Ren Yi grabbed Gong Yingxian by the collar and snarled, “No, I’m not! I’m practically dying here! If you want me to recover sooner, then stop scaring the fucking life out of me!”
Gong Yingxian wrapped one hand around Ren Yi’s and gently stroked his fingers. “Ren Yi, calm down.”
Ren Yi took a deep breath, then released him and turned to look for the light switch.
“Don’t turn it on. There’s no doctor on duty in this examination room today.”
“You know this place pretty well. How long have you been hiding here?”
“I started following you today,” Gong Yingxian added. “I’ve been tailing you ever since you left the hospital.”
Ren Yi roughly wiped his face. His racing heart gradually began to settle, and he spoke in a low voice. “What the hell happened? Why did you go with Bai Yan? Why are you wanted by the police? Do you have any idea what it means to be a wanted fugitive?!”
Gong Yingxian lowered his head and murmured wearily, “…Could you let me sleep for an hour first?”
“What?”
“I’ve barely slept these past few days. I haven’t been able to find anywhere clean, and I don’t have my pillow. My mind is a mess right now.” Gong Yingxian wrapped his arms around Ren Yi’s waist and rested his head against his shoulder. “If I hold you, I’ll be able to sleep.”
Ren Yi’s heart melted instantly.
“Come home with me first.”
“I can’t. Your phone is bugged, and your car has a tracking device. Your home is probably under surveillance too.”
Ren Yi frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Do you think I don’t know these tactics? Fortunately, though, you haven’t been followed. They might think you’re vigilant enough that following you would alert you to something, or perhaps they’re afraid that if someone follows you, I won’t come looking for you.”
“You mean they know you’ll come looking for me?”
“Of course. And it’s not just you. Everyone close to me is being watched.”
“Then… what do we do? Wouldn’t coming to see me put you in danger?”
“It’s fine. They can’t catch me. Do you know anywhere safe, somewhere no one would think to look, where we can hide for a while?”
Ren Yi thought for a moment. “There’s one place, but… Forget it. That’ll do.”
“Where?”
“I have a buddy who moved abroad to settle down. His parents spend the winter with him and don’t return until after the Qingming Festival. I know the password to their house. He’s used the same trick for passwords since he was a kid: just reverse the numbers of his birthday.”
“Good,” Gong Yingxian said. “When we leave, take your phone with you. We mustn’t talk.”
“What about the tracker in the car?”
“I’ll remove it.”
Gong Yingxian took out his own phone and handed it to Ren Yi, then mouthed one word: Go.
The two left the nursing home and walked to the parking lot. Taking advantage of the cover of darkness, Gong Yingxian crouched down and felt around the underside of the car. Sure enough, he found the tracker. He tossed the little black box into a trash can.
Only when Ren Yi saw the tracker with his own eyes did he truly feel that he was being monitored by the police. He had no idea what kind of case he had become entangled in. He only knew that ever since Purple Flame had set its sights on them, he could no longer expect to live a peaceful life.
They got into the car. The interior was much brighter than the room they had just left, allowing Ren Yi to see Gong Yingxian clearly. He was wearing very plain casual clothes and a baseball cap. His cheeks had grown gaunt, and dark circles surrounded his eyes. He really did look like someone who had been severely deprived of sleep.
Ren Yi reached out tenderly and stroked his face. Gong Yingxian leaned into his palm, rubbing his cheek against it again and again. It was as though he had stolen a brief moment of peace, and all the muscles in his body finally relaxed.
They drove in silence. Only when they stopped at traffic lights did they seek reassurance in each other’s presence through a glance or a small touch, soothing their anxious, fearful hearts.
When they arrived at his friend’s house, Ren Yi opened the door without any trouble. A stuffy smell, the unmistakable odor of a place left unoccupied for a long time, greeted them. He went over and opened the windows to air it out.
Gong Yingxian once again isolated Ren Yi’s phone from the signal before finally letting out a relieved breath.
“I’ll clean up the bedroom. Go get yourself some water first and see if there’s anything to eat in the kitchen.”
Ren Yi took clean bedding out of the cupboard, made the bed, and gave the floor a quick sweep. When he turned around, he found Gong Yingxian standing behind him without his noticing, leaning against the doorframe and quietly watching him.
“Did you find anything to eat?”
Gong Yingxian shook his head.
“Then I’ll go buy you something in a bit.”
Gong Yingxian shook his head again. “I just want to sleep.”
Ren Yi spread his arms helplessly. “Come here.”
With the desperate urgency of someone chasing the first glimpse of daylight, Gong Yingxian crossed the room in two or three quick strides and threw his arms around Ren Yi. They fell onto the bed together.
Ren Yi held him close, gently stroking his back again and again.
“You must be exhausted.”
“Mm.” Gong Yingxian spoke beside Ren Yi’s ear. “I’ll sleep for just one hour. No, make that two. You have to wake me up.”
He pressed his ear against Ren Yi’s chest, listening to the steady, powerful beating of his heart. It was the gentlest lullaby in the world, and sleep swept over him like a wind rolling across an open plain.
He hadn’t been able to sleep these past few days, partly because of his surroundings and partly because he had been under such intense mental strain. But now he was holding Ren Yi, with Ren Yi right there in his arms. With this person beside him, it didn’t matter that he lacked the pillow he had depended on since childhood. It didn’t matter that the environment failed to meet his standards of hygiene. It didn’t even matter that he was carrying the weight of so many schemes and dangers on his shoulders.
Having Ren Yi was enough.
Together, they could build an impregnable fortress.
Gong Yingxian closed his eyes and quickly sank into a deep sleep.
Ren Yi held him carefully, his mind in turmoil. But one thing was certain: Gong Yingxian was alive and safe. Everything else, in truth, wasn’t nearly as important.
Gong Yingxian slept until the following morning. That alone showed just how much exhaustion he had accumulated.
When he woke up, Ren Yi was no longer in bed. A faint aroma of food drifted through the crack beneath the door. He walked into the living room and found that Ren Yi had already prepared breakfast.
Ren Yi looked at him. “Hungry?”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Gong Yingxian rubbed his head. “I said I’d sleep for only two hours.”
“If you didn’t get enough sleep, how much longer do you think your body could have held out?”
“Where’s your phone?”
“Don’t worry. I took it with me when I went out to buy things this morning, so there’d be some normal activity. It’s wrapped up again now.”
Gong Yingxian sat down in a chair and yawned. “I really do feel alive again.”
“Eat.” Ren Yi sat opposite him. “Once you’re full, tell me everything from beginning to end.”
Gong Yingxian visibly paused before lowering his head and starting to eat.
Ren Yi sighed. “You haven’t been sleeping or eating, have you?”
“Very little. The food outside is dirty.”
“With all your little quirks, you’re hardly suited to life on the run.”
“I never intended to spend my life on the run.”
“Then you…” Ren Yi stopped himself. “Forget it. Eat first.”
As he ate, he secretly watched Gong Yingxian. The brief peace of this meal was about to be shattered. He desperately wanted to know what had happened, yet at the same time, he was afraid of finding out.
After they finished eating, Gong Yingxian looked into Ren Yi’s eyes and asked, “Have you heard about Zhang Wen?”
“Mm. He was an impostor. The real Zhang Wen is probably dead, or at least in grave danger.”
“He disappeared. Either he was also a member of the cult, or he was murdered.”
“How’s Cai Qiang?”
“He’s still in the hospital, but he’ll recover.”
“How did Yue Xingu die? Why did you go with Bai Yan? And why are the police hunting you?”
Ren Yi fired all three questions at him in one breath.
“That day, Bai Chicheng told me that Zhang Wen was someone they had planted in the Fire Investigation Division. His job was to look for opportunities to tamper with fire investigation reports and conceal evidence of arson committed by members of the organization as much as possible.”
“How could he tamper with them? The Fire Investigation Division’s reports are digitally encrypted. Internal personnel can only view them, not modify them.”
“What if he did it before the reports were finalized? Take the Wen Hui Shopping Mall case and the Anjia residential complex case, for example. Zhang Wen worked with Fang Zhixu to destroy evidence, causing us to misjudge the time the fires started. We still haven’t caught the perpetrators. The same thing happened in the Anjia residential complex case. An arson case was classified as an accidental fire. If someone inside the insurance company with a sense of justice hadn’t secretly informed the police, that case might have been covered up completely as well.”
Ren Yi said solemnly, “Every case Zhang Wen handled is being reviewed.”
“There’s another way reports can be altered even after they’ve been finalized: the old files from before everything was digitally archived.”
Ren Yi took a deep breath. “New recruits in the Fire Investigation Division are always assigned to organize old files or evidence storage. But there are surveillance cameras in those areas.”
“There are plenty of ways to get around surveillance.”
“So were the files and evidence from your family’s case tampered with?”
Gong Yingxian nodded. “That’s what Bai Chicheng told me. He asked me to turn off the listening device, then said he had the original files. If I helped him escape, he would give them to me.”
“And you agreed?” Ren Yi’s voice rose involuntarily. “I refuse to believe you couldn’t find a better way. Surely things didn’t have to get so bad that you ended up in this situation.”
“I didn’t agree at first. I doubted what he was telling me and planned to arrest him, then interrogate him at length. But…”
“What happened?”