The Dark Side Erupts
His face bright with excitement, Xiao Yuan rushed to the bedroom door and grabbed the handle.
The door swung inward on its own.
A cold glint of steel flashed.
Xiao Yuan threw his hand up on instinct. A sharp pain tore through it, and a bleeding gash opened across his palm, blood hitting the floor.
He cried out and stumbled backward.
The pain and the sight of his own blood cut through the excitement instantly, leaving nothing behind but panic.
Xiao Yuan stared into the bedroom.
A hollow-eyed homeless man filled the doorway.
He was wrapped in a purplish-brown rag of a coat, greasy shoulder-length hair matted and tangled. A thick beard almost swallowed his dark face, leaving little visible except two fierce, unsettling eyes.
In his hand, a dripping knife.
“You should go. Just leave.” Xiao Yuan pressed his bleeding hand to his chest, aware that Wen Yiqian was behind him, and forced himself to hold his ground long enough to say it.
He didn’t get to finish.
The homeless man swung the knife in a hard, merciless arc directly at him.
Xiao Yuan lurched back and dodged, but the man came after him like a cornered animal. Every slash went straight for something vital. He left no room, showed no hesitation, seemed completely indifferent to whatever came next.
Two more cuts opened on Xiao Yuan’s body before he fully understood what he was dealing with.
An ordinary criminal, even a reckless one, would pull back from killing. Too much mess, too many consequences. This man wasn’t operating on those terms at all. He moved like someone who had already decided the outcome and just needed to finish the motion.
“Help! He’s trying to kill me!” Xiao Yuan, all courage spent, scrambled backward on all fours and screamed for his life.
Wen Yiqian stood frozen for a moment.
Even to his eye, the man seemed genuinely unhinged. Breaking and entering was one thing: people didn’t usually respond to being discovered by trying to commit murder. But this one was acting as if his life depended on it, as if there were no other possible response.
If this kept up, Xiao Yuan was going to end up dead.
Calling for help would take too long.
Going at the man himself: not a chance.
Wen Yiqian stamped his foot, gritted his teeth, and shouted. “Hey! Stop. You want to leave, just go. We won’t touch you.”
He moved behind the sofa, clearing the path to the front door.
The homeless man looked up at him.
“Please.” Wen Yiqian shrank back slightly and pointed at the wide-open door.
The man stared at it for a moment.
Then gripped the knife and charged straight at Wen Yiqian.
Oh, come on. Wen Yiqian groaned inwardly and bolted around the other side of the sofa. “We’ve never crossed paths before today. What is this for?”
The man said nothing. He drove the knife forward in a hard thrust. Wen Yiqian twisted aside and the blade sank into the sofa instead, tearing through the fabric and exposing the stuffing underneath.
“I can’t afford to replace that!” The damage landed in Wen Yiqian’s chest like a physical blow. It hurt somewhere deeper than fear.
The homeless man yanked the knife free and kept coming, his face showing nothing: no anger, no hesitation, no awareness that any of this was unusual.
Xiao Yuan, bleeding from several wounds, used the distraction to edge quietly toward the front door.
When he reached the doorway, he turned back.
“Big Brother Yiqian, I’m going for help. Hang in there, you’ve got this!”
He gave a determined fist pump and vanished through the door.
Wen Yiqian felt a rush of something hot climb his throat, but before a single word could come out, a slash cut the air in front of him.
The blade missed his body by a breath and took a long strip out of his shirt instead.
Cold sweat broke out across his back. He snapped his focus back entirely and kept moving, circling the sofa, trying angles, talking the whole time.
“Killing me gets you nothing. Just walk out.”
“The police will be here any minute. Leave now and you can still disappear. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life locked up?”
“There’s no reason for this. No reason at all.”
Nothing landed. The man was somewhere beyond the reach of words, operating on instinct alone. Every tactic that had ever worked for Wen Yiqian required the other person to be listening. This one wasn’t.
Then his heel caught the edge of the coffee table.
He went down.
No time to think. No other option. He performed.
In an instant, something shifted behind his eyes.
The homeless man showed no mercy. He lunged like a dog breaking off a leash, drove the knife down toward Wen Yiqian’s chest with everything he had.
Wen Yiqian caught the blade with both hands. The tip pressed against his sternum. The man leaned into it, pushing with his full weight, and blood began to seep through the shirt.
He brought both hands down on the handle and bore down harder, closing the distance, face dropping toward Wen Yiqian’s.
Ha. Hahahaha.
As the blade tip slowly worked through skin, Wen Yiqian’s expression became something the homeless man had not been prepared for: unhinged, electric, almost joyful.
The man faltered for just a fraction of a second.
Thud.
Wen Yiqian snapped his head upward with everything he had, driving his forehead directly into the other man’s.
He used it like a weapon, like it belonged to someone else entirely.
The impact was dull and heavy, the kind of sound that made the stomach turn.
The world went dark at the edges for the homeless man. His grip loosened.
Wen Yiqian’s laughter climbed higher. He seized the man’s head in both hands and brought his forehead down into it again.
And again.
Blood ran freely down both their faces.
The homeless man had no answer for it. His eyes began to drift. Each blow pushed him further from consciousness, and there was nothing left in him to fight back with.
Wen Yiqian got to his feet, swaying, then found his balance.
He was smiling.
He reached down, grabbed the homeless man by the hair, and dragged him to the bathroom without particular urgency, the way you might drag a bag that had become inconvenient to carry.
He came back for a length of rope, a stool, and a stack of paper.
Working with unhurried precision, he bound the man’s hands and feet to the stool from behind. Then he ran a second rope around the head, angling it back, fixing it so the face pointed upward.
He turned on the shower.
The cold water hit the man’s face directly. Under the assault of it, the vagrant clawed his way back to consciousness and began to struggle.
Wen Yiqian placed one foot on the stool to hold it steady and looked down at him, still wearing that calm, composed smile.
He picked up two sheets of paper, laid them across the man’s face like a mask, and let a little water fall over them.
The paper soaked through and sealed itself to his skin.
The vagrant’s tongue moved against it, trying to push through, to make a gap for air.
Wen Yiqian added another sheet. Then water. Then another sheet.
Methodical. Patient. Unhurried.
(End of Chapter)