Idiot
“You…” Dracula looked at Wen Yiqian beside him. “You tricked me?”
“Correct.” Wen Yiqian nodded, admitting it without hesitation.
“You fantasize about becoming an immortal vampire, and you look gravely ill. It’s clear you’re suffering from a serious disease and don’t have much time left.”
“So I only needed to play a small trick involving what you care about most to throw you off balance.”
“Plus, you’re even dumber than I imagined, which is why the plan went surprisingly smoothly.”
As he spoke, he patted the man lying on the ground. “Alright, wrap it up.”
The man immediately opened his eyes, sprang to his feet, and grinned. “Big brother, how was my corpse acting?”
He glanced at Dracula and pointed at his own chest. “I even sacrificed my looks for this. Pay me a little extra, won’t you?”
“Scram.” Wen Yiqian pulled out two hundred yuan and stuffed it into the man’s hand.
“Got it.”
The man happily pocketed the money, rubbed the spot where Dracula had just “fed” on him, threw a flirtatious glance back at Dracula, and scurried off gleefully.
Recalling the scene, Dracula felt his stomach churn. He wiped the ketchup from the corner of his mouth, his expression turning uglier by the second.
“A random extra I found on the street. Pretty dedicated, huh?” Wen Yiqian watched him with a mocking expression.
“Do you know what consequences this will bring?” Dracula stood up furiously, his tone menacing.
“What consequences?” Wen Yiqian crossed his arms, looking genuinely curious.
Dracula sneered. “So you don’t care about that little girl’s life either?”
His expression turned sinister. “Without me, you’ll never find her.”
That was why he had dared to come here alone. As long as he held the hostage, the other side wouldn’t dare act recklessly.
“You really are…” Wen Yiqian reached out and gently patted Dracula’s bald head. “Adorably stupid.”
Dracula took a few cautious steps back, pressing himself against the wall. “What do you mean?”
“You’re already here. Why would I still be worried about the hostage?” Wen Yiqian said.
“I have accomplices,” Dracula shot back with sudden confidence. “One text from me and he’ll kill that girl.”
“People hustle for profit, people bustle for profit.” Wen Yiqian shook his head. “If you had some grand ambition, like robbing a bank or something actually profitable, I might believe you have accomplices.”
He paused, then smiled contemptuously. “But you want to become a vampire by drinking human blood.”
“Who would be so brain-dead as to join you in something so pointless, so harmful, and so utterly useless?”
He watched the shifting expressions in Dracula’s eyes with calm interest. “If you were eloquent, you might have managed to rope in one or two equally brain-dead accomplices.”
“But both the phone call earlier and this conversation make it obvious you don’t interact with people often and are clumsy with words.”
“And if you were decent-looking, I might believe you have some devoted lover willing to do anything for you.”
“But with your looks?”
“How am I supposed to believe that?”
“You… I…” Dracula’s face flushed red. He stammered for a long moment without managing to say anything coherent.
“You’re not going to tell me you hired help with money, are you?” Wen Yiqian smiled slightly.
Dracula lowered his head and glanced at his own shabby appearance. Even he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
His eyes darted around. Then, with a tone of forced resolve, he said, “Even if you’re certain I have no accomplices, before I left, I set up a trigger. If I don’t return within an hour, that girl dies horribly.”
“First: I never said I was certain you have no accomplices,” Wen Yiqian replied without any rush. “What I said was speculation. It’s your own words just now that truly confirmed it.”
He watched the other man’s expression sour further and continued. “Second: you claim you set up a mechanism, and if you don’t return within an hour, the girl will die. I’m not trying to look down on you, but your lying skills are genuinely terrible. I don’t even know how you arrived at ‘one hour.’”
He shook his head, his expression almost pitying. “Couldn’t you at least calculate how much time passed between hanging up the phone and getting here?”
Dracula was left speechless, his face cycling between red and white.
“To be honest, if I weren’t concerned that a fool like you might do something reckless out of desperation, I wouldn’t have wasted this much time on you,” Wen Yiqian said flatly.
Clearly, dealing with someone like this brought him no enjoyment whatsoever.
“Heh heh heh…” Dracula let out a bitter laugh. “Right. I’m a fool. The biggest fool.”
He raised his head and roared. “But what choice do I have? I have an incurable illness. I’ve spent everything I have and still couldn’t be cured.”
“What was I supposed to do? Just wait quietly to die?”
“Deep down, I know the idea of becoming a vampire is foolish. But I had no other options.”
“I don’t want to die!” he cried out in anguish. “I’m still so young. I don’t want to die!”
Even some of history’s most ambitious emperors, upon sensing their impending mortality, had frantically pursued the elixir of immortality.
Even knowing the so-called elixir was nothing but nonsense.
Even as the so-called immortality pills made their health deteriorate day by day.
They didn’t want to die, so they forced themselves to believe.
Perhaps from the very beginning, Dracula had known that the vampire fantasy was exactly that: a fantasy. Something to fool himself with.
But he had hypnotized himself desperately, forced himself to believe, because he had no other choice.
At least this way, he could hold onto some hope. Some expectation.
Otherwise, whatever days he had left would be spent in nothing but despair and darkness.
Wen Yiqian’s gaze remained indifferent, a mocking smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “You don’t want to die? What about the people you killed? Did they want to die?”
“What does it matter to me whether they wanted to die or not?” Dracula shouted back stubbornly. “Humans are inherently the most selfish creatures. I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
“Then what does it matter to me whether you want to die or not?” Wen Yiqian tilted his head slightly. “The only reason I’ve bothered talking to you this long is to try and salvage some amusement from someone who’s wasted so much of my energy.”
He paused. “But you really can’t provide me with any.”
As he spoke, his expression turned cold and dark. He began walking toward the other man, one step at a time.
“What are you trying to do?” Dracula felt a spike of panic rise in his chest.
“For someone like you, who can’t bring me any enjoyment: what’s the point of you being in this world?” Wen Yiqian kept walking, his expression perfectly indifferent.
Gradually, a look of madness spread across his face, bright and hungry.
“Let your life give me one last bit of fun.”
(End of Chapter)