Chapter 7: The raving mad traitor
The world’s most callous and cruel man must be named Chen Zhang An.
The way to deliver the most brutal punishment to a person is to destroy their most precious happiness.
Of course Chen Zhang An knew what Lu Feng held most dear, he also knew that killing Lu Feng personally would not be the most painful punishment he could met out to this traitor. Thus, he chose to end his own life with his own two hands, right in front of Lu Feng.
Night after night, Chen Zhang An will appear in his mind, sprawling lazily on the sun deck, waving his hand at him.
He thought that this man had finally come to accept him, but behind that warm smile hid the greatest cruelty.
Between heaven and hell, there truly is only a thin line.
In the darkness of a room, a soothing and beautiful nocturne played. An ethereal contralto accompanied by a cello, crooned from a jukebox, both melodious and elegant.
A moonbeam shone through the window of the room. Under the moonlight, a solemn man dressed in a black suit played a piano with clean and slender hands.
Lu Feng closed his eyes as though to immerse himself in the music. This is Chen Zhang An’s favorite piano piece. From the very first day he started following that man, he had never stopped practicing - simply because it was Chen Zhang An’s favorite music.
‘We will be together forever.’
He slowly opened his dark bottomless eyes. He turned his gaze to a rocking chair inside the house. It was empty, but as the man looked at it, he started smiling.
It was the chair the Chen Zhang An sat in the most often. That man haven’t left him; he had been sitting there throughout, his eyes closed, listening to him play quietly.
'Zhang An, did it sound nice?’ Lu Feng spoke to himself as he started humming.
He stood up from the piano, the singing from the jukebox still drifting around the dark room. As a cold wind swept in through the window, more threads of moonlight filtered into the room, lighting up a portion of a wall in the room.
On that lighted portion hung several portrait paintings.
On one of the paintings was a man sitting on a rocking a chair, a hand holding a cigar and the other a glass of wine. His lidded eyes seem heavy with thought.
The painting beside it showed a man lying on a large black bed without a shred of clothing on. His brow was lightly furrowed as though his sleep was uneasy. His pale body, littered with red marks from lovemaking, was wrapped in a nest of black satin sheets.
Portrait after portrait, the room was covered entirely in paintings. Each painting held the same face.
The man in the painting could be a king overlooking a crowd with a contemptuous gaze; he could be a chained wounded beast posing in a humiliating yet erotic display; or he could be observing viewers outside the painting with remote and indifferent eyes.
Without any exception, all of them was of a man named Chen Zhang An.
'Zhang An… …’
Chanting the man’s name like a sleep talker, Lu Feng laughed in a craze. He rather Chen Zhang An killed him with his bare hands than to live in this unbearable reality.
'You aren’t dead, you can’t be dead, you definitely can’t dead.’
As though he was murmuring a curse, Lu Feng gently caressed the face of the man in the portrait. When he closed his eyes, it felt like that man was still by his side watching him.