CHAPTER 83: CHAPTER 83; TRAGIC INCIDENT

Found you.

"Found you, you idiot!"

Three kilometers away, Chen Ting’s car raced through the darkened streets, weaving between late-night traffic with aggressive speed. He was still on his phone, his voice raised in anger as he barked orders at whoever was unfortunate enough to be on the other end of the phone call.

"I don’t care if it’s midnight! Get Judge Wang out of bed and tell him I need an emergency psychiatric hold order by morning. Yes, for my wife! She’s dangerous, unstable, a threat to herself and others....."

In the passenger seat, his secretary clutched the briefcase to his chest like a shield, his face pale with worry. "Sir, perhaps you should slow down. The roads are...."

"Shut up," Chen Ting snapped at him, taking a sharp turn that made the tires screech. "I’m not in the mood for your cowardice. We need to move fast before Lu Yuze can entrench himself. Once we have the legal paperwork, he’ll have to surrender her. He can’t refuse a court order, no matter how powerful he thinks he is."

He ended one call and immediately started another, his fingers flying over the phone screen with practiced efficiency. "Hello? Yes, this is Chen Ting. I need you to pull some files for me, medical records for my wife. I need documentation of her psychiatric history for a court case. What? I don’t care about privacy laws, just....."

He stopped mid-sentence.

A sharp, stabbing pain lanced through his skull, so sudden and intense that he gasped, nearly dropping his phone. It felt like someone had driven an ice pick directly into his brain, the cold spreading through his neural pathways with terrifying speed.

"Sir?" The secretary noticed Chen Ting’s sudden pallor. "Sir, are you alright?"

Chen Ting tried to respond, but another wave of agony crashed through his consciousness. This time it wasn’t just pain, it was pressure, as if invisible hands were squeezing his brain, compressing it from all sides.

Images flashed through his mind, unbidden and unwanted. Memories he’d buried, things he’d convinced himself hadn’t been that bad, justified actions that now played out in brutal clarity.

Chen Wan’s face was terrified as he raised his hand to strike her.

His children, who were crying in their room, while he raged downstairs.

The psychiatrist he’d bribed to sign false commitment papers.

The drugs he’d been slowly administering to his wife, making her seem unstable, paranoid, crazy.

Every cruel word. Every calculated manipulation. Every time he’d hurt someone weaker than himself, he felt nothing but satisfaction.

All of it flooded back, and with it came something else, a presence, cold and ancient and utterly merciless, rifling through his memories like someone flipping through the pages of a book.

’You hurt her,’ the presence observed, not with anger but with clinical detachment, as if diagnosing a disease. ’You hurt many people. You enjoy causing pain. You’re a predator.’

Chen Ting tried to scream, but no sound came out. His hands spasmed on the steering wheel, and the car swerved dangerously into the oncoming lane.

And predators, the presence continued, need to be eliminated.

"Sir! Sir, watch out!" The secretary’s scream finally penetrated Chen Ting’s consciousness, but it was too late.

The pressure in his head suddenly intensified a hundredfold. Chen Ting felt something break inside his skull, not physically, but spiritually, mentally, the essential thing that made him simply... shattering.

His eyes rolled back, showing only whites. Blood began trickling from his nose, his ears, the corners of his eyes.

The car, now completely out of control, veered sharply to the right.

The secretary grabbed the steering wheel, trying desperately to correct their course, but Chen Ting’s body was dead weight against him, and the vehicle was traveling too fast, the momentum too great.

And then the presence turned its attention to him.

The secretary felt it, that same cold intelligence touching his mind, but briefly, almost carelessly. He wasn’t the target. He was just... in the way.

Collateral damage, the presence noted with chilling indifference.

The secretary’s brain short-circuited, his nervous system flooding with contradictory signals. His heart stuttered, missed several beats, then stopped entirely.

He slumped forward against the dashboard, dead before his body fully settled.

The car, now piloted by two corpses, crashed through a guardrail at over 120 kilometers per hour.

For a moment, it seemed to hang in the air, suspended by momentum and gravity’s cruel calculus.

Then it plummeted down the embankment, rolling three times before slamming into a concrete support pillar with a sound like thunder.

The fuel tank ruptured on impact.

And then, inevitably, catastrophically.....

The explosion lit up the night sky like a miniature sun, a ball of orange flame climbing into the darkness, visible for kilometers in every direction.

By the time the first emergency responders arrived, there was nothing left but twisted, burning metal and two bodies charred beyond recognition.

Back in the mansion, Shuyin’s jade eye stopped glowing.

Her fingers uncurled, relaxing against the couch cushion.

Her breathing returned to its normal, peaceful rhythm.

The frost on the windows began to melt, water droplets running down the glass like tears.

Lu Yuze stared at her, his heart pounding. He’d felt... something. A shift in the air. A cold pressure that had suddenly appeared and then vanished just as quickly.

"Shuyin?" he softly called her.

Her eye cracked open slightly, that glowing jade iris fixing on him with drowsy awareness.

"Problem solved," she murmured, then her eyes closed again and she was immediately back in deep sleep, as if nothing had happened.

Lu Yuze sat frozen, his mind racing. Problem solved? What problem? What had she.....

Then his phone suddenly buzzed.

He looked down at the screen and could see the news alert.

BREAKING: Fatal Car Accident on Highway 7. Two Dead in the Fiery Crash.

His blood ran cold.

With trembling fingers, he opened the article. The details were sparse, too early for complete information, but the location was correct. The timing was correct.