Chapter 4

13

As the days passed, her sight gradually returned.

At first there was only a faint light, painfully bright against the darkness. Then she began to make out blurred shapes. Finally, everything around her became as clear as it had been before.

At each follow-up appointment, the doctor asked whether she could see anything.

She only shook her head.

It was deliberate.

She pretended to be a helpless blind woman who could not live without him.

She did not have to wait long for her answer.

Every morning, Xie Feng brought her a glass of warm milk. A layer of fine white powder always settled at the bottom.

The moment he turned away, she poured it out. When she could not avoid drinking a few mouthfuls, she hurried to the bathroom and forced herself to vomit until her body went limp.

Xie Feng watched her for a long time.

She remained weak. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

At last he grew impatient.

“Xiaoya, let’s go back to the village so you can rest,” he suggested. “Birdsong, flowers, fresh air. It might help your eyes recover.”

Her heart sank.

She knew he was nearly done waiting.

Quietly, she took the phone hidden beneath her pillow and sent a message to Chen Yang, who had always stayed nearby, watching over her.

His answer came almost at once.

“All right.”

In that instant, her last hesitation fell away.

With her heart that cold, there was nothing left to reconsider.

This time, she would turn the tables.

She had to.

14

If Xie Feng could secretly take out a large accident policy on her, why couldn’t she do the same to him?

If he could put something in her milk, why couldn’t she add something to the coffee he drank every day?

She did not hesitate. Once she decided, she acted.

Xie Feng drank the drugged coffee without suspecting a thing. He assumed he had simply been overworking himself.

As time passed, he grew weaker. His arms and legs began to feel unsteady.

Perhaps he panicked. Perhaps he feared he would collapse before anything happened to Ma Xiaoya.

Whatever the reason, he accelerated his plan to kill her.

To this man, money meant everything else would follow.

Beautiful women. The best medical care. Anything he wanted.

He said he would build her a sunroom, somewhere she could enjoy the sunlight and help her eyes recover.

Behind her back, he covered the courtyard with boards full of nails. Their sharp points stuck upward, enough to chill anyone who saw them.

He wanted an “accident.”

She would trip, fall, and land on the nails.

He might even have intended to wait until the drugs left her dazed, then drive the nail-studded board into her head himself.

He never realized he had already walked into a trap of her making.

The sun was especially fierce that day.

Standing in the courtyard, Ma Xiaoya looked at the cold glint of the nails. At last, with a savage sense of satisfaction, she dropped the pretense.

“Xie Feng. You make me sick.”

His face went white.

With his mask torn away, he lost control.

He lunged at her, seized her throat, and spat through clenched teeth, “You bitch! You dared lie to me! I’ll drive every one of those nails into your forehead!”

The courtyard gate burst open.

Chen Yang rushed in.

Xie Feng was normally the stronger of the two, but after drinking the drugged coffee for so long, he had barely any strength left. His limbs were slack and useless. He was beaten within moments.

Chen Yang snatched up a brick from the foot of the wall and struck him hard on the back of the head, then kicked him in the chest.

Xie Feng staggered and fell.

As chance would have it, his head landed squarely on the sharp nails.

Blood poured out.

His body convulsed a few times, then lay still.

Heaven had seen to it: the monster had died in his own trap.

15

By the time I heard this final layer of the truth, I was cold all over, right down to my fingertips.

One revelation beneath another. Like peeling an onion.

By the time you reached the center, the sting brought tears to your eyes.

Those tears were neither anger nor sorrow.

Only a feeling too complicated to put into words.

“That… is the whole truth, Officer Song. I arranged everything. Chen Yang had nothing to do with it. Take me to the station. I’ll turn myself in.”

Chen Yang suddenly caught her arm, his eyes red.

“No! I suggested it first! I did it because I love her! I was the one who struck him. I’m the one who should go to prison!”

Ma Xiaoya tried to shake him off. At last, her tears began to fall.

“Don’t be stupid… I never should have dragged you into this.”

He held on, his eyes bloodshot.

“Then punish me! I can’t let you bear all of it alone…”

I watched them in silence, torn by emotions I could scarcely untangle.

At last, I stopped them.

“Enough. The court has ruled on this case. It’s over.”

They froze and stared at me in disbelief.

I shrugged.

“Quite a productive visit today. I even got to hear an updated version of the story. But a story is still a story. Sometimes there’s no need to take it too seriously. I have work waiting at the station, so I’ll leave you to it. Have a good trip.”

I turned and walked away.

But I could feel both of them watching me long after I left.

16

After that, I never came across Where the Wind Meets Mountains and Rivers on the short-video platforms again.

I heard the account had been deleted.

There were rumors too. After paying off the family debts, Ma Xiaoya and Chen Yang had donated all their remaining savings to a Hope Primary School in the mountains.

Then they had gone to a remote mountain region, far from other people.

They grew vegetables and worked the land, rising with the sun and resting when it set. They kept a small, peaceful corner of the world for themselves and lived quietly, asking nothing more of it.

This time, there were no livestreams.

No cameras. No scripts. No traffic.

And no more calculations, lies, or malice hidden in the dark.

They had held each other up on the edge of the abyss, saved each other in the night.

Now they would spend the rest of their lives together, with a simple, unwavering devotion that might wash away the grime and heal the wounds of the past.

Perhaps, once all the glitter and clamor were stripped away, love was only this: looking after each other and living in peace.

I thought that might be love at its most beautiful.

17

But time proved how naive I had been.

Ten years later, a letter arrived out of the blue.

It was from Chen Yang.

Officer Song,

I am writing on behalf of both myself and Ma Xiaoya. Think of this as a confession that has come far too late.

Even at the very end, we lied to you. We never told you the whole truth.

The nail in Xie Feng’s temple was no accident.

That day, he discovered the gate Xiaoya had unlatched and locked it again from inside. By the time I broke in, he had strangled her unconscious and was about to drive a nail into her forehead.

I knocked him unconscious just in time.

When Xiaoya came to, she hated him so much that she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. She killed him the way he had meant to kill her, then made it look like an accident.

At that moment, there was nothing in her but betrayal and revenge. She did not hesitate.

Afterward, though, the nightmares came every night. She dreamed of Xie Feng coming to claim her life, his head covered in blood, his face twisted with rage.

We gave away all the money. We hid in the mountains.

Still, she could not escape the torment in her own mind.

She grew more frightened, more exhausted. Eventually, she began raving even in broad daylight.

Yesterday, after her mind finally broke, she died in my arms.

Only when she closed her eyes did she find peace.

You are a good man. Deceiving you weighed on both our consciences. Before I go, I must offer you a sincere apology from us both.

I hope that in our next lives, Xiaoya and I can love each other without all the complications, lies, and blood of this one.

I will not let her leave alone.

By the time you read this, perhaps I will have caught up with her.

May your work go well, and may you live a happy life.

Chen Yang and his wife, Ma Xiaoya

I put down the letter.

A terrible foreboding rose inside me.

I picked up the phone and called their local police station to ask after them.

While I waited, I remembered the wound on Ma Xiaoya’s forehead when I had first attended the scene ten years earlier.

That small mark, about the size of a nail head, had made me suspicious. She had put me off with a single explanation.

She was blind. She must have bumped into something.

Looking back now, what Chen Yang had written had to be the truth.

Xie Feng had tried to kill Ma Xiaoya with a nail.

After being rescued, she had hated him enough to do the same to him.

But in doing so, she had condemned herself to years of inner torment, from which only death had finally released her.

The officer on the other end of the line returned with what they had found.

Just as I feared.

The day after sending the letter, Chen Yang had jumped off a cliff with Xiaoya’s body in his arms.

Without hesitation.

Without looking back.

It was the same cliff where they had once livestreamed that sham wedding.

Our first performance was for you.

This final curtain was for ourselves.

All the guilt, all the remorse, vanished with that leap into the wind below the cliff.

No more Xie Feng.

No more Xiaoya.

No more Chen Yang.

And no more wedding—the wedding that had concealed so much blood and so many lies.