Chapter 44. The Fall Of Icarus Part 1

It had already been several days since they returned to Pingyuan, but to Lu Zhengming, everything that happened in Beijing still felt like a dream.

Half-drunk and half-sober, Yin Yan had said a lot of things he would never say while clear-headed. His words came in pieces, often interrupted by dazed, drunken laughter.

Lu Zhengming felt that was the only kind of laughter that was real. His face was relaxed, unguarded, completely unlike the perfect mask he usually wore.

He thought back to a year ago, when Yin Yan had come to his studio with a bottle of wine. He had said unforgettable things back then too. But when he sobered up, he returned to his usual self. No acknowledgment. No reaction. As if the whole night had been a dream.

Now, a year later, Yin Yan was doing the same thing. Changing the subject with all sorts of diversions. Only this time, he wasn’t cold like before. He seemed gentler, more sincere. But it was still one kind of honesty, hiding another.

The next morning, Yin Yan told Lu Zhengming where he had gone the day before. Just as Lu Zhengming had guessed, he had gone to visit Dai Wangyun.

Yin Yan had ultimately given up on being the good guy. The moment he received Zhong Jingjing’s contact information, a plan had started forming in his head.

He hadn’t wanted to lie to Zhong Jingjing. But he also wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.

He had exchanged a few messages with Dai Wangyun on WeChat, and Dai Wangyun had sent him his home address. As a gift, Yin Yan brought along a raw lapis lazuli stone.

It was a deep blue gemstone with pure color and high value, also a rare natural pigment that could last for centuries without fading. From Renaissance oil paintings to Tibetan Buddhist thangkas, this unforgettable shade of blue had appeared across time and culture.

The piece Yin Yan carried came from Afghanistan, gemstone grade, with a shade of ultramarine so rich it leaned violet. To the naked eye, it had almost no impurities. If carved into a decorative object, it could go straight to auction. But its most likely fate was to be crushed and refined into powdered pigment of various textures, blended with medium to create blue paint in different tones.

This was one of Dai Wangyun’s indulgent hobbies.

What Yin Yan never told Zhong Jingjing was that the stone had come from her mother. It had been a keepsake she gave him before she was hospitalized. Aside from that stone, Yin Yan brought nothing with him to meet her father.

When Dai Wangyun saw it, he went silent for a long time. Yin Yan sat on the huanghuali wood sofa in the living room, saying nothing. The only sound in the villa was the trickling water of the koi pond.

When the silence finally broke, Dai Wangyun smiled and put the stone away. He started talking about his collection, and Yin Yan picked up the conversation as if nothing had happened.

That evening, Dai invited him to stay for dinner. He opened a vintage bottle of Feitian Maotai. Good liquor was never in short supply in his home.

“Age catches up. The will is there, but the body lags behind.”

He raised his glass and only let the liquor touch his lips. Yin Yan downed his in one go. Before the dishes even arrived, he had already emptied three cups, full pours each time, and complimented the bottle lavishly.

Dai Wangyun nodded with a smile and said he had two more bottles. He offered to let Yin Yan take them back.

Yin Yan shook his head with a smile. Expensive wine like this, he said, should be shared with people who were worth it. Bringing it back to Pingyuan would reduce it to a collector’s item.

Dai Wangyun laughed heartily and offered him more food. After that, Yin Yan didn’t bring up Pingyuan again. Dai occasionally lifted his glass, but only wet his lips. Every time he did, Yin Yan drained his cup to the bottom. He drank on an empty stomach. The strong liquor scorched through his gut like fire, but all he showed was a bright, easy smile.

At the dinner table, power always belonged to the one with higher status. It was a way to assert dominance, to test the submissiveness of the guest. The more reluctant the drinker, the more pain they endured, the more agreeable they acted, the more the host’s sense of control solidified.

Before all the dishes had even arrived, Yin Yan’s cheeks had already flushed. The liquor had scorched his throat to the point that his voice started to turn hoarse. Dai Wangyun only smiled more.

At first, he still went through the motions of lifting his cup. Later, he didn’t even need that. Just a pause between two sentences, a breath held in his chest, and Yin Yan would instinctively raise his glass, empty it, and follow up with some smooth, harmless pleasantry.

Both of them carefully avoided the real topic. The conversation stayed on trivial, meaningless things.

Dai Wangyun began reminiscing about his early years in Pingyuan, and only then did Yin Yan follow his lead, offering some updates about the current state of Pingyuan Art Academy. Dai Wangyun shifted to talking about his achievements at the national art institute, and Yin Yan took the chance to ask him for insights from his decades-long career.

No matter what the subject was, Yin Yan always had a smooth and appropriate response. Dai Wangyun appeared to be in excellent spirits, moving from one topic to the next, and Yin Yan’s toasts became more and more frequent.

By the middle of the meal, the conversation shifted. Dai Wangyun stopped talking about himself and started asking about Yin Yan.

The questions still sounded casual, but Yin Yan gradually sensed the needles hidden in the cotton. Each question was layered with traps, and every answer he gave felt like stepping across a minefield.

Falling into those traps wouldn’t cause real harm. But in truth, that was the worst possible outcome. Nothing happening would mean returning empty-handed, and everything he had worked so carefully to orchestrate would have been dismissed without a trace.

His stomach felt like it had been turned inside out, or like it was roasting over an open flame. Half of his mind was devoted to keeping up a pleasant smile, the other half focused on navigating each response. The bottle of Maotai reached its end. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. By the time he swallowed the last glass, his face felt like a mask, one that ignored his body’s pain and smiled on its own.

Fortunately, Dai Wangyun knew when to stop. He smiled and said he was too old to stay up late, and Yin Yan quietly exhaled in relief. Dai Wangyun walked him to the door and instructed the housekeeper to call a car for him, but Yin Yan quickly declined.

He needed to leave as fast as possible. One minute longer and he would lose control.

Dai Wangyun patted his shoulder and offered a few compliments and words of encouragement. As they both stepped across the threshold and Dai Wangyun retracted his hand, he added, almost offhandedly. “Jingjing is a very simple girl.”

Yin Yan had expected that. People like Dai Wangyun always dropped the most important lines in the most casual tone. That entire elaborate dinner had been nothing but fog and shadow, a way to measure him in silence.

Yin Yan smiled smoothly. “Xiao Zhong is pure. I can’t compare to her.”

He hesitated for just a second. Clearly, Zhong Jingjing hadn’t explained the truth of their relationship to Dai Wangyun. Faced with the choice between correcting the record and saying nothing, Yin Yan chose the latter.

He wasn’t here to play the good guy. He reminded himself of that once again.

Dai Wangyun laughed and patted his shoulder again. “At least you’re honest. I like that.”

He slipped an arm around Yin Yan’s shoulders, playing the role of a proper father figure, speaking of his regret over never reconnecting with his daughter. As they parted outside the villa, Dai Wangyun seemed slightly drained. A trace of genuine regret flickered in his eyes.

“Xiao Yin, look after her for me. And try to persuade her to think seriously about her future.”

Yin Yan nodded, playing the dutiful junior. He comforted him with a few kind words, and shared some casual details about Zhong Jingjing’s life. Only then did Dai Wangyun wave him off, letting him go.

Before he left, Yin Yan delivered one final, soft blow.

“Professor Dai Wangyun, I’ve seen Teacher Zhong’s sketchbook.”

Dai Wangyun, still caught up in his fantasy of familial warmth, didn’t suspect a thing. “What sketchbook?”

Yin Yan knew he had struck home, though his expression remained full of fondness and grief. “There were a lot of portraits of you and her in it. She always kept it close.”

He bowed slightly and took his leave, walking toward the villa district’s exit.

The rideshare driver chattered nonstop, trying to fill the night shift silence. Yin Yan stared coldly out the window, jaw clenched, fighting off nausea and vertigo.

Before long, the driver gave up and went quiet, blasting club music to stay awake. The car’s sound system had been modified. Sound came from every direction, loud and inescapable, suffocating.

Yin Yan could not take it anymore. He was about to ask the driver to turn it off when he caught a glimpse of the rearview mirror.

She was sitting in the back seat.

The spider smiled at him. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

She looked like she wanted to pat his head, like praising a child who had aced a test. But the stiff, insectoid limbs had already filled the backseat, packed so tightly that not a single one could stretch out. All they could do was scratch against the window, scraping and skittering.

The sound was unbearable, even worse than the music. Each scrape sliced into his eardrum, splintering the already chaotic music. The melody shattered into broken shards, leaving behind only sharp, high-pitched squeals.

Yin Yan forced himself to ignore it and turned his face toward the window. The shuttered storefronts still had their lightboxes glowing, giving the street a strange illusion of liveliness. He stared for a while until the lights began to blur against his vision, trailing behind his eyes, painting long streaks of white and yellow across the night.

Each one came with that hair-raising squeal.

As soon as the destination appeared up ahead, Yin Yan told the driver to stop. He stumbled out of the car like a fugitive escaping capture.

The hotel building swayed in his vision. The horizon warped with it. Every step felt like walking on a pitching ship deck. His legs wouldn’t obey. He nearly fell several times. But he didn’t dare stop. He even started running, because it felt like if he slowed down, even a little, the shadow behind him would catch up, grab his ankle, and drag him straight into hell.

That could never happen.

So why—

“What are you running from?”

Her mournful voice came from just behind him, as if rising out of his own shadow. It slipped straight into his ear, cold and wet.

“You did very well. I’m pleased,” she hissed with laughter. “I have a reward for you.”

“I don’t want it!”

“Come now. Don’t hide…”

“I said no!”

“Come—”

“Fuck off!”

Yin Yan bolted, still refusing to look back. The traffic light at the intersection turned red. Tires screeched behind him, but the crawling of those limbs stayed close, clinging to his heels. Her voice followed like a breath against the spine, dark and low:

“You’d rather take punishment than accept a reward. How ungrateful.”

Suddenly, the hotel seemed farther away than ever. The shadows from the streetlamps rose like a jungle, solidifying into real shapes. Yin Yan slowed instinctively and glanced around. Black beasts moved through the shadowed forest. Some were panthers, some lions, and others wolves. Deeper within, human shapes drifted faintly in and out of sight, and from that darkness came scattered groans and muffled sighs.

He slammed his palm against his temple. The hallucination trembled like static on an old TV. He ran through it, cracked it open, and light broke through the fracture. Yellowish and dim.

He thought he was back in the real world, until he saw a man standing under the streetlamp in a Roman robe.

The image was so absurd he almost laughed. But still, he ran toward him. If what he had just passed through was The Divine Comedy, then this man could only be Virgil. And Virgil wouldn’t hurt him. The thought was absurd, but it gave him a shred of safety to cling to.

This “Virgil” didn’t speak. He simply raised an arm and pointed behind him.

The hotel lights flickered into view.

Yin Yan didn’t stop. He ran straight past him with everything he had. He had never run this hard in his life. The stretch from here to the hotel doors may have only been a dozen meters, but it felt as long as the road between hell and earth.

He burst into the hotel drenched in cold sweat. The lights were bright. The warm-toned decor glowed quietly. Everything fell still. The nightmare stayed locked outside in the dark.

He wiped his forehead, finally calming down, his fingers icy as he straightened his clothes. But once his nerves relaxed, his body gave out too. The alcohol rose in his throat again. He clenched his teeth, walking slowly, trying to distract himself.

That Virgil from the street came back to him. His face had been cloaked in shadow the whole time, but his features had looked familiar.

Who else could it have been but Lu Zhengming?

Yin Yan let out a bitter laugh and shook his head. His Virgil had been waiting in the hotel room all along.

The moment he saw Lu Zhengming, he couldn’t hold it in anymore. He collapsed on top of him, not just falling onto the bed, but falling onto his body, throwing up violently all over him, showing him the most humiliating side of himself, and not caring at all.

He knew Lu Zhengming wouldn’t care either.

The arm wrapped around his waist stayed steady. It didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away.

And that reminded him of something else. A picture from decades ago. A little boy curled up in filth.

If Lu Zhengming had seen him back then, he would have done the same. He would have lifted him out of it, silently and without the slightest pause.

He believed that.