Chapter 49. The Sinner Part 1

The moment he saw the list of winners, Yin Yan understood everything.

He sat in front of his easel, replaying in his mind what Dai Wangyun had said back in Beijing. “Jingjing is a pure child.” And again, just before leaving Pingyuan, he had repeated the same words. Only now did Yin Yan finally grasp the meaning.

Dai Wangyun had warned him twice. Twice. And each time, he failed to hear the subtext: Jingjing is a pure child, you had better not set your sights on what you should not touch.

Dai Wangyun had done the very same thing back then. How could he not recognize the signs in someone else?

But Yin Yan, unwilling to let go, still clung to the last shred of hope and took the gamble. Yet a gambler sees only wins and losses. Had he stood where Dai Wangyun stood, he too would have seen straight through the clumsy act.

He did not want to hurt Zhong Jingjing, but he also wanted to use Dai Wangyun. He wanted both the benefit and the moral high ground. How could anyone expect that kind of perfection to exist?

“You didn’t just build a façade. You built a fucking monument.”

Yin Yan remembered what Lu Zhengming had once said in bed. A careless joke that had become a curse. All he could do now was laugh bitterly at himself.

Worse still, after the laughter faded, his body betrayed his will. His mind had only just remembered those years, and already, his flesh had begun to stir.

Back then, Lu Zhengming’s acting was still raw. The scorn in his eyes and the contempt in his voice still carried a trace of truth. Yin Yan had knelt on the floor and let him trample him, yet what surged up in him was not shame but a long-dormant desire. The humiliation did nothing to dampen it. On the contrary, it added spice to the hunger, like oil thrown on a blaze. He had been startled to discover just how sensitive his body had become. Lu Zhengming barely pressed him with his foot a few times before he came.

He had never known such intense satisfaction before that.

Yin Yan shut his eyes. Memory had rekindled the body, but it sparked no desire.

Because she was laughing.

Her laughter sounded like metal dragging across the floor. It was twisted like a broken record singing a warped tune. The sound pressed in like something physical, piling up in the room, until it filled every inch of space. Yin Yan sat trapped in his chair as if buried alive, the only thing he could move was his head. It reminded him of certain ancient punishments where the body was encased in stone.

She crawled along the walls and the ceiling. Then, hanging upside down, she stared directly into his face.

It was a malicious stare, brimming with something close to hatred. As if she were holding a stone, ready at any moment to crush his skull.

“You’re a worthless piece of shit too.”

She threw the first stone.

His head throbbed as if actually struck.

“I thought you were different from him,” she said, hurling another one. “You’ve let me down.”

Yin Yan tried to raise his hand to press his temple, but he could not lift it at all. It truly felt as though he were buried under layers of sand. All he could do was lift his head in agony, and in the blurry red of his vision, meet her inverted face.

“I tried my best,” he said.

“Excuses.” She gave a sharp laugh, and another stone appeared in her hand, flying toward him.

Yin Yan’s head snapped to the side. A warm trickle flowed from his brow.

“I’m sorry I failed.”

She lifted his chin with her forearm. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve put up with you?”

“I’m sorry.” One of his eyes turned the world a rusty red.

“That’s not sincere.”

“Then tell me. What counts as sincerity?”

Yin Yan lifted his head, trying to let the blood flow away from his eye, but the other temple took the next hit. His vision went black. Countless white streaks flared and vanished like meteors. His ears rang for a long time before her voice pierced through:

“You indulge yourself. You’ve decayed. You fob me off with excuses again and again… Not only did you not do everything you could, even now, you’re trying to lie to me…”

She thrashed her limbs and crawled across the ceiling.

“You drove your father to his death. Then you killed me. And even now you feel no remorse…”

“I’m sorry…”

“Shut up!”

Her shriek was like an ice pick stabbing through his skull. Yin Yan felt his brain freeze solid. The cold tore through his body, and he could almost hear his blood turning to ice.

She screamed and wailed hysterically. The lights in the room suddenly went out. Shards of glass fell like rain, cutting his scalp open and covering him in blood.

“How could you hurt me like this… How could you trample on everything I gave you…”

She climbed onto him, her joints sharp as blades, tearing through his clothes and skin. As she carved wound after wound, she sobbed and accused him in broken cries:

“I loved you so much… I endured so much for you… You shattered my heart…”

“I’m sorry.”

“You murderer… you criminal…”

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

Yin Yan apologized again and again, trying to calm her rage. In the past, if he just endured long enough, suffered deeply enough, she would eventually be soothed. She would become gentle again, full of compassion, explaining how to be a better person and how to do the right thing. With tears in her eyes, she would wipe away her own tears and say, “This is all for your own good.”

And he would repent from the depths of his heart, reflect on his failings, and punish himself for his degradation. Not to win her forgiveness, but to become better, to be worthy of love.

She used to say that the right path was always the hardest, and that real love was always painful. She also said, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” ①

In his blood-tinted vision, she still looked like she had all those years ago.

It was his own misstep that left her suffering even now, warped into this monstrosity.

“It’s my fault.”

“I’m guilty…”

He stared at the drawer beside his easel. Inside it was a sharp angled palette knife, used to scrape away mistaken layers of paint. He had measured it against his carotid artery more times than he could count. If one day he made a mistake he could never undo, it could help set him back on the right path.

“Take it out,” she suddenly said, her voice calm.

In that instant, Yin Yan felt his body return to him. The pain disappeared. He said, “Okay,” and reached for the drawer handle. But—

“Yin Yan, I’m here.”

Lu Zhengming barged in, and he had no choice but to stop.

This degenerate man had come once again, tempting him with earthly pleasures. With a warm body, a blazing gaze, clumsy words, and his atrocious cooking…

Whether he liked it or not, it was a mistake far too easy to fall for.

That night, Lu Zhengming did nothing. He simply held him. Even though they were both naked, their desire barely restrained, Lu Zhengming’s chest radiated heat like a furnace. Yin Yan relaxed completely in his arms, turned and hugged him back. He unconsciously shifted, pressing against his skin, slowly erasing the temperature difference between them.

That kind of unfulfilled intimacy, laced with love and longing, was like a natural sedative. The dark thoughts and nightmares retreated deep into the subconscious and did not return for the rest of the night.

At first, Yin Yan had approached it with guarded caution, just like how he resisted all comfort and pleasure in daily life. Those were poisons that corroded the will, making people weak, addicted, dependent. Once immersed in the tenderness, it was all too easy to forget the bleak reality around them. And if, one day, fate shattered the illusion, how would he bear to face the wreckage that remained?

He had tasted that bitterness too many times before.

He had tried resisting it with medication. The drugs could only level out his emotions, preventing worries and pain from invading him for a while, but at the cost of numbing any joy as well. Yin Yan had never followed the prescription schedule, because he didn’t believe he was sick. He would suppress the symptoms with high doses—the severe side effects forced him to focus on dizziness and nausea. After wrestling with those, the depression became bearable.

Most of the time, he didn’t take anything. He allowed himself a certain degree of indulgence, then punished himself with equal suffering. He preferred that sharp clarity of pain over the dullness of drugs. Pain was not meaningless. Every time it washed over him, he felt his sins being cleansed. It gave him a deep sense of solace.

Lu Zhengming had polluted everything far too easily.

He was more addictive than any drug in this world. He could even twist Yin Yan’s values, turning wrong into right, turning pain into pleasure, turning crude lust and vulgar emotion into love. He was always self-satisfied, always confident in his righteousness. He even found pleasure in revenge. When the same punishment was inflicted on him, he took joy in it and saw it as another form of love.

Yin Yan realized with bitter sorrow that he had already begun to accept this pollution. What was even sadder was that he let it happen with perfect awareness, watching himself walk further and further down the wrong path.

Until there was no way back.

On the day of the exhibition setup, Lu Zhengming woke up early.

Yin Yan had taken medication the night before. When he woke up in a heavy daze, Lu Zhengming was already fully dressed, smelling fresh, and leaning in with a good morning kiss. Eyes still closed, Yin Yan enjoyed it, then hooked his arm around Lu Zhengming’s neck and pulled him in for a second kiss.

Lu Zhengming’s breathing quickly grew heavy. The medication had completely dampened Yin Yan’s desire, so he simply used abstinence to torture him. After several days of this, Lu Zhengming could hardly withstand even the smallest tease.

Struggling to pull away from Yin Yan’s lips, he said, “I have to go.”

Yin Yan gave him a single glance, and that was enough to make Lu Zhengming kiss him hard one more time before fleeing the bedroom without a backward glance.

“Breakfast is in the fridge. Don’t forget to eat.”

Yin Yan broke into a wanton laugh, which came to an abrupt stop the moment the door closed.

He heard a cold, sneering chuckle. Yin Yan sat up warily, scanning the room. The shadow that had been driven into a corner by the morning light now gave another eerie laugh. A pale, jointed limb stretched out from the darkness, followed by more.

She was far more withered than before. If spiders had bones, she would look like a spider’s skeleton. She crawled with difficulty, as if being scorched by invisible flames. Each movement crackled, and ash-like fragments fell from her ruined body like bone dust.

As long as Lu Zhengming left his sight, the protection he offered would collapse. Yin Yan got out of bed with a blank expression, got dressed, and swallowed a handful of pills.

The chill behind him grew stronger. One limb pierced his body. Then a second, a third… He watched his flesh tear open, as ruined and mangled as hers, but he felt nothing.

The medication had dulled part of the hallucination. The pain and fear became blurred, like seeing through murky glass.

Yin Yan thought of Lu Zhengming’s paintings—layer upon layer, filled with secrets, yet astonishingly honest. That was a realm he could never reach.

She finally climbed onto him and began tearing at his flesh with her teeth.

“Take it out,” she said.

If sound could shatter, her voice would be filled with cracks, its splinters as sharp as broken glass.

In the hallucination, blood streamed from his ears. In reality, all he heard was ringing.

“Take it out…”

She bit through his neck. Blood spurted from his artery, staining the floor and walls red. An unspeakable exhaustion spread through him. He knew she was exhausted too. This bloody vision was her final frenzy.

“I’m sorry.”

He apologized wearily, as if years ago, he had knelt before a body growing cold.

“I’m sorry…”

He dragged himself to the easel, opened the drawer, and took out the palette knife. Its angled blade gleamed with a cold light. The hardwood handle was solid, steady in his grasp, as dependable as death itself.

He expertly aligned the blade with his carotid artery. With just a little more pressure, he could be completely free.

She circled beside him, as if she could not wait to savor the taste of death. The clacking of her limbs sounded like the beat of some ritual drum, turning this otherwise ordinary suicide into something solemn and ceremonial.

The rhythm grew faster and faster. The tip of the knife pressed deep into his skin, carving out a hollow.

“Stab it in. Hurry.”

“I’m sorry.”

Yin Yan let go. He released all his strength and placed the palette knife back where it belonged.

The room fell instantly silent. The spider and the blood vanished as if they had never existed. Even the pain dissipated with them. All that remained was a crushing fatigue, so heavy it made breathing a chore. It collapsed onto him like a great weight.

Yin Yan returned to the bedroom, swallowed a few more pills, and sank into the bed in a drugged haze.

He never hid his medication from Lu Zhengming. In his view, that would have been selfish, but he felt no guilt. He knew Lu Zhengming would tolerate his selfishness and let him offload part of his pain onto him. He could not explain why he believed this, only that he was sure of it. Just as he was sure that he would move the blade away from his neck again and again, choosing to keep walking down that wrong path.

By day, he would always wrestle with this question. But by night, wrapped in Lu Zhengming’s warmth, he would find his answer naturally.

The thought made him start looking forward to the night ahead.

But Lu Zhengming never came home.