Chapter 094: A Terrifying Scene

Li Jia lifted the quilt, first carefully tucking it around the sleeping Peng Min. Then she got out of bed, adjusted the air conditioner, and only after that did she quietly open the door and slip outside.

They had talked for an unknown amount of time, and most of the time it had been Li Jia doing the speaking, so by then she was already terribly thirsty. It was only after Peng Min finally could not fight off sleep and drifted off that she left the room to find some water.

Because the apartment windows let in a faint glow from the lights in the residential complex, the living room was not completely dark. Even without switching on a lamp, one could move about normally.

Li Jia was the sort of person who got up in the dead of night and never turned on the living room light, whether she was going to the bathroom or simply getting a drink.

The moment she stepped out of her room and glanced across the living room, she noticed a strip of light beneath her parents’ bedroom door.

Could they still be awake?

She was a little surprised, but unlike last time, she did not go pressing her ear to the door or doing anything of the sort.

In her view, her parents no longer had any secrets worth her eavesdropping on.

Li Jia went straight to the water dispenser and drank a little.

At that very moment, she heard raised voices coming from her parents’ bedroom, clear and distinct in the quiet, dim living room.

She had already been about to return to her room and sleep, but she immediately stopped, turned around, and padded softly toward her parents’ bedroom.

By the time she reached the door, the quarrel inside had become even clearer, and she also noticed that the bedroom door had not been shut tightly; it had only been pulled almost closed. That was why the voices could come through so distinctly.

Li Jia held her breath and listened carefully, trying to figure out what her parents were arguing about. As she had guessed, it was most likely about turning themselves in and calling the police.

Even before she had heard the actual content of the argument, the thought of it made her feel irritated and faintly furious. She wanted to burst in immediately and give them both a good scolding.

But that impulse was easily suppressed.

“Liu Jiajia, listen to me. We already failed Xiao Jia once. We cannot fail her a second time.”

It was Li Ming’s voice that came first from inside the room. His tone was markedly louder than before.

“Li Ming, lower your voice. What time is it? Aren’t you afraid the neighbors will hear? And aren’t you afraid Xiao Jia and the woman who came with her will hear it too?” Liu Jiajia said at once, her voice intentionally lowered.

If the bedroom door had been fully shut, Li Jia might not have caught every word. But since it was only nearly closed, she heard the sentence in full, even though it was spoken softly.

Her expression turned very unpleasant.

She did not know what they had argued about before, but from her father’s words alone she could draw a conclusion: her mother seemed to want to do something that would hurt her for a second time, and was probably trying to persuade her father to agree. He had not given in immediately, and that was why they were arguing.

Li Jia forced down her anger and kept listening. At the same time, she gently nudged the half-closed door open a sliver, enough for her to make out the situation inside.

In the narrow view she could see Liu Jiajia sitting calmly on the bed, while Li Ming stood opposite her, full of anger as he glared at her.

“Liu Jiajia, Xiao Jia is your daughter. How can you be so cruel? Anyway, I still can’t betray my own daughter a second time. Xiao Jia has already suffered terribly. We cannot drag her completely into the abyss again.”

This time Li Ming lowered his voice a few more degrees when speaking to Liu Jiajia.

“Li Ming, you should know those people are powerful beyond imagination. Do you really think turning ourselves in and calling the police will help? By then Xiao Jia’s fate will be countless times worse than it is now. And even if we take a step back, do you really think that once we go to a rehabilitation center, we can truly break the addiction?”

Liu Jiajia’s expression remained calm.

After she finished speaking, Li Ming opened his mouth several times as though he wanted to say something, but in the end he fell silent each time and said nothing.

Liu Jiajia gave Li Ming a long, contemptuous look, apparently taking his silence as a kind of tacit agreement. She then picked up the phone by the bedside and said, “I know Xiao Jia is the apple of your eye. But isn’t she also the apple of mine? If you can’t bring yourself to be the villain, then let me do it. I’ll call those people right now.”

With that, Liu Jiajia turned on the phone and seemed ready to place a call.

Seeing this, Li Jia’s heart tightened. She was about to rush in and stop her mother when she saw what happened next in the bedroom, and she froze in place.

In the room, just as Liu Jiajia was about to dial, Li Ming’s expression suddenly changed. He lunged forward in two or three quick steps and snatched the phone straight from her hand.

“Li Ming, what is wrong with you?” Liu Jiajia demanded, startled that he had seized the phone.

“Liu Jiajia, easy for you to talk. You say it’s all for Xiao Jia’s sake. If you truly cared about her, you never would have sold her to those people in the first place just to feed your drug habit. Everything you are doing now is only because you don’t want your supply cut off, because you want to keep flattering the people who can keep giving you drugs. I don’t think the one losing her mind is me. It’s you.”

Li Ming gripped the phone tightly and stared at her, speaking each word with cold precision.

How could I have been so foolish? How could I have agreed to this woman’s sweet lies in the first place? Poor Xiao Jia. Father has wronged you.

He looked at the woman before him. Though her face seemed utterly familiar, he felt she had become incomparably strange.

So strange that it frightened him.

“Li Ming, don’t say it like that. You agreed back then too. And besides, every time your cravings came on, you never once held out. On Xiao Jia’s matter, aren’t you really just after the drugs yourself? I think you’re the one pretending to be righteous while actually being just as vile.”

Liu Jiajia’s tone was full of contempt for the man in front of her.

At the doorway, Li Jia looked on in disbelief. She could not even begin to believe that the woman in the room was her mother. It was as though the person before her and the mother in her memory were completely different people.

“I made one mistake already. I will absolutely not make the same mistake a second time. Likewise, I will not allow you to do anything else that hurts Xiao Jia. I swear it.”

Li Ming seemed to have been struck in a weak spot by Liu Jiajia’s words. His expression was dispirited, but his voice remained firm.

“If we’re not calling, then we’re not calling. Why are you suddenly swearing such oaths? Xiao Jia is your daughter, but isn’t she my daughter too? It’s late already. Let’s go to sleep early. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

Seeing that Li Ming looked serious and resolute, Liu Jiajia changed her tune like this.

Li Ming nodded at once, relaxing somewhat. He walked to the bedside and began taking off his clothes, preparing to lie down.

Seeing this, Li Jia let out a long breath of relief. At the same time, she knew her father was still the same father who had once loved her dearly. He had not changed.

But just as she was about to close the door she had left ajar and leave, she saw a scene so horrifying she would never forget it for the rest of her life.

In the bedroom, while Li Ming was only half undressed, Liu Jiajia somehow produced a fruit knife from nowhere and drove it straight into his chest. Blood immediately sprayed everywhere.

But that was not the end of it. Li Ming, his face filled with disbelief, was quickly clamped over the mouth by Liu Jiajia’s hand. With her other hand, she yanked out the fruit knife she had just stabbed into his chest.

The instant the blade was pulled free, a great gush of blood splattered across Liu Jiajia’s face.

Yet none of it slowed her even slightly. Her expression twisted horribly as she briskly slit Li Ming’s throat with the knife in her hand.

Li Ming only managed a few muffled sounds. A few seconds later, he was completely gone.

Liu Jiajia still seemed uneasy, and stabbed him several more times in the abdomen with the fruit knife before finally stopping.

At the bedroom door, Li Jia witnessed everything with her own eyes. Her entire body trembled uncontrollably, tears streaming down her face. She bit down hard on her left hand with her mouth, and only after biting until blood flowed did she manage not to make a sound.

Inside the room, once Liu Jiajia had confirmed beyond all doubt that Li Ming was dead, she tossed the fruit knife aside and panted heavily.

Then she moved, searching frantically all around the room.

At the door, Li Jia had thought her mother would first look for her phone and call the nightclub or someone else, but Liu Jiajia’s rummaging made it impossible to tell, at least for the moment, exactly what she intended to do.

She searched the room with great care, not even missing the space beneath the bed. All the while her expression remained anxious and hurried. Several times she passed by Li Ming’s corpse as if she had not seen it at all, utterly unconcerned.

Before long, Liu Jiajia found a box from a very concealed spot and immediately began jumping with delight, like a child who had just received a beloved toy.

After a moment of excited flailing, she eagerly opened the box and took out what was inside: a syringe and several vials of liquid.

Li Jia recognized them at once. They were the drugs she had once been injected with.

She watched carefully as Liu Jiajia drew the liquid into the syringe, paying close attention to its color, and she became utterly certain that this was not the diluted version in Peng Min’s possession, but the genuine article in a highly concentrated form.

Inside the room, Liu Jiajia looked at the syringe in her hand with unrestrained excitement, then impatiently injected the entire contents into her vein.

Not long after, she began swaying from side to side with a look of ecstasy, her eyes unfocused, as if she had seen something unimaginably beautiful, completely sunk into her own private world.

At the bedroom door, Li Jia watched all of it through the crack.

By then her body had stopped trembling. Her left hand had fallen away. She stared silently at Liu Jiajia in the room, only occasionally glancing at Li Ming’s corpse, and her eyes had turned utterly cold.