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The new work isn’t entirely fictional. To be precise, several core plotlines are drawn from murder cases he once witnessed firsthand.
Before the pink romance evolved into a shocking murder case, it was indistinguishable from every love story praised by poets. Xue Jing’s parents also had an extremely romantic first encounter and rendezvous.
On a summer evening, as twilight descended, the sea breeze from Victoria Harbour blew all the way from Nathan Road to Tsim Sha Tsui without stopping.
At the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce’s gala dinner, Feng Yun, serving as a hostess, mistakenly entered the spider’s web like a flower butterfly. To escape several middle-aged tycoons who were drunk and pester her, she lifted her skirt, held her champagne glass, and hurriedly ran up the spiral staircase.
Seeing the lustful men about to catch up to her, she panicked and fled into the rooftop terrace with no way out.
On the terrace, a tall, well-dressed man stood smoking with his back to her. Behind her, she could still faintly hear nauseating shouts. Comparing the two evils, Feng Yun had no choice but to steel herself and seek help from the stranger.
The man wrapped his arm around hers, and the scent of tobacco lingered in the air—sharp yet tinged with a faint minty freshness. For some reason, despite her usual aversion to the smell of cigarettes, Feng Yun didn’t find it unpleasant. Before she could even make out his face, she whispered softly, almost pleading: “Please, help me.”
Fortunately, when Xue Lianwu turned his head, his features were strikingly handsome. Everything about him was perfect—even the way he held his cigarette between his fingers exuded an irresistible charm.
Not only that, but he was also a kind and gentlemanly soul.
That day, the wealthy and dashing Xue Lianwu not only helped Miss Feng, who had dropped out of school after middle school to work, by pretending she was his companion to get her out of a tight spot, but he also whisked her away from the party early to take her for a breath of fresh air. Together, they went up to Victoria Peak to admire the night view.
The path up the mountain was overgrown with weeds. Fearing that Feng Yun might twist her ankle in her high heels, he instructed the driver to pull over so he could buy her a pair of comfortable sneakers from a nearby store.
After exchanging contact information, a steady stream of luxurious gifts began arriving at her doorstep like snowflakes.
Every time Xue Lianwu took her out on a date, he would choose an expensive restaurant and bring along a large bouquet of vibrant roses.
In no time, no matter how charming or sunny other men her age might be, they couldn’t hold a candle to him. Feng Yun and Xue Lianwu, a talented young businessman from Jicheng who had come to Hong Kong to expand his business, quickly fell into a passionate romance.
She moved out of her parents’ cramped subdivided flat and into a sea-view apartment rented for her by her boyfriend. Every morning, she would wake up, dress herself in front of the mirror, and then go shopping in Central with Xue Lianwu’s credit card. She started taking frequent days off from work—five out of seven days a week—and when her boss called to reprimand her, she simply cursed him out and quit.
But happiness is fleeting. Less than a year into their relationship, she discovered that her boyfriend had been making frequent trips back to Jicheng to prepare for his wedding.
The wedding was grand—a fusion of Chinese and Western traditions—but the enviable leading lady wasn’t her.
And that night, when Xue Lianwu emerged from the bathroom clad only in a white towel, he didn’t even offer an apology as he watched her cry over the stack of wedding photos on the coffee table.
When Feng Yun confronted him about why he was marrying someone else, he calmly listed over a dozen ways in which his fiancée’s family could benefit his business.
His fiancée was the ideal candidate for a business marriage: an only child, her mother already deceased, and her father, though strong-willed, elderly and stubborn. Through this marital alliance, Xue Lianwu planned to gain the upper hand and eventually take full control of their assets.
As for Feng Yun’s parents, they were just a taxi driver and a housewife who had lived in rented apartments for decades. Besides Feng Yun, who occasionally sold luxury items to supplement the family income, there were three other siblings dependent on them—all mouths to feed.
From the very beginning, Xue Lianwu had seen her merely as his woman in Hong Kong.
There were likely many others like her scattered across different cities. The only difference was that, faced with Xue Lianwu’s coldness, Feng Yun wiped away her tears, forced a flattering smile, and threw away the stack of wedding photos.
Since childhood, she had vowed never to live the same life as her parents. After meeting Xue Lianwu, she had willingly abandoned her own career aspirations, lured by money, and now found herself trapped. She believed she was no longer qualified to compete with younger workers in the job market, so the best path forward was to compete with other gold-digging women for Xue Lianwu’s favor.
It wasn’t hard to predict what happened next. Determined to become Xue Lianwu’s top choice one day, Feng Yun followed him from Hong Kong to Jicheng. To secure her position, she left her hometown, abandoned her parents and siblings, and devoted herself to learning how to be a suitable mistress.
When Xue Lianwu’s wife, Li Shulan, became pregnant, Feng Yun began scheming to convince him to let her have a child as well.
Fortunately for her, Li Shulan’s first child was a girl, and complications during childbirth left her weakened. It was only a few years later that Feng Yun finally gave birth to Xue Jing.
But after more than a decade of sacrificing her youth, the “promotion” she had hoped for through motherhood never materialized. So, once again, she directed her resentment toward Li Shulan, who always appeared in the spotlight, arm in arm with Xue Lianwu. During this period, Xue Lianwu used his busy overseas schedule as an excuse to avoid getting involved in their conflicts, completely disappearing from the battlefield of their rivalry.
Perhaps he too had grown tired of the endless tug-of-war. He began ignoring Feng Yun’s calls, and even his secretary started brushing off her inquiries.
The last confrontation between Feng Yun and Li Shulan took place at a villa outside the city. Feng Yun deliberately brought her son along, hoping to provoke Li Shulan with the boy’s presence.
But no matter how harsh her words, Li Shulan sat motionless on the sofa, her expression blank, her eyes cold and lifeless. She simply repeated the same phrase over and over: “As long as I’m alive, our family will never divorce.”
It was a promise her father had made her before he passed away, and she had never defied her family.
She would never allow her daughter to grow up without a father, like Xue Jing.
Feng Yun, being the younger of the two, felt as if she were punching a cloud—her efforts futile. In a fit of rage, she sneered and shoved her son toward Li Shulan. “Fine, you want to play the saint, don’t you? If you’re so kind and generous, why don’t you raise my son too? Isn’t he pitiful? All these years, every holiday season, you and your daughter hog Xue Lianwu. How many times has he even seen his own son? The kids at kindergarten call him a bastard!”
After berating Li Shulan, Feng Yun turned to Xue Jing and said, “Tell your father I can’t wait any longer. He needs to give me an answer. If he won’t divorce her, then don’t bother sending you back to me!”
“I have my own life to live! Tell him to stop looking for me!”
With that, Feng Yun left Xue Jing behind and boarded a flight abroad for a vacation. She believed she had played her final card and was confident in her victory. She knew Li Shulan came from a respectable family and wouldn’t resort to underhanded tactics like her. All she had to do was wait for Li Shulan’s patience to run out, force a confrontation with Xue Lianwu, and reap the benefits.
But as she waited, all she received was news of a gas explosion at the Li family’s villa, resulting in casualties.
On the day Li Shulan decided to turn on the gas, heavy snow was falling outside. No one knows what she was thinking—whether it was a sudden snap or something she had carefully planned for a long time.
Early in the morning, eight-year-old Xue Ting, with her mother’s permission, took five-year-old Xue Jing out into the yard to build a snowman.
The siblings weren’t meeting for the first time. In the past, when Xue Lianwu and Feng Yun would meet secretly, they’d have their daughter take Xue Jing to wait at the park downstairs. When Feng Yun threw tantrums and ran away from home, he’d also bring Xue Jing to pick up his daughter from piano lessons and leave her with his secretary.
Though the half-siblings shared an uncanny resemblance in appearance, their personalities were worlds apart. Whenever the adults’ endless arguments erupted, Xue Jing would plug his ears with his fingers, pretending he didn’t exist, while Xue Ting would simply turn on the TV and crank the volume up to its highest setting, forcing the quarreling parents out of the house.
That day, halfway through building the snowman, Xue Jing started crying again. He asked Xue Ting, “Big Sister, when will Mommy come to take me home?”
He had been asking this question frequently in recent days. All the servants in Li Shulan’s house had long been dismissed, and the villa was covered in dust wherever you looked. She hadn’t bathed in days, wearing a stained nightgown smeared with menstrual blood, sitting in her room all day, applying lipstick in front of the mirror and muttering to herself. Xue Jing was too afraid to speak to her, trailing after Xue Ting like an annoying little mouse, squeaking incessantly.
Xue Ting picked up two pebbles from the ground to use as the snowman’s eyes and pulled out a few tissues from her pocket, handing them to him disdainfully. “Didn’t I tell you? After you sleep one night, your mom will come.”
“You’re crying so disgustingly. Blow your nose!”
Xue Jing’s hands were red as he blew his nose hard, walked over to the trash can in the yard, stood on tiptoe to throw the tissue away, and then came back. He stuck a tree branch into the snowman’s body and whimpered in his childish voice, “But I’ve slept many nights, and she still hasn’t come.”
“Then sleep one more night, dummy.”
Xue Ting glanced at Xue Jing, who was still crying, rolled her eyes, and wondered why such a coward could also be their father’s child. But in the end, she dusted off her hands and stood up. “Stop crying. I’ll go ask my mom for some money and take you to buy hamburgers.”
“Maybe after we eat hamburgers, your mom will come.”
“Really? We’re having hamburgers for lunch? Can I have fried chicken wings too?” A child’s sadness is fleeting. At the mention of hamburgers, Xue Jing’s eyes lit up again.
“What’s there to not allow? The set meal has everything—onion rings, cola, the works. Do you want pizza too?” Xue Ting was well-versed in using money to buy food. Ever since she started elementary school, Li Shulan had become erratic, dismissing all the servants, and there was often no food at home. Whenever Xue Ting complained of hunger, her mother would toss her a stack of hundred-dollar bills and tell her not to bother her because her head hurt.
“My mom usually doesn’t let me drink cola… Can you not tell her?”
Xue Jing followed Xue Ting toward the villa, mumbling softly. Mentioning cola suddenly reminded him of something, and he froze hesitantly. “Will your mom agree? She won’t hit us, right? Last night, I heard her screaming downstairs… It sounded like she was talking to herself.”
Ever since Xue Jing could remember, Feng Yun often made him call Xue Lianwu. Besides reciting the lines Feng Yun forced him to memorize, every time he had to say how much he missed and loved his father and beg him to visit.
If Xue Lianwu refused, Feng Yun would take it out on Xue Jing, beating him regularly.
The worst time, Feng Yun knocked out one of his teeth. Fortunately, it was a baby tooth. Later, Feng Yun casually apologized, telling him that the tooth would grow back after he turned six, so it didn’t matter.
Xue Jing feared that Li Shulan might also be the kind of adult who resorted to violence. He worried that his older sister might get beaten too.
“If only hitting were the problem. Normally, she barely talks to me. She just stares at herself in the mirror all day.” The same questions over and over: “What time will you be home tonight? Do you have any engagements tomorrow? How’s the company doing lately?” Not a single word was meant for her daughter.
It was unbearably dull.
Seeing Xue Jing shrink his shoulders in fear, Xue Ting kicked at the dirt in the snow indifferently and said, “If you’re scared, wait outside. I’ll go look in her purse.”
“I’m not scared. I’ll go with you.”
Opening the door, Xue Ting immediately smelled a strong stench. She didn’t know if her mother was once again sitting on the toilet without closing the door. Without thinking, she pushed Xue Jing back and, putting on a serious face like an adult, told him, “Wait outside. Don’t wander off.” Then she closed the door behind her.
In less than two seconds, the lights inside the house flickered on. The small spark ignited the gas that had reached explosive levels in the air, triggering a massive explosion.
“That was the last time I saw them.”
Smoke choked their lungs, gas poisoning set in, and severe burns covered their bodies. Two days later, at the funeral, Li Shulan and Xue Ting lay in crystal coffins for mourners to pay their respects.
Afterward, Feng Yun quickly moved into Xue Lianwu’s house with Xue Jing. From then on, Xue Jing never suffered another beating. Feng Yun and Xue Lianwu stopped arguing altogether, and the three of them lived a fairy-tale-like perfect life.
Pausing briefly, Xue Jing recounted this story as if it were someone else’s joke, speaking with an air of nonchalance. But his voice was icy cold, and upon closer inspection, there was a faint tremor. “Except for the fact that I wet the bed throughout elementary school because of nightmares.”