Cheng Shen

For the past ten years, the Cheng couple had continuously received financial support from the Huo family. They had long since moved from their rural home in Daxing Mountain and relocated to the provincial capital of H Province.

The two of them bought two apartments and two commercial properties in the city center. One was used by Father Cheng, Cheng Liguo, to open a mahjong parlor, and the other became a small supermarket run by Mother Cheng, Pan Yinghua, selling groceries like fruits, vegetables, and daily necessities. The couple never had another child, which seemed to confirm the old rumor that they "couldn't have children and had to adopt."

Huo Mingjun was grateful to Cheng Sheng for saving his life, so after his death, he naturally shouldered the responsibility of supporting Cheng Sheng's parents. After recovering, he had met with the couple a few times and found them to be vulgar, selfish, and money-grubbing. He couldn't figure out where things had gone wrong to produce a son like Cheng Sheng.

Huo Mingjun couldn't get along with the Cheng couple and gradually stopped seeing them, but a substantial amount of support money was regularly deposited into a specific account every year.

The Cheng parents, with their substantial savings, lived a leisurely life. Although they had no children of their own, their life was quite comfortable and pleasant. So when they saw the uninvited Huo Mingjun in their living room, they didn't sense the danger. With their frivolous and vulgar air unrestrained, they familiarly asked, "Aiyo, what a rare guest! What wind blew Boss Huo here? You should have given us a heads-up before coming. Look at us, we haven't had time to prepare anything... Come, come, Boss Huo, have some water."

"No need to bother," Huo Mingjun said, not taking the cup she offered. He got straight to the point, "I came today to ask about Cheng Sheng."

Pan Yinghua's hand froze in mid-air. Cheng Liguo, who was about to light a cigarette, trembled, and the lighter flared with a blue spark.

"What's with those expressions?" Huo Mingjun asked nonchalantly. "What, you can't remember?"

"No, no..." Pan Yinghua came to her senses and immediately tried to salvage the situation. "Old Cheng and I just... didn't react for a moment. It's been so many years. Your sudden mention of it just stunned us both."

Huo Mingjun's lips curled into a cold, ambiguous smile. "That's good, then."

It should have been a smile, but not only was there no mirth on his face, the icy ridicule in the curve of his lips was enough to make one shrink back. The Cheng couple had always been both respectful and fearful of Huo Mingjun. At this moment, his smile made their hair stand on end, their calves faintly cramping. They managed to feign some composure and tentatively asked, "Has Boss Huo found someone who looks like our Ah Sheng again?"

Huo Mingjun raised an eyebrow and retorted, "What do you mean, 'again'?"

Pan Yinghua was at a loss for words, explaining dryly, "Didn't you have us meet that young man last time, the one who looked so much like Ah Sheng..."

"Right, he's not the one," Huo Mingjun said. "He doesn't have a mole by his eye, and his IQ is normal. But I've recently heard that moles can be removed, and IQ is even more unpredictable. Besides these two things, do you think there's anything else that's different?"

The couple looked hesitant.

After a long moment, Cheng Liguo said with difficulty, "This... Boss Huo, the child was still young when the incident happened, not fully grown. We don't know what he would look like as an adult, so we really can't compare."

"I remember Cheng Sheng took a bullet for me back then, it hit his right leg, right?" Huo Mingjun asked casually, as if it were an offhand remark. "What happened to that bullet? Do you still remember?"

"That's right, there was a hole in Ah Sheng's leg when his body was returned," Pan Yinghua immediately chimed in, thinking she was being clever. "But we didn't see the bullet... Maybe it went straight through? Such a small thing, we couldn't find it back then, let alone now..."

The calm expression Huo Mingjun had been wearing instantly vanished. Beneath the removed mask was an uncontainable rage and a chilling killing intent.

His frosty gaze gouged into the Cheng couple one by one, wishing he could tear them apart alive on the spot.

Huo Mingjun clearly remembered that in the year of the incident, he had specifically reviewed the case report. Because the body was mostly charred black, unrecognizable, and severely damaged from being crushed under the car, many injuries could not be examined. Therefore, the forensic expert's final report did not mention a gunshot wound.

And now, Pan Yinghua, following his casually fabricated cue, was telling him with certainty that "Cheng Sheng" had a bullet hole in his leg.

Furthermore, according to the police investigation later, one of the two kidnappers back then was from a hunter's family and was a good shot. On the night Huo Mingjun and Cheng Sheng escaped, the kidnapper who drove after them and shot at them was this person.

The first shot missed due to the distance, but the second and third shots did not miss their mark.

From the very beginning, they were shooting to kill, with every shot aimed at Huo Mingjun's back, right where his heart was. Therefore, the second shot that Cheng Sheng blocked for him could not possibly have hit his leg.

That scar was on Xie Guan's back. So who was the imposter who had been calmly accepting his tributes and remembrances for the past ten years?

Huo Mingjun lost the patience to continue coaxing the truth out of them and called out, "Zhong Heguang."

Before his voice had even faded, Zhong Heguang entered the room with several men. Well-trained bodyguards in black swarmed forward, pinning the stunned Cheng couple to the ground and tying them up tightly like two human-shaped zongzi on the floor.

The couple had lived for most of their lives without ever experiencing such a scene. They were so scared they wet themselves, writhing and struggling on the floor, screaming for help, until a bodyguard gagged each of them with a towel.

Huo Mingjun sat on the sofa, as still as a mountain, his expression arrogant and his tone icy. "Don't scream, and don't waste your time struggling. The two of you conspired to deceive me for eleven years. Now it's my turn to call the shots."

"Tell the truth, and I'll let you die a prettier death."

"I don't know what you're talking about, let go, help... This is breaking and entering... Ah!!!"

Huo Mingjun heard this nonsense, gave a hand signal, and a bodyguard immediately stepped forward, grabbed Pan Yinghua's left index finger, and bent it backward forcefully—

A sickening crack of bone breaking echoed.

Pan Yinghua let out a miserable scream, but it was muffled by the towel, the shriek choked back down her throat. The pain was so intense she nearly fainted on the spot.

"You're right. Not only am I breaking and entering, I'm also administering my own justice," Huo Mingjun glanced lazily at Cheng Liguo. "Does Mr. Cheng have anything to say?"

Cheng Liguo was terrified, but the pain of a broken finger was nothing compared to the consequences of telling the truth. He gritted his teeth, determined not to speak, and remained silent.

Huo Mingjun waited for three seconds. Seeing no answer, he casually raised his hand.

A bodyguard stepped forward. This time, the target was not a finger, but with a "crack," his right wrist was twisted and broken as cleanly as wringing a towel.

Cheng Liguo's eyes rolled back in his head. He let out a muffled roar, his body convulsing uncontrollably, clearly driven mad by the pain.

Huo Mingjun acted as if he hadn't heard the screams filling the room, and said faintly, "Mrs. Cheng, continue."

Three seconds later, another one was broken.

The woman was the first to completely break down, letting out a long, incomparably shrill wail.

"I'll talk! I beg you! I'll tell you everything!"

Two hours later, with Pan Yinghua's six fingers broken and Cheng Liguo's both wrists twisted and two leg bones fractured, Huo Mingjun finally understood the complete truth that had been buried so deeply.

Ten years ago, Pan Yinghua and Cheng Liguo lived in Chengjia Village in Daxing Mountain, H Province, making a living by farming. Cheng Liguo had no son, so he bought a stolen baby boy from human traffickers and raised him as his own son, naming him Cheng Sheng.

He had a younger brother, the only one in the village who got into a technical secondary school. He later married a nurse from the town's clinic and also had a boy, named Cheng Shen.

When Cheng Sheng was eleven and Cheng Shen was ten, a severe earthquake struck H Province. The area where Chengjia Village was located was near the epicenter and suffered heavy losses. Cheng Shen's parents were unfortunately killed, and only Cheng Shen, who had been placed by his mother in the corner of a camphorwood chest, survived. After the earthquake, he was sent to his uncle's home in Chengjia Village to be raised by Cheng Liguo's family.

However, due to post-disaster trauma, Cheng Shen's intellectual and psychological development was severely delayed. In the remote mountain village, there was no concept of "psychotherapy," and everyone treated him as a mentally disabled child. His uncle's family considered him a burden, only ensuring he didn't starve to death. No one sent him to school, and no one took care of him. Cheng Shen grew up wild like this for five years, until one day he was sent by the village children to climb into an abandoned courtyard to retrieve a ball.

He met Huo Mingjun.

Cheng Shen's cousin was Cheng Sheng. Their names were similar, but their personalities were completely different. Although Cheng Sheng was adopted, Cheng Liguo and his wife, unable to have their own children, had always treated him as their own and spoiled him rotten. At sixteen, Cheng Liguo sent him to the town to attend high school. Cheng Sheng made a new group of bad friends and became addicted to hanging out in internet cafes and playing games.

During the summer vacation, he returned to Chengjia Village. He would often sneak out behind his parents' backs to steal things from abandoned houses and sell them in town for money. One night, he climbed over the wall to go out and happened to see Cheng Shen, who was also sneaking out. Cheng Sheng was curious and wanted to see what the little fool was up to, so he followed Cheng Shen all the way to the abandoned house where Huo Mingjun was being held.

Cheng Shen was dazed and foolish, but Cheng Sheng was not. And in a sense, not only was he not foolish, he could even be considered quite shrewd. He went around to the front yard and observed for a few days, realizing he had stumbled upon a real kidnapping case. The kidnappers each had a gun, and the person locked in the house was their hostage.

Cheng Sheng was in his arrogant, chuunibyou phase where he thought he was invincible, loving grand scenes of gang fights and bloodshed. Not a single cell in his almond-sized brain remembered how to write the words "abide by the law." After discovering this secret, his first reaction wasn't to call the police, but to think eagerly, "This is fucking cool, I want to pull off a big job too!"

Sometimes, the more naive and ignorant a person is, the more terrifyingly vicious they can be.

Cheng Shen clumsily planned to help Huo Mingjun escape, unaware that a pair of eyes was always watching him from the shadows.

Later, Huo Mingjun had also wondered. Back then, Cheng Shen had used a bottle of strong liquor to knock out the kidnappers and steal the key. Logically, they shouldn't have been discovered so quickly, yet they hadn't run far before the pursuers caught up. However, the kidnappers all perished at the bottom of the cliff, so no one could give him the answer. After much fruitless investigation, Huo Mingjun could only attribute it to bad luck and the liquor not being strong enough.

It wasn't until today that he learned that behind this mystery, there was a hidden accomplice.

On the night of the planned escape, Cheng Sheng followed Cheng Shen and saw him steal a bottle of high-proof grain liquor from home. So he rushed home and told Pan Yinghua the whole story, fear-mongering that if Cheng Shen secretly let the hostage go, it would bring disaster upon their family—after all, the kidnappers all had guns.

When Pan Yinghua heard this, she immediately started cursing Cheng Shen as a jinx. Seeing his mother's attitude, Cheng Sheng volunteered to go and tip off the kidnappers to teach them a lesson.

His mother was worried about his safety, but she had always doted on Cheng Sheng and couldn't dissuade him. With Cheng Liguo not at home, she let Cheng Sheng have his way.

So Cheng Sheng woke up the drunken kidnappers, personally opening the beast's cage. He also got into the kidnappers' car, participated in the pursuit of Huo Mingjun, and ultimately plunged off the cliff with the kidnappers, meeting his end in the wreck with no return.

Pan Yinghua waited all night, but her son did not return. She anxiously asked around and finally, someone told her there had been a car accident on the mountain road outside the village. Three people had died, and one of them was said to be a teenage boy. The police were looking for someone to identify the body.

Pan Yinghua rushed to the scene and immediately recognized a scrap of remaining cloth as being from the clothes Cheng Sheng was wearing when he left home that night. She was consumed by immense shock, and as sorrow welled up, before she could even start wailing, a middle-aged man in a suit, but with an impatient look on his face, walked over. He asked what her relationship was with the deceased and said sarcastically that this child had saved their young master's life, and they would give them a sum of money as compensation.

At first, she was dazed and confused, but a moment later, she suddenly understood the key to the situation, and a gleam of ecstatic joy burst forth in her eyes.

She knew the one who saved the person was the fool, Cheng Shen, and the one crushed in the car was her son, Cheng Sheng. But there were only three bodies at the scene, and there was no trace of Cheng Shen among them.

The middle-aged man said that the young master had personally seen the person who saved him get hit by the car and fall off the cliff. Falling from such a height, Cheng Shen's chances of survival were minuscule.

The three bodies at the scene were burned beyond recognition; a DNA comparison would be needed to confirm the identities of the deceased. This meant that even if the young master came to the scene himself, he wouldn't be able to tell who had died.

The most important point was that the middle-aged man personally relayed the young master's exact words: "The person who saved me is named 'Cheng Shen'."

The local dialect had a complex accent, and the people of Chengjia Village had always been unable to distinguish between front and back nasal sounds. Therefore, in their pronunciation, the names "Cheng Sheng" and "Cheng Shen" sounded almost identical.

Pan Yinghua claimed the credit for Cheng Sheng.

The whole village knew that the Cheng couple's child, Cheng Sheng, had acted heroically, saving the young master of a wealthy family, and that the Cheng Family had latched onto the golden thigh of the Huo family. As for the dazed little fool Cheng Shen, he disappeared without a trace and was quickly forgotten. If anyone occasionally mentioned him, they all followed the Cheng family's official story, believing he had been abducted by human traffickers.

From then on, Huo Mingjun's savior became "Cheng Sheng," while the name "Cheng Shen" was silently and completely erased by the combined effect of a calculating person and the merciless passage of time.