Chapter Eleven: When Thoughts Have Become Demons (3)
“Cheng,” Mark shrugged. “Sorry, this isn’t the scene I wanted you to see. You know, it was completely unexpected.”
There was unmistakable amusement in his voice.
Yet he was somewhat puzzled. Why had the audio been muted for a while just now?
Cheng Muyang was breathing lightly, forcing himself to catch his breath as the pain intensified.
Yet his expression was unexpectedly calm. He slowly walked up to Mark and grabbed him by the front of his clothes. “I won’t let any of you leave the Philippines alive.”
Mark looked at him in surprise. “I can tell you that killing me won’t do you any good. All the recordings are synchronized to CIA headquarters. From just now on, you’re already a globally wanted criminal.”
Because of his emotions, Cheng Muyang’s eyes had almost turned black. His lips were pressed tightly together.
Every line of his face was taut. Looking down at Mark from above, he exuded a heavy sense of oppression, like a predator looming over its prey.
“I think the CIA should be very happy that I can kill a few of their citizens and add another charge to my name, don’t you?” His voice was very soft, utterly unconcerned.
Mark’s pupils suddenly contracted.
But it was already too late. Cheng Muyang’s fist slammed hard into his temple. When someone rushed in through the door, he had already thrown Mark’s body at them, knocking one of them over. Mark, completely unconscious, kept coughing up great mouthfuls of blood, and his companions were all somewhat horrified.
Who would have thought something like this would suddenly happen in an interrogation room? But what happened next was even harder for them to comprehend. This man was actually able to disregard his circumstances and turn the entire enclosed interrogation room into a veritable killing ground.
Every place his fists landed drew blood.
His ribs were fractured. He knew better than anyone that continuing to move so violently would result in a fatal hemothorax. But reason had completely abandoned him. What he remembered was that girl from his youth. When he had silently recited the Heart Sutra yet found no salvation, she alone had appeared in the darkness and driven away all his nightmares.
So he absolutely could not tolerate anyone threatening her. What she said or did did not matter to him, but if someone forced her to do something, he would personally kill everyone who saw or heard it.
The moment Cheng Muyang threw Mark aside, he used the gun he had taken from him to shoot and kill two people in quick succession.
The remaining three had also had their guns knocked away by him. They each gripped a short blade in their hands and, crouching low, surrounded him.
His eyes followed the three men as they alternately appeared in his field of vision.
The internal injuries had already become unbearably painful, and he was even beginning to hallucinate that his soul was leaving his body.
He quietly spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged water and, following the habit he had formed in childhood, recited the Heart Sutra: “The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, when practicing the profound Prajnaparamita, clearly saw that the five aggregates are all empty, and thus crossed beyond all suffering and distress. Shariputra, form is no different from emptiness, emptiness is no different from form...”
The Heart Sutra, guiding people toward peace, freedom, and liberation.
Yet he could find no liberation from his obsession.
He could only rely on it to hold on to the last fragment of his consciousness amid the unbearable pain.
Cheng Muyang lowered himself. Blood dripped from the knife in his hand. Just as the three lunged past one another toward him, the silver-flashing blade in his palm passed with incredible precision across one man’s throat.
“All dharmas are empty in nature, neither arising nor ceasing, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing...”
Only a cruel calm remained in Cheng Muyang’s eyes as he drove the knife in his hand into the man’s heart.
The next second, he had already snatched a new short blade from the dead man’s hand.
The remaining two looked at Cheng Muyang and increasingly regretted rushing into the room just now.
If they had simply abandoned Mark, at least five of them could still have survived. But now, neither of them could escape. Even if they were not fighting for the CIA, they knew perfectly well that there was no way they could escape the blade in Cheng Muyang’s hand.
This was not a desperate struggle at all. It was a one-sided slaughter.
Du came out of the room and saw everything on the surveillance footage, completely unable to believe his eyes. This man, Cheng Muyang, had actually killed so many people in front of the CIA’s surveillance cameras.
This operation had been led by him and Mark, and they had brought six people.
At this moment, only he and the companion beside him remained. There were only two of them left.
“Blow up this house. If all our people are dead, detonate it,” Du immediately made his decision.
They had already obtained Cheng Muyang’s confession, so the mission could not be considered a failure. At the very least, if they blew him up and killed him, they would have enough evidence to continue with the next step of negotiations with Moscow. Too many people in Moscow’s upper ranks had a “perfect friendship” with Cheng Muyang, so the charges against him were enough to threaten them.
“Du, someone is asking why you shut off the audio monitoring for two minutes just now.” The companion sitting in the monitoring room looked up at Du. “No one is allowed to turn off the audio during an interrogation in the monitoring room. That’s a basic requirement.”
Du patted him on the shoulder and smiled. “I’ll explain this to them personally.”
As soon as he finished speaking, everyone on the surveillance monitor collapsed onto the floor.
Blood flowed like a river. Even just looking at the scene, one could almost smell the thick stench of blood. The two men fell silent for a moment. In the pool of blood, Cheng Muyang braced himself against the floor with one hand and struggled to stand.
He walked over to the unconscious Mark. In an utterly primitive manner, he straddled his body and drove the short blade down hard. Then he raised his head and looked toward the monitor.
His gaze was utterly devoid of emotion.
Du quietly exhaled.
This man was terrifying.
Thinking about what had driven him into a frenzy, Du felt a faint chill creep up his spine.
There was an inexplicable stabbing pain in his chest, as though that knife had been driven into his own heart rather than Mark’s.
“Detonate it in two minutes. I’ll wait for you on the west side of the coast.” Du irritably gripped the back of the chair, then let go. Still uneasy, he pressed his companion again. “Is this room completely sealed? Can he get out in two minutes?”
“Completely sealed.” His companion quickly set the detonation sequence.
The moment he finished speaking, Du was already pointing the gun at the back of his head and pulling the trigger.
The last one. Apart from Du himself, the last CIA agent on this coast was dead as well.
The instant he fired, Du felt as though he had been possessed by a demon.
Just two hours earlier, they had been in complete control of everything. Yet two hours later, they had been almost completely wiped out. This man and woman were both too terrifying, terrifying like demons.
If he had a choice, for the rest of his life he would never have anything to do with anyone from the Nan family or the Cheng family again.
And now, Du had to take Nan Bei away and trade her for his family.
Du rushed out of the monitoring room, crossed the wall separating it from the interrogation room, picked up Nan Bei, and ran toward the outside of the wooden house. By then, the sky was completely dark. Carrying an unconscious woman, he ran across the fine, soft sand. Because the sand was so soft, he ran more slowly than he had expected. Amid the deafening explosion and enormous waves, all he could do was press Nan Bei beneath him, shielding her from the sand, rocks, and fragments of the building flying in every direction.
He did not know what had sliced open his back. He touched the warm blood with his hand and looked at the burning ruins as he sat up from the beach. Beside him was Nan Bei, unconscious. Du wished he could tear her skin off and pull out her tendons, yet he had no choice but to compromise, even having to protect her from the explosion.
Du understood that from the moment he turned against his CIA companion, he would have to “disappear” from this world, or become a counterintelligence agent for another country. Thinking of the long future he would have to spend being hunted by the CIA, he felt the urge to kill Nan Bei.
Unfortunately, for now, all he could do was take Nan Bei and leave the coast engulfed in rolling flames.
During her long unconsciousness, Nan Bei began to hear the sound of rain.
The rain was very loud, yet it seemed to be separated from her by a layer of glass, making it hazy and indistinct.
She struggled to open her eyes.
There were no lights in the room. Her entire body was bound tightly, her mouth sealed with tape, and her hands and feet restrained so that she could not move at all. She should have been lying on a bed, and there seemed to be a very unpleasant smell lingering on the sheets.
Wherever this was, at least it was no longer by the coast.
She thought Du must have succeeded.
Otherwise, they would not have used such a crude way to tie her up.
It was pitch-black night, and it was raining. Only the gray-white natural light outside filtered in.
She lay with her eyes open, looking out the window.
She did not know how long she had been asleep. Her head was splitting with pain. Starting at her temples, sharp pangs spread outward, impossible to suppress. She could only close her eyes and silently recite the Heart Sutra over and over.
She had learned it from her mother when she was little. Whenever she felt agitated and restless, she would recite it to calm her mind.
There was no dead end. There was nowhere in this world that was truly a dead end. As long as she left the CIA, that would be the first step toward a way out.
“The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, when practicing the profound Prajnaparamita, clearly saw that the five aggregates are all empty, and thus crossed beyond all suffering and distress. Shariputra, form is no different from emptiness, emptiness is no different from form, form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself is form; sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness are likewise.”
Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself is form.
She thought of Cheng Muyang. Emptiness and form, form and emptiness. He, at least, had seen through it all.
The rain outside seemed to be growing heavier and heavier, reminding her of her days in Belgium. Her memories unfurled, all the way back to that first day.
In the cramped back seat of the car, he had one hand resting on the seat and the other on his own knee. Because his legs were so long, he had no choice but to turn sideways and sit close against her. It had begun so ordinarily. She had simply wanted to make conversation, and he happened to speak Chinese.
Cheng Muyang.
Cheng Muyang.
Those three characters rolled across the very tip of her heart, and they were searingly hot.
She hoped he would be able to finish everything smoothly. As for her, she needed to return to Wanding first.
The voices outside the door interrupted her thoughts. They were all in a local language she could not understand. She listened for a while, and just as she was about to give up, she suddenly heard English with a Filipino accent, someone making small talk with someone else. Soon, from the intermittent exchanges between the men and women, she learned where this was: the red-light district of Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
It was not long before the returning Du confirmed her guess.
Du tore the tape from her mouth and fed her bread piece by piece, remaining silent the entire time. When he finally gave her water, he said, “I’ll keep you alive and well until your brother sends my wife and daughter to Britain.”
To Britain?
Nan Bei swallowed the water without saying anything. For someone who had betrayed the CIA while also offending Moscow, defecting to British intelligence was indeed a good choice.
After she finished eating, Du sealed her mouth shut again.
Du lay down on the bed on the other side of the room, and the room fell silent once more. She closed her eyes and began continuing the recitation of the Heart Sutra in her mind. She did not know when she fell asleep, but a dream followed her.
In the dream was Cheng Muyang, the young Cheng Muyang.
He was wearing a little bespoke suit with a tiny bow tie. His brown eyes, porcelain-white skin, and black hair, softly curled beneath his ears, made him look remarkably like a Western porcelain doll. Sitting ramrod straight, he was flipping through a Buddhist scripture. After a while, his eyes finally moved away from the scripture and, with an utterly solemn expression, turned toward the wall.
Nan Bei followed his gaze, only to find a shunga woodblock print hanging there.
What a little pervert!
Like an observer, she watched as the camera drew closer to him, finding it amusing. Yet as she continued to stare at the boy, watching him, she gradually became entranced. This love, no matter who had fallen under its spell first, had long since been destined to last a lifetime.
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