Chapter 63: Rose Fragments (1)

The rain stopped around evening.

To be precise, it wasn’t that the rain stopped; their ship had simply sailed out of the rainy maritime zone.

More than half of Wen Mingzhe’s subordinates were dead or wounded. The rest were either taken prisoner or fled by boat. These underlings posed no real threat, and there was no need to hunt them to the last man. Wen Mingwei gave a casual wave of his hand, and Gu Jing led the men in a practiced cleanup of the battlefield: clearing the deck, covering up any traces of the battle, and tossing the bodies into the vast ocean. Everything was accomplished with effortless ease.

Until this moment, Wen Mingzhe was not yet dead. Fatally wounded, he lay on the deck at his last gasp, his unfocused pupils staring at the shifting winds and clouds in the sky, his split mouth wide open as blood continued to flow.

The process of a person dying was visible to the naked eye. Wen Mingwei stood between his line of sight and the sky, casting a condescending, merciful glance down at him. "Do you have any last words?"

"..." Wen Mingzhe could not speak, but he gently moved his finger.

Wen Mingwei placed a smartphone beside his hand. "Type."

The text input cursor flashed on the screen, and Wen Mingzhe slowly tapped out a single word: "Tan," referring to Tan Zhao.

Clearly, he had things he wanted to say regarding Tan Zhao, but a person’s state of mind on the verge of death differs vastly from normal times, and final words are reserved only for the most pressing matters.

For a fleeting second, a profound bewilderment flashed through Wen Mingzhe’s eyes. His life, which had once sailed smoothly before plunging into a tailspin at the bottom of the abyss, resembled a poorly-ended movie. Looking back on his deathbed, he realized that well over half of it had been spent "filming" Wen Mingwei.

Bullying Wen Mingwei in their youth, competing with him as they grew older, and later biding his time for nine years—all for the sole purpose of wiping away his humiliation and forcing Wen Mingwei back down onto his knees before him...

With his face practically covered in blood, Wen Mingzhe suddenly grinned.

The adage "words are wise from a dying man" does not apply to everyone. His gaze left Wen Mingwei and shifted to Tan Zhao on the other side.

The accompanying doctor had just treated Tan Zhao’s wounds. Tan Zhao ought to have been resting in the cabin, but he had insisted on accompanying Wen Mingwei to "see him off" and witness Wen Mingzhe’s death with his own eyes.

Tan Zhao stared at the phone screen, his gaze darkening.

Wen Mingzhe deleted the character "Tan." After a moment, he tremulously retyped: "Don't expect to... die easy either..."

Wen Mingzhe’s blood was nearly drained, his facial features contorted, yet he was still smiling, as if some secret joke between the two people before him made him unable to stop savoring it even as he died.

Unwilling to watch him curse Wen Mingwei, Tan Zhao raised his foot to step on him, but was stopped.

"Anything else?"

Wen Mingzhe paused for several seconds.

As the ship turned for the return voyage, sailing onward for a long time, the sea remained boundless.

Flocks of gulls wheeled overhead, their clear cries growing increasingly urgent.

At last, Wen Mingzhe slowly tapped out the final three characters: "I'll wait."

Then he pushed the phone away, signaling that he had nothing more to say.

Wen Mingzhe paused for a moment, cocked his pistol, and aimed it at the other man's head, pulling the trigger—

"Bang!"

The instant the gunshot rang out, the seagulls scattered in shrieking panic.

Wen Mingwei personally dragged up the remains of the man who was nominally his brother and cast them into the sea.

Past grievances were consigned to the flowing waters, and the entanglements of love and hate were brought to an end here.

Expressionless, Wen Mingwei wiped his hands. Suddenly, his waist tightened as Tan Zhao embraced him from the side. "Why do you look like you're not happy?"

"It's fine," Wen Mingwei paused. "I just didn't expect him to die so cleanly. It went smoother than anticipated."

He turned his head to look at Tan Zhao.

Evening was falling, overcast and with dark clouds shielding the sun above the ocean.

In the dim light, half of Tan Zhao’s face was hidden in shadow, his gaze calm and profound—the kind of profoundness that comes when a man matures and wades into a certain depth, never to return to a state of innocence.

Wen Mingwei looked at him for a long time, so long that Tan Zhao grew slightly uncomfortable. "Is there something on my face?"

"No. Just realizing that you've grown up."

"What are you saying? I'm not eighteen anymore."

"Right. Does it hurt?" Wen Mingwei touched the bandage on his shoulder. "Don't pull such death-defying stunts again in the future. I was worried."

Having just received anesthesia, it didn't hurt right now. Tan Zhao had almost forgotten about his own wound, but he didn't forget to beg for a reward. "Did I do well this time, Mingwei?"

"Very well."

"Then shouldn't you—"

"What do you want?"

"Want you to love me a little more."

"..."

Tan Zhao cupped Wen Mingwei's face in both hands and lowered his head to kiss him.

Unusually, Wen Mingzhe closed his eyes, adopting an attitude of silent consent, indulgence, and leaving himself entirely at Tan Zhao's mercy.

There was not a second person in the world who could treat Wen Mingwei this way. Tan Zhao finally faintly grasped the authority to "enjoy" him; a single shallow taste left him somewhat dizzy, and his fingers tightened involuntarily, hooking around his jaw.

"Mingwei..." Tan Zhao murmured in a daze, kissing him deeper and deeper. Hearing his uncomfortable gasps felt intoxicating. Clearly, Wen Mingwei was deeply uncomfortable yet didn't call a halt, as if satisfying Tan Zhao at that moment was paramount—an attitude of utter pampering that was equally dizzying. Tan Zhao hadn't intended to kiss for so long, but his heart was in turmoil, and he couldn't stop himself, feeling as though he wanted to chew him up and swallow him whole to be satisfied.

When it was over, Wen Mingwei smiled.

Even though he hadn't said a word, Tan Zhao read sarcasm into it. "What?"

"I just praised you for growing up, and immediately you revert to your true nature."

"..." Tan Zhao choked slightly. "What did I do?"

Wen Mingwei said meaningfully, "Between two people, only one can hold the initiative. I let you do whatever you wanted, and you still didn't know how to control me."

He sounded like he was joking, part of their flirtation.

Humbly asking for instruction, Tan Zhao said, "To control the other person, you must first learn to control yourself. You have to be able to withdraw at any moment, pulling away just when the other person desires it most, instead of letting yourself get muddled before the person being kissed even reacts."

"…Hm, want to try?" Putting his newly acquired knowledge into practice, Tan Zhao pulled Wen Mingwei back into the cabin to make out.

By now it was completely dark. Unable to find the light switch, Tan Zhao used the faint, ghostly glow reflected off the seawater outside the window to press Wen Mingwei down onto the sofa, kissing him fiercely once more.

A deep kiss lasting over a minute without a pause; Tan Zhao deliberately pulled away three times, and each time Wen Mingwei's reaction grew more intense, clinging to him as if he were suffocating without him, practically begging him to continue kissing.

Every time he was begged, Tan Zhao's head spun a little more. In the end, it was actually Wen Mingwei who stopped first, smiling up at him again. "Like it?"

"..."

Belatedly, Tan Zhao realized this too was part of the reward—Wen Mingzhe was coaxing him, teasing him, playing with him like a cat with a mouse.

"...Fine, now I really have learned." Tan Zhao felt a faint trace of embarrassment and annoyance, which he kept suppressed. "Just you wait until my wounds heal."

In theory, whether a person could hold the initiative during intimacy had nothing to do with whether they were injured or not.

The young master had found a convenient excuse to save face, and Wen Mingzhe didn't expose him.

Overnight, they made up—
Though there hadn't been an argument to begin with, the subtle undercurrents of mutual suspicion that had long lingered in the air were swept clean by those two kisses.

Tan Zhao, in particular, had resolved a major weight on his mind, fulfilling the promise he had previously made to Wen Mingwei. It was as if he had been vindicated of false charges; from then on, whether it was Gu Jing, Jian Xinning, or Wen Mingwei, no one had any reason to doubt him ever again.

A few days later, Tan Zhao personally handled the "aftermath" for Wen Mingzhe, tracking down his overseas lair through his subordinates, sending men to clean it out thoroughly, and reporting it to Wen Mingwei, bringing a complete period to the entire affair.

Finally, in mid-December, those batches of firearms that Wen Mingwei was eager to unload were shipped out of the country smoothly, entirely free of any adverse interference.