Chapter 53
Discovering Li Chen's problem was completely an accident.
A voyeur hired by Li Chen misjudged the focal point of the Li family's high-level power struggle, mistakenly thinking he could gain some leverage from Li Bo. To show his sincerity, the voyeur leaked some of Li Chen's unknown "fetishes" to Li Bo.
Of course, even at that time, Li Bo still did not take the matter seriously.
Because Li Chen's "abnormality" had actually started from a very young age.
*
In the eyes of the Li couple, Li Ailing was a total and utter failure.
Similarly, Li Chen could hardly receive any favoritism from the Li couple either.
If it were not for the fact that leaving this child to wander outside might lead to his death or reduce him to a lowly, wretched beggar, bringing shame upon the Li family bloodline, Li Bo had no doubt that the couple actually never wanted to bring such a "mongrel" back home at all.
Especially since, when Li Chen was brought back, he looked so thin, ugly, and utterly devoid of upbringing.
An immature child does not understand how to assess the situation or read people's expressions.
He was too young, and his mother had never taught him the skills of how to survive in a hellish environment like the Li family.
Therefore, he only followed his own nature, crying and shouting endlessly day and night, wanting to return to the familiar place.
And the person he screamed for and yearned for wasn't even his mother, but a so-called friend he had made in the slums...
Thus, the Li couple chose the simplest method to discipline this grandson of theirs who carried a humble bloodline.
*
They locked Li Chen in the basement.
*
It is said that during World War II, many people used the same method to deal with prisoners.
The Li family's basement was deep and dark, without a trace of light, and sounds from the outside world could not penetrate it at all.
At a fixed time every day, someone would drop food into the feeding chute for the person inside, but no matter how miserably the person in the basement screamed, they would never receive any response from the outside.
Li Bo had accidentally been locked in there once or twice when he was very young.
Those one or two experiences were enough for him to blindly obey the Li couple and be entirely at their beck and call for the next twenty years or so.
In some people's words, Li Bo was simply the most obedient dog raised by the Li family.
And Li Bo never cared about this evaluation.
After all, if those people were put inside, they would also become very docile and obedient once they came out.
Strictly speaking, however, Li Bo was locked in the basement for at most a day or two.
And Li Chen...
Li Chen supposedly spent a whole year in that basement.
*
Of course, when Li Bo actually met Li Chen, the latter had already been trained by the Li couple into a "barely presentable" child.
When the child saw Li Bo, he would stretch the corners of his mouth into a smile and call out "older brother," and he would also provide perfect answers when the tutor arrived.
Nourished by lavish material foundations, Li Chen was like an ugly duckling that had finally returned to a flock of swans, transforming at an astonishing speed into an intelligent and pretty child.
Yet for some reason, the very first time he saw Li Chen, Li Bo felt a chill run down his spine...
And this hair-raising intuition was confirmed not long after.
*
It was a parrot.
Extremely clever and beautiful, with brilliant colors and a high intelligence approaching that of a human child.
*
Li Bo had long since forgotten where that parrot came from; anyway, it was probably sent by some friend in the business world as a birthday gift specifically for Li Chen, seeing that the Li couple's attitude toward their newly arrived grandson was gradually changing.
Li Chen liked that parrot very, very, very much.
When playing with that parrot, Li Bo felt for the first time that his younger brother possessed a childlikeness that somewhat matched his age.
It was a pity that good times did not last long; not long after, the parrot fell seriously ill, and even though a pet doctor was sent to treat it, it remained on the verge of death.
Then one day, the parrot died.
Li Bo watched with his own eyes as Li Chen blankly hugged the dead bird, sitting motionlessly for a long time in the greenhouse where they used to play together.
Finally, the child silently shed tears and secretly buried the parrot in the garden.
*
The death of a parrot and the sadness of a child were far too minor and trivial matters in a place like the Li family.
Even Li Bo himself did not pay much attention to it.
However, a few nights later, Li Bo was abruptly awakened from his sleep by a rustling sound.
Years later, he no longer remembered why he didn't alert anyone else, but instead instinctively threw on a coat and followed the sound step by step to the garden.
He saw Li Chen in the garden.
The child's body was covered in mud, and his hands were stained with blood.
With his back to Li Bo, his frail shoulders kept twitching.
Li Bo heard a very low, muffled whimpering sound, inarticulate, yet it made all the hair on his body stand on end.
"Li Chen... What are you doing here?"
Li Bo asked.
Then, under the moonlight, Li Chen slowly turned his head.
His face remained flawless, like a meticulously carved doll.
However, most of his face was stained with blackish-red, mottled blood, making his teeth appear exceptionally white and closely packed.
And in his mouth, he was biting into... the half-eaten, decaying corpse of the parrot.
*
At that time, the pungent stench of decay and the white maggots crawling and twitching among the parrot's remains were frequent visitors to Li Bo's nightmares for several years to come.
He had once sought help from psychological counselors, as well as pharmaceuticals and alcohol, but in the end, none of it worked.
His nightmares would always end with that child's natural and unhesitating reply.
*
"Don't be afraid, older brother."
The young Li Chen wore a calm expression.
He chewed very carefully on the parrot's carcass inside his mouth. The meat chunks, already rendered exceptionally soft and mushy by decay, mixed with shattered feathers and turned into thick, dark blood that welled out from between his lips, only for him to carefully smear it back onto the tip of his tongue.
Under the grinding of his molars, the tiny, shattered skeleton of the bird made a crunching sound.
"I just felt that Si Si was too lonely."
Li Chen pulled the corners of his mouth into a blood-stained smile toward the pale, terrified teenager. He clearly looked identical to the "Li Chen" of the daytime, yet Li Bo felt that the child looked unusually unfamiliar.
Unfamiliar, as if his body had been hijacked by a ghost from the abyss.
"I like it so much. Don't you think it's just too pitiful to let it rot away alone in the dirt and be forgotten as time passes?"
"P... pitiful?"
"Yeah, so pitiful, really so pitiful."
*
Li Chen swallowed the last remaining head of the parrot named "Si Si."
With a squelch, he crushed the parrot's eyeball.
Then he stuck out his tongue and licked away the foul, bloody stain from the corner of his mouth bit by bit.
"...So I think it's better to let it stay with me forever."
The child patted his stomach, smiling with satisfaction and bliss.
"Although it's a bit disgusting, and the corpse tastes bad, look, older brother, now no one will ever be able to separate me and it!"
*
Li Chen is sick.
And he suffers from a very, very severe mental illness.
*
Later, Li Bo learned that when the Li couple finally remembered their grandson and dragged him out of the basement, Li Chen had already gone mad. It was only through sophisticated mental control and brainwashing, coupled with heavy doses of medication, that the cute and obedient child in everyone's eyes came to be.
However, a madman is a madman after all.
Perhaps to endure the lightless, terrifying time in the basement, Li Chen developed a very distinct case of multiple personality disorder.
One of his personalities was barely able to maintain Li Chen's social daily life.
Beneath that perfect facade, however, lurked a soul as mad and dark as an evil ghost.
As Li Chen grew older, he also became more and more perfect, but at the same time, the rotting shadow beneath that glossy skin grew increasingly twisted.
Even Li Chen himself was well aware of this.
When Li Bo threw the voyeur's denunciation at Li Chen and warned the latter not to continue, Li Chen instead smiled and voluntarily confessed that terrifying secret to him.
*
"Ah, yes, I am a thorough, completely uncontrollable stalker. A stalker, a voyeur, a madman, a sexual pervert... a freak."
"But I have no intention of stopping this behavior."
Unlike the child covered in mud, bloody rotten flesh, and dark blood in his childhood, the young man who stood before Li Bo once again had a straight posture and an elegant sitting posture. Even the expression on his face seemed draped with a mask, completely concealing all emotional fluctuations in an impeachable manner.
"You must have noticed long ago that many of my thoughts are... well, somewhat abnormal."
He said in a soft voice.
"Every time I see him, a strong urge wells up inside my body. The other part of me is always so naggy, chattering and screaming endlessly, wanting him to stay with me forever."
"Ah, older brother, you know what I mean, right? Yes, just like what you're thinking."
*
"So I have to work very hard to keep 'it' calm. I don't want Si Si to die just like that. After all, he is so timid, so fragile, and so cute. If 'it' really killed Si Si, I would be very sad."
"But... older brother, do you know? 'It' and I are craving to completely merge with him almost every moment. Only in this way can Si Si truly belong to us."
"I must give this desire an outlet to be released, otherwise I don't know what 'it' will do once it loses control."
...
Author's Note:
Yang Siguang: ...What the hell is going on? !!!
Li Chen (suddenly popping up): Naturally, it's your dead ghost of a husband!
[Such a cold joke...]