Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

Hearing this, Wei Dekang nodded desperately.

"Did I light the detonator?" Yang Ce asked again.

This time Wei Dekang hesitated a moment, but still shook his head.

"There you have it. I said I wouldn't kill you, and I didn't light the detonator. What are you yelling for?" Yang Ce shrugged. "I've always been a man of my word."

"Mmm, mmm." Wei Dekang still wanted to say something.

Yang Ce waved a hand. "But your subordinate Old Six Zheng is going to murder you, and that's beyond my control. Bye-bye, and good luck. Here's hoping one detonator doesn't kill you."

With that, Yang Ce and Bao Lin walked on without looking back and left Wei Dekang's company.

Only then did Bao Lin give in to his curiosity. "Brother Yang, you said Old Six Zheng will murder Wei Dekang—what's that about?"

"Heh, it's simple." Yang Ce said, "I put a little something on Old Six Zheng. In a moment he'll wake up, and unable to bear the pain, he'll light the detonator and kill himself. The reason I had you twist the fuses together was so that when Old Six Zheng lights the detonator, Wei Dekang gets dragged into it too."

"So that's it." Bao Lin saw the light and could not help giving a thumbs-up in admiration. "Brother Yang, you're brilliant. This way, the bombing has nothing to do with us at all—it's entirely Old Six Zheng taking his own life and accidentally injuring Wei Dekang along the way. Haha!"

Though he did not know what means Yang Ce had used, Bao Lin had not the slightest doubt about his abilities. He had seen some of Yang Ce's formidable methods before.

Yang Ce got into Bao Lin's Jinbei van, and the two of them quickly vanished into the vast night, heading back toward the jewelry company.

Old Six Zheng was woken by the discomfort in his body—a feeling beyond description, as though someone were scraping his bones with a knife and drawing out his marrow with needles. It was unbearable.

And what was even harder to endure was that all over his body, it felt as if tens of thousands of ants were crawling and burrowing every which way, as though he were being devoured by a pack of anteaters, inside and out, tormenting Old Six Zheng so badly that he could not even faint.

When Yang Ce had interrogated people before, he had always used only one acupoint-striking method, but on Old Six Zheng he had used three, precisely to make sure he would not fail to want death.

By now, Old Six Zheng was howling "awoo, awoo" in agony, a sound so shrill and miserable it was as if he had met a vengeful ghost, frightening even Wei Dekang to the marrow.

He could not understand what had happened to Zheng Laoliu, or why the man should be in such agony now that he had come to. Yet from the outside, there was not a single visible wound on Zheng Laoliu's body.

After Yang Ce left, Wei Dekang had been at a loss. Yang Ce had wired a detonator to him—was the sole purpose of that to frighten him? But now, seeing Zheng Laoliu's behavior, Wei Dekang was even more bewildered.

"Aaaah!" Zheng Laoliu let out a wild howl. "Kill me! I can't take it anymore!"

Zheng Laoliu's eyes were wide open, his face indescribably hideous; he was gasping harshly for breath in great gulps and smashing his head against the ground with all his might.

Wei Dekang was secretly horrified. What kind of torment could it be, to reduce a man to this state? He was still puzzling over it when a chill suddenly seized his heart and cold sweat burst out all over him. Zheng Laoliu had finally noticed the detonator and the lighter beside him. Without the slightest hesitation, Zheng Laoliu struck the lighter and touched the flame to the detonator's fuse, then threw himself down on top of it.

Then, on Zheng Laoliu's face appeared a look of longing and deliverance. In an instant Wei Dekang understood: Zheng Laoliu was begging for death—he was committing suicide.

But as fate would have it, the other end of that detonator's fuse was connected to the very detonator strapped to his own body.

"Mmm—mmph—" Wei Dekang strained with all his might to make a sound, to stop it, but Zheng Laoliu's nerves had been shattered by the torment, and he no longer had any sense of the world around him.

As for Wei Dekang, all four of his limbs were broken; he wanted to stop it and could not. He cast one despairing glance at Zheng Laoliu's detonator, whose fuse was about to burn down to the end, and a look of utter hopelessness came over his face. Once Zheng Laoliu's detonator went off, his own explosion would not be far behind. Wei Dekang did not want to die, yet there was not a thing he could do. At that moment he truly wanted to weep.

His own capable subordinate had in the end become the very man who would send him to meet the King of Hell. The thing Wei Dekang regretted most now was ever provoking Yang Ce—but by the time he understood this, it was far too late.

With a great "BOOM," Wei Dekang's ears nearly burst with the din. He saw Zheng Laoliu die a hideous death not far away, flesh and blood flying in every direction, and much of Zheng Laoliu's blood and gore was even spattered onto Wei Dekang himself.

But at this moment he no longer had the presence of mind to care about that, for in the next instant Death would come calling on him. Another tremendous blast—Wei Dekang ended his own life. The whole of Dekang Tower fell into a profound stillness, as though nothing at all had happened. Though the explosions had been loud, that was only from inside the tower; outside, in the bustling downtown, those two blasts were surely no different from the sound of firecrackers going off, and so they drew no one's attention at all.

"You can handle the cleanup, can't you?" Sitting in the car, Yang Puqi had been monitoring the activity over at Dekang Tower with his ability all along, and only once both Wei Dekang and Zheng Laoliu had been blown to bits by the detonators did he relax, and speak to Baolin.

"Don't worry, Brother Yang." Baolin was an expert at handling this sort of thing. "I'll take care of it. Besides, we're not the ones who lit those detonators—it was that Zheng Laoliu who lit them. What the hell does that have to do with us?"

Yang Yuting nodded. He knew that several of the lawyers under Baolin's command were experts in this line of work; they had played a considerable role back when they took over Wang Pu's Century Xiongfeng Group.

"Leave this equity document with you as well." Yang Ce handed the share transfer agreement to Baolin. "Get your lawyers to take over Wei Dekang's holdings—any problem with that?"

"No problem." Baolin nodded and gave his assurance. "I'll get it done, guaranteed. And it just so happens that now we've got ourselves a real estate development company."

"Mm. Use your own judgment; you don't need to check everything with me." Yang Ce thought for a moment, then added, "How are your connections with those tabloid papers and magazines?"

"Those people? Heh, they're always hoping to cozy up to us—they just never get the chance." Baolin laughed. "Why, Brother Yang? You thinking of starting a magazine?"

"Not that. About this business with Wei Dekang and Zheng Laoliu—if it blows up, you can give it a bit of publicity. Mm, say the two of them were queers, lovesick and tormented, and killed themselves together," Yang Yanzhou said.

"Pfft—" Baolin nearly doubled over laughing when he heard this. "Brother Yang, you're a genius."

To be continued.

972. Find a Killer to Take Out Yang Ce

Four badly decomposed corpses were discovered inside a villa in Macau. Investigation had established their identities: Macau resident Liu Jihao, the illegal immigrants Ouyang Kanqi and Ouyang Junwei, and an internationally wanted criminal known as Yanchixia 001.

The police did not even know Yanchixia 001's real name; they knew only that he was presently a pillar of the Eagle Eye assassin squad, and that Ouyang Kanqi was the man behind the scenes, the true head of that squad.