— Night —
It had been a few hours since Wei Chen had returned from the hospital, where he had met his ex-girlfriend and learned a fact that had left him deeply shaken.
Now, he was lying on the bed. Beside him, Dream Butterfly was sleeping soundly.
As for Mo Xingyao, that scaredy-cat didn’t dare sleep here. She was still nervous and wasn’t ready for it. Besides, this was a guest house.
Doing that here would be very inappropriate. He wasn’t shameless enough to leave white substance X behind for the maids here to clean up.
As he lay there, staring into the night and listening to the sound of the night wind, his thoughts wandered back to his previous life.
He... No.... The William Carter had a daughter with Cindy, and he had died without ever knowing the truth.
Why hadn’t she told him?
If she had... No.....
He knew himself, and he believed Cindy knew him well enough not to tell him either. Even if she had told him in his previous life, with all the pressure, his pride, and that stupid mindset of desperately wanting acknowledgement from some weird strangers...
Would he really have stopped?
No... There was a very good chance he wouldn’t have stopped.
In fact, he might have doubled down on it because he had a daughter now, and he would have needed even more money for her.
Now that he had died and reincarnated as Wei Chen, an employee of the Underworld Palace, he couldn’t help but wonder...
What had gotten into him back then for him to be that stupid?
As Wei Chen thought about it, he couldn’t help but prop himself up with both hands and rub his face, trying to clear his mind and push away all the thoughts cluttering his head.
"Sigh..."
He let out a long sigh before sitting on the bed and looking at the night view outside through the vertical blinds covering the floor-to-ceiling glass window.
The distant lights from the houses and the sound of speeding vehicles in the distance gave him a strange sense of calm and comfort.
He turned his head and looked back at Dream Butterfly.
She was looking back at him.
It seemed that she had woken up because of his movement.
"I’m sorry, Yu’er. Did I wake you up?" Wei Chen asked with a smile as he stroked her head, feeling her smooth and silky black hair.
"It’s okay, Lord Husband."
She shook her head...
Then she paused and looked straight at him.
"You seem disturbed. Something must be weighing on your mind. If you don’t mind, could you share it with me? I might not be able to help, but I’ll try to help you as best as I can."
Dream Butterfly asked, her eyes as bright as the stars as she stared into his soul.
Wei Chen felt a little guilty toward Dream Butterfly.
He still wasn’t sure if he should tell her about his previous life, about Cindy, about the parents of his previous life.
As for the parents and Cindy, as far as they know.... he had already died and disappeared from their lives, leaving them an adorable little baby girl in Cindy’s womb, and now... he knew the truth.
This made him unable to think straight.
Should he appear before them?
Should he make up for his regret?
If so, would they be able to accept it?
And most importantly...
As a dead man who had already disappeared from their lives...
Should he... tell them who he really was?
What kind of consequences would follow if he did?
These questions wandered through his mind, his thoughts consumed by the desire to make up for his regret.
Yes... ’make up for his own regret’, a selfish desire to make himself feel better and stop feeling like a useless deadbeat dad. An attempt to make himself feel less guilty.
As Wei Chen’s mind wandered through the thoughts occupying his mind, Dream Butterfly also observed him attentively.
Her experience as a former courtesan, where she had to carefully observe her guests and understand their moods, was proving useful now.
She knew for a fact that her husband had something weighing heavily on his mind, yet for some reason, he was unable to tell her about it.
"It’s okay, Lord Husband. You don’t need to tell me if it makes you uncomfortable," Dream Butterfly said with a smile.
"No, it’s not like that. It’s just..."
Before Wei Chen could come up with an explanation, he felt a soft body and a warm embrace from the front. The soft fragrance of her hair reached his nose, slowly calming his troubled heart.
"Just let me hold you like this... I may not be able to help you right now, but at least... by holding you like this... I can help you calm your mind," Dream Butterfly said in a calm voice.
Her understanding touched his heart.
"Thank you..."
Wei Chen uttered a simple word.
A simple word that carried all of his sincerity and gratitude for her understanding.
How lucky was he to have a wife like this?
.....
Outside the mansion, a certain black van had been parked about 500 meters away. Inside the van, three people were monitoring the situation inside the mansion.
They were speaking to each other in Russian as they tried to determine what was actually happening inside by watching the footage captured by the people they had sent into the security screening area.
One monitor displayed the captured footage, while another showed the heat signatures of the people inside.
The moment they saw Wei Chen hugging Dream Butterfly, one of them whistled with a smile and made a joking remark in Russian.
However, the one who appeared to be their leader immediately scolded them in Russian, causing the two others to tone down their jokes and humor.
But before they could do anything else, the footage suddenly dissolved into static as the signal was cut.
Immediately, the leader slammed his fist against the wall and shouted something in Russian, signaling the driver to get them out of there.
But...
Unknown to them, the person sitting in the driver’s seat was already dead.
It was nothing more than a corpse with a hole in his head, lying lifeless in the seat. Blood slowly dripped from the gaping hole in his temple.
Noticing this, the leader said something in Russian and quickly took out a pistol they had kept nearby.
The other two immediately followed suit.
The air inside the van suddenly became thick with blood and uncertainty.
Suddenly, one of the doors was blown inward.
A barrage of gunfire immediately erupted as a hail of bullets was dumped into the van through the gaping hole that had been blown open from the outside.
The bullets tore through the muscles of the people inside, shredding their bodies and turning them into sieves.
Even their flak jackets couldn’t protect them.
There were simply too many bullets, and the caliber was too large.
The bullets tore through their flak jackets along with the men wearing them.
"Sector C7 clear!"
One of the men who had led the squad that breached the van spoke into his communication device before the entire team professionally retreated.
Like a well-oiled machine, a cleanup crew soon arrived with a tow truck, they removed the van along with any bullet casings that might have fallen onto the ground.
Their professionalism and the tools they used, including magnets, plastic sheets, and water to clean up the blood and erase any traces of the scene, were almost like an art form.
It was clear that these people were professionals when it came to cleaning up scenes like this.
At the field HQ, James Stanton watched the scene unfold through the monitors in the operations room. Many CIA officers were working in shifts, but James, as the only person with enough authority and responsibility for this operation, hadn’t caught a wink of sleep.
Beside him, a small pile of empty, dried-up coffee cups had accumulated next to his desk. In his hand was another hot cup of coffee, one he had brewed himself to help him pull another all-nighter during an operation like this.
"For f*ck’s sake, this is the third group of rats we’ve caught tonight, and they’re Russian," one of the officers complained while continuing to work at his monitoring station.
"Strange... There’s no China among them. Are they really that considerate?"
The point was raised by one of the officers in the operations room, and James agreed with him.
It wasn’t in China’s nature to simply leave them alone, despite the fact that they knew the United States had guests from the other side of the portal.
"Continue monitoring. I don’t believe they won’t come, but if they truly don’t, that’s good," James said as he took another sip from his nth cup of coffee that night.
Unknown to James and the CIA officers monitoring the situation and managing the security protocols around the mansion, a lone dark silhouette was moving through the woods.
It headed straight toward the mansion, rushing from tree to tree while effortlessly avoiding the security personnel and patrols the CIA had deployed.
It moved through the woods as if it owned the place.