nother year passed.
In that year, Zhao Yichen burned every hour, every heartbeat, feeding evidence to police, fueling investigations, stoking fire.
The system resisted. Zhuxin’s networks ran deep. Arrests mounted. Scandals broke. But power still rooted itself.
And one shadow lingered: Wang Yue. Wang Sheng’s cousin. Declared missing. No report ever found him.
Yichen never spoke of it. Silence was its own confession.
Then came the day Wang Sheng, shielded by bribes and influence, walked free on bail.
Yichen was waiting.
Not hiding. Not pretending. Cameras caught him dragging Wang Sheng out of a luxury club by the neck. He acted under full surveillance, leaving no illusions.
Hours later, beneath failing suburban light, Yichen opened his custom-built app and pressed "Live."
Tens of thousands joined the stream in minutes. Then hundreds of thousands.
He wore the storm-black raincoat he had worn the night he visited my grave.
Comments scrolled in a feeding frenzy:
"Is that Zhao Yichen?"
"Oh my god, that’s Wang Sheng..."
"What is he doing?"
"Don’t...stop....think of her, think of Su Mei"
When Wang Sheng stirred awake, he found his mouth gagged, his body bound, surrounded by cold tools laid out with care.
He spat curses until Yichen silenced him with a slash to the thigh. Blood poured, his scream muffled too late.
The chat exploded in horror, then went black as the feed cut. But it was already too late. Screenshots saved. Clips copied. His purpose served.
I whispered brokenly, "Yichen, you didn’t need to. They would have found him. He was already going to fall."
He smeared crimson from his temple with shaking fingers, his eyes burning like pyres.
"Trials take years, Mei," he murmured. "Neither of us has that much time."
His gaze dropped to me, translucent and fading.
"And you.... you don’t have long either."
Wang Sheng screamed against the gag, frantic. "Who the hell are you talking to?"
Yichen’s brow arched. He sighed, lifting the hammer.
"You’ll know soon enough."
And the hammer fell.
The headline wrote itself:
FINANCIER-TURNED-INVESTIGATIVE CRUSADER ZHAO YICHEN ARRESTED FOR MURDER.
Wang Sheng’s body was found. No heir, no dynasty, only another carcass of excess.
I wondered, when his restless soul surfaced, if the girls his family had destroyed would greet him in the afterlife and tear him apart.
Hell itself would be merciful compared to what awaited.
The public pressure could not be contained.
Students marched, candles glowing like constellations in the night. Chants echoed: "Justice for the victims. Justice for the innocent."
Police, long shielded, were forced to move. Zhuxin burned from within as allies scattered like rats from a sinking ship.
And through it all, Yichen sat behind bars.
I sat with him too. Though I could not warm him, my ghost lay its head upon his shoulder.
We whispered through walls of silence.
"Su Mei… can you see it?" His voice was hushed, broken.
"See what?"
"That this world....is still good."
I swallowed tears. "Yes."
"The police are still fighting. The students are still marching. Courage still exists. And rotten men..... eventually, they can’t outrun daylight."
His bloodshot eyes met mine, glowing with stubborn light.
"Almost over now. It’s almost finished, sweetheart."
A year slipped by, carrying autumn and spring.
Yichen’s trial loomed like a guillotine.
On a bitter winter’s day, he stood in chains before court.
Then he spoke words that cracked the silence.
"I killed Wang Yue as well."
Even policemen faltered.
I froze. "Yichen why tell them?"
But he stood steady, his confession falling like iron.
The cousin who had ordered my death, shrouded by family ties Yichen had ended him, buried him long ago. Even I had never known.
The senior officer who’d followed Yichen’s crusade the longest met his eyes quietly. Duty and pity warred in the man’s lined face.
Yichen asked for one final thing.
"I’ll take you to the body."
6
He left me an address. Told me to wait there.
A cabin in a forest valley. Sparse. A bed, a table. The faint smell of pine.
On the table, roses. Black roses.
Dark, velvety, rich as spilled wine. They reminded me of him when I first saw him: a black rose in Armani, sharp-featured, languid, with women fluttering around him.
A cream card lay among them, his handwriting:
"To my little jasmine."
Pinned beneath was a note in the flower shop girl’s hand:
"I saw you on the news. Was she the one you loved? She was stunning. Wishing you both happiness."
My heart broke anew.
When Yichen finally stumbled into the cabin, his suit torn and waist bloodied, I nearly screamed.
"It missed the vitals," he managed with a grin. "Only grazed me. I’ve got… an hour maybe. But it’s enough."
And he smiled as sunlight.
He opened the closet. Inside, neatly hung: a white wedding dress and a black suit.
My tears broke.
He tugged on the suit, smirking faintly. "No more crying now. Is marrying me that painful?"
I collapsed into sobs as he smoothed phantom fingers over my cheek. Helpless, he muttered, "Still can’t touch you. Not even now."
But he lit the basin. Burned the dress for me. Roses scattered into bathwater, crimson bleeding into porcelain.
I begged him to stop, to run, to live. But this was his finale.
He sank into the tub of petals, pale against velvet.
"I have a gift for you," his voice shook. "No apologies. Just vows."
His light faded. I clung to shadow.
"You don’t deserve this," I screamed. "You should have lived, Yichen. Wrinkled. Safe. Laughing. Not this."
He winced against pain, but his smile was tender.
"No, my Jasmine. This is happiness. More than I’ve ever had."
Tears rolled down his cheek. "When you were gone, I thought of you every second. I didn’t dare visit your grave I’d have broken. But when you came back to me, even as a ghost… the world lit up again."
He tried to chuckle, choking. "I never slept with them, you know. The girls. I paid them. Told them my lover believed she was dead. Asked them to play along. I couldn’t betray you. Not once."
I wept, breaking.
He grinned faintly through dying breath. "You’re adorable, you know that? Crying like this."
"I love you," I cried. "Yichen, I love you with everything."
He pulled me near, kissed air where my lips should have been.
"I love you more."
And with that, Zhao Yichen clear-eyed, arrogant, tender let the petals close over him.
And I, his jasmine, held his fading smile in silence.
END
Chapter 05
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