15.00pm Sunday
Quick as a flash, Wei Ying saw the silver metal of a blade as it twisted in the air and found its way to his grandmother's neck.
He was stepping forward even before he knew what his feet were doing, amid cries and protests hovering around them. Song Lan and Xiao XingChen had their swords at the ready, but Xue Yang was in a prime position to see them and keep an eye on Wei Ying's face.
Lan Zhan had a hand on Wei Ying's shoulder, restraining him.
A-Qing cursed, causing that maniac to smile.
"Ah, ah, ah..." he tsked, shaking his head. His dark eyes, black in this light, shone with curiosity. "How do you know me?" He aims that at Wei Ying.
It wasn't a command but Wei Ying understood the threat that it could have been. And since Compelling required eye contact and the maintaining of it, he purposefully stared at his grandmother instead, and was astounded to see her looking...bored?
"I asked you a question." Xue Yang says, letting the incredibly sharp steel nick the smooth skin under his butterfly knife.
That was why Xue Yang had twisted it in the air; not an elaborate showy move but a precise one on purpose to activate the weapon.
His grandmother rolls her eyes and then stares back at him, with a message in the glittering quicksilver of her eyes, imperceptibly shaking her head.
Did she mean for Wei Ying not to intervene? Or to carry on talking?
It would distract the delinquent and Wei Ying opted for that instead, trying to draw him out.
"I recognised your face from pictures." Wei Ying tells him, focusing on the collar of his black shirt.
Staring at his grandmother was too worrying, opening up possibilities that he wasn't strong enough to handle.
"And what pictures might these be?" Xue Yang sounds bored as well.
"Pictures collected by my parents. Possibly because," Wei Ying was going to say, because his mother might have seen this exact moment play out in her visions, and taken steps to ensure it did, but there was no need to give Xue Yang any more ammunition. So he changed it to, "they were gathering evidence against you."
"So they had a kid." Xue Yang replies in a second, connecting the dots in his head faster than anyone else.
Wei Ying thinks he must be clever, not only by evading capture for so many years, and staying out of sight for so long, but he was sharp enough to know about people, more specifically, about the ones who had been hunting him down.
But if Xue Yang can ask questions, then so can Wei Ying, and it might help to buy them some more time, if that's what his grandmother wants.
"Why were my parents after you?"
"I massacred an entire clan, back in the day." It is said nonchalantly on purpose, as though it wasn't important.
Wei Ying can feel Xue Yang staring at him, willing him to look at the knife wielder. But Wei Ying isn't an idiot, and even if Xue Yang tries to say more and more outrageous statements to attempt this, Wei Ying isn't going to fall for his ruse.
And at least, he's being honest.
"Why? Did they do something to you?" His curiosity is real, and Wei Ying wants to know whether what he's going to say will match up to what his grandmother told him about the psycho.
"Yes, they did. Well, one of them did. It was his fault that he and his entire family had to pay with their lives." Xue Yang grins, a casual, friendly smile, but his eyes are burning with rage. He cocks his head, thoughtfully.
"So...they just threw themselves on your weapons?" Wei Ying scoffs, baiting him back. He wants the real Xue Yang to come out and play.
"They might as well have!" Xue Yang shouts, and then his expression turns calculating. "Nice one," he admits, reeling himself back in. The facade returns as he gives Wei Ying a wink.
Lan Zhan growls right next to Wei Ying, his fingers digging into the shape of his shoulder. Wei Ying lifts up his left hand, wincing as the bruising twinges on his left side, aggravating the sore skin. But his desire to soothe ruffled feathers is greater than his own discomfort, so he bears the pain, dismissing it from his attention.
"Actually, I was just a kid when it happened." Xue Yang holds up his empty hand, curling it around Baoshan Sanren so she's pressed even closer to his chest.
She looks disgusted by that small action.
Wei Ying stares at his hand, the one Xue Yang wants him to look at. He's wearing a single black glove, and it's the pinkie finger which looks straighter and thicker than the others.
"They hurt you? How old were you?" Wei Ying asks him, his gaze flickering up and away between his digits and his face. He reminds himself to be more alert, quickly. He cannot afford to make eye contact with Xue Yang.
"What do kids want, most of the time? And I had a sweet tooth...still have, to some extent even now." Xue Yang looks distant, as if he's seeing something else in his mind. "The man promised me that he would give me five candy pieces in exchange for passing a message along. A bargain is a bargain, isn't it? But that vermin changed his mind, ran his cart over my hand and crushed my finger."
"That's why you killed him?" Wei Ying exclaims, incredulously. "Okay, that's one guy, but what about the rest of his family? What did they do to you? How many lives are worth your pinkie?"
"I promised him that I would exterminate his name from the world until nobody remembered the Chang Family name. I had to show him that I would keep my word even if he did not." Xue Yang smiles coldly, biting his own lip. "It wasn't my fault that your folks stuck their noses where they shouldn't have. It was none of their business."
Wei Ying remembers that his grandmother had told him about that, how his parents had stepped up to the call for justice. They had volunteered to hunt down this killer, the murderer of an entire clan, just it was just because of some slight.
"It was a timely intervention by that slime ball, Jin GuanShan, who offered to take them off my hands. He thought I would be 'indebted' to him." Xue Yang barks out a laugh. "As if."
"What did he do?" Wei Ying can guess; his grandmother had told him enough for him to put two and two together. But he just feels cold and numb.
His parents died because of this cruel man.
Just because his twisted mind obeyed his crazy thoughts, and he did what he pleased, and in that strange mental state, neatly side stepped away from the blame of guilt from his own actions.
In that instance, Wei Ying understood a profound fact about him.
Xue Yang wasn't going to stop doing whatever he wanted to.
Not now, and not ever.
He was the true definition of a psychological killer, acting on the whims of his own mind and justifying every action as 'not his fault'.
Xue Yang made a face. "That pervert promised me protection both from the Wens, and from your parents, and on the side, he wanted me to be his hidden blade." He looks disgusted at the thought. "In case things went awry with the Wens, because the Big Sleaze put his ding done in everything, I was supposed to make the balance tip in his favour."
That made sense.
Wei Ying didn't know too much about Jin GuanShan, but so far what he'd heard was enough to condemn him. He was the one who had lured his parents to an abandoned warehouse and had them killed.
"You piece of shit!" Song Lan spits on the floor, cursing at Xue Yang. "That's how you got me, isn't it?" He scowls at the smiling man.
"A-Lan..." it's a gentle warning from Xiao XingChen, a murmur to wait.
"You were easy," Xue Yang scoffs, as if it hadn't been challenging in any way. "In fact, all of you were so thirsty for news, it was fun playing with your feelings. Except for you," his height lets him look down on Baoshan Sanren, who up until now, hasn't bothered speaking. "I tried, but it was like she never cared about any of you." It's a barb intended to sow discord, but no one believes him now.
"So what exactly do you want now? How do you plan on getting out of this latest mess?" Wei Ying glares at him, this sorry excuse for a person.
"Simple. You will let me go, and we can forget about this."
"You really are crazy if you think that's gonna happen." Wei Ying tells him firmly. "Because of you, my parents are dead."
"Consider me not killing your grandmother as payment. A life for two."
Baoshan Sanren was biding her time, for his grip to loosen, and now she was tired of it. This idiot was an accident waiting to happen, and if he thought for a single moment that he had the upper hand, then he was going to regret that mistake.
Her right leg flies up and kicks Xue Yang hard, in his face, and at the same time, she yells, "A-Chen, scissor!" Pushing away from Xue Yang, she uses that momentum to propel his dazed person towards them, and it only takes a second for both Song Lan and Xiao XingChen to cut his head off.