Idol Chapter 145 Part 2

-2-

 

The traces of his return to the country were well concealed.

Qi Lin was especially surprised after receiving the DEMO; he had heard Huo Ren sing many times over the years but had never encountered this state.

The closest comparison would be the heartbreak song in “Peach Soda.” Although the enunciation wasn’t particularly clear, that song remains a popular choice for editing BGM to this day, with a very high sing-along rate.

Huo Ren’s voice was clear and had a unique texture, and coupled with excellent melody and emotional expression, was enough to awe the entire audience on his own.

Qi Lin had just returned not long ago, his newly styled hair messy as if chewed by a dog. He dragged Huo Ren straight to the rehearsal room, introducing him to the band teachers who had been with him for several years.

After several run-throughs, the young man was full of surprise.

“Brother Ren, this transformation… is too terrifying.”

He noticed that Huo Ren had become much quieter and no longer tried to make others laugh. Waving his hand to signal the teachers to keep the secret and continue rehearsing, he pulled Huo Ren to check out the stage.

“Do you need any backup dancers besides the guitar? Should someone from Boss Pei’s side come over for a practice?”

Huo Ren shook his head.

“I’ll be enough on my own.”

These were all completely unfamiliar experiences.

Alone.

His identity now wasn’t as Corona’s leader, nor was it representing that of C.

It was Huo Ren.

The song didn’t need to be too long, three minutes was enough.

Pei Ruye, acting as the agent and currently the founder of a short video platform, had already secretly arranged a series of linked reactions.

The moment the performance ended, a chain of explosions would begin on time, faithfully executing every step of the plan.

The concert was scheduled to start promptly at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.

On Friday afternoon at two o’clock, Huo Ren made a trip to Xie Lianyun’s current residence.

Bo Jue and Bo Huan had both received concert tickets and would rush over after class.

Lately, Xie Lianyun had been in a state of disappearance, not responding to messages or calls.

The address was given by Bo Jue, a very ordinary single apartment, chosen with minimal effort in both location and layout.

Yet, it was still on the seventeenth floor.

Huo Ren had always had a measure of Xie Lianyun, listening for activity inside before knocking, and sure enough, there was the sound of heavy metal drum beats.

He knocked hard several times.

“Who is it—”

“Delivery!”

The rock music was paused, and someone slowly came around from afar in slippers: “Didn’t you just deliver?”

When the door opened, Xie Lianyun was stunned for a few seconds: “Holy crap? You came back early?”

Huo Ren glanced inside: “Are there guests?”

“How could that be,” Xie Lianyun, worried about neighbors passing by, pulled him into the room: “Do you think I’m hiding a sweet young lady here or what…”

The apartment was a messy, smelly two-bedroom, with bags of snack wrappers and takeout boxes piled in several plastic bags.

“We have to sort the trash now, need to throw it out at the right time,” Xie Lianyun, aware of his disheveled state, hurriedly changed into a somewhat clean T-shirt and tidied up the place: “You came back and didn’t even call, you scared me just now.”

Huo Ren rolled up his sleeves to help clean up, opening all the windows to let in fresh, clean air and sunlight.

“Your phone was off?”

“Ah? Oh, yeah, haven’t checked my phone in days.” Xie Lianyun scratched his head, grabbed a broom to tidy up the living room, trying to divert the topic: “The other day, Brother Long offended Bo Jue again, heard he got turned away several times when he went to apologize—”

Huo Ren was still assessing his current state, suddenly saying: “Brother Xie, I missed you.”

Xie Lianyun’s ears turned red instantly, always feeling as if he was still under the captain’s care: “I know, I know, eat less takeout, go out more, now that you’re back, I’ll also stop messing around…”

Huo Ren nodded, as always, not verbose or reproaching, helping him clean the apartment.

Sweeping, mopping, wearing a mask and wig to throw out the trash.

The washing machine, long unused, started working, tumbling a large load of dirty clothes.

Xie Lianyun wanted to defend himself, but seeing him silently helping clean up, felt painfully touched.

He reached out to pass Huo Ren the disinfectant spray, but his gaze landed on the tattoo on his left hand and suddenly changed, immediately grabbing his wrist and pulling it into the sunlight.

“Huo Ren,” the young man had never been this stern before: “You got a tattoo? And here?!”

Huo Ren nodded.

“I had to find a way to commemorate him.”

Xie Lianyun held his wrist, looking and looking again, not hiding any anger in his eyes: “Pei Ruye actually let you do this? Such a painful place on the palm and you dare to tattoo, Huo Ren have you grown up? Asking our opinions for an engagement, isn’t a tattoo a lifelong matter, what the hell were you thinking???”

“Long Jia is an idiot, couldn’t you learn to use takeout to console your feelings like me, damn it??”

Huo Ren waited for him to finish yelling before moving his wrist.

“Bro, you’re hurting me.”

Xie Lianyun abruptly let go, taking several deep breaths like a bellows, then turned and walked towards the study.

Huo Ren thought he was truly angry and quietly followed.

Xie Lianyun searched through the bookshelf and quickly pulled out a report.

“Listen.” His heart was in turmoil, but he still faced Huo Ren, handing over the folder: “You need to stay calm and listen to what I’m about to say.”

Xie Lianyun, who had grown up attending banquets with Jiang Shu, had a natural sharpness in reading people and fates.

He knew if he didn’t make things clear to Huo Ren, this fool would never be able to live a normal life, daring to tattoo today and buying a boat in Siberia tomorrow.

“There are thirteen reports in total, the latest one was faxed over yesterday, all lines have been kept confidential.”

“I never intended to keep you in the dark, but the results have not been fully determined yet, and acting rashly could alert the enemy.”

Huo Ren paused for a second and repeated: “Report?”

Xie Lianyun looked directly at him for a few seconds, lowering his voice to speak honestly, “I took Chi Ji’s ashes for sampling.”

At that moment, Huo Ren felt as if his blood was rushing upwards against the flow, finally asking the question that Bo Jue and the public had asked many times before—

“Xie Lianyun, are you insane??!!!”

“Listen to me, I know this seems freaking insane—” Xie Lianyun extended his hand to flip open one of the pages, showing him the identification results, “Huo Ren, the person in that coffin might not have been Chi Ji from the start.”

“What?”

“The composition of those ashes is completely different from normal ashes; it’s mixed with a large amount of silicone and plaster-like substances.”

“I took a sample in the chaos, the sample was too small and it was almost impossible to identify DNA after being burned at high temperatures—”

Huo Ren rapidly flipped through each page, leaning against the door to support his trembling body, barely able to hold the dozen reports steadily due to his rapidly beating heart.

“Plaster turns white after burning, and so does silicone, no one knows what the hell was actually in that coffin.”

At that second, Huo Ren thought Xie Lianyun had truly gone mad.

Only a madman would secretly take a close friend’s ashes for testing.

“Brother Xie, that’s the seventeenth floor,” he said, feeling as though his heart was splitting open, “From the seventeenth floor down to the eleventh floor, how could he possibly still be alive?”

“Brother Xie, I know Chi Chi was the first member you picked, I know he means something different to you.”

“But the entire rescue operation involved public hospitals, could it be that all those doctors and nurses involved were bribed? Even if Qi Ding could deceive everyone, it’s impossible to bring someone back from the dead—”

“The rescue team was made up of specialists dispatched from private hospitals along with Doctor Wu,” Xie Lianyun spoke even faster, revealing everything he knew, “Have you ever considered that Chi Ji actually fell onto a buffer zone and not the eleventh floor, that he never hit the eleventh floor at all?!”

“The surveillance on the eleventh-floor platform was broken, blood and the body were all handled by Wu Qiu and his team, Huo Ren, have you ever considered that the person sent into the ambulance wasn’t Chi Ji from the start?!”

Huo Ren’s mind went blank, suddenly wanting to destroy his own skepticism and clarity, to believe every word he said.

Now, there were two possibilities.

The first, Chi Ji was already dead, and Xie Lianyun was saying all this just to comfort himself and move on, to stop feeling pain over the past.

He couldn’t, like Brother Xie, exhume graves and test ashes—moreover, the possibility of extracting DNA from ashes is nearly nonexistent.

The second, Chi Ji really wasn’t dead.

Chi Chi was just hidden away.

Xie Lianyun saw him finally considering the possibilities and handed over the force analysis diagrams he had drawn himself and all the photos, page by page.

During the funeral, everyone was immersed in grief; no one would lift the black cloth in the coffin to see the face and body.

Moreover, even if it wasn’t similar enough, the impact of the fall on the body could be used as an excuse to pass scrutiny.

“From a fall from the seventeenth floor to the fourteenth-floor buffer zone, there’s a distance of nearly ten meters, and whether he hit it precisely is also a question.”

“It’s impossible to be unharmed; even if Chi Ji survived, he would now be either disabled or in a vegetative state.”

Xie Lianyun felt he was analyzing these matters with a cruel calmness, yet still shared all his speculations with Huo Ren without reservation.

He hoped, more than ever, that his intuition was true.

“Now, Han Qu is taking over all the collapsed benefit chains after Corona’s downfall, and Eshan Venture Capital is at the cusp of listing; the Han family father and son would never allow their image to become that of a murderer.”

“If Chi Ji is still in recovery, whoever hid him would be brainless to let any hint of it leak out to anyone.”

Huo Ren was still processing this sudden overload of information, his voice filled with emotion as he spoke, “You think someone has hidden Chi Chi away?”

Who could it be? And where?

Was this all a comforting signal prepared by Xie Lianyun, or real evidence of survival?

“Do you know what you should be doing right now?” Xie Lianyun pressed his shoulders, emphasizing, “You need to make Han Qu focus on you, make him believe Chi Ji is truly dead, to lower all his guards.”

“You returned to uproot the Han family, and the whole of SPF is working on ‘The Chosen by God,’ Long Jia and Boss Pei are preparing to take down Eshan Venture Capital, even Bo Jue is enduring his introversion to attend high society gatherings to gather information; everyone is working towards the same goal—”

“Huo Ren, I know you might not believe me or accept all this.”

“But we have no choice now, we need to move forward.”

“—No matter what awaits us at the end.”

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Resuming updates at 6 a.m. from January 11th, absolutely no early updates……