Siheyuan: Hang Jia Dongxu, smash Banggeng to death!

midnight.

inside the room.

Tangtang was already asleep, her little hands clutching Lin Tian's clothes, her breathing as even as a kitten curled up in its bed.

Lin Tian did not sleep.

His eyes were open in the darkness, and the ghostly figure kept staring into the courtyard. Just then, the hinge of the door to the west wing turned.

A dark figure darted out from the crack in the door, crouching low against the wall, the ghostly figure following silently behind.

As Jia Dongxu climbed over the courtyard wall, Lin Tian's ghostly figure was already pressed against the shadows behind him.

"Jia Dongxu was the catalyst for all of his family's tragedies."

"If he hadn't stolen scrap iron from the steel mill, my father wouldn't have been taken to the boiler workshop by Yi Zhonghai, where he would have accidentally discovered Director Yang's mistakes, ultimately leading to the destruction of our family."

Since it began with Jia Dongxu, let it end with Jia Dongxu.

After landing, Jia Dongxu squatted down against the wall. Suddenly feeling a chill, he turned around and looked back to make sure no one had noticed before straightening up.

He dusted off his knees and walked out of the alley, the scrap metal in the sack in his hand clinking softly with each step.

"Oh, Mom is so stingy. Luckily, she managed to scrape together twenty yuan to buy food, otherwise we'd be starving tomorrow."

"Luckily, I still had some scrap metal left. I'll take it and have some fun at the shady place, hehe..."

Lin Tian's ghostly figure clung to the shadows behind him. Jia Dongxu walked at a moderate pace, occasionally stopping to look around.

He walked through two alleys and turned into a narrower alley without streetlights.

The silhouettes of the people making the rendezvous in the distance gradually emerged in the night, with a lantern hanging on a bamboo pole.

Jia Dongxu walked over, squatted down, and took out the scrap iron from his pocket, placing it piece by piece along the edge of the sack.

The man kicked the iron block with his foot, then picked up another piece, weighed it in his hand, and held up three fingers.

"Thirty yuan?"

Jia Dongxu lowered his voice, "This is top-quality steel, you're only offering thirty yuan?"

"Thirty yuan, that's the most we can go. We're also taking a risk. If you don't want it, then forget it."

Jia Dongxu hesitated for a moment and then nodded.

The man pulled out a wad of crumpled bills from his pocket, counted out three large ten-dollar bills, and handed them over.

Jia Dongxu took the money, didn't count it, put it directly into his pocket, stood up, turned around and left, walking faster than when he came.

Stealing scrap metal to sell?

Lin Tian smirked. "A leopard can't change its spots." He silently moved from the shadow behind Jia Dongxu to the shadow in front of him.

Jia Dongxu felt a cool breeze on his face and subconsciously shrank his neck, but did not stop.

It's normal to feel a bit cold at night.

Suddenly, a cold voice whispered lightly in his ear: "Jia Dongxu."

Jia Dongxu stopped abruptly, as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over his head.

He immediately looked around, but the alley was deserted. "Who's there?"

No one answered.

Jia Dongxu's voice tightened and began to tremble. He was even more frightened and turned to run away.

After passing through two alleys and turning into a narrower alley, he suddenly heard footsteps behind him.

The footsteps were very light, yet they were clearly following behind him. Jia Dongxu suddenly stopped and turned around to look.

The alley was deserted, with only moonlight shining down.

He took a few more steps, and the footsteps sounded again.

Unhurried and unhurried, like a patient hunter waiting for its prey to exhaust itself.

Jia Dongxu panicked.

I was even more terrified.

They fled frantically once again.

It turned into a narrower alley, then another, like a startled mouse darting left and right in the night.

But the footsteps kept following behind, neither too close nor too far, like an invisible thread always tied to his ankle.

Jia Dongxu felt as if his lungs were stuffed with a ball of red-hot wire. He stopped under an old locust tree outside the courtyard house.

Bent over, hands on knees, panting heavily, he had finally arrived, as long as he could return to the courtyard house.

No matter who's following behind him, or what kind of monsters they are, as long as there are many of them, he'll avoid their sharp edge.

Jia Dongxu's confidence returned, and he turned around to look behind him.

A person was standing at the entrance of the alley.

Short and thin, it stood quietly on the edge of the shadow where the moonlight could not reach.

His face was as white as paper, his eyes were two bottomless black holes, and the corners of his mouth were curved in an arc that did not belong to a living person.

Jia Dongxu's legs buckled, and he fell to the ground, his back hitting the rough bark of a tree.

The brain momentarily loses its ability to think.

But his body's instinctive fear drove him to beg for mercy: "Don't come any closer... don't come any closer... damn ghost, there's a cause for every crime, please don't kill me."

Lin Tian floated forward a step, without feet, but with the sound of wind.

"Jia Dongxu, I've come to take your life."

What?

Asking for life?

Is it trying to take its own life?

Jia Dongxu fumbled in his pocket with a trembling hand, pulling out a wad of crumpled bills. "Grandpa! I have money! Fifty yuan! Take it all! Please let me go..."

He held the money above his head, as if surrendering.

Lin Tian looked down at the wad of banknotes and sneered, "Foolish! If I kill you, your money is my money, isn't it? You're out of your mind to use my money to buy your life."

Jia Dongxu's hand froze in mid-air.

The banknotes slipped through his fingers and landed on the bluestone slab. He opened his mouth, but then everything went black.

Then his body slumped to one side, like a plant uprooted and slowly falling in the night wind.

The moonlight shone on that crooked old locust tree.

The branches swayed gently in the night breeze, like a person sighing silently.

One end of the rope was tied around Jia Dongxu's neck, and the other end was already hanging on the thickest branch above his head.

A few seconds later, his body began to rise slowly, like a boat without sails or oars being gently lifted by an invisible current of water, swaying slightly in the wind.

The night was dark and the wind was high.

Just right.

eye for eye!

If it's not enough next time, come a few more times.

In the courtyard, on the bed in the back room, Lin Tian turned over and tucked the blanket around the sleeping Tangtang.

Not enough, still not enough.

Lin Tian's ghostly figure stood under the crooked old locust tree, looking up at the figure swaying gently in the night breeze on the tree.

Jia Dongxu's body was like an old bell without a clapper, slowly turning in the wind. The moonlight cast his shadow on the ground, which swayed and shortened.

Lin Tian patted non-existent dust off his hands, as if he had accomplished a trivial task.

"Not bad, not bad."

"In the original novel, Jia Dongxu was always depicted as someone hanging on the wall, and now hanging him on a tree would still suit him just as well."

Lin Tian withdrew his hand and retreated into the night, leaving no trace.

A dog barked in the distance, then fell silent again.

The alleyway fell silent again.

Only the old locust tree was still swaying gently in the wind.

Jia Dongxu is happily swinging on a swing.

The crescent moon on the horizon was slowly passing through a thin cloud, like a half-closed eye.

……