Chapter 248: Butterfly's Weakness

“Your father is inside the wind chime?” Han Fei had dealt with many strange characters, if anything, he was more familiar dealing with these people compared to normal individuals. He even had his own system to determine what kind of attitude he should adopt based on how crazy the other party was.

“He spread his ashes into the wind so whenever the wind chime rings, his soul will start to communicate with me.” The man with pale skin looked at the wind chime. As if reminded of something, the face that was too young for his age colored with regret.

“Looks like you love your adopted father a lot.”

“Yes, I’d come back here to talk to him whenever I have time.”

“Then why did you sell his brain to Immortal Pharma?” Han Fei was not that much of a chatter. The main problem was he had the habit of cutting to the chase in conversations.

The man’s head slowly turned around to look at Han Fei. “Who are you?”

“My name is Han Fei, I’ll be playing your father in the movie, Thriller Novelist.” Han Fei looked around. After making sure the man wasn’t armed and there was no hidden danger, he walked forward. “Your father is the most complicated person I’ve met. His mind is like the sea. Every time I try to emulate his emotions, I would feel like I was swept away by that raging sea.”

“No one will be able to bring his character justice.” The man said confidently.

“Really? Even if there are 9 of us each playing a side of his persona?”

“That might fool the public but the 9 of you won’t be enough to recreate the real him.” The man turned back to the wind chime. “That is not something that can be done through acting. Those who never experienced it will never understand.”

“Experience? What kind of experience are you talking about?” Han Fei paid attention to every word the man said. This rather strange man was Han Fei’s most important way to get to know Spider better.

“I respect my father a lot, and he loves me too but, in the past, he has tried more than once to kill me.” A smile unsuitable for his age appeared on the man’s face. “Does that not sound absurd? But that is the truth.” The man’s words reminded Han Fei of the adoption papers he found at the House of the Butcher. There were many notes on the margin, among them were striking words like death and kill.

“I’ve seen him masterfully butcher livestock; I’ve seen him easily take down a man much bigger than he was; I’ve seen him lock himself inside a small cupboard to cry; I’ve seen him holding a knife or a pen while looking menacingly at my neck. The first time he wanted to kill me, I still didn’t understand what death was, I couldn’t tell what his reasoning was. But I didn’t blame him. He wanted to kill me but he was also the one who protected me. Father has many different personas, there is only one of them who wants to kill me, the rest of the time, he loves me a lot.” The man sounded detached when he told his story. It must have been hard to live with a schizophrenic person like Spider but there was no blame in the man’s voice, if anything, there was only sweet memories.

“You don’t blame him even if he tried to kill you?” Han Fei wanted to see into this man’s heart.

“In your eyes, father is nothing more than an author with schizophrenia, you think his story is mysterious and alluring. But for me, he is the saddest person in this world. He couldn’t love anyone in his life because he is always trapped in that circle of self-doubt and self-betrayal.” The man looked at the wind chime silently as if talking to himself. “You will never understand him.”

“Then do you mind telling me more about him? I’ve read all of his books, I really want to know how he was like in person.” Han Fei sat beside the man.

Staring at the wind chime, the man continued, “My father once told me that the bravest decision he ever made in his life was to adopt me. Ever since his breakdown, he locked himself up inside a secluded world. He refused to communicate with the outside world, afraid that he might lose control, afraid that his other personas might harm people close to him. He spent his life trapped within himself. I have no idea why he suddenly changed at the last moment of his life, perhaps it was his way of rebelling against fate. He wanted to use the last moment of his life to prove something... No matter what happened to him, he was still him, fate was not going to change him.” The man pointed at his heart. “I am still alive, I have nothing but love and appreciation for my father and for that, he has won. He won over the arrangement of destiny, won over the persona who wished me death, won over the pair of invisible hands who seemed to be in control of everything.”

“Destiny? Invisible hands?” A suspicion slowly rose in Han Fei’s heart due to the man’s words. The last battlefield between Spider and Butterfly was this adopted child. Butterfly couldn’t take down Spider directly so they tried to make Spider murder his own adopted son to crush his mind!

The ‘death’s in the adoption paper had the same handwriting as the one inside Spider’s manuscript but clearly they were not written in the same mental state. In other words, by the end of his life, Spider perhaps was not so in control of himself anymore, or maybe something was controlling him?

“Did your father tell you anything else? Have you heard the term, Butterfly from him?”

“Butterfly?” The wind suddenly moved the wind chime. The man closed his eyes and his pale face appeared to grimace in pain. The loose black outfit was like a mourning shroud. He did not answer Han Fei’s question but sang some unknown song following the ringing of the wind chime. Then he stood up and prepared to leave.

“One can’t mention that word inside this building? I’ll be honest with you, I’ve already been targeted by the Butterfly. Like your father, I too wish to kill the Butterfly.” Han Fei stopped the man. “I have no other choice, the thing has crawled out from the depth of nightmares. It is getting closer and closer to me, in fact, I’ve just seen it 10 minutes ago.”

The man subconsciously stepped away from Han Fei and then he shook his head. “Impossible, other than my father, no one would be alive after seeing it, no one has the power to make it appear.”

“I have no idea how things got to this stage. Initially I was just invited to join a movie project but I ended up accidentally helping the police solve the human jigsaw case from 10 years ago, that appeared to anger the Butterfly. Then the enmity deepened further after I solved the Case of Foretold Deaths at Yi Ming Private Academy and snapped one of its wings.” Han Fei stared at the young man’s face. The terror and fearlessness he garnered from the cryptic world poured out. “I’ll put it like this. Your father had fought bravely with the Butterfly but it only ended with a draw, however, me and my friends, we’ve already won the Butterfly once.” When Han Fei said that, his presence was completely different from before. The scent of blood appeared to ooze out from him. There appeared to be a devil hiding under the man’s gentlemanly surface. He gave Spider’s son less the impression of an actor but more of a killer.

The man’s face paled even more. He thought for a long time before he turned around. “Since you can see it, it can only mean that you are going to die soon. I don’t know how to help you, father never told me anything. The only thing he said on his deathbed was…” The man looked at Han Fei. “He said I am the Butterfly, I was the reason he couldn’t win the Butterfly and I was also the reason he won’t lose to the Butterfly. Until now, I have no idea what he meant by that. Perhaps the thing that troubled him once crawled into my brain. If he wished to destroy it, then he had to kill me and killing me would have caused him to lose.”

Han Fei memorized everything the man said. When Spider met Butterfly, this man was still a child. He was Butterfly’s pawn, Spider’s battlefield. The man had no idea the war that waged over him but his words did help inspire Han Fei. ‘The Butterfly is best at manipulating humanity, I need to make sure this doesn’t happen to me.’ From the tussle in the mind to the ‘accidents’ in real life, Han Fei was reliving Spider’s past. In the cryptic world, Han Fei was cursed by the tenants of Ziggurat, the place of origin for Butterfly’s followers; in real life, the humanoid shadow was slowly encroaching. Butterfly rarely went to such lengths to punish someone, they were not worth the time. Perhaps only Spider, Han Fei and Huang Yin had had such privilege.

“Looks like I have misunderstood you, but I still don’t understand why you would sell your father’s brain to Immortal Pharma.” This was the kind of transaction that was extremely rare. The brain was the most mysterious part of a person’s body, it hid all the secrets.

“Father is the cleverest person I know, so clever that even after he got sick, he could still coexist with his other personas and function like normal. But he knew his brain was different from normal and he knew I wouldn’t be able to protect it so he paid a visit to Immortal Pharma before he did.” The man stared at the wind chime. “Everything was father’s decision, I was merely carrying out his last wish.” Walking past Han Fei, as the man left the room, he mumbled as if to himself, “I hope you’ll live. Father once said, that thing has no weakness but the more fearful you are of it, the stronger it’ll become.”

The man’s words reminded Han Fei of Jin Sheng’s advice. The more fearful you showed yourself at the Ziggurat, the smaller your chance of survival.

“Don’t worry, I’m not so easily scared.” Han Fei waved at him. “You also need to take care of yourself. By the way, I still haven’t got your name.”

“It is Wu Zui, it means my sin, it’s a name my father has given me. He didn’t have me take his surname afraid that I might inherit his bad luck.” Then the pale skinned man disappeared down the corridor.