My fiancée, Cao Baozhi, is a perfect actress.
She carefully calculated every penny of my savings, every emotional weakness, and my longing for a family.
The 88,000-yuan bride price was part of her script. Her gravely ill father was a prop. Her tears on our wedding night were her lines.
The only thing she failed to account for was an ultrasound scan, accidentally left behind, showing a six-week pregnancy.
Time is anchored to the first week she spent building me a paradise.
When the chain of logic closes perfectly, love becomes the most provable false alibi.
(Part Two: The Hunt on a Philosophical Level)
Old Chen, my guide into the abyss, asked me, “Do you know the essential difference between hunter and prey?”
“A hunter understands the rules and turns them into weapons.”
So I tore up the moral handbook and forged my pain into bullets.
I infiltrated her world and learned her language. I understand deception better than a con artist and violence better than a thug.
When they praised me as a “born villain,” I knew my gun was aimed straight at the bullseye.
(Part Three: The Game Above the Conspiracy)
Today, I took the seat across from them at the poker table.
Under the lights, the man who controlled everything smiled as he appraised me, as if I were a new addition to his collection.
And beside him, the woman I once called my fiancée looked at me with a new, calculating gaze, as though she were assessing a piece of merchandise.
She doesn’t know that she has gone from hunter to the first token of allegiance I put on the table.
This is no longer revenge.
It is the ultimate hunt: a game played on the world as its board and human nature as its pieces, inviting her and all the darkness behind her into play.
