Becoming The White Moonlight’s Human Weapon After My Death - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: If People Are Too Emotional Late At Night and Don’t Sleep, They’re Likely to Make Decisions They’ll Regret For The Rest of Their Lives.

Shao Dongmi made it through a mentally and physically exhausting day.

In fact, Shao Domgmi had originally not been having a good time this day. The biggest blow had come from just recently finding out about the death of his childhood best friend, Chen Xing.

Chen Xing had been expected to die from the beginning. Although Chen Xing’s family was his next door neighbours and they went to the same neighbourhood kindergarten, Chen Xing would frequently ask for sick leave, and during elementary school he’d just spend the whole time confined in a hospital ward. Like the rest of his peers, Shao Dongmi would leap up and down like a monkey when he was a kid, and he would frequently climb up three floors using the hospital’s water pipe and drop in to see Chen Xing through the window, scaring the nurses there half to death.

He would always show up very suddenly, and there were several time when he bumped into Chen Xing’s parents, who were wiping their tears with their backs to Chen Xing. He had also overheard the doctor advising them with words like “He won’t live long, there’s no way no matter how much money you burn through, I recommend you give up the treatment”.

Shao Dogmi had just recently learnt the meaning of “give up” and “abandon” at school, and he was worried that one day, if he wasn’t careful, Chen Xing would be tossed into a plastic bag by his parents and thrown away, so he climbed up the window even more enthusiastically.

When he was a kid, Shao Dongmi thought police cars were very cool, and he would often bring small plastic figurines and cars to show Chen Xing at the hospital room. Chen Xing even loudly declared that he would be a policeman in the future with Shao Dongmi when they grew up, and then Shao Dongmi would be in charge of kicking the door as a distraction so Chen Xing could fly down into the scene on a helicopter and arrest the criminals.

Afterwards, Chen Xing’s parents turned their backs to them and left the room with trembling shoulders, leaving behind Chen Xing’s older brother, who always had a fierce look on his face, as he stared at the floor with reddened eye rims. He endured and endured until finally breaking: “But the sound of a helicopter would be much louder than the sound of kicking a door.”

Shao Dongmi had a growth spurt after he began his first year of high school, and he was worried the air conditioner outside the hospital window would collapse if he stepped on it, so he had no choice but to switch to going in through the main entrance. The first time he went, he stepped into the hospital reception with big strides, suddenly feeling tall and mature, but the elated feeling didn’t last long. He went into the hospital room and saw that everything had been moved and the room was empty.

Afterwards, he heard that Chen Xing’s illness had taken a turn for the worse, and his parents had transferred him to a better hospital in the big city that very night. He lost touch since then, and he never saw the Chen family return again.

Shao Dogmi looked everywhere for news from that hospital, convinced that Chen Xing would get better if he went there no matter how terrible it looked.

He held on to hope and didn’t think about the worst possibility, and ten years passed in a flash. The Chens had returned not long ago, they tidied up their ancestral home once again and posted an obituary, and only then did Shao Dongmi confirm that Chen Xing had truly passed away already.

To say that he wasn’t depressed would be a lie, Shao Dongmi had been in low spirits for several days because of this. Even Xi Yue left him alone for a day and didn’t go pick arguments with him.

In addition to this, what made Shao Dongmi feel the worst was the victim’s family member who stopped him that morning.

That case had happened 15 years ago.

In the beginning, the dead body of a young man that had just come of age had been fished out of the river. The corpse had been inside a large suitcase, and it had been covered in cuts and bruises when it was discovered. Aside from the body, they also discovered two human fingers inside the suitcase, a pinkie finger from a left hand and a ring finger from a right hand, but the corpse’s own fingers were intact.

During the course of the autopsy, it was discovered that the wounds on the body were all mechanical injuries1 caused by blunt objects, and that they were all created before death. It was also discovered that the two fingers came from two different people.

At this point, at least three people were already implicated in the case. If it happened that the two owners of the fingers were also victims, then it would be a serial killer case, so the Bureau was attaching a lot of importance to it.

After an investigation, the incident became clear. A local Yinjiang gang organisation which used a snake totem as a logo had set the victim up to take out a high-interest loan, and repeatedly obstructed the victim so that he could never pay the money back in time until he was unable to repay them. The criminal sent out two of his men to beat up the victim as coercion, using violence to make him pay several times, but the gang members miscalculated and accidentally beat the victim to death.

The two gang members had their fingers cut as punishment, and they’d been overtly tossed in along with the abandoned corpse. With this, the Criminal Investigation Bureau followed the clues and arrested the two gang members, who confessed the gang leader was someone codenamed “Snakehead2”.

So far, the facts of the case were clear. However, the case with conclusive evidence could not be concluded perfectly. The prosecution had been dismissed on the grounds that “due to the facts being unclear, it needed to be sent back to retrial”, and the two gang members had also been released since they couldn’t be convicted. And after that, “Snakehead” quickly escaped without a trace, completely disappearing from people’s sights ever since. It had been a full fifteen years since this escape, and there had been no follow-up as of now.

For the last fifteen years, the victim’s father would often come and ask about any progress in the case. He’d been coming more often recently, practically almost every day. He knew Shao Dongmi and Yan Chenli would often go to work together, so he had dragged him persistently to ask: “Where’s Captain Yan? Is he still investigating my son’s case? Do you have anything? Tell me, has he also given up already?”

Shao Dongmi couldn’t answer, he could only stand there blankly. The old man had been weeping for fifteen years, so the tears in his eyes had long since dried up, he just stared at him, unwavering, with the kind of despair that could drown one on the spot.

Shao Dongmi had been struck three times by Yan Chenli, Gong Xiaolu, and Xi Yue, he’d been mentally beaten up all day so that his soul had already scattered by the time he got off work. The sky was already dark, and the old man was sitting alone under a parasol tree by the side of the road, dazed, his eyes already completely devoid of light. Shao Dongmi ignored when he tried to talk and told him he’d take him home, but he tugged at him for a long time and didn’t see him move, so he had no choice but to force himself to sit next to him and keep him company.

When midnight arrived, the supermarket across the road turned off its lights and closed its doors. The rolling shutter door briefly pierced through the peace of the middle of the night. Seeing the store closing up shop, the old man similarly stood up with the help of the tree and hobbled back home. Shao Dongmi was worried, so he walked with him the whole way, and it was only when he saw the old man getting into his home safely that he went back home to sleep.

Shao Dongmi laid down on his bed after taking a bath, his thoughts barrelling around in his brain like a wild horse, and was simply unable to fall asleep.

In particular, that brown-haired man that Yan Chenli had brought with him who went against all reason, and who’d unexpectedly smashed the steady world-view he’d grown up with, so much so that he felt his brain was about to explode.

After tossing and turning restlessly for half the night, Shao Dongmi made a decision he would regret for the rest of his life.

He poked He Xiaowu and discovered the other was still awake, and impulsively asked for the link to Xi Yue’s Long Aotian novel.

It was really hard to not be curious when hearing that an acquaintance had written a novel.

And he really needed something to distract him right now.

He opened it to take a look, wow.

“[Rebirth] Die, Great Demon! Gaoling Zhihua’s Heart Belongs Only to Me!”

He couldn’t look away.

The next morning, He Xiaowu bounded into work. From a distance, he saw Shao Dongmi slumping against the entrance of the Criminal Investigation Bureau with dark purple bags under his eyes and faint breath.

“I didn’t sleep a single second for the entire night.” Shao Dongmi slumped with a dazed face against the wall as he sat on the stairs, “It’s too shocking, it’s really too shocking.”

He Xiaowu spoke sympathetically: “It’s understandable.”

Shao Dongmi spoke as if he had nothing left to live for: “Before I clicked on it, I thought it would be like during elementary school when we liked drawing our teachers stepping on poop, something of that kind. I thought Xi Yue would write: Shao Dongmi is stupid, a total failure, nobody likes him, he always embarrasses himself. For example, trousers ripping open while walking, slipping on the rain and doing the splits in front of someone, being thrown away by the goddess while trying to kiss up to her, things like that.”

He Xiaowu’s eyes widened, and he spoke in amazement, “Wow, Dongmi, you really understand him.”

“Huh?” Shao Dongmi was confused, “That’s not what he wrote.”

He Xiaowu said: “That’s exactly what he wrote for the first edition.”

Shao Dongmi turned his head back in shock: “Shit, there’s multiple editions?”

He Xiaowu nodded: “He wrote over two-hundred thousand words for it, but there were only a few reader comments and they were all cursing him. They said the male lead was a chuunibyou3 moron, that the so-called flower Gaoling Zhihua was a pretty but useless flower vase, and that the Great Demon King villain was too weak so the face-slapping was not satisfying at all.”

Shao Dongmi: “……”

This kind of ass-kissing, splits-making plot could have two-hundred thousand words, dope.

“Although it’s dumb, at least it’s understandable. But what I read yesterday…” Shao Dongmi tried to control the twitching of his mouth, “Before yesterday, even if I was beaten to death I wouldn’t have believed that Xi Yue would actually spend so many pages describing how handsome I was, how beautiful, how I drove people crazy with charming eyes like silk and graceful looks. Fuck, it’s too terrifying.”

He Xiaowu looked away guiltily, “…Uh. About that, there’s actually a few factors of one sort of another…”

Shao Dongmi was vigilant: “What’s the inside story?”

“It’s… do you remember? About three years ago? When Captain Yan hadn’t been deployed yet, you cracked a big case, the serial killer that killed every year on the flowering season who’d been continuously active for many years, and you finally arrested the culprit.”

Shao Dongmi: “Are you talking about the cherry blossom blooming case? I can’t take full credit for that time, it was just a stroke of luck. It was all from Captain Yan praising me in the report.”

“Weren’t you very popular during that time? You even had a few interviews and filmed for a newsreel and stuff, Captain Yan was bringing you in and out all day. During that time, I once got off work and passed by the glass doors over there, there was no one else in the office, and I saw Xi Yue alone as he burst out crying with his face buried in his screen. I was curious so I looked at his screen and saw those comments cursing his novel. I went back and looked up the title, and seeing the novel hadn’t even changed the names, I understood what was going on.”

“……………” An ominous premonition arose.

“Uh, I saw him crying so pitifully, so… I registered a sockpuppet account and left him a comment saying, you can’t write like that, I’ll teach you.”

“Fuck!!!” Shao Dongmi leaned back in horror.

“I used a burner to add his contact details. Of course, you also know about his temper, he’s simply not the kind of person to take advice well, so he cursed me out for two weeks. But afterwards, I found out that he’d been deleting and re-writing according to my requirements while he was cursing me, so, so I felt that it seemed like it wouldn’t be impossible…”

Shao Dongmi recalled absent-mindedly, oh right, that novel seemed to have lots of comments and views, it even seemed like he’d signed a contract.

“I told him that if he wanted to write a satisfying villain face-slapping story, he had to make the villain high-end, imposing, and top class, that way the readers would be satisfied when seeing him defeated. I told him to carefully think about what the core of what made people hate the villain was.

“He thought about it for two days and said: The villain Demon Shao Dongmi is a vixen, he stole Gaoling Zhihua Yan Chenli’s heart, and disdained Yan Chenli.”

Shao Dongmi: “Huh??????”

He Xiaowu actually spoke with a calm and serious face, already completely immersed in his professional skills, “I said, since it’s like this, you need to focus on emphasising the villain’s external appearance.

“He went back to make changes for half a month, but he struggled and couldn’t write anything.

“I said, didn’t you write about Gaoling Zhihua’s beauty very nicely before? Do it like that, take Gaoling Zhihua’s previous description and give it to the Demon villain, then give Gaoling Zhihua new characteristics. With those changes, I feel that the results will be great.”

Shao Dongmi was extraordinarily shocked: “…So, those ‘charming eyes like silk and graceful looks’ were initially written for Captain Yan??”

“Yep!” He Xiaowu nodded matter-of-factly.

Help.

Goddammit, 187 cm, a six pack, charming eyes like silk, graceful looks.

Help!!! Kill me I want to forget!!!

He Xiaowu got excited instead, “Don’t say it, the data rose up after being altered according to my suggestions. Do you understand the power of the triple-winner of the law awareness propaganda trophy now?”

Shao Dongmi’s face was as pale as death: “Enough, shut up.”

“Just that was enough to make you sleepless for a whole night? You haven’t seen the rest yet.” He Xiaowu spoke with another hidden meaning and filled with sympathy, “Wait until you read the ‘deeply in love kiss-ass has his feelings played with by the scum woman and is ruthlessly abandoned’ storyline, when you find out who the ruthless scum woman who abandons you is, only then will you know what a real breakdown is.”

Shao Dongmi, who was at the end of his rope, grabbed his cellphone, and as soon as the other side picked up he let out a heart-rending wail: “Captain!! Captain why aren’t you here yet Captain?!! Captain, take me away!! Captain!! If you don’t come you’re gonna lose me forever!!”

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1 Mechanical trauma is an injury to any portion of the body from a blow, crush, cut, or penetrating wound. 

2 In ch 6 I had previously translated this as “human smuggler” when they talked about the case because snakeheads are gangs that smuggle people, but in this case it’s being used more as a name. 

3 Middle school/8th grader syndrome. Embarrassing behaviours usually characterised by tweens who think they’re awesome and special when they’re actually not.