Chapter 241: Life-threatening
Chapter 241: Life-threatening
After lunch, Lan Shiwen made himself a cup of tea, spread out a list on the desk, and crossed out two names on the list with a red ballpoint pen.
The list was very long, and it took up several sheets of standard A4 paper. Most of the names on it started with "Liu" and were crossed out with bright red crosses. Lan Shiwen checked it over and over again, and there was only one name left that had not been crossed out.
"Liu Hongwen..." Lan Shiwen held the teacup to his lips and groped for the last name on the list with his fingers.
Liu Hongwen was the most talented of the Liu family's direct descendants of this generation. His keen political sense enabled him to realize in time after being threatened with death by Lan Shiwen that the Liu family had become a family with few supporters. He fled overnight without even taking much property with him and escaped.
His brothers and sisters are still hoping that the mutual protection among officials in Yunzhou and the complicated conflicts of interest will make that madman named Lan afraid to act rashly.
If you place your hopes on illusions, your hopes will be shattered along with the non-existent hopes.
Lan Shiwen put down his teacup and poured himself a new cup of tea, worried in his heart: "This Liu Hongwen is a bit tricky."
Liu Hongwen and his wife and children have now fled to the United States of Europe. Even though the governor of Yunzhou has personally made solemn representations many times and demanded that the United States of Europe repatriate them, the other party's attitude remains ambiguous.
It is highly likely that Liu Hongwen has defected to a certain aristocratic force in Europe and exchanged some special bargaining chips for protection. However, no one knows what he has paid in order to convince those old nobles who are unwilling to take action until they see the rabbit to bear the pressure from Kyushu for them.
"It's a pity that Ye Yao refused to cooperate... If he was willing to sneak into Europa as Van Dyke, a powerful noble with a title, he would be able to get rid of Liu Hongwen quickly and relieve my worries."
Lan Shiwen put down the teacup and sighed. He almost forgot that he still had Van Dyke's matter to deal with.
"...Perhaps this is the way to go. If the European side still refuses to extradite Liu Hongwen, I will announce the death of Van Dyke and imply that this is the consequence of their arrogance. If they continue to refuse to cooperate, more nobles will be killed in the future..."
After thinking about it, Lan Shiwen felt that this was feasible. As for diplomatic issues and whether such vicious incidents as assassinating senior officials of other countries would trigger a full-scale war... he didn't care at all.
Now Lan Shiwen only cares about one thing:
——Kill all the members of the Liu family, even if the world is about to be destroyed in the next second.
Even if Liu Hongwen's death would lead to the destruction of the world and the entire earth would explode in an instant, causing the human race to perish, Lan Shiwen would definitely kill him without any hesitation or wavering, at any cost.
He is such an extreme person, hopelessly extreme.
If he wasn't extreme, he wouldn't be Lan Shiwen.
The water started to boil. Lan Shiwen bent over, picked up the kettle and removed it from the fire. He poured the boiling water into the teacup and made a new cup of tea. The rich aroma filled the air and a few drops of tea splashed onto the papers on the table.
"Xiaolan?"
"Ok?"
Suddenly, a gentle call was heard from behind. It was the voice of his girlfriend, but Lan Shiwen remembered that he locked the door before entering the study. How did she get in?
"What's wrong?" Lan Shiwen turned his head and looked back in confusion. At the same time, a gust of cold wind blew by.
An invisible evil spirit quietly clung to him, resting its cold chin on his shoulder. Its tongue-pulled mouth was empty, with only a cold wind blowing out, extinguishing the yang fire on his shoulder.
Lan Shiwen is dead.
"Hmm?" After a moment of trance, Lan Shiwen suddenly opened his eyes, holding the familiar steering wheel in his hands. He had just returned home and parked the car.
"I'm back?" Lan Shiwen's eyes were burning as he quickly understood the current situation: "After I parked the car, I returned home and went into the study. I was drinking tea while checking the list of Liu's family members. Then I suddenly heard my girlfriend's voice behind me, and then..."
Then he died.
Is your house haunted? No, that's unlikely.
Was that an assassination by the Ascended or Granted?
Lan Shiwen remembered that the last time he came back from the dead was the last time. There was no sign or clue, and he died suddenly in the office for unknown reasons.
He died and then returned, returned and then died, and kept dying and dying, until Lan Shiwen was numb from dying. Only then did he finally determine from the endless cycle of reincarnation that the person who killed him was Ning Zhe.
So who killed me this time?
Lan Shiwen thought about it and many candidates suddenly appeared in his mind. There was no way. He had offended too many people. The enemies who wanted to kill him could be lined up from the mouth of Yanzhou to the snow-capped mountains of Cangzhou. If the rules of death and return were not too against the will of heaven, Lan Shiwen would have been eaten to death by that group of ascenders who were more ferocious than ghosts.
"First of all, I died after hearing my girlfriend's voice, but I locked the door at the time. She didn't have the key to my study and shouldn't have been able to get in."
"Even if I made a mistake and forgot to lock the door, she should have knocked before entering."
Lan Shiwen was very confident about this. His girlfriend was the daughter of a high-ranking official in Yunzhou. She had some basic knowledge about the existence of the strange world and knew that she could not enter his private space casually, otherwise it would cause disaster.
"So, the person standing behind me and calling my name wasn't her. Someone faked my girlfriend's voice to attract my attention. The moment I turned around, a cold wind blew through my body. My cause of death was related to this..."
Lan Shiwen used clear logic to quickly summarize the process of his own death:
Hearing a sound, looking back, a cold wind blowing, feeling cold all over, death.
"The condition that triggers death is... a response?" Lan Shiwen thought about it, temporarily wrote down this guess, and then thought about other possibilities.
In addition to the process of death, there are other doubts.
Lan Shiwen remembered that the voice he heard at that time was very clear, without any distortion caused by recording and then playing it back. It was definitely not a secretly recorded recording. It was as if there was really someone standing behind him, calling Lan Shiwen's name in the voice of a woman he was most familiar with...
So who was the man who killed him? Why did he fake his girlfriend's voice? And how did he create such a convincing voice?
It's forged to that extent that it can't even be mistaken for the real thing, because it is real.
"... Could it be?" Lan Shiwen thought of that possibility, and beads of cold sweat crept up his back, making him shudder.
At this time, a familiar voice sounded in the back seat of the car, as faint as a ghost urging death:
"Xiaolan?"
(End of this chapter)