Chapter 38 - ​Chapter 38: The Architecture of Revenge

​They spent the next month in the bowels of the city, moving through the tunnels and the forgotten basements like a single, multi-limbed creature. Xuan's jealousy had evolved into a meticulous, cold-blooded strategy. He spent his nights watching the Wei estate from the shadows, his mind recording every guard rotation, every security camera blind spot. The extreme level of his obsession meant he knew exactly when Wei Chen drank, when he slept, and when he looked at the photograph of Ning he still kept on his desk. "He still has your picture," Xuan hissed one night, returning to their crawlspace with a look of pure, murderous intent. "He touches the glass as if he's touching your skin." Ning's reaction was a scream of extreme anger; she threw a glass bottle against the stone wall, her face contorted in a mask of possessive misery. "Break it! Burn it! He has no right to even look at my shadow!" She collapsed into Xuan's arms, her extreme level of lovingness demanding that he erase every trace of her from the rival's world. The misunderstanding of the public—that the Wei family were the grieving benefactors—was about to be shattered. They began to leave "signs" for Wei Chen: a lock of Ning's hair on his pillow, a smeared red 'X' on his windshield, a recording of her crying played through his home's smart speakers in the dead of night. They were turning his life into a psychological war zone, a mirror of the extreme level of torment he had put them through. They were the debt that could never be repaid.