Chapter 56 Get Out

As the sound of Zhou Yi's voice faded, Zhou Jianjun suddenly fell to his knees with a heavy thud.

Zhou Yi remained entirely expressionless in response.

He simply removed his hat and coat in silence, placing them on the sofa nearby.

That kneeling motion was filthy; Zhou Yi himself didn't care, but he could not allow the police uniform he wore to be tainted.

"Zhou Yi, I know I was wrong. Please let your second uncle go. At my age, I cannot afford to lose face like this," Zhou Jianjun sobbed, tears and snot streaming down his face.

"I swear to you, Grandpa really did fall by himself. None of us pushed him. No matter how wretched I may be, I could never commit murder for money."

With a cold snort, Zhou Yi walked over to the broken folding table, bent down, and picked up the handwritten statement relinquishing all rights to the inheritance.

He then glanced around the room, found a pen, and finally squatted down leisurely.

He placed the paper and pen right in front of Zhou Jianjun.

Throughout this entire process, Zhou Yi did not utter a single word, leaving Zhou Jianjun kneeling there.

"Sign this, and then get the hell out of the Zhou family home!"

Zhou Yi bit out each word, suppressing the fury boiling within him.

Seeing the murderous blaze in Zhou Yi's eyes, Zhou Jianjun trembled with fright and picked up the pen from the floor.

Just as he was about to sign, the inner door flew open, and Wang Cuie rushed out.

"Don't sign it! You can't sign it!" she screamed.

"If I don't sign, should I go to prison? It's all your fault for piling all that junk in the hallway, which caused the old man to trip! I told you we needed to take him to the hospital, but you said hospital treatments cost too much, and since the old man had lived long enough, we might as well just leave him alone and wait for him to breathe his last breath! I was out of my mind to listen to your conscience-devoid idea in the first place!" Zhou Jianjun wailed, beating his chest and stamping his feet in despair.

"How dare you blame me? There were four adults living in this house, is it my fault there was too much clutter? It's not like it's the first day the old man has been too stingy to turn on the light when going to the bathroom at night. Is it my fault he fell? I didn't push him, and I didn't hit him! Besides, who wrote this will? Did I force you, Zhou Jianjun, to write it?"

"How many characters do I even know how to write? Every single word of this will was written by your own hand, Zhou Jianjun! The most I did was fail to render aid, but you—you are the old man's biological son, his precious son—sitting there forging a fake will while eagerly waiting for your own father to die! How do you even have the face to blame me?"

Hearing Wang Cuie's hysterical shrieks, Zhou Jianjun flew into a rage of utter embarrassment. He lunged at her, and the two began clawing and pulling at each other.

"How is it not your fault?" he cursed as he grappled with her. "You've spoiled our son rotten since he was a child, turning him into this useless trash who is always stirring up trouble and causing such massive problems! Would I have ever done something like this otherwise? That was my own father!"

"What? Is the son mine alone? He carries the Zhou family blood just as much!"

"When you carried the old man onto the bed to wait for death, what did you say to him? You said, 'Dad, a life for a life. Let your life buy your grandson Xiaokai's life. It's all for the sake of the Zhou family, so don't blame me, just go in peace.'"

"I finally see it now. There isn't a single decent person in this entire Zhou family."

"What kind of terrible karma did I accumulate in my past life to marry into this wretched Zhou family and suffer like this?"

"Oh, heaven have mercy, why is my life so bitter?"

Zhou Yi stood by, watching the spectacle with cold detachment. He didn't even intervene when the declaration on the floor was trampled to pieces.

It didn't matter; he had prepared several copies.

However, he kept a close eye on every movement and micro-expression of both Zhou Jianjun and Wang Cuie. Judging by their reactions, this fierce altercation did not look like an act.

Could it be that Grandpa wasn't lying? Did he really fall by himself?

He had heard the older family members complain several times in the past about how Grandpa refused to turn on the lights at night to save electricity, so that scenario was entirely plausible.

Even so, the family's failure to rescue him, compounded by their opportunistic forgery of the will, remained unforgivable crimes.

Once today's matters were settled, he would find time to have a proper conversation with Grandpa to verify the exact sequence of events.

That would determine the legal nature of the incident—whether it constituted a criminal case. Intentional harm would undoubtedly be a criminal offense, but failure to render aid and document forgery depended entirely on the attitudes of the involved parties.

It would also resolve the most agonizing dilemma Zhou Yi currently faced.

If it was not intentional harm and not a criminal case, his sense of guilt regarding dereliction of duty would be vastly diminished. Otherwise, torn constantly between the law and his family, his inner torment would be endless.

Yet this realization did nothing to dampen his rage toward this household, especially regarding Zhou Jianjun's remark about "a life for a life"—words that Grandpa, even in his semi-conscious state, must have heard.

Despair is heavier than the death of the heart.

Yet such is the boundless love of parents: even when his own son refused to save him and eagerly awaited his demise, Grandpa still sought to plead on his behalf, striving to leave an unfilial scoundrel a way out.

Zhou Yi sighed inwardly, confirming the old adage: the good die young, while villains live for a millennium.

"Well, look at this. Quite a lively gathering."

Suddenly, the front door, which Zhou Yi had left ajar upon entering, was shoved open.

A burly, bald man with a thick neck and a long scar running across his forehead strode into the room.

The bald man wore a gaudy, brightly colored shirt with his hands shoved into his pockets, a toothpick dangling from his lips, exuding an air of supreme arrogance.

Zhou Kai, who had just stepped out from the inner room, turned pale the moment he laid eyes on the bald man and instinctively tried to bolt back inside.

"Grandson, you stay right where you are!" the bald man barked harshly.

Frozen in terror, Zhou Kai dared not move an inch, his entire body shivering violently like a sieve.

"Get your ass over here!" the bald man commanded.

As Zhou Kai crept forward with trembling steps, Wang Cuie suddenly lunged toward the bald man, pointing right at his nose and screaming, "Where did some featherless little punk crawl out from, coming into our house to act wild—"

Before she could finish her sentence, the bald man swung his arm and delivered a resounding slap across her face.

With a crisp crack, the blow sent Wang Cuie stumbling, her hair disheveled and blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, instantly shattering her previous bravado into dust.

Immediately afterward, five or six more men filed in from outside. Like the leader, they were all dressed in flashy attire, lacking only the words "arrogant thugs" tattooed across their foreheads.

More crucially, Zhou Yi noticed that the men trailing behind were all armed.

Some carried machetes, while others brandished heavy iron pipes fashioned from water mains.

Upon entering, they began banging on walls and knocking over furniture, every single one of them wearing a vicious expression.

By this point, Zhou Jianjun and Wang Cuie had finally realized that these were the very thugs who had threatened to chop off their son's hands.

Terrified, Wang Cuie backed away frantically until her heel caught, sending her sprawling to the floor in a heap.

The bald man impatiently beckoned to Zhou Kai. The moment the trembling youth reached him, the bald man raised a hand and struck him across the face.

"When I told you to get over here just now, were you fucking deaf?"

The slap instantly brought Zhou Kai to tears, and he shrank his neck like a frightened chick, whimpering softly.

"What are you crying for, you motherfucker? Where is my money?!"

"Eighth Brother, I really don't have that much money, please, sob..."

*Slap!* Another heavy blow echoed through the room.

The strike left Zhou Kai's hair a mess.

"If you didn't have money, what the hell were you gambling for?"

*Slap!* Another strike landed.

Blood filled Zhou Kai's mouth.

"If you didn't have money, why were you playing cards with your mother's life savings?"

The bald man grew more heated with every blow, delivering slap after slap. Whenever Zhou Kai dared to flinch, an even heavier strike followed immediately.

Beaten into standing in place while weeping and wailing, Zhou Kai's cheeks swelled into the shape of a pair of pig heads within moments.

A neighbor passing by the open doorway peeked inside out of curiosity, only to be pointed at by one of the bald man's lacklings, who brandished a machete and roared, "Get the fuck away!"

The neighbor hastily bolted back into their apartment and slammed the door shut.

Wang Cuie's usual arrogance had completely evaporated. She could only weep and plead for them to stop hitting him, yet she dared not step forward to intervene for fear of drawing the blows upon herself.

That single slap from the bald man had terrified her into submission; her ears were still ringing continuously.

It was a supreme irony: a shrew like her felt no fear toward a police officer like Zhou Yi, yet she utterly lacked the courage to provoke such hooligans.

She knew that police officers were bound by constraints—the constraints of the state, of morality, and of the law.

That was why she felt emboldened to act defiantly in front of the police.

But lawless ruffians operated under no such constraints; they would genuinely beat you, curse you, or even run a blade through you without hesitation.

Zhou Yi stood off to the side like a silent backdrop, making no move to interfere from start to finish.

After all, this was the retribution this family thoroughly deserved. He could not take matters into his own hands, but having others do it for him was by no means a bad thing.

Seemingly growing tired of hitting him, the bald man delivered a vicious kick to Zhou Kai's stomach, sending him crashing to the floor with a painful yelp.

The family of three huddled together in a shivering, weeping lump.

The bald man signaled to his subordinate, who promptly handed him a gleaming machete.

"Ninety thousand! Either you pay up right now, or I chop off these two hands of yours this very second!"

The bald man patted the flat of the blade as he sauntered toward the three of them.

Zhou Jianjun's face drained of all color. "W-wasn't it eighty thousand? How did it become ninety thousand?"

"Old man, do you think debts don't accrue interest? Do you expect all these brothers of mine to work for free?"

"B-but... it's only been a few days, and another ten thousand has already been added? Not even the mint prints money this fast."

"Heh, motherfucker, you owe money and yet you still think you have the right to argue?"

The bald man produced an IOU, squatted insolently right in front of the trio, and waved the paper back and forth before Zhou Jianjun's eyes.

"Take a good look. This is the IOU your son wrote in his own hand, with the interest clearly calculated in black and white. What? Trying to renege on it?"

"It doesn't say two hundred thousand here..."

Before Zhou Jianjun could finish his sentence amidst his weeping, the cold, flat side of the machete struck him sharply across the face.

"Old man, don't waste my fucking breath. Today, you either pay the money, or I cut off both your son's hands."

"But we... we don't have that much money..."

"Then how much *do* you have?"

"J-just... three thousand yuan."

"How much?!" The bald man's eyes widened in disbelief. "Three thousand? What the fuck, do you take me for a beggar?!"

The bald man suddenly sprang to his feet, swept his gaze across the apartment, and sneered, "This place looks decent enough. How about this? Sign the deed over to me to clear the debt. Consider it me playing the good guy and taking a loss, and what you owe me will be settled in full."

He let out a chuckle. "How does that sound?"

"You won't be laying a hand on this apartment," a cold voice rang out from behind.

"Not only will you not touch it, but you're going to get the hell out of here right now!"