Forge a path to success.

Chapter 309 Desires and Needs (1)

When he returned to the hotel, the clock had already deviated from 12. Chu Hengkong was a little sleepy, but his mind was still sharp. His thoughts drifted along with Kanin's last question, drifting back to the upper reaches of his memories in a half-dreaming, half-awake state…

Let's go back to the last time he heard this question.

·
Seven years ago, in Las Vegas.

"This is a room where no one has ever died," Chu Hengkong said with satisfaction. "It's been a long time since I've stayed in such a clean room."

As always, after checking the room, he began flipping through the hotel menu. The Union Hotel in Las Vegas was surprisingly good; there were no cameras or listening devices, not even traces of blood. Vilbert figured it was probably because there were too many people here who gambled extravagantly; the guests, regardless of their wealth, all had a reckless abandon, while the hotel owners couldn't afford to gamble.

Over the years, she and Chu Hengkong had stayed in hundreds of hotels, sometimes with their subordinates, but more often just the two of them. Chu Hengkong would point to an oil painting and tell her that it was a room where a gunfight had taken place, then remove the frame to show her the filled-in bullet holes behind it as proof. Before falling asleep, he would suddenly say that someone had been shot dead in his bed, then lift the mattress to reveal the broken wooden frame underneath, stained with dried blood.

At first, she felt disgusted, then she felt numb, and finally she even developed a sense of morbid curiosity. Just like he had said long ago, nothing can be trusted except people.

Brands, rules, and even the blood alliance itself—their "credit" has a price. And that price is actually surprisingly low, because in order to maintain their credit, they will actively cover up the ugly things happening in their territory. It's just that most people are unaware of this and blindly trust them.

She sat at the table, typing away, enduring the noise from outside the window. It was another rainy night, and no matter how good the hotel's soundproofing was, she could still feel the raindrops hitting the glass, like bones hitting rusty iron, which was incredibly irritating.

"What should we eat tonight?" Chu Hengkong was still looking at the menu. "Steak, fries, onion soup... Oh, they even have barbecue here! No wonder it's a gambling city."

"I'm not eating," Vilbert declared in advance. Chu Hengkong had already picked up the phone.

"I'll have 30 lamb skewers, 5 chicken wings, 10 each of heart tubes, bone marrow, and kidneys, plus two baked flatbreads." He flipped the menu to the first page, "and a sandwich set meal with black tea."

Violet couldn't help but sigh; she would be working amidst the smell of cumin tonight. Chu Hengkong pulled out his NDS and started engrossed in those childish games again.

“I’ve always told you that sighing too often will make you an old woman, but you’ve only gotten more and more beautiful, which is really strange,” he said. “Maybe it’s just natural beauty; even with all that work, your skin is still great.”

She pressed the power button and observed herself through the dark screen, the rigid girl sitting in front of the laptop. She wore a black women's suit, had long, straight hair that hadn't been dyed, and her overly pale skin made her face appear cold. She was taller than her peers, but her figure hadn't changed much.

What appeal does such a person have? Even by Eastern standards, she seems unusual. The only connection she has with beauty is probably social jargon like "beautiful lady."

“Please don’t make fun of me,” Vilbert said coldly.

“Look at you, you’re like that. If someone sincerely compliments you, you think they’re joking. We usually call people like that ‘sensitive’ or ‘harsh.’” Chu Hengkong twirled her hair with his fingers. “In my experience, sensitive and harsh women usually don’t have good figures. If you don’t find a way to correct your personality, you’ll probably be flat-chested for life, Miss Vilbert.”

“It doesn’t matter, I don’t care,” Vilbert said. “I don’t need a figure.”

"Okay, here you go again."

She continued reviewing the reports: "I don't plan to date. I don't plan to get married. I don't need a husband. I don't need a lover. So you can say whatever you want, I don't care."

"Please, someone save me! I really can't talk to teenage girls anymore." Chu Hengkong sighed. "If I praise you, you think I'm supporting you. If I support you, you reply with ten. Please, stop being rebellious for the sake of being rebellious. Other people's high-achieving girls are thorny roses, but you're turning into a field of thorns."

"I will continue to stab you mercilessly."

She knew she hadn't controlled herself well today, because Chu Hengkong was a little annoyed. He closed the game console, put his hands on her shoulders, and his voice deepened.

“Vilbert, I’ve told you many times that the consequences of making such flirtatious jokes with men are very serious.”

She looked up, and Chu Hengkong's face was reversed in her eyes.

"If you want to use me to vent your desires, go ahead."

Chu Hengkong pinched her cheek hard, making her wince: "If I hear anything like that again, we're done."

“I’m sorry.” Violet conceded at the opportune moment, then added insult to injury, “But you were the one who just said I was pretty.”

Chu Hengkong stared at her for a long time until she smiled smugly. He let go and lay back on the bed, complaining, "I really have nothing to say to you."

Just then, the doorbell rang. Chu Hengkong brought in a plate of grilled skewers, making sure to place hers next to the computer. The sandwich contained salami, tomato, lettuce, and mozzarella cheese—an Italian-style panini. He wouldn't order her a high-calorie, greasy American-style sandwich.

As she immersed herself in the forms again, she heard Chu Hengkong ask, "Seriously, are you really planning to keep doing this?"

"what happened?"

“Look, you’ve made a lot of money. You have a lot of henchmen, a lot of cars, a lot of guns, and a lot of houses.” Chu Heng spat out a chicken bone. “But you haven’t had a few days of peace either. In the past three years, I’ve accompanied you to almost every corner of the world. You spend a third of the year negotiating business deals and a quarter of the year on airplanes. The little bit of free time you have left is spent holding family meetings, directing shootouts, and occasionally dodging assassins.”

“It was very fulfilling,” Vilbert said.

“You’re overdoing it,” Chu Hengkong said. “You’re only 14, boss. You’re capable, you’re exceptionally talented, but do you really intend to live like this for the rest of your life? On a path that you can already see the end?”

“You know very well that I can’t leave now.” Vilbert shook her head. “I could walk away with a check and sail across the ocean, but I will always be Vilbert Velus. My enemies, my subordinates, even my blood oath will be looking for me. There is no such thing as a clean break here.”

“It’s all an excuse.” Chu Heng laughed. “You can easily hide yourself in a corner of the world, like hiding a drop of water in the ocean.”

"You have too much confidence in me."

"You've already gone through countless versions of your retirement plan by the time you said that," Chu Hengkong pointed out.

He's absolutely right. She had been considering retirement for six months, at which point she would become a quiet, reserved Chinese girl attending a foreign language school in Shanghai. Her parents worked away from home year-round, leaving her to rely on her idle older brother.

The only flaw in this plan is that even if Chu Hengkong is willing to undergo plastic surgery, he will never be able to live a peaceful, ordinary life. Before the Blood Alliance finds Verus, the local police will come after him first.

“Those plans are impossible. And I can’t detach myself from my current life until I achieve my goal.” “You do have a purpose.”

"I want to find out the cause of my father's death."

Chu Hengkong frowned: "I thought it was Lucas."

“Lucas was too incompetent. Even as a mole, the only information he could leak was pre-arranged false information,” Wilbert said. “Yet such an incompetent man knew about my father’s death before me and started taking action before me. This was all planned. Lucas was supposed to take over the Velus family and lead them to ruin, but he failed by accident.”

“The cultists can’t get information about your father… So what about the people inside the Blood Alliance?” Chu Heng thought for a moment. “You haven’t found his trail yet, so you need to increase Verus’s influence as much as possible until that person can’t stand it anymore and takes the initiative to contact you.”

"Correct."

"When will this cycle of revenge end!" Chu Hengkong sighed. "Keep it up, boss. Remember to call me before you make your move."

He didn't deliberately show sympathy or feign sympathy, which pleased Wilbert.

By the time she quietly finished the spreadsheet, Chu Hengkong had already dealt with those strange strings of files and was playing games while plugged in. She shut down the computer and asked, "Hengkong, what about you?"

"how?"

"What are you planning to do?" she asked. "Why are you still living this kind of life?"

Since the negotiations with the Russians ended, she has been asking Chu Hengkong for work more and more frequently. Because besides him, she can't find another person she can completely trust, and the crises she faces are only getting more dangerous with each passing day.

This peculiar employer-employee relationship lasted for three years, so long that Chu Hengkong got used to calling her "boss," and she unconsciously started calling him "A-Kong." But their relationship never truly changed. Chu Hengkong accompanied her on her travels, killing all sorts of people, and after it was all over, he went back to delivering pizzas, unchanged.

"I don't have any plans," Chu Hengkong said, still playing his game. "Life's fine as it is now, I'll just take it one step at a time."

“If you’re content with your current life, you’re already a killer. If you’re just going with the flow, you should be staying in your rented room delivering food,” Vilbert said. “But you’re neither, Acon. You have many paths you could take, but you don’t choose. You just stand there stubbornly, reaching out to touch everything you see, but you neither move forward nor backward. I can only assume you don’t really care about any of this. You don’t care about anything around you.”

Chu Hengkong laughed: "You make me sound so heartless."

“You’re not heartless. You’re arrogant.” Vilbert stood up. “You’re too strong, Akong. You’re like a different species from everyone else. This difference makes you look down on everyone equally, and you never once put society in your eyes.”

"Have you always thought I was an alien?" Chu Hengkong laughed incessantly. "I thought you were just rebellious, but I didn't expect you to be such a deep-seated chuunibyou (a person with delusions of grandeur)..."

He still didn't understand. Violet thought desperately. He still didn't get what she really meant.

"Do you care about the police, Akong?"

"I respect their work."

"What about the law?"

“Follow the correct parts.”

"government?"

Chu Hengkong chuckled again: "Don't be like that."

Did you feel any psychological burden when you killed him?

"I only kill those who deserve to die."

"That's why I said you don't care."

Chu Hengkong realized she was serious. He put down the game console and stood up as well.

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t care.”

“You know what, Kong. Any psychologist would classify you as a classic antisocial personality. And the difference between you and those potentially dangerous individuals is that you don’t need a gun to be more powerful than them,” Wilbert said. “You’re out of place in this world. You’re still standing there looking for something you crave, but I don’t know what you really want.”

Chu Hengkong stared at her for a long time, then suddenly reached out and ruffled her hair.

“You, on the other hand, are unusually childish for once,” he said with a smile, just as he had when he lectured her long ago. “Not everything needs a reason… and not everyone knows as clearly as you what they need. Most people just drift along aimlessly, day after day, day after day.”

"Then why are you still here?" she pressed. "Why did you save me that day?"

“I can. I am willing. I should,” he said. “So I acted.”

He rested his chin on Violet's head and gently patted the girl. "Alright, go to sleep early."

Before going to bed, Chu Hengkong packed up the trash and put it in the hallway. He used to be too lazy to clean it up, but since he was out with his boss, he didn't want her to be unhappy if it was too messy. He lay in bed, preparing for another sleepless night, when he heard faint thunder outside the window.

"Boss, look," Chu Hengkong said with a headache, "you're almost fifteen..."

Violet lay on the bed without saying a word, only showing her profile as she stared at him. Chu Hengkong once again flinched in the face of that gaze, and curled up slightly as thunder rumbled.

He turned off the light and lay down next to Violet. The girl gave him half of the blanket.

"Go to sleep early," Chu Hengkong sighed.

(End of this chapter)