The Overlord Flower's Guide to Intercepting a Woman's Wife's Death and the Male Lead&

Zhou Bingheng pulled out the wooden chair opposite him, sat down, and placed the teapot between the two of them.

He took two large, rough porcelain bowls from the table, filled one bowl to the brim, pushed it over, and left one bowl in front of himself as well.

Steam rose up from the rim of the bowl, filling the room with the bitter smell of tea stems.

He Yaozu picked up the teacup with both hands, lowered his head and took a big gulp, then spat out the few broken tea leaves floating on his lips onto the ground.

"The tea at the base is still so bad."

He shook his head and put down the bowl.

This complaint reveals the good life he was living across the street, and it is also a person's last lingering attachment to life before he dies.

Back when they were training in the Helan Mountains, they would fight over even the cold water with mud and sand at the bottom of their kettles, but now that they have a cup of hot tea, he's starting to complain.

Zhou Bingheng ignored the complaint. He took the photo out of his pocket, pressed it with two fingers, and pushed it to the center of the table.

He Yaozu lowered his eyelids and stared at the black and white photograph for a long time.

He slowly raised his hand, stopping at the edge of the paper, just half an inch away from touching the wild chrysanthemums in front of the grave.

After hovering there for a while, his fingers stiffly retracted.

She passed away in the third year after you left.

Zhou Bingheng spoke.

He Yaozu's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, but he didn't make a sound.

"Before she left, the villagers asked her where her son had gone."

Zhou Bingheng looked at the back of his hand resting on the rusty iron pipe.

She said, "My son is out on a mission."

He Yaozu's right hand, hidden under the wooden table, began to tremble uncontrollably.

"Until the very last day, she believed you were doing things for the country."

Zhou Bingheng spoke very slowly, enunciating each word very clearly.

In the interrogation room, the only sound was the wind and sand blowing in through the ventilation vent in the corner.

Zhou Bingheng continued speaking.

"Her grave is on the hill behind our old home, the second one in the third row. People go to sweep it every year during Qingming Festival. Do you know who it is?"

He Yaozu stared at the table without looking up.

"He was your old squad leader back then. He retired from the army and went back to his hometown. Knowing that your mother lives alone, he would visit her every year during holidays."

"Later, he got old and his legs couldn't walk the mountain path anymore, so he used a stick to urge his son to continue."

Zhou Bingheng picked up the rough porcelain bowl in front of him and took a sip of the slightly cool tea.

"I passed by there in the spring of 1968 and visited the graves. They were very clean."

He Yaozu let out a very soft sound.

The sound was forced out entirely from the nasal cavity; it was dry and muffled.

He slowly raised his face.

There wasn't a drop of water in his eyes, but his pupils were darting around.

"It's better that he's dead."

He Yaozu gritted his teeth, his cheeks puffing out.

"So that I won't have to stay in the village because of my family background, where I'll be looked down upon every day and won't be able to straighten my back even when I walk through an empty alley."

He said this to the air, and also to himself.

Zhou Bingheng sat opposite him, listening quietly.

He knew that He Yaozu's mother had spent most of her life unable to hold her head up because of being labeled as a member of a landlord's family, and she didn't even dare to breathe loudly.

After He Yaozu fled, the burden became even heavier, with the added label of being a family member of a defector, which directly crushed the old lady.

On the night before he passed away, there wasn't a single person by his bedside to see him off.

A long silence.

Zhou Bingheng leaned forward slightly, his voice becoming unusually heavy.

"Officer He, a soldier will never point his gun at his own country."

He Yaozu raised his chin and opened his mouth to retort.

Zhou Bingheng immediately cut him off and then uttered his second sentence.

"But a country should not allow its soldiers to be driven to desperation."

He Yaozu's lips twitched violently.

He clearly had no idea that Zhou Bingheng would say such a thing to his face.

As a political commissar in charge of ideological work, Zhou Bingheng's exclamation was extremely outrageous.

But at this very moment, sitting here are two veterans who once fought side by side in the same trench, and who also share a mentor-student relationship.

The first half of the sentence is Zhou Bingheng's bottom line that he will never let go of, while the second half is his final understanding and regret for the old acquaintance in front of him who is now on a dead end.

The room fell silent once again.

He Yaozu ran his fingers back and forth along the edge of the photograph on the wood grain.

The perfectly good photo paper was rubbed raw by his rough fingertips, leaving a row of uneven, frayed edges.

After a while, he picked up the photo, flipped it over, and placed it face down firmly on the table.

His expression slowly relaxed, and his wandering gaze regained focus.

You made a mistake.

He Yaozu straightened up completely.

Zhou Bingheng remained seated, waiting for him to continue.

"You shouldn't have come to see me."

He Yaozu looked at Zhou Bingheng across from him, his tone unusually calm.

"Since you came today, I have to repay this favor."

"This doesn't really count as a favor."

Zhou Bingheng spoke up to correct him.

He Yaozu grinned and chuckled softly.

His smile was extremely bitter, yet remarkably serene.

"Bingheng, I've chosen a dead end."

"From the night I crossed that border, this was the only destination I had left."

He didn't avoid Zhou Bingheng's face at all, making his words crystal clear.

"I don't regret it, but I know you're different from the others who came to interrogate me before."

"You genuinely came to see me, just because you made a special detour to visit my mother's grave back in 1968..."

He paused for half a second, his voice muffled and pressed down on the table.

"I'll give it back to you."

He Yaozu leaned half his body forward, his lips moving rapidly as he uttered a name.

The name was pronounced very softly.

In this enclosed room, Zhou Bingheng still had to lean forward half a shoulder to hear those three words completely.

Upon hearing the name, He Yaozu leaned back, his back slamming hard against the cold, white wall, and he closed his eyes.

"This person is ten times more dangerous than me. When I was a key member on the other side, I overheard them mention him once. Their level of infiltration is far beyond mine."

"I changed to the southern route this time to meet him. Part of the passage in the middle was paved by his men."

"But I can't figure out what kind of deal he's making with the other side. Judging from his ruthless way of doing things, he might be profiting from both sides."

He opened his eyes again.

"Don't just check the surface receiver when your wife wrote down the Morse code in the stone chamber; go inside and compare the frequencies."

"When I sent a telegram to find someone to pick me up, I wasn't using the regular radio station on the other side at all. The frequency was 0.3 points down, and it was a relay station that this person had set up privately."

Zhou Bingheng etched that name, along with the 0.3% frequency deviation, into his mind.

He stood up from his chair and looked at his former comrade-in-arms across from him, who was dressed in a full prison uniform.

Ten years ago, also in the Helan Mountains, under the scorching sun in August.

The two of them lay side by side in the scorching sand, vying to drink from the same burning hot tin can, their heads touching as they examined the same nearly worn-out contour map.

Now, one is going to the execution ground tomorrow to be shot, while the other stands up straight to bid a final farewell.

Seeing that he was about to leave, He Yaozu called out to him and added a few final words of explanation.

"Bingheng, you don't need to go to the back mountain of your hometown anymore."

He took a breath.

"Tell the old squad leader and his son not to go anymore."

The meaning behind the words couldn't be clearer.

He was about to embark on his journey. He would personally go to that cold, earthen hut to keep the old woman company, who had suffered for most of her life.

Those who remain in the mortal world no longer need to travel long distances to offer chrysanthemums meant for the living.

Zhou Bingheng stood diagonally opposite the table, and paused for a full three seconds.

He suddenly bent down and reached out his hand.

I pressed my index finger against the edge of the photographic paper on the table, which was facing down, and then gently lifted it.

The photo was flipped over, with the front facing up.

The grave mound, with its fresh soil and wild chrysanthemums, was once again clearly illuminated under the gas lamp.

"Keep this photo."

Zhou Bingheng directly rejected his statement that he did not allow tomb sweeping.

As long as Zhou Bingheng is still wearing these clothes, the incense at that grave will never be extinguished.

He Yaozu's chest heaved violently.

As he watched the tall figure approaching the door, he finally couldn't suppress the question that had been churning in his mind all night.

"Bingheng!"

He Yaozu shouted at the top of his lungs from behind.

"Your wife was an excellent actress in front of me, and she was incredibly efficient at destroying the radio with her bare hands."

"She's really something else. You've got her next to your pillow, are you sure she's safe?"

Zhou Bingheng did not answer, and his walking rhythm did not stop for a moment.

The guards outside immediately opened the iron gate, and he strode out.

The corridor was long and dark.

Zhou Bingheng's shoes trod on the cement ground, one step after another.

He walked to the window at the very end of the corridor and stopped.

Outside the window, not far away, is the gray-brown ridgeline of the Helan Mountains, the horizon swept clean by the cold winds of the Northwest.

He reached out and stopped a junior officer who happened to be passing by, asking for a cigarette.

The clerk hurriedly took out a match and lit it for him.

Zhou Bingheng never smokes.

This was the first time in his 28 years that he had put a cigarette in his mouth, and probably the last time in his life.

The smell of burning low-quality tobacco is terrifying; a large puff goes straight up to your throat.

He was so choked that he stood there motionless.

A cloud of grayish-white smoke billowed out in front of the glass window, causing my eyes to quickly well up with tears.

The cigarette butt kept burning.

The orange-red flames trailed down the thin white paper until they burned the two fingers that were gripping the cigarette.

He stubbed out his cigarette butt on the dusty windowsill, crushing it to pieces, then turned and strode down the stairs.

Frost appeared the next morning.

A desolate valley at the foot of the Helan Mountains.

He Yaozu was executed by firing squad.

After two loud, resounding sounds, everything returned to dust.

The person in charge of collecting the remains followed the rules and checked the pockets of the coat to verify the items.

A pair of folded photographic papers were pulled out from the rough cotton cloth.

As you unfold the photograph, you can see that the paper has been rubbed so many times by your fingers that it has developed a layer of oily patina.

The picture shows a low, neatly tidied grave.

The crease in the middle was folded backwards by the owner several times, but in the end, it was still facing right up.

At the same time.

Deep within the Helan Mountain fault line, a military jeep was bumping along its way to outpost number seven.

Su Xingmian, wrapped in a military overcoat, was dozing off against the car window.

Suddenly, her right eyelid twitched twice without warning.

She suddenly opened her eyes and turned to look at the endless salt flats outside the car window.

He reached down with his right hand and touched the two orange hard candies in his pocket.

Has something happened to the old fox?