124: Chapter 124 Better to live a wretched life than to die a good death

The sour, rotted stench permeating the rock crevice grew stronger and stronger, but he made no move to cover his nose at all.

He had long since grown accustomed to this smell; when slaughtering and skinning pigs, the stench was even more pungent than this.

He lowered his head to look at Chen Jian kneeling on the ground, then glanced briefly at Wang Lan sitting against the wall.

Two people.

One knelt and sold his wife, the other sat without changing her expression.

Quite interesting.

[Writing up to this point, I hope readers remember our domain name, for Taiwan novels, look for Super Convenient]

Lin Fan shifted the shovel to his left hand, shoved his right hand into his pants pocket, found a relatively clean stone, and plunked himself down.

This action caused both Chen Jian and Wang Lan to tense their nerves simultaneously.

Sitting down meant he was not in a hurry to leave, nor in a hurry to make a move.

It also meant there was a show to watch.

"The two of you were quite spirited when you were beating Song Ya."

Lin Fan spoke, and Chen Jian stopped his kowtowing motion, the color draining another layer from the face of Chen Jian.

The fingers of Wang Lan were crossed and locked over her knees, neither loosening nor tightening.

"Chen Jian, I remember those few kicks you gave Song Ya." The gaze of Lin Fan fell on the face of Chen Jian, "Three kicks to the chest, one kick to the stomach, and dragging her by the hair to slam her against the reef—do you still remember?"

The lips of Chen Jian were trembling.

In the mind of Chen Jian, the scene from the beach that day surged forth with a boom.

"Lin Fan... That was... That was Wang Lan who forced me to..."

"Shut up."

The mouth of Chen Jian snapped shut.

Lin Fan turned his head to look at Wang Lan.

"Wang Lan, you are much smarter than him. You did not want to play the villain and were afraid of retribution... so you let Chen Jian take the lead..."

The eyelashes of Wang Lan fluttered slightly, but she did not make a sound. With the personality of Lin Fan, he would definitely not keep them alive.

Therefore, whether she spoke or not amounted to the same thing.

"Alright, I will not waste words."

"Between the two of you, only one can live."

Chen Jian froze entirely, and Wang Lan looked at Lin Fan in disbelief.

"However..." Lin Fan dragged out the end of his sentence, "who lives is not up to me to decide."

Chen Jian raised his head, a dazed expression plastered across a face covered in mud and scabs.

"Not up to you to decide... Then who decides?"

Lin Fan did not answer him directly; instead, he asked an irrelevant question.

"Chen Jian, how many years have you been married?"

"...Seven years."

"Seven years." Lin Fan repeated the number. "Over these seven years, you have been used by her as a chess piece, a mouthpiece, and a human shield. You must have pent up quite a lot of anger, right?"

The corners of the mouth of Chen Jian twitched, but he did not dare to take up the conversation.

"At the company, you did not even have a name. People called you the husband of Wang Lan, called you a kept man, and laughed behind your back calling you a coward. Back home, if she told you to go east you would not dare go west, and if she told you to shut up you would not even dare to breathe heavily."

"For seven years, have you ever vented your anger even once?"

As soon as these words came out, the eye sockets of Chen Jian turned red.

It was not from being moved; it was because his deepest scab had been poked.

Lin Fan turned back to Wang Lan.

"Wang Lan, the dog you raised for ten years just sold you out completely right in front of me. He pushed everything onto you and could not wait to carve you up to feed me."

The jawline of Wang Lan tightened.

"Whether you are disappointed or not, I do not know, but you must feel terrible inside. You raised him for so long, yet at a critical moment he is completely useless."

Wang Lan did not speak, but her breathing pattern changed. She did not care about the subsequent words of Lin Fan.

She knew Lin Fan was sowing discord and would definitely make them kill each other, but since there was a glimmer of hope for survival, who would not want to live?

Lin Fan glanced at the two of them.

"Since you both find each other displeasing to the eye, then it is simple."

"You two have a fight. Whichever one wins, I will keep. Not only will I not kill you, but I will also give you food, water, and treat you the same as the people upstairs."

"As for the loser, if they are not dead, they will stay right here and keep company with those corpses outside."

There was a three-second silence.

The Adam's apple of Chen Jian bobbed. He looked up at Lin Fan, his lips moving a few times.

"You... Are you serious?"

"Do I look like someone who would joke with you?"

The eyeballs of Chen Jian rolled around frantically. He was 1.7 meters tall and weighed over sixty kilograms. Even though he had grown a circle thinner after being starved for more than twenty days, his frame and muscle mass were still there.

Wang Lan was 1.6 meters tall and as thin as a bamboo pole.

A man could not beat a woman?

Was this not a freebie?

"Lin Fan, is what you said true? If I win, you will keep me?" The voice of Chen Jian grew eager, his kneeling body shifting half a step forward.

"When have I ever gone back on my word?"

The eyes of Chen Jian lit up.

At this moment, the gaze he directed at Wang Lan changed.

Inside it, there was no longer any fear, no longer any habitual obedience.

Replacing them was something that had been suppressed for seven years and finally found an outlet.

Resentment.

Pure, unadorned resentment.

"Wang Lan." Chen Jian stood up from the ground. "Do not blame me. It is better to live a wretched life than to die; I do not want to die."

As soon as his voice fell, he charged forward.

His movements could not be considered fast—a body starved for over twenty days could not possibly be fast.

But a weight of over one hundred and forty pounds hurtling over was already oppressive enough in this narrow rock crevice.

But Wang Lan did not panic.

Her eyes fixed on the direction Chen Jian was charging from, and her right hand grabbed a handful of sand.

She accurately flung it into the eyes of Chen Jian.

"Ah...!"

Chen Jian let out a miserable scream, instinctively covering his face with both hands. His feet stumbled, and his center of gravity completely collapsed.

Wang Lan did not give him any time to recover.

Her right hand had already felt that piece of wood before Chen Jian rushed over.

It was not long, about the thickness of a forearm, and she had kept it within arm's reach all along.

It was not a coincidence; it was a habit.

What kind of person was Wang Lan?

A woman with a CPA background who had worked in the Big Four accounting firms, she always left herself a way out in everything she did, including staying with her own husband.

She gripped the wood with both hands, aimed at the back of the head of Chen Jian, and swung down.

"Bang."

A muffled thud.

The wood smashed solidly against the skull, numbing the web of the thumb of Wang Lan.

The miserable scream of Chen Jian abruptly cut off.

His entire body toppled forward, knees hitting the ground first, followed by his face.

Face down, he smashed into the gravelly ground of the rock crevice, kicking up a cloud of dust.

He lay there sprawled out, an egg-sized lump mixed with a trace of blood swelling up at the back of his head.