After the New Year, once she had returned home from the village, Shen Yi contacted her friends on her phone and arranged a place to meet.
To her friends, it had only been one winter break since they had last seen her. To Shen Yi, however, it felt almost like she had returned from another lifetime.
They gathered at their usual coffee shop and chatted animatedly about their respective lives.
“I was practically growing mold at home,” Chen Jiaojiao complained. “My mom couldn’t stand seeing me lying around, so she wanted to sign me up for all kinds of classes and have teachers come to the house one after another. It’s torture.”
“Same here.” Zhao Shumin counted off on her fingers. “Piano, calligraphy, advanced math, spoken English… My mom practically wishes she could stretch a single day into forty-eight hours.”
Only Sophia had it easy. Her parents were both overseas, so she had an incredibly relaxed life and was eager to find something new and exciting to do.
The blue-eyed, golden-haired girl rested her chin in her hands and excitedly made a suggestion.
“Hey, Xiao Yi, we said before that we wanted to visit your house, and you promised we could. Can we go now?”
“…”
Shen Yi had spent too long in another world and had completely forgotten what she had promised in this one.
After a two-second hesitation, she asked, “You want to come to my house?”
“Of course. We all do.”
Sophia made sure to include Chen Jiaojiao and Zhao Shumin, gazing at Shen Yi with expectant blue eyes.
Chen Jiaojiao shrank back. “What? Shen Yi’s house? I’m not going!”
Zhao Shumin couldn’t help picturing a gloomy mansion from a cartoon: a dark, eerie atmosphere, bats flying through the air, and sinister background music playing.
She shuddered as well.
A family of assassins… It probably looked a lot like what she was imagining.
Maybe there were even skulls hanging by the entrance.
“Come on,” Sophia coaxed. “Aren’t you curious about Shen Yi’s super-cool mom? Oh, and her dad too. He doesn’t seem like a normal person either. Anyone who can handle Shen Yi’s mom must be amazing.”
She had placed Shen Yi’s family beneath eighteen layers of romanticized filters.
“You’re the first person to call my dad amazing,” Shen Yi said with an awkward laugh.
“Take us to your house. Please!”
Chen Jiaojiao crossed her arms in refusal. “I’m not going! I’m not going! Her dad is going to kill me—”
“Hey, her dad isn’t some murderer who chops up everyone he sees. Come on. Assassins have professional ethics, you know.”
“…”
Shen Yi looked at Sophia’s eyes, bright enough to reflect the stars, then at Chen Jiaojiao’s face, which seemed to say, “My life is over.” In the end, she sighed, accepted her fate, and pulled out her phone to send a message home.
Mom, I’m bringing a few classmates home as guests today!
Wen Ya replied almost instantly.
How many? And how did they do on their final exams?
Shen Yi: “…”
After hesitating for two seconds, she replied:
I don’t know, but probably pretty well.
Wen Ya was delighted.
Then bring them all home. Mom will definitely give your friends a thorough screening!
Shen Yi: “…”
Her ominous premonition grew even stronger.
Under Sophia’s relentless pleading, the other two unwilling members of the group were forced to come along as well.
And so, the entire group headed toward Shen Yi’s home.
The door opened soon after.
Wen Ya was dressed in house clothes and appeared to have just come from the kitchen, an apron tied around her waist. She was carrying out a plate of freshly cut fruit and greeted them warmly.
“You’re all here? Come in, come in. Sit down.”
She brought out the snacks from the house and placed them on the table.
Then Wen Ya folded her hands and gazed at the girls with a gentle smile.
The living room was brightly lit. A fruit platter and several plates of snacks sat on the coffee table. Everything looked so ordinary that it could have been any classmate’s living room.
Zhao Shumin even secretly let out a sigh of relief, thinking Chen Jiaojiao had been exaggerating.
After observing the three girls for two seconds, Wen Ya quickly spoke.
“How many points did you get?” she asked Sophia with a smile.
Sophia froze. “Huh? I… I ranked twenty-third in the grade on the last monthly exam.”
“Oh, that’s very good.” Wen Ya’s tone grew a little more sincere. She turned to Chen Jiaojiao. “And you?”
Chen Jiaojiao straightened her back as if she had just been called on by an instructor. “N-Ninth.”
“Oh my, that’s even better.”
Wen Ya’s eyes curved into a smile as she pulled a sheet of paper out from beneath the coffee table.
Shen Yi took one look and nearly screamed.
It was the ranking list from the latest exam. Somehow, her mother had gotten hold of it.
Holding the list, Wen Ya checked the girls’ names and rankings one by one, adjusting her attitude toward them according to their scores.
Fortunately, all three of them had done quite well.
Only Sophia, as a foreign student, had scored somewhat lower.
“I knew it. Good children should spend time with other good children.” Wen Ya sat down and casually pulled Shen Yi into her arms, stroking her daughter’s hair over and over. “Bad children will only lead you astray and send you down the wrong path. If you ever go down that road, Mommy will lie awake all night, tossing and turning. I’ll find whoever led you astray and butcher him. You wouldn’t want Mommy to be sad, would you?”
Her voice was as gentle as if she were telling a bedtime story, but her arms tightened slightly.
Shen Yi felt as if her mother had stroked her hair so much that it was about to generate static electricity.
After saying this, Wen Ya noticed that the room had gone quiet. She turned to Shen Yi’s classmates, her gentle smile still in place.
“Children, don’t you think I’m right?”
“…Absolutely, Auntie. You really are a wonderful mother.” Chen Jiaojiao wiped away a bead of cold sweat, her voice trembling slightly.
Zhao Shumin nodded frantically beside her. Sophia finally came back to her senses and nodded along too.
Wen Ya nodded in satisfaction and got up to refill the tea.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Sophia finally dragged her gaze away from the cookies and began looking around.
“Oh, Auntie, you have so many antiques in your house.” She pointed to a glass display cabinet in the corner of the living room. It was filled with all kinds of objects, from porcelain and jewelry to ornaments and scroll paintings, a dazzling collection of treasures.
“Are these things you brought from the Shen family?” Sophia asked curiously.
She knew that the Shen family was never short of antiques.
Wen Ya returned with the teapot. The moment she heard this, her brows drew together, and her displeasure was obvious.
“Of course not. These are my things. I would never take anything from those people in the Shen family.”
Sophia failed to notice the change in Wen Ya’s mood. Her attention had already been caught by a small crown inside the display cabinet, and she leaned over to peer through the glass.
“This crown, and those jadeite ornaments—they’re so beautiful.”
“A certain heir gave me that,” Wen Ya said with a smile as she walked over and stood beside the display cabinet. “That one is a princess’s crown. Royal princesses always have plenty of decorations like these. She saw that I liked it, so she gave it to me.”
Wen Ya had spent a long time working with a royal family on an assignment in the past.
Most of them had treated her very kindly. Before she left, many of them had even given Wen Ya gifts, which she had carefully stored and displayed at home.
Sophia’s eyes sparkled.
“Wow… A gift from a princess…”
Wen Ya nodded, then added quite naturally, “Oh, right. Besides the ones I received as gifts, there are also some that my employers told me to take after I finished killing people.”
“……”
“Besides, it’d be a waste not to take them. I was planning to sell some of them after I went straight, but I found that nobody dared to buy them, so I just put them on display at home.”
Even someone as carefree as Sophia couldn’t help letting her hand tremble at that.
She turned her gaze back to the exquisite, dazzling objects in the display cabinet.
A crown, jadeite jewelry, jade bracelets, scroll paintings.
Every single one of them had once belonged to a member of royalty who had been assassinated.
Her hands trembled twice, and she silently took a step back.
These weren’t exhibits at all.
They were clearly the memoirs of a master assassin.
Wen Ya’s Proud.JPG
Zhao Shumin’s scalp prickled. She hurriedly changed the subject, sweeping her gaze across the living room until it suddenly stopped on a banner hanging on the wall.
“Hey, Xiao Yi, why does your family have a banner like that?”
She thought to herself:
A banner like this represented such a positive topic. Surely nothing could go wrong with it, right?
But then again…
A banner in an assassin’s home.
And it was for performing acts of bravery and helping others.
That sounded downright hellish.
Chen Jiaojiao also noticed the banner. It had a red background with neat golden lettering, and it hung properly beside the television wall. The words on it read:
“Three-Good Citizen Award for Bravery and Heroism”
She let out two awkward laughs. “Wow, could this be because Uncle Shen was rewarded for helping an old lady cross the street?”
Shen Yi often said that her father liked doing good deeds, and Chen Jiaojiao had always been only half-convinced.
But after seeing the award for bravery and heroism, she couldn’t help wondering:
Could she really have misunderstood Shen Sixing?
Even assassins performed acts of bravery and helped others?
“This…” Shen Yi’s expression turned complicated.
“That’s a long story.”
It all began on a chaotic night.
When Shen Yi was nine years old, she failed an exam. After returning home, she kept her report card tucked in her pocket, too guilty and nervous to take it out.
At the time, she also loved running around outside with Shen Xun.
So Wen Ya simply decided to punish both children together.
She brought out the feather duster she hadn’t used in ages and decided to give the two of them a proper childhood.
Shen Ruxu was the sort who liked protecting his younger siblings. When he came home and saw Wen Ya looking ready to kill someone, he hurriedly tried to cover for the two little ones.
At the time, he even grinned and attempted to reason with his mother.
Unfortunately, Wen Ya pinned him to the floor in three moves.
The boy’s face was pressed against the floor, leaving him in a completely helpless and miserable state.
He sobbed, “Xiao Yi, Xiao Xun, it looks like relying on your big brother isn’t going to help.”
“Shen Ruxu, you’re not my brother anymore! You’re completely useless!” Shen Yi clutched the stair railing in horror, shouting as she scrambled upward.
Shen Xun poked his head out from the second floor. He glanced at his second brother, who was being pinned to the floor, and decisively declared, “You’re fired.”
“If I’m not your brother, then what am I?” Shen Ruxu tilted his head, his voice stretching out in utter despair.
“An enemy of the Shen family.” After saying that, Shen Xun withdrew his head.
“……”
Seeing that their capable second brother was of no use, the two children began scrambling wildly up and down the stairs like circus performers.
Shen Yi slid down the stair railing, while Shen Xun climbed from the second-floor hallway over to the landing. The two of them darted around the house like a pair of frightened monkeys.
Wen Ya was furious. Clutching the feather duster, she looked as though she wanted to beat these two disgraceful descendants of the Shen family to death.
As luck would have it, the family next door had decided to make a move.
After all, Shen Yi’s family looked quite wealthy.
Luxury cars often stopped outside their home, and besides, there wasn’t a poor person in the entire neighborhood.
Neighbors were usually the easiest targets.
The couple next door had committed quite a few crimes in the past. Shen Sixing had always felt that something was wrong with them, but he had been too lazy to deal with it. After all, the two families had minded their own business and left each other alone.
However, the murderous couple urgently needed money.
After moving into this upscale neighborhood, they had also spent a long time watching the surrounding residents.
In the end, they decided to pull off one last big job.
They chose Shen Yi’s family, who appeared to be the most harmless.
After all, the man of the house looked soft and weak, the woman spoke gently, and the whole family seemed to consist of the elderly, the young, and the infirm. They were practically the perfect targets.
Knock, knock, knock.
Someone knocked on the door.
Wen Ya had no intention of opening it.
She was really, truly irritated.
Why?
Why was not one of her children willing to study properly? What was so bad about school?
When she was young, she hadn’t even had the money to attend school. And now that they had such good conditions, not a single one of them liked studying.
“Who is it?” Shen Sixing didn’t want to get dragged into this parenting crisis.
He abandoned his usual lazy manner, hurriedly stood up, and went to open the door.
“It’s the property management office. Someone downstairs reported that your home is leaking, so we came to take a look.” A man’s voice came from outside.
Shen Sixing raised an eyebrow, his expression turning subtle, and opened the door.
The moment it opened, he saw the couple standing outside with weapons in their hands and grim expressions on their faces.
Shen Sixing stared at the couple’s unfriendly faces—the sort that clearly belonged to people ready to kill and rob at any moment. After pretending to think for two seconds, he sighed.
“I’m sorry, but we’re in the middle of educating our children. Could you come back tomorrow?”
He clasped his hands together and pleaded pitifully. “Today really isn’t a good time.”
Even if the sky were falling, they would have to wait until his wife finished disciplining the children.
In their household, even murderers didn’t have the privilege of attacking first.
The couple was stunned.
They had been in this line of work for a long time, but this was the first time they had ever encountered a situation like this.
Instead of being afraid, the man had blocked the doorway and earnestly negotiated with them about whether they could come back tomorrow.
“What do you think?” the man sneered, then kicked the door open and forced his way inside.
They had never intended to leave any survivors today.
Bang!
The noise of the door being smashed open instantly silenced the lively living room.
Wen Ya stopped in the middle of chasing the children, still clutching the feather duster in her hand.
Shen Yi and Shen Xun stopped running too. The two little ones clung to the stair railing and poked their heads out together to look downstairs.
“Hey.” Shen Yi’s eyes lit up, and she let out a tiny cheer. “Looks like we don’t have to get beaten today.”
Shen Xun was confused. “Why not?”
“You idiot! Because someone’s about to take the beating for us!”
Shen Ruxu also got up from the floor. His earlier dejection vanished as he dusted himself off and turned around with a faintly amused smile.
When he saw the couple holding weapons, he covered his mouth and feigned mild surprise.
“Oh? Are you planning to kill us?”
Wen Ya frowned, immediately turned around, and retrieved a kitchen knife from the kitchen.
She still had the feather duster clutched in one hand, while the other held the kitchen knife. Her hair was slightly disheveled, and her eyes were as cold as ice.
“I’m disciplining my children. What did you come in here for?”
The couple: “……”
They looked at the kitchen knife in Wen Ya’s hand, as well as Shen Sixing, who stood blocking the doorway with an amused smile.
They suddenly had a very bad feeling.
It seemed they had run into a tough crowd.
And this family appeared to be even more hostile than they were.
Before the two of them even had time to swing their knives, Wen Ya, consumed by rage, beat them into two human “folding phones” on the spot, leaving them unable to get back up.
At the time, Wen Ya was utterly furious. She had already raised her knife and was about to bring it down when Shen Sixing pulled her back into a tight embrace.
He gently urged her, “Calm down. I don’t want to bury bodies in our yard, and disposing of them would be such a hassle, darling. Let’s just take them to the police station.”
Killing someone was no easy matter.
Everyone had to go through the complicated process of disposing of the body afterward.
And for a lazy man like Shen Sixing, dealing with the police was preferable to traveling all the way out to the countryside—or carrying out the laborious task of burying a body in the yard.
Shen Yi quickly ran downstairs, crouched beside the unconscious couple, and poked them both.
The girl said softly, “What bad luck. Talk about an unlucky year.”
They had arrived just when Mom was at her most furious. Not getting themselves killed was truly a stroke of luck.
And so, the story came to an end—
The Shen family received a silk banner.
It had been jointly presented by the neighborhood committee and the local police station.
At the time, Wen Ya wore a stiff expression and maintained an elegant smile as she simply accepted the award for “Model Citizen, Courageous Intervention, and Inspiring Deeds.”
Shen Sixing even took a photograph to commemorate the occasion.
“…Your family’s life is really something else,” Zhao Shumin said after hearing the whole story, finally managing to get the words out.
Chen Jiaojiao covered her face and slowly collapsed back onto the sofa, her worldview once again shattered by this family.
Sophia, however, suddenly lit up. She moved closer to Wen Ya and asked, “Auntie, do you take apprentices? You know, the kind you teach a few self-defense moves to…”
Wen Ya glanced down at her, then at her ranking in the class. Smiling, she gently pushed the girl’s head away.
“Of course, sweetheart. But you’ll have to make it into the top ten in your grade first.”
She smiled sweetly. “Only students who are outstanding enough get to be friends with my children.”
Sophia: “…”
