A handful of wealthy bosses were holding a private tea party and already trying to decide where a living human being would go, who would own him, and whether he would live or die.
Ling He, trapped in the pool and beset by one calamity after another, had his black hair swept across the surface by the flying spray. When he drew in his chin, his long phoenix eyes slanted upward at the corners. The slight ripples reflected shifting, fish-scale patterns of light, which played in turn across his translucent, bone-china features, lending his handsome face an aura both mysterious and formidable. Ling He stared at Watanabe, his lips moving lightly with a mocking smile still upon them. “You old scumbag, haven’t you always desperately wanted to kill me? Wanted to peel off my skin and pull out my tendons?
“Haven’t you always wanted to chop off my hands, cut off my feet, hack me into eight pieces, pickle me in a wine vat, and turn me into human swine to vent your hatred?”
Elio’s Notes: “Human swine” is a historical term for a person subjected to extreme mutilation as punishment, famously associated with Empress Lü’s treatment of Consort Qi in early Han history.
Everyone around them fell silent and held their breath, listening to Ling He speak slowly and lightly despite the cruelty of his words, uncertain what exactly he intended to say.
Ling He’s arrogance was astonishing. “Even turning me into human swine wouldn’t be enough. I’d still have this mouth.
“You old coffin-board, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid I’ll say?
“Are you afraid I’ll say… why that adoptive mother of yours—the one you were inseparably intimate with, rubbing temples and whispering together, who even nursed you—became depressed and jumped from a building? Or why your noble, benevolent stepfather, who worked diligently all his life, suddenly lost everything at the end of his life, suffered a stroke, and never got back out of bed?”
Ling He’s laughter echoed beneath the glass ceiling. He seemed to be telling the vilest joke imaginable, yet his voice was melodious and pleasant, not frightening at all, and his expression remained perfectly amiable, doing nothing whatsoever to diminish his looks.
Watanabe Yangshan inexplicably began to tremble, his large belly quivering. “Poisonous snake… poisonous snake….”
A poisonous snake spat venom capable of burning the faces of everyone around it. Watanabe Yangshan’s fingers curled like hooks. He must have desperately wanted to find something to cover Young Master Ling’s mouth, only to realize that he himself had hung Ling He in the middle of the fountain pool. If he wanted to gag him, he would have to jump into the pool and swim over. He couldn’t reach him.
You Haodong and Jian Mingjue were already completely engrossed. Watanabe Yangshan had originally been from the mainland and had only gone off to make a living in the island nation a little more than ten years ago. Shamelessly, he had attached himself to Watanabe Masaharu and his wife and served them despite not being all that different from them in age, even calling them Father and Mother. How could his adoptive mother have nursed him?
Yan Xiaodao was already prepared. He stood up and began rolling up his sleeves, saying with complete seriousness, “Mr. Watanabe, don’t worry. I’ll help you shut his mouth.”
Watanabe Yangshan had never imagined that Ling He not only schemed for his family’s property and destroyed his wealth, but also knew these secrets that could never be spoken of before outsiders. He knew too much. This man could not be allowed to show his face.
It happened to be feeding time in the aquarium, and the professional keepers were feeding the marine animals.
Watanabe Yangshan’s face flushed crimson. Suddenly beside himself with rage, he ordered a keeper, “Throw that stingray in there! Poison him!”
“Wait!”
“Don’t!”
“No!”
Three voices of protest came from three directions at once. You Haodong, Second Jian, and Yan Xiaodao almost simultaneously stood at the pool’s edge to stop him. Even the handsome celebrity who had spent the entire evening calmly keeping himself out of it rose nervously and grabbed Watanabe Yangshan’s sleeve, trying to persuade him. Don’t let somebody die here.
“No, forget the stingray. Put that shark in! Let it bite him to death!!”
The aquarium’s large tank contained a juvenile mako shark a little over a meter long. It looked like an adorable baby shark and was not yet fully grown. If it really grew to adulthood, it would be the sort of bloodthirsty, man-eating great white shark seen in movies. It was exactly the kind of exotic pet rich people kept when they were determined to court disaster.
The keeper did not obey immediately. This was no joke, and he froze where he stood.
If the young shark were really released into the pool, following the scent of human flesh, once those teeth made contact, Young Master Ling would be gnawed down to a skeleton.
Watanabe Yangshan rushed forward, grabbed an iron net, and laboriously scooped up the young shark himself. Using a gun outright would, after all, make it a criminal case. But if someone on an island “accidentally” died in a shark attack, what could anyone say?
Freed from the confines of its narrow tank, the young shark flexed its glossy, slick skin in the air and swung its tail with obvious delight. The iron net could no longer hold it. With a graceful sweep of its tail like a dragon, the shark leapt toward the large fountain pool!
Jian Mingjue cried out loudly, “Aiya!” He genuinely could not bear to watch such a beautiful man get fed alive to a shark.
The person beside Jian Mingjue casually snatched a teacup from the low table and struck in the blink of an eye. The tiny cup seemed to grow eyes of its own as it flew straight toward the shark’s broad forehead. With the force of a bullet, just as the shark leapt toward the water, it struck with a bang….
Ling He in the pool watched Yan Xiaodao’s entire fierce sequence of movements without expression.
The young shark and the delicate little teacup fell into the water together.
The baby shark went limp and fainted. There was no wound on its forehead and no blood; it simply lay unconscious on the bottom of the pool.
You Haodong secretly let out a breath of relief and mocked, “Every arrow missed the target. That must have been hard on you, Mr. Yan. Missing is harder than hitting, isn’t it?”
Yan Xiaodao shrugged and said innocently, “That’s why they say every trade is its own mountain.”
Watanabe Yangshan’s face was still crimson.
You Haodong couldn’t swallow his irritation. He patted Watanabe on the shoulder. “Mr. Watanabe, you’d better pray your pet doesn’t wake up again in the water. Next time, what goes into its head will be a throwing knife.”
Yan Xiaodao strolled back to his seat, snapped his fingers, and restarted the conversation. “Mr. Ling, what were you trying to say just now? I’m very interested. Go on.”
Having escaped the shark’s jaws, Ling He neither changed expression nor seemed short of breath. He wore a smile, but there was nothing friendly about it. “Interested in what? How Watanabe Masaharu had his stroke, or why his wife jumped from a building? Ha ha ha ha. What does their family’s sordid violation of human decency have to do with me? The world is full of brainless fools like you who believe whatever they hear. You people are experts at pinning all these tedious, filthy scandals on somebody else so you can make yourselves look nobly born, pure, and incorruptible, as though there isn’t a single louse hidden beneath your clothes.”
You Haodong was curious too. “If you’ve got something to say, let’s hear it.”
Ling He tossed his wet hair back with a lift of his face. A few strands splashed droplets across his features, making him appear even more darkly beautiful, damp and brooding. “Then you should ask Mr. Watanabe Yangshan standing beside you, neither Chinese nor foreign, neither man nor ghost. Beneath that human skin of fawning flattery, how did he kowtow and cling to Watanabe Masaharu’s thigh back then, refuse to leave his side, win his trust, plot to seize his family fortune—and seduce his own adoptive mother, Madam Watanabe?”
The whites of Watanabe Yangshan’s eyes threaded with red. “You’re slandering me!”
“Yue Yangshan!!” Ling He suddenly erupted. The entire pool of blue-green water seemed to whirl into a vast vortex with that single shout, sweeping away every attempt Watanabe Yangshan might have made to resist or argue. “You hypocritical, treacherous, scheming, sick pervert with bizarre tastes since you were a teenager—what are you pretending to be, some dignified gentleman as steady as deep waters and towering mountains? Aren’t you ashamed? Haven’t you always had a special taste for married women over forty? You committed adultery with your adoptive mother, Madam Watanabe, and at her age she actually became pregnant. Was that child supposed to belong to Watanabe Masaharu, who’d long since been impotent from penile cancer? The child was born unhealthy and became intellectually disabled and unable to speak. You publicly called him your younger brother, but what is he really to you? Do you dare admit it? Do you dare admit that he was the retribution for your own sins?”
Ling He’s breathing became even more rapid with the intensity of his emotions, and his face seemed to shine. The hall’s multicolored glass ceiling truly had been cleverly designed. At that moment, every colored light revolving outside gathered its beams upon his face, making him dazzling.
“Yue Yangshan, someone like you still dares talk about loyalty, trustworthiness, benevolence, and righteousness? You changed your name and surname and willingly crawled beneath an old Japanese devil’s knees, flattering him like a little Japanese devil. That was no different from betraying your country and defecting to the enemy—you are disloyal to your own people. You abandoned your home for profit, forgot your roots, and even refused to acknowledge your own father and mother—you are unfilial. You chase profit, attach yourself to the powerful, then plot to steal their family property—you are without benevolence. You defiled another man’s wife, drove your stepfather into a paralyzing stroke, then seized his nest for yourself—you are without righteousness. You trampled every human bond and committed something so appalling it beggars belief—you are shameless and filthy. A worthless bastard as disloyal, unfilial, heartless, unrighteous, shameless, and filthy as you still has enough layers of skin left on his face to accuse me of plotting against you? What gentleman would leave ill-gotten wealth untouched? Yesterday I took your dirty fortune; today I’ll strip off this hypocritical gentleman’s human skin too. You’ve turned yourself into one enormous, all-caps turtle bastard and still have the nerve to humiliate yourself in front of this many people. Why don’t you crawl out of here, gouge out both your eyes, sever the tendons in your hands and feet, throw yourself into the shark pool, and finish yourself off? You foul people’s mouths and dirty their eyes just by existing. If you have even the last shred of shame left, changing your name and surname was the right thing to do. A man like you—when you crawled out of your mother’s womb, did you ever deserve the surname Yue?!”
The entire hall fell utterly silent. Every person’s suspended breathing could almost be heard.
Liang Youhui had actually sent many more messages, but Yan Xiaodao had long since forgotten him somewhere beyond the nine heavens. His eyes were fixed blankly on Young Master Ling in the pool. That final sentence in particular swept beautifully across his eardrums and struck straight into his heart, almost making him want to slap the table and cheer. Now that was a proper cursing.
“Heh… heh-heh-heh…” A full minute of silence passed before the talkative old gossip Jian Mingjue became the first to break it. Beside Yan Xiaodao, he said lightly, “Wonderful… what a fascinating person. He’s got bite, he’s got flavor…. Cutting off his hands and feet would really be such a waste….”
You Haodong had apparently found the whole thing fascinating too. There was juicy family scandal right in front of him; why wouldn’t he watch? A rare, openly contemptuous sneer appeared on his usually inscrutable face as he glanced toward Watanabe Yangshan.
As for the celebrity Watanabe had hired to accompany them, he lowered his eyes with an expression that pretended he could not understand mainland Mandarin at all. He looked profoundly awkward.
Ling He had just delivered an enormous speech and had choked on several mouthfuls of water midway through without stopping. Now all the water he had accumulated burst from his nose and mouth at once, and he began coughing uncontrollably. He seemed to be enduring enormous physical pain, yet the blatant satisfaction of having succeeded burned brightly in his eyes.
It was as though he had already anticipated that after saying all of that, there was no chance he would die tonight.
That smile was genuinely poisonous. One look at it seemed to burn a bright afterimage into the retina, impossible to forget.
His eyelashes were covered in droplets, his expression dreamlike and almost demonic, the tails of his eyes and the peaks of his brows like green mountains veiled in mist and rain.
And his voice was low and melodious rather than shrill or grating. Even when cursing someone, he spoke unhurriedly and in perfectly formed sentences, drawing anyone who listened deeper and deeper in….
Yan Xiaodao had never before imagined that there was anything unnatural about describing a man’s appearance with the word “beautiful.”
He had never studied men much. At most, he could tell that some were tall and strong, others short and ugly; some carried themselves elegantly and were easy to like, while others had a sleazy air that made people dislike them. There truly were not many men capable of winning his admiration. Take the young celebrity sitting nearby, for instance. Off the screen and seen in person, he was nothing extraordinary. A grown man who had no trouble making a living yet willingly carried himself with such cheap, servile humility in order to ingratiate himself with the rich and powerful, living in a way that did not resemble a man at all—someone like that could not move Yan Xiaodao in the slightest.
Today, inside the casino hotel on Yilu Island, for the first time in his life, Yan Xiaodao felt that four words could describe the Young Master Ling before him.
Peerless, city-toppling beauty.
Whether he could truly topple a city remained to be seen—that would be a rather grand spectacle. But this beautiful snake had clearly angered the fake Japanese bastard so badly that Watanabe was about to cough up his lungs and intestines.
Watanabe Yangshan’s body, bloated with wine, lust, wealth, and greed, collapsed back onto the sofa. His head tipped backward, his face rapidly turning pale as sweat soaked through his suit. The attendants and bodyguards beside him flew into a panic, stuffing fast-acting heart pills into his mouth.
Nobody else present cared about the Watanabe family’s sordid drama, but after receiving a free performance of somebody else’s ugly family scandal, none of them was about to refuse the chance to amuse themselves at another person’s expense.
“Every villain meets a worse villain eventually. Heh-heh-heh….” Jian Mingjue fiddled with the red-jade thumb ring on his thumb, his chin trembling.
“Mr. Watanabe looks extremely unwell. He should rest tonight. Whatever business we have can wait until tomorrow.” You Haodong wanted to buy time as well.
“Don’t leave the man drowning in the pool. If he dies, there’ll be no show left to watch. Get him out.” Yan Xiaodao suddenly took charge as though he were the host, ordering Watanabe’s attendants to haul Young Master Ling out of the fountain pool.
The two iron chains were removed from the sea gods’ tridents. Chains still bound Ling He’s wrists. With his hands and feet spread apart, he was dragged awkwardly onto dry ground and tossed there like a torn rag. His long-limbed body took up a conspicuous amount of space beside the pool.
Ling He kept his eyes open, a faint, indifferent smile on his lips. With a turn of his tongue, he flicked aside a strand of hair clinging to the corner of his mouth.
Water continued running from around his feet back toward the pool. The little mako shark had woken up as well and began swimming around the large pool with a thoroughly confused expression.
Before anyone else could react, Yan Xiaodao continued, “Hurry and get Mr. Watanabe to a hospital. If there isn’t one on the island, use a helicopter and send him to the emergency center on the neighboring island. Mr. Watanabe clearly isn’t in any condition to take care of things here. Why don’t I take Mr. Ling back with me for now and keep an eye on him? I won’t let him escape.”
As he spoke, Yan Xiaodao strode forward without the slightest hesitation and grabbed Ling He by one shoulder.
All Yan Xiaodao was thinking about now was getting this man out of this trouble-ridden place as quickly as possible. Whether it was an object or a living person, once something landed in his palm, nobody else had the ability to pry open his five fingers and snatch it away.
Ling He’s brow furrowed sharply when his shoulder was lifted. Caught unprepared, the grip genuinely hurt. It felt as though a steel claw had forcibly hauled his shoulder upward while his waist and lower body still hung powerless on the ground, almost pulling him apart at the middle. What the hell were this Mr. Yan’s hands made of?
“Wait—what exactly are you doing?” The one who spoke was You Haodong, staring at Yan Xiaodao in disbelief. “Mr. Yan, you’re already in such a hurry to take him away? Aren’t you going to discuss it with the rest of us?”
Yan Xiao, you think you can fish in troubled waters and simply walk off with the man? Do you think I, You Haodong, am invisible?
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