Bo Wang met her gaze with a silence so heavy it felt like a physical weight.
“First of all,” Lu Zhiling continued, her voice possessing a calm that bordered on cruelty, “this is about you. You’ve never believed the world holds any goodness. With a mindset that bleak, I truly worry about how much longer you can keep going.”
She didn’t soften the blow. “Secondly, no one can stay hidden in the shadows forever. Sooner or later, you will trip. It’s inevitable.”
Bo Wang understood her meaning instantly. A mocking, jagged smile curled his lips. “So, the old lady didn’t summon you just to help her pack her bags, did she?” He let out a sharp, cynical breath. “She couldn’t handle the mess herself, so she sent you to do her bidding? She’s old and blind, but what’s your excuse? Do you even know your own limits?”
He stood up, the smile vanishing into a mask of icy composure. “If I actually spent my life worrying about things like ‘tripping’ in the dark,” he said, his voice dropping to a lethal chill, “I, Bo Wang, would have been reincarnated eight hundred times by now.”
Lu Zhiling stood as well, her posture unyielding. “If someone has never touched the light,” she said quietly, “how could they possibly know that heat has the power to burn?”
“You think I don’t dare?” Bo Wang’s eyes darkened, a predatory glint flickering in the depths.
“Yes,” Lu Zhiling answered without a second of hesitation. “You’re afraid.” She straightened her back, each word slicing through the last layer of his armor. “That’s why you stay inside your comfort zone—the violence, the casinos, the darkness. You’re terrified to step out. But the truth is, you don’t even like it there. If you did, you wouldn’t be so lost that you can’t tell if you’re living in heaven or hell.”
She saw it in him: he didn’t know if death would be a relief or an escape. He lived as if he were already a ruin, waiting for the wind to knock him over.
Anger flared in Bo Wang’s expression, a raw, volatile heat. Seeing the violence gathering in his eyes, Lu Zhiling felt her body stiffen. This is it, she thought. The edge.
Driven by a desperate instinct, she took a breath and threw herself into his arms. She wrapped her hands around his waist, clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in a storm. Her voice lost its sharp edge, turning soft and pleading. “Bo Wang… let me try with you, alright? You’re always so bored. Just think of it as me keeping you company—a way to pass the time.”
The rage that had been boiling toward his head stalled.
In the next heartbeat, Bo Wang’s hand clamped around her wrist like a vice. He dragged her to the bed and pinned her down, his heavy frame caging her. His hand slid beneath the hem of her clothes, his palm searing against her waist. His breath was a hot, dangerous brand against her ear.
“Passing the time?” he murmured darkly, the vibration of his voice rattling her bones. “Doing it until you die is much more interesting. Want to try?”
Lu Zhiling froze. She could feel it—he wasn’t being playful. He was utterly, dangerously furious. Seeing her terror, Bo Wang let out a hollow, cold laugh. “Lu Zhiling, so this is all the courage you have.”
He didn’t touch her again. He straightened his clothes, turned, and walked out without a single backward glance.
Only when the door clicked shut did Lu Zhiling sit up, her back drenched in cold sweat. She let out a long, shaky breath. She had bragged too much to the Matriarch; she had played a hand she didn’t know how to win.
The next day, the atmosphere in the hospital was thick with the scent of antiseptic and unvoiced grief. Lu Zhiling sat by Jiang Fusheng’s bed, focus intent on peeling an apple.
Jiang Fusheng had been weeping on and off since she woke. “Uncle Zhang was such a good soul… how could he be so foolish? I don’t know if it was Madam You or Madam Xia, but they are both monsters. They hurt you, and they destroyed him…”
“Neither of those women has a ‘simple heart’ (bù xiāng xìn, a term implying they are deeply scheming and treacherous),” Lu Zhiling said calmly. She finished her task and handed the fruit over. “Do you want it?”
Jiang Fusheng wiped her eyes and looked down, only to see an apple core. Lu Zhiling had shaved the fruit down so aggressively that only the middle remained. She almost choked on a sob. Silently, she pushed Lu Zhiling’s hand away and grabbed a fresh apple. “I’ll… I’ll peel one for you instead.”
Lu Zhiling looked at the tiny, jujube-sized remains of her apple and felt a wave of helplessness. She had been raised to lead, to strategize, to survive—but she had never been taught the quiet, domestic grace of daily chores.
“Miss,” Feng Zhen said from across the bed, his face etched with worry. “Are you really going to stay and fight those Bo family women? They eat people without spitting out the bones (chī rén bù tǔ gǔ tóu, a common idiom for ruthlessly cruel people). Please, let’s just leave.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Lu Zhiling said, her stubbornness surfacing like a reef at low tide.
“But you couldn’t persuade Bo Wang,” Feng Zhen countered. “You failed at the very first step.”
It was the truth. Without Bo Wang’s strength to back her, she was a queen without an army. But just as she began to map out a new strategy, her phone buzzed. It was a message from Ding Yujun.
“Zhiling, if Yu Yunfei and Xia Meiqing don’t return soon, Zheng Rong will donate the Qi Xue inheritance (the ancestral wealth of the Bo line). The internal struggle will turn bloody. Please, try one more time.”
An address followed—Bo Wang’s current coordinates. If she didn’t secure him, the Lu family’s ancestral home in Jiangnan would be sold off, and she and her child would be hunted until there was nothing left.
Lu Zhiling bit her lip and stood up. “I’m going out.”
Bo Wang had fled the city for the ocean.
Under the scorching sun, Lu Zhiling’s speedboat cut through the salt spray toward a massive white yacht. Even from a distance, the sound of a hǎitān pàiduì (a wild beach-style party) reached her—a cacophony of bass and drunken laughter.
Men and women in minimal clothing were lounging everywhere, lost in a haze of alcohol and public displays of affection. As the speedboat pulled alongside, a man in floral trunks peered down at her, his eyes roaming her conservative dress with predatory interest. “A classy beauty. Who invited you? You’re dressed like you’re going to a funeral. Want me to find you a bikini?”
“I’m looking for Bo Wang,” she said, her voice like ice.
The man’s bravado vanished. He hurried to find Ji Jing, Bo Wang’s close associate. Moments later, Ji Jing appeared at the railing. “Boss Lu? What are you doing here?”
“I need Bo Wang.”
“Brother Wang is sleeping. Come back another day,” Ji Jing said with a polite but firm smile.
Lu Zhiling knew better. Bo Wang wasn’t sleeping; he was refusing her. Without a word, she reached out and grabbed the yacht’s lower railing. The two vessels surged and dipped on the deep blue swells.
“Boss Lu, what are you doing?!” Ji Jing shouted, leaning over.
“Let me on,” she said, her gaze unwavering. “I’m pregnant. You wouldn’t want me to cause a scene or get hurt at your party, would you?”
Ji Jing nearly choked on his drink. He scrambled to help her up. “Careful! Don’t fall!”
Once on deck, Lu Zhiling ignored the judgmental stares of the partygoers. Ji Jing followed her, his head spinning. “Pregnant? Whose?”
“My husband’s.” “How long?” “Two months.”
Ji Jing felt like he was about to combust from the scandal.
The interior of the yacht was dim, smelling of expensive cigars and heavy liquor. Lu Zhiling pushed through the crowd until she found him. Bo Wang was sprawled on a sofa, looking like a fallen deity. His collar was open, his features sharp and dangerous even in repose. A woman was leaning over him, tenderly draping a blanket across his chest.
“Who are you?” the woman snapped, sensing a threat.
“And who are you?” Lu Zhiling replied with a chilling indifference.
Ji Jing chased the woman away and turned to Lu Zhiling. “Boss Lu, look… this circle is just for fun. People here don’t get ‘attached’ (shàng xīn). Don’t take it seriously.”
Lu Zhiling didn’t respond. She sat down, put in her earplugs to drown out the noise, and simply waited.
A woman in a daisy-patterned bikini—clearly emboldened by the alcohol—approached the sleeping Bo Wang. She pulled out a tube of lipstick, drew a crimson heart on his white collar, and leaned down to kiss him.
Bo Wang’s eyes snapped open.
In a blur of motion, he lunged. He grabbed the woman’s hair and slammed her head directly into a large ice bucket on the table.
The room exploded into a deafening silence. There was blood, the sound of shattering ice, and the woman’s muffled screams of terror. Bo Wang looked up, his eyes wild and dark, and saw Lu Zhiling standing there.
She didn’t flinch. She walked over, picked up a bottle of high-proof vodka, poured it onto a clean tissue, and began to gently wipe the lipstick stain from his collar. Her hands were steady.
“Can we talk now?” she asked softly.
Bo Wang smirked, a cruel, beautiful expression. “Lu Zhiling, you’ve certainly grown some backbone.”
“Can’t you just reconsider?”
Bo Wang looked at the ice scattered across the floor, then back at her. “Walk across it,” he said, his voice lazy and lethal. “Do that, and I’ll consider it.”
She shook her head, her hand moving to her midsection. “I told you. I’m pregnant.”
His gaze turned to stone. “And who gave you the right to refuse me?”
Before she could speak, rough hands grabbed her shoulders. Her shoes were stripped off. Around them, the crowd began to cheer, sensing a new, more sadistic kind of entertainment. Bo Wang watched with total indifference, his heart a fortress she couldn’t breach.
Lu Zhiling’s heart sank. She realized with a cold thud in her chest that she had made the ultimate mistake: she had overestimated her worth to a man who had been raised in a cage.