The man laid Shen Yanzhou down onto the bedroom bed. Just as he was about to rise, his wrist was suddenly gripped tightly by a scalding, slender hand.
Shen Yanzhou was sunk deep into the velvet pillows, his shirt loose and exposing a large expanse of his ice-white chest. He curled his lips into a smile—one carrying a hint of drunken innocence mixed with an innate, natural arrogance.
“Thirty Million, I’m thirsty.” Shen Yanzhou tilted his head slightly, his damp red lips pressing into a dissatisfied pout. His fingertips lazily tapped the air toward the man’s nose. “I want to drink warm water, add honey… make it sweet.”
The man stared at his damp lips, his voice raspy. “Yes, Master.”
When the warm water was delivered to his lips, Shen Yanzhou refused to extend his hands to take it. He took two sips directly from the man’s hand, water droplets sliding down the corner of his mouth, soaking his collar. Frowning with distaste, he reached up to blindly tear open his shirt buttons, using a bare foot to kick against the man’s abdominal muscles.
“Thirty Million, I want to take a bath. Go draw the water.”
By the time the man returned from drawing the water, an impatient Shen Yanzhou had already begun tearing at his own clothing. His fingers refused to cooperate, leaving things increasingly tangled; ultimately, he gave up entirely, half-sitting on the bed’s edge as his suit trousers slid loosely to his ankles, exposing long, ramrod-straight legs.
Too white.
The result of years of keeping out of the sun and living in total luxury, it was a paleness that verged on the sickly. The lines were impossibly straight, tapering from the calf down to the ankle into an exceptionally beautiful, fragile curve. His kneecaps were rounded and exquisite, flushing with a pitiable, thin pink from catching a chill.
“What are you dazing for?” Shen Yanzhou tilted his head slightly, his silver hair brushing against his flushed, liquor-warmed cheek. “Come here, carry me to the bath.”
“Yes, Master.” The man hoisted him up and placed him into the bathtub.
The warm water instantly enveloped his entire body, and Shen Yanzhou let out a comfortable sigh. His legs beneath the surface rapidly turned red from the hot water a white-bleeding-into-red hue, like a perfectly ripe peach that looked as if one could squeeze water out with just a little force.
The man’s gaze grew increasingly sticky and heavy.
“Why haven’t you moved yet?” Shen Yanzhou half-opened his eyes, hooking his finger through the hazy intoxication as he said with a touch of rage, “Come here and help me wash my hair. This hair gel is incredibly sticky, making my scalp throb.”
The man pulled up a low stool to sit behind the tub.
Those hands of his were entirely covered in old blade scars, and his web space carried thick calluses left behind by years of boxing. Yet the moment they settled onto that silver hair, they were impossibly steady. His fingertips passed through the strands, applying pressure with absolute precision, sending waves of tingling numbness across Shen Yanzhou’s scalp and relaxing his tightly strung nerves.
As the steam rose, his consciousness blurred, drifting back twenty years to a similar rainy, thunderous night on that yacht before it sank. His mother had also washed his hair like this, while the waves outside slammed against the hull and Anita Mui’s Years Flow By rasped softly from the radio.
A massive wave of emptiness slammed over him like a tsunami, piercingly cold.
“Thirty Million,” Shen Yanzhou suddenly spoke, staring at the water droplets on the ceiling. “Are you a dog by nature? How do you know how to do everything?”
“You can cook sampan congee, tend to those delicate roses, and even a task like washing hair is so natural to you?” His tone was flat. “Practiced this before?”
The hands behind him didn’t stop, the fine foam popping softly.
“To stay alive.”
The man’s voice was completely steady, carrying a detachment born of surviving life and death. “In a place where people are eaten alive, if you don’t learn to be clever, if you don’t learn how to do everything, you would have rotted through in a sewer long ago.”
Shen Yanzhou opened his eyes, leaning back slightly to look at the man upside down.
It was a strange angle. The man’s jawline was as sharp as a blade’s edge, his brow bone prominent, and his eye sockets deep. Even while performing a servant’s task, the wildness buried in his bones couldn’t be hidden.
Too familiar. This sense of familiarity left his heart hammering with panic.
“Have we…” Shen Yanzhou stared into his eyes. “…met before?”
“Why is it that you know exactly what temperature I want my bathwater to be?”
The movement of the man’s hands paused. Facing Shen Yanzhou’s scrutinizing gaze, the corners of his mouth suddenly hitched into a smile.
“Master truly knows how to joke.”
“I was born on the worst street of the Kowloon Walled City a place where even the sunlight can’t pierce. Every day I opened my eyes, it was to dodge loan sharks and scramble for spoiled rice. The air was entirely filled with the scent of mold and the stench of dead rats.” He lowered his eyes. “How could a gutter rat like me ever have the opportunity to meet a master living in the clouds?”
Shen Yanzhou stared at him for a long moment. “True.”
Someone emerging from that kind of hellhole would indeed do anything and learn anything just to get a bite of food.
“Since you stayed inside there for so long,” Shen Yanzhou’s gaze cut through the dense steam, seamlessly locking onto the man’s face, “that place was a melting pot of dragons and snakes. There must have been plenty of eccentrics, right?”
“Eccentrics?” The man didn’t stop his hands, letting out a chuckle. “The Walled City was entirely filled with eccentrics. There was a mad monk who locked himself in a cage to chant sutras, and a butcher who loved wearing women’s clothing to perform opera. Which type does Master refer to?”
“Did you ever see a man… whose left hand only had three fingers?”
“People on the streets called him Limping Ho.”
The fingers massaging his scalp executed an exceptionally minute pause. Yet the man’s breathing frequency didn’t alter in the slightest. He quickly adopted an expression of blank recollection, the movement of his hands returning to normal.
“Inside the Walled City, people missing arms or legs are a dime a dozen. People getting their fingers chopped off for losing bets, or hands severed from fights you could grab a handful anywhere.”
“But that name, I’ve never heard it.”
Shen Yanzhou scrutinized his eyes there was no dodging, no panic.
“Forget it.” He hid the disappointment in his eyes. “The water is getting cold. Carry me to bed.”
“Yes.” The man grabbed a large bath towel, wrapping Shen Yanzhou within it. Moving gently, he carried him out of the bathroom and placed him onto the soft, massive bed. He pulled the silk duvet over him, tucking the edges tightly, leaving not a single gap.
Soon, the residual force of the alcohol surged like a receding tide, and he plunged into a bottomless dreamscape.
Blinding lightning, his mother’s screams torn apart by the gale, briny sea water flooding his lungs, and that deformed left hand with only three fingers raising a gun in the torrential rain.
Bang! Scalding blood exploded within the freezing sea water, brilliantly red.
“Save me…” he roared inside the silent deep sea, the extreme cold instantly seizing his heart.
“Cold, so cold.”
Someone… save me…
Just as he was on the verge of suffocating to death, another savage force brutally shattered the dreamscape—
A scalding heat source forced its way in. The person possessed a powerful physique and a body as scorching as lava. Like a fierce beast of the deep sea, he drove away the freezing dead energy, yet brought with him an even more terrifying plundering.
The suffocating sensation of near-death didn’t vanish; it merely altered its flavor. It was no longer the stinging pain of sea water flooding his lungs, but the heavy frame of the man circling him within his embrace, leaving him unable to breathe.
The man’s hands caressed his entire body, his legs forcing apart his knees which were tightly clamped from terror. He attempted to struggle within the dream, but this only caused the man to wrap around him even tighter.
“Don’t move…” The voice in the dream was deep and raspy, carrying a hair-raising lust. The man in the dream seemed to harbor a near-pathological obsession with these legs of his. Those rough, large hands would occasionally pinch the meat of his thighs, his fingertips sinking into the white skin, kneading it into various shapes, playing with it willfully with total dominance.
“Too soft…” the man panted heavily against his ear, sweat trickling down his high nose bridge onto Shen Yanzhou’s trembling knees. “So good.”
Shen Yanzhou wanted to struggle, wanted to kick this beast away, but his legs had long turned too sore and weak to exert any force. He could only let his delicate skin be rubbed until it was flushed and burning…
The following morning, the mid-mountain villa was shrouded in a damp, cold mist.
Shen Yanzhou was jolted awake by a burning sting on his thighs. The sensation of pain was entirely too real; completely disregarding his hangover headache, he frantically flung back the duvet and yanked up the hem of his sleep trousers to check.
White. There were no bruises, no broken skin, and not even a single trace of redness left behind by lovemaking.
Only beneath the pale skin, an unnatural pink faintly showed, as if the temperature left behind by that man’s palm in his dream last night still lingered.
“How could it…” Shen Yanzhou’s fingertips stroked across the skin with a slight tremble.
There was none of the sticky residue left by a man’s bodily fluids; everything was entirely clean, and his pajamas were put on perfectly neatly.
Was it truly just a dream?
But that sore, swollen sensation of being forcefully pried apart and rubbed why was it so clear? So clear it made him feel as if someone had toyed with his legs after he passed out drunk.
Filled with panic and uncertainty, he lifted his head. His gaze shifted, freezing instantly.
Thirty Million was actually curled up on the long-haired rug beside his bed. Like a guard dog, he kept watch by his bedside, dressed in a piece of street-stall junk that challenged his aesthetic boundaries. The fabric was as thin as paper, carrying the cheap look of low-quality synthetic fiber. The collar was loose and sloppy, hanging precariously off his broad shoulders, and the text printed across his chest had already begun to crack at the edges: 【I [Heart Logo] HK】.
The massive red heart in the middle was vulgar, gaudy, and completely tacky.
Shen Yanzhou stared at his solid arms, his gaze turning exceptionally deep. Too similar. The hands that had dragged him out from the pile of dead bodies in his dream were just as powerful—the arms rough and hard, pinning his leg bones until they throbbed. Even this frame that continuously radiated heat perfectly overlapped with the tactile sensation in his dream.
For a split second, Shen Yanzhou couldn’t distinguish between dream and reality.
Was it him? The beast that went mad holding his legs last night was it this dog?
With that thought, Shen Yanzhou extended a bare toe, kicking the man’s shoulder on the floor without a shred of politeness.
“Hey. Wake up.”
The man on the floor reacted with extreme speed, his eyes snapping open almost the instant he was touched.
“Master?” He immediately flipped over to sit up, kneeling on both knees by the bedside as he looked up. “So early. What’s wrong? Are you uncomfortable anywhere?”
“Well… I, you said you were cold last night… said, uh, you were scared… so I—I slept here.” He offered a stuttering explanation.
Shen Yanzhou scrutinized him from an elevated position. Suddenly, he slowly untied the drawstring of his sleep trousers. The fabric slid down, and the legs, freed from restraint, were exposed without a shred of concealment, displaying the most primitive temptation.
Then, he lifted his right leg, his bare foot settling without an ounce of politeness onto the man’s hot, lightly sweat-sheened, broad shoulder.
“Thirty Million.”
Shen Yanzhou’s toe tapped lightly, grinding down along the man’s bulging collarbone line, before finally settling against the man’s prominent adam’s apple with extreme malice. He could clearly feel the muscles beneath his foot instantly lock as hard as iron.
“You said you survived in that human-eating mud-pit and learned how to do everything.” Shen Yanzhou leaned forward slightly, his silver hair draping down, those beautiful eyes carrying a hook-like scrutiny. “Then the skill of pleasing people, have you learned that too?”
The man didn’t answer immediately.
He slowly lifted his head. The eyes hidden beneath his messy hair were terrifyingly dark, like a deep well inside the Walled City that hadn’t seen daylight for years, carrying a savage glint of extreme hunger. He stared deathly at Shen Yanzhou, his gaze practically licking across his pale calves like a physical object, before finally focusing on this arrogant young master’s face.
Four eyes met.
Shen Yanzhou felt a sting from the heat in that gaze. His toes instinctively wanted to retract, but the man suddenly snapped his head to one side, using his cheek to press against the instep of his foot, his stubble prickling against the delicate skin.
“What kind of pleasing does Master refer to?”
Shen Yanzhou snapped back to reality quickly, letting out a cold sneer. Mouths can lie, but bodily instincts won’t.
“Open up.” His toe gave a light upward tilt, pressing against the man’s jaw as he commanded: “Open your mouth. Please me.”
The man froze for a moment, the veins on his arms bulging violently as his hands gripped the plush rug tightly. Then, he lowered his eyes. “Yes, Master.”
He slowly drew closer, opening his mouth to move toward him.
Shen Yanzhou bit his lower lip, suppressing the fractured sounds in his throat as he stared deathly at the top of the man’s head like a hunter examining a trapped prey, waiting for that familiar technique to appear.
However, it was wrong. Completely wrong.
The man’s movements were so unpolished it was atrocious. The rough surface of his tongue licked randomly without a shred of strategy, like a clumsy large hound trying to please its master. Not only did it fail to bring a single shred of pleasure, but it also tickled him intensely.
Worse yet, this person seemed overly nervous, his teeth clashing heavily against the delicate skin.
“Hiss…” Shen Yanzhou sucked in a sharp breath of air. The slight sensual inclination that had risen from his memories vanished instantly, washed away by this clumsy pain. There was no head-numbing swallowing, and none of that dominant control that felt as if it would suck his very soul out.
There was only tedious saliva.
Was it truly just a dream after all?
Shen Yanzhou narrowed his eyes, his fingers gradually tightening until his nails nearly sank into the man’s scalp, his tone entirely filled with disappointment and irritation:
“So stupid.”
“Get out.”