It was raining outside, and Man Yu wished with all his heart that the rain would grow even heavier. Ideally, it would develop into a mild typhoon, not strong enough to hurt anyone but powerful enough to make it impossible for him to travel anywhere. That way, he would have a perfectly legitimate excuse to abandon the task he had been assigned and let the whole thing fall through.
Unfortunately, fate was not on his side. After spending two whole hours making his way to the venue of the funeral farewell ceremony in his usual timid and pathetic manner, Man Yu was promptly stopped by the bodyguards at the entrance. He wasn’t the only one being denied entry. A whole group of reporters and members of the media had also been kept outside.
Inside the funeral hall, solemn music filled the air, creating a mournful atmosphere. Outside, however, the streets were crowded with cars and people, and the scene was so bustling that anyone who didn’t know better might have mistaken it for a wedding celebration instead of a funeral.
The white moonlight’s surname was Lu. As for his full name, Man Yu still hadn’t managed to find that out. All he knew was that the Lu family was an illustrious and prestigious family whose wealth and influence far surpassed those of the Sheng family by an immeasurable margin. The scale and grandeur of the farewell ceremony alone were enough to make that abundantly clear.
Man Yu had never attended such a grand and solemn occasion before. Just thinking about having to go inside and bring Sheng Lin home made him feel intimidated, and his courage began to falter before he had even taken a single step through the entrance.
“I’m sorry, but without an invitation, we’re unable to let you enter.”
The wind and rain battered Man Yu until he could barely keep himself steady. His hair had become plastered to his face, soaked through and clinging to his skin. Nevertheless, he politely tried pleading with the bodyguards a couple more times, hoping they might reconsider. Their answer remained unchanged.
In the end, he didn’t have the heart to make things difficult for them. After all, he had worked for other people before and understood how difficult it could be to do one’s job while answering to someone else. The bodyguards were simply carrying out their duties, and he had no right to blame them for that.
Holding his umbrella tightly, Man Yu decided to find a place to squat down and wait until the farewell ceremony was over. Once Sheng Lin came out, he could intercept him at the entrance and bring him home. That should count as completing his assignment, shouldn’t it?
Two reporters who had also been denied entry were squatting nearby. Each had a lollipop in their mouth, and the two of them were whispering to each other, exchanging gossip in hushed voices.
“How exactly did Young Master Lu die? Wasn’t he studying abroad and doing perfectly fine?”
“Mm, you don’t know what he’s like? He’s always been reckless, doing whatever he pleases and causing trouble wherever he goes. When he was only seven or eight, he actually dared to mess around with the electrical wiring at his father’s wedding to his stepmother. The moment the power was switched on, all the lights in the entire venue exploded. The place looked like a demolition site! When he was twelve or thirteen, he was sent to a juvenile correctional camp, but instead of behaving himself, he managed to incite all the delinquent boys there into rebelling. They blew up part of the camp in the middle of the night, escaped, and made their way into the city’s news broadcasting building. At one in the morning, he stood there broadcasting some sort of declaration of freedom. The entire city thought they were being haunted by ghosts…”
The older reporter smacked his lips around his lollipop, savoring the candy as he spoke. Even after recounting so many outrageous incidents, he still hadn’t gotten around to explaining how the man had actually died.
Loving gossip was simply part of human nature. Man Yu, too, wanted to know what sort of person the Enigma his husband was so infatuated with had been. The more he listened, the more frightening the man seemed. Even so, he couldn’t help quietly inching closer to the two reporters, eager to hear more without drawing their attention.
When he noticed their shirts were completely soaked, he silently shifted his umbrella to share half of its cover with them.
“Th-thank you! Which news outlet are you from?”
The rain that had been falling on their heads was suddenly blocked by the umbrella. The two reporters turned around and found themselves looking at a thin, rather gloomy-looking young man standing beside them. He held the umbrella over their heads with his head lowered, and the sleeves of his shirt had slipped down just enough to reveal a pair of slender wrists. Against the gloomy, rain-soaked surroundings, his skin looked almost dazzlingly pale. He didn’t seem very old, either. At first glance, he looked more like a university student who hadn’t yet graduated.
The two reporters stared at him blankly for a moment before quickly recovering. They thanked him enthusiastically and even shared a piece of candy with him. The young man responded with shy silence, making no effort to answer their question. Since he didn’t seem inclined to talk, they didn’t press him further. They simply assumed he was a newcomer working as a junior assistant for some media outlet, someone who had only recently entered the industry.
With that assumption, they continued their conversation.
“When he was fifteen, he ran away from home and had his credit cards frozen. Then he forged his identification documents and managed to get himself hired as a trainee at an entertainment company. He made quite a bit of money from the whole affair, and, as a bonus, he exposed his father’s affair so publicly that the entire country learned about it. The Lu family spent at least three hundred million on public relations that year alone! When he was sixteen or seventeen, he started dabbling in the stock market without understanding the risks and ended up getting himself hunted down. By the time he turned eighteen and became an adult, his father had finally had enough and packed him off overseas…”
At that time, Man Yu had still been living in a boarding school, completely isolated from the outside world and paying no attention to anything happening beyond the walls of the institution. He had known nothing about the sensational stories circulating around the capital, and he had never heard any of these outrageous rumors.
Now, as he listened to the reporters recount one unbelievable incident after another, the nerves in his forehead began to twitch. A profound sense of despair and desolation rose from the depths of his heart.
If this was the kind of person his husband loved, then how could he ever hope to win Sheng Lin’s heart?
No wonder Sheng Lin had become increasingly dissatisfied with him.
He was spineless, incapable, and utterly dull. He was so ordinary that he was like a single drop of water falling into the vast ocean, disappearing without leaving the slightest trace.
“Young Master Lu wasn’t any more well-behaved after going abroad, either. During the first half of the year, he decided he was depressed, so he took a leave of absence from school and went to the Southern Hemisphere to drive tractors and herd sheep. During the second half of the year, he developed insomnia and ran off to the Arctic Ocean to work as a fisherman on a boat. After all that, he finally managed to graduate. But apparently, on his second expedition through a tropical rainforest, he died somewhere inside it. It took another half a month of twists and turns before his body was finally transported back to the country.”
At long last, Man Yu had pieced together the life story of his husband’s white moonlight from the two reporters’ conversation.
By the time he finished listening, he felt even more powerless than he had when he first arrived. It wasn’t just the realization that he could never measure up to someone like that. He also found the whole thing almost impossible to believe.
That man had lived his life in such a spectacular, earth-shattering fashion, and even his departure from the world had been just as dramatic.
He had been only twenty-two years old.
So young.
Man Yu suddenly thought that he should have brought a bouquet of flowers with him.
The mournful funeral music drifted out with the wind, its sorrowful melody carried beyond the walls of the venue. Outside, the rain continued to fall in a steady, dreary drizzle. The reporters showed no intention of leaving without getting what they had come for. Like hunters patiently waiting for their prey to emerge, they remained crouched outside the entrance, refusing to give up until they had secured an opportunity to obtain an exclusive interview. Mixed in among them was Man Yu, who was waiting for his husband.
It would probably be after nightfall before the people inside moved to the banquet hall to enjoy dinner together. Man Yu had already prepared himself for the possibility of remaining crouched outside until dark.
Who could have imagined that he would barely have to wait half an hour before a piercing scream erupted from inside the memorial hall, tearing through the gloomy sky?
The scream was soon followed by the thunderous sound of hurried footsteps. The commotion grew louder and louder as it approached, until the entrance door suddenly burst open from the inside with a tremendous BANG!
The crowd surged forward in a chaotic crush, people shoving and pushing against one another as they desperately tried to escape. The usually elegant and dignified ladies and gentlemen who had attended the ceremony were now deathly pale, their faces contorted with panic and terror. They looked as though a single moment’s delay would leave them dead in the jaws of a ferocious beast.
“HE’S COME BACK FROM THE DEAD!!! HE’S COME BACK FROM THE DEAD!!!”
“AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”
Several reporters’ eyes lit up instantly. Like agile fish slipping through the water, they darted skillfully into the panicking crowd, squeezing through gaps and pushing their way toward the commotion. The bodyguards were clearly unable to control a situation that had spiraled so wildly out of control in such a short time.
Man Yu was afraid that someone might catch him in the middle of the chaos and reprimand him for his behavior. He didn’t dare follow the reporters, so he simply wanted to find a corner of the wall where he could press himself against it and remain inconspicuous. His eyes darted rapidly across the crowd, searching for his husband.
The reporter beside him, who still had a lollipop in his mouth, took one look at his dazed, bewildered expression and grabbed him by the arm, hauling him straight into the crowd.
“Come on! This is breaking news! What are you standing around for? When are you ever going to get promoted to a full-time reporter if you keep acting like this?”
The scene before them was even more chaotic than anyone could have imagined. Some people had gone so pale that they looked as though they were about to collapse, while others were already sitting helplessly on the floor, their faces ashen. There were people scrambling toward the exit as though they wished they had four legs instead of two, desperate to run as fast as possible. Others were screaming at the top of their lungs, frozen in place and unable to move despite their terror. One person had even fainted on the spot, and a butler was frantically pressing the area beneath their nose in an attempt to revive them.
Amid this pandemonium, a tall, slender figure dressed in a traditional Chinese funeral robe sat brazenly atop the coffin, one leg propped up in an utterly unrestrained posture. The memorial tablets and ceremonial offerings lay scattered across the floor around him, thrown into disarray by the commotion.
Perhaps it was because his love ran so deep, but among the sea of panicked faces, Man Yu spotted his own husband almost immediately.
He hurried over, bowing his head and apologizing in a small, deferential voice as he squeezed through the crowd. Then, without wasting another moment, he opened his umbrella and held it over Sheng Lin’s head, shielding him from the rain.
“Hello? Hello…”
A deep, magnetic voice, languid and unhurried, echoed throughout the memorial hall, accompanied by a faint crackling of electrical interference. The sound spread from the ceremonial platform at the center of the venue, reverberating through the hall, which was filled with decorations bearing the character Kui.
After a brief microphone test, the voice continued in a cheerful, carefree tone that was entirely inappropriate for the solemn occasion.
“Surprise! Distinguished guests, welcome to my funeral! My name is Lu Yinbing. I’m terribly disappointed that after four years apart, the only reaction any of you can muster to the news that I’m still alive is fear. Not a single one of you is genuinely happy to see me! I’m very disappointed in all of you.”
“Having said that, fortunately, I’ve always been a generous and forgiving person… Oh, my dear father, why have you fainted? Are you overwhelmed with excitement?”
The reporters carrying their cameras and bulky recording equipment immediately swarmed forward like a pack of hyenas that had caught the scent of blood. They rushed toward the front, crowding together so tightly that they completely blocked the view of anyone standing behind them.
Meanwhile, the frightened guests gradually began to calm down. They finally realized that this funeral was nothing more than another one of Young Master Lu’s elaborate pranks.
Lu Yinbing.
What a beautiful name.
If Man Yu hadn’t heard so much about the man’s extraordinary exploits, he would have assumed that the person who bore such a name must have been a refined, scholarly gentleman with a cool and reserved temperament.
He had an instinctive feeling that something about Lu Yinbing’s words wasn’t quite right. However, the man had delivered them with such absolute confidence and conviction that Man Yu couldn’t help wondering whether perhaps there really was nothing wrong with what he had said after all.
Oh.
Man Yu’s heart suddenly skipped a beat as the realization finally dawned on him.
His husband’s white moonlight had come back to life!
At that moment, Man Yu couldn’t tell whether he should feel horrified, regretful, or delighted. He was such a slow-witted person that even his emotions always seemed to arrive half a beat later than everyone else’s. His natural timidity and deep-rooted inferiority had robbed him of the courage to meet other people’s eyes, let alone look directly at someone as extraordinary and intimidating as Young Master Lu.
He felt that merely looking at such a person once would be enough to bring the wrath of heaven crashing down upon him, striking him with five thunderbolts and leaving him unable to reincarnate even after death.
Timidly lowering his head, Man Yu kept one hand on his husband’s arm. Through that touch, he could feel Sheng Lin trembling so violently that he seemed to be shaking like a sieve. A wave of sympathy and sorrow rose in Man Yu’s heart.
His white moonlight had returned from the dead.
Sheng Lin must be so happy that he was trembling.
Perhaps Man Yu should push Sheng Lin toward the very front of the crowd and tell Lu Yinbing that there was someone here who was so overjoyed at the news of his survival that he couldn’t stop shaking.
Maybe Lu Yinbing would be moved by such a display of affection. Perhaps, in a moment of gratitude, he might even accept Sheng Lin’s love.
But what would happen to Man Yu then?
Then what was going to happen to him?
Man Yu didn’t want to be abandoned, nor did he want to get divorced. A beta who had gone through a divorce would be looked down upon by others once they stepped outside into society.
“A’Lin, M-Madam Sheng… asked me to… to ask you to come, come home…” With a small, selfish hope of his own, Man Yu timidly reminded him in a low voice.
For reasons Man Yu couldn’t understand, Sheng Lin suddenly reached out and grabbed his hand tightly.
The tips of Sheng Lin’s fingers were slightly cool, but his palm was burning hot. It was the first time Man Yu had ever been treated with such intimacy by his husband, and a faint thread of happiness immediately welled up in his heart. He hurriedly tightened his own grip, holding on to Sheng Lin’s hand as though afraid the moment might slip away if he didn’t.
There was no denying that Sheng Lin was handsome and charismatic, with an extraordinary bearing that set him apart from ordinary people. Standing at 185 centimeters tall, he had a high nose, deep-set eyes, and a sharp, piercing gaze. Otherwise, Man Yu would never have developed a favorable impression of him after seeing him just once, much less taken that first step into this arranged marriage.
Truthfully, someone as timid and honest as Man Yu had never dared to expect that he would be the only person in his husband’s heart. He knew perfectly well that he could never compare with the white moonlight sitting so brazenly atop the coffin. Even so, as long as Sheng Lin treated him a little better than he had before, Man Yu would have been satisfied.
Unfortunately, his happiness lasted barely a few seconds.
As though he had suddenly come to his senses, Sheng Lin abruptly flung Man Yu’s hand away with almost enough force to shove him aside. The strength of an Alpha was not something a frail beta like Man Yu could withstand. Weighing barely forty-five kilograms, he was sent flying as effortlessly as a lightweight sandbag tossed through the air.
The umbrella slipped from his grasp, spun twice in the air, and tumbled away along with him.
Man Yu instinctively reached out to grab it, but his fingers closed on nothing but empty air. Only after the impact did the scorching pain begin to register, arriving belatedly and spreading through his body. His face hurt the most. He hurriedly raised his arms to shield it, then curled up on the ground for a moment, dazed and motionless, before finally forcing himself to struggle back to his feet despite the pain.
Sheng Lin swiftly glanced in Lu Yinbing’s direction. Seeing that the other man was still surrounded by a crowd of people, he finally turned back and glared viciously at Man Yu.
“Get farther away from me! Who told you to come to a place like this and embarrass yourself?”
“You… your mother told me to…”
“She told you to come, so you came? Are you a dog? Do you obey her every single word without question? Haven’t I already told you not to let me see you? I really don’t understand why she insisted on making me marry you in the first place. You’re older, you’re boring, and you can’t even speak properly. All you ever do is embarrass me!”
Afraid that someone might see him standing beside Man Yu and associate the two of them with each other, Sheng Lin hurriedly turned away and strode toward Lu Yinbing, leaving Man Yu behind. Before he left, he threw one final warning over his shoulder.
“Don’t follow me!”
Man Yu had thought he had already grown accustomed to living this kind of life.
His mother had told him that suffering humiliation was inevitable when marrying into a family like the Shengs. After all, there were countless people who would have loved to endure such hardships if only they had been given the opportunity to marry into a family like theirs.
But when Sheng Lin shoved him to the ground and called him a dog, Man Yu couldn’t understand why he was still crying.
Rainwater trickled down his cheeks drop by drop, gathering in the hollow of his collarbones before pooling there.
He sat in a daze, absently picking at the seam of his trousers, unable to figure out what he could possibly do to appease Sheng Lin’s anger. Years of experience, stretching all the way back to his childhood, had taught him that the first thing he should do whenever someone became angry with him was apologize.
“I’m… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
He hadn’t deliberately tried to embarrass Sheng Lin. He hadn’t intentionally made himself sound so incoherent, either.
Back when he was still in school, he had even won the gold medal in a teaching competition for his classroom presentation. Man Yu genuinely couldn’t understand why speaking had gradually become such a difficult thing for him.
Sheng Lin didn’t hear his apologies. Without even turning his head, he disappeared into the tightly packed crowd, leaving Man Yu standing alone in the rain.