The wine bottle exploded into shards, glass scattering across the floor like a rain of jagged stars.
The impact left Song Jiaxin’s vision swimming with bursts of gold, his body stumbling sideways in a dazed lurch.
Dark red liquid streamed down from his head, dripping in rivulets. For a moment, it was impossible to even tell whether it was blood or just wine.
“Ah—!” Lin Nian’s delicate features drained of all color, her scream piercing the air like glass splintering.
But Song Shiyi felt no relief, no lessening of his suffocation. His gaze fixed on Jiaxin, who was wobbling, barely upright but still refused to collapse.
The sight only fanned the fire in his chest. He grabbed another bottle with a motion so fluid it was almost automatic, and brought it crashing down again.
The shock of glass shattering against bone vibrated up through his palm, numbing his fingers to the joints. Wine sprayed in every direction, soaking his clothes, staining his skin.
The countertop was bare now, emptied of bottles. But the furious storm inside him did not end. It demanded release, more and more.
Song Shiyi dragged in a long, trembling breath, fighting to control the hands that shook so violently from excitement that he could hardly grip. He bent, wrenched open the cabinet door, and reached for another bottle.
He didn’t get the chance.
Lin Nian hurled herself across the room, shoving him back with desperate strength, arms locking protectively around the bloodied Jiaxin.
“You lunatic!” she screamed.
Song Shiyi didn’t even blink. He swung the fresh wine bottle in her direction without hesitation. The glass whistled through the air, forcing Lin Nian to shriek again as she stumbled away, panic sending her fleeing from the strike.
Even Song Guocheng, the ever-composed patriarch, stood rooted in shock, his face twisted with disbelief.
His finger quivered in midair as he tried, and failed, to string words together. “Y-you, you—”
And only then, only after the chaos had fully detonated, did Song Shiyi begin to feel something return to his body.
A scrap of soul crawling back into its shell. His hand, now emptied, clawed at the fabric over his chest, his breath breaking in jagged little gasps.
His heart was a beast battering against its cage, pounding so fast it seemed ready to rupture straight through his ribs.
For so long, a heavy weight had pressed down on his chest, choking him, smothering him. It squeezed his stomach until it cramped, making eating nearly impossible, every bite caught in his throat, every swallow a war.
But now, staring at the wreckage, at the horrified and furious faces surrounding him, that suffocating weight slowly, miraculously lifted.
And in its place came something else. Something terrifying. A shiver-inducing thrill that unfurled like poison blooming in his veins.
So this was it. This was all it took.
A low chuckle leaked from his throat, startling even himself. He lifted a hand, covering his eyes, fingers pressing against his lids.
The laugh began soft, breathless. But it wouldn’t stop. It spread, louder, faster, unhinged. Until it broke into ragged gasps, until it tangled with sobs.
It was laughter that scraped raw against his throat, so hoarse it bordered on a scream. And behind his palm, hot tears spilled, seeping out through the cracks between his fingers.
Outside, the wind beat against the windows, rattling the frames with a constant howl.
The storm’s wail merged with his laughter, turning it into something inhuman, something that clawed at the bones of everyone who heard.
Rage. Pain. Hatred. Defiance. Despair.
Every emotion that had festered inside this body now broke free, flooding through him, drenching his blood, making it roar with rebellion.
Song Guocheng staggered back, eyes wide, voice rasping into a furious bellow as he pointed with shaking hands. “Don’t just stand there! Grab him! Restrain him! Now!”
But none of the servants moved. Not one.
Because the once-gentle second young master they had always known now looked like something entirely different, like a madman, possessed, dangerous beyond reach.
The laughter gradually ended, leaving only his ragged, trembling breaths behind.
Step by step, Song Shiyi backed away until his spine pressed against the window. With a flick of his hand, he threw it open. Wind and rain burst inward, chilling the air.
And then before anyone could move, before anyone could stop him, he twisted his body and climbed out, vanishing in full view of all.
The dining room was only on the second floor. From the ground, it didn’t look too high. There was even a grass lawn beneath. But the reality was harsher.
The landing drove a grunt of pain out of him. His knees jarred, his joints buzzing with numbness, nearly giving way. But at least nothing broke.
He looked up. The window gaped open above. And there, leaning out with a face black as thunder, was Song Guocheng, staring down with a glare that could kill.
But he didn’t dare call him back. Couldn’t. Not here.
This neighborhood was a wealthy enclave, home to business partners, dignitaries, people who mattered. To make a scene here would be to lose face.
Song Shiyi knew that. He knew exactly how to use it. He tipped his chin upward, mocking, and offered Guocheng a little wave, a gesture dripping with contempt.
Then he turned his back and walked away.
At first his pace was steady. But step by step it grew faster, until it turned into a run.
The fine rain outside struck his face like tiny needles, clinging to his lashes, plastering his clothes to his skin.
His shirt grew heavy with water, but he didn’t care. He only knew one thing: forward. Keep running.
His lungs burned, each breath raw from gulping down the damp night air. Pain seared through his chest, but his feet only pounded harder, every splash into a puddle a shout of defiance.
Pedestrians, sheltered under umbrellas, slowed their steps. One by one, they turned their heads, staring. They couldn’t help it.
The sight was too stark. A young man, drenched to the bone, running wild and unrestrained, looked less like someone fleeing the rain and more like a fugitive fleeing pursuit.
A criminal, tearing through the streets in a desperate escape. And though his path was reckless, chaotic, the crowd parted instinctively, giving way.
It wasn’t until one of his soaked slippers slipped on the slick ground, nearly sending him sprawling, that he caught himself against a railing, gripping hard to keep his balance.
His gaze flickered to the shop window beside him.
There, in the glass, was his reflection.
For a moment, he just stared. And then he laughed.
Wet hair clung to his face, dripping constantly. The white shirt he wore was splashed with dark, wine-colored stains that had dried into something grotesque.
He looked exactly like a murderer on the run, blood still on his clothes.
But he didn’t care. He couldn’t be bothered.
He pushed into the store, bought a shovel. Then stepped back into the rain, lifted his hand, and hailed a cab.
The driver was a kindly middle-aged man, the sort with a round face and easy smile. As soon as the passenger shut the door, he turned, ready to greet him with a cheerful word.
But the greeting died in his throat. His body froze.
Because in the rearview mirror, he saw him.
A boy so young yet soaked through, dripping.
His face was drained of all blood, ghostly pale, a mask of the dead. And yet his features were delicate, refined, too beautiful for such a night.
Under the dim yellow light of the streetlamps, that face seemed to exist half in shadow, half in illusion, an apparition in the dark.
It gave off a strange, unreal sort of illusion like something that should not exist in this world was suddenly placed in front of one’s eyes.
And when those pitch-black eyes lifted and met his through the rearview mirror, locking onto him without the slightest ripple of emotion, the driver couldn’t help the violent shudder that crawled up his spine.
“Y-Young man… where exactly are you headed?” His voice cracked, his throat dry.
Song Shiyi reported an address in an indifferent tone.
The driver’s face instantly changed color.
It was a cemetery. A deserted graveyard sitting out on the edge of the city.
“You, you’re saying… going there, at this hour, in the dead of night, what could you possibly want to do?” The driver tried to laugh, his smile stiff and forced, but in his heart he had already started retreating.
“To visit someone. Don’t ask more than you should.”
The words had barely fallen, low and faint like mist sinking into bone, when the heavens split apart above them.
A shocking bolt of lightning streaked across the night sky, illuminating the inside of the car in a merciless flash.
The boy’s face turned ghostly pale, his hair soaked through, dripping with endless rain. The water slid down in cold rivulets, following the sharp line of his jaw, tracing it until it spilled off the edge.
“Yes! yes!” The driver trembled violently. In his brain, images spun past like a film reel, every horror movie he had ever seen playing back in fragments.
He stamped down on the accelerator without hesitation, desperate to get this eerie passenger to his destination as quickly as possible.
Yet even after arriving, even after watching with wide eyes as the young man calmly took out his phone to scan and pay, even after watching him step out of the car without a backward glance, nothing terrifying actually happened.
Really… really just to see someone?
What the hell? He had been ready to meet a ghost! In the end it turned out to be… just a lunatic?
The driver slumped against the steering wheel, on the verge of tears, feeling as though his very soul had been wrung out. But as he replayed the scene in his mind, his expression suddenly froze.
Wait.
If it was only to “see someone”… then why bring a shovel?
Inside the graveyard.
The darkness pressed in from all sides. Song Shiyi flicked on his phone’s flashlight, its dim glow barely carving out a path ahead of him.
Slowly, he groped his way forward, until at last he stopped in front of one particular gravestone.
The Tomb of Mother, Lu Wanqin.
His expression twisted with something deep and indescribable. He lifted his hand and gently, almost reverently, traced his fingers across the still-new stone.
Then, with a motion weighted by grief, he slowly lowered himself, half-kneeling before it.
The rain kept falling, cold and endless, drumming relentlessly onto the earth. The sound of wet soil being dug open echoed through the otherwise silent cemetery, each shovelful heavy, muffled, suffocating.
After a long while, Song Shiyi cast the shovel aside and, with painstaking care, pulled from the ground a small, grey urn.
The pain was unbearable. It burst through his chest like a dam breaking, tearing at him, hollowing him out, drowning him in molten sorrow.
It was the kind of pain that didn’t just ache, it dissolved, corroded, melted him into nothing. In that endless downpour, it felt as if his entire body would disintegrate into rain and mud, vanishing into dust.
And then. like jagged glass pressing against skin, the memories came.
That man, standing cold and tall against the blackness of night, his face harder than steel. He leaned carelessly against the stone bridge, one hand playing idly with a delicate little box.
“Please,” his voice had been hoarse, shaking, desperate. “Gu Ye, I’m begging you, don’t do this.”
His face had been pale as death, every word scraping out from the rawness of his throat, soaked in despair that could split hearts.
But the man only gazed down at him from above. Not a trace of pity. Not even the faintest flicker of compassion.
“I’ll give you one last chance.”
The urn, the one with the black-and-white photograph was tilted open, angled dangerously toward the rushing river below. In the photo, the woman’s expression was tender, sorrowful.
At any moment, the water could swallow her whole.
“Gu Ye!” His eyes had nearly split open, his whole body straining forward in madness, but he was forced down, pressed into the dirt by the black-suited bodyguards.
“Axin’s future cannot be ruined like this. I’ll ask you one last time. Will you admit it, or not?”
“He’s your younger brother, he’s crying himself raw in front of you! What are you made of, stone?”
“I didn’t kill anyone! That night, I was with you, you know that, you—”
Slap.
The man had strode forward, his hand whipping across Song Shiyi’s face, silencing him in a crack of violence. Only then did he speak, voice low, cruelly unhurried.
“Is that so? But I truly didn’t see you that night.”
“Why forge an alibi, then? What guilt are you hiding?” His broad hand, carrying the faint scent of Guerlain cologne, slid along his jawline, sealing his fate with pitiless finality. “Because the one who killed… was you.”
The shrill ring of a phone shattered the nightmare like glass breaking, jolting him back.
The glow of the screen reflected in his dark eyes. He stared at the name flashing there, then pressed to answer.
“Gu Ye.”
He murmured it softly, splitting the syllables apart as though savoring the bitterness of each.
Behind him, the relentless sound of rain crashing down filled the silence, too clear to ignore if anyone cared enough to listen.
But Gu Ye didn’t. He had no patience. Why should he? In his world, the only treasure was Song Jiaxin.
And Song Shiyi? Song Shiyi was nothing more than a stand-in, a counterfeit, a cheap substitute to kill time.
As Song Shiyi goes through traumatic memories, Gu Ye calls.
Gu Ye’s voice lashed at him, full of ice and fury: “You hit A’xin?”
News traveled fast.
“That’s right. He asked for it. I only gave him what he wanted.”
Song Shiyi leaned back against the gravestone, clutching the urn protectively to his chest.
The straightforward admission stunned Gu Ye for a moment, then drove his fury higher.
His voice dropped, hoarse, but the rage in it couldn’t be hidden: “How dare you?”
“There happened to be a bottle of red wine nearby. I picked it up and brought it down on his head.” Shiyi’s hand ghosted through the air, then spread open with a sudden snap of fingers. “With a loud crack.”
“Twice.”
On the other end, Gu Ye’s breathing grew ragged, almost animalistic.
His precious white moonlight, the one he held high and holy, had actually been humiliated so viciously by this counterfeit lover.
It was an insult he could not bear. “Why would you do something like that?”
But the question gave Song Shiyi pause.
His hand stopped mid-air. Raindrops clung stubbornly to his long lashes, rolling down slowly with every blink. Each cold drop on his skin was a reminder, he was here, in this body, in this cruel, unrelenting reality.
A novel. Just a novel.
Wasn’t he taking it too seriously?
Song Shiyi rubbed a hand over his drenched face, whispering to himself with a raw, biting honesty: “Fuck… I don’t even know.”
“Maybe because they’re just so fucking stupid.” He managed to convince himself with those words. “Yeah. That must be it.”
“…”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Gu Ye’s forehead veins bulged with fury. Feeling mocked, feeling played with, he could no longer control himself.
He spat out his final ultimatum: “I don’t care what you’re thinking. You come to me right now. Immediately.”
“If you don’t, then we’re finished.”
He thought the words would crush him. After all, back then, when they first got together, Song Shiyi had been just a poor student.
Of course, he had been with him for money. Even if Song Guocheng had dragged him back into the family, he wasn’t meant to rise.
He wasn’t meant to be a phoenix. In the end, wasn’t he still just clinging to him?
“Fine. Send me the address. I’ll come right away.”
The answer came without hesitation.
Gu Ye sneered inwardly, despising him all the more. A fake would always be a fake. He could never compare to Axin, not even half, not even a fraction.
But then, amid the noise on Shiyi’s side, something caught Shiyi’s attention.
“Sounds like you’ve got quite a crowd over there.”
Through the speaker, muffled voices filtered in. Mixed with it, Shiyi’s tone carried the faintest of laughs, airy and distant, like wind slipping past one’s ear.
That laugh carried a chill, subtle yet sharp, creeping into Gu Ye’s chest.
You like substitutes, don’t you?
Then I’ll let you play with one until you choke on it.
✦ ✧ ✦
Cresvynia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ COFFEE OFFERING
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · He’s in the BookChapter 2 · You Like playing Stand-in, Right?Chapter 3 · This Kind of person is just asking for troubleChapter 4 · Is it so Bloody?Chapter 5 · Let’s Rot togetherChapter 7 · Illegitimate SonChapter 8 · Unfaithful husbandChapter 9 · MemoriesChapter 10 · Silence before stormChapter 11 · Hunt beginsChapter 12 · Nightmare I rememberChapter 13 · Why do they ride on their own heads?Chapter 14 · I forgive myselfChapter 15 · Can you take me in tonight since I’m homeless?Chapter 16 · Mr. Qin, do you like me?Chapter 17 · If you like it, you can have itChapter 18 · Gu Ye, it’s obvious that you also pursue these thingsChapter 19 · If you still can’t let go of Gu Ye, why not give it a try with me?Chapter 20 · He actually made him bow down to that bastard.Chapter 21 · Ruining someone’s future is simply unforgivableChapter 22 · God can’t possibly favor someone like youChapter 23 · UrnChapter 24 · May they die a horrible deathChapter 25 · If you’re broke, stop showing off.Chapter 26 · Kneel before me, begging for mercy.Chapter 27 · The plan succeededChapter 28 Part 1 · This time, the victim is Gu Ye Part 1Chapter 28 Part 2 · This time, the victim is Gu YeChapter 29 · This time, I’ll make full use of youChapter 30 · Educating about the existence of lawsChapter 31 · So who is he now?Chapter 32 · I want to destroy this fake spacetime.Chapter 33 · So, I was himChapter 34 · They’re all crazy, just let me have my wayChapter 35 · I will punish them in the right way.Chapter 36 · I’m already a lunaticChapter 37 · Can you stay by Qin Huai’s side for my sake?Chapter 38 · I’ll grant your requestChapter 39 · Not a pitiful littleChapter 40 · They Both should dieChapter 41 · I want to destroy the empire that Song Gucheng builtChapter 42 · Do you hate me too?Chapter 43 · No one should feel goodChapter 44 · He’ll definitely be the winner in the end!Chapter 45 · Acting is really tiringChapter 46 · I wanted that bastard to disappearChapter 47 · Ready made scapegoatChapter 48 · He’s willing to save themChapter 49 · I’ve come to catch up with youChapter 50 · You stole someone else’s placeChapter 51 · Shiyi, why won’t you save me…Chapter 52 · To make a good life is more importantChapter 53 · Even if you really cheated on me, it doesn’t matterChapter 54 · Finally, I can say goodbye to you completelyChapter 55 · Angel sent by heaven to save himChapter 56 · CEO Gu is a very affectionate personChapter 57 · If you love him, go to jail for himChapter 58 · His most beloved son wanted to kill himChapter 59 · Take good care of our dear fatherChapter 60 · Take back everything that truly belongs to meChapter 61 · He knew that Gu Ye would not let him downChapter 62 · The Song family’s shares must absolutely not be transferred to Song ShiyiChapter 63 · I am no one’s thingChapter 64 · He always knew what kind of person Song Qingwen was.Chapter 65 · FinalChapter 66 · Extra