Shen Qingqing was awakened by a mouthful of cement dust.
Her throat was so dry it hurt. She coughed until tears sprang from her eyes as the sharp scent of perfume mixed with the dust of the construction site rushed into her head, making her scalp tingle.
The blazing sun scorched the back of her neck. Looking down, Shen Qingqing saw herself wearing a pair of bright red high heels with broken heels, crouched beside a pile of cement bags.
Where the hell was this?
Just a second ago, she had been staying up late at the office revising a proposal. She had worked until three thirty in the morning and suddenly died from overwork, so how had she ended up on a construction site the moment she opened her eyes?
“These should be enough for you to buy a bag, right?”
A hoarse male voice came from in front of her, cold and edged with frost.
Shen Qingqing looked up.
A pair of distinct yet horrifyingly battered hands hovered before her.
The palms and fingers were covered in dried blood scabs and cement slurry. Fresh wounds overlapped old ones, flesh split open in places, while several wrinkled hundred yuan bills stained with blood were pinched between those hands and held out toward her.
Her gaze followed those hands upward.
The man crouched beside the cement pile wore old clothes so worn they had long lost their original color. The cuffs were frayed, exposing several old scars around his wrists.
He tilted his face upward.
His brow bone was sharp, his nose high, and his jawline carried a trace of viciousness. Yet his cheeks were gaunt, his lips cracked, and messy strands of hair clung to the corners of his forehead.
But the most alarming thing was his eyes.
They were half open, the pupils clouded by a grayish haze, unfocused and empty as they stared blankly in her direction.
He was blind.
“I asked you a question.”
The man’s voice sank lower. His tongue lazily swept across his cracked lips, drawing out a streak of blood.
“Too little?”
Shen Qingqing’s mind buzzed as unfamiliar memories violently flooded into her head.
She had transmigrated into a novel, becoming the self-destructive villainess who shared her exact name.
The original owner of this body was vain and greedy. Taking advantage of the fact that the blind billionaire heir, Huo Yan, had temporarily lost his memory, she had impersonated his white moonlight and tricked him into working for her like a slave.
Not only had she forced him to haul cement and carry steel bars at construction sites, she had also squandered every cent of his hard earned money. Whenever he failed to satisfy her, she beat him with belts and burned him with cigarette butts. It was utterly inhuman.
And this blind Huo Yan before her was the future lunatic villain of the novel, the one who would later return to the Huo family, reclaim everything, and massacre his entire clan.
What had the ending been again?
On the very first day Huo Yan regained both his memories and eyesight, he shattered every bone in the original owner’s body inch by inch before chopping her into pieces and feeding her to the Tibetan mastiffs in the backyard.
Shen Qingqing suddenly felt a chill at the back of her neck, and her stomach lurched.
As if sensing the change in her breathing, the crouching Huo Yan slowly curled his lips into a smile.
The smile carried no warmth whatsoever, making his dust covered face appear even darker.
“Or are you planning to try some new trick today?”
He pushed the bloodstained bills slightly closer to her, his tone terrifyingly calm.
“The wire you bought last time, have you used it all up yet?”
Shen Qingqing’s scalp went numb.
She knew all too well what murderous intent hid beneath this kind of calmness. A villain like Huo Yan was not enduring everything because he had accepted his fate. He was keeping score in his heart, line by line, waiting to settle the debt someday.
If she wanted to survive, she had to stop courting death immediately.
With a sharp smack, Shen Qingqing slapped toward the wrist holding the money.
Huo Yan’s reflexes were far too sharp for a blind man. The instant she was about to touch him, every muscle in his body tightened, his spine straightened, and the veins along his neck bulged.
He was waiting.
Waiting for her to do what she always did, dig her long nails into his wounds or snatch the money before kicking him again.
But the expected pain never came.
Instead of hitting him, Shen Qingqing snatched the bloodstained bills from his hand, quickly crumpled them into a ball, then bent down and stuffed the wad forcefully into his pocket.
To make sure it would not fall out, she even shoved it deeper twice.
Huo Yan froze completely.
Not the tense stillness of caution, but the kind of stiffness that came when common sense had been utterly shattered and his mind briefly stopped functioning.
His cracked lips parted slightly, yet no sound came out for a moment.
“You think this tiny bit of money is enough to dismiss a beggar?”
Suppressing the urge to collapse from weak knees, Shen Qingqing stood upright and forced herself to imitate the original owner’s arrogant attitude with a cold sneer.
“With just a few hundred yuan, you can’t even buy me a bag strap. Keep it for yourself and buy a coffin.”
Her voice rose a couple of pitches out of sheer panic, but to Huo Yan, it only sounded inexplicably strange.
He frowned slightly. Through the fabric over his thigh, the sensation of money in his pocket felt unfamiliar.
In all twenty six years of his life, especially during the past half year after falling into the mud, people had only ever stolen things from his pockets. This was the first time anyone had ever stuffed money into them.
“What do you mean?”
Huo Yan’s voice darkened, murderous intent hidden beneath it.
Shen Qingqing stared at his hands, her heart pounding wildly. She absolutely could not let his injuries worsen. The more scars he accumulated now, the faster the knife would fall on her later.
“What do I mean? Just look at your hands. They’re practically rotting.”
Glancing around, Shen Qingqing spotted a faucet near the construction site. Clacking over in her heels, she strode to it and twisted the pipe open.
“Get over here and wash up.”
She turned back and barked at him fiercely.
Huo Yan did not move.
Tilting his head slightly, his empty eyes faced the direction of the faucet while his nostrils subtly flared.
He was smelling her.
The perfume on this woman was still there, but beneath it lingered a faint clean scent, carrying the vivid freshness of a living person.
Completely different from the nauseating cloud of powder and cosmetics she used to reek of.
“What kind of trick are you playing now?”
Huo Yan sneered dangerously.
“What trick could I possibly be playing? I just think you’re filthy, alright?”
Taking a deep breath, Shen Qingqing walked back to his side and grabbed his wrist.
The instant her fingers touched him, Huo Yan trembled.
It was a conditioned reflex carved into his bones, because every time the original owner had grabbed his hand in the past, she either burned him with cigarette butts or scalded him with boiling water.
Feeling the violent trembling in his arm, Shen Qingqing cursed the original owner in her heart for being less than human, and unconsciously softened her grip.
“What are you dodging for? Afraid I’ll eat you?”
Her mouth remained as vicious as ever, yet her hands carefully guided him toward the sink.
Cold tap water flowed over his hands, softening the blood scabs as streaks of diluted blood ran down his fingers.
Suppressing her nausea, Shen Qingqing reached out and carefully scrubbed the cement from beneath his nails and deep within the lines of his palms.
Her movements were incredibly gentle.
Huo Yan lowered his head, his lifeless dark eyes growing heavy.
Amid the sound of running water, the woman’s breathing brushed against the back of his hand. Every time her fingers touched one of his deeper wounds, she instinctively paused for a moment, as though she feared the pain even more than he did.
Something was wrong.
Everything was wrong.
Every action this woman had taken today lay completely outside his expectations. Her mouth was fiercer than ever, yet her hands were so careful, as though she was afraid of hurting him.
“Shen Qingqing.”
Huo Yan suddenly grabbed her wrist in return, his grip painfully tight.
Lowering his head, his blind eyes moved close to her face, his breath brushing across the tip of her nose.
“What exactly are you plotting?”
Shen Qingqing sucked in a sharp breath from the pain. Meeting those unfocused eyes, her mind raced frantically.
She absolutely could not show weakness. With paranoid villains like him, the more you tried to please them, the faster you died.
“What am I plotting?”
Instead of retreating, Shen Qingqing lifted her chin and moved even closer to him, snorting arrogantly.
“I’m plotting that if your hands become crippled, get infected, or need amputation, then who’s going to earn money to buy me bags? Do you expect me to waste my money supporting a useless cripple? Keep dreaming.”
The moment those heartless and vicious words left her mouth, the force in Huo Yan’s grip actually loosened slightly.
So she was only afraid he would die and no longer be useful for exploitation.
That sounded exactly like her usual stupid and greedy style.
Seeing some of the vigilance fade from his eyes, Shen Qingqing silently wiped away a cold sweat in relief.
That was close. She had barely fooled him.
From this day onward, with this blind tyrant of a villain, she could only grit her teeth and rely on her mouth while pampering him like an ancestor.