As Song Qingxian looked at the letter Lu Nanzhan had left behind, tears streamed endlessly down her face, falling onto the paper as the ink slowly blurred and spread apart. She felt as though she had experienced a long, endless dream, dying and being reborn over and over again, only to wake from it with nothing left but emptiness and loneliness.
It was Song Qingxian’s first time entering Lu Nanzhan’s study. Among the piles of documents and files on the desk, two books stood out conspicuously: How to Be a Qualified Lover and The Good Father Training Manual. He really had tried to become like a normal person, but by then he had already built an impenetrable wall around his mind, one outsiders could never enter, and one he himself could never escape from.
So the number above his head had never meant dragging her into death with him. It meant that once it reached one hundred, he would completely lose all attachment to this world.
At the beginning, Lu Nanzhan had been consumed by an obsessive desire to possess Song Qingxian, desperately dragging her with him toward death no matter the cost. But perhaps he really had changed. This time, in order to let Song Qingxian live better, he chose instead to quietly disappear through death himself.
Song Qingxian flipped open the books and discovered that he had carefully written notes throughout them. Suddenly, she remembered how he had studied One Hundred Ways to Be Gentle at the hospital. A painful bitterness welled up in her chest. She wanted to know what the remaining ninety-nine ways had been like, whether they were just as clumsy and heartbreaking as the first, but unfortunately, she would never have the chance to find out.
Even his study was arranged in a dark and oppressive style. Black tones dominated everything, monotonous and suffocating, heavy enough to make breathing difficult.
Song Qingxian noticed a large pile of paintings stacked in the corner. When she walked over, she discovered that every single painting was of her. There was her sleeping, eating, smiling, and her standing beneath the rain holding an umbrella…
Every painting carried a force powerful enough to pierce straight into the heart, though the artistic style itself was filled with darkness and eerie distortion. At a glance, it was obvious they had all been painted by Lu Nanzhan.
In truth, many mentally ill people possessed talents far beyond ordinary people in certain areas. Perhaps he could even have become a famous painter someday.
Song Qingxian remained alone in the study for a very, very long time. In reality, the amount of time she had spent with Lu Nanzhan had not been very long at all, yet that crazed and obsessive man already seemed to have become a part of her life itself, fused into her flesh and blood.
Lu Nanzhan was dead. No one would cling to her like a madman anymore, tormenting her endlessly. He had even left her an enormous fortune. She could now live freely and extravagantly in this world with enough money to last several lifetimes.
But Song Qingxian felt that she had probably gone mad too.
She wanted to die.
She did not know whether she would still have the chance to be reborn again this time, but if she did, she would save Lu Nanzhan no matter what.
Two days later, Song Qingxian committed suicide in the villa’s bathtub. As she bathed, the terror of drowning from her previous death once again swept over her. Yet while Lu Nanzhan had been by her side, she had clearly already recovered from it.
At that moment, Song Qingxian realized that perhaps she, too, could no longer live without Lu Nanzhan. Every second after learning of his death had become unbearable torment.
So she chose death.
When Butler Zhou found her the next day, her entire body had already turned pale as paper. The bathtub was completely dyed red with blood, creating an eerie and hauntingly beautiful scene.
Song Qingxian was dead.
On one hand, he was the Third Young Master of the prestigious Lu Family of Nanchuan City, the man who held the family’s power in his hands, an emperor-like figure capable of controlling everything with a mere gesture. On the other side, he was the illegitimate son despised by the Lu Family. The Lu Family only acknowledged him when he was fifteen years old, after he had spent years abandoned outside the family. In order to avoid disgracing the family name, they sent him overseas and left him to fend for himself, publicly claiming that he had been studying abroad since childhood. From a young age, he struggled desperately through the mud of life, and even after returning to the Lu Family, he never received the slightest warmth.
He was mentally ill, yet that did not stop him from being a genius. In only five years, he completed all high school and university coursework and earned a master’s degree from a business school. At twenty years old, relying on his extraordinary financial talent and keen grasp of market opportunities, he quickly rose to fame on Wall Street. It was also during that time that he resolved to take revenge on the Lu Family.
Eventually, he got his chance. Father Lu was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and the entire Lu Corporation fell into chaos as upper management began making their own moves behind the scenes. Lu Nanzhan was urgently summoned back to the country at the age of twenty-one, and from that year onward, he began his battle with Lu Chiyan for control of the company.
In just five years, he relied on his meticulous business strategies and ruthless methods to rapidly eliminate his opponents. Under his leadership, the Lu Corporation grew into one of the top enterprises in the country. Lu Chiyan was nearly forced completely out of the power struggle, barely managing to retain his seat on the board of directors as a marginalized figure within the company.
Lu Nanzhan made countless enemies. Both inside and outside the company, criticism toward him was endless. People called him vicious and merciless, accusing him of crushing his opponents without leaving them any path of survival. Then, at the age of twenty-six, he met Song Qingxian. She became his brief salvation and light, yet also the calamity he could never overcome in his lifetime.
Lu Nanzhan had struggled to survive alongside his mother ever since childhood. His mother was a prostitute, and throughout his childhood, all kinds of men constantly came and went through their dilapidated home. His mother smoked, drank, and frequently beat and cursed him while he was still very young.
Once, after drinking heavily, she grabbed a knife and tried to kill him, calling him a burden. Unfortunately, she was so drunk that she stumbled and fell, and the knife accidentally pierced her own artery. In the end, she died from excessive blood loss.
That moment from his childhood became a shadow he could never escape for the rest of his life. When the police arrived, he was standing expressionlessly in front of his mother’s blood-covered body, still holding the knife in his hand. He had always been withdrawn and isolated since childhood, and rumors alone were enough to destroy a person. Everyone said he had murdered his own mother and called him a complete monster. People avoided the young boy as though he were something terrifying. Eventually, even Lu Nanzhan himself began to doubt his own memories and once truly believed that he had killed his mother.
Some people are healed for a lifetime by a beautiful childhood, while others spend their entire lives trying to heal from an unfortunate one. Lu Nanzhan was exactly that kind of person. Rejected, despised, and struggling desperately to survive in the mud, he gradually became cruel, cold, and even mentally twisted.
Volume One, End.