The moment Su Qingyu stepped in front of the pole, the atmosphere inside the bar instantly grew lively. Applause and whistles erupted from all directions, rising and falling in an endless wave as the crowd reacted to his unexpected appearance.
Hua Shuming exclaimed in pleasant surprise, “Jiang Chu can actually pole dance?”
Li Dongfeng also rose to his feet along with the people around them, his eyes filled with undisguised admiration as he looked toward the stage. He turned to Sheng Xun and said enviously, “Sheng Xun, your boyfriend is seriously incredible.”
Yet the praise directed at his boyfriend, along with the envy others expressed toward him, did not make Sheng Xun happy in the slightest. On the contrary, it only made him even angrier. He desperately tried to deny it, his voice filled with agitation as he insisted, “No! He’s not like this!”
The two men stared at him in confusion, unable to understand why he was reacting that way. There was an unmistakable sense of bewilderment in their eyes, as though his sudden denial and furious response had come completely out of nowhere.
The people nearby who had overheard him also turned their gazes toward him, looking at him with strange and puzzled expressions.
The more they reacted this way, the angrier Sheng Xun became. He had no idea how to explain to them that Jiang Chu was not like this, nor did he know how to tell them what Jiang Chu was supposed to be like.
By the time he finally figured out how to speak, another round of enthusiastic applause erupted throughout the bar.
The dance had begun.
This famous bar had a spacious dance floor, with a circular stage positioned at its center. A single straight black pole stood in the middle of the stage.
In their city, it seemed that no famous bar was complete without a pole. In the eyes of many people, pole dancing was the sexiest form of dance. It even carried a hint of eroticism, making it a perfect match for the atmosphere of nightlife.
When someone who had captured the attention of everyone in the bar the moment he walked through the door was about to perform a pole dance, the atmosphere immediately grew as heated and intense as a blazing fire.
His slender, fair hands stretched out along the pole before tightening around it. His entire body pressed against the metal and such a simple movement was enough to draw a wave of excited screams from the bar.
His face moved close to the pole. The high bridge of his nose brushed against the metal as it slid gently downward. His head tilted slightly, his long eyelashes lowered and closed and his thin lips were a deep, dusky red.
The audience watched him with bated breath. There was hardly any movement and the scene was almost unnaturally still, yet no one could explain why it was so captivating.
Then his arm slid downward. He wrapped himself around the pole and pushed himself up in one fluid motion, using the metal to propel his entire body into a spin.
He was truly like a swan spreading its wings. His body turned in the air before he descended in an elegant, graceful landing, every movement smooth and seamless from beginning to end.
Those few dozen seconds of dancing were enough to stun everyone in the bar.
Many people who performed pole dancing in bars did so simply for the excitement of the moment. Carried away by the lively atmosphere, they would climb onto the stage when the mood struck them and dance casually, their skill levels generally nothing to write home about.
But he seemed different.
Anyone who understood dance could recognize his astonishing control over his body from the very beginning. His strength and balance were precise and every single stop in his movements was worth savoring again and again.
Even those who knew nothing about dancing were inexplicably drawn in. They could sense that this was someone who knew how to dance exceptionally well, someone whose every movement could become a painting.
His movements were incomparably smooth, yet they also carried the powerful, upright strength of his bones and that strength seemed to hold emotions of its own, broken, yet refusing to yield.
A moment ago, he had leaped upward with all his might. The next moment, he fell helplessly to the ground, crawling forward in submission. His head drooped over his knees as he continued to dance right there on the floor.
Gradually, the audience became immersed in his movements. Only then did they realize that this was not an ordinary pole dance.
This was the painful struggle of a human being.
Slowly, he raised the heel of his back foot, stretching his instep until his toes pressed against the ground. It was the movement of a ballet dancer rising onto their toes, like a swan beginning to dance.
Yet he looked as though he were stepping onto thorns, painfully lifting himself onto his toes while reaching out, trying to escape.
Both hands seized the pole.
It was the only rope in his land of thorns that he could use to climb upward.
The rope appeared stable but in reality, it was slippery, slick and weak. Once again, he fell back into the thorns.
Something had trapped him.
Perhaps it was the spectators watching him. Perhaps it was this bar, steeped in sensuality and the pleasures of the night. Perhaps it was this prosperous city. Perhaps it was wealth, power and fame.
All of them had transformed into sharp, piercing thorns.
It was as though they could see the ground beneath his feet, where his purple veins faintly showed through, covered in blood. As though they could see the streaks of blood left across his body by the thorns, each scratch cutting into his skin.
They could almost feel his suffering firsthand, the pain of his struggle, his helplessness and his sorrow.
Exhausted, he wrapped his arms around the rope and closed his eyes, breathing softly. The black beauty mark at the corner of his eye became a tragic mark of fate, its sorrowful presence seeming to blur beneath a veil of painful moisture.
A large bar had never experienced such a moment of silence.
This was a pole dance that had gone far beyond anything they could have imagined.
After a long while, several people in the bar were the first to emerge from the emotions that had seized them. They began applauding sporadically, their claps scattered and uncertain.
Then, all at once, they saw the man pressed against the pole smile.
He lifted his head. Beads of sweat slid down his throat, passing over his Adam’s apple before disappearing into the black fabric of his shirt.
His dark red lips slowly curved upward. His long eyelashes lifted, revealing a breathtakingly stunning moment, while the tear mole at the corner of his eye seemed to change color beneath the lights.
He began to dance again.
The snake shaped chain resting against his collarbone soared into the air. His strength was no longer broken and his movements were no longer helpless.
His feet slid across the floor in parallel, fiercely sweeping aside the thorns.
When he no longer feared the thorns, they became his weapon.
When the rope meant to rescue him was too slippery to hold on to, he used the thorns to wrap around it. He transformed the thorns beneath his feet into a lifeline, then began climbing upward.
His slender arms, even when covered in blood, clung tightly to the thorny rope. Using the thorns as footholds, he spun upward in a soaring ascent.
The black sleeves of his shirt spread gracefully in the wind. He had become a black swan, spreading powerful wings through the blood.
The corners of his lips lifted into an unrestrained smile. The light in his eyes came from the deepest, darkest depths, beautiful yet shadowed.
It was the beauty of rebirth after death, a breathtaking transformation like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
At ten thirty in the evening, the night’s festivities had only just begun to gather momentum.
Suddenly, a thunderous wave of applause and screams erupted from Fill Xu Bar. The sound was so loud that passersby were startled, turning their heads repeatedly to peer inside with curiosity.
It was difficult to imagine who could have caused such a reaction. Even a celebrity concert probably wouldn’t have created an effect like this.
“Damn, he’s incredible!”
“Oh my God, I’ve got goosebumps all over!”
“Am I seriously getting to watch this without paying? Am I really in a bar right now?”
“Someone tell me his name! I swear I’ll spend the entire night shouting it at the top of my lungs!”
“He’s my god!”
Fill Xu Bar was famous and the cost of spending an evening there was not low. Many of the people inside were hardly inexperienced with the world. They had seen plenty of things before, yet they were still left astonished by a pole dance like this.
At the beginning, many of them had indeed approached the stage with a certain expectation. They had wanted to watch a beautiful man perform a sensual pole dance.
But none of them could have imagined that the performance would turn out like this.
This was a pole dance that made their blood surge and their hearts tremble far more intensely than they had anticipated.
They were fortunate enough to witness such a performance in this bar, yet at the same time, they felt that a pole dance of this caliber should not be confined to a place like this.
It belonged somewhere higher.
After Su Qingyu finished, he bent forward in a bow before blowing another kiss toward the audience.
“Hello, everyone. My name is Jiang Chu and I love pole dancing.”
No one knew who started it.
Then, the entire bar erupted with his name.
527: 【Host, repentance value +3.】
Su Qingyu’s smile widened. He tilted his head and waved toward the people below.
At that moment, everyone in the bar remembered his name.
They knew that he loved pole dancing and that his skill on the pole was truly extraordinary.
And it wouldn’t end with that moment.
For the next several days, perhaps even longer, people in the bar would continue talking about him.
Su Qingyu paid no attention to the people below the stage trying to persuade him to stay. He simply picked up his shoes and walked back toward them.
Thanks to the advanced “wearing in” system from the Underworld of Fengdu, he was using his own body. Jiang Chu had no illnesses and was in good health and his body was likewise in excellent condition. That was why he had been able to perform such an intense dance.
However, it had been a long time since he had danced with this level of intensity. He had still worked up quite a sweat and his shirt had loosened considerably during the performance. The hem of the shirt, which was shorter on the left and longer on the right in a deliberately stylish design, revealed a strip of his waist.
He paid no attention to it. He simply placed his shoes beside his feet and settled down on the sofa.
He might not have cared but someone else certainly did.
When Su Qingyu walked over, several of Sheng Xun’s friends still hadn’t fully recovered from his pole dance. Just like everyone else in the bar, their eyes continued to follow him wherever he went.
By the time they finally came back to their senses and wanted to say something to him, Sheng Xun had already stepped in front of Su Qingyu, his face full of fury, blocking the others’ view of him.
For some reason, his eyes seemed to be on the verge of catching fire.
“Jiang Chu, do you have no shame? You’re a student at Jin University, yet you’re actually dancing on a pole in a bar!”
“…?”
This time, Sheng Xun’s friends didn’t even need to say anything. The people whose gazes had remained fixed on the man in the black shirt, still immersed in the dance they had just witnessed, were already reacting.
A wine bottle suddenly shattered at Sheng Xun’s feet.
From somewhere in the dance floor, someone cursed, “Ungrateful bastard!”
They might not have known that Jiang Chu was Sheng Xun’s boyfriend but Sheng Xun’s friends did and, deep down, they were thinking the same thing.
Sheng Xun was being a little too ungrateful.
Hua Shuming’s gaze kept drifting uncontrollably toward Su Qingyu. He couldn’t understand it. Sheng Xun clearly had such an amazing boyfriend, so why didn’t he know how to cherish him properly?
If it were him…
Hua Shuming suddenly jolted in alarm and hurriedly looked away.
It was true that his heart had given a sudden jolt when Jiang Chu first walked through the hotel’s doors but the moment he learned that Jiang Chu was Sheng Xun’s boyfriend, he had immediately reined in those restless feelings.
And yet, during the dance just now, he had barely blinked once.
The shock Jiang Chu had given him was not merely a matter of physical beauty.
Now, when he thought back to the young stars he had kept as lovers, each of them suddenly seemed so shallow. None of them possessed that profound, weighty force that struck directly at the heart.
He could barely even remember what their faces looked like anymore.
All that remained in his mind was Jiang Chu’s dance on the stage moments ago.
He felt that the dance had been a monologue from the depths of Jiang Chu’s heart. That Jiang Chu was truly experiencing such pain and that the source of that pain might very well be Sheng Xun.
Hua Shuming felt that someone like Sheng Xun was unworthy of Jiang Chu.
He reached out and shoved Sheng Xun aside.
“You don’t understand him at all! All you know how to do is scold him. Is this how a boyfriend is supposed to act?”
After having a wine bottle smashed at his feet, Sheng Xun was now being pointed at and scolded by his own childhood friend.
He was so stunned that he became a little dazed.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to go.
Yet one after another, his friends were criticizing him.
“I’m telling you, Sheng Xun, what’s wrong with pole dancing? If you’re so high and mighty, then why do you even come to bars?”
“I think that pole dance could have been performed on a professional stage. What the hell are you doing?”
“Didn’t you hear Jiang Chu say that he likes pole dancing? What’s the point of forcing him to learn classical dance when that’s what he enjoys?”
The more Sheng Xun listened, the angrier he became.
“What do you people know!”
Su Qingyu listened to the system’s announcements as the repentance value continued to rise and his mood became exceptionally pleasant.
Then he opened his mouth and asked, “What do you know?”
The moment he spoke, everyone around them turned to look at him.
“You made me learn classical dance and play the piano. Was it because you thought those things were the only way to give someone an artistic aura? Because you thought pole dancing sullied the image you wanted me to have?” Su Qingyu raised an eyebrow at him. “Have you ever seen that famous painting? Pretentious respectability and hypocrisy are the enemies of art.”
The moment Su Qingyu finished speaking, a loud cheer rang out from somewhere in the crowd.
Many of the people who came to bars and nightclubs at night hated those who acted all high and mighty in such places. They had come here to have fun, so how could someone claim they couldn’t accept pole dancing?
The words “pretentious respectability and hypocrisy” had struck right at the heart of what they were thinking.
Sheng Xun’s chest heaved violently. He bent down, grabbed Su Qingyu by the wrist and tried to drag him out of the hotel.
Su Qingyu used a little skillful force and slipped his wrist free once again.
“I like it here. I don’t want to leave right now.”
“Why should we leave? Weren’t you the one who called us here?”
“Jiang Chu has barely been here and you’re already asking him to leave? Come on, come on, everyone sit down. Let’s talk for a while longer.”
Li Dongfeng, who had always been the peacemaker, pressed Sheng Xun down onto the sofa. He then asked the surrounding onlookers to give them some space before sitting down and saying, “Isn’t this our first time meeting Jiang Chu today? Don’t make the atmosphere so awkward. Let’s sit down and have a proper conversation.”
The anger in Sheng Xun’s chest was still churning. His face darkened as he said, “Talk about what? He’s from some small place and his family is worlds apart from yours. What could you possibly have to talk about with him?”
Sheng Xun had spoken that way because he was furious.
In truth, he didn’t want to talk about Jiang Chu like this in front of his friends. He cared about his own dignity, too but Jiang Chu had been far too outrageous tonight, leaving him both enraged and flustered. In his anger, he had spoken without thinking, using those words to suppress Jiang Chu’s uncontrollable behavior.
He was also issuing Jiang Chu a veiled warning.
If he continued, neither of them would come out of this looking good.
Usually, whenever things reached this point, Jiang Chu would stop talking.
Su Qingyu, however, said, “Isn’t it precisely because our living environments are different that we have something to talk about? Or are you suggesting that the only thing you can discuss face to face is your elite education?”
Li Dongfeng let out another sudden snort of laughter.
✦ ✧ ✦
Cressilia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
Coffee is technically a form of emotional support.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 30 · Fengdu Underworld (1)Chapter 31 · Fengdu Underworld (2)Chapter 32 Part 1 · The Humble Young Master (1)Chapter 32 Part 2 · The Humble Young Master (1)Chapter 33 Part 1 · The Humble Young Master (2)Chapter 33 Part 2 · The Humble Young Master (2)Chapter 34 Part 1 · The Humble Young Master (3)Chapter 34 Part 2 · The Humble Young Master (3)Chapter 35 · The Humble Young Master (4)