Chapter 47

Chapter 47

A terrifying crimson glow deepened in Qiao You's emerald eyes. He ambiguously yet forcefully cupped the boy's feverish cheeks, a smile playing on his lips as he murmured, "Baby, do you know what you're saying?"

Lan Yexing's belated realization brought a fresh wave of shyness, his face flushing even deeper and growing hotter. He parted his lips to speak, but Qiao You, with a mischievous glint, offered him no chance to reply.

The moment the words left his mouth, space itself warped. In the next instant, Qiao You swept the syringe from the table and cradled Lan Yexing, transporting them to his single dormitory room. The drawn curtains swayed gently in the night breeze. In the comforting darkness, Qiao You possessively pressed the boy in his arms onto his bed.

Two taut, muscular arms braced on either side of the boy's body. The young man's heaving, broad chest and the dangerous contours of his arms conspired with the bed, forming a cramped, oppressive, cage-like space that firmly ensnared the boy. A few slivers of moonlight, mingled with the lake's shimmer, pierced the room. The young man's black shadow, darker than the night itself, loomed over the boy like a wall, as if poised to physically invade his skin, to imprison his bones, organs, and blood.

Lan Yexing's black hair lay disheveled, his eyes hazy and moist. He lay almost docilely in that meager space, his nostrils filled with an intrusive scent of lime. His heart hammered, threatening to burst from his chest, and the burning heat on his cheeks uncontrollably spread throughout his body. He found himself almost unable to breathe.

The overwhelming sense of oppression and desire emanating from the young man instilled a flicker of fear within him. His scalp tingled, his ears buzzed, and his body trembled in sync with his racing heart. Yet, deep within, an undeniable anticipation surged uncontrollably—this was the person he adored, the person he loved beyond measure...

Who wouldn't yearn for such intimacy with the one they cherished?

A soft, captivating light emerged in Lan Yexing's moist eyes. He gazed blankly at him: he yearned to touch his handsome face, to encircle his neck, to kiss him, to share a deeper intimacy...

But under this suffocating pressure and control, his body felt too pliant, trembling uncontrollably from his very soul to his fingertips. He couldn't even lift an arm, so he could only meet his gaze with such a moist, lingering, obedient, and tender look...

The blond young man above him returned his gaze with eyes that were profoundly affectionate, obsessive, and chillingly cruel. He smiled, and with a large hand, he teasingly drew Lan Yexing's uniform tie elegantly from beneath his cashmere vest, disarranging the neatly tucked white shirt collar beneath. Then, like a terrifying demon king cloaked in handsome human skin, he leaned down, bringing his lips close to the boy's hot ear, coaxing him ambiguously, "Be good, let me take these off, okay, baby?"

Lan Yexing instinctively tilted his head, his black hair falling into even greater disarray. A small patch of fair, reddened skin was revealed at his collar, disheveled by the tugging of his tie. He obediently parted his moist lips slightly, intending to answer, but his vocal cords seemed suppressed, unable to utter a sound.

Qiao You stared intently at him, his emerald eyes unnervingly bright, his oppressive gaze spreading like a net, firmly pinning the boy to the bed, greedily capturing every minute expression and movement.

The pleased smile on his face deepened, and with an elegant flourish, he finally untied the tie.

His voice, hoarse and captivating, resonated with magnetism, yet the words themselves were laced with mischief: "Xiao Xing, it's all your fault that things have turned out this way..."

Lan Yexing stared blankly at him, finding the young man cunning, alien, and terrifying. A tremor of fear ran through him, yet he still couldn't, and didn't want to, push him away...

His currently chaotic and buzzing mind simply couldn't grasp why such contradictory emotions as love, pleasure, desire, fear, and dread could simultaneously course through his being.

So, as his clothes were stripped away, piece by piece, Lan Yexing merely raised an arm to shield his eyes and brows. Tears, long since streaming down his cheeks from the soreness caused by the young man, dampened his face and the sheets. Yet, he didn't voice his fear, only whispered softly and hoarsely, "I... I've never done this before..."

Lan Yexing's eyes and brows remained hidden by his arm. He sniffed his reddened nose, his slightly trembling voice growing even softer: "Please... please be gentle..."

Qiao You, having elegantly unbuttoned the last button of the boy's white shirt, froze, his eyes widening abruptly—that intensely tingling sensation surged in his heart again, almost stealing his breath—even as his body dangerously and wildly clamored with all manner of base, vulgar, and insane desires.

He wanted to make him weep.

He wanted to make him ache.

He wanted him to truly be his.

But the feeling of "cherishing" lodged itself like a sharp thorn, preventing him from proceeding—he even found himself uncontrollably pondering a question he had once utterly disdained: What exactly is love?

Plunder? Possession? Control?

He still disdained and failed to grasp this question, which, like the concept of "happiness," was too abstract and grand. But now he finally understood: love definitely does not equate to desire...

......

After a long pause, Qiao You settled onto the edge of the bed, his gaze still fixed on the boy, brimming with undisguised desire. However, he extended a large hand, gently yet firmly grasping the boy's forearm that covered his eyes and brows. After moving it aside, he glanced at the boy's red, wet eyes, filled with surprise, then swiftly and forcefully pulled up the wrist that fit perfectly in his palm.

Thus, the boy on the bed, clad in an unbuttoned white shirt, was pulled up and possessively embraced.

One of his large hands ruffled the boy's soft black hair, while the other rested on the boy's slightly trembling, slender back, gently stroking along the spine, as if soothing a startled kitten. He softly said, "Be good. I won't do anything more tonight. Don't be scared anymore, okay?"

In the dim, safe room, Lan Yexing's body stiffened, then relaxed as he came to his senses. He buried his face in the young man's embrace, reaching out to grasp the young man's clothes, and muffled, "I'm not scared, I'm just... a little bit scared. It's okay if you continue."

He, too, longed for intimacy with the person he cherished.

Qiao You, dressed in a shirt and trousers, his half-open shirt revealing impressively sculpted abdominal muscles, exuded a rarely seen aura of dangerous, rebellious, and uncontrolled charisma.

He sat elegantly and casually by the bed, his muscular, long arms possessively holding Lan Yexing, who was half-sitting with knees bent, almost completely enveloping him in his embrace.

Hearing Lan Yexing's words, he chuckled softly, and even his emerald pupils rarely showed a hint of a smile. He imprinted a clean and gentle kiss on the boy's head, saying, "You're so brave, Xiao Xing."

Lan Yexing felt as if he was being mocked. He pushed him away with a blush: "Hey."

Qiao You casually and happily hummed in response, dotingly ruffling the boy's black hair and pulling him deeper into his embrace.

His pupils still held an unyielding, terrifying desire, but his tone at this moment was relaxed and casual: "It's okay, we can do the most intimate things later."

No matter how difficult it was to suppress the wild surge within him, he was willing to wait until Lan Yexing was no longer afraid.

He didn't want Lan Yexing to suffer any trauma or harm from this experience.

But that didn't stop him from collecting some interest now.

A flawless smile graced his face, and just as he was about to lean in for a kiss, he saw Lan Yexing in his arms lower his head, push him away slightly, and softly say, "If you don't want to continue, then let's start getting used to things more intimate than kissing."

Qiao You, under the cloak of night, watched the slender, pale neck that the boy revealed beneath his gaze, and dangerously narrowed his eyes.

Seemingly sensing the other's intensely strong presence, Lan Yexing awkwardly reached out and touched his own hot nape. He said in a muffled voice, blushing, "Can you bite here?"

Qiao You's pupils contracted, the red light in his emerald eyes terrifyingly clear.

Lan Yexing's voice grew smaller and smaller due to embarrassment, yet he still candidly said, "I heard that in this world, there's a behavior called marking, which is biting here... Although I don't have any glands, I still want to be... marked by you..."

Before he finished speaking, a thick, terrifying shadow completely enveloped Lan Yexing.

Lan Yexing's eyes suddenly widened, and he let out a heavy "hmm"—at this moment, the tall, handsome young man leaned down slightly, biting fiercely into that pale, fragile nape, like a terrifying vampire in handsome human skin greedily sucking the blood of a willing prey.

Lan Yexing's breath hitched for a moment from the pain, yet he remained obediently still. He only clutched the young man's clothes more tightly.

......

After an unknown amount of time, Lan Yexing hissed, covering the terrifyingly hot teeth marks on his nape, and looked up. He glared at him, blushing, "Hey, are you a dog?!"

That patch of skin on his nape was all swollen!

But even so, it didn't break the skin!

How did this person control his strength?!

Qiao You smiled at him, his emerald eyes filled with satisfied pleasure. He reached out a large hand and contentedly stroked the boy's nape, saying insincerely, "Sorry."

Lan Yexing twitched his lips and looked away, blushing: "Forget it." After all, he was the one who initiated it.

After learning about Qiao You's background and then the secrets of the world from Leon, Lan Yexing's emotions had experienced great ups and downs. At this moment, he finally calmed down due to this special intimate contact.

He looked at the syringe Qiao You had placed on the table, and his eyes grew cold.

His brain quickly began to work. He looked at Qiao You again and said seriously, "I have a guess. Do you want to hear it?"

If his guess was true, he might be able to help Qiao You draw out the real Song Wen.

Qiao You raised an eyebrow, staring at his still unbuttoned white shirt. He wanted to remind the other, 'Are you sure you want to say that?', but he cunningly didn't say it aloud. He just smiled and said, "Tell me."

Lan Yexing blinked and said, "I suspect that the King and the Host have different goals and motives."

In other words, they are not entirely on the same side.

He had some basis for this speculation:

For example, the "Song Wen" in the administrative building's office said that it was the Host who informed the King about his and Qiao You's love affair. The King acted on this information, sending "Song Wen" to deliver the Extract Syringe.

This means that the King likely cannot directly obtain information from Xiao Song. If he wants information about the host from Xiao Song, he probably has to ask the Host, and the Host can choose whether or not to provide it.

For example, after he completed his most recent mission, the Host unlocked the "Source Analysis" ability for him. He learned the truth about Qiao You's parents from the syringe, and later learned part of the truth about this world from Leon.

Xiao Song used to say that the Host's core ability to control the outside world couldn't affect him (now it seems this ability is Precognition). But even if it couldn't predict his actions, the Host should have known these things by reading Xiao Song's data. This would almost certainly shake the King's rule, yet there has been no movement from the King. This suggests that the Host most likely did not inform the King of these matters.

These clues all indicate that the Host and the King are not entirely on the same front.

The last point he cared about was that Leon said the King saw Qiao You as naive, weak, and kind, but the actual Qiao You was not like that, and the King seemed unaware of his secret activities all along.

He thought of two possibilities. The first possibility was that Qiao You had a way to evade the gaze of that "Precognition" psychic power. The second possibility was that the actual controller of this "Precognitive" who only had a brain left was likely the Host, and the Host had not informed the King of Qiao You's abnormality.

Having traced the clues this far, Lan Yexing, as if remembering something, looked at Qiao You: "Why does the King think you're naive, weak, and kind?"

According to Leon, the King trusted his machines and secret weapons implicitly, which meant their power was immense and beyond human comprehension. The King believed their judgment and detection were infallible.

So how did Qiao You manage to evade them?

Qiao You smiled, meeting his gaze, and said faintly, "A person devoid of any emotion or sentiment would naturally be detected as naive, weak, and kind by any instrument."

At the age of three, his mother transferred his original psychic power away. He should have been without psychic abilities, but perhaps because the psychic community, cursed by bloodline, would always possess psychic power regardless, after losing his original power, he inexplicably awakened his father's psychic ability: "Extraction."

He adapted to this dangerous and bloody psychic power remarkably quickly.

The day after he was taken by the royal family, he learned to use this psychic power to completely "extract" his inner self.

When the royal family took him away, they gave him a sedative before the examination. So he had no memory of that physical check-up. However, before falling completely unconscious, the precocious child used his new psychic power to thoroughly "extract" his inner self.

The test results showed that his sexual orientation was male, and his personality was kind, weak, and innocent.

The royal family completely lowered their guard against such a three-year-old child. To make him feel the so-called "happiness," the royal family ultimately did not silence the old butler, but instead granted his desperate plea, allowing him to continue raising him, only threatening the butler to strictly forbid instilling hatred in him.

In the years that followed, the royal family closely monitored him and the butler. The royal family and those prominent families would also send various omegas and alphas to infiltrate his surroundings, watching him and collecting information. They would also subtly probe his preferences in partners.

And every year, the royal family would send people to draw his blood samples. Each time before giving blood, he would empty his entire inner self, becoming a hollow person. A hollow person, of course, would be flawless in character and integrity.

He lived his life this way until high school, and he believed that even after losing his memory and entering university, he still detested these things.

Lan Yexing, hearing this, tenderly clasped his hand. He looked directly into the other's eyes and asked the final question: "How much did you truly know about the truth of this world before?"

Qiao You still gazed at him with gentle, morbid focus, his smile deepening. His voice was elegant and melodious, yet it held a cold arrogance and disdain: "I only vaguely sensed that the King and the powerful hand behind him were orchestrating the fate of the entire world. To be honest, none of that concerned me."

He simply didn't care what happened to this world. If his parents knew he had grown into such a cold and arrogant person, they would surely be disappointed.

Qiao You: "At that time, I only cared if they had the ability to completely orchestrate my destiny."

Perhaps because he once possessed that unfortunate and eerie "precognition" psychic power, he developed an immunity to such scrutiny. Or perhaps his mother's power was still at play. He discovered through many experiments that the powerful hand could not fully predict his actions—for example, regarding his bloody underground laboratory, it could only foresee that he would be in the basement at some future point, but not what he would be doing there.

Another example: when he repeatedly "extracted" the bodies of those psychics for a certain purpose, it seemed to only "predict" that he appeared near the individuals at a certain time.

Its gaze upon him was blurry.

However, given the incidents with those people, it should have been able to deduce that he was the culprit, but he disdained this: he would destroy the evidence of his bloody deeds, merely to avoid attracting more trouble from outside his enemies in a society that, to most, operated civilly and normally; if it were the King and that disgusting powerful hand, he would eagerly lure them and Song Wen all to him, then engage in a satisfying slaughter—but that powerful hand was much harder to reveal than the deeply hidden King.

Qiao You's half-lidded pupils were filled with icy malevolence: he truly didn't care what happened to this world. For revenge and a certain purpose, no matter whether killing his enemies would be good or bad for this world, he would kill them without hesitation. He was destined to be stained with so much slaughter and bloodshed.

However, Lan Yexing... he knew that besides caring for him, Lan Yexing also cared for many other people, and for this world.

If only... he truly wished he could leave him a world untainted by countless dirty karmic ties, a clean and happy world...

He still didn't understand what "happiness," which his parents had so deeply yearned for, truly was. Yet, he, who even now harbored countless base and wicked thoughts towards Lan Yexing, at the same time desperately wished that Lan Yexing could attain that state called "happiness."

Even if it meant forgoing it himself...

...

Lan Yexing gazed softly at the handsome blond young man who seemed lost in thought, a nameless unease stirring within him. He leaned in and embraced the young man, frowning slightly as he muffled, "Hey, are you going to let me continue?"

Qiao You's thoughts returned. He smiled, almost dotingly ruffling the boy's black hair: "Go on."

A plan slowly formed in his mind. Lan Yexing took a deep breath and said, "Do you care about your grades?" Like, would you mind not getting all A's because of missed classes?

Qiao You raised an eyebrow: "No."

Lan Yexing: "What about your club activities?"

Qiao You: "No." He wasn't truly a qualified soccer player, completely uninterested in team glory. He joined only because he had a slight interest in the sport itself.

Lan Yexing fell silent for a moment. He held the young man intimately and lingeringly, finally asking the last question: "Do you mind... being imprisoned by me for a while?"

If Qiao You, who was most important to the royal family, were to completely disappear from this campus, the King would surely send his true confidant—the real Song Wen—to find him.

This way, he could bring the person who directly killed Qiao You's parents before Qiao You, and Qiao You could avenge his parents...

And when he said this, he did not ask Xiao Song to block the Host.

Because, at the same time, he also wanted to conduct an experiment: he wanted to test how significant the divergence in stance between the King and the Host was... If the Host still concealed his plan to imprison Qiao You from the King, then it would mean that, unlike the King who only regarded Qiao You as the core of the entire conspiracy, for the Host, there was another core...

If the Host didn't conceal it from the King, it didn't matter either. If the King knew in advance that he, a mere pawn, was going to target the crucial Qiao You before he imprisoned him, he would still send his most important confidant to handle the matter. He would still be able to bring Song Wen before Qiao You.

Qiao You smiled, looking at him meaningfully, and said, "Xiao Xing, have I corrupted you?" You've even learned words like 'imprisonment,' how... exciting.

Lan Yexing looked at him with a helpless yet soft expression: "So, do you mind or not—" if I [imprison] you for a few days?

Qiao You still smiled, gazing back at him with a morbid obsession, and answered crisply, "No."

Lan Yexing's light eyes brightened: "Then I—"

Qiao You raised an eyebrow: "But there are conditions."

Lan Yexing blinked: "Tell me."

Qiao You's eyes deepened. He reached out a large hand, his fingers ambiguously and meaningfully parting the boy's already unbuttoned white shirt. He smiled and said, "Take it off, and let me hold you while we sleep tonight."