Chapter 3

Jiao Bai walked out of Diye on his own two feet. He stood on the steps and looked up at the night sky—it was well past midnight by now, and there weren't many stars out.

"Young Master Xiaoqiu." The driver was hurrying him along.

Jiao Bai gave a faint sneer. The driver's eyes looked at him the way you'd look at a cheap whore, even as his mouth kept up the honorifics.

"What's the rush? My head's still spinning, give me a minute." There was a fresh needle mark on Jiao Bai's arm—he'd had an IV drip, his fever had broken, and he felt considerably more clear-headed now.

So Diye actually kept a medical team on staff. Probably in case the rich young masters played a little too rough and their toys needed emergency stitching. A medical team... that was something the comic had never mentioned either.

Jiao Bai made his way down the steps one at a time. When he reached the car, he didn't get in right away—instead he went and stood beside the Qi family's driver, clapping him on the shoulder. "Hey, brother. Got a smoke?"

The driver's face turned the color of pig liver. He forced out a stiff warning: "Young Master Xiaoqiu, you don't look too well. Maybe skip the cigarette and go home and drink some water instead. Your health comes first."

"Thanks for the concern." Jiao Bai reached over and, with apparent friendliness, straightened the driver's flipped-up collar. The corners of his mouth curled up, baring a pair of sharp little canines. "Let's go, brother. Sorry for the trouble."

Jiao Bai opened the car door and settled slowly into his seat. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a black car rounding the corner and heading this way, then comically slamming on its brakes with a screech that set everyone's teeth on edge.

He didn't need to look to know exactly what was happening: the person in the driver's seat, eyes practically bulging out of their skull with shock, wanting to run him over but not daring to offend the owner of the car he was riding in—forced to swallow it down, wearing the twisted expression of someone who'd bitten into a mouthful of shit and had no choice but to keep chewing.

All the pent-up frustration and resentment Jiao Bai had accumulated since arriving in this world finally let up, just a little.

The dog in that car had driven over on impulse, half out of his mind, staking out the spot like some wronged wife catching her husband in the act—except he was just a dog himself. He'd missed his window this time, and after this, he wouldn't dare try again.

Jiao Bai leaned back in the seat, relaxed. Back when he used to read the comic, all this melodrama had been delicious entertainment with dinner. Now that he was one of the people living it, it was a whole different, much less digestible story.

Jiao Bai's whole goal was to extract himself as fast as possible and stay far, far away from everyone connected to the main plot—especially the protagonist shou. But reality was doing the exact opposite: it was dragging him straight into the whirlpool.

He had to build up activity value with eight friends on his list. Eight. Goddammit. What a scam.

Just as Jiao Bai was drifting off to sleep, the car turned around without warning and headed back toward Diye.

Jiao Bai glanced at the rearview mirror and saw the driver had just hung up a call and was now watching him, wearing the gleeful expression of someone about to enjoy a good show. Jiao Bai swallowed the question rising in his throat and dug his fingernails hard into his palm inside his pocket.

He'd been found out!

Jiao Bai turned to look out the window. The city's night skyline rushed backward behind the glass at high speed. How had he been exposed?

Only a few hours had passed since he'd fainted with fever—what could Qi Yiliao possibly have found in that time to notice something off about him?

Jiao Bai's back shot straight up off the seat. Surveillance!

There had to be cameras installed in Qi Yiliao's room, and knowing him, probably covering every angle. He must have gotten suspicious and pulled up the footage to check, and found more than enough to raise questions.

There was no other explanation.

Jiao Bai sank back against the seat, his whole back damp with cold sweat. He rolled down the window; the night wind came pouring in, tousling the hair on his forehead, and his wound gave a dull throb of pain.

Whatever. Deal with it as it comes. Since there was no regular System supervision to worry about, no need to keep playing a role—he could just say he'd been faking it before.

Everyone alive wears a few masks. They were all adults here; everyone understood how it worked.

Jiao Bai told himself: as long as he never said out loud that he'd transmigrated in, nobody would ever think to connect the dots that way.

And even if he let it slip, intentionally or not, no one would believe him anyway.

If that pack of golden children ever found out he was really just a character from a comic, drawn into existence by an author, they'd throw him straight into a mental hospital and let him die there.

Some truths were better off staying buried.

Jiao Bai's heart, which had leapt clear up into his throat, slowly settled back down into place. He used the time on the road to gather his strength—there was no telling how long this battle was going to last.

......

Diye

At his computer, Qi Yiliao reached the hand holding his cigarette toward the ashtray, tapping off a long column of ash with a light flick. His gaze never left the multi-angle surveillance feed in front of him.

One of Qi Yiliao's small pleasures was having cameras installed in his own room so he could watch himself on the monitor. Awake, reading, working, or asleep. Viewed as if by a stranger, a detached observer.

He kept watch over himself.

Which was exactly how tonight's scene had come about.

Tonight, with nothing else to occupy him, Qi Yiliao had noticed that after his shower, the young man had suddenly dared to talk back to him—and had quite a lot to say, at that—so he'd pulled up the footage to take a look. And sure enough, he'd found something.

Zhang Zhen was thoroughly stumped: "What could possibly make an empty shell suddenly grow a soul in the space of a second?"

Qi Yiliao clicked the mouse, replaying the footage from the start.

On screen, the young man had originally been lying naked on the bed, eyes closed, his gaunt, bony limbs wrapped in an air of rot and decay. Then, a moment later, his eyes snapped open. He looked around in a daze at first, then his breathing turned ragged, his pupils constricting as he clutched at the sheets beneath him as if he couldn't catch his breath.

What followed was even more baffling. He'd scrambled into his clothes with trembling hands, then scrambled off the bed on all fours and hidden himself under the table...

He seemed to be running from something, in a state of real panic, and yet forcing himself to face it head-on all the same.

Whether in the sheer richness of the emotion or in how fast it shifted, the whole thing was deeply strange.

"It's almost like he's possessed," Zhang Zhen offered hesitantly. Aside from that, there was another possibility: that Wang Chuqiu, worn down by the environment he grew up in, had learned to be nothing but obedient—so obedient that his spirit had slowly gone dormant and rotted away. Tonight he'd "woken up," come "alive"—in short, what people called a split personality.

"Possessed? Doubtful." Qi Yiliao's gaze swept over the small camera placements around the room.

"Then it's a split personality." Zhang Zhen took a phone call and said quietly, "Third Brother, they've brought him back."

Qi Yiliao ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. "Send him next door."

Zhang Zhen went out at once to receive him. They'd only come to South City for the birthday celebration, and would be leaving right after tomorrow's noon banquet; Third Brother had no time to deal with this matter, and wouldn't have bothered even if he did—it wasn't his business, no need to get involved.

The Shen family was different from the other great clans. Old Madam Shen had chanted sutras and kept to a vegetarian diet for years, and put enormous stock in matters of ghosts, spirits, and fate. No one in the Shen family was permitted to have blood on their own hands—whatever needed doing was left to the servants, and even then the family had to distance themselves from it and spend time at the temple afterward.

If the young man in the footage really was possessed, this was a serious matter indeed.

Qi Yiliao called out to Zhang Zhen just as he was about to reach the door: "Change out everything on the bed. All of it."

Zhang Zhen scratched his head. Earlier, when he'd tried to carry Wang Chuqiu, Third Brother had stopped him and told him not to touch something dirty—at the time he'd suspected Wang Chuqiu had done something on his own initiative that had gotten on Third Brother's bad side, and now he was even more sure of it. Privately, he sighed. Tonight was supposed to be the night Third Brother kept Wang Chuqiu around; everyone had figured Third Brother could finally unwind a little. No one expected it to end up like this.

"Yes, sir," Zhang Zhen said.

The next moment, he heard his master speak again: "And that tin of tea on the table. Throw it out too."

......

At half past one in the morning, Jiao Bai returned to Diye. He stood in a room thick with the scent of chestnut blossoms. To his left was a rumpled bed with a passed-out Little Chili Pepper on it; directly ahead of him stood Shen Ji, fully dressed except for two undone buttons, his eyebrows and eyes cold and handsome, his pair of long legs and narrow waist impossible not to notice. He was several years older than Qi Yiliao, close to forty.

[Your friend Shen Ji has come online]

His avatar was Pikachu.

A little ball of yellow-orange, ears standing straight up, stubby little arms tucked in front, its flat lightning-bolt tail sticking up high, two small pink blush marks on its cheeks.

Once Jiao Bai was sure he wasn't seeing things, he sucked in a sharp breath, and the little man inside his head screamed with joy: So cute, I want to squeeze it!

But then his eyes drifted over to the old man soaked in that vintage CEO musk...

The Pikachu instantly lost its charm. Bye-bye.

In the comic, Shen Ji was quite the famous figure. The author had given him several highlight moments, promoting him to the position of top-billed major supporting character; outside the comic, his fan-tag rankings and shipping-fandom popularity trailed only Qi Yiliao's—he only lost out because he ended up with a canon pairing later on.

"Sir." Jiao Bai spoke up. This old fart's hair grew as thick as his libido—no sign of balding whatsoever.

Shen Ji's voice carried the lazy satisfaction of a male animal that had just finished its conquest for the night. "Go get my shoes."

Jiao Bai: "..."

The original owner of this body had to do this too?

Jiao Bai used to love reading bad-ending, melodramatic, scum-and-cheap comics, and he had a vague memory that plenty of them featured this exact dynamic between a sugar daddy and his kept lover.

A few seconds later, Jiao Bai thought to himself: ha, no. Not the same at all.

This old man didn't just want his shoes fetched—he wanted Jiao Bai to put them on for him.

Jiao Bai gritted his teeth, crouched halfway down, and set the leather shoes on the floor. His calf was suddenly kicked, catching him off guard, and he dropped hard onto his knees with a thud.

Old Dog Shen! Your mother's dead!

Jiao Bai's knees ached like they were about to split open. He gritted his teeth and knelt there, riding out the pain, while overhead a cold, hair-raising, appraising gaze bore down on him. It looked like Qi Yiliao had already handed the surveillance footage over to this old bastard.

"Shoes," Shen Ji said, cold and impatient.

Jiao Bai wanted nothing more than to grab that leather shoe and slap Shen Ji across the face with everything he had, again and again, until the man was on the ground howling for his mama with his teeth scattered around him. But his current position didn't allow for that. Not yet. He had to hold it in.

His chance would come. He was going to beat Shen Ji's face into mincemeat someday. Jiao Bai soothed himself with the mental image. The moment his hands touched Shen Ji's calf, he didn't even need to think about what came next—this body's muscle memory took over and finished putting the shoes on for him.

All in one smooth motion.

Jiao Bai nearly burst out laughing.

For the original owner of this body, there was gold beneath a man's knees. He couldn't reach it standing, so he had to kneel to pick it up. But after kneeling for so long, he could no longer get back up.

"What are you thinking about?" Shen Ji leaned down, the scent of mint from his collar mixing with the cloying sweetness that had rubbed off from his little plaything.

Jiao Bai lowered his eyes. "Nothing."

"Look up. Look at me when you say it." Shen Ji's voice turned sharp and commanding.

Jiao Bai, fighting hard against the urge to obey: "..." What the hell—had the original owner been psychologically abused into this?

Just as Jiao Bai was about to get up, Shen Ji suddenly clamped a hand around the back of his neck—cold, broad, pinching him the way you'd pinch an ant. Jiao Bai struggled, uncomfortable.

Shen Ji held Jiao Bai's neck with one hand and yanked his shirt off with the other. His dry, slender fingers trailed down Jiao Bai's back and stopped an inch above his tailbone.

This body's tailbone had been injured before, right at the exact spot where Shen Ji's fingertip had come to rest.

Jiao Bai knelt sprawled at Shen Ji's feet, gooseflesh crawling wildly across his back. Instinct screamed danger, his limbs beginning to shake, breath coming fast—and just as he was a second away from springing up to fight back, the five fingers around his neck tightened. In the instant he felt himself starting to choke, the fingertip pressed against his tailbone suddenly drove downward, with a force both terrifying and cruel.

Jiao Bai's face went pale with pain, and he convulsed helplessly.