Lu Chen's words drifted to her like a lover's murmured dream, each syllable piercing Jiang Wanxing's heart—already shattered by shock and disbelief—with the precision of a poisoned silver needle.
"'Star Cup'… 'Teacher Guying'…"
Those names, cursed as if by dark magic, were the twin pride and ever-bleeding wound of Jiang Wanxing's life.
Twenty years! A full twenty years she had believed that this chapter of humiliation, resentment, and bloodied tears lay sealed in the darkest vault of her memory. She had thought that through endless nights of self-hypnosis and ruthless forging, the once-fragile girl whose dreams lay in ruins had been tempered into something harder than diamond and colder than ice—a merciless machine.
Yet why… why, when those two long-forgotten names escaped so calmly, so definitively from the lips of this obscure, even somewhat shabby young man, did her supposedly unbreakable heart still lurch as if gouged by the keenest blade?
Her phoenix-like eyes, now unmoored by sheer astonishment, fixed on Lu Chen's face—pale from the strain of wielding his mysterious "Heart-Hunting Score," yet gleaming with triumph. She searched his gaze, his slightest expression, for a crack, a hint of bluff. But found nothing.
Disappointment flooded her.
In Lu Chen's gaze lay the stillness of a bottomless well and the chilling clarity of omniscience. At the corner of his lips hovered a fleeting, almost pitying smile—an expression that seemed to say, "In your grasp of countless lives, you have reigned as queen. But I… I am the god who rules over this world."
"You… how… how could you possibly know these things?!" Jiang Wanxing's voice had lost its earlier sharpness, replaced by a trembling despair. Her full, sculpted body quaked with the emotional upheaval, on the brink of collapse under the sudden onslaught of truth.
Her black silk dress, tailored to her curves, clung even tighter as she trembled. The twin alabaster mounds at her chest, already threatening to burst the fabric, heaved as violently as frightened white rabbits, radiating an intoxicating allure.
Lu Chen's eyes flicked—just for a heartbeat—to that lavish terrain before he, like the greatest gentleman, restored his gaze to her faultless, ravaged visage.
He knew her defenses lay in ruin. Her heart, long encased in ice and riddled with loneliness, lay bare before him. Now was the moment—his moment—to seize control of this "hunt."
"Ms. Jiang," he said softly, voice still gentle yet unassailable. He lifted a hand—and with reverent delicacy—wiped away a single tear, trembling with emotion, from the corner of her eye. His fingertip brushed her skin, smooth as jade yet cool from tears.
In that instant, a jolt like lightning coursed through him, thrilling every nerve. And Jiang Wanxing's body, aflame with this intimate contact, shuddered as if scorched by a fierce flame. A sensation she had not felt in twenty years stirred within her: shame and fury mingled with a perverse, soul-deep craving, like an addict in withdrawal.
She tried to scream, to resist—to tear this presumptuous stranger apart as she had so many who had dared to violate her. But she found she could not even raise a finger.
Lu Chen's eyes—dark, fathomless whirlpools of power—drained from her every ounce of pride and defiance.
"What matters," he murmured, his touch at her eye gentle yet unsettlingly possessive, "is whether you will grant me—and yourself—a chance to redeem those… long-buried regrets, to seek that most genuine, most yearning… salvation."
Jiang Wanxing's breathing stilled. In her shock and despair, her eyes—once stark and lost—flickered with a fragile, struggling light.
"Salvation…?" she repeated, voice hushed almost to silence.
"Yes—salvation." Lu Chen's lips curved into a sly, sinister smile, tinged with compassion. Leaning close, he whispered against her jasmine-scented earlobe, voice laden with deadly promise, "Tell me, Ms. Jiang: the Star Cup trophy, Teacher Guying's unfinished dream—don't you truly want to… reclaim them yourself?"
Boom!
His words detonated in Jiang Wanxing's tumultuous mind like a greater explosion. Her legs buckled, and she collapsed—helpless puppet cut from her strings—into his steady, dependable arms.
A glint of triumph flashed in Lu Chen's eyes. With one fluid motion, he gathered the queen of hearts, the "Venomous Empress" who had ruled all around her, into an embrace that was at once firm and disarmingly tender.
In that embrace, his soul seemed to ignite. He felt the soft warmth of her breasts pressed against him, their surprising suppleness and heat stirring in him a fierce hunger. And her heart—so long frozen—now pounded against his chest, racing with shock, shame, anger…and a new, unwelcome longing.
"You're drunk," he whispered, voice low and tempting, as his hand—sinful in its gentleness—rested on her slender waist, feeling the silk's whisper-thin promise beneath his palm.
Jiang Wanxing's face, reddened as if with ripest shame, buried itself in the cheap fabric of his suit; her fists pounded his back feebly, the sound pitiful as a wounded kitten's whimper.
"Let me go… you… bastard… scoundrel… what do you… want from me?!" Her tone still bore a trace of her old pride—but more powerfully now, an unaccustomed vulnerability.
Lu Chen said nothing. He pulled her closer, as though to merge her very being with his.
Then, gently, he kissed the damp strands of hair on her forehead, what little remained neat after her panic. The softness of his lips, the absent-minded tenderness—each motion rehearsed a thousand times—spoke of irresistible, lethal kindness.
At once, Jiang Wanxing stiffened as if struck by lightning. Her struggling hands fell limply to her sides. She could feel the heat of his mouth—masculine, commanding, yet tender as fire—flowing through her veins, reviving her heart like rain on a desert long parched. It throbbed with forbidden desire.
Just as the charged atmosphere threatened to shatter all restraint—
A melody, both familiar and distant, drifted into Lu Chen's mind—a gentle, mournful tune of memory.
It was a song that had swept the Mandopop world twenty years ago. A song that the young, hopeful "Lin Wanxing" had sung through countless lonely, lamp-lit nights. A song she and her late mentor, Guying, had hummed together one sun-streaked afternoon over fragrant Longjing tea—the only song they ever shared.
"…Outside the pavilion, by the ancient road, the grasses stretch toward the horizon…"
On instinct, or perhaps guided by the inscrutable "Heart-Hunting Score," Lu Chen began to hum—his voice slightly hoarse yet magnetic, suffused with longing—the very song she had buried deep in her soul.
Within the vast, opulent office, his melody floated like a feather brushing her wounded heart. Like an ice pike, it shattered the thick shell she had built around her soul, making her phoenix eyes fill for the first time with hot, uncontrollable tears.
Those tears belonged to the girl Jiang Wanxing had been—but had forgotten for twenty years. They signified that her queenly heart, frozen so long, had finally, at his unexpected approach, melted—and opened the most secret door to her soul.