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The original novel said that what Ye Mingzhao feared most was someone taking his place. That was why, after Chu Hengyi returned to the Ye family, he had tried every means to drive a wedge between Chu Hengyi and the Ye family. And when his biological parents came looking for him, he had used the most extreme and ruthless methods to take revenge on them.

Because he could not forgive his biological parents for abandoning him, and feared even more that their reappearance would likely destroy the close relationship he had with the Ye family. He could not bear having someone ruin his life again and again.

So he wanted to destroy what his biological parents cared about most, so they could taste the despair of being abandoned by their loved ones after losing all their value.

But things did not go as he wished.

Not only did he fail to destroy everything his biological parents cared about, but under someone's deliberate guidance, he gradually exposed his sinister, ruthless, utterly deranged true nature. It also made the Ye family confront for the first time the savage and cold-blooded side hidden beneath Ye Mingzhao's obedient, gentle facade. This also laid the groundwork for Ye Mingzhao's tragic end, abandoned by everyone and left with nothing.

As for the biological parents who had abandoned Ye Mingzhao, that pair of selfish, utterly shameless scum who had committed the crime of abandonment instead became victims in everyone's eyes. They even took advantage of Ye Mingzhao's revenge to gain quite a few benefits from Chu Hengyi and the Zhou family. One escaped bankruptcy, while the other took the opportunity to go public, completing a leap in social class in one stroke.

Only Ye Mingzhao was abandoned by everyone and died miserably.

Sure enough, anyone who could abandon you once would, no matter how nice their words sounded, always abandon you a second time when the time was right.

"You really know how to put on an act!"

When Ye Mingzhao, having cried enough, entered the washroom alone and turned on the faucet to wash his face, Chu Hengyi, who had watched the entire performance, quietly appeared behind him. "If I hadn't known you already had news about that woman, I might actually have believed your nonsense."

"I should thank you for your little note." Ye Mingzhao straightened up and gave Chu Hengyi a faint smile through the mirror. "If you hadn't warned me, I really would have been caught off guard."

Chu Hengyi leaned against the doorframe, looking at Ye Mingzhao in the mirror as well.

In the mirror, Ye Mingzhao was strikingly handsome, his eyes deep and dark. Droplets of water slid down his clear, refined face. His ink-black, satin-like hair clung wetly to his blindingly pale forehead and cheeks. The corners of his smiling peach blossom eyes tilted slightly upward, fine droplets gathering on his thick, curled lashes. Even his sharply contrasting black-and-white eyes seemed to have been quietly veiled in a hazy mist.

At first glance, he looked like a water ghost from some supernatural tale, one that would drag anyone who looked at him for too long into the water to drown.

There was an inexplicable sense of seduction about him.

Chu Hengyi looked away uncomfortably. "This was an exchange!"

Ye Mingzhao had helped him uncover the truth behind the Chu family taking him in, and he had told Ye Mingzhao about his biological mother. As for what Ye Mingzhao would do next, that was none of his business, nor did he want it to be.

Ye Mingzhao looked thoughtfully at Chu Hengyi, then suddenly smiled.

At that instant, Chu Hengyi felt a chill run down his spine. "What are you smiling about?"

Ye Mingzhao said nothing. He picked up a towel and wiped his face.

Chu Hengyi frowned deeply and was just about to speak when a commotion suddenly erupted outside.

A moment later, footsteps approached from afar. The next second, Yu Mingze burst into the washroom in a panic, not even having caught his breath as he blurted, "A woman suddenly showed up outside, saying she's your biological mother—"

Ye Mingzhao's brow twitched. Then Yu Mingze continued breathlessly, "Uncle Ye and Aunt Ye heard the commotion and came out of the lounge too. The two sides have run into each other!"

Ye Mingzhao was somewhat surprised. He had not expected Zhou Yueze to play this card at this moment.

He stuffed the towel in his hand into Yu Mingze's hands and silently walked out.

Chu Hengyi followed close behind. Before leaving, he inexplicably glanced at the towel in Yu Mingze's hands—though even he did not know why.

The film set, where they would still be shooting through the night, was empty. The people from the Beggar Prince production crew had all gathered outside Ye Mingzhao's private lounge. Though they could neither hear nor see what was happening inside, no one left.

The crowd lingered in place for a long time, buzzing with discussion.

Ye Mingzhao walked forward, parting the densely packed crowd like Moses parting the sea. All kinds of gazes shot from countless pairs of eyes like blinding beams of light, converging on Ye Mingzhao's face. They tried to pierce through every emotion Ye Mingzhao had hidden beneath his skin.

Expressionless, Ye Mingzhao walked to the lounge door and placed his hand on the handle.

The unlocked door made a faint click, but it startled the crowd of onlookers like an explosion.

Everyone watched Ye Mingzhao's back and instinctively took two steps backward. Before they could figure out why they had retreated, Ye Mingzhao had already stepped into the room.

The door clicked shut again, cutting off everyone's prying gazes.

Inside the lounge, the members of the Ye family sat separately on the sofas, their expressions complicated as they looked at the woman kneeling on the floor, weeping and repenting.

Ye Mingzhao's gaze fell on the woman's face.

In that moment, time abruptly reversed. Countless memories flashed before his eyes like scenes on a carousel, like a videotape rewinding at high speed, until they finally froze on a snowy night twenty years ago.

Ye Mingzhao blinked softly, like a camera shutter being pressed, effortlessly retrieving an old photograph buried deep within his memories.

He gave the woman kneeling on the floor and sobbing bitterly a faint smile, his expression inexplicably gentle and calm. "Why aren't you wearing that blue padded jacket anymore? Blue looked good on you."

Ye Mingzhao paused, then suddenly smiled. "I rather liked blue."

In that instant, the woman's tearful expression of repentance froze on her face like a mask. She seemed to remember something and abruptly raised her head, her eyes filled with shock and terror as she looked at Ye Mingzhao.

End of Reverse V

Have you ever experienced the feeling of death being only one second away?

The sky-filling snow mingled with howling north winds, sweeping down in an overwhelming torrent. The cold was so piercing that even breathing felt difficult. Everything was buried beneath the snow, including an infant's hoarse cries. Before they could travel any farther, they were shredded by the frigid winter wind.

No one could hear the cries of a baby abandoned by his biological mother in a dump on a freezing winter night, but he clearly remembered how a mother's back gradually disappeared from his sight.

That patch of blue that had remained in Ye Mingzhao's memory for so many years had walked out of his world frame by frame in countless nightmares.

Endless darkness and boundless cold wrapped around his tiny body.

The increasingly faint cries for help did not bring his closest family back, but drew wild dogs out to hunt with their fangs bared.

Following the faint crying and weak heartbeat, they found the infant, whose body temperature was rapidly dropping beneath the wind and snow. For some reason, they did not choose to feed. Instead, they curled up beside the baby.

Their filthy, matted fur pressed tightly against the infant's soft, fragile skin. Their hot, wet tongues licked his cheeks exposed to the bitter wind and snow. An unceasing stream of warmth radiated from the wild dogs, gradually seeping into his body, which had already frozen blue.

Only when the darkness receded and dawn arrived did an old scavenger accidentally discover the swaddled baby abandoned in the dump.

The infant struggling on the brink of death was finally saved.

But what awaited him was not a new life, but one illness after another, seemingly without end.

The long torment seemed to have only just begun. During the three years after he was sent to the orphanage, he endlessly repeated the cycle of high fevers, illness, crying, and nightmares. His life seemed frozen on that snowy night when he had been abandoned.

For a long time, Ye Mingzhao deeply hated his hyperthymesia.

In a cycle he could not tell was memory or nightmare, he relived the experience of being abandoned again and again. He watched that patch of blue disappear from his sight over and over. The wild dogs that bared their fangs in the darkness approached time and again. Sometimes, they would curl up beside him as they had in reality. But in far more nightmares, the moment they found him, they would pounce on him and viciously tear apart and devour his body.