Hidden Attribute

Welcome to Trapped in the Same Day for a Thousand Years, exclusively produced by Feilu Novel Network, written by Sang Ze and narrated by Wang Xiaomo and Lao He. Su Qingying was acting a little crazy. She would never have done this before, but here she was.

It was the kind of act that could shatter the image she had maintained for years and extinguish everything that made her shine.

The closer someone came to perfection, the less room they had for flaws. One flaw could bring them crashing back down to the level of an ordinary person. People with serious problems to begin with never faced that burden.

It was like a bad person who had done countless terrible things suddenly doing something good. Everyone would say he had turned over a new leaf. It was so easy for a villain to become a Buddha: put down the butcher's knife, and enlightenment was his.

But when a good person—someone who had done countless good deeds—suddenly did one bad thing, one thing the people around them could not accept, they fell from heaven to hell. People would call them a fraud. They would say, "So that's what they were really like," and insist all their earlier kindness had been fake.

Su Qingying had always carried the pressure of being that good person. The burden on her shoulders was too heavy, so heavy she could barely breathe. She had had enough long ago.

Wu Chen suddenly sucked in a sharp breath and shoved Su Qingying away. He touched the corner of his mouth, then looked at his fingertip. There was blood.

"If you want to kiss me, fine, but why bite me?"

Wu Chen pressed a finger to the corner of his mouth again.

It was not serious, but it had drawn blood.

Su Qingying, pushed back into her seat, stared straight at Wu Chen. She was breathing hard.

Then she lunged forward again, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

"Wait!"

"No, no, no. Hold on."

Wu Chen pushed Su Qingying away twice more. Each time, she came right back and threw her arms around him.

"Will you calm down?"

Smack!

The slap rang out sharply.

Wu Chen had not hit her very hard. Su Qingying still had to see people, and he could not leave a mark on her face. But inside the sealed car, the slap sounded loud.

Su Qingying's left cheek flushed red. She covered it and immediately settled down.

Though he had struck only her left cheek, her entire face had gone crimson. She was breathing rapidly as she turned to look at Wu Chen. There was something peculiar in her eyes: no resentment, no anger, no disbelief. If anything, there was a hint of anticipation.

"What's wrong with you?"

Wu Chen scolded her, then reached over and pinched her arm.

Su Qingying recoiled from the pain and covered the spot.

The pinch really hurt, but Su Qingying kept staring at Wu Chen. Her face grew even redder, and that strange look remained in her eyes.

Wu Chen had slapped her deliberately. He was not truly angry; he had done it on purpose.

Wu Chen despised men who hit women whenever they got angry. What kind of men were they?

But if a woman wanted to be hit, that was another matter.

That was Su Qingying's secret: she was an M.

Wu Chen knew that Su Qingying had discovered this side of herself by chance three years earlier.

After a busy stretch at work, she had gone to the gym at home to hit a punching bag and relieve the pressure from her family, social life, and job.

The female bodyguard accompanying her casually offered a few pointers on how beginners should throw their punches. Su Qingying grew interested and asked to spar with her in the ring.

They really did spar. The bodyguard held back and was very careful, but she still struck Su Qingying by accident.

It was the first time Su Qingying had ever been hit, and to her surprise, she found a certain pleasure in it.

It felt good. Those were her own words.

Wu Chen knew exactly how she had discovered it, down to the details, because Su Qingying had told him herself.

In one of the Reincarnation cycles, after Wu Chen had won her over, she had told him how she discovered her Hidden Attribute.

After that first sparring match, though, she never sparred with anyone again. She did not even hit the punching bag.

Her mother had found out about the bodyguard's accidental blow and forbidden Su Qingying from training. If she kept at it, the muscles in her arms would become defined and spoil her perfection.

Afterward, Su Qingying tested her Hidden Attribute several more times in other ways.

She pinched herself, pricked a finger with a needle, and even secretly bought candles so she could drip hot wax onto her arm.

She confirmed that she had those tendencies. Perhaps she had been controlled too tightly, or perhaps she had repressed herself for too long. Either way, it had pushed her to the opposite extreme. In those little flashes of pain, she found a sense of belonging. They eased her stress, released her emotions, and let her relax—even enjoy herself.

Once she was sure, she grew frightened. She was terrified that she was a pervert.

She searched online and read everything she could find on the subject, including information about related films. Gradually, her fear faded.

During that search, she stumbled across a forum that served as a gathering place. Many of its users were like her, and its posts all revolved around the same subject. Some people sought partners, some described their confusion, and some worried that something was wrong with them and sought reassurance. There were also videos and written accounts of what people had done.

Su Qingying secretly browsed it for a long time. Mostly she read without posting. On the rare occasions she replied, it was to encourage people seeking reassurance who were as frightened and lost as she was.

She carried on like that for a full year.

Then, two years ago, Su Qingying finally made her first post. It was also her only one, and it ran to three thousand words.

In it, Su Qingying expressed her confusion and talked about her family. She did not reveal their background, only how they treated her. She vented freely about them and the other people around her, even expressing despair about her life.

She called herself a doll dressed up for display.

Most of her complaints were about her mother, whom she described as traditional, stubborn, domineering, and fiercely controlling.

Of course, she mentioned her Hidden Attribute too. The point of the post was to let everything out, so she said things she should and should not have said.

Online, she was talking to strangers, not speaking face-to-face. No one knew her, and no one could possibly know who she was. That was why she dared to speak.

She said she wanted to fall in love and wanted someone to hit her.

She wished the people around her would stop handling her so carefully and putting her on such a high pedestal.

She also said she wanted to defy her mother and do everything her mother had forbidden her to do. The more outrageous, the better.

At heart, it was a post to vent her feelings. Although Su Qingying had said nearly everything on her mind, she had not asked to find a partner. Venting was the point.

But on that forum, no one cared why she had become an M.

Once the post went up, Su Qingying was terrified. It became one of the forum's hottest topics, drawing over a thousand replies, and she received hundreds of private messages overnight. Almost all of them wanted to meet her.

It frightened her badly. She regretted posting it.

She felt she had nothing in common with the people on the forum. They were a bunch of lunatics. She wanted to take the post down, but she could not.

She contacted the forum moderators, but they refused to delete it.

The forum's servers were overseas, making it difficult for her to use her connections to shut it down.

Or rather, she did not dare use her connections to do anything about the forum. She could not let anyone know she had any link to it.

For a long time afterward, she checked the forum frequently to see when interest in her post would die down.

Once it did, she visited the forum less and less, until she stopped altogether.

She decided to forget it all and keep her unusual tastes a secret forever.

Two years passed. She no longer thought about it of her own accord—until she met Wu Chen.

When Wu Chen sent her that text message, Su Qingying panicked. She was afraid.

Su Qingying's secret was that she was an M. But being an M was not the problem. She had never done anything outrageous. She had held herself back because she did not dare act, and her spotless reputation remained intact.

The problem was not who she was. It was that Wu Chen could prove it.

The post she had made two years earlier could destroy her.

Without that post, which she could not delete, Su Qingying would have had little to fear. An accusation without proof was just slander.

And her reputation was so good that smearing her would be difficult. No one would believe it.

But if there was proof, they would.

As it happened, Wu Chen had discovered Su Qingying's Hidden Attribute by chance.

During the Millennium Reincarnation, he had investigated the Su Family in detail, focusing on Su Qingying. To his surprise, she really did seem almost perfect inside and out, as though she had nearly transcended ordinary humanity. He could find no weakness in her. He had almost believed the image himself.

Then, on one July 7, while investigating Su Qingying again, Wu Chen secretly got hold of her personal computer.

On it, he found a mysterious folder buried deep among her files.

It was locked, and he had no password to open it.

So Wu Chen used his Hacking skills to break into it. Inside were some adult videos.

For an adult in her twenties, that was nothing unusual. Wu Chen saw no reason to hide them so carefully. But every video Su Qingying had saved belonged to one particular category. That was unusual.

Realizing there was more to it, Wu Chen checked the browser on her computer and found browsing history as well as automatically saved usernames and passwords.

That was how he learned Su Qingying was When Will the Moon Be Clear, and how he found the forum post she had written years earlier. He learned everything.

On the final July 7 of Wu Chen's life—four evenings ago—he had talked with Mu Qianqian at the bar. After the Jinfu Jewelry robbery, when she did not believe his claims about the Reincarnation and the women he had slept with, the subject of Su Qingying had come up.

Mu Qianqian showed him a news report and asked whether he had slept with Su Qingying. Wu Chen admitted he had. She did not believe him, so he said Su Qingying had a fatal weakness that would make winning her over easy. Mu Qingqing still did not believe him and pressed him to name it, but Wu Chen refused. He only told Mu Qianqian to guess whether Su Qingying was an M.

The forum post was Su Qingying's fatal weakness.

It gave Wu Chen a way to approach her in private. Given her circumstances, winning her over was not very difficult. If he understood her well enough, he would not even need an elaborate plan. He could do it in a single day.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Look where we are!"

"We're on a public road. There aren't many cars around, but what if someone drives past and sees us in here? Have you no shame?"

"Can't you think for once?"

Wu Chen scolded Su Qingying, who sat in the passenger seat holding her arm.

Su Qingying said nothing. She looked a little hurt, but her eyes told a different story. There was a touch of vulnerability in them, yet that peculiar look was stronger.

"I'm talking to you. Were you thinking at all?"

Wu Chen scolded her again and raised his hand as if to hit her.

Su Qingying shrank back as though frightened. A soft whimper entered her voice. "Was I wrong?"

She had always hidden this part of herself and kept it under control. She did not dare defy her mother, so she had never dared cross that line.

But today, Wu Chen had drawn out her Hidden Attribute. He had given her courage and led her this far. To him, that was not a bad thing.

Su Qingying's problems had built up over time. If she could not find a healthy way to release that pressure, she would inevitably become depressed. She might even jump to her death.

"Come on. Sit up straight!"

Wu Chen ordered Su Qingying to straighten up.

She shifted immediately, then looked at him with wide eyes.

"Seat belt," Wu Chen barked. Su Qingying fastened it.

Su Qingying wanted Wu Chen to shout orders at her—as long as they were orders she liked.

Being an M did not mean she would accept anything. Her mother's countless restrictions and arrangements, for instance, made her deeply miserable.

"We're going somewhere else."

With that, Wu Chen started the Lamborghini again and pulled onto the road.

"Where are we going?" Su Qingying asked softly, glancing at him. Her voice was especially gentle. She was fully caught up in the moment now.

"Where do you want to go?" Wu Chen asked.

"Wherever you say," Su Qingying murmured. There was something different in the glance she gave him.

"Then we'll go to my place," Wu Chen said.

"Okay." Su Qingying nodded.

Wu Chen stepped on the accelerator, and the car surged forward.

Once they got home, they could get down to certain things.

Su Qingying's forum ID was When Will the Moon Be Clear.

She had not chosen that name at random. It was an oblique way of expressing what she wanted.

"When Will the Moon Be Clear" was a line from Su Shi's poem Prelude to Water Melody.

Her name was Su Qingying.

And that poem contained the line, "I dance and play with my clear shadow; how could this compare to life in the mortal world?"

It had to be said: even the usernames chosen by educated people could be clever and meaningful.

Wu Chen did not intend to wait. He was taking Su Qingying home. Half an hour later, the Lamborghini was back in the city center, but they still had not arrived.

Wu Chen was not heading to East Sea Splendor in the northern part of the city. That property had already been transferred into his name. If the Su Family came looking for him, they would check his records, and a home registered to him was not safe. Someone might turn up there without warning. Instead, he was going to his family's old house, which was registered under his parents' names. Chances were, no one would disturb them there all day.

That concludes this episode. Please keep listening!