Amid the relentless bouts of excruciating pain, Chu Changqi learned what it meant for every second to feel like a year.
Twenty years earlier, perhaps things would not have ended this way. But he was old now, plagued by the ailments he had accumulated over the years. The closer he came to death, the more he feared it-not to mention Chu Yilan's relentless pursuit lately, which had cost him countless men and vast sums of money.
Little by little, with nowhere left to hide, Chu Changqi finally unearthed the truest thought buried in his heart.
He knew he would lose.
When Chu Yilan had failed to become a complete lunatic, when he could still fend him off and have enough strength left to crush him, Chu Changqi had known that his revenge against the Ming Family was incomplete.
All those years in C Country, he had done everything possible to expand his power, all so he could return.
He refused to accept defeat. He wanted another look at what the seed he had planted in Chu Yilan's heart all those years ago had grown into.
If Chu Yilan's heart and soul had been utterly destroyed, he could reclaim Hengtai, just as he had once replaced Old Master Ming.
But his dear son had changed.
Chu Changqi still remembered the first photograph of Chu Yilan that Liu Li had shown him. It was, more or less, a picture of him with Shen Lian. He had found it utterly unbelievable. After all the effort Chu Changqi had spent severing Chu Yilan's attachment to living things, he could now see tenderness and affection for another person in his eyes.
Chu Changqi would never let Shen Lian go, but for all his calculations, he had failed to account for Shen Lian's true nature.
Given