I had long since fallen into the abyss

Flung onto the bed, Wen Yanyu curled into a ball in fright and was just about to speak.

Fu Hanchuan leaned over him, pressing a knee between his legs so he could not get up from the bed.

The sudden turn of events left Wen Yanyu utterly panicked, unable to understand what the other man was going to do.

Then Fu Hanchuan suddenly reached out to undo his clothes. Wen Yanyu's pupils contracted sharply, and panic warped his voice. "Fu Hanchuan, what are you doing?"

Fu Hanchuan's gaze chilled slightly. Ignoring him completely, he turned him over and yanked open the jacket the boy was wearing.

"Don't!!" Wen Yanyu struggled instinctively. A layer of gray mist curled around his fingertips through muscle memory, but he forcibly stopped himself from using it to hurt the man above him, trying to wriggle free with a deft twist instead.

When both sleeves were pulled up, Wen Yanyu's struggles stopped. He lay rigid on the bed, not daring to move at all.

Cold fingertips gently traced the hideous, raised scars, inch by inch.

"One, two, three, four, five... twenty-one..."

Only after counting the scars on both arms one by one did Fu Hanchuan raise his eyes, no discernible emotion in his icy gaze.

"Who did this?"

Fu Hanchuan asked softly.

As though the skin of his arms felt cold exposed to the air, Wen Yanyu buried the side of his face in the bedding. One hand tightly gripped the fabric over his stomach, and his body trembled without stopping.

Fu Hanchuan's gaze was fathomless, and he remained unmoved.

"You're terrified of pain. You couldn't have cut this deep yourself. None of the hospitals in the country have any records of you seeking treatment, and these wounds couldn't have been stitched by a professional doctor."

"You're a medical student, but anesthetics are controlled, and there's no trace of you buying any privately. If you stitched them yourself without anesthetic, you would have bled to death while you were unconscious from the pain."

"Wen Yanyu." Fu Hanchuan lowered his head to look at him, his tone cold. "I'm giving you five minutes. Tell me who did it. I don't want to lose my temper with you."

Time ticked by, second by second.

The countdown ended.

Wen Yanyu turned his head aside, not daring to look at the man, his voice trembling. "I can't tell you."

"Please, don't ask anymore..."

The brand had not faded. Even if he wanted to explain, he could not say it.

Powerful arms restrained him and flipped him over. Fu Hanchuan gripped his cheeks, forcing him to lift his head.

Meeting the man's eyes, roiling with anger, Wen Yanyu's lashes trembled wildly. He was utterly terrified and wanted to explain something, but not a sound would leave his throat.

Looking at him, Fu Hanchuan suddenly laughed, coldly, so very coldly. "Wen Yanyu, you really are something. Aside from Fu Wenyuan, no one has ever pushed me this far."

Having long since learned who Fu Wenyuan was from books and the internet, Wen Yanyu was too frightened to speak. He looked at him helplessly.

The two stared at each other like that for a long time.

Fu Hanchuan's lashes lowered slightly, and he suddenly let go.

"Did you know? That car crash back then was something I planned myself. Or rather... it was an ending I willingly accepted," the man said softly.

Wen Yanyu froze, his face deathly pale, unable to believe what he had heard.

Fu Hanchuan paid him no mind and continued on his own. "The ending I chose for myself. On my way home after completing my revenge, dying on a rainy day."

"What a perfect ending."

Fu Hanchuan's expression was calm. "You know my uncle was in love with my father. But you probably don't know that my father loved my uncle too."

Wen Yanyu's breath stopped, his pupils instinctively contracting.

Fu Hanchuan ignored Wen Yanyu's stunned reaction and simply continued telling the truth hidden beneath layer upon layer of lies.

"An adopted son and a biological son. The family wouldn't allow such a relationship, so my father married my mother, a woman from a foreign country. She didn't speak the language. Her family's standing wasn't low, but it wasn't particularly high either, and she had little power. Simple and innocent, she gave birth to me and my younger brother."

"But after they married, my father fell in love with my mother. Too late, though. My mother found out about it. She had married my father for love."

"Because she loved my father, she loved me and my brother. But after discovering she'd been deceived, she wanted nothing more than to kill us. She wanted to escape, but my father imprisoned her at home."

"My uncle made the first move. It was a midsummer night, and a fire quietly started. In fact, my mother had already discovered the gasoline in the house and the doors and windows locked from the outside."

"So had I."

Fu Hanchuan laughed softly, without a trace of warmth. He gently stroked the boy's eyes, which kept trembling in shock.

"My mother was full of hatred. She knocked me unconscious and locked me in the bedroom, while she held my younger brother and died in the flames. She was so foolish, so naive. She wanted everyone to fall into the abyss with her. She thought that would bring retribution down on Fu Wenyuan."

"My father's room was the easiest to escape from. The three of us were on an upper floor, with almost no way out. She wanted all three of us to die together. She hoped my father would avenge her, gambling three lives in exchange for an ending where everyone went to hell."

His tone was soft and unhurried, his lowered eyes filled with indifference. His voice was as low and calm as ever, as though he were recounting someone else's story.

"But my will to survive was simply too strong. The pain of the flames burning me and the smoke woke me. I climbed out from the sixth floor into the garden, dragged my broken leg, and crawled out of the old house being swallowed by flames, inch by inch."

"My mother succeeded. My father was burned half to death. After learning my uncle had set the fire, he went mad. He wanted to kill my uncle. He no longer loved him, but he had no power to avenge her, so he entrusted that task to me."

"My uncle swallowed up all the Fu family's businesses. And just like that, I took their dying wishes with me and went abroad to seek refuge."

"Everyone knows what happened afterward." Fu Hanchuan spoke with a sighing, almost lyrical cadence. "The child from back then fought his way home from abroad, avenged his parents, broke his enemy's legs, and made him crawl out of the rebuilt old house, inch by inch."

"I sent him to stand trial, then got him out and shoved him into a psychiatric hospital, where he suffered every torment. He killed himself. What a perfectly satisfying revenge story."

Wen Yanyu's expression was blank. He could not get a single word out. None of this past had been mentioned in the novel.

He only knew the male lead, Fu Hanchuan, the favored son of heaven. He had never known the backstory brushed over in a single line.

Silence lingered for a long while.

Fu Hanchuan tilted his head slightly and laughed again, a twisted gloom in his eyes. He sighed softly. "Actually, I just lied to you."

"That's only the version told within the family."

What?

Wen Yanyu's gaze was bewildered.

Fu Hanchuan stared at him. Those gray-blue eyes were submerged in sorrow, submerged in the abyss, and in an instant, all emotion vanished from them, leaving them heavy and dangerous.

"My father loved Fu Wenyuan until the day he died. He loved my mother, but he loved Fu Wenyuan more, the man he had grown up with."

"After my mother found out, he imprisoned her to keep word from getting out, to keep her from hurting the other person he loved."

"He refused my mother's request for a divorce, and he refused her request to return to her homeland. Even my maternal grandparents, who came from another country desperate to see my mother and take her home, died in a car crash."

"Together, he and Fu Wenyuan drove my mother mad. They drove my mother and my young brother to their deaths, and then he told me not to hate Fu Wenyuan."

Fu Hanchuan spoke very slowly, as though telling a story, recounting it at leisure.

"He didn't die of his burns. I told Fu Wenyuan that my father loved my mother. I pretended to be innocent and ignorant, and told him hatefully that my father would take revenge. Step by step, I fueled the conflict between them. I made Fu Wenyuan kill my father with his own hands."

Under the dim yellow moonlight, the man's irises seemed to turn an eerie deep blue, an endless abyssal ocean rippling with boundless despair.

Within the abyss was a vengeful ghost that had crawled out of hell.

A chill rose from the base of Wen Yanyu's spine, and he began trembling involuntarily. That familiar scent from the man once again filled his nostrils, bitter and cold.

Fu Hanchuan bent down, their eyes meeting and their breaths mingling. His tone was frighteningly dark. "During those years abroad, whenever dreams brought me back at midnight, I would dream of that fire. I would dream of my mother and my brother."

"Over and over, I heard their screams. I heard them ask me, Fu Hanchuan, why won't you die? Why are you still alive? Why won't you die? You're useless now. Hurry up and join us. Why won't you die?"

"I would dream of my father in his hospital room, staring into my eyes through the gap in the door, desperate and in pain. He was pleading with me to save him. He asked me, I'm your father. I love you so much. Why would you do this to me?"

"Those people in the Fu family cared about profit and power. After I took charge, I kept everything firmly in my own hands. They called me a shark, biting into anything I set my sights on. They also called me a mad dog, a mad dog with nothing but power in his heart and eyes."

"They were right." Fu Hanchuan laughed. "But there was nothing they could do about me. No one could touch what was mine. So, as time went on, they all wanted me dead."

"Exactly what I wanted." Fu Hanchuan's eyes brimmed with pleasure.

"So I chose my own ending. I knew someone had tampered with my brakes, and just as I expected, something went wrong with my car. I lay inside it, quietly waiting to die."

His fingertips trembling uncontrollably, Wen Yanyu stared blankly at the man above him. This Fu Hanchuan, calmly falling apart before his eyes, swallowed by the abyss, was not the person he knew.

Nor was he the male lead from the book.

He should have been afraid.

But...

His heart throbbed with pain, a piercing ache, an inexplicable heartache so intense he could not say a word.

"I'd finished everything I needed to do. No one wanted me to keep living. I thought this ending wasn't bad."

Fu Hanchuan lowered his eyes to look at him.

"But then you came."