Chapter 6: The Container Back Then

*Handle with care! This chapter contains disturbing content. “Wait, don’t break it!”

Seeing that Qin Lie was about to snap the disc in half, Chu Ran hurriedly reached out and snatched it away.

“What are you doing?” Anger crept up inch by inch. Qin Lie’s face was so dark it looked like he might eat someone alive. “Destroy it now. I never want to see what happened that day again!”

“What if there’s something new on it? No one would be so clueless as to dig up old history just to ruin your mood.”

“Suit yourself.”

Looking at the light hidden behind Chu Ran’s rimless glasses, Qin Lie felt unbearably uneasy, like he wanted to punch him on the spot. His mood was twisted into a mess, snarled into knots.

“Put away that sick hobby of yours. If you think you can enjoy watching me make a fool of myself, you can forget it.”

When they reached the screening room, Qin Lie snorted coldly.

Chu Ran smiled and fetched red wine from the bar, pouring a glass for each of them. Looking around this lavishly equipped room, he sighed in admiration. “Lie, you’ve collected so many treasures here. When are you going to make me a copy? Wanting something you can’t reach is torture.”

“Get lost.” Seeing Chu Ran reach for the discs displayed in the cabinet, Qin Lie grabbed a discarded wooden cork and threw it, hitting his left hand dead on.

“Ow! This is the hand I use for surgery. If I’m injured, are you going to pay for it?” He accused Qin Lie of violence, though in truth it was just a light tap with no force behind it.

Perfect angle, perfect force, perfect precision.

“Hey, isn’t this a photo of the treasure from her earlier years? Look at the way you’re practically dying to devour her. You scared her into crying.”

“She asked for it.” Qin Lie answered dully. “Crying like that, so pitiful and fragile—who knows how much that would turn a man on.”

Chu Ran spent a long time enjoying several photo albums, almost all of them covering Su Xue from her earliest years to the present, before settling back onto the sofa and taking a slow sip of wine. “Want the video of the three months I spent training the treasure? Ten million, and it’s yours.”

“Get lost.”

“It was amazing,” Chu Ran said, licking his lips with near-mad delight. “Being forced to perform for people, masturbating in public; getting fucked so hard she blacked out and still kept moving her hips; even when they gang-raped her she was still crying ‘Brother Lie, save me.’ She was so cute it made me want to swallow her whole, bite by bite.”

Qin Lie’s hand jerked. “Are you sure you didn’t hear that wrong?”

“Of course not! So think about it—a mere ten million. A bargain, right?” Chu Ran chuckled. “You’re still too soft on her. If you don’t believe me, you can also send someone to lock her in a dockside shipping container and fuck her until she screams.”

A dockside shipping container? Qin Lie immediately turned murderous, his sharp eyes pinned on Chu Ran as he drank the wine in one gulp.

It dripped at the corner of his lips like blood.

Still the porcelain doll he had spoiled rotten and kept cradled in his hands day after day.

Though this situation had been expected ever since she was born, Qin Lie still hadn’t imagined it would come so soon.

He had planned to raise Su Xue properly and only eat her after she turned eighteen. He hadn’t expected to be twelve years early.

“Open that disc and take a look.”

The bad memories hammered at his chest as Qin Lie gave the order from on high. Chu Ran sighed helplessly, opened the player, and slid the disc in.

The massive screen and three-dimensional surround sound were practically a cinema-level treat. The lights came on, and Chu Ran grinned, settling into the sofa with his eyes wide open, terrified of missing even the smallest detail.

The Su Xue on screen was tiny, like a porcelain doll, already heartbreakingly beautiful years ago.

Her huge eyes were glossy black, like top-grade black agate.

But right now they were filled with a near-desperate terror.

A pure white princess dress, with its cute little cape already torn apart, was dirty in places.

Her voice was soft and kittenish, and Chu Ran couldn’t help letting out a muffled groan.

The urge to torment her filled his head. Just thinking of Su Xue crying and begging beneath him made him hard as a spear.

“What… what are you going to do?” Pearly tears kept streaming down as a man bound her two little hands behind her back with hemp rope, while a strip of black cloth wrapped thickly around her eyes.

Red marks bloomed on her slender wrists. She looked absolutely pitiful.

“Damn,” Chu Ran muttered, unable to hold back, “they actually blindfolded her. What a buzzkill.”

“Shut up.”

“Oh? Lie, don’t you feel anything? She looks mouthwatering enough to set your blood on fire!” The two of them were both sadists with the same tastes, and Chu Ran was genuinely puzzled for the first time by his friend’s sexual preferences.

Watching Qin Lie chew on his fingers over and over, tense and restless, he frowned. Could there really be something he had never known?

The footage kept moving, the background shifting from the empty lot full of containers to the inside of one, filthy and cluttered.

As if sensing that she was about to be taken into the cold darkness, Su Xue finally broke down completely. “Where are you taking me? Where is Brother Lie? You clearly promised me that as long as I left, you’d let Brother Lie go safely!”

“Sweetheart, take one more step forward and your Brother Lie will be safe.”

The man coaxed her softly, though in truth he was pinching Su Xue’s throat and practically dragging her into the container.

The door slammed shut, and Su Xue jolted in terror before collapsing to the floor.

“If I remember right, twelve years ago you two were kidnapped together, weren’t you?” Chu Ran asked lazily as he poured more wine and swirled the glass. “Why do I remember you telling me that the treasure ditched you and ran off alone, and that you were beaten for a day and a night before A-Qian came to save you?”

“I don’t know.” Though Qin Lie never wanted to think back on what happened then, it was still etched in his mind.

Several tall men separated the two of them, black gun barrels pressed against both their bodies. The man clearly told him that the ransom money was only enough to let one person go, and Qin Lie had to decide.

Qin Lie had hesitated. Looking at Su Xue crying like a pear blossom in the rain, he had wanted to let her go, but he still hadn’t made up his mind.

The ransom was only enough for one person. The person his father would exchange for, of course, was himself, and Su Xue would be left behind here.

If Su Xue escaped, Qin Heng would toss her aside too, leaving her to face heaven knows how many accusations. So Qin Lie decided not to leave. He would stay with Su Xue, no matter what happened.

And yet, right then, after Su Xue, who was ten meters away from him, had someone whisper a few words in her ear, she gave Qin Lie a long, deep look and then suddenly ran outside.

“Su Xue!”

Like the scene of being ruthlessly abandoned years ago, this was Qin Lie’s first and last shrill scream in his life. Roaring in utter despair, he could only watch Su Xue’s tiny figure disappear farther and farther away without hesitation.

The woman he had personally raised, the one he couldn’t bear to let suffer even the slightest grievance, had just abandoned him without a backward glance. Wolf cubs were never easy to tame.

“Could I have been wrong?”

Qin Lie narrowed his eyes, already a little foggy-headed.

Impossible.

It was clearly a fact confirmed by his father and even his mother.

Back then the Ji family was in the middle of a furious backlash, a financial crisis. They had indeed only put up a huge ransom to save Qin Lie.

In the end, Su Xue was treated as the traitor and tormented by the old man with the most humiliating methods for three months before Qin Lie picked her up again.

By then Qin Lie had already thought she was dirty and didn’t care about her much anymore, but even so he still felt that it would be a waste to let someone else devour a person he had raised for so many years.

So he brought her back to his side and kept her as a plaything ever since.

Later on, Qin Lie had not failed to ask Su Xue why she had done that, but she always kept her mouth shut. She tacitly accepted everything with a deeply defeated attitude. Because of that, Qin Lie’s hand had only grown heavier each time.

“So who exactly is lying?” Chu Ran watched the person on screen gradually draw closer to Su Xue and asked in that same ambiguous tone. Then he exclaimed in surprise, “Huh, the jade on this person’s foot isn’t cheap. If they’re that rich, why come kidnap people? What an idiot with too much free time.”

“The jade on the foot?”

Qin Lie lifted his eyes, rewound the footage, and froze it.

A pair of exquisitely cared-for feminine legs were crossed in a seated pose, radiating disdain.

Even in the middle of winter, she was still wearing a beautiful short dress, clearly someone who cared very much about her appearance.

The emerald-green jade pendant on her left ankle, hanging from a red cord.

Qin Lie’s breathing caught. For a moment, the horrible thought in his head nearly knocked him unconscious.

“Are you okay?” Chu Ran had never seen Qin Lie this agitated before, and his reaction made him both nervous and amused. “I’ve never seen you this scared even when you’re killing someone.”

“I’m fine. Keep going.” Qin Lie rubbed his temples and pressed play again.

Smack...

What happened next began heading in a filthy, unbearable direction. First came a heavy slap across Su Xue’s face, smashing her so hard she coughed up blood and the world spun around her; she could barely stay on her feet.

Qin Lie’s heart clenched hard.

Back then, Su Xue had still been his darling, someone he wouldn’t even dare hold too tightly for fear of hurting her. What exactly was this being done to her?

Blood surged upward. Qin Lie narrowed his eyes, full of danger. “Did you see the person who delivered this bag?”

“No. It was wet on the bottom when it was delivered, so judging by the paper, it should have been sitting there for about an hour.”

“Mm.”

After picking up his phone to assign tasks to his men, Qin Lie raised his eyes toward the footage still playing.

“Did the treasure provoke someone?” Chu Ran asked. “Back then she was still so inexperienced she couldn’t even kill a cat. How could she have enemies?”

Qin Lie was confused too.

Those people never spoke. They just kept beating Su Xue’s body. Just as they were about to strip off her clothes, Chu Ran asked curiously, “Why do I feel like this doesn’t look like kidnapping for ransom at all? They’re not here for money. It looks more like kidnapping for humiliation.”

Qin Lie watched, still without a clue.

“Where is Brother Lie? Is he all right!” The blindfold, knocked askew, suddenly revealed Su Xue’s face full of terror before it was shoved back into place.

“If you behave, Qin Lie will be fine. If you don’t, we’ll kill Qin Lie. Listen.”

A phone was held in front of Su Xue, and from it came Qin Lie’s agonized cry.

“Brother Lie! Don’t touch him!” But on her end the mute button was on, and nothing could get out. One of the kidnappers reached out and stripped away Su Xue’s clothes, making her scream in terror. “What are you doing…”

Her bitter tears soaked the thick black cloth, her face full of panic and despair.

“If you keep yelling, Qin Lie dies!”

Her slender body was suddenly yanked apart. The three men seemed to glance toward the woman’s direction; after a moment, they began the next step.

“It hurts, take it out, it hurts so much!”

“Tsk, so tight!” Rough fingers pried open the narrow pink crease between Su Xue’s legs, then thrust in without a trace of mercy. They dug and gouged hard, and before long streaks of blood were running down his fingers.

“The treasure’s first time was given to a finger?” Chu Ran looked a little furious. “What a waste of something so fine!”

Qin Lie, however, felt it hard to breathe.

He clearly remembered that when he saw Su Xue again later, the old man had already had her trained into a tool for serving men.

She was clearly still so young, yet she could obediently swallow a man’s cock.

There was no way not to hate it.

He only wanted to crush her to pieces with his bare hands.

“No, let go of me... let go, it hurts!”

Just as Su Xue was crying and pleading for mercy, the man had already unzipped his pants. A huge blue-purple cock, slicked with lubricant, pressed toward that delicate slit. He parted the flower-like lips and slowly pushed inside.

The scene was almost split open by the force of it.

Su Xue’s slender lower body was brutally filled. Her belly was even pushed into a bizarre shape, and all she could do was lift her neck and beg, unable to get a single word out.

“It hurts... no... don’t...”

“If you please us well, Qin Lie will be fine. If you pass out, Qin Lie’s going to have a rough time.”

Grabbing her black hair, the man’s tone was vicious beyond measure.

“Don’t touch Brother Lie!”

“Then it depends on how well you perform!” He threw her aside and, from who knew where, produced a chunk of ice. He shoved it hard toward Su Xue’s ass. “You’re not allowed to pass out before it melts!”

“Waaah, wah...”

There was no tenderness at all, only relentless taking and invasion. The sight was so close to outright brutality that Qin Lie felt sick and fast-forwarded past it.

“She passed out.”

A bucket of ice water woke the torn-up woman, and Qin Lie was quite familiar with the voice coming from the phone. It was the miserable scream he himself had made while being beaten, and the curses he had hurled at her over and over: “Su Xue, I’m going to kill you!”

“No, don’t touch Brother Lie. I’ll behave, don’t touch him...” Su Xue’s face had gone deathly pale as tears kept falling.

“Stand up. Ride me yourself.”

Blindfolded, Su Xue trembled as she stood, her small hands feeling along the man’s body before she climbed onto his lap, awkwardly found the right position, and slowly lowered herself down.

“The treasure sure is hard on herself.” Licking his lower lip, Chu Ran judged, “She sat down that neatly. No wonder no matter how much you torture her now, she never gets fussy or dragged out about it.”

“Enough!”

With a violent press of the exit button, Qin Lie’s mind was now in total chaos. What the hell was going on? While he was being beaten, was Su Xue being tortured in another container? She had clearly run away, hadn’t she!

With such a huge discrepancy, someone had to be messing with him. Qin Lie felt a chill run from the top of his head straight to the soles of his feet.

Someone was lying to him. That person might even be his own parents! Why had Su Xue hidden the truth? Qin Lie couldn’t make sense of it.

He stood up at once, but Chu Ran blocked him.

“Qin Lie, I understand how you feel right now. But there’s one thing I have to remind you of: the treasure isn’t as strong as you think.” When you’re in the middle of it, it’s easy to be blinded; from the outside, things look clearer. Pushing up his glasses, Chu Ran calmly said, “It’s obvious that back then she felt deeply guilty about making you take the beating because she passed out. This tape isn’t the whole story either. There may be things we don’t know that made her keep silent about it. But looking at how hard she’s worked for you these past twelve years, how she’s never complained despite all the labor, just your threats and six years of care probably shouldn’t have been enough to hold her up.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that the treasure may have been living in guilt toward you this whole time, which is why she’s been able to stay by your side until now. If you forgive her or explain things now, you’ll only make the pillar holding her spirit up collapse completely. Put yourself in her shoes. If you accidentally hit an old woman with your car, then spent twelve years taking care of her while letting her beat, scold, and order you around, and then suddenly found out the old woman had been staging a scam, what would you do?”

“I’d think I was an idiot. I’d want to kill that old woman, and then kill myself.”

Qin Lie blurted it out almost without thinking, then suddenly clamped a hand over his own throat, finding the thought horrifying.

Chu Ran smiled faintly. “Of course. I wouldn’t mind seeing the treasure break down, either. The choice is yours. I’m just offering medical advice.”

“Since when were you this kind? Does my joke satisfy you that much?” Qin Lie arched a brow, feeling like this black-hearted friend of his was mocking him.

“Of course. It’s easily the best joke I’ve seen in years.” Chu Ran chuckled darkly, his eyes full of mad ideas. “If I ever find the people from back then, I’ll cut their fingers into slices. They actually dared take the treasure’s first time like that. I won’t forgive them.”

Chu Ran had always been ruthless toward anyone who ruined something that might have been a rare delicacy. Qin Lie was the same. Picking up his phone and looking at the reports from his subordinates, a vicious plan slowly began to take shape.

*Because I saw readers asking why the heroine’s personality was so hard to make out.

So I’ve posted this chapter tonight.

Of course, the heroine’s combat power is less than the hero’s, so she can’t beat him in a fight.

*Since I’m being so diligent, leave me a comment before you go~ rolling around and acting cute~* Thanks to all my dear readers, I love you all so much!