Chapter 2: Activation

The mother and son sat there, one massaging shoulders, the other with eyes half-closed, neither of them showing what they were thinking.

The atmosphere turned tense in an instant.

Yang Haoran grew anxious. They couldn't go without a topic here; without one, things would fast-forward straight to the beating.

As he fretted and spun in circles, desperately searching for something to say, Liu Ruoxi finally spoke.

“That's enough. Stop. Turn on the computer.”

Yang Haoran's heart lurched at those words. He kept rubbing her shoulders and said as if nothing were wrong, “Mother, what do you need the computer for? Is the computer over there broken?”

“Heh... my computer isn't broken. I think it's your brain that's broken, and your nerve has gotten too big,” Liu Ruoxi said, her voice cold enough to cut through bone. “What are you dawdling for?”

“Right away, right away.” Yang Haoran didn't dare pull any more tricks. He knew that if he kept mouthing off, a feather-duster beating would be unavoidable.

He crouched down, groped for the power switch on the tower, then stood up and turned on the monitor.

After a startup tone, the Windows boot screen appeared.

Fortunately, when a computer is shut down and restarted, it doesn't keep the screen that was up before it powered off.

“Move.”

Liu Ruoxi stood up and glared at her son. Yang Haoran obediently stepped aside.

She sat down in the computer chair and, with practiced ease, opened the drive, clicking into folder after folder. Whenever she found a folder, she opened it and looked inside.

Seven or eight minutes later, she had browsed through every folder, but there was still no video she wanted. Yang Haoran, standing to the side with his head slightly lowered, let out a quiet breath of relief. Good thing he'd been one step ahead. Ever since the last time the video in the folder was found by his mother and he had deleted everything, he'd gone online to look up how to hide folders.

Now it seemed that move had been brilliant.

Out of the corner of her eye, Liu Ruoxi caught the faint upward curve at the corner of her son's mouth and gave a cold smile. “I'll give you one last chance. Are you going to hand it over yourself, or do you want me to find it?”

“Find what?” Yang Haoran played dumb to the end. “Mother, whatever you want to find, just say it. I'll help you look.”

“One last chance.”

Liu Ruoxi looked at her son, her gaze fixed coldly on Yang Haoran as she repeated herself.

Being stared at like that by his mother sent a chill down Yang Haoran's spine, but he'd already been stubborn for this long. How could he possibly confess now?

“I don't understand.” Seeing his mother's gaze turn even colder, he hurriedly added, “I really don't understand.”

He was gambling. Gambling that his mother couldn't find it. If she could, why would she still be threatening him like this?

The logic clearly didn't hold. He was full of confidence.

“Hmph...” Seeing her son still putting on a hard face at death's door, Liu Ruoxi curved her lips into a beautiful smile, not quite smiling. “I gave you a chance, and you didn't know how to cherish it. Then don't blame your mother later.”

Seeing the expression on his mother's face, Yang Haoran was suddenly gripped by a bad feeling. That posture, that tone, she seemed to have him completely pinned down. Could she really find it?

Liu Ruoxi clearly had no intention of saying more. She skillfully opened the browser and typed into the search box, “How to find hidden folders on a computer.”

The instant Yang Haoran saw those words, he went dumb.

Smartness had backfired on him.

He had only thought of finding out how to hide folders, and never once thought someone could search the other way around.

After a right-click search, the page jumped to a long list of methods. Liu Ruoxi casually clicked into one and started reading.

A few minutes later, Yang Haoran stared at the folder labeled “Study Materials” on the screen, feeling like crying without tears.

“What else do you have to say?”

Liu Ruoxi said calmly.

“My beautiful and merciful mother...”

With a plop, Yang Haoran dropped to his knees on the floor and said with a miserable face, “Can you give me one more chance? I really won't dare again.”

Liu Ruoxi looked at her son, now performing like his life depended on it, kneeling on the floor. Her face stayed blank, but the corner of her mouth twitched slightly.

How had she given birth to something like this?

“Same as always. Butt or hand?”

Sitting in the computer chair, Liu Ruoxi issued her orders like an aloof queen.

“C-can I choose neither?”

Yang Haoran looked up at his mother with hope in his eyes and asked carefully.

“What do you think?” Liu Ruoxi sneered.

“Okay, Mother.”

Yang Haoran slumped in defeat and, looking wilted, fished a feather duster out from under the bed.

The whole process was very smooth. Clearly this wasn't his first time.

He respectfully handed the feather duster to the old witch, still wanting to struggle one last time before dying. “My beautiful and merciful mother... could you go a little easier on me?”

“No.”

Liu Ruoxi said flatly.

“Fine!”

With no hope left at all, Yang Haoran lay down on the bed as if resigning himself to his fate. Compared with his hands, his butt had more meat on it and could take a beating.

“Take off your pants.”

At that moment, a cool voice from behind him made him feel as if he were standing at the edge of an abyss.

“No way, old witch.” Yang Haoran sprang up in fright, ready to curse.

“What did you call me?”

Liu Ruoxi's icy gaze was like ten-thousand-year frost, chilling to the bone.

Realizing he'd let it slip, Yang Haoran hurriedly shifted expressions like he was flipping a face on and on, putting on a fawning smile. “I said, my beautiful and merciful mother, how did it come to this? You never used to make me take off my pants.”

“Then was then, now is now. If I don't give you a deep enough lesson, will you still put your mother in your eyes?”

Liu Ruoxi sneered. “Take them off, or not?”

Was that even a choice? Yang Haoran didn't think so.

He looked miserable, his heart chilled to the bone. Without three days, he probably wouldn't be getting out of bed.

He helplessly put his hands on his waistband and was just about to pull his pants down when he remembered his mother was still watching.

“Mo... Mother, could you turn around for a moment?”

Yang Haoran looked a little embarrassed.

“Heh...”

Her son had always had no shame, so this shy look was the first time Liu Ruoxi had ever seen it. She couldn't help laughing out loud, and in that instant her stunning, icy beauty seemed to melt, dazzling and breathtaking.

Yang Haoran stared, dazed.

He had always known his mother was beautiful, and when he once read The Song of Li Yannian, the first face that came to his mind was hers, beautiful as a goddess.

In the north there is a beauty, peerless and standing alone.

One glance can topple a city, a second can topple a nation.

How could one not know of a beauty who can topple city and nation alike?

Such a beauty is hard to find again.

At the same time, he felt a rush of heat in his groin, though he didn't notice it at all.

Because all his attention was on that breathtaking face of his mother.

Seeing her son's unblinking stare, Liu Ruoxi realized what was happening. Her face instantly went cold again as she barked, “Aren't you going to take them off yet? Do you want Mother to help you?”

“Oh... oh...”

Yang Haoran snapped back to himself and, without thinking, pulled down his waistband, completely unaware that his penis was already standing at full attention.

Distracted and using too much force, the jagged teeth of the zipper scraped hard across the proudly erect penis.

As everyone knew, the penis was one of a man's most vulnerable parts. Any injury there hurt like hell.

“Ahhh—”

A scream tore from Yang Haoran's mouth. He suddenly lost his footing, his face twisting in pain as he collapsed onto the bed. His complexion went deathly pale in an instant, cold sweat pouring off him, and by reflex his hands clamped tightly over his groin, as if that could ease the pain.

Cries of agony poured from his mouth as he rolled around on the bed.

His son's sudden scream froze Liu Ruoxi in place. A few seconds later she came to herself, and the hard mask on her face vanished at once, replaced by panic and anxiety. “What's wrong? Haoran? Where did you hit yourself?”

“It hurts... it hurts... it hurts so much...”

Yang Haoran's face twisted slightly with pain, his complexion white and bloodless, cold sweat covering him from head to toe. He could barely get the words out.

At that moment, the stabbing pain left his mind completely blank.

He clutched his groin with both hands, and thin streams of bright red blood seeped through his fingers, dripping onto the bed. Before long, both of his hands were smeared with blood.

Seeing her son gripping his groin with blood all over his hands, Liu Ruoxi felt a wave of dizziness wash through her mind, as if the sky had suddenly collapsed.

She couldn't afford to think about anything else. Her panic was beyond words. Her face went a little pale as she fumbled frantically around her body for her phone.

She certainly knew where she had put it, but with her mind in chaos, it took her quite a while to find it.

Her trembling fingers unlocked the screen with shaky movements. She tapped the phone icon, and her fingertip landed on 120 in an instant.

But just then, with her nerves so tight, her sweaty finger slipped and hit 20 instead. She couldn't care about that anymore. Wiping the sweat away, deleting, and pressing again all happened in a split second before she tapped to call.

The pain was too severe. Unable to bear it, his brain triggered a defense mechanism, and Yang Haoran fainted dead away. Before he lost consciousness, he faintly heard his mother's anxious voice by his ear, dreamlike and drifting farther and farther away.

Yet neither of them noticed that on Yang Haoran's blood-soaked right hand, thin streams of blood had seeped into the black ring on his index finger.

The ring was pitch black all over, with a recessed middle section and all kinds of mysterious, unknown patterns engraved inside.

If you looked closely, you'd find that those mysterious patterns were actually split into upper and lower sections.

A few seconds after the blood seeped into the ring, a faint glimmer flashed across its surface. Then, as if something had been activated, the first pattern in the recessed middle section began to glow softly. The light spread downward, flowing like liquid toward the second mysterious pattern at the bottom of the ring.

As the light gradually passed over it, most of the pattern at the bottom of the ring lit up. Just as it was about to continue spreading, a crack, like a bottomless abyss, severed the flow. Beyond the abyss lay the remaining portion of the engraved design.

An incomplete pattern clearly could not be activated. After a short while, the mysterious pattern at the bottom of the ring dimmed again and returned to normal.

Only the first mysterious pattern continued to emit a faint glow.

The first pattern flickered three times, then sent out an invisible wave of energy that spread in all directions, like a search radar.

Liu Ruoxi, standing beside Yang Haoran, was the first to be brought into the search area.

A few seconds later, a voice sounded in Liu Ruoxi's mind.

[Conditions met. Game program loading...]

All of this was completed in just ten seconds. By then, the frantic Liu Ruoxi had not noticed the prompt that seemed to sound directly in her head.

Every last thought she had was focused on her son, Yang Haoran.