For the first time, everyone on set saw Chu Xuzhou looking stiff.
When Chu Xuzhou spoke to people in the past, he might occasionally react a bit slowly, but it never came across as stiff. On the contrary, he usually gave off an air of effortless poise, handling everything with unhurried calm, as if nothing could truly touch him.
This was the first time his grip on the vascular strangeness and his expressionless face both looked so unnatural.
“Come on,” Bai Chen said, taking the initiative to invite him closer. He added in a voice only the two of them could hear, “Just pretend you beat me.”
The first time Bai Chen met Chu Xuzhou was a month after he’d offended Starlight Entertainment.
He had still decided to become a big star. Being a big star meant he could get both love and money. And to become one, he needed to latch onto someone rich and influential to pave the way.
That day, he’d overheard a conversation between a celebrity and their agent, learning that the president of Faraway Group would be attending a banquet. Faraway Group was a century-old enterprise, like an ancient tree with roots tangled through every industry imaginable. The president of Faraway was the perfect target.
When Bai Chen went to grab the president of Faraway Group, he spotted the elderly man—whom everyone at the banquet respected and feared—bent over respectfully, listening to a young man speak on that small path cordoned off by bodyguards. Naturally, Bai Chen switched his target to the young man.
The old president and the young man talked for a long time. The young man seemed to be giving important instructions, and the old president and those around him bowed lower and lower, their heads nearly touching their knees. The old president even shed tears.
Bai Chen, bored waiting on the rooftop of a nearby building, kicked off his shoes. His hair grew long and turned white, drifting freely in the wind as he gradually revealed his most comfortable, true form, basking in the bright moonlight that night.
To capture someone so formidable, he naturally couldn’t hold back his power, so there was no need to keep up the disguise.
They finally finished talking, and the young man walked down the path.
Bai Chen followed him on beams of moonlight until they reached a deserted narrow trail. When the young man stopped, Bai Chen appeared and said, “Let’s fight. If I win, you swear loyalty to me. If I lose, do whatever you want with me.”
The young man turned to look at him, moonlight flashing in his eyes, nothing else. “I’m not fighting you. I can sense you’re weak right now—you couldn’t beat me. Just go.”
Bai Chen pulled out the sack he’d prepared in advance, knocked him out, and dragged him back to his rundown little shack.
When the man woke up, his gaze locked intently on Bai Chen.
Seeing how serious he was, Bai Chen told him, “Per our agreement, I’m your master now. You have to follow me.”
“Also, your money’s mine now.”
“And that Starlight place banned me—you need to fix that.”
As he spoke, a destructive ripple surged through the air. His furniture turned to ash one by one, the cinders about to rain down on his face—the young man had suddenly launched an attack, charging straight at him.
As the ashes fell, Bai Chen’s long hair whipped up. Ignoring the destructive energy in the air, he crossed through it unscathed and appeared before the young man. He raised his hand and knocked him on the head again.
The young man passed out once more.
Bai Chen had hit too hard this time. The young man’s mind reeled, faint traces of blood seeping around his eyes. He glared at Bai Chen, silver light flickering in his eyes amid Bai Chen’s silhouette, which was on the verge of being drowned in blood. Then he attacked again.
Bai Chen was annoyed. Instead of just knocking him out, he fought him properly this time.
The outcome was obvious.
Bai Chen planted his foot on the young man’s chest and looked down at him, eyes bloodshot on the ground. “Clean my foot.”
He’d lost his shoes while waiting on the rooftop, and had been going barefoot since—walking and fighting. The brawl had left his feet bloodied and dusty.
The young man stared at the foot on his chest, seemingly unable to believe the splattered blood was his own. After a long while, he finally reached out and wiped the dark red blood from the snow-white instep.
Bai Chen knew the pact was sealed.
At first, Bai Chen saw him only as a money printer and a stepping stone into the entertainment industry.
At first, Chu Xuzhou treated him only as a contractual obligation: providing money and resources, always on call, endlessly patient. But in his idle moments, his gaze would linger on Bai Chen, filled with a deep, probing curiosity that slipped through.
The change came the first time Bai Chen signed something for Chu Xuzhou.
Previously, when Chu Xuzhou had joined fans to pick him up, Bai Chen hadn’t thought to sign for him, and Chu Xuzhou had never asked. That day, for some reason—maybe something he’d chatted about with the fans—after signing for the fan next to him, Chu Xuzhou suddenly extended his hand.
Bai Chen assumed he wanted a signature on his palm. He took the hand and wrote his name in the center: Bai Chen.
Afterward, Bai Chen’s hand went numb.
As he wrote in Chu Xuzhou’s palm, the temperature there spiked—at least 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Along with the scorching heat, an intensely potent wave of affection poured from their touching palms into Bai Chen’s body.
It was high-energy, but different from the love the boy Jiang Yuanmu had given him. This one surged in hot and heavy, seeping into his veins and heating his blood.
The unfamiliar sensation left Bai Chen ill at ease. Using the motion of signing on Chu Xuzhou’s sleeve, he rubbed his hand against it several times. Then he paused, pressing down without wiping further. It was strange, uncomfortable… but he devoured it greedily.
How could he not consume love this potent?
That line—”Just pretend you beat me”—didn’t loosen Chu Xuzhou up. If anything, it backfired. The vascular strangeness in his hand went rigid, unable to bend and wrap around Bai Chen’s waist.
Bai Chen had to pinch it himself, coaxing a bit of life into the vascular strangeness so he could wrap it around his own waist. “You do the back.”
He couldn’t reach behind to bind his own hands.
The stylist prompted from the side, “Tie the waist tighter—loop it twice, knot it, then bind the hands.”
The vascular strangeness seemed to have lost its vitality but still oozed blood, making it slippery. The knot refused to hold.
Dong Man and the others noticed sweat beading on Chu Xuzhou’s nose. Bai Chen couldn’t see it, but he felt it through Chu Xuzhou’s hand, which was growing scorching hot again.
That hand wielded the vascular strangeness, wrapping it around him into a contorted pose. Inevitably, they touched.
With heat like that, it was like the hand was setting him on fire.
Bai Chen felt as uncomfortable as he had the first time, signing in that palm. He wanted to tell him to control his body temperature but held back. Those little flames were packed with delicious love, carrying a searing edge as it absorbed into every part of him.
Higher energy than ever before. Tastier.
Even though he’d eaten his fill today, Bai Chen couldn’t stop absorbing the affection—and the heat along with it. His blood heated up, his skin flushing pink all over from the warmth.
In the attic, the vascular strangeness’s tendrils regained their writhing amid the tugging, faintly agitated as they scraped against the ceiling and floor. The filming cameras and circulating fans hummed together. The air grew hot and bloody, then fresh again, only to heat up anew, tainted with the vascular strangeness’s metallic tang, thick and cloying in the cramped space.
Bai Chen frowned and turned his head, murmuring so only they could hear, “Control your body temperature.”
The man who had been about to bend down and bind his ankle froze. Ten seconds later, Bai Chen’s ankle jerked—he nearly kicked out from the burn. Not only had the temperature not dropped; it had risen.
This wasn’t human heat.
A person would have burned to death long ago.
Tension strung from his ankle up his calf, every inch of taut skin flushing pink. His veins bulged, the bluish-purple ridges starkly prominent before the bloody vascular strangeness wrapped them, its red plasma swallowing the color.
The wrapping sped up but stayed careful, only slipping into heaviness a couple of times.
The stylist continued, “Next, bind the foot to the hands behind the waist. It’s tricky—if we can’t manage it, we might use a body double or the prop foot we’ve prepped.”
Chu Xuzhou moved to Bai Chen’s front, gripping his ankle. “I’ll lift. Call it if it hurts.”
The height rose gradually as Chu Xuzhou drew closer, until Bai Chen’s leg pressed tight against his shoulder in a full upright fold. Bai Chen made no sound. By then, Chu Xuzhou holding his ankle was nearly pressed against him. Bai Chen’s discomfort wasn’t from the leg, but the heat—Chu Xuzhou’s heat radiating through their clothes onto him.
Bai Chen shot him a displeased glance, but Chu Xuzhou pressed the leg toward the hands behind without warning. With the motion, they ended up face-to-face, pressed fully together.
Bai Chen’s toes curled instantly. Amid gasps of awe, Chu Xuzhou’s palm guided it smoothly into place, hooking onto the hand.
The stylist beamed. “Last one: wrap the vascular strangeness around Teacher Bai Chen’s mouth. Bite down lightly, Teacher—we want it to look like it’s gagging you speechless.”
Chu Xuzhou bent to pick up a tendril for Bai Chen’s mouth. The moment it touched his hand, it crumbled to ash, like pitiful cinders scorched by fire.
He bent for another, snapping it while wiping off the blood.
He grabbed more in succession—none intact enough to use.
“…”
A celestial master who’d been watching curiously, wondering why the vascular strangeness no longer obeyed him, finally spoke up. “Let me try.”
Chu Xuzhou stepped back, positioning himself behind the camera.
As soon as he approached, Dong Man felt the surrounding air heat up.
Du Feili had told her that the living dead didn’t act like living dead at all. Even if they weren’t ice-cold like zombies, a body temperature this high wasn’t normal either. It felt like everything was about to combust.
Dong Man saw his hand clench halfway, then release, her mind flashing to what she’d just witnessed.
When the living dead wrapped the vascular strangeness around Bai Chen’s ankle and calf, veins had inexplicably bulged on Bai Chen’s skin there. The eerie tendrils on his calf had plumped up as if alive, and at the same time, veins protruded on the back of the living dead’s hand.
Seeing three types of bulging veins amid the blood at once should have been utterly grotesque, but Dong Man’s heart pounded instead.
She figured she’d at least understood the reason for one of those bulges.
Buoyed by that confidence and harboring a certain intent, she boldly spoke up.
“Hello, Xuzhou Big Shot. I’m Bai Chen’s assistant.” She affixed her protective label first, then asked, “You seem really hot. What’s going on? Are you sick?”
