Chapter 17: Dark-Skinned Rugged Honest Man 17

Rainy night, thunder and lightning, enveloping darkness, and a long-haired beauty pleading pitifully for help.

Jiang Rang had only ever encountered such a dramatic scene in tales of the supernatural. He never imagined it would one day play out in his own life.

“Jiang Rang… help me…”

A trembling voice, lips nearly clattering against teeth, whispered right by his ear. The damp, mossy scent clung to him like a serpent’s tongue, casually yet seductively coiling around the young man’s sturdy waist.

The dark-haired beauty’s lips were blood-red. He lay half-prone on the water-stained floor, his pallid skin making his delicately arched brows and striking features appear all the more eerily alluring. Strands of wet black hair stuck to his cheeks, and mist swirled in his obliquely upturned black eyes, brimming with restless waves.

The beauty gazed at him with eyes full of longing, supplication, pity, and invitation. If anyone else had been standing there, they probably would have lost control and pounced already.

Jiang Rang’s heart pounded like a drum. He swallowed hard on instinct.

To be fair, this widowed male master of the villa was indeed a rare beauty. But a beta still had his limits.

The young man couldn’t help but step back half a pace. He awkwardly turned his face away, clinging to the principles of “don’t look where you shouldn’t” and “don’t listen to what you shouldn’t,” and stammered indistinctly, “S-Sir, I-I can’t help you. I’ll go out right now and find a doctor for you!”

“You’re not going anywhere!” the omega said urgently, his commanding tone laced with faint gasps.

The man’s eyes were rimmed with damp red. Seeming to realize that the young man responded better to firmness than softness, he gritted his teeth and said, “Come to me.”

The beta froze like a rusted robot, utterly motionless.

Qi Yu let out a cold laugh. His body trembled uncontrollably with restraint as he issued a frosty command: “Didn’t you hear me?”

Jiang Rang was indeed intimidated. The honest guy was simple-minded and had no clue what was going through his employer’s head. Even though he sensed the danger and knew the smartest thing to do was flee the house, he still obeyed his employer’s words on reflex.

“Help me up.”

The beta clenched his jaw, half-kneeled, and stiffly supported the disheveled yet stunning omega to his feet.

In the process of rising, the long-haired man seemed unable to hold back any longer. He shivered lightly, his limbs went limp, and he half-fell into the young man’s arms.

His porcelain arms loosely encircled the young man’s honey-toned neck. His long hair cascaded like water through the gap where their bodies met. Half of those dark locks undulated over the youth’s prominent chest, radiating an intensely erotic allure.

Jiang Rang’s mind exploded. He didn’t dare move a muscle.

The scorching heat of their physical contact stood out sharply in the darkness. The omega seemed to reach his limit, his body convulsing as hot breaths sprayed wildly across the young man’s ear.

A burning palm slid slowly down from the young man’s neck. It followed its frenzied owner, inching along the bulging veins of restraint in the beta’s neck, until it hovered over the taut white shirt straining across his chest.

Qi Yu’s half-lidded eyes trembled. His vivid red lips parted and closed repeatedly, as if mist were seeping from them.

His voice was highly unsteady, as though he were striving to stay calm.

“Jiang Rang,” he said, “you can feel it, can’t you?”

The sodden curtains swayed heavily in the gusts. Outside, thunder boomed, and a flash of lightning pierced the gloom like it meant to cleave the two men in the room apart.

The widowed male master revealed a smile that was eerie, cold, and bewitching—like a vividly colored venomous snake flicking its tongue and speaking in human words: “I like you.”

The downpour resumed in torrents, drenching the entwined beta and omega without mercy.

Thunder cracked again, illuminating the young man’s pale, fearful face.

Qi Yu still had no intention of letting him go.

The man’s slender fingertips caressed the young man’s bobbing Adam’s apple. His voice turned utterly eerie and tender, like some spell piercing through the windowpane.

He coaxed the downcast beta softly: “You know, I’m just an omega widower with endless wealth and power. If you stay with me, if we have a baby together, all that wealth and power will be yours.”

“You’ll be the baby’s father and inherit everything I own.”

Qi Yu narrowed his thin, red-rimmed eyelids, watching the honest guy try to stammer a rebuttal. He curled his lips and said, “I know you have a fiancé, but does anyone in Jiangjia Village even acknowledge your relationship?”

“Jiang Rang, he’s just a bloodsucker who latched onto you after losing his family and having nowhere else to go.”

“Must be tough, right? Working two or three jobs all by yourself?”

“Being looked down on, hired for the cheapest rates.”

With liquid tenderness, the man cradled the young man’s face as it twisted into a pitiful expression. His red lips nearly brushed the beta’s, only to pause tantalizingly at the last moment.

The omega’s voice suddenly brimmed with ambition. He fixed Jiang Rang with a piercing stare, like a stern teacher heartbroken over a wayward student.

“You need to give him up. Only I can help you. Choose me, and I’ll get you into the Federal Lower Parliament right away.”

“You’ll climb the ranks step by step, all the way to the pinnacle of power.”

“You’ll become a legend in this town, bringing eternal glory to the Jiang Family!”

The grating voice threatened to pierce eardrums, yet the beta kept his face lowered the entire time, his expression unnaturally calm.

The air was filled only with the omega’s harsh, ragged breathing.

The nighttime rain had eased into a drizzle, and the damp clothes clinging to their skin gradually dried in the muggy heat.

The beta, who had kept his eyes downcast throughout, slowly raised his head. To Qi Yu’s astonishment, there was no trace of the greed, longing, or excitement he had anticipated in the young man’s gaze.

Jiang Rang’s face was candid and straightforward, and in this moment, his ordinarily plain features took on an indescribable handsomeness—like a sharp blade slicing through the darkness.

The young man grasped the man’s slender wrist. With a gentle flex of his arm, he eased the other onto the pristine white bed.

“Mister,” he said, “what you’ve offered is tempting, to be sure. But I’m just an ordinary man. I lack the education and talent to reach the heights you’ve described. I have no ambitions. I only want to live my life quietly, step by step.”

“Besides, A Liu is no burden to me.”

Jiang Rang let out a soft breath, his voice steady. “Mister, you’re not in your right mind right now—it’s the heat clouding your judgment. I’ll pretend I never heard a word of it. I’ll go call the doctor up now… Good night, sir.”

The young man stood in the shadows cast by the light, his elevated position and the dim glow fracturing his face into stark contrasts. His muscular build made him resemble a silent mountain.

Yes, he was always so quiet and even-tempered.

And yet, that only served to highlight how moody, capricious, and ruthless the man could be.

The sound of footsteps gradually faded away. On the bed, the omega lay as still as a corpse, his chest no longer rising and falling with breath.

It was a long while before he stirred. His long black hair hung in disarray, and tears spilled uncontrollably from his reddened eyes.

Qi Yu seemed unable to control himself. His slender nails raked harshly across the bedsheets, then he clapped his hands over his ears, his entire body shuddering with nervous tics.

The omega mumbled under his breath, his words thin and faint, as if reciting some vicious curse. His dark hair veiled half his pallid face, while the other half twisted into a sickly, brooding grimace.

His lips kept moving. “Jiang Rang treats me so well. It’s all those bitches seducing him… Yeah, it’s all their fault…”

“Die, you bitches! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die!!”

~~~

The villa’s lights burned through the night.

Even as dawn approached, faint screams still echoed from upstairs.

The widowed male master’s condition appeared to have worsened.

A servant who entered to deliver food saw him bound to the bedhead with white restraints, raving madly. His long hair cascaded wildly around him, making him look like a ghost risen from a midnight grave.

Of course, even having witnessed it firsthand, no one dared breathe a word.

Only when the morning sun rose did the long-haired man—with his cheeks slightly hollowed—slowly lift his head. The crimson in his eyes had faded to a pale pink, evoking the image of diluted blood.

After a night of hysterical frenzy, he was now utterly serene. Sunlight fell across his deathly pale skin, making him seem as if he might dissolve into the air and vanish at any moment.

He tilted his head back to bask in the warmth of the sun, his voice light and ethereal.

“Send Jiang Rang in. All of you, get out.”

No one dared respond. The private doctor in white didn’t even offer any medical advice, fearing he wouldn’t make it out the villa’s doors if he lingered.

Jiang Rang hadn’t slept well at all that night. His room, with its window left open, had been soaked through by the rain, leaving no dry spot to rest. He’d squeezed in with some of the other servants he got along with.

Something weighed heavily on the young man’s mind, and he’d woken early that morning.

The events of the previous night felt like a fever dream. Jiang Rang didn’t dare dwell on them. Truth be told, what worried him most right now was whether his employer, humiliated and enraged, would fire him—and if he could find another job with such good pay.

The young man had few skills. He could barely read or write. His only assets were his strong build and brute strength; he looked like he could handle any heavy labor. Apart from the construction site, there weren’t many other options.

But the pay on construction sites wasn’t great either. Wages were often delayed, sometimes leaving workers without income for months or even half a year.

His family couldn’t afford to wait.

Jiang Rang was thinking this when he heard the Male Master summon him upstairs for a talk. His heart tightened even further.

The tall youth entered the master bedroom with his head bowed. Brilliant sunlight poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, chasing away the room’s pervasive chill and gloom.

The slender omega, dressed in white patient scrubs with an inhibitor patch affixed to the back of his neck, was resting on the small orange-red chair arranged by the windowsill.

This warm-toned table and chair set had been Jiang Rang’s idea. The sunlight there by the floor-to-ceiling windows was always perfect—ideal for the Male Master, whose constitution ran cold, to relax and recuperate.

“You’re here.” Qi Yu didn’t look up. He was intently studying the wilted roses in the vase, his long fingers gently crushing the dried stems and petals. His voice was flat and indifferent, just as it always was.

“No new flowers today,” he said.

Jiang Rang’s heart clenched instinctively. He was about to say he’d fetch some right away when the man waved him off, signaling there was no rush.

In just one night, the omega seemed to have grown even thinner. The loose patient scrubs only accentuated his frail, emaciated frame.

Qi Yu stared at the silver ring on the beta’s middle finger for a long moment. A shadow flickered in his gloomy eyes before he finally murmured softly, “Sorry. I scared you last night.”

It was the first time Jiang Rang had ever heard the man offer such a formal apology. The youth froze, stammering after what felt like an eternity, “N-No… that was just an accident. It had nothing to do with you. You certainly wouldn’t have…”

“No.” The man lifted his pale eyelids, calmly cutting off the youth’s unfinished words. “It wasn’t an accident. I do need a child.”

The young beta recoiled half a step in shock, his tousled bangs practically bristling as if ready to explode.

The Male Master, however, spoke leisurely, even curving his lips in a faint smile. “Or to put it another way,” he said softly, “I need a child to help me legitimately take over the Li Family.”

“Yesterday, I lost my composure and didn’t explain things clearly to you.”

“Jiang Rang, you can still think it over. Your physical condition is excellent. As long as you can help me have a child, I’ll reward you generously. And I’ll find the top doctors in the Federation to cure your father and your fiancé’s illnesses.”