Chapter 31: Dark-Skinned Rugged Honest Man 31 Part 2

Seduce him, entice him with everything you’ve got. Make his eyes linger on you forever. Drown him utterly in the halls of desire, so that everything he lays eyes on reminds him of your beauty, your allure, your sexiness.

Like venomous fangs sinking deep into his neck, pumping neurotoxic Gu that binds him to you for life.

Qi Yu pinched the base of his fingers. He slowly tugged at the bunched fabric over his shoulder, on the verge of fully exposing his pale skin, when Jiang Rang finally lost his restraint. The young man leaned in impossibly close, head bowed with an inscrutable expression, and straightened the man’s clothes.

He fussed over it with such meticulous care, as if he couldn’t hide his jealousy—as if he refused to let anyone else glimpse the Male Master’s stunning allure.

For that one instant, Qi Yu even felt an exquisite rush of pleasure from the other’s actions.

The man was like a gambler frantically proving he’d hit the jackpot. Compared to the young man’s earlier indifference, this was like a lightbulb finally switching on.

Qi Yu didn’t mind Jiang Rang’s possessiveness.

In fact, he wished it were even more extreme. He wouldn’t care if it meant being carved up, as long as every piece belonged to him—he’d relish it.

From an outsider’s perspective, the two of them looked every bit the picture of a lovey-dovey couple.

A tall man in a gray plaid suit came to an abrupt halt outside the glass window.

His features were sharply chiseled, his forehead hair slicked back just enough to leave a few stray strands brushing his eyes, lending him a youthful, refined, aristocratic air.

His gaze cut through the layered, hazy riot of colors and settled lightly on the affectionate pair inside the store.

They looked utterly blissful, as if their fairy-tale romance had already reached its perfect conclusion. The store’s soft orange lighting caressed the Beta’s handsome face, every shadow along his brows and eyes brimming with the young man’s tender cherishing and protectiveness for his beloved.

The man slowly clenched his fist, his knuckles blanching stark white from the pressure.

The assistant standing behind him noticed him stop and asked cautiously, “Boss Chen?”

Chen Jingxu lifted his eyes faintly, his tone casual. “You go ahead with the inspection. I’ve got something to handle here—no need to wait.”

The assistant nodded hurriedly and retreated at a distance.

The man pushed open the glass door. His polished leather shoes struck the floor with a soft, muffled thud.

Jiang Rang had just withdrawn his fingers after smoothing the Male Master’s collar when he heard the sound and looked up—straight into the deep, viscous gaze of the approaching man, sticky as sludge.

The young man froze for a stunned instant, dazed. His moist, glistening lips parted next; he seemed on the verge of speaking, but the stranger’s imposing steadiness sapped his confidence. Instead, he swallowed the intimate words in a haze.

Finally, he mustered a polite but distant smile.

Beta nodded and said softly, “Mr. Chen.”

His words were so steady, as if he cared nothing for the days gone by. Yet those eyes of his fixed relentlessly on alpha’s every gesture, searching this man’s polished exterior for any trace of that passionate, brazen little dog who had known only how to beg for his affection.

But Jiang Rang was destined for disappointment. The man before him was refined and elegant, his skin flawless and smooth, his gaze sharp, his posture utterly composed. He returned the young man’s courtesy with a calm detachment that felt utterly foreign.

As though he had erased every memory they shared.

That inexplicable pang of loss in Jiang Rang’s chest didn’t linger long. Soon enough, a pair of pale wrists snaked around his arm from the side—like chains lashed through the air, coiling around beta’s lips, his neck, his eyes, his very body. They claimed him with a possessiveness that bordered on suffocation.

“Boss Chen, it really has been a while.”

The smile at the corner of the man’s lips cracked slowly, cold and faint as the water of some bottomless pool. Qi Yu’s fingers tightened lightly on beta’s hand as he drawled, “I hear you’ve done quite a number on your big brother. Parliament seat, stocks, options, shares, subsidiaries—all of it straight into your pockets. Family’s family, after all. How could you bring yourself to do it?”

Chen Jingxu’s expression didn’t shift in the slightest under the barrage of sarcasm. The man remained serene and aloof, his ink-green eyes flicking briefly over Jiang Rang. Only after a pause did he reply in a mild tone, “President Qi, you’ve got it all wrong. Big Brother brought it on himself with his poor management. How can you pin that on me? If I hadn’t stepped in to clean up the mess, the Chen Family’s assets would’ve been devoured by the wolves circling outside.”

Qi Yu didn’t rise to the bait. He merely curled his lips in faint disinterest, his palm drifting to rest gently on the subtle curve of his belly—like some mild-mannered omega who had settled happily into married life.

“I’m in no position to deal with these things anymore myself,” he said leisurely. “Truth be told, Jiang Rang and I are expecting. Now that Boss Chen has taken full control of the Chen Family, I’ll have to trouble you with the partnership between our houses.”

In that instant, Chen Jingxu’s mind went utterly blank. Then, like old wounds flaring up without warning—wounds that had never properly healed, kept raw by sleepless nights—they began to fester. They swelled and throbbed like rusty blades plunged into flesh, the rot spreading fast amid the filth and infection, all of it festering and stinking beneath the veneer of that impeccably tailored suit.

He still passed for human only because the suit concealed the pus, molding him into the picture of refined nobility.

The memories came crashing in then, fragmented and relentless as a tide held back too long.

Chen Jingxu had to admit it: from the very start, the young man had captivated him.

But his own arrogance, selfishness, and hypocrisy had ruined everything.

Retribution had come swiftly—in the midst of a brutal power struggle within the Chen Family, his half-brother had schemed to have him committed to a mental hospital.

How was any sane person supposed to endure those twisted, pathological torments?

Electroshocks. Needle chairs. Whippings. Verbal degradation…

Beneath that relentless assault on body and soul, Chen Jingxu lost all sense of himself as a human being.

In those memories—endlessly long yet fleeting in retrospect—the stark white walls of his cell and the silver bars over the window burned deepest.

Time and again, amid the eerie shafts of sunlight stabbing through those bars, they had forced him to kneel like a dog. Human speech was forbidden; he was made to devour raw meat and gulp filthy wastewater from a bowl on the floor. Failure brought endless streams of abuse and lashes, days without food or water.

He had tried begging for help, tried escaping. Begging earned him mockery, treated like a plaything for their amusement. Escape brought a slapped-raw face, shattered knees, and the humiliation of being strung up on the rooftop for an entire night.

Chen Jingxu had convinced himself countless times that he would die in that rotting ward.

But he hadn’t.

Even after the torture fractured his mind, leaving him with shattered cognition, he never stopped fighting to survive.

Beaten down one time too many, the man who had lost his grip on sanity learned the art of deception.

When his lofty tormentors loomed over him, he would tremble on cue—meek, compliant, obedient.

Kneel, and he knelt. Bark like a dog, and he barked.

The alpha within lay dormant, biding his time for a killing blow.

Then, one night, he feigned terror and lured his most brutal attendant to the stairwell.

Chen Jingxu remembered it vividly: he had torn out the man’s throat with his own teeth.

It wasn’t a clean kill. Blood erupted in a geyser, splattering his face like a baptism. The attendant fought back savagely, clawing chunks of flesh from Chen Jingxu’s cheeks.

But nothing could stop the feral alpha now. He tore into the man’s flesh until all resistance ebbed away.

That very night, the mental hospital descended into chaos due to the excessively brutal and bloody murder method. It was during this uproar that Chen Jingxu made his escape.

The escaped alpha lacked any human sense of rules or boundaries. He hid here and there, eventually ducking into that small alley.

But at that point, he wasn’t simply hiding anymore.

He wanted to “replace” a human.

With only the instincts of a beast, the alpha had cleverly grasped the laws of jungle survival. He aimed to seize a human’s identity and status, blending into human society.

Jiang Rang was the first fish he hooked.

The whimpering sounds the young man heard were the alpha’s deliberate act of playing weak, much like the foxes from certain legends. Those foxes would mimic a child’s cries to lure adults out of the house, then devour the children inside before sauntering off.

Chen Jingxu had approached with exactly that intent in mind. From the shadows, the alpha had seen it clearly: the young man’s soft heart and hesitation.

So, he decided to play it even more pitiable.

Little did he know, the moment Jiang Rang pulled him into an embrace, the beastly alpha had fought for how long to suppress the urge to sink his fangs into the young man’s neck.

Perhaps endurance itself was a prolonged, ambiguous process—one that could curdle over time.

The first time Chen Jingxu failed to kill Jiang Rang, he was doomed to lose the upper hand in their game.

He sank deep into the mist the young man had woven around him, forgetting his original purpose entirely.

Jiang Rang’s smiles, his anger, his praise, his encouragement, his heartache, his tenderness, his protectiveness.

All of it took tangible form in the little dog’s racing heart, his dizzy mind, his secret glances.

Unbeknownst to himself, the alpha traded his fangs for soft kisses, replacement for possession.

Like a domesticated animal, he began to eagerly await his master’s return, his master’s smile, his master’s caresses.

Back then, even a simple pat on the head from Jiang Rang would leave him too blissfully sleepless.

But such happy days didn’t last. He craved more—a fuller claim on Jiang Rang.

And so, the little dog started teaching himself human knowledge, trying to fit into human society. Yet the more he learned, the more he understood, the greater his pain.

He came to grasp jealousy, possession—and discovered that his Jiang Jiang seemed to have another dog on the side.

That dog loved to act cute and spoiled, basking in Jiang Jiang’s favor. Almost every time it called, Jiang Jiang would rush off.

He tried resisting, sulking, crying, even starving himself.

Jiang Rang didn’t buy any of it.

In the end, he hatched a plan.

He would track down that dog, map out every step, find a way to distract Jiang Jiang, then use his fangs and claws to rip the filthy thing apart and destroy its face beyond recognition.

Poisonous venom seeped from the little dog’s heart.

Unfortunately, his big brother—ever the meddler—cut the plan short midway.

But no matter. Since that idiot big brother of his couldn’t finish him off, now it was his turn to kill them both for good.

Chen Jingxu lowered his gaze slightly, a cold, eerie light fixed on Qi Yu’s belly.

His expression shifted in an instant. As he lifted his brows, his eyes turned pitiful and obedient, flicking toward the young man. His lips twitched, as if on the verge of a trembling syllable.

But the alpha held back. He calmly schooled his features, reverting to the refined and elegant Second Young Master of the Chen Family, his faintly furrowed brow laced with patient gentleness.

He was the first to bid farewell to Qi Yu and Jiang Rang. The moment he turned away, his lips curved into a subtle arc.