Chapter 45: Two-Faced Phoenix Man 4

Lu Xiang didn’t wait for the bell to ring before he left early.

The Crown Prince’s face was ashen, like it had been splashed with unevenly diluted gray paint. The veins bulging slightly on his forehead resembled worms wriggling just beneath the skin. That face with its excellent bone structure was stretched taut by pallid skin, while his sharp, dashing eyebrows slanted aggressively upward.

His razor-sharp aura was so intense that no one dared meet his gaze directly. As such, nobody caught sight of the dark, turbulent desire simmering in his eyes, barely held in check.

Lu Xiang left quickly. The Crown Prince was tall and slender, with long legs that made his proportions stunningly perfect.

Yet no matter how one looked at it, his retreating figure seemed to carry a faint, uncomfortable tremor. Even his movements appeared stiff and icy.

The sudden departure of their circle’s leader clearly left Chen Ming stunned for a moment. He let out a couple of “Aiya”s, then couldn’t help half-turning. His gaze drifted fleetingly over the young man’s cheeks, where the tip of his nose was slightly red and even his eye sockets held a hint of pink.

But seeing the half-blind guy by the young man’s side start fawning and coaxing him again, Chen Ming felt some indescribable emotion flicker through him. He couldn’t hold back a soft tsk, then glanced sideways at Ji Mingyu and shrugged. “Well, that’s just great. Brother Lu’s got a serious germaphobia thing going on. He’ll probably have to scrub off a layer of skin when he gets back.”

He didn’t keep his voice down at all, as if he wanted certain people to hear. “Brother Lu didn’t even lose his temper. He must’ve been really disgusted and couldn’t stand it, so he went straight to take a shower, right?”

Jiang Rang’s expression changed almost instantly. How could he miss the mockery dripping from those words? His fingers clenched until they were nearly white, his teeth gritted tight, the muscles along his cheek pulling into a sharp, elegant line.

Yet even so, he still managed to squeeze out a helpless, pitiful look from his soft white face. His damp eyes seemed on the verge of spilling over with syrupy tears.

“Chen Ming,” Ji Mingyu said in his mild, gentle tone, as if coming to the young man’s defense. But on closer listen, there was a hint of amusement in it. “That’s enough. Don’t say things like that. It’s quite rude.”

Jiang Rang wasn’t stupid; he could clearly hear the two of them singing from the same hymn sheet.

The pitiful expression on the young man’s face twisted for a split second along his cheek. On the surface, he still looked lost and at a loss, but beneath the desk, his pale knuckles viciously twisted into the thigh of his mild-mannered, cowardly neighbor.

The more vulnerable and helpless Jiang Rang appeared, the harsher the violence he inflicted on Zhou Yichun.

But even after being treated so casually, humiliatingly, and groundlessly by the young man, the heterochromic youth’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. From start to finish, those strangely colored eyes stayed fixed on him. The flush of shame on his pale face only grew more intense, as if the rougher Jiang Rang treated him, the more drowning, starved, genuine love he derived from it.

Jiang Rang naturally paid no attention to the lapdog groveling at his feet. Right now, his mind was shrouded entirely in a fog of hatred. He pursed his lips, his downcast gaze brushing over the long earring dangling from the elegant young man’s ear like white jade. He couldn’t help but think with disgust and disdain that this guy wasn’t just nauseatingly pretentious—he was a total sissy.

And what genius artist? In Jiang Rang’s eyes, the man was probably just a fraud. When he couldn’t keep up the act anymore and worried about being exposed, he’d switched to finance, that’s all.

Jiang Rang figured he had it all figured out. Weren’t all these hateful rich people just this hypocritical? With enough money to burn, they were happy to buy themselves fame.

He really wanted to… he really wanted to…

Jiang Rang gently wiped at nonexistent tears with his pale pink fingertip and offered a dejected apology. “I’m really sorry, Classmate Chen, Class Monitor. I really didn’t notice just now. Classmate Lu suddenly leaned in… I’m sorry, it’s all my fault.”

His tone was utterly pitiable, the misty redness at the corners of his eyes brimming with tears, as if they might spill over at any moment.

—He really wanted to grind the filthy soles of his shoes into their smug, ugly faces.

They’d make such ridiculous expressions, wouldn’t they?

Jiang Rang thought as his lightly furrowed brows trembled innocently, a thin trail of water sliding down his cheek.

Chen Ming clearly wanted to keep ranting, but his gaze swept over the young man’s misty, pitiful appearance. The Young Master’s lips parted slightly, and for a moment, he was at a loss for words.

The young man with faintly yellow hair frowned, unable to help thinking: How does this guy start crying after just two sentences?

He really was… he really was…

No words seemed adequate to describe the person before him.

It was like Chen Ming knew full well that the young man was a gold-digging, low-class schemer. Yet as soon as the other reddened his eyes slightly, lowered his gaze gently, and looked up at him through that hazy veil of tears wrapped in softness, his mind went blank.

He couldn’t recall those familiar insults for the poor, couldn’t remember his earlier disdain and contempt.

He felt as though he had been immersed in those lustrous, pearl-like teary eyes, involuntarily surrendering all control.

The sensation was so utterly bizarre that he didn’t dare look any longer. The young man abruptly turned his head away, his earlobes flushing a deep crimson.

Jiang Rang naturally failed to notice Chen Ming’s peculiar behavior, but Ji Mingyu, who stood nearby with a faint smile and calm eyes, saw it all too clearly.

Ji Mingyu leisurely smoothed the slightly creased edge of the page in his hand, a flicker of dark light passing through his narrow eyes.

~~~

Jiang Rang had been bottling up his anger all day.

His plan to get close to Lu Xiang hadn’t gone smoothly at all. In fact, Lu Xiang might even have started to find him annoying.

The more Jiang Rang thought about it, the more irritated he became. He clenched his silver-white teeth and couldn’t help but scoff inwardly—what kind of cleanliness obsession was that? It was all just pretentious nonsense, the kind of affliction only the rich could afford.

If you were starving half to death, who would care about cleanliness? You’d eat anything, do anything, just to fill your belly.

“Jiang Jiang, are you still thinking about him?”

The man’s voice was listless, tinged with a faint rasp and a subtle probe that was hard to detect.

Jiang Rang’s train of thought snapped to a halt. The delicate features of the young man froze for an instant, and then, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, his voice sharpened abruptly. “Zhou Yichun, what nonsense are you spouting?”

Zhou Yichun pressed his lips together. Facing the aggressive young man, his voice grew even more lacking in confidence, but he didn’t soften his words in the slightest.

He said softly, “Jiang Jiang, I haven’t even said who it is yet.”

The young man’s brows paused for a moment before furrowing in resentment once more. His eyes reddened in an instant.

He lunged forward a few steps, staring intently into Zhou Yichun’s mismatched gray eyes, his tone laced with frustration at the other’s incompetence and an outburst of pent-up grievance. “You still have the nerve to say that!”

“Zhou Yichun, you actually have the gall to bring it up? If you weren’t so useless, would I have been humiliated like that by them?”

“Yes, I’m thinking about them! I’m wondering why you couldn’t stand up for me and curse them out back then? Why don’t you have their kind of ability? Why aren’t you the heir to the Lu Family?”

As Jiang Rang spoke, his breaths came in heavy gasps, his eyes gleaming with a bloody red hatred. His writhing red lips spat out hurtful words. “Why are you just a useless blind man?”

Zhou Yichun stood frozen in place. Under the barrage of the young man’s accusations, he didn’t even dare lift his head. He only half-lowered his eyelids, his back hunching over even more severely, as if in the next moment his knees would buckle and he would kneel at Jiang Rang’s feet.

“Yichun…”

Suddenly, a pair of warm, faintly fragrant wrists gently cradled the man’s icy face.

Zhou Yichun trembled all over. His eyes reddened as his one black and one gray eyeball shifted slightly with the young man’s movements. Amid his panic, profound pain, and utter numbness, the man’s expression was completely blank.

But then the young man suddenly drew him into a gentle embrace, wrapping his shaking shoulders and back. His tender wrists slid slowly down his spine in a soothing caress.

Jiang Rang’s voice was gentle to the point of enchantment as he murmured into his ear, “I’m sorry, Yichun. I’ve been too harsh on you lately. But…”

The low voice carried a hint of faint disappointment. “But Yichun, I really do like you. I’ve been testing you all this time to see if you can shoulder our future together… I don’t want you to have any regrets after we get married…”

“Do you understand what I mean?”

Zhou Yichun suddenly broke down, clutching the young man before him tightly. His black-and-gray heterochromatic eyes were threaded with spiderweb-like blood vessels, half his face buried suffocatingly against the warm curve of Jiang Rang’s neck.

Scorching tears fell one after another into Jiang Rang’s collar. A flash of impatience and disgust crossed Jiang Rang’s face, but he held it back and continued with his false tenderness. “Alright, what are you crying for?”

“Jiang Jiang, Jiang Jiang, I love you. I love you so much—”

Zhou Yichun’s voice shook as he spoke. He suddenly pulled back a step, mumbling like a man possessed. “It’s me, it’s my fault, Jiang Jiang. I’ll work harder from now on, try to earn enough for you to live in a big house… All my money will be yours from now on, okay? Everything Zhou Yichun earns goes to Jiang Jiang.”

As he spoke, he suddenly slapped himself hard across the face.

The blow was vicious; a deep red handprint quickly swelled on the man’s pale cheek.

In a tone that was almost fawning and quivering with desperation, Zhou Yichun groveled before Jiang Rang. “Jiang Jiang, it was all my fault today. From now on—no, next time, I absolutely won’t let you suffer any grievance again.”

His words were excessively ingratiating, utterly divorced from reality.

Jiang Rang thought coldly to himself that the man was truly hopeless, brazen enough to say anything.

Those noble young masters and ladies could be thoroughly crushed with a single slap. So what if Zhou Yichun’s family had some money? At most, they were just nouveau riche, and they still wanted to compare themselves to a deep-rooted family conglomerate?

The young man thought this to himself, yet his face still bore a gentle smile.

Zhou Yichun looked utterly bewitched, like an ugly mangy dog that had suddenly earned its master’s favor, drooling in a truly ridiculous manner.

Of course, Jiang Rang knew exactly why the other man was acting this way—after all, he hadn’t given him a good look in a long time.

Simply not beating or scolding him was already the best attitude possible, let alone this long-absent gentle and intimate tone?

Jiang Rang had always known his limits and was well aware of Zhou Yichun’s boundless indulgence toward him. Many things became cherished precisely because they were so hard to obtain.

That’s right—he was stringing Zhou Yichun along, even feeding him belittling remarks all along.

Jiang Rang didn’t see anything wrong with his actions.

In the end, people had to be a little selfish. If he kept treating Zhou Yichun well, the man would only grow more presumptuous. It was like training a dog: he had to hit and scold, but not too harshly. Occasionally, he needed to offer symbolic submission and a tiny taste of sweetness.

Only by maintaining this warped dynamic could Jiang Rang keep him dangling at a distance. Otherwise, given Zhou Yichun’s drooling, lecherous-dog obsession with him, the man would eventually pin him to the bed and never let him go.

Jiang Rang didn’t think there was anything wrong with physical desire, but only on the premise that he was extremely picky.

He despised Zhou Yichun’s defective eyes and even felt there was no need to go that far with him.

In fact, he was spot on.

Jiang Rang gently kissed Zhou Yichun’s damp cheek and said softly, “Yichun, since you don’t want me to suffer any grievances, you should go get your eyes treated first. Auntie has been urging you to do it, and she’s even been calling me the past couple of days…”

Seeing the man stammering as if he wanted to say something, Jiang Rang gently pressed his finger to the other’s lips. The youth’s porcelain-pale cheeks carried a hazy, fog-like enchantment, and his low, silky voice was like cool, fine rain.

He said, “Yichun, when you come back after getting treated… you’ll be obedient, right?”

In that instant, Zhou Yichun was like a withered tree suddenly bursting into spring. His translucent heterochromatic pupils gleamed with a nearly pathological light, and his entire body trembled on the verge of convulsions.

He gritted his teeth, but his lips still clashed involuntarily in restraint.

In a quivering voice, Zhou Yichun said, “G-Good… good, Jiang Jiang… I-I’ll go obediently. I listen… I…”

His tone carried a sobbing lilt, like a pure-hearted boy completely lost in love.

Jiang Rang gave a soft “mm,” then glanced at him hesitantly, his lips parting as if he had something more to say.

Zhou Yichun gasped and sobbed without a second thought. “Jiang Jiang, I’ll transfer all the money in the card to you right away. For daily life, I’ll have Auntie come over to clean and cook for you… but Jiang Jiang, you can’t spend money recklessly—no smoking, no too many snacks…”

A breeze-like kiss suddenly grazed his chilled cheek, stunning Zhou Yichun once more. His face flushed crimson to the point of bursting, and his unspoken words jammed in his throat.

Jiang Rang smiled. “Okay, I’ll listen to you, Zhou Yichun. I’ll be right here waiting for you to come back.”

“Oh, right—remember to note it as a voluntary gift.”

A tidal flush of red surged across Zhou Yichun’s face like the sea. He half-bit his lip, unclear if he’d fully registered it, simply nodding frantically.

Jiang Rang chuckled lowly. The youth’s thick, long lashes fluttered like a bird on the cusp of newfound freedom. Satisfied, he said to the man before him, “Very obedient.”

With that, the youth slowly let his smile fade, as if he’d finally performed enough. He stretched lazily, shot Zhou Yichun a languid sidelong glance, and drawled, “Why aren’t you rolling off to make dinner? What are you standing around for?”

Zhou Yichun pursed his lips into a nearly bashful smile. His hands twisted together nervously, and in a trembling, saccharine voice, he said, “Okay, I’ll go right now… right now.”