Chapter 40: Brown Eyes (14)

Within the pitch-black ventilation duct, he could only barely feel the direction of the wind.

The System was always playing dead. After Shen Qiuxun had climbed to a place he deemed safe, he carefully pried open the vent cover, gripped the opening with one hand, and jumped down. His soles landed on the thick carpet, as light and silent as a cat.

The room was very dark, with almost no sunlight penetrating it. Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized this was another hotel suite. He was just about to yawn when a chill ran down his back.

In the quiet room, it seemed like there was another breath.

In the darkness, a gaze that made one’s hair stand on end was glued tightly to him. It was like a herbivore newly entering the grasslands being targeted by a starving wolf crouching in hiding. The wolf’s muscles were coiled, ready to strike, bulging with the desire to tear and bite.

A coldness rose from the soles of his feet, sinking deep into his bones. Darkness amplifies people’s fears, as if a monster could appear within it at any moment, waiting for him to walk right into its maw.

Shen Qiuxun carefully retreated, his attractive eyes narrowed as he meticulously observed everything in the room. All was calm. At times like this, the quieter it was, the more terrifying it became. He slowly backed away until he finally touched a solid surface.

He let out a tiny sigh of relief, but before he could finish exhaling, the breath caught in his throat: Why did the wall behind him… have a heartbeat?

‘What… is this?’

【.】

The targeted Beta was completely unaware. His atrophied glands made him unable to sense the room’s heavy, extreme liquor-scented pheromones, which were ready to explode at any second.

He also didn’t know that the second he dropped down from the vent, it was like a drop of water falling into a pot of hot oil, instantly causing a sizzling uproar. The pheromones in the entire room began to dance joyfully as if oil was being poured onto a raging fire.

Unknowingly, he had walked right into the embrace of the hungry wolf in the darkness.

A large, rough hand stroked his jaw. It was surprisingly gentle and practiced, as if caressing a precious pearl that was treasured and fondled daily. The thumb moved up from his jaw and touched his lips.

Shen Qiuxun subconsciously closed his mouth. Calmly, he even had a stray thought: Maybe he had encountered some kind of pervert.

Soft, fuzzy hair brushed against his cheek. Belatedly, he realized the other person was sniffing the side of his neck, like an animal sniffing its cub, or a human smelling food.

The man let out a soft, contented sigh. The indistinct sounds slid past his ear, and he understood a few words:

“Xunxun… you’ve come to my dreams again…”

Shen Qiuxun immediately shuddered. He suddenly had a terrible guess.

The other party held his earlobe, licking and nibbling gently. Something warm and wet pressed against his collarbone, and a single drop slid down his chest, vanishing into the unexplored territory of his abdomen.

The man wrapped his arms around his waist, pressing his face against the back of Shen Qiuxun’s neck, motionless, like a music box that had wound down to its end.

Shen Qiuxun breathed a shallow sigh of relief: The man thought this was a dream.

Just as he thought this, he suddenly heard a low, hoarse voice, like the stroke of midnight Cinderella heard at the ball:

“Xunxun… this is the first time I’ve dreamed… of a you with a heartbeat.”

A sob lingered at the end of those words, like a male beast that had lost its mate, pouring out its grievances: “You never look at me… only your back… all you leave me is your back…”

“So cold, so cold… so empty… it hurts so much…”

“You never turn back to look at me… You won’t turn back to look at me…”

“My gland hurts so much… Xunxun… wife… I hurt so much… I beg you… I beg you…”

The man’s emotions suddenly became somewhat agitated. Random, damp kisses landed near Shen Qiuxun’s ear. Who knew how many times he had experienced dreams with a sliver of hope, only to wake up alone, to become this docile, just holding him like this, doing nothing else.

“Why don’t you answer me?”

“You still don’t love me… don’t like me… just don’t like me…”

“Why? Why? Why?”

Should he answer? How could Shen Qiuxun know what he was like in this man’s dreams? Would his cover be blown?

But the other party kept asking and asking. Shen Qiuxun swallowed. To be safe, he responded softly: “Mm.”

“…”

The long-winded pouring out of feelings seemed to freeze over instantly. The silent, suffocating air solidified for what felt like several seconds. Shen Qiuxun was abruptly turned around to face a pair of crimson phoenix eyes. The ink-like green was shot with blood, possessing a strange, insane feeling.

An abrupt “drip” sound rang out. The darkness was swept away as all the lights in the room turned on, enveloping the space in warm light. Shen Qiuxun blinked.

A familiar face thus entered his vision.

Silver hair, green eyes. His features had shed all childishness, becoming deeper, more profound, and cold. The grassy green eyes from his memory had turned into a rich dark green, like a pair of the finest emerald gemstones. At this moment, they were like an ancient well silent for a thousand years. The deep dark green made one feel a chill from head to toe, a trace of pain seeping even into the bones.

To be honest, Shen Qiuxun didn’t feel much, but being stared at so intensely by the man still sent a shiver of horror through him.

Seriously ill.

That was Shen Qiuxun’s first impression.

He blinked nervously.

Xu Zhiyuan woke as if from a long dream. He stared dumbly, reaching out to touch a face he didn’t know how long it had been since he’d last seen. Tears streamed down uncontrollably like strings of pearls.

For Shen Qiuxun, it had only been a dozen or so days since he’d seen Xu Zhiyuan.

But for Xu Zhiyuan, five long years had passed.

Five years.

In the first year, he restrained himself, trying not to seem so cheap and lowly. He returned to the Capital Planet and worked day and night, not daring to close his eyes. Every monthly heat period became an execution day.

By the second year, he finally couldn’t hold on anymore. Shen Qiuxun’s back figure would appear before his eyes for no reason. He became distracted, and his glands malfunctioned.

In the third year, he began to be unable to distinguish reality from dreams. Even the Xunxun in his dreams only showed him a back. He hid in his castle, going crazy, living in constant fear every day.

In the fourth year, he finally admitted defeat. He began enduring the pain to search for him all over the world. “No one will love you” had become a hellish curse, making his life worse than death.

By the fifth year, disappointment had accumulated step by step. He could only kneel in the darkness of his rental house begging for mercy, pleading for Shen Qiuxun to come back to him.

The atmosphere was incredibly strange, like early morning mist condensing under low temperatures. Ice crystals formed on his skin, only to sizzle and evaporate away.

Xu Zhiyuan seemed to be looking at him, yet also not looking. There was a hint of fragility between his brows. His once overwhelmingly arrogant aura seemed like it had been submerged in a deep, cold pool for a millennium, completely devoid of any life or vitality.

After his last mission ended, Shen Qiuxun had cast the man completely out of his mind. He was so heartless that he naturally assumed Xu Zhiyuan was the same—that he’d be upset for a few days at most before forgetting him. He thought that note saying “No one will love you” was just meant to disgust him.

After all, for rich people, love was something that could be bought. Once you had money, who cared about fussy, sentimental love?

Seeing Xu Zhiyuan’s face, he instantly pieced it together: It must have been that time he came for dinner and slipped up somehow. Then Xu Zhiyuan followed the trail, found out about Xian Zeyang’s identity, and used Xian Zeyang to lure him here. As for whether Second Young Master Fang really had been looking for trouble—that was still unclear.

But for whatever reason, the man hadn’t met him directly… Or had he found this place on his own?

Xu Zhiyuan just quietly watched him, motionless, like a statue. He finally remembered.

From that chaotic, clamorous, hellishly maddening and endless abyss, after painfully struggling and sinking, climbing up with great difficulty, he had finally encountered his own secluded lake once more. It was like a tender, lingering embrace of curved glass, like a delicate and gentle haven for his soul.

That day, Xu Zhiyuan had shut himself in the monitoring room for an entire night, watching the surveillance footage frame by frame.

His mind, already growing more deranged day by day as the illness deepened, was like a glass bottle filled with liquid, barely held together by tape. The figure in the surveillance footage finally caused the boiling liquid to explode, shattering the glass bottle into pieces.

He had originally intended to personally pick Shen Qiuxun up from the staircase made of X Crystal, but because his illness flared up, he had to confine himself to this room.

The wire called “Pheromone Disorder” had finally snapped under the ever-increasing pressure. He had collapsed. It was Xiang Yuan who repeatedly mentioned Shen Qiuxun’s name in his ear, hoping to call back his sanity. Fortunately, even just a name proved so effective. But his mental state was still unsuitable for meeting Shen Qiuxun alone.

He would ruin everything.

To reunite with Shen Qiuxun, he had to be restrained, gentle, and magnanimous. It was like trying to forcibly cram a screaming, howling monster into a human shell, pretending to be a normal person.

He found Shen Qiuxun’s residence in the Lower City District and immediately bought that Small Hotel without a moment’s delay. Like a disgusting thief hiding in the dark, he saw the greenery on the balcony: He was living well.

Without him, living even better.

Xu Zhiyuan followed behind him, from the Rental House to the Small Hotel, then got in a car, arriving near the hotel, where he ran into the annoying Ji Buyan.

His fingers clawed into the wall until his hands were bloody. He saw Ji Buyan chatting happily with Xunxun. In the end, all he could do was find someone to lure him away. He didn’t dare do anything else.

He had to be harmless, gentle, sunny…

He could hardly tell anymore if the person before him was a dream or reality. Now, at this moment, Xu Zhiyuan finally found a thread of clarity amidst his chaotic thoughts: Had he really found Xunxun again?

“Xu Zhiyuan?”

He gazed into those calm, cold black pupils. It was like a person whose whole body was on fire, covered in scars, leaping into a lake of cool, refreshing water. The Xunxun in his dreams never had a face… So…

Xu Zhiyuan woke as if from a dream. He lowered his dark green eyes. The skin between his brows twitched unnaturally, like a face frozen for too long was restarting. He swallowed the metallic taste of blood in his throat and forced a gentle smile.

Shen Qiuxun felt that Xu Zhiyuan’s mental state wasn’t quite right. He pressed his hands against the man’s chest, forcing some distance between them.

After all, the moment he saw Xu Zhiyuan, he had even planned out how many incense sticks he’d burn for Xian Zeyang next year. Maybe this guy’s brain had been damaged because of his Pheromone Disorder.

“Xunxun… Xunxun…”

Xu Zhiyuan’s breathing was rapid. He finally pinched his own palm hard to bear it, wanting to force out a gentle smile. But his facial muscles clearly no longer obeyed his command, twisting into just a strange, stiff arc.

He had once shut himself in his room, practicing expressions in front of the mirror again and again. Gentle, gentle, gentle… he just couldn’t learn it.

He simply couldn’t learn it. He had smashed hundreds of mirrors, and what he saw in the end was still that unlikable face belonging to an Alpha!

A face that people loathed.

Xu Zhiyuan closed his eyes, viciously shoving his screaming, howling Mental Power back down. He tugged the corner of his mouth up and said gently, “Long time no see.”

“…” It was even creepier now, okay?!