Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Caught in Tao Anqing’s malicious gaze, Sui Chunsheng realized something was wrong and prepared to retreat, but a sudden, sharp pain exploded at the back of his head.

Then, he lost consciousness.

…

Sui Chunsheng woke up from the pain, only to pass out from it again.

After that, his hands and feet were crippled, and even his tongue was severed.

According to Tao Anqing, an extremist fan of Sui Chunsheng had discovered their relationship and intended to harm her, but ended up injuring Sui Chunsheng by mistake.

Listen to that-how ridiculous.

Sui Chunsheng was consumed by rage and despair because he could no longer write or speak.

The most devastating part was that, as a dancer, he could never dance again.

Later, Tao Anqing’s “mental illness” was cured. She started livestreaming, taking care of Sui Chunsheng in front of the camera. To the audience, he was a man with crippled legs who couldn’t speak or write, and who had even “developed a mental illness, becoming irritable and aggressive due to his disability.”

Chuntian was supposed to be elegant and charming on stage.

Whenever Sui Chunsheng’s friends came to visit, Tao Anqing would forcibly dose him with sedatives to ensure they never saw him while he was lucid.

The dancer Sui Chunsheng, who used to talk and laugh with so many people, had been reduced to a shadow of a human being.

As for that “extremist fan” who was taken away by the police-the one who supposedly fell from a building with Sui Chunsheng and died-Sui Chunsheng had seen him.

It was a man.

Coincidentally, the person Sui Chunsheng saw when he opened the door now was that very same man.

All the threads connected, piecing together the truth-

Tao Anqing and this man had conspired together. Originally, they planned to squeeze a fortune out of Sui Chunsheng, or at the very least, blackmail him for a sum before leaving.

Then, Tao Anqing suddenly thought it would be better to simply cling to Sui Chunsheng for life.

After all, that playboy probably had nothing left to hold him down except for a lingering sense of responsibility.

She hadn’t intended to be disfigured; she only wanted to use her old tricks. But the man had said that wouldn’t work-Sui Chunsheng would definitely know she was acting, and if she wasn’t injured, how could she make him feel guilty?

And so, before Tao Anqing could even react, the man grabbed a bottle of sulfuric acid sitting nearby and splashed it directly onto her.

This was also why Tao Anqing had pinned the crime of harming Sui Chunsheng on the man.

Having Sui Chunsheng crippled and the man who disfigured her dead was something she had calculated from the start.

…

Tao Anqing looked at Sui Chunsheng in terror. “You… how did you actually get here?!”

She clutched the bedsheet and pointed at the man. “It’s him… he’s the one who kidnapped me! I was forced!”

Sui Chunsheng frowned. “Why would you kidnap a girl?”

The man looked at Tao Anqing in disbelief. Thinking of the plot they had just finished hatching, he gritted his teeth and searched around. Just as he was about to grab the sulfuric acid nearby-

A slender, beautiful hand picked up the bottle first.

Sui Chunsheng swirled the bottle curiously and asked with a smile, “What is this?”

The man gave a forced laugh. “It’s just a bottle of water…”

“Since it’s just a bottle of water,” Sui Chunsheng slowly unscrewed the cap and splashed it over him under the man’s horrified gaze, “then it should be able to wash your filthy soul clean.”

The man wailed in agony, clutching his face. Tao Anqing swallowed hard and slowly crept toward Sui Chunsheng.

“Do you know?” Sui Chunsheng looked at Tao Anqing with a smile, his eyes cold. “Falling from a building, having your tongue and hands broken, being imprisoned… it’s all quite painful.”

“But your greatest sin was making it so I could never dance again.”

“Being associated with someone like you is truly the shame of my life.”

Although Tao Anqing didn’t understand what he meant, this was the first time she had seen Sui Chunsheng like this.

The calm before the storm… it was terrifying.

She screamed in fear, but this place was a spot she and the man had chosen themselves. How could anyone find them so easily?

“Even though all of this is fake, there has never been a moment that felt more real to me than right now.”

*Bang-*
The sound of a body hitting the ground.

Following that noise, the entire building dissolved into fragments and scattered with the wind. Sui Chunsheng stood on the ground, subconsciously taking a few steps forward.

As Ning Shuo prepared to deal with the next problem, he heard a voice full of laughter: “Thanks.”

…

Ning Shuo opened his eyes to find himself in an incredibly dim room.

Looking around through the man’s eyes, Ning Shuo saw a woman.

Strangely, he couldn’t see the woman’s face.

Even stranger was his realization that while this target’s memories were a bit muddled, he didn’t seem to have amnesia.

Usually, others would remember a past event-one filled with pain or regret-after only a short while, and then they would strive to change that experience.

But this person had nothing.

Eating, working in the study, attending meetings… there wasn’t a single negative emotion that might trigger a change in this dream.

Using the camera during a meeting, Ning Shuo saw the man’s face.

It was the CEO, An Sheng.

An Sheng simply handled one official matter after another with a serious expression, occasionally going to check on the woman locked in the room.

From what Ning Shuo could gather, the relationship between this woman and An Sheng seemed unusual. It had the faint scent of a ‘confinement’ trope, yet it also felt like something else entirely.

Just as Ning Shuo was beginning to think that the source of An Sheng’s distress was merely a mountain of paperwork, a car carried An Sheng to a psychiatric hospital.

Another mental hospital?

Ning Shuo frowned, feeling that this element was appearing with far too much frequency.

An Sheng walked through the dark, enclosed corridors until he reached the very last room.

Inside this ward, a man with a visibly hunched, aged back crouched in the corner, scratching at something unknown.

An Sheng asked, “How is he?”

The doctor replied, “His condition is worsening.”

An Sheng gave a curt nod. “Increase the dosage.”

The doctor hesitated. “To… put him out of his misery?”

An Sheng shot him a look, and the doctor immediately shut his mouth. “Understood.”

An Sheng had a dream during a short nap.

This was perhaps the lucky part of Ning Shuo inhabiting someone else’s body; at least when the other person slept, he could choose to stay awake.

Furthermore, he could see the host’s dreams, though still from the host’s perspective.

In this dream within a dream, An Sheng’s body became very small.

He was surrounded by vast patches of blackness. In front of him, there was only a table, a woman, and a man holding a belt.

Sitting on the floor, he watched the woman hold him tightly. The belt fell on her back again and again, and the mole on her shoulder was as red as blood.

This single image persisted for a long time. Then, the scene receded like a tide, and An Sheng woke up with a start.

Ning Shuo frowned.

Although he couldn’t see the face of the woman An Sheng had locked up, still…

Why did her silhouette look so much like the person in the dream who seemed to be An Sheng’s mother?

…

An Sheng returned to his house. As he passed the room where the woman was kept, he paused. “How is she today?”

The servant said, “Sir, it’s the same as usual.”

An Sheng gave an acknowledging sound and walked inside. “If you don’t eat, you’re only hurting yourself,” he said.

The woman asked, “…Why?”

An Sheng knew she was asking why he had locked her up.

An Sheng frowned, feeling his jumbled memories tangle into a knot, leaving him unable to distinguish or straighten them out.

He asked involuntarily, “Tell me where my mother is, and I will naturally let you go.”

While imprisoning someone wasn’t in his character, he could be unscrupulous when it came to achieving certain goals.

An Sheng was about to leave when he found that his limbs would not obey him.

Ning Shuo was doing everything in his power to control An Sheng and pull back the covers. At the same time, he endured the agony of his soul being forcibly stripped and expelled by the master of the dream.

The moment the covers were pulled back, the pain of the soul-stripping stopped.