"What should we do now? Can we just wait?" Ye Shaoheng looked at the little girl who had been split in two.

After making that move, the big guy stopped moving and didn't even pull out his huge cleaver.

At this moment, when Ye Shaoheng turned his gaze to the little girl again, he realized that the once fresh corpse and blood had long since turned into a dried-up corpse, and he could vaguely see a dusty crystal core lying next to her.

Ye Shaoheng had a bad feeling about it.

"Da da da..."

The sound of light footsteps approached from afar; it wasn't the sound of one person, but rather that of a group of people.

Ye Shaoheng heard a sacred song.

It's like a choir singing devoutly to God in a church, but it feels a bit eerie to hear it in this kind of environment.

The group's singing sounded very distant, as if it were coming from outside the building, and you could tell from the sound that there were quite a few of them.

"It moved!" Ye Shaoheng felt his heart skip a beat.

Ye Yuansong followed Ye Shaoheng's gaze and saw that the runes on the bound red horse lit up, and it began to vibrate slowly with the singing, causing the already unbearable iron chains to make a grating "creaking" sound.

As the footsteps grew clearer, Ye Yuansong and Ye Shaoheng looked around and realized that they were completely surrounded.

Each of these people wore a black cloak, their hands exposed, clasped together and hanging down in front of their chests in devout prayer.

They were all wearing white masks, which looked like faces floating in the darkness, sending chills down one's spine.

Suddenly, all the white-masked figures looked up at Ye Yuansong and Ye Shaoheng in the center. Ye Shaoheng immediately felt his scalp tingle and a burst of sensation swept over his entire body.

But instead of doing anything, they started singing along with the sounds coming from outside the building.

"Ye Shaoheng, stop them! Kill them!" Ye Yuansong was the first to react.

Ye Yuansong took out his gun and fired without hesitation. Several white masks shattered, and several people fell into pools of blood.

But this did not affect the speed of these "choirs" singing. They did not even look at their companions, and continued to sing devoutly to the two people or to the huge figure in the center.

The knight on the red horse in the middle finally moved. He twisted his body and pulled stiffly, and the two iron chains broke apart. In that instant, the red horse knight finally met Ye Shaoheng's eyes.

Grandpa, why don't Mom and Dad like me?

What was that sound?

Ye Shaoheng felt a sharp pain in his eyes. He instinctively closed them, and when he opened them again, the enormous creature was gone. The endless darkness and the eerie white mask were nowhere to be seen.

And it was clearly his own home.

Clean, cold, and empty.

Ye Shaoheng saw it; it was himself at age 10.

He had just been taken back to the Ye family by Ye Yuansong. Before that, he had been with his father and had just had a rib broken that day.

A broken rib is theoretically considered a minor injury, since being knocked unconscious is a common occurrence. Ye Shaoheng spends every day calculating when he will die.

besides……

If I die, will my father weep and regret it?

After all, I am, in a way, my father's child.

Every time his father finished drinking, Ye Shaoheng would consciously curl up on the ground, ready to be beaten. He never expected that the ugly duckling in the fairy tale would turn into a swan, and that he would have a similar story.

That day, Ye Yuansong personally came to this remote corner, took him to the hospital, and brought Ye Shaoheng back to the Ye family.

During this time, his father tried to resist and take Ye Shaoheng away, but Ye Yunsong, a tough soldier, had everything arranged perfectly, and he and his father had no way to escape.

In the end, after his father produced the agreement severing ties, he left alone, and Ye Shaoheng never saw him again.

You're just a useless piece of trash who only holds us back.

These were the last words her father said to her before they parted.

Ye Shaoheng was actually familiar with this phrase; he had been remembering things since he was very young, and he remembered that he used to live with his mother.

However, Ye Shaoheng often didn't see his mother. When his mother didn't come home all night, he could only rummage through the refrigerator, beg from the neighbors, or look for food on the street. It was a miracle that he wasn't abducted. Being beaten and scolded was commonplace.

But Mom is a woman after all, so she didn't hit that hard; she wasn't beaten to the point of fracturing bones every few days.

Ye Shaoheng only remembered that one day, his mother brought him to his father. The two had a fierce argument and neither wanted him. In the end, his mother won and left with her head held high like a victorious rooster, without even giving him a second glance.

Ye Shaoheng was the consequence of their impulsiveness, just like in some melodramatic novels, where a privileged young man falls in love with a free-spirited school beauty, one who has never experienced the hardships of life, and the other who wants to climb the social ladder.

The two people certainly loved each other, but if the difficulties were a byproduct of love at the beginning, then over time, love becomes a byproduct of the difficulties.

Moreover, this is reality. Ye Yuansong was not a foolish parent. He simply had another child and started practicing with a new one. Sure enough, he kicked his eldest son out of the house and didn't leave him a single penny.

After I followed my father, although I was always beaten, at least I wouldn't starve to death. And my father was at home most of the time, and after getting drunk, he would lie in bed and sleep, so I was only beaten once every two or three days.

At least there are people at home.

For a child, this is enough to give them a sense of security.

Finally, one day, he was picked up by his grandfather.

Grandpa treated him very well; he wouldn't hit him, he made sure he was fed, and he even taught him a lot.

"Grandpa, why don't Mom and Dad like me?" On the third day after returning to the Ye family, Ye Shaoheng dared not touch anything in the house, and only dared to carefully tug at Ye Yuansong's clothes.

That day, Ye Yuansong remained silent for a long time, looked at Ye Shaoheng and sighed deeply, then rubbed Ye Shaoheng's head with his large hand.

"Maybe it's because you don't smile much," Ye Yuansong said.

"Don't you like to smile? If I smile, will Mom and Dad come back?" Little Ye Shaoheng asked innocently.

“No, only when you learn to laugh, ignore all sadness, and become strong will nothing be able to hurt you,” Ye Yuansong said solemnly. But then he thought that saying this to such a young child might be a bit too profound, so he added another sentence.

"Besides, a smiling child is always lucky. Maybe you'll be lucky in the future."

Is that so? Ye Shaoheng believed it to be true; a child only needs a flimsy excuse.

"Now that you've come to my Ye family, you can't bring shame to the Ye family. A family is an eternal curse that is carried on a person's shoulders." Ye Yuansong continued, "If you want to leave now, I can give you some money and assign you a guardian so that you can live to adulthood safely."

"Don't leave my grandpa! I, I will definitely be a good boy from now on, I will be very good and work very hard." Ye Shaoheng immediately grabbed Ye Yuansong's clothes, seemed to remember something, hesitated for a moment, and then raised a smile.

I promise I'll smile more from now on, please don't leave me, okay?