Chapter 5 Guess what I've been through these past three years...

Even though five years have passed, Jiang Shiyuan still vividly remembers that ambiguous spring day.

He pressed closer and closer, leaving her with nowhere to retreat.

Even as he was kissed until his mind went blank and his eyes welled up with tears, he still wouldn't let her go.

Just when she thought he would take her in the car, Huo Lan stopped and began to seriously examine her appearance.

As if examining a hard-won piece of porcelain, his gaze blatantly revealed the superiority of the master, and his undisguised possessiveness burned within Jiang Shiyuan's heart.

In that instant, two words flashed through her mind—"plaything".

As the downpour gradually subsided, the distance between the two in the gloomy apartment had become extremely dangerous and intimate.

"So, I'm just your plaything, aren't I?"

Jiang Shiyuan looked up at Huo Lan with a stubborn expression, trying to regain her last shred of dignity even in this unbearable position.

Huo Lan's eyes darkened, but he said nothing, only letting out a muffled groan of anger turned into mockery.

After a long pause, he finally said, "So, am I your master? And if your master wants his plaything to be more obedient, can you agree?"

Huo Lan lowered his eyes and saw that the ink on the flower and bird painting under Jiang Shiyuan was still wet, and the ink smudged on the hem of her nightgown. He frowned.

He has a slight obsession with cleanliness and doesn't like his things getting dirty.

"Take it off."

As soon as he finished speaking, one hand reached down, about to lift the hem of her skirt, but she held it down firmly.

"Huo Lan, we've been separated for three years. It's time to end this. I haven't taken a single penny of the money you sent me."

Huo Lan suddenly released his grip on her, placed his hands on the desks on either side of her, and looked at her with a smile, "Whether you take it or not, your account will receive three million every month without fail, not once."

Jiang Shiyuan was infuriated by Huo Lan's shamelessness. "What, are you going to force me to give it to you even though I don't want it?"

Huo Lan said, "I just want you to understand that our agreement has never ended."

Jiang Shiyuan was speechless, and the air in the room seemed to freeze.

Huo Lan continued, "But what I don't understand is why you left me?"

Huo Lan, his eyes filled with confusion and doubt, questioned her: "Every month, the latest seasonal products from top luxury brands are delivered to your Bell Pavilion for you to choose from, whether it's jewelry or dresses. I've hired the most professional team to take care of your skin, your nails, and every single strand of your hair. You also have top nutritionists and body shapers serving you in terms of your diet and body management. This is what so many people dream of. Why would you give it up?"

He tilted his head slightly, his gaze searching her face for something, as if trying to find the answer in her expression, but in the end, he only swallowed hard, his voice low and hoarse: "Why?"

Jiang Shiyuan saw the tears welling up in his eyes and realized that he was truly heartbroken.

She didn't have many opportunities to hurt him. From the moment she arrived at Huo Garden, she was always trying to please him. Even during the days when she was planning to escape, she was still coaxing him.

As for why one should give up this so-called comfortable life, it's probably because this kind of life is fundamentally unhealthy.

She was not used to being so refined that every inch of her body had to be scrutinized and examined, which only made her feel more acutely her status as a "plaything".

Because every beautiful part of her body was carefully nurtured by him for his pleasure and happiness.

Perhaps at the beginning, she felt that she must have been incredibly lucky to be able to associate with such a powerful and wealthy person and enjoy a luxurious life that others could only dream of.

But later she learned and realized that this Huo Garden, under the guise of pampering, imprisoned too many people's lives, as if anyone who resisted even slightly would be defined as insatiable.

She initially thought she was a canary kept in a secluded mansion, but later discovered she was a parasitic vine that could only survive by clinging to others—a change that was undoubtedly fatal.

Of course, there is another very important point.

Huo Lan is incapable of love.

In his mind, loving someone means keeping her by his side at all times, making her his possession, violently and suffocatingly invading her, leaving her no time to breathe.

The rain outside the window had stopped, the moonlight was filling the air, and the streetlights were turning on one by one, but the line of cars and bodyguards parked downstairs at the apartment building had not yet left.

Residents came downstairs in twos and threes, and the elderly and children made a lively scene.

Although Jiang Shiyuan couldn't hear what they were talking about, she could guess a bit from the children's laughter and the adults' tones.

Such a grand display would naturally lead to much speculation, and even if she didn't go with him, rumors about her would still spread like wildfire.

Just then, Huo Lan suddenly spoke up: "Isn't it troublesome to live in a place like this?"

Jiang Shiyuan pursed her lips and remained silent. She knew that if she said one sentence, the other party would have three sentences waiting for her.

Huo Lan stopped seeking answers, his gaze fixed intently on the ink stain on her skirt. He then looked up at her and said, "I'm not leaving tonight. You know what to do, right?"

Jiang Shiyuan's heart, which had just been at ease, suddenly jumped again. "Didn't you complain that you were annoyed and couldn't sleep well?"

Huo Lan tilted his head slightly, his Adam's apple bobbing, his hot breath brushing against her ear, his voice tender and deep: "Who said I was going to sleep tonight?"

After saying that, he pulled out a wet tissue from the side, wiped his hands clean, and ignoring how unsightly the ink stain was, he picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom.

"Didn't you say you were a plaything? Then you'd better behave."

From the moment she entered the apartment, Jiang Shiyuan knew she couldn't escape, so she simply stopped resisting.

If things really get really bad, just cry and beg for mercy.

The bedroom door opened, and Huo Lan pressed her onto the bed, then began to unbutton his shirt with one hand.

He had been waiting for this day for what seemed like three years, or to be precise, 1125 days.

He counted down the days, each one feeling like an eternity.

The person he longed for was right beneath him; he wished he could devour her whole, and bind her to his very bones.

The ink-stained nightgown had long since disappeared, and Jiang Shiyuan's neck and lower body were covered with ambiguous marks.

Her eyes gradually misted over, her pupils almost dilating.

Because she had been celibate for so long, just the touch of her fingers was enough to overwhelm her completely, causing her to become completely overwhelmed.

But it stopped at the last step.

Huo Lan was panting heavily, his eyes were bloodshot from extreme restraint, but he still managed to pull over a floral quilt and wrap it around her.

It was late spring, the days were warm and the nights were cool, and she was already sweating lightly. If she stopped now, she might catch a cold.

Huo Lan gently kissed the tip of her nose, his voice hoarse, "I'll have someone downstairs bring me a box up."

He rolled out of bed, and when he reached for his phone to send a message, he fell silent and sighed softly.

She then sat down at the foot of the bed, untied the small sandalwood prayer beads wrapped around her wrist, closed her eyes, and began to twirl them.

Jiang Shiyuan crawled over, wrapped herself in the blanket, and quietly looked at him from beside him.

"Aren't you going to continue?"

"Didn't you say you didn't want to?"

These words left her speechless; she had indeed said those words before.

Who said we should stop at this critical juncture?

Huo Lan began to recite Buddhist scriptures again, but he still smelled the faint fragrance emanating from Jiang Shiyuan's body when she approached. It was the ebony sandalwood fragrance that he had specially made for her, which was most likely to make him lose his mind.

Huo Lan was so bewitched by the fragrance that he opened his eyes but dared not look at her, the redness at the corners of his eyes not fading at all.

Jiang Shiyuan watched him fiddling with his prayer beads and felt puzzled, as he had never had this hobby before.

"How did you start to like this?"

No wonder he was able to stop at the crucial moment; he had truly renounced worldly life and become a monk.

Jiang Shiyuan thought to himself, "I'm cursing."

"After you left three years ago, so many things happened that I was too restless, so I started to worship Buddha."

His fingertips, which were twirling the prayer beads, turned white. Even the Buddhist scriptures, meant for calming the mind, could not restrain him in the slightest. So he stopped chanting and instead held her tightly in his arms, wrapped in a thin blanket.

"Buddha said that there are eight sufferings in life: birth, old age, sickness, death, separation from loved ones, not getting what you want, being with those you hate, and the five aggregates burning intensely. Can you guess which kind of suffering I have been enduring for the past three years?"

Jiang Shiyuan remained silent. After she fled abroad, she never received any further information about the Huo family.

It wasn't until she returned to China a year ago that she learned from some media reports and other sources that many major events had occurred in the Huo family over the past three years.

Huo Lan's father hanged himself, his grandfather died of grief, the family business continued to decline, and his uncles and other relatives were eager to seize the Huo family estate.

The headlines coined by the media at the time were also shocking: A Prestigious Family Undergoes a Tremendous Change; The Thousand-Year-Old Huo Family Is About to Collapse...

But she couldn't have predicted that these successive events would happen after she left.

Jiang Shiyuan sometimes wondered if she would have left in such a hurry if she had known what would happen next. But she couldn't come up with an answer no matter how many times she thought about it.

"It's not about being separated from loved ones or being with those you hate, but about not being able to get what you want."

Huo Lan lifted Jiang Shiyuan's chin, gently pressing her lips with the pad of his thumb, his eyes full of pity: "I knew you had returned a year ago, but the troubles around me have not been cleared away yet, so I cannot bring you back to Huo Garden."

"I've endured it for a year, and all I can do is watch you on the security camera and think about you."

Jiang Shiyuan was initially heartbroken by Huo Lan's description of the pain of unrequited love, but after hearing his subsequent mention of "surveillance," she was terrified and her scalp tingled.

The current Huo Lan is no different from the Huo Lan of three years ago in essence; he still has an obsessive and perverse desire for control.

Jiang Shiyuan trembled uncontrollably, and asked with extreme fear, "Where did you set up the surveillance cameras?"

Huo Lan chuckled and pulled her closer. "Your bedroom, bathroom, living room, apartment entrance, every intersection you've walked through, every room in Mengkong Studio—all of these are under my watchful eye. The owner of the steamed bun shop downstairs, the clerk at the convenience store you frequent, even your colleague Li Fengmian, and all sorts of people you encounter—they are all under my watchful eye as well."

"Don't tremble, Shi Yuan. You know I hate seeing you afraid of me."

Huo Lan nuzzled her cheek and began to kiss her lightly again, his hand reaching for that spot once more.

"How about we skip protection tonight and you have my baby?"

Jiang Shiyuan's face turned red with anger, and she wished she could slap him.

"So unwilling? Don't worry, it's not the right time yet, and I can still hold back. But if you don't behave, I can't guarantee what will happen."

He left a final kiss on her lips.

"After all, I haven't touched a woman for three years since you left."

Upon hearing this, Jiang Shiyuan tensed up and dared not move, silently letting him hold her like an obedient doll.

Huo Lan was very satisfied and pinched her cheek. "Shouldn't you reward me for remaining chaste for you?"

Seeing that Jiang Shiyuan was still stubbornly ignoring him, he just chuckled and gently bit her neck as a small punishment.

"Be a good girl and come back to Huo Garden with me. Don't even think about running away again, okay?"

A note from the author:

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