Chapter Seven: The Mark of the Ram

The rain in London lasted all night, only turning into a lingering haze in the early morning. The dampness permeated every brick and stone of the city, and also filled the vast space of the Xuyue Organization headquarters, which was converted from a warehouse, with an inescapable, dull atmosphere mixed with rust, old goods and rainwater.

Yan Daosi, codenamed "Gongyang," was in his orderly office, facing the first batch of reports delivered that morning.

He wore a crisp white shirt, and his long, silvery-white hair was neatly tied back, revealing a clear and aloof profile.

His movements were precise and efficient; he flipped through documents, made annotations, and issued instructions like a highly sophisticated instrument.

Everything in the office was placed in its most appropriate position, as if any slight disorder would trigger a dangerous switch deep within him.

However, absolute external control is often used to suppress the never-ending internal storms.

When the brief respite arrives, he puts down his pen, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the cool, solid wood tabletop. As his gaze falls upon the blurry street scene shrouded in damp mist outside the window, those fragments of memories he has tried so hard to preserve quietly resurface like ghosts.

The first scene in my memory is always associated with cold and silence. It wasn't the damp chill of London, but a more bone-chilling, more desolate cold, belonging to that vast but deserted family estate on the outskirts of the city.

He was very young then and didn't have a formal name, only a vague title.

The manor was large, with many rooms, but most of them were empty and covered in a thin layer of dust. Only he, a few servants who showed him more reverence than care, and... his mother, Yan Che.

Yan Che, a woman whose very name carries a chill.

Her mixed Chinese and Russian heritage endowed her with stunning beauty—long, jet-black hair, and eyes as deep, cold, and sharp as the purest emeralds on the Siberian tundra, capable of piercing the heart.

But what is most unforgettable about her is not her beauty, but the steely will and deep-seated insecurity forged in the smoke of World War II and the crawling out of piles of corpses.

Her gaze toward the world was always one of scrutiny and vigilance, as if she were always ready to face the next attack.

Yan Che's love for his young son, if it could be called love, was restrained to the point of being cruel.

She didn't offer the gentle words and loving embraces of a typical mother; instead, she employed a "Spartan" style of strict discipline. She firmly believed that in this dog-eat-dog world, "weakness means death."

In my memory, he fell down, scraped his knee, and bled profusely.

He instinctively wanted to cry and seek comfort.

But Yan Che simply stood a few steps away, coldly watching him, his voice devoid of any emotion: "Stand up yourself. Pain is a feeling that only the weak exaggerate."

He learned to write, and if a stroke was even slightly crooked, the entire sheet of paper would be mercilessly torn to shreds and rewritten until it perfectly met her demanding standards. "Details matter, Moss. A wrong stroke on the battlefield can be like a bullet that misses its mark, costing you your life."

She personally taught him the basics of fighting, using ruthless and uncompromising techniques.

When he flinched from exhaustion or fear, she would stare intently at him with her emerald eyes, her voice like an icicle: "Your enemies will not be swayed by your tears. Become stronger, or die."

This education shaped him and left the first mark on the depths of his soul: emotions are a dangerous luxury that must be suppressed; perfection and order are the only guarantee of survival, and any mistake could lead to utter ruin.

He longed for a look of approval from his mother, a gentle touch, but all he ever received were higher demands and colder reprimands.

What puzzled and pained him most was that his mother's gaze was often extremely complicated.

Sometimes, a faint, almost imperceptible tenderness would flash in his eyes, but more often, it was deep worry, or even... a hint of unspeakable disgust? Later he realized that it was because he was looking more and more like the man he should call "father"—the one who gave her this body, but also brought her endless pain and humiliation.

My memories of my father are fragmented and distorted. He was a man who appeared respectable in parliament but was cowardly, selfish, and promiscuous at home.

He was the primary source of his mother's suffering, and also the "original sin" blood curse that Yan Daosi could not escape.

My father rarely came home. Every time he did, it was accompanied by arguments, the sound of things being smashed, and my mother's suppressed, yet even more unsettling, silence.

Occasionally, the father would try to show Yan Daosi a little feigned closeness, but that only made Yan Che react more intensely.

She seems to have transferred some of her hatred for this man to her son, who has a similar face.

Yan Daosi once inadvertently witnessed a fierce conflict.

The father returned drunk, his words filled with insults about the mother's background and past.

Yan Che didn't cry or make a fuss; she just stood there like a cold, avenging goddess, her gaze instilling fear in even her drunken father.

But in the end, it is often Yan Daosi, caught in the middle and powerless to resist, who bears the brunt of the violence and rage. The father vents the frustration he cannot vent with the mother on him with his fists and feet.

At that moment, in the young Yan Daosi's heart, the fear and hatred for his father, intertwined with the twisted love for his mother—a love that yearned for recognition yet was pushed away—created the deepest pain.

He felt like an unwanted, flawed "relic," a living testament to his parents' failed marriage and mutual hatred. His face, so similar to his father's, became his inescapable "original sin."

The turning point came when he was nineteen. His father's violence and infidelity escalated, even threatening his mother Yan Che's personal safety.

Yan Che's body and mind were on the verge of collapse due to prolonged torture. Yan Daosi realized that this cage called "home" had to be broken, otherwise it would be the mother and son who would be destroyed.

Just then, an unexpected ally appeared—Morse's biological mother, Scarlett. Scarlett and Yan Che had a complex and unspoken relationship—perhaps sympathy, alliance, or even deeper emotions; she also harbored deep hatred for the man who had committed the violence.

She found Yan Daosi and provided crucial information—a loophole in one of her father's secret trips and a weakness in parliamentary security.

This was a conspiracy that was so calm it was brutal.

There was no intense emotional outburst, only meticulous risk assessment and action planning.

Yan Daosi used his knowledge of his father's habits and the security system, while Scarlett was responsible for providing support and information from the outside.

The whole process was like a cold surgical operation.

What I remember most clearly is not the bloodshed during the operation, but the deathly silence on the eve of the operation, and the immense, empty sense of relief after the success, along with the even deeper psychological shackles that followed.

He killed not just an abuser, but a part of his own bloodline, the "curse" he tried to break free from but that followed him like a shadow. At that moment, he was both a son avenging his mother and a desperate struggler trying to break the chains of fate.

He felt no pleasure, only a bone-chilling cold and a sense of fatalism that there was "no turning back."

Yan Daosi was suddenly jolted awake from his reverie. A slight stinging sensation came from his fingertips. He had unconsciously used too much force, and his fingernail had scratched a shallow mark on the table.

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down and suppressing the surging dark emotions back into the deepest part of his heart.

He stood up and walked to the huge one-way glass window in the office, overlooking the well-organized operation of the headquarters. Members performed their duties, training, patrolling, processing intelligence… everything ran according to established rules.

This is the "order" he longs for: an environment that is predictable, controllable, without sudden violence, and without distorted emotions.

Xu Yue created this organization, and he, Gong Yang, used every means to maintain its stability and security.

His neurotic concern for the safety of the organization's members, his excessive detail in mission planning, and his zero tolerance for any signs that might disrupt order... all these seemingly paranoid behaviors are deeply rooted in the cold, violent, and uncertain childhood manor.

He built order here not only to atone for his sins, for the blood on his hands, and for the guilt of not being able to make his mother happy, but also to create a safe haven that would never collapse for himself and those he considered "family".

However, he knew better than anyone that beneath this fortress built of steel and rules lay turbulent undercurrents and unhealable cracks.

The shadow of his mother and the mark of patricide haunt him like an eternal leech, reminding him of the fragility of order and the horror of the past.

He turned around, returned to his desk, and picked up the report again about increasing the density of nighttime patrols at headquarters.

His eyes regained their usual calm and focus, as if his momentary lapse had never occurred.

But only he himself knew that beneath that hard shell called "Ram," the helpless child in the cold manor, yearning for a sliver of warmth, had never truly left.

He must become stronger, more cautious, and more ruthless. Only in this way can he protect the hard-won "order" built with blood and will, this illusory and precious phantom called "home".