Chapter Forty-Seven
"Song Guansui, have you gone mad!"
Jiang Manyan could no longer control herself and screamed out.
"Yes! I'm insane!"
Song Guansui growled, forcefully grabbing his chin and forcing him to look directly into the raging fire in his eyes.
"I went crazy the moment you started having feelings for someone else!"
Faced with this destructive madness, Jiang Manyan, amidst extreme pain and fear, instead unleashed a cold sharpness.
He was breathing heavily, blood still seeping from the wound on his neck, staining his plain collar red, but he suddenly laughed softly, a laugh filled with sorrow and mockery.
"Your people?"
He repeated, his honey-brown eyes sparkling as if washed by water, so clear they were almost blinding.
"Brother, you keep saying I'm yours..."
His voice was soft, yet it was like a sharp dagger.
"But besides imprisoning me with the surname 'Song,' pressuring me with the identity of 'brother,' and threatening to destroy everything I care about... what else have you given me?"
"Did they give me a legitimate identity to live in the sunlight, or did they ever give me even the slightest bit of... genuine respect and understanding?"
He looked directly into Song Guansui's suddenly constricted pupils and said, word by word.
"All you gave me was a magnificent yet cold cage and an endless desire for control. And Qin Lingfeng..."
When this name was mentioned, a complex and indescribable light flashed in his eyes, like pain, yet also like warmth.
"What he gave me was the trust of standing shoulder to shoulder, the sky that let me fly freely, and the sincerity that was willing to protect my ideals in his own way, even if our beliefs differed."
“You can destroy Jincheng, kill everyone, but that won’t change the fact that it’s here,”
He raised his hand, his fingertips gently touching his heart, his gaze both sorrowful and resolute.
"You've already lost everything."
Jiang Manyan's words precisely pierced Song Guansui's most obsessive and untouchable territory.
Sure enough, the madness that had been surging in Song Guansui's eyes instantly solidified into a killing intent that seemed to have a tangible form!
His aura became violent and terrifying. With a sudden flick of his sleeve, the tea set, documents, and even the silver bell on the table were all swept to the ground, making a piercing cracking sound!
"you--!"
His hand, gripping Jiang Manyan's neck, bulged with veins from extreme anger, yet it strangely paused just before he could exert any force. His scarlet eyes were fixed on her equally agitated face, her eyes red-rimmed but filled with unyielding spirit.
The urge to destroy and the reluctance to let go almost tore him apart.
At this critical moment, Fusang, which had been standing silently in the shadows, made its move.
He moved like a ghost, silently appearing behind Jiang Manyan, and with his fingers flying like the wind, struck her precisely on the back of the neck.
Jiang Manyan's body went limp, and before the intense emotions in her eyes had faded, she lost consciousness and fell backward.
Fusang gently pushed the limp Jiang Manyan into Song Guansui's arms, which were stiff with rage. Her voice remained steady, but carried a hint of barely perceptible admonition.
“Master, you know perfectly well that Young Master Yan is all bark and no bite. He doesn’t care about himself, but he values the lives of those ants more than anything else. Why do you have to use what he cares about to hurt him, making yourself angry for no reason and hurting the young master as well?”
His words were like a bucket of cold water, extinguishing the flames of anger in Song Guansui's heart.
These words not only pointed out the crux of the matter but also carried a hint of protecting the two masters.
Fusang did not wait for Song Guansui's reply—he knew that any words would be superfluous at this moment.
He bowed deeply and then quietly left the tent, leaving behind the mess and the unconscious, warm, soft body in his arms for Song Guansui, who was still panting and had a complex and unreadable expression in his eyes.
A deathly silence fell inside the tent.
The warmth of the person in his arms and the faint, bleeding teeth marks on her neck served as reminders of Song Guansui's loss of control.
He looked down at Jiang Manyan's furrowed brows and wet eyelashes, even in her unconscious state. His overwhelming anger seemed to be blocked by something, unable to be vented, and finally turned into a suppressed, almost painful gasp.
He tightened his arms, holding the person tightly in his embrace, as if he wanted to completely crush this unruly body and embed it into his own bones and blood, never to be separated again.
He won the city and forced him to submit, but it seems... he can never win his willing love.
This realization, more so than any defeat on the battlefield, gave him a profound sense of defeat.
Jiang Manyan, who was forcibly dragged into darkness, did not find a moment of peace.
The extreme emotional turmoil and the excruciating pain at the back of his neck became the perfect breeding ground for nightmares. His consciousness sank into a blood-soaked abyss.
He saw Jincheng.
It is no longer the vibrant scene of cooking smoke rising from chimneys that I remember.
A thick column of black smoke, carrying sparks, shot into the sky, staining half the horizon red.
The familiar bluestone streets, which he had helped pave himself, were soaked in a viscous, dark red liquid, and with each step he seemed to hear the bubbling of blood.
Cries and maniacal laughter intertwined to create a concerto of hell.
He saw Mr. Feng, with his white hair, being lifted up by a spear, his emaciated body thrown onto the ruins, his eyes, which always held a wise smile, staring blankly at the sky.
He saw the girl from the tofu shop in the west of the city, who always gave him hot bean cakes, lying on the street corner with her clothes torn, her eyes vacant, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, and was eventually dragged into deeper darkness by a grinning soldier.
He saw Lin Xiu, the sixth son, covered in arrows, like an unyielding hedgehog, his right hand gripping a chipped knife tightly, standing in front of the Jiang residence's gate, letting out a final, beast-like roar before being hacked down by the hail of blades...
Children ran and cried among the ruins, searching for their missing parents, only to be trampled mercilessly by iron hooves or pinned to the ground by spears thrown at them, their little hands and feet still twitching helplessly.
What terrified him even more was that at the end of the dream, he saw Brother Zhong chained up and forced to kneel on the ruins.
Song Guansui stood beside him, elegantly wiping his fingertips, and then, with his own hands, slowly and deliberately, plunged a long sword into Qin Lingfeng's chest...
"No--!!!"
Jiang Manyan was jolted awake from her nightmare, sitting bolt upright with her heart pounding wildly, as if it were about to explode.
He was drenched in cold sweat, his thin shirt clinging coldly to his skin.
He gasped for breath, his pupils dilated with extreme fear. The hellish scene from his dream—the plight of the people, the moment Qin Lingfeng was stabbed—was like a red-hot branding iron, deeply etched into his mind.
He subconsciously raised his hand to touch his neck, where the wound inflicted by Song Guansui was still throbbing.
The pain of reality and the horror of the dream overlapped instantly.
This is not a dream, this is a warning.
This is a bloody future that could be realized at any moment under Song Guansui's madness.
A chilling coldness shot up from his tailbone, instantly freezing his limbs and bones.
The sharpness and indomitable spirit that he had maintained when confronting Song Guansui collapsed in the face of the absolute power difference and this premonition of destruction.
He hugged his violently trembling knees, burying his face in them, but could not dispel the blood-red color that filled his vision.
He knew that Song Guansui was not joking.
And he seemed to have lost the ability to protect anything he wanted to protect.
This realization made him feel even more desperate than death itself.
A tall and silent figure approached the bed quietly, like a cheetah blending into the shadows.
Jiang Manyan raised her head, and through her teary eyes, she recognized the person as Fu Cong—the leader of the secret guards who was almost inseparable from Song Guansui and had a very low profile.
"Young Master Yan."
Fu Cong's voice was soft, with a hoarse quality from years of silence, yet it was exceptionally clear in the quiet tent.
Jiang Manyan did not respond, but looked at him with her eyes brimming with undried tears and lingering fear.
Fu Cong continued in a low voice, his tone calm yet carrying an undeniable truth.
"Everyone says that the eldest son of the Song family is the most unpredictable and ruthless."
"But you know, if you are willing to lower your head a little and show weakness for a moment, the master will do whatever you want."
These words did not comfort Jiang Manyan; instead, they felt like an accusation, causing his already tense brows, already taut from the nightmare, to furrow even more, as he subconsciously resisted the logic that blamed his "lack of weakness."
Seeing this, Fu Cong silently moved closer and squatted down by the bed, softening his usual coldness.
His lips were slightly parted, as if he were having an internal struggle and was somewhat hesitant.
But in the end, seeing the undried tear stains and deep pain on Jiang Manyan's pale face, he made up his mind.
"The Tobacco Master"
He lowered his voice even further, as if afraid of disturbing something.
"Haven't you always wanted to know the real story behind... that riot at the mine?"
These words struck Jiang Manyan like a bolt of lightning!
He turned his head sharply, his honey-brown pupils contracting suddenly as he stared intently at Fu Cong.
He had deployed his elite forces to investigate the incident that had caused Song Guansui's increasingly volatile temperament, and all the information they received was that the riot had been bloodily suppressed, and none of the participants had survived. The truth had long been buried.
"Back then, even if half the money in the account was gone, with the master's methods, he could have quickly stabilized the situation and suppressed it with thunderous force..."
Fu Cong slowly began to narrate.
Hearing this, Jiang Manyan was not surprised, as it was in line with Song Guansui's consistent iron-fisted approach.
However, Fu Cong's next words plunged him into an icy abyss.
"But... before that, you 'shed your skin like a cicada,' and my master ordered me to take some men with me to search for you everywhere."
Fu Cong's voice carried a hint of barely perceptible pain.
"Those thugs somehow got wind of it and found a young man who looked seven or eight parts like you. They tortured him until he was barely recognizable as a human, then pushed him to the front lines, claiming that he was you... They used this to blackmail our master, making him hesitant to act and forcing him to surrender..."
Fu Cong's voice visibly choked at this point. He took a deep breath before continuing with an almost cruel calm.
"Later... our master was imprisoned deep in a dark, sunless mine, where he suffered inhuman torture and abuse for over half a month. When we finally found him..."
Fu Cong didn't continue, but the unfinished words left a more chilling imaginative space than any concrete description.
That more than half a month of darkness was enough to destroy and distort anyone's mind.
He raised his eyes and looked earnestly at Jiang Manyan, whose body was stiff and whose face was as pale as snow, his voice filled with humble pleading.
"Master Yan, please...please stop arguing with the master. Can't you two just be at peace?"
The tent fell into a deathly silence, with only Jiang Manyan's increasingly rapid breathing, as if she were being choked by an invisible hand.
The truth that Fu Cong brought was like a poisoned dagger, piercing precisely into the depths of his soul, bringing a subversive shock and... an overwhelming sense of guilt.
The tent was warm from the charcoal fire, and a faint scent of blood and medicine lingered in the air.
Jiang Manyan, wrapped in a thick fur blanket, leaned against the soft cushions, her gaze fixed on the flickering flames, but her eyes were different from yesterday.
Fu Cong's words were like the last straw, crushing all his thoughts of resistance, but also bringing a strange, desperate calm.
At nineteen, he glimpsed the darkest rules of this world, burdened with heavy guilt towards his brother, and faced the livelihoods of the entire city's residents.
After endless worry about the safety of Jiang Zhong, Qin Lingfeng, and others, he finally realized that he had nowhere else to go.
...
Since there is no way out, then become that way yourself.
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