WCHM Chapter 36

Lu Chi countered, “What do you want to hear?”

 

The sun was almost fully set by now. Floodlights lit the beach as bright as daytime, making everything sharply visible. The earlier scorching atmosphere had been blown thin by the sea breeze, cooling somewhat.

 

Under the lamps, Liang Jiashu’s dark pupils appeared pitch black, his expression unreadable.

 

“What I want to hear, will you say it no matter what?”

 

Lu Chi let out a soft laugh. His hands were still tied behind him, yet he showed not a trace of panic. Meeting Liang Jiashu’s gaze from above, his lowered lashes felt almost condescending.

 

Casually, he asked, “For example?”

 

Liang Jiashu stared at him for several seconds, then suddenly reached out and, without the slightest warning, grabbed one end of the black lace and knotted it tight, yanking on it hard.

 

The slightly coarse lace edge whipped sharply across that… strip of sensitive muscle.

 

Tightening in an instant.

 

Caught off guard, Lu Chi let out a low hum. The corners of his eyes flushed with a sickly, feverish red, as if touched by fire. Cloth felt very different from a hand, and it was his first time experiencing it. At once, his scalp tingled.

 

…It hurt, but it was also pleasurable.

 

Liang Jiashu stared at the water-sheen clinging to Lu Chi’s lashes, waiting until the tip of his tongue retreated from the corner of his lips, before finally rasping out, “For example, why did you suddenly change your temperament two months ago?”

 

Two months ago… exactly when Lu Chi had crossed into his world.

 

So Liang Jiashu had sensed something was off from the very beginning.

 

Lu Chi tilted his head back for a moment, caught his breath, and laughed hoarsely. “Officer Liang, you sure you want to interrogate me at a time like this?” With that, his gaze drifted downward, looking at Liang Jiashu’s rather exaggerated reaction. The other man’s expression, however, remained unreadable. He even pulled again, voice low and rough.

 

“Answer me, Lu Chi.”

 

“Why did someone who never stepped foot in a casino lose one million at the Lin family casino, then end up with four million in illegal loan debt?”

 

“Why is it that after four years at A University’s School of Art, no one remembers what you looked like? Why are there zero posts about you on the forum? Even Lin Rong says she has no impression of you.”

 

“And why…”

 

“Why is it that in every group photo of the orphanage in your files, ever since its founding, you never appear in a single one?”

 

With each question, the black lace tightened further.

 

By the last one, Liang Jiashu was nearly face-to-face with him, nose brushing nose. The silk was pulled to its limit, taut enough to almost snap under pressure.

 

Yet still, he did not loosen it.

 

Lu Chi knelt on the wooden board, hands tied behind him, breath unsteady and laughing outright. His pale chest rose and fell; from his Adam’s apple to his jawline, every line stood out sharp and beautiful.

 

Breathlessly, he said, “Liang Jiashu, didn’t I already tell you?”

 

In his mind, the system had been forcibly kicked offline due to the explicit scene, utterly unaware of its host’s continued boldness and shamelessness. And so, Liang Jiashu heard Lu Chi’s unsteady breathing as he drawled lazily: “Because I’m the righteous and dazzling savior. I stayed here to stop you from destroying the world.”

 

“……”

 

Liang Jiashu was silent for two seconds. Then he pressed his lips to Lu Chi’s, breathing lightly against them.

 

“Lu Chi… do you really think I don’t dare do anything to you?”

 

Lu Chi narrowed his eyes, licking the corner of Liang Jiashu’s mouth as he softly replied: “Yes, Liang Jiashu.”

 

“To me, you’re just a dog.”

 

“I tell you to kneel, and you do it.”

 

Under the lights, the man’s legs were spread, his arms tied behind him. His messy, sweat-dampened bangs clung to his forehead, and the black silk against his cold-white skin made him look both indecent and disheveled.

 

And yet, his expression remained lofty and superior, his gaze like a whip lashing across the man in front of him.

 

Liang Jiashu’s throat bobbed. Next, he heard Lu Chi say, unhurried: “You’ve been investigating me nonstop, haven’t you?”

 

“But since you found nothing, all you can do is ask me, isn’t that right?”

 

From the very first time they met, the Gong No.1 had begun digging into Lu Chi. Even after they got together, Liang Jiashu’s surface apologies meant nothing. In truth, he had never stopped. He indulged in Lu Chi’s body, yet simultaneously kept trying to peel apart every layer of his identity, so after knowing all the experiences of “Lu Chi,” how could he miss the inconsistencies in Lu Chi’s own words?

 

Lu Chi said he was abandoned three times.

 

But according to the orphanage’s records, he had lived there since infancy and had never been adopted by any family.

 

Lu Chi said he graduated from A University’s School of Art.

 

Yet despite his striking face and personality, everyone’s memories of him seemed scrambled. They either had no impression of him or forgot him immediately.

 

Once, Liang Jiashu had even compared different strands of hair he had secretly collected from Lu Chi, but the testing results showed a genetic match of 99.99%. They all belonged to the same person.

 

So then, why all the impossibilities?

 

Even his mother had said it before: Liang Jiashu possessed an almost cruel level of curiosity toward the unknown.

 

As a teenager, he once tested his own hypothesis without sleep, recording the entire process. Even when shrapnel from an explosion nearly pierced his eye, he still remained expressionless, gathering data.

 

He was a person who would do anything for the sake of truth, merciless, even to himself.

 

Which was why Lu Chi could read his clumsy, shadowed impulses so clearly.

 

The wind blew by.

 

The man gave a light, tilted smile, intimate and distant all at once. “You’ve wanted to strap me to an operating table and study me for a long time, right?” he asked. “But you just can’t bear to.”

 

Because he loved.

 

Even a silent beast, under moonlight, would lower its head to gently smell the roses.

 

Liang Jiashu tightened his hold on the silk ribbon. Rationally, Lu Chi was the one in a submissive pose, yet looking into those pale brown eyes, he felt an absurd urge to kneel in front of him.

 

They stayed locked like that for too long.

 

At the tied point of the silk ribbon, moisture slowly began to seep in.

 

Lu Chi exhaled softly and lazily licked his lips. Then his long, pale leg bent upward sharply, kicking the young man in front of him back to his senses.

 

“Come here.”

 

In the sound of crashing waves, the corners of his upturned eyes were flushed bright red by desire.

 

Liang Jiashu’s throat tightened instantly.

 

In the reflection of Lu Chi’s eyes, he saw his own distorted features, like an animal in heat. As if gripped by an invisible hand around the throat, he lowered his head, obeying Lu Chi’s careless command, moving sluggishly…

 

“Kneel and crawl over,” the man continued.

 

“And then, lick.”

 

The sun finally sank completely, and the ambiguous wet sounds were drowned out by the tide.

 

The man tilted his head back, his Adam’s apple rising in a sharp, sexy curve. When he spoke, his tone was obscene, his raspy voice brushing like a feather, leaving a tingling itch behind.

 

He said, “Lick until I’m satisfied, and I’ll tell you why.”

 

Just one simple sentence, and Liang Jiashu’s throat stayed swollen from that night all the way until noon on the third day.

 

…………………..

 

Supplies arrived on the island once every two days. By the third day, Lu Chi was already lounging by the villa’s floor-to-ceiling window, head tilted lazily as he sunbathed.

 

Behind him, Liang Jiashu’s broad shoulders relaxed, arms wrapped tightly around him. Lu Chi paid it no mind. Instead, he stuck out his tongue to lick his imported ice cream cone, asking, “So, you suspected the Lin family was fishy for a long time?”

 

Liang Jiashu stared at the smear of white ice cream on his crimson tongue, his dry and raw throat bobbing several times. After a moment, he rasped, “Since two years ago, every core patent from each of my AI projects would be completely reproduced by the Lin family within half a year.”

 

Technology was constantly evolving, so being caught up wasn’t unusual. Liang Jiashu never assumed he was the only one in the world who was smart.

 

But what was unusual was that every time the Lin family released a technical model, it was exactly the same as Liang Jiashu’s research. It could even be said they copied it wholesale, down to every detail, with barely any changes.

 

“I’ve never had a fixed team. The core models are recorded entirely by me. In this world, there isn’t a single person who could extract what’s in my head and replicate it intact.”

 

His tone was mild but carried an absolute confidence. Lu Chi pondered, and after a moment, heard him casually add: “Unless there exists another me in this world.”

 

At that, Lu Chi’s hand, still holding the ice cream, paused. He lifted his eyes, meeting Liang Jiashu’s gaze. After a long moment, he suddenly asked: “Liang Jiashu, aren’t you curious about the Lin family?”

 

Liang Jiashu looked straight at him. His voice was calm, answering: “At first, not really.”

 

So for two years, he had stayed buried in his lab, blowing up equipment. Although he sensed something odd about the technology, he paid no attention to anything connected to the Lin family.

 

Until the night he went to FOM and met Lu Chi.

 

Like a drowned ghost mesmerized by a butterfly, Liang Jiashu began a violent chase, trying to control him, then ultimately, submitting to him.

 

All his curiosity, desire to know, and desire to control were poured into Lu Chi, leaving none for anyone else. And then Lu Chi abruptly resigned and started asking around about the Lin family.

 

Only then did Liang Jiashu recall everything.

 

A sudden rumble sounded in the distance. The weather changed quickly on the islands. One moment was clear skies; the next brought torrential rain. In an instant, dark clouds swallowed the sunlight, and thunder cracked. As lightning flashed, Lu Chi lowered his eyes, something suddenly darting across his mind.

 

[System,] he commanded, [open all the original plot.]

 

The electronic voice in his head obeyed immediately.

 

Lu Chi calmly flipped through the original story, from Gu Yanyan and Liang Jiashu’s first meeting, to their first conversation, to Liang Jiashu’s sudden appearances, his occasional nudges, his cold observation…

 

Lightning lit the night sky, and Lu Chi quickly closed the original story.

 

He finally understood what the original Liang Jiashu had been doing.

 

In the novel, Gong No.1 had long discovered the strangeness around Gu Yanyan and Liang Zhiyu, sensing the hidden connections between the Lin family and everyone else.

 

So he treated the Protagonist Shou and Gong No.2 as white lab mice, treating his entire little world as a lit dissection table. He drew a scalpel and began calmly cutting them open, coldly watching their reactions.

 

He was probing the world itself.

 

Which was why he ignored all the pain, regret, resentment, and despair Gu Yanyan and Liang Zhiyu suffered.

 

Liang Jiashu’s curiosity was so intense it was cruel, with a complete lack of empathy and no moral shame whatsoever.

 

But the difference was, this time, Lu Chi arrived. And all of Liang Jiashu’s cruel curiosity landed, unexpected and fierce, onto his butterfly.

 

He was too dazzling, too beautiful; when he appeared, he barged into Liang Jiashu’s world with a force bordering on tyrannical, disrupting everything. From that moment on, what the Lin family was didn’t matter, whether another him existed didn’t matter, whether his world was even real didn’t matter either.

 

The Lu Chi smiling before him mattered the most.

 

And his brutal, overflowing curiosity, because he couldn’t bear to lose him, transformed into kneeling, crawling, and willingly lowering his head for Lu Chi.

 

The original Liang Jiashu had been a monster.

 

The current Liang Jiashu was a wild dog Lu Chi had trained to appear obedient.

 

Rain hammered violently, with water streaking down the window.

 

Lu Chi finished the last of the cone, licked his fingertips, turned, and hooked an arm around the young man’s strong nape, meeting those dark, focused eyes.

 

He was just about to speak when the system suddenly shrieked in his mind like a husband catching his wife cheating:

 

[Baby! Are you playing with the Gong No.1 or not?!]

 

[No!!! You’re in a relationship with the Protagonist Gong, mutual! One-to-one! Are you or are you not!!]

 

“……”

 

A strange, powerful emotion spread through him.

 

Like coming home exhausted after work and collapsing into bed wanting to sleep immediately, only for the back of your head to feel weirdly warm, realizing the pillow was soaked with your senile old cat’s dripping, stinking piss.

 

Lu Chi stayed silent, breathing steadily.

 

After a moment, he replied calmly:

 

[What are you trying to do?]

…………….

If you’re interested, the first arc is already completed on my Patreon! You can support me and read up to Chapter 47 here, with 5 new chapters coming next month! Happy Reading!