DTTM 73

Chapter 73: Get Lost, I Never Want to See You Again

Introduce?

How should I introduce him? “This is my brother. I brought him along to broaden his horizons.”

“Young Master, you’ve come at the perfect time!” I quickly regained my composure, raised Ye Shuer’s wrist, and gestured to Zong Yanlei, attempting to once again use my superb acting skills to get away with it. “I don’t know how this person got in. When I found him, he was trying to escape. He seems to be a thief.”

Although the mask concealed his expression, it was easy to see how stunned Ye Shuer was from the way he quickly turned to look at me. Fortunately, he managed to keep quiet.

Zong Yanlei stood silently amidst the swirling dust, seemingly oblivious to the collapsed structures around him.

“Young Master, it’s too dangerous here. Why don’t we leave first…” I let go of Ye Shuer’s hand and walked quickly towards Zong Yanlei.

Halfway there, Ye Shuer suddenly shouted in shock from behind, “It’s open!”

I abruptly turned around, and saw that Ye Shuer had somehow managed to forcibly tear open a dark rift in this chaotic space by using the key or some other method.

He had already stepped one foot in, but stopped and turned to look at me, waiting for me to follow.

“Go!” I silently ordered him.

“Since you don’t know each other, whatever happened to him shouldn’t matter, right?” Zong Yanlei’s deep, icy voice rang out again.

As he finished speaking, the rift that had appeared out of nowhere, barely wide enough for one person to pass through, suddenly began to contract like a healing wound. It trapped Ye Shuer, who was unable to leave, in the rift.

“Ugh!” He groaned in pain, his body trembling from the pressure.

My heart raced. I stopped myself from running towards him, and turned away from him.

Zong Yanlei raised his right hand and slowly curled his knuckles. With each inch he tightened his grip, Ye Shuer’s muffled groans behind me grew even more louder.

“Then die.” He stared at me as indifferent like he was talking about nothing more than a worthless insect

After saying that, he suddenly clenched his fist.

“No!”

My body reacted faster than my brain; I rushed towards him, and jumped down the last few steps. I grabbed his wrist and tackled him to the ground.

Zong Yanlei’s back slammed against the shattered marble floor. He winced in pain, but the smile on his lips deepened, radiating madness.

“Didn’t you say… you didn’t know him?”

I couldn’t care less about his questions and hurriedly turned back to check on Ye Shuer’s condition. I only managed to see him and the rift disappear.

My mind went blank. I stared at the empty staircase above me. Before I could even find a new excuse to explain my actions, my vision shifted and I found myself in the opposite position from Zong Yanlei, now pinned below him.

“Why the rush?” His fingertips traced a path from my cheek down to my neck, paused, and then slowly tightened. “Want to avenge him?”

“Crash!”

The enormous crystal chandelier finally gave way and crashed down. A shockwave rippled through the air. Fine pebbles rained down on my face and shoulders, abruptly pulling me back to reality from my shock.

“Let’s get out of here first…” I grabbed the arm that was gripping me. And although I wanted to give him a smile like I used to to ease the tension, my lips were stuck together as if glued on, and I just couldn’t manage to smile.

“Scared?” Zong Yanlei was unmoved, he only tightened his grip. “This isn’t the first time it’s collapsed; I’ve rebuilt this place many times. But this time, I probably won’t do it again…”

As he spoke, his smile gradually faded, his gaze darkened, and he looked down at me condescendingly.

“You’ve dirtied it…you brought someone here…” His brow furrowed repeatedly, gradually revealing the anger beneath his cold exterior. “I gave you so many chances…”

I felt suffocated. His fingertips gripped my fragile trachea, cutting off the flow of oxygen. I gasped for breath, and grabbed the other person’s wrist, but I made no further move.

At this point, I realized that there was no point in saying anything more; he no longer trusted me.

I simply gave up struggling, let go, and allowed him to “kill” me in the metaverse. I thought this might trigger a forced ejection mechanism, allowing me to escape from here.

“I will never be your most steadfast choice. You always deceive me and betray me for various reasons and for various people…” A red tinge appeared at the corners of his eyes due to anger, which was particularly noticeable on his pale face. “What is it about me that I lack compared to them?”

That trembling voice, coupled with the redness in his eyes, made him look like a child who had suffered a great injustice and was trying hard to hold back his tears.

Even though I know he would never cry over something like this, I still…

I looked into those watery eyes, which shone even brighter with the heat of anger, and reached out to touch them.

“Not this again…”

He suddenly released his grip on my neck, as if he could no longer bear it, and leaned down to bite my lips viciously.

He sank his sharp canines into my lip, as if he wanted to rip off my flesh. The excruciating pain and suffocation made me want to push him away.

The next instant, black thorns appeared out of nowhere, wrapped around my hands, forcibly held my wrists together, and raised them above my head.

Sharp thorns pierced my flesh and scraped against bone; even the slightest movement caused immense pain.

However, this was just the appetizer.

After that, Zong Yanlei stopped talking. The rough kiss, the fierce penetration… pain exploded all over my body. I bit my lower lip, my teeth sinking into the wound he had just bitten. My mouth filled with the taste of rust, but I stubbornly endured it without making a sound.

The thorns tightened, and my wrists felt as if they would snap at any moment.

Fresh blood trickled down my arms, lips, and even thighs.

Amidst the ebb and flow of pain and desire, my vision swayed, and I could hardly distinguish whether it was the constantly collapsing virtual space or Zong Yanlei that caused all of this.

“You sacrificed a lot for those people…” He leaned down. He pinched my jaw between his thumb and forefinger, forcing me to look into his bloodshot eyes. “If Zong Shen’an hadn’t died, and the key was in his hands, would you have infiltrated his side and opened your body to him?”

He found out.

“Mmm…”

This question was like a knife. It precisely stabbed into my most vulnerable spot, raising goosebumps on the back of my neck.

From the moment I decided to exploit his soft heart and affection, I knew it was immoral. To disregard the suffering of an individual and treat his sacrifice as necessary in the name of the happiness of the majority was utilitarianism.

People became means, not ends.

Therefore, it was only natural that they would be met with resistance and revenge.

I didn’t feel wronged or angry. Just like when my mother left home with Ye Shuer back then, she and Zong Yanlei were just doing what they were supposed to do.

“Who…who knows?”

With a mouthful of metallic sweetness, I smiled at him, deliberately using the most frivolous tone to provoke his already unstable emotions.

There’s no turning back, and there’s no way to move forward. So let’s just end it all here and now.

Ha, I thought our farewell would be more peaceful and dignified. In the end, we still ended up on the ugliest old path.

As if it were a manifestation of his rage, thorns spread from my wrist to my upper arm, and with a sudden tug, my shoulder was dislocated.

My vision went black for a moment, and I thought I should finally be ejected. But when the pain subsided a little, I found myself still trapped in this dying space.

Large chunks of the ceiling were falling down, but Zong Yanlei must have done something to prevent those deadly fragments from reaching our small space.

The surrounding structures had mostly collapsed, even revealing the sky that had been hidden before.

The entire sky was no longer blue, but turned into an unsettling crimson. A red moon hung high overhead, and the surrounding temperature plummeted, becoming as cold as the dead of winter.

Suddenly, I felt a cool sensation on the tip of my nose.

I blinked, and it took me a while to realize that it was snowing.

This space was so bizarre it defied logic; it collapsed whenever it wanted, and it snowed whenever it wanted.

Soft, snowflakes fluttered down, covering my and Zong Yanlei’s heads, faces, and entangled limbs.

My body slowly grew cold, and my senses began to go numb. I knew I was really about to lose consciousness.

As my consciousness faded, the restraints on my arms suddenly loosened. The thorns, like plants in the real world, went into hibernation when they encountered wind and snow, slowly retreating and releasing their hold on me.

“I’ve had enough of your lies…”

Snowflakes melted at the corners of Zong Yanlei’s eyes. He blinked gently, and the transparent liquid slid down his cheeks.

I tried to raise my hand to wipe it off for him, but I couldn’t move it for a long time. Then I remembered that my shoulder had been dislocated.

“This is the last time I’ll ask you this…”

He lifted me up from the cold ground by the back of my neck and cradled me in his arms.

“Are you staying or leaving?”

In this moment, I naturally wouldn’t assume that he was asking me to choose between staying in this space or leaving.

Years of getting along and having a tacit understanding meant that even without his explanation, I could understand what he meant—choose him or someone else.

It was so cold…even though we were doing something so intimate, body to body, sharing each other’s warmth and heartbeats. I used to only feel hot whenever we did it, so hot. But today I felt so cold. Even colder than the first time I was sent to the Zong family and met him.

I closed my eyes, and snowflakes fell on my eyelids, quickly warmed up by my body, then falling like a torrent.

I slowly opened my lips: “Leave.”

Whether six years ago or six years later, my choice was still the same.

The arms holding me tightened suddenly, as if he wanted to break my spine. A moment later, I heard Zong Yanlei’s self-deprecating laughter.

A broad, cold palm grabbed the back of my neck. I braced myself for him to snap my neck, but all I heard was him whisper in my ear, “Get out. I don’t want to see you again. We’re over, Jiang Man. But maybe for you, it never even started…”

Just a few sentences. Disappointment, hatred, disgust, so many complex emotions…but in the end they all returned to a stagnant silence.

The moment the words left his mouth, the excruciating pain that had been masked by the cold swept over my entire body again. This time, it wasn’t just my body; even the depths of my soul felt as if thorns were piercing and tearing me apart. The pain was so intense that I even lost my voice.

“I……”

I opened my mouth, trying desperately to say something, even a hypocritical “I’m sorry.” But something Zong Yanlei did caused my body to become transparent, and my voice seemed to be blocked; I couldn’t make a sound no matter what I did.

And just like that, I vanished into his arms.

The next instant, the neural connection was severed.

I suddenly opened my eyes and gasped for breath. The hatch of the neuro-navigation pod opened, and I scrambled out on all fours.

Every muscle and nerve in my body screamed in agony. I was drenched in sweat. I laid on the ground, retching incessantly, but could only vomit some sour, bitter gastric juice mixed with the smell of champagne.

The basement’s cement floor was cold and hard. I curled up, my fingers clutching at my clothes, and felt that I hadn’t escaped yet, that I was still trapped in that virtual space with the red moon.

“Ah……”

The pain that had been suppressed for so long finally broke through. In this remote, deserted, dusty, dilapidated cabin, I couldn’t help but scream out in agony.

“Ah…ah ah…”

It was such excruciating pain, I had used all my strength to vent, to scream, to try to shout out the agony that was tearing my soul apart. But what echoed in this empty basement were only a few broken and weak sobs.

***

Author’s Note

Humans have become means, not ends. Conversely, this means humans should be ends, not means. This is Kant’s theory. The original meaning is: in this world full of utilitarian calculations, no matter how advanced technology is, no matter how important efficiency is, humans will always be the measure of all things, irreplaceable subjects of value, not tools for achieving goals. In the text, this can be seen as Jiang Man treating humans as tools, rather than dignified subjects of value.