“Fuck!”
Gu Chen let out a muffled grunt. It felt like his brain had been violently stirred. His knees buckled instantly. If he hadn’t been gripping the doorframe with all his strength, he would have dropped right there.
What the hell? A sonic weapon?
It wasn’t just the sound.
The light.
The corridor’s soft, warm yellow lighting now stabbed into his eyes a million times brighter than staring straight at the midday sun. Tears poured down his face uncontrollably.
The wind.
The gentle breeze from the central air conditioning no longer felt light—it was thousands of saw blades scraping wildly across his entire body.
Gu Chen forced his eyes open a crack despite the agony.
The corridor was empty. A few secretaries were typing at their workstations far away.
Those originally faint keystrokes now thundered in his ears like explosions.
Clack clack clack! Boom boom boom!
“Ah!”
Gu Chen clutched his ears in pain.
“Is this the freedom you wanted?”
Qin Hongyi’s voice came from behind.
She walked up behind him but didn’t help him. Instead, she leaned against the doorframe, watching the man who had been so arrogant just seconds ago.
“The agent did repair your genetic defects.” Qin Hongyi’s tone was cold. “Congratulations—you’ve evolved. Your five senses, neural response, and muscle density have all entered the realm of the gods.”
“But you forgot one thing: gods do not walk in this filthy, noisy mortal world.”
Gu Chen was drenched in cold sweat. The pain came straight from his nerve endings.
He wanted to retort, but even the air he inhaled felt like swallowing blades.
“Close… close the door…” he forced out through gritted teeth.
It was too loud. Too bright. Too painful.
“Beg me.” Qin Hongyi didn’t move.
She even raised her hand and snapped her fingers lightly.
Snap!
To Gu Chen’s heightened senses, that sound was like a flashbang detonating right beside his ear.
Pfft!
Blood surged up Gu Chen’s throat. He spat out a mouthful and collapsed completely, sliding to the floor like a puddle of mud.
Divine overload.
This was the greatest paradox of the Eden Project.
When a creature’s hardware was upgraded to the extreme but lacked the software to filter information, the world itself became torture.
Without the Key’s restraint, every external stimulus was amplified ten thousand times until it burned out the brain.
“Young Master Gu, did you think the Key was a restriction?”
Qin Hongyi crouched down and lifted Gu Chen’s sweat-soaked chin with one finger.
“The Key isn’t a restriction—it’s protection.”
The moment her fingertip touched his skin.
A miracle happened.
The excruciating pain, noise, and blinding light that had been driving Gu Chen mad receded like a tide at the point of contact.
Qin Hongyi was like an insulator—or a powerful dose of morphine.
From her fingertip, a wave of calm and tingling numbness spread rapidly through his entire body.
The wind was no longer knives. The light was no longer blinding.
Hell instantly turned back into the human world.
Gu Chen’s pupils, which had been unfocused from the pain, suddenly sharpened.
Instinct.
At this moment, reason completely collapsed. Survival instinct took over.
He didn’t care about dignity. He reached out and hugged Qin Hongyi’s calf.
His cheek pressed against her knee, his whole body trembling.
Not enough.
The contact area was too small.
Only full-body contact could block out those terrifying streams of external information.
“Give me…” Gu Chen’s voice was broken, like a junkie’s. “Don’t go… Hongyi…”
Qin Hongyi looked down at the woman at her feet.
That devastatingly beautiful face was now covered in cold sweat. Strands of wet hair stuck to her cheeks. Where was the arrogance from earlier?
Only the desperate, tail-wagging plea for mercy remained.
She smiled.
A smile both pathological and satisfied.
This was right.
This was the perfect Eden Project creation.
This peerless blade, without its sheath, wouldn’t just hurt others—it would break itself from being too sharp.
“Weren’t you going to leave just now?” Qin Hongyi reached out, her five fingers sinking into Gu Chen’s thick long hair. She yanked his head back forcefully, making him look up.
“The door is open now. Go on, get out.”
Gu Chen panted violently.
He clung desperately to Qin Hongyi’s leg.
“Not leaving… I’m not leaving…”
He buried his face in the fabric of Qin Hongyi’s gown, greedily inhaling her unique cold scent.
It was the only oxygen he could breathe right now.
“Gu Chen.”
Qin Hongyi bent down, her red lips brushing his ear. Her voice was soft like she was coaxing a child, but the content was brutally vicious.
“Remember this—you crawled back yourself.”
“In this lifetime, even if you turn to ash, you’ll only be kept in my box.”
With that, she straightened up and dragged Gu Chen—who was still clinging to her like a giant pendant—step by step back to the desk.
She sat back in her chair. Gu Chen obediently knelt between her legs, resting his head on her thigh, arms wrapped around her waist. His body still trembled slightly from the aftershocks.
Qin Hongyi picked up the personnel appointment document on the desk, glanced at it without reading, and tossed it straight into the paper shredder.
Then her hand returned to the top of Gu Chen’s head, stroking it absentmindedly like she was petting a kitten.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
Gu Chen closed his eyes, lashes quivering.
Was it humiliating?
Yes, it was.
The proud Young Master of the capital circle was now kneeling at a woman’s feet like a pet, begging for life.
But he couldn’t move.
The moment he left Qin Hongyi, that terrifying high-dimensional world would descend again.
“…Better.” Gu Chen bit out the words, acknowledging the pathetic truth.
Jin Di Hao Ting, top-floor banquet hall.
The air was a constant twenty-four degrees Celsius, every cubic meter reeking of money burning.
Top-tier fragrances mixed with the low notes of a cello—for the capital circle’s elite, this was the arena of fame and fortune.
But for Gu Chen right now, it was purgatory.
“Too noisy.”
Gu Chen was practically “grown” onto Qin Hongyi.
His devastatingly beautiful face was buried in the crook of her neck. His hands gripped her slender waist tightly, frantically absorbing what little life-saving body heat he could through the fabric.
To outsiders, this was the Qin Group’s crazy female president doting on her new canary—sickeningly affectionate.
Only Qin Hongyi knew this guy was sucking oxygen.
“Hang in there.” Qin Hongyi held a champagne flute in one hand while the other had no choice but to support Gu Chen’s back to keep the hundred-pound pendant from sliding to the floor.
“Qin Mu just fell. Tonight is the debut of the Qin Group’s restructuring. These old foxes are all watching the wind direction. I have to be here.”
“That’s your problem…”
Gu Chen’s voice was muffled in her collar. It sounded soft and sweet, but it was ice-cold. “That fat bastard is breathing like a cow. The guy on the left is wearing cheap chemical perfume. And that violinist… the C string is off by 0.03 hertz. I want him dead.”
Qin Hongyi looked down at the exposed fair neck in her arms and smiled wickedly.
“If you can’t stand it, beg me and I’ll take you back to the car.”
“No.”
Gu Chen refused cleanly and even rubbed harder against her collarbone like a big cat seeking the most comfortable position. “The air in the car is stuffy. It’s suffocating. This place is fine—especially the way that fat guy is looking at you. It makes me hungry.”
Qin Hongyi raised an eyebrow. “Hungry?”
“Mm.”
Gu Chen finally lifted his head.
His pure black eyes were misty, the corners tinged with a seductive red from the noise stimulation.
But beneath that extremely fragile appearance hid a madman already plotting.
“I want to gouge out his eyeballs, use them as light bulbs, and step on them to hear the pop.”
Gu Chen smiled, utterly bewitching, and blew gently into Qin Hongyi’s ear.
“President Qin, lend me a lighter?”
The moment the words left his mouth, the fat bastard who breathed like a cow came striding over on his own.
Wang Dayong, a nouveau riche in real estate who had made his fortune through demolitions. His methods were as dirty as they came.
After Qin Mu’s fall, he had been the loudest cheerleader, already scheming how to tear a piece of flesh from the Qin Group.
“Oh, if it isn’t President Qin!”
Wang Dayong swaggered over with his ten-month-pregnant beer belly, his beady eyes sweeping over Qin Hongyi before sticking to Gu Chen. They lit up like a fly that had spotted meat.
“I heard President Qin’s been under a lot of mental strain lately. So this is the little plaything that’s got you so enchanted?”
Wang Dayong chuckled, reaching out a fat hand covered in gold rings straight toward Gu Chen’s face. “Gotta admit, the looks are top-tier. This figure, this skin—tsk tsk, President Qin is truly blessed.”
Qin Hongyi’s gaze turned ice-cold. She was about to act.
But the person in her arms moved first.
Gu Chen didn’t dodge.
Instead, he loosened his hold on Qin Hongyi a little and leaned his face forward, eyes timid and voice sickeningly sweet. “Uncle, did you wash your hands?”
Wang Dayong froze, then burst out laughing. “Hahaha! Got some spirit! Uncle’s hands have touched more money than you’ve seen paper in your life! Come on, let Uncle spoil you a little…”
That fat hand was five centimeters from Gu Chen’s face.
Crack.
A crisp sound rang out.
It didn’t sound like a slap—it sounded more like a dry branch being snapped by hand.