Chapter 080: Dancing with the Clear Shadow—What Is This Mortal World!

Chapter 080: Dancing with the Clear Shadow—What Is This Mortal World!

Back then, after Wu Chen sent Su Qingying that text, she had been thrown into panic and fear.

Su Qingying’s secret was that she was an M. But the problem didn’t lie in the M itself. She might be an M, yet she had never actually done anything outrageous. She endured. She didn’t dare. She kept the glory around her intact. So the problem itself wasn’t that she was an M.

It was that Wu Chen could prove she was.

The post she had put up on the forum two years ago was fatal to her.

If not for that post, which couldn’t be deleted no matter what she tried, Su Qingying would truly have had nothing to fear. Without proof, it was slander—and her reputation happened to be so good that slandering her was no easy thing.

No one would have believed it.

But once it could be proven, once everyone believed it, then…

Wu Chen’s discovery of Su Qingying’s hidden trait could itself be called an accident. During the loop, the year before last, he had once investigated the Su family in detail, and Su Qingying above all.

What he found was that Su Qingying really was nearly perfect, inside and out.

A person so perfect already that she seemed almost lifted clear of the mortal world.

Impeccable.

Wu Chen had nearly believed it.

Then… on one particular July 7, while investigating her yet again, he quietly got hold of Su Qingying’s personal computer. On it he found a mysterious folder buried very deep.

A locked folder. Without the password it wouldn’t open.

He didn’t have the password. He used hacking skills to force it, and saw what was inside: certain films.

Watching material like that seemed to be something everyone did. Men more often; women had usually watched at some stage out of curiosity and the like, and of course some simply enjoyed it.

That was nothing.

Hiding it that way struck Wu Chen as unnecessary.

But the films Su Qingying hid were of one type. One specific type. The kind where men hit women and get particularly… like that.

That was very wrong.

Once Wu Chen realized there was a problem, he went further and turned up browsing history in the browser on her personal computer, along with usernames and passwords it had saved automatically.

And so—

He learned that Su Qingying was “When Will the Bright Moon Appear,” and he learned about the post she had made on the forum all that time ago.

He knew everything.

On the last July 7 of Wu Chen’s life—four days ago—at the bar that night, he had once talked to Mu Qianqian about Su Qingying.

Because of the Jinfu Jewelry heist, Mu Qianqian hadn’t believed what he said about sleeping with women during the loop. She showed him the news and asked whether he had slept with Su Qingying.

Wu Chen admitted he had.

Mu Qianqian didn’t believe him.

Wu Chen then said Su Qingying had a “fatal weakness” that would let him take her down with ease.

Mu Qianqian still didn’t believe him, and pressed him on what the weakness was.

Wu Chen wouldn’t say. He only told her to guess.

Su Qingying being an M, and that post on the forum—that was Su Qingying’s fatal weakness.

The post gave Wu Chen a way to reach her privately. And because she was an M… the difficulty of taking her down really wasn’t high. As long as he understood her well enough, he didn’t even need an especially elaborate setup. He could take her down inside a single day.

“What is wrong with you? Do you not look at where you are? This is the side of a public road. There may not be many cars, but if one happens past and sees you and me in here, do you want to keep any face at all? Can you use your head?”

Wu Chen was scolding the woman in the passenger seat again, who was still holding her arm.

Su Qingying said nothing. Her expression looked a little wounded, but her eyes weren’t wounded in the slightest. There was a hint of something soft and pitiable in them, and far more of that particular look.

“I’m talking to you. Do you have a brain or not?” As he spoke he reached over and pinched her again.

Her eyes reddened from the pain and she shrank away, a small sound in her voice as she whispered, “I was wrong.”

She had spent her life hiding it, holding it down. If she didn’t dare defy her mother, she would never dare cross the forbidden line.

But today Wu Chen had dug her hidden trait out into the open. He had given her courage, carried her along, brought her to this point. This wasn’t a bad thing for her—or so Wu Chen believed.

Su Qingying’s condition had built up over years. Without reasonable guidance and release, in time… she would inevitably develop depression. She might even jump off a building.

“Come here. Sit up straight!” Wu Chen ordered her again, telling her to straighten up.

She shifted at once, then looked at him with wide, hopeful eyes.

“Seat belt!” he barked.

She fastened her seat belt.

Wu Chen yelled at her… and Su Qingying wanted to be commanded like this. Provided, of course, that the commands made her comfortable. It wasn’t as if an M would accept anything at all. Every restriction and arrangement her mother imposed on her, for instance, made her feel dreadful. Absolutely dreadful.

“Let’s move somewhere else.” Wu Chen started the Lamborghini again.

Back on the road.

“Where… are we going?” Su Qingying glanced over and asked softly. Her tone was unusually light and gentle. She was in that state now.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Wherever you say,” she said in a small voice. The look she cast at him carried a different sort of feeling.

“My place, then.”

“Okay…” She nodded, then pressed her legs together again without thinking.

Wu Chen put his foot down, and the speed leapt.

Home.

Some things could be done now.

Su Qingying was a woman no man had ever touched, but the truth was she had always wanted it. She was an M, after all, and a twenty-seven-year-old woman with her hormones at full flood. The harder she had been repressed, the more she wanted it in private.

Su Qingying’s ID on the forum was “When Will the Bright Moon Appear.” That handle hadn’t been chosen at random. Through it, she had expressed her thinking in a very oblique way.

“When Will the Bright Moon Appear” was the opening of a ci poem by Su Shi, “Shuidiao Getou.”

Su Qingying’s surname was Su, and her given name was Qingying. And in that poem of Su Shi’s, there was this line: I rise to dance with my clear shadow—what is this mortal world?

It had to be said: cultured people even picked their handles with that much elegance and depth.

So Wu Chen didn’t intend to wait any longer.

He would take Su Qingying home, and then… dance with the clear shadow.

Half an hour later.

The blue Lamborghini was back in the main urban district. By rights they should have been home already, and they weren’t. Wu Chen hadn’t gone back to Donghai Huafu in North City, because that property had already been transferred to him and stood registered in his name.

He was going to the old family apartment. The old apartment was under his parents’ names.

The Su family was looking for him. They would investigate him. A property in his own name wasn’t safe. Someone might turn up there without warning.

So the old apartment it was.

That way, by his estimate, no one would disturb him for the rest of the day.