Prologue: Life and death

As a child, Jian Qiao was betrayed by his parents. As an adult, he was stabbed through the heart by a woman he barely knew but claimed to love him. If there was one truth he'd learned, it was that love was destruction.

Rege Grande was a formidable warrior and a renowned playboy. The gallery in his family's castle was filled with dozens of portraits of beautiful women, all his former lovers. He had no intention of falling in love with a man.

After Jian Qiao died, he transmigrated into a medieval world of startling cruelty, but the nightmares from his traumatic past shattered his health. His only goal was to improve the lives of his city's people. Rege Grande was just another obstacle to overcome.

And yet, somehow, this most improbable couple might turn out to be perfect for each other...?

***

Rege, before they met: Damn, who the hell is Jian Qiao? If he dares to steal my girl, I'll mess him up!

Rege, after they met: Damn, Jian Qiao is really good-looking, we should be friends!

Rege, after they were friends: No way! Jian Qiao is great! He should belong only to me! The first time I've bent for anyone!

Jian Qiao: One hundred actions will have a reaction, and your retribution is me!

......***......

A thin woman was slowly walking towards the cold river.

The surging waves pitched pale gray mist into the air, forming a fog that grew thicker and deeper, gradually shrouding everything nearby. The gloomy sky was depressing, and the oversaturated moisture seeped into the lungs, giving people a sense of suffocation unto death.

The woman used a phone as she walked, and the little boy who was tightly clamped under her arm could not help coughing.

"Mom, I can't breathe. Mom, I'm so cold, can we go home? Mom, don't go there, if you go further won't the water come up? Mom, mom..."

The child's tender voice, mixed with sobbing and helpless pleading, reverberated on the open river.

The woman looked down at her son.

Her eyes were bloodshot as if she hadn't slept for several nights. The despair in her eyes was more intense than the rushing river and denser than the diffuse mist. She continued to carry the phone that wouldn't connect, stubbornly waiting for a response from the other side.

Her son's pained face and tear-filled eyes seemed meaningless to her, scenery without any significance.

She lifted her head, looked towards the deeper water, and kept walking. The little boy choked on his saliva and began to struggle violently.

She fiercely clamped her arm, not caring that she might take her son's life before the flooding river could.

Suddenly, the phone connected. A lazy male voice spoke slowly, "Didn't I tell you to stop contacting me?"

The woman's eyes, which were completely occupied by despair, suddenly showed a glimmer of light. Her pace towards the deep water finally stopped.

The little boy breathed a sigh of relief, but he couldn't stop coughing.

"Be quiet!" The woman scolded fiercely.

The little boy quickly let go of the hand that tightly gripped his mother's clothes. He covered his own mouth, staring at the phone with dark eyes full of expectation. He hoped this call would save him.

"Will you get a divorce or not? If you don't get divorced, I'll take Jian Qiao into the river!" The woman's voice trembled.

The man gave an unconcerned chuckle. "I have no shortage of women or sons. Go ahead. You're not the first person to use a child to try to force me to divorce, and you're not the first person to commit suicide for me. Save it, I won't be pushed around."

The man was about to end this conversation which was so meaningless to him, but the woman suddenly pressed the phone against her son's ice-cold cheek, her voice eager: "Call for Dad, Jian Qiao! Tell Dad to come and save you!"

The little child didn't understand the grievances between his parents, he just wanted to live. It was too cold here, too terrible.

He opened his mouth and shouted again and again, "Dad, save me, Dad, save me...."

However, the phone screen went black in the middle of his cry for help. The man decisively hung up the phone and quickly blocked all the woman's contact information.

Even if the child's cry for help was real, even if the woman's suicide threat was genuine, he didn't care. A madwoman who considered love more important than her own life and the life of a child, she would only cause him more trouble. He might not be able to get rid of her entanglement in his life otherwise, so it was better to let mother and son die cleanly.

The woman could no longer hear the man's voice, but she was still screaming like crazy, "I love you! I love you more than anyone else! Why can't you love me? Why? Fine, so you don't love me, do you? Then I'll go ahead and die, and I'll take your son with me! You'll regret it!"

The little boy suddenly understood in his ignorance—love was a terrible thing, and his mother couldn't live without it. Without it, even he wasn't entitled to live.

But why? Was love really that important? What did love look like? Why was it something you couldn't see, couldn't touch, and couldn't hold?

Since you couldn't see it, couldn't touch it, and couldn't have it, he didn't want it. Wasn't that OK? Couldn't you live perfectly well like that?

The flooding river didn't wait for him to understand these too-complicated questions. The water submerged his body. The stinging pain in his nose and suffocation in his chest snatched away his ability to think.

In an instant, all the messy thoughts disappeared. Only the fear remained, overwhelming and turbulent, terrifying as a storm.

The little boy struggled violently, thumping his hands and feet, trying to call for help, but he was only robbed of more oxygen by the freezing river. His mother was dragging him into the abyss of death with hands like iron tongs.

He was terrified, and the unprecedented sensation of horror was a dagger

piercing his heart, as if his soul was being torn to pieces, with such an immensity of pain and despair it was engraved in his memory forever.

In the last second as he lost consciousness, the little boy thought in a daze: Love is about as painful as death, right?

***

Jian Qiao had a nightmare again. It was the same nightmare he'd had every day for decades.

When he woke up from the dream, his head was covered with cold sweat, as if he'd just been fished out of the water.

"Director, I compiled the design drawings from the second group. Please have a look." A well-dressed woman knocked on the office door and walked inside, placing a thick pile of drawings on the desk.

Jian Qiao picked up the top sheet and looked at it. This was a design drawing of a jade necklace. The fancy style was very novel, but the workmanship was somewhat difficult.

As a top jewelry designer, Jian Qiao quickly identified the problems and flaws. He reviewed the drawings one by one. His expression was very calm, and he didn't make any comments.

As the leader of the second group, the woman was a little bit unsure of his thoughts, so her face showed some uneasiness. When she opened her mouth and was about to ask, a woman with a haggard face and emaciated body rushed into the office. She fell on Jian Qiao's desk and swept away the tall stack of design drawings.

The group leader took a step back. Her expression lacked surprise. Yet another woman who was fascinated by Jian Qiao had come to the door. Sleazebag!

As she thought about this, the second group leader raised her head surreptitiously and gave Jian Qiao a quick glance.

It was the first time she'd looked the director in the face since entering the room to hand in the designs. Of course, the reason for this wasn't that she despised or looked down on him. The reason she didn't dare look at him was because she'd end up staring in a daze.

Jian Qiao's skin was always morbidly pale, and his jet-black eyes were full of mist, as if they could devour all light. He was handsome, but his beauty didn't contain a trace of youthful vigor, sunlight, or clarity.

If you had to describe it, it was more like a flower in full bloom, sweetness mingled with the smell of corruption. He was gorgeous, mysterious, and fascinating, but also gloomy, decadent, even deathly.

Sometimes, the group leader felt that the man sitting in front of her wasn't real, but made of fog, like he could dissipate with a gentle wave of the hand.

In the midst of these thoughts, the woman who threw herself on the desk said plaintively, "Jian Qiao, did you know that I'm dying! Marry me, please!"

She reached out her hand and tried to grab Jian Qiao's tie, but was dragged away by the secretary who'd just arrived.

Jian Qiao remained in his chair, watching the scene quietly. His dark eyes were still filled with thick fog, and there was no emotional reaction at all. He'd heard a lot of painful begging, and he'd seen a lot of desperate faces.

"Stop making trouble! Director Jian has nothing to do with you. Why on earth would he marry you? Director Jian is the one who paid for your cancer treatment. Don't go too far!"

The secretary was really angry, so the tone was particularly harsh.

This woman had merely stayed alone with Jian Qiao all night.

To be more precise, Jian Qiao sat on the sofa and listened to the woman chatter through the evening. The next morning, he paid her generously to compensate her for an entire night of dry mouth.

Nothing happened between the two. Jian Qiao, who'd suffered from incurable insomnia for years, needed to be accompanied at night, or listen to some meaningless words. It was the only way he could force back the nightmares that followed.

Man or woman, didn't matter. As long as the person could talk all night without letting deathly stillness and loneliness fall, Jian Qiao would welcome them. And his actions caused misunderstanding and speculation from the outside world, so a "scumbag" label was slapped on his head.

This woman had accompanied Jian Qiao for one night, but she obviously didn't know what the word "boundary" meant. From pursuit to chasing to crazy entanglement, the woman's behavior had escalated step by step, and then went completely out of control.

Half a month ago, the woman called and said she had cancer, begging Jian Qiao to marry her because of her short remaining time. Jian Qiao paid the woman half a million for cancer treatment, but he naturally ignored the marriage request.

The secretary reminded him to check the truth of the matter before handing out the money, but Jian Qiao had lightly said, "Life is very important, just give it to her."

Life is very important, so we must live well. This was the philosophy Jian Qiao had always believed in.

Only half a million to let a woman live, it was really not much for him.

But his good intentions didn't bring good results. The woman took a knife

from her bag, sliced through the secretary's arm, then thrust it madly into Jian

Qiao's heart.

The severe pain penetrated Jian Qiao's body, and his misty eyes showed surprise for the first time. He held the woman's stabbing wrist and asked in a hoarse voice, "Why?"

He didn't understand why the woman would kill.

"Because I love you, so even if you die, I'll take you with me! We'll never be separated." The woman was smiling agitatedly, with incomparable satisfaction on her happy face.

Love? Was it because of love again?

So, when love couldn't be obtained, did it destroy?

Jian Qiao lowered his head, looked at his blood-stained chest, and laughed for the first time.

The nightmare of so many years ago had finally floated up from the deep river bottom, grabbed hold of his ankle, and dragged him into the dark abyss that had been waiting for so long. The mist in his eyes finally cleared, but there was still no light in them. Death had taken away all the light.

***

"My lord, at last you're awake! How wonderful, the city of Desolette is saved!"

The moment he opened his eyes, these words entered Jian Qiao's ear.

He covered his chest and slowly sat up, only to find that the speaker was standing next to his bed with tears in his eyes, and he looked terribly frightened.

The other person had red hair and deep-set eyes, which was obviously the

look of European and American people. The words he'd just spoken were in English, not Chinese.

Jian Qiao pressed hard against his heart and felt a slight pain, which proved he was indeed alive.

The man standing by the bed grasped his thin wrist and did his best to console him, "My lord, please stop torturing yourself. Your parents have gone to heaven and will never come back. What you should do now is live well! Your people need you, your city needs you, your servants need you too! Please cast off these shackles of despair and be glad again!"

The man used Old English. The grammatical structure and wording were very different from modern English.

As a modern person, Jian Qiao should not understand these words, but what was amazing was that he could understand the meaning as if it were his mother tongue.

He immediately looked at a glass screen placed on the opposite side of the bed. From the blurred silhouette he saw a young man leaning against the pillow, a man as pale as himself, thin and gloomy, but his features were even more profound and beautiful than his own.

The former Jian Qiao had died, but now he seemed to be in another time and space, living as someone else.

Realizing this, Jian Qiao slowly lowered the hand pressing his chest. Instead he held his forehead and heaved a sigh.

His sigh was deep and exhausted, but he was grateful.

In any case, it was good for him to continue to live, even if he faced those

endless nightmares again, and was dragged into the abyss by another sudden

disaster....

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