For Zhou Yanbai’s disappearance, Jiang Nanshu had tortured him for a month with no one coming to his rescue.
Even in Port City, no one cared about his whereabouts.
Day by day, Zhou Yanbai grew desperate, convinced that even though he was captured by Jiang Nanshu, the police would soon find him based on the clues he had left. By that time, Jiang Nanshu would be sentenced for unlawful detention, and he could seize the opportunity to take Jiang Nanshu’s money again!
That’s why he risked himself and willingly let Jiang Nanshu’s men take him away.
But where were the people to rescue him?
Where were the police?
Jiang Nanshu, that malicious woman, tormented him every day in different ways.
In just a month, he had become skin and bones, and his clothes hadn’t been changed all month, reeking of stench, and even taking a bath was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
The physical torture was bearable compared to the psychological torment.
Jiang Nanshu wouldn’t let him sleep.
Anytime he closed his eyes, a burst of loud noise would instantly wake him up, and at night, there was an intensely bright incandescent light in the room that made his eyes water, causing his mind to be tightly wound and disoriented all day long.
Suddenly, the door burst open. The creaking sound frightened Zhou Yanbai into curling up in a corner, screaming, as Jiang Nanshu walked in wearing high heels and immediately smelled a foul odor.
Looking beneath him, there was a wet patch.
Her expression cold, her lips slightly curled, she said, “How disgusting, Zhou Yanbai, is this all it takes for you to break down?”
Hearing Jiang Nanshu’s voice, Zhou Yanbai moved his hands and looked over.
Jiang Nanshu was standing over him, looking down.
Suddenly, he felt a sense of déjà vu, and the scene felt eerily familiar.
It took him back eight years.
After Zhou Yanxu died, he first stepped into that courtyard house, a place that bore too many traces of his elder brother, which he eventually razed with fire.
Poor brother, why did you abandon me to raise someone unrelated to you by blood?
I was your real brother. We were the real family.
You knew I was ill, yet you left.
Zhou Yanbai thought Zhou Yanxu’s death was a relief, as he wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore.
That’s why he sought out Jiang Nanshu.
The fifteen-year-old girl with bright eyes and white teeth was well-cared-for. Those clear eyes gazing at him ignited a strong desire to shatter her innocence.
He wanted to see if the naive girl raised by his brother could still remain pure after he dragged her into hell.
Initially, it was like a cat playing with a mouse, tormenting her slowly from her studies, making it impossible for her to pursue education normally, then infiltrating her life so she couldn’t live normally either.
Later, he learned the arsonist he had hired died.
Jiang Nanshu became one of the suspects, but eventually, she cleared her name and even had her own brother sent to a psychiatric hospital.
Zhou Yanbai found the turn of events intriguing.
So, he forcefully confined Jiang Nanshu to a small cabin, finding mere bullying of a girl too low.
He wanted to break her bones, to tell her that she was just a dog raised by the benevolent Zhou Yanxu. Now that the master was dead, either she finds a new master or dies.
But Jiang Nanshu’s spine was too rigid; she refused to bow, and he could no longer be blamed for being ruthless.
He quite liked her face.
No wonder his brother did too.
Later, a disheveled and filthy Jiang Nanshu shattered that beautiful image he once had of her.
He simply smiled condescendingly at her, “How disgusting, Jiang Nanshu, do you regret defying my decision? Don’t look at me with such hatred; we’re barely getting started.”
The memories abruptly stopped.
Jiang Nanshu could grit her teeth and refuse to plead even for a moment.
But he couldn’t handle it.
He was used to a life of luxury and couldn’t endure such hardships.
When he saw Jiang Nanshu, he knelt before her, “Please forgive me, I was wrong before. I was deluded, it was my sickness that made me treat you that way, it wasn’t intentional. I was really sick, I couldn’t control my actions.”
Jiang Nanshu kicked him away, fearing his dirty hands might stain her clothes.
These experiences were all ones that Jiang Nanshu had suffered before.
Because of this torment, she was mentally frail and couldn’t endure any shocks; the fact that she hadn’t gone mad in such an environment was solely due to her willpower.
Was Zhou Yanbai’s light remark that he was sick supposed to erase all that?
The resentment in Jiang Nanshu’s heart lessened significantly, but it was still not enough.
She threw a document in front of Zhou Yanbai, “Sign it. You still owe me one billion. Do you want to die now, or sell your company and scrabble to survive another year?”
Zhou Yanbai stared blankly at Jiang Nanshu.
There were many ways to die, Zhou Yanbai swallowed his saliva.
He once thought of starving Jiang Nanshu and not giving her water; after she escaped, she was recaptured due to her lack of strength.
Zhou Yanbai saw the moss at the corners of her mouth.
He smiled, his eyes curved, as he made her drink a little Paraquat.
Watching her vomit and convulse, he suddenly thought, a toy can still be fixed, but if broken, he would throw it away.
So he sent her to the hospital for treatment.
She survived.
Zhou Yanbai had seen these miserable states; he didn’t feel pain when the harm hadn’t befallen him. Now, he only felt fear and finally understood what Jiang Nanshu felt when she faced him.
He trembled as he signed his name.
He didn’t want to die. Maybe he could still… grasp a sliver of hope, wait until he got out, wait until he got out, and then everything would be okay…
Jiang Nanshu took back the document, looking at the name he wrote in fear, she scoffed coldly, “You could only bully me when I was young. What goes around comes around, and this time it’s finally your turn to die.”
Zhou Yanbai sat on the ground, swallowing his saliva, his voice somewhat hoarse, “Can’t you, for my brother’s sake… spare my life? I want to live.”
Jiang Nanshu’s smile was stunningly beautiful.
His torment had broken her physically.
Her time left to live wasn’t long.
She was marked for death, yet he still wanted to live?
The world doesn’t work that way.
“Bear it well. I hope when next I come, you are still alive.”
Having said that, she left the desperate Zhou Yanbai there.
He pounded on the door forcefully, “Jiang Nanshu, this is illegal, you are murdering someone! You’ll go to prison. Let me go, and I can pretend nothing happened, Jiang Nanshu! Please, spare me.”
Jiang Nanshu ignored him, not until she stepped out into the warm sunlight did she see the tenacious wildflowers and green grass around her, and realized that spring had come.
The fall of Port City’s Zhou Family happened in an instant.
The buyer of the Zhou Group was Jiang Nanshu.
The elite in Beijing could only sigh.
She inherited the Zhou Family in another overwhelmingly powerful manner.
But the declined Zhou Group couldn’t compare even to a subsidiary company developed by Jiang Nanshu.
Jiang Nanshu immediately handed it off to Xun Wu to manage.
In the month of March.
Jiang Nanshu made a trip to Port City, selected a gravesite with good feng shui for Zhou Yanxu, and buried his ashes.
She felt she had fulfilled something she had always wanted to do; now, she felt an immense relief, the weight on her shoulders lifted dramatically, giving her a sense of rebirth.