Chapter 96
“The first secret.”
Shu Ci rolled Lu Wanqing’s words over his tongue, realizing: He knew he had gone to find Yi Xingshui.
Not only that, but he also clearly knew exactly what Shu Ci wanted to do.
“Lu Wanqing, how long have we known each other?” Shu Ci gazed into those eyes that were like deep pools.
From the tail end of midsummer to the beginning of winter, perhaps it hadn’t even been a hundred days. Yet Lu Wanqing instantly knew why he wanted to find Yi Xingshui, and before Shu Ci even opened his mouth, he had laid his secrets bare.
He could actually leave a tactile sensation on Lu Wanqing through a photograph; just a scratch could leave such a clear mark on his neck. What if… what if he used scissors or something to cut him?
To such a vulnerability, he held nothing back.
Immersed in scriptwriting, Shu Ci was passionate about every form of destined encounter, pursuing resonance and love-hate dynamics in different forms. He was emotional yet incredibly rational, rationally believing that some romance and synchronization were limited to fictional worlds, that one could never pursue ultimate romance in reality.
And now, Lu Wanqing was his irrationality.
He was his shock to the world.
He was his telepathic connection.
Shu Ci raised his hand, his fingertips covering the scratch on the photo, his gaze fixed on Lu Wanqing raising a hand to touch his own neck, unable to resist the numbing sensation transmitted through the photo.
All the past events became traceable.
For instance, not letting him take out the marriage photo casually; for instance, at the base, when he kissed his portrait, he heard his voice the moment his lips touched it.
“The cruise ship wasn’t our first kiss, was it?” Shu Ci blinked. “That time at the base, I definitely touched your lips.”
Lu Wanqing lowered his head, looking deeply at him. “It was too brief. I didn’t feel anything.”
At that time, he only remembered the sound of his own heart beating like a drum.
“What about now?” Shu Ci pinched the photo, covered his nose with it, and slowly pressed his lips against it.
Shu Ci watched Lu Wanqing from the corner of his eye. The man’s throat bobbed, emotions surging in his eyes, almost threatening to swallow Shu Ci whole.
Two streams of unrestrained energy were already intertwining, vibrating in the air. Yet they tacitly made no move, separated by a distance of one or two meters, looking at each other, feeling the intimate action that penetrated the back of the paper.
“Do… do you want me to share my feelings?” Lu Wanqing’s voice was hoarse.
“Wait, I’ll speak first.”
Shu Ci’s fingertips pushed the photo. His kiss went all the way down, from the neck to the collarbone. After a long while, he stopped. “My feeling is… it’s far from enough.”
Lu Wanqing was dressed too strictly; the places he wanted to kiss were all under the clothes.
Moreover, this perception seemed to be one-way. Only Lu Wanqing could feel his movements and touch; he couldn’t feel any romantic pleasure from the photo.
“What about you?”
Lu Wanqing looked at him quietly for two seconds.
“I want you.”
As soon as the words fell, four eyes met, their gazes striking sparks in the air.
The Alpha no longer stood with his hands down two meters away; he moved to Shu Ci’s lips at almost top speed. How could quenching thirst with poison be enough just now? His tongue pried open those beautiful lips, and ambiguous air flowed through the gap where they met.
Shu Ci tilted his head back to respond to him.
In a breathless moment, he suddenly remembered: “You told me the first secret, what about the others?”
As the words fell, he looked at the buttons he had undone in a mess, watching Lu Wanqing straighten up. Pectorals and abdominal muscles were dazzlingly displayed in front of him, looking at him with hazy eyes.
At this moment, he suddenly remembered a rule in the Omega training materials He Lian gave him.
—For Interrogating Alphas.
When they lose their guard, wrap around the Alpha’s vital areas, provoke his strongest desires, awaken his deepest wildness.
Then, render the other party immobile, unable to stop.
Until he says the words you want to hear.
A mischievous idea suddenly popped up. Shu Ci calmly released his pheromones, climbing up little by little from his toes. The vibration of the air seemed to look like uncontrollable passion, but in reality, it was weaving a fine net to tightly bind the Alpha who was completely exposed before him.
Shu Ci pressed tightly against Lu Wanqing. Every word he spoke brushed against the peak of his lips.
“Finish speaking before continuing. How many little secrets do you have?”
No matter how delirious Lu Wanqing was, he knew what Shu Ci was doing. The base had simulators to simulate situations where Omegas used pheromones for temptation and interrogation; he had never been defeated by those artificial machines.
But this wasn’t a battlefield, and Shu Ci wasn’t the enemy.
He thirstily held the soft lips in front of him in his mouth, and then, as he wished, dissected his entire self before Shu Ci.
“Not many. Just those many identities you discovered… that is my second secret.”
And also the last secret.
“…”
Shu Ci had thought countless times about when he would confess those confusing alter egos, but he never thought the moment would arrive here.
In the mid-mountain villa of Far-flung District Seven, on the bed.
He had his bathrobe untied by someone, listening to him tell his secrets so honestly.
“Let me guess.” He held Lu Wanqing’s ribs, going down one by one. “Do you have spatial teleportation abilities? Or can you create a clone of yourself by blowing on a strand of hair?”
Lu Wanqing let him explore his waist, leaning down to bite his earlobe.
“Neither.” He pressed against his ear, took a deep breath, and slowly said, “I actually… have lived more than once. More than one lifetime.”
Shu Ci’s hand stopped.
“Infinite rebirth?” He narrowed his eyes and asked softly.
“Perhaps.” Lu Wanqing fell silent for a moment. He didn’t know how to define it, nor had he ever tried to explain his experience. The word Shu Ci used was somewhat fitting.
“Before you came, before you told me everything here was a world in a book, I always thought it was fate.”
The first time he realized things weren’t quite right was when he followed Shu Changhai’s arrangement. The boss helped him settle a construction site brawl, and in return, he had to get a marriage license with that “Shu Ci.”
Marrying the boss’s relative, despite their match rating being ridiculously low. He didn’t know what Shu Changhai was thinking, but since they had already got the license, they should talk things out and live a good life.
On the day the project was completed, he bought a lot of groceries, wanting to cook a good meal.
But what awaited him was an empty house on Juqing Road.
“Shu Ci” had taken all his things and moved back to his own apartment.
Later he learned that the crown prince of the Gu Group was entangled with him.
He wanted to find him and ask clearly what was happening, and if there was anything he could help with. But for some reason, he could only stand in place, never able to get close to them. The atmosphere between them seemed to be a world of its own.
Even if he got close, whether it was Gu Lanzhu or “Shu Ci,” they didn’t care what he said.
“Because I was used to being ignored since childhood, I thought back then that they were the same.”
Even his newlywed partner wouldn’t have him in his eyes, wouldn’t even say his name.
Shu Ci’s eyes grew hot, and his arms wrapped tightly around Lu Wanqing.
That was the state of a tool character that flashed by in the original novel, perfectly normal. He was forced into the plot framework, his autonomous consciousness drifting outside the storyline.
“Was it very sad?” Shu Ci’s voice carried a hint of heartache.
“It was okay.” Lu Wanqing hugged him back. “To me, that was still a long, long time ago.”
That was his first life, spent in confusion and muddle-headedness. helplessly divorcing, watching “Shu Ci” and Gu Lanzhu get married and have children. On the second day after the child’s full moon, he woke up, and everything had returned to the starting point.
He stood at a certain moment in his past life, welcoming a new life, a new beginning.
Old experiences became his “golden finger.” He tried his best to avoid certain things, wanting to walk a different path, but still couldn’t escape the Shu Group, couldn’t escape that framed brawl.
He had no power to refuse Shu Changhai’s proposal to marry Shu Ci.
And the second time, he shockingly realized that everything related to “Shu Ci” and Gu Lanzhu—the time and place they met, the words they said to him—were perfect replicas.
The word “Fate” was like a rope tied around his neck.
He couldn’t hide, couldn’t escape.
“Even if I didn’t know this was the book you spoke of, I could completely map out everything related to ‘Shu Ci’.”
Shu Ci blinked. “You got the script.”
“But it was useless. I made many attempts. I couldn’t get close to them, nor could I reverse the development of events… your so-called plotline.”
Everyone is drunk but I am sober.
The awake person was like a transparent ghost shuttling through the vast world. Every time a child of “Shu Ci” and Gu Lanzhu turned one month old, he would return to a certain node in his past life.
“I get it.” Shu Ci nestled in Lu Wanqing’s arms, fingertips twirling the ends of his hair. “The Full Moon Banquet is the last extra chapter; that’s the end of the story. The timeline of the story world is only that long. If you live in the book world, your life comes to an abrupt halt the moment the story ends.”
There are many viewpoints in literary theory. Some believe the end of a story or movie means it ends there, with no follow-up; others believe the story ends, but the story’s world continues.
Lu Wanqing’s experience was obviously the former.
His future was finite.
“The only benefit is that experience accumulates constantly.” Lu Wanqing recalled, “After many times, I found that I simply couldn’t change the general environment, nor things related to Shu Ci and Gu Lanzhu. But social news unrelated to them would always have subtle changes.”
So outside the plot, before they met, Lu Wanqing tried hard to stay away from Shu Ci and Gu Lanzhu. In places without them, he could autonomously make many choices and conduct many experiments.
“One time during a brawl, I didn’t compromise with Shu Changhai, didn’t make a deal, so I went straight to the Iron Chopsticks.”
“So… you became Yamaraja.”
“The time I chose to study finance, I went abroad for further studies and opened up my own market there.”
“So there was N.O.?”
“And one time when the story ended, I returned to Juqing Road, back to that… boyhood era where I was spurned by everyone.”
“So, you met Lu Wei, and later went to the Seventh District.”
Every time the plot reached the finish line, he would return. But no matter what, the happy ending of Shu Ci and Gu Lanzhu never changed. He was always transported to a certain place at a certain moment, becoming the tool in that plot.
“But the last time it ended, I didn’t go back to the distant past. Instead, I returned to the moment I was forced to get the marriage license.”
This time, all his identity experiences from the past came back with him!
All his contacts lay in the same phone contact list.
That night, purely by some strange urge, he parked his car there. He hadn’t expected to see Shu Ci escaping.
And the first moment Shu Ci asked him for help, he knew this person wasn’t that hollow puppet, that sweet Omega who had repeated the plot so many times.
Love is when, at a certain moment, the marionette gains a soul.
And looks at him, calling his name.
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