As soon as the morning sun hit the clinic's roof, Qixian was already dressed into a very descent one while his car keys are freely dangling around his fingers. "Hey, Haoran, I'm heading out! There's an urgent matter at the office!" he shouted toward the back rooms, the lie smooth and practiced. He didn't wait for a response, bolting out the door and into the driver's seat before Haoran could even offer a word of caution.
He hit the speed dial as he pulled out of the driveway—he must have forgotten Yanlan's and Haoran's scolding or maybe he just chose to forget it.
"Chengli! Good morning!" Qixian said, his voice dripping with a forced cheering.
"You sound like the exact opposite of your voice, Young Master," Chengli noted warily on the other end.
"Well, you know where Jin Rou's private basement is, right?" Qixian asked, his eyes cold and fixed on the road.
"I do. You told me that if I ever had a spare time, I should keep a permanent eye on his private haunts," Chengli answered.
"Send me the address. Now," Qixian commanded, ending the call before Chengli could even process the request.
The moment the coordinates pinged on his phone, Qixian floored the accelerator. He sped toward the location, weaving through traffic with a reckless disregard for anything but the burning fire in his chest.
By the time he reached the site, his blood was boiling at a temperature that threatened to melt mountains.
This was Jin Rou's playground—a space reserved for his high-stakes "interrogations" and displays of cold-blooded cruelty.
Qixian arrived with the terrifyingly pleasant demeanor of a man who had already lost his mind, smiling at the perimeter guards who were too confused and intimidated by his sudden appearance to stop him. After all, it had been a month since he vanished from the Zhou estate, and the aura he radiated was no longer that of a runaway son, it was that of a predator, just like when he is angry.
He had come for Jin Rou. He had come to tear the throat out of the man who dared to draw Haoran's blood. But the basement was empty.
No Jin Rou. Not even a shadow.
"Where are you?!" Qixian roared, his voice bouncing off the soundproofed walls. "Come out and face me, you fucking coward! You want to play with guns? Come see how it feels when someone actually shoots back!"
Silence was his only answer, and it was the final straw.
"Damn it!" A red haze descended over Qixian's vision as if a thousand years of suppression finally snapped like a frayed wire. He grabbed a priceless porcelain vase—worth millions of won—and hurled it with all his strength into a wall-mounted rack of vintage wine. The sound of glass exploding and expensive liquid splashing was like a symphony to his ears.
He didn't stop there. He moved through the basement like a localized hurricane of pure vengeance. He smashed the surveillance monitors into static, ripped the upholstery from the velvet chairs where Jin Rou sat to watch others suffer, and overturned the massive, heavy mahogany desk.
Qixian laughed, the sound sharp and haunting, as he swung a metal pipe into a tall glass display case filled with Jin Rou's "trophies." The shattering was continuous and rhythmic.
"You sent those filth to a place of healing! Then as a gift, I'll leave you with nothing but a graveyard! Just like what my pheromones represent!" He became a little devil having fun in hell, throwing everything his hands could reach—statues, books, electronics—into a growing pile of debris.
By the time he finished, the room was no longer a room, it was a graveyard filled with countless tombs. Shattered shards were everywhere, stuffing from chairs hung like cobwebs, soil from uprooted plants was smeared across the floor, and torn papers littered the wreckage.
He stepped over the ruins, his knuckles bleeding and his chest heaving with exertion. His scent of Spider Lily was now so thick, poisonous, and suffocating that the guards outside didn't even dare to breathe as he walked out.
He stopped in front of the lead guard, a terrifying, devilish smile on his face. "Hey. Tell him I left a gift inside. And don't you dare enter—he should be the very first person to see what I've done."
___________________
Back at the clinic, the atmosphere had shifted into a different, more suffocating kind of heavy.
Yichen stood by the window, his silhouette a sharp, dark blade against the flickering streetlights outside. He remained motionless, his eyes locked on his phone screen with an unshakable focus until a single message finally illuminated the display.
"Sihan," Yichen said. His voice was no longer just deep, it was a low, dangerous vibration that seemed to rattle the very floorboards.
"Yeah?" Sihan looked up from the table, his expression unusually grim.
"The men who broke in yesterday—the ones who hurt Haoran and Qixian..." Yichen turned toward the room. In the dim light, his eyes didn't just flash, they flickered with that haunting, abyssal Enigma blue. "They weren't common thugs. They were sent directly by the Zhou family."
Sihan's eyes widened in genuine shock. "The Zhou family? But that makes no sense. Why would a conglomerate of that stature target a small, struggling clinic?" Sihan felt confused but then a sudden theory came up "Wait... unless..."
"Unless they weren't after the clinic at all nor after Haoran," Yichen finished, his hand tightening until the tracker he was holding was crushed into a fine dust. "They're after Qixian." He shifted his gaze toward the hallway, staring at the empty space where Qixian usually lingered.
"Qixian? Why on earth would they be after Qixian?" Haoran asked, his voice trembling as he clutched his bandaged arm.
"Perhaps he provoked them," Yichen mused, his mind racing through the possibilities. "He must have triggered a grudge deep enough for them to shed blood just to find him." He paused, his jaw tightening. "By the way, where is he? Why isn't he here?"
"He said there was an urgent matter at his office," Haoran replied, looking increasingly small in his chair.
"What?" Yichen growled, the sound vibrating in his chest. "Is he insane? Does he not realize how dangerous the Zhou family is? Does he think he's invincible?"
"What if he doesn't even know that it was the Zhou family's doing?" Sihan theorized, leaning forward. "He might think they were just random low-lifes."
"Wait, I think Sihan might be right," Haoran added, his worry deepening. "Yesterday, when he was fighting, he talked to the leader like they had a personal history. He must have thought the man was acting on his own, not on behalf of a family like the Zhous..."
A sudden, violent surge of protective Monkshood pheromones flooded the clinic. The scent was so icy and overwhelming that even Sihan, an S-tier Alpha, felt a shiver run down his spine. Yichen looked ready to tear the city apart to find him, but he forced a shaky breath, slowly pulling his presence back under control.
"No," Yichen said, his voice dropping to a chillingly calm tone. "It was just a theory for now, we can just stay here and wait for him to come back. And when he does, we might be wrong, but if he didn't, we must be right."
______________
Jin Rou returned to his mansion an hour later, his migraine still pulsing like a thunder behind his eyes as if the god of thunder descended just to punish him. He found his head of security trembling at the top of the basement stairs, face pale and hands visibly shaking.
"Sir... please... you shouldn't go down there," the man stammered, blocking the path.
Jin Rou didn't say a word, he simply pushed past him with a force that sent the man staggering against the wall. He descended the stairs, each step heavy with dread.
When he reached the final stair, his breath hitched in his throat. His sanctuary—his meticulously curated pride—was gone. The refined air of the basement was replaced by the cloying smell of expensive vintage wine mixed with the sharp, coppery tang of blood and the lingering, suffocating scent of fresh soil.
"Qixian..." Jin Rou whispered, his voice trembling with a manic, high-pitched fury. He stepped into the room, the fine shards of shattered glass crunching like bone under his designer shoes. "Zhou Qixian!"
His eyes landed on the metal pipe resting in the exact center of the wreckage. To Jin Rou, this wasn't just a tantrum or a simple act of vandalism, it was a loud, clear message. But his mind, warped by years of deep-seated paranoia, immediately twisted the truth into a narrative he could understand.
"You told him," Jin Rou hissed, his eyes darting wildly around the ruins of his life. "You went to Gu Yichen and told him to do this, didn't you? You used that S-tier Alpha monster to ruin me because you were too cowardly to face me yourself!" He let out a jagged, hysterical laugh that turned into a grimace as the migraine spiked.
"You think you're clever, hiding in that pathetic clinic while your 'protector' does your dirty work?" Jin Rou snarled at the empty, broken room, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. "I don't care if I have to burn resort to any means. I will take you, Qixian. And when I do, I'll make sure you're the one left to sweep up the broken pieces of your own life."
This battle was no longer about their reputations, inheritance, or business. For Jin Rou, it was humiliating, "I won't wait for another week just to tear you apart, I will tear you apart this week so that you can never step foot at the gala at the end of the month!"