Su Feifei had never dared go out alone. Ever since her mother died ten years ago, the shadow of fear had been planted in her, and from that day forward she had dreamed of someone who could protect her — someone at her side who could make her truly stop being afraid. She had lived through too many close calls to fully trust even the bodyguards around her, always half-expecting that one day her luck would run out. And in these past days at Ye Tianxie’s house, having witnessed his freakish strength, she had been exhausted every day and yet inwardly more at ease than she had ever been in her life. That ease was something she had become addicted to, greedy for… And he had told her that as long as she didn’t set foot outside the house, even an assassin couldn’t touch her.

She believed what her own eyes had seen that night, so she believed what he said — and she believed her father. When a man as shrewd as her father was willing to pay three hundred million and pull every bodyguard away, what was left to doubt or fear?

So when Ye Tianxie gave her that seemingly joking warning, she knew perfectly well that someone was watching her from the shadows, and that the scene she had lived through countless times was about to play out again. But this time, strangely, she felt no fear at all — only a faint, rising excitement… an anticipation of what would happen next. Precisely because scenes like this had terrified her so many times before, she longed to watch a threat like this be effortlessly crushed in front of her, so that the shadow of fear that had weighed on her for years could finally be wiped away.

Since Ye Tianxie hadn’t suggested going out, Su Feifei had obediently stayed indoors these past days for her own safety, spending every day scrubbing every corner of the place, as though setting up a new home of her own.

Stepping out the door, she let out a small cry and breathed in the free, clean air outside with greedy delight, without a thought spared for any danger that might be coming. She had made her choice and placed her trust; being afraid on top of that would be a disservice to herself.

“Wow! I’ve been in your house so long I’d forgotten how good the air outside smells. I have no idea how you survived in there.” Su Feifei breathed with her eyes closed, not forgetting to get a couple of jabs in. Then she turned around. “Go bring the car around. This young lady intends to have a proper day out… whose fault is it that this young lady is in a bad mood?”

Ye Tianxie stepped up beside her and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t have a car.”

“Hm? You can afford a villa like this and you don’t have money for a car?” Su Feifei’s face was a picture of astonishment.

“Can’t drive.” Ye Tianxie admitted it honestly, a little embarrassed.

“You can’t drive?” Su Feifei wrinkled her nose and muttered, “Seriously? A grown man who can’t drive. You’re practically an endangered species.”

“I really can’t,” Ye Tianxie reiterated.

“Then how do you manage when you have to travel somewhere far?”

“I never travel far.”

Su Feifei: “…”

Thoroughly out of words, Su Feifei produced a small wine-red phone and dialed a number. The instant it connected, she barked into it in her best young-mistress voice. “Uncle Seven, bring my car over right now… Which one? Whichever, it doesn’t matter, just hurry! To where I’m living now… Ten minutes, or I’ll have my father docking your pay!”

She snapped the phone shut, pursed her lips at Ye Tianxie, and complained, “You should have mentioned you had no car earlier. You weren’t planning to make this young lady walk into the city, were you?”

“You didn’t ask… We could take the bus,” Ye Tianxie offered, entirely innocent.

“Absolutely not. I hear people grope you on buses.”

Ye Tianxie couldn’t help letting his eyes flick to Su Feifei’s legs, and had to admit… if they actually took a bus, every animal on board would go for it without a second thought, fully aware they’d be slapped for it.

Tianyuan Estate, as the most opulent residential district in Jinghua City, was home exclusively to the wealthiest of the wealthy. And super-rich men of that order tended not to have idle hands. Money, to them, was a number; they would never lack it again for the rest of their lives — but that certainly didn’t mean they stopped chasing it. What they enjoyed wasn’t the swelling of their assets but the earning, and the process of grinding down their competitors — along with prestige and reputation.

So Tianyuan Estate was even quieter than an ordinary residential district. At a glance, apart from the security guards on patrol, there was hardly a soul moving anywhere.

While Su Feifei and Ye Tianxie were waiting for the car, a man in a well-cut suit came hurrying over, his expression harried. Seeing the two of them standing outside, he made straight for them. “Excuse me, could you tell me where Villa No. 19 is—”

In a heartbeat, he pulled a knife no longer than a finger from his waist and slashed at Su Feifei’s throat.

He was a reasonably professional assassin. Before striking, his clothing, his expression, his eyes, his bearing had been disguised without a single flaw — and he had made his move mid-sentence, at the precise moment when a listener’s attention is engaged and their guard instinctively drops…

Thud!

A dull impact. The assassin, his knife barely out, was struck by an enormous force. He let out a grunt and flew off like a dead leaf, sailing more than ten meters before tumbling across the ground and finally coming to a stop, motionless.

When an ordinary person kicks another, the result is pain and a brief interruption of their movement. Kicking someone hard enough to send them flying is already a rare sight — and kicking a man that far is something you’d expect only in a martial arts film or a work of science fiction.

Fearless as Su Feifei had become with Ye Tianxie there, the sudden thrust of that dagger still drained the color from her face. The strike and the kick that answered it had come almost simultaneously; she had barely broken out in a cold sweat before the man was already airborne.

Su Feifei had been through this sort of thing far more than once or twice, and had built up a certain tolerance. She patted her violently rising chest, didn’t bother sparing a glance for the wretched assassin, and looked up at Ye Tianxie with two bright eyes full of excited little stars. “Wow! Tianxie, you’re amazing — you knocked him that far with one kick… Tianxie? What’s wrong?”

Ye Tianxie was staring blankly at his own hand, an expression of stunned vacancy on his face, as though he’d seen something inexplicable, something he couldn’t quite believe.

I put less than two-tenths of my strength into that kick. It should have sent him a few meters at most. Where did that much force come from…? What’s going on? When did my strength jump to this level — and how did I not notice?

Hearing Su Feifei call his name, he glanced at the assassin, whose condition was anyone’s guess, and said with a lowered brow, “They want you dead? Given your position, you shouldn’t have blood feuds with anyone. Shouldn’t what you face be kidnappings, to leverage your father? Why are they trying to kill you?”

As Ye Tianxie understood it, frequent kidnapping attempts made perfect sense for someone in Su Feifei’s position. She had an obscenely wealthy father; people would take her for ransom, and competitors would target her to force Su Luo’s hand… But that assassin just now had plainly been trying to take her life outright.

Why kill her? What does anyone gain from her death?… Has the environment Su Feifei lived in all this time really been full of assassination attempts like that?

A flash of deep grief and pain crossed Su Feifei’s face before she buried it. She wanted to laugh it off the way she usually did, but thinking of the years behind her, she found she couldn’t produce a laugh at all. She said, bitterly, “What did you think…? I go through assassinations like that several times a month. I’m used to it. My father is a ruthless man — if he weren’t, he wouldn’t be where he is today. A great many people have been bankrupted because of him, left with nothing, their families torn apart… And with nothing left to live for, all they have left is revenge, and their revenge concentrates on me. They want me dead, so my father suffers… And then there are my so-called uncles and aunts. My father has only one daughter; if he were gone, everything would pass to me… but if I died, his fortune would go to those uncles and aunts, or to their children. So they have always, always wanted me dead. My father and I both know it perfectly well, and we can never find the evidence, never find the crack… Why do you think I was frightened every single day? Why do you think I threw away my dignity to move in with you? Why do you think I set everything aside just to earn your approval…? I only want to feel at ease. If I could stop living under this shadow, I’d rather have nothing at all. I’d rather my father were an ordinary laborer.”

Something struck Ye Tianxie hard. Survive. She’d said she was surviving, not living. To live is to strive for something better. To survive is only to keep breathing.

The shadow on her heart and the scars on it came open together as she spoke, and her voice grew quieter and quieter. When she turned her face away, her eyes were already brimming. “I don’t hate my father. But I hate that I was born into a family like this.”

Everything she’d experienced since childhood had made safety matter more to her than anything else. And that night, when she watched Ye Tianxie take bullets with his body and dispatch four kidnappers in the blink of an eye, a fierce longing had caught fire in her… the longing to stay at his side and be protected by him. A longing no one could understand without having lived it.

These past days at his house, tiring as they’d been, were the most relaxed and unburdened stretch of years. From her very first day there she had felt as though she’d stepped into another world — a world where fear no longer existed. Which was why she treated him almost the way one treats someone whose favor one is desperate to win…

And it was only today, seeing it with his own eyes, that Ye Tianxie understood just how heavy a shadow she had been living under.

(End of Chapter 126)