Cold, bone-chilling cold.
Ji Yuenián tried to struggle up in a daze, only to find her entire body tightly bound by thick hemp ropes, unable to move an inch.
Her clothes felt as if they had shrunk, clinging tightly to her and making it nearly impossible to breathe—especially her full chest, which was pressed so hard it ached unbearably.
“Mm…”
She breathed with difficulty, a weak and stifled groan escaping her lips. Forcing her eyes open, she found the surroundings shrouded in darkness, only able to vaguely sense that she was tied to a chair.
Creak—
At that moment, the door suddenly swung open, and a beam of light slipped in. Accompanied by steady, powerful footsteps, Jiang Chi walked in carrying a glass of water. The faint light from behind cast his silhouette, reflecting a slightly deranged outline.
“Big Boss Ji, how are you feeling now?” He strode to Ji Yuenián’s side, his long, clean hand grasping her elegant, delicate chin. His gaze was full of playful danger.
“Jiang… Jiang Chi.” Ji Yuenián struggled to open her mouth, but her throat was parched to the extreme, her words faltering.
She had no idea how long she’d slept. On top of that, the meatball soup she had before had a lot of salted vegetables, making her throat now feel as dry as the earth under the scorching summer sun.
“Thirsty?” A glass of ice water was brought to her lips.
Ji Yuenián swallowed with difficulty, nodding slightly.
“That’s good.” Jiang Chi’s lips curled in a graceful smile, then he offered her the ice water.
The cold sensation slid down her throat and into her chest. Ji Yuenián gulped down the entire glass of water greedily, finally feeling the burning in her throat ease a little.
“How is it? Feeling better?” the man said next.
Ji Yuenián licked her lips, lifting her eyes with effort. “You… what do you want?”
“Of course, I want to save my Qingchan.” The man replied as if it were only natural. Meanwhile, he reached into his pocket and, when he pulled his hand out, a silver coin glinted in his palm.
He looked at Ji Yuenián, smiling faintly. “Now, our Big Boss Ji, allow me to ask you a few questions.”
“What is this?”
One second, two seconds, three seconds… A whole minute passed, yet Ji Yuenián still gave no answer. The faint smile vanished from the man’s face, replaced by a chill.
“Our Big Boss Ji seems to prefer refusing the toast only to be forced to drink it.”
“……” Ji Yuenián remained silent.
She still couldn’t figure out where she’d slipped up and revealed her real identity, but under the current circumstances—especially with Jiang Chi’s deranged aura and the undisguised anger and hatred in his eyes—
For the first time, Ji Yuenián realized that deceiving this “little guy” might really backfire, and she might even be in mortal danger.
After a moment’s hesitation, she spoke:
“Well… Calm down first, let’s talk this out. I didn’t mean to deceive you, I’m willing to apologize, to compensate, to pay the price.”
“Jiang Chi, our families have been close friends for years. We can’t ruin our business cooperation over a small matter like this.”
“Besides… I’m the second young master of the Ji family. If something happens to me, my dad and big brother will never stop investigating.”
“You’re still young, don’t go down the path of crime.”
“Second young master? What second young master?”
The man’s previously icy expression suddenly broke into laughter when he heard this, laughing until tears nearly streamed from his eyes, his waist bent from amusement.
“Big Boss Ji, haven’t you realized something’s off?”
“What’s off?” Ji Yuenián arched her beautiful dark brows. Suddenly, her expression turned wonderfully complicated, as if her face were a palette—surprise, fear, confusion, panic, shock, and anger, all intertwined at once.
All those complicated emotions contorted her features, making her look twisted and strange.
She stared fixedly at her own full, rounded chest, and shouted, “Wh—what the hell! How did I end up like this?!”
“Did you do this to me!” She glared at the man standing before her, her teeth grinding with fury, as if she wanted to bite him to pieces.
“Karma! Maybe this is karma!”
“What goes around comes around, you never escape!”
Jiang Chi only laughed louder, his laughter echoing around the basement, as if countless people were mocking her in unison, chilling to the bone.
After laughing to his fill, Jiang Chi was ready to get down to business. Since brute force didn’t work, he would try a combination of hard and soft tactics.
“I’ll ask one last time—tell me everything about the silver coin, and I’ll let you go afterward.”
“Otherwise…”
He spun the coin nimbly between his fingers, then slowly leaned in. His thin lips brushed Ji Yuenián’s ear, exhaling softly, causing a blush to rise on her pretty cheeks.
“I never imagined our Big Boss Ji would turn into such a charming woman after transforming!”
That restless hand ruthlessly kneaded those full curves, making the long-haired queenly beauty moan involuntarily.
“Tsk tsk, so this is what a real-life TS girl is like? Impressive. But I wonder how you taste inside~ Maybe I should find out~~”
He deliberately drew out his words, his tone full of teasing ambiguity, while the queenly beauty’s face instantly turned dreadful, mottled with blue and purple. Damn it! Jiang Chi is completely shameless—she’s a man, damn it!
But Jiang Chi’s words made Ji Yuenián waver a little. Compared to stubborn resistance, being locked up in a dark room, forcibly confined, or even—
If Jiang Chi, in his anger and shamelessness, turned her into a “cream puff,” his current proposal seemed the better option.
Most importantly, Ji Yuenián had no leverage to refuse.
If she refused now, who knows—Jiang Chi might really lose control and take her right then and there!
“Really?” she asked, with a trace of hesitation.
“On my honor,” he replied.
Ji Yuenián clenched her teeth, her heart pounding. “Fine, I’ll tell you. That silver coin is…”
Very quickly, she explained the coin’s origin and the functions she’d figured out to Jiang Chi, who listened intently, sometimes relaxing his brows, sometimes frowning, and sometimes looking doubtful.
When Ji Yuenián finished, she added, “I’m done. As we agreed, you’ll let me go now, right? I swear I won’t call the police afterward!”
“Heh…” The man chuckled lowly. “What do you think?”
She was stunned.
He straightened up, hands in his pockets, a posture of utter frankness. “I’m not letting you go. Your body belongs to my Qingchan.”
“Has your conscience been eaten by a dog!” Ji Yuenián didn’t understand the line “your body belongs to my Qingchan,” but it didn’t stop her from cursing him out.
“I don’t need to keep promises to trash,” Jiang Chi shrugged. “Besides, as someone who plays the financial market and harvests retail investors, my conscience disappeared a long time ago.”
Jiang Chi’s almost scoundrel-like demeanor drove Ji Yuenián mad. If she weren’t tied to the chair, she would have jumped up and punched him a couple times by now.
No matter how angry, frantic, or helpless Ji Yuenián grew, Jiang Chi’s face remained utterly calm, as if her emotions had nothing to do with him.
He patted the queenly beauty’s cheek and said gently, “Now, please go down.”
“I want to talk with my Qingchan.”
Silence. Silence. Dead silence.
The fury vanished from Ji Yuenián’s face as she looked at Jiang Chi, as if seeing him in a new light, her expression slightly odd. “You… what do you mean?”