LBC |Love Beyond Control/Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Xin Yuan fell into that familiar nightmare again.

In the dream, he was sitting in a car, while his mother, ignoring his attempts to stop her, rushed off the highway and sped wildly along a rural path.

Because he had to make it to the last audition.

The details that followed played out once more. Xin Yuan even remembered that the weather had been very nice that day, sunlight falling through the window onto his side. Under his mother’s orders, he was reviewing the script again.

Suddenly, there was a sharp screech of brakes.

The car body spun violently one hundred and eighty degrees. Under the fierce impact, everything before his eyes turned into blurry shadows, and he could only see the windshield instantly splattered with vivid red blood.

Xin Yuan’s soul seemed to be suspended in midair. For the countless time, he stared fixedly at the shattered car window, trying to make out the victim’s face through the cracks.

Yet no matter how hard he tried, he could only see two vague bodies lying in a pool of blood.

“What are you calling? Are you crazy!”

His mother, with blood all over her hands, screamed as she rushed over and knocked his phone away. “Idiot! No one can know about this, or else we’re all finished!”

No…

It couldn’t be!!

Xin Yuan struggled desperately, but when he tore himself out of the nightmare, all that remained around him was the empty room.

The warmth beside him had already turned cold, as if no one had ever been there.

Xin Yuan was covered in cold sweat. It took him a while before he could sit up. He pulled over the corner of the blanket that still carried Xiang Zhufeng’s scent and held it tightly in his arms. Then, suddenly, he heard Xiang Zhufeng’s words from last night again in his ears:

On the day he and XinHui got engaged, Xin Jianye would officially give him a seat on Hanhai Group’s board of directors.

Their long-planned scheme was only one last step away from success.

“Teacher Xin Yuan, please try it. With silicone this thick, will there be a stinging sensation in the arm?”

“Teacher Xin Yuan…?”

The prop master called out several times before Xin Yuan finally snapped back from Xiang Zhufeng’s words.

“Thanks for your trouble, this is fine.”

Xin Yuan smoothly shifted back into a smile, took the silver needle from the staff member, and stabbed it into the wrist with the fake skin already applied.

The drama being filmed now, Duanya Xing, was Xin Yuan’s first historical drama where he carried the whole production on his own.

The male lead he played, Chi Ruoyuan, appeared to be a weak and useless prisoner, but in truth he was a highly capable pharmacist. In order to avenge the destruction of his family, he had been staying in the enemy country all along.

Today’s scene was the part where Chi Ruoyuan deliberately pricked himself with needles in order to deceive the enemy’s informants and keep his pulse weak.

Under the camera, Chi Ruoyuan wore a white robe. With his fair hand, he pinched up the silver needle and inserted it one by one into his acupoints. His movements were ruthless, as if he could not feel pain at all. But when he reached a certain point, the tightly restrained expression on his face finally cracked, and then he coughed up a large mouthful of blood.

Veins bulged on Chi Ruoyuan’s forehead. His thin body trembled continuously from the muffled coughing, yet he still continued expressionlessly, until his pulse returned to near nothing. Only then did he collapse beside the bed, covered in cold sweat.

“Cut!”

The director’s satisfied voice rang out through the walkie-talkie. “Good, good, very good. Congratulations to Teacher Xin Yuan for another one-take!”

Although the set was noisy, Xin Yuan still firmly controlled everyone’s emotions. Even the straight-laced stagehand big brother, who had a steel-straight temper, could not help but feel sorry for him.

Xin Yuan’s rise to fame had been unbelievably fast, so the rumors swirling around him were always more outrageous than the last. But as long as someone had personally interacted with Xin Yuan, not one of them would say he was bad.

Even the stagehand who had originally been a fan of Xin Yuan’s “rival” now had stars in his eyes. “Teacher, you’ve worked hard. Let’s go rest for a bit first, we’re about to start the next scene soon, okay?”

The next few scenes did not have much dialogue. They mainly involved Chi Ruoyuan being humiliated and then beaten by servants after being locked in the woodshed.

Xiaonuan tentatively suggested finding a stand-in, but as expected, Xin Yuan still refused, and she could only secretly report it to Xiang Zhufeng.

Xin Yuan had always felt that he could not really be called passionate about acting. It was just that since he had played this role, he had a duty to interpret it with everything he had.

After tidying up the script, Xin Yuan habitually looked at his phone. After casually scrolling for a few seconds, his expression immediately changed.

“Brother Yuan, what’s wrong?”

Xiaonuan was still confused, but Xin Yuan had already hurriedly taken off his wig and costume and stood up to leave.

“Huh? Brother Yuan, we’re about to start filming. Where are you going…!?”

The sky darkened without warning, and dark clouds that seemed ready to collapse hung over the horizon, pressing down until it was hard to breathe.

On the suburban road, the lights on both sides flickered on and off. Just as the road ahead was about to narrow into a smaller intersection, the driver finally could not help asking, “Young man, are we driving this way?”

There was no response.

Summoning his courage, the driver glanced at the rearview mirror.

The young man in the back seat wore a cap and a mask, so his face could not be seen clearly, but it was obvious that he was trembling slightly.

“Young man, are you feeling unwell? Are you sure you want to keep going?”

Xin Yuan dug his nails hard into his palm, forcing himself to steady his trembling voice. “I’m sure, keep driving.”

The increasingly narrow path seemed to overlap with the nightmare. As the car jolted, he seemed to see two people outside the window, following along and repeatedly slapping the glass, crying out for someone to save them.

“Is this Dongwen Village No. 37? See if this is the place.”

The driver stopped at the desolate intersection, his heart full of fear. If that strange man had not directly transferred 1,000 yuan the moment he got in, he would never have come to this ghostly place even if he died.

Xin Yuan struggled to focus his eyes. At that moment, a sudden cry for help rang out from the mouth of the alley by the roadside.

That sound was like a silver needle, stabbing him awake from the illusion in an instant.

Xin Yuan endured the dizziness and stumbled into the alley entrance.

However, before he had run a few steps, his shoulder suddenly sank, and someone pressed him down from behind.

“Well, I didn’t expect you to come quite fast?”

Xin Yuan’s steps halted. Borrowing the faint moonlight, he saw that four burly men were standing in the narrow alley entrance.

At the men’s feet, a middle-aged man and woman were kneeling.

“Xiao Yuan, run, don’t worry about us…”

The woman shook her head frantically. Before she could finish speaking, someone kicked her to the ground again.

“Let her go!”

Xin Yuan wanted to rush over, but his shoulder was pinned down tightly, and he could not move at all.

“You’re that legendary big star?”

The man held a spiked iron rod and circled around to stand before Xin Yuan. “Then you must be very rich.”

“He’s rich, he’s rich!”

The man kneeling on the ground had blood all over his face. Howling, he crawled to Xin Yuan’s feet. “Xin Yuan, please, save Uncle. Uncle really has no choice. If I don’t pay them back, they’re going to take my and your Aunt Fen’s lives!”

Xin Yuan stared at the man at the front. “How much do you want?”

“Xiao Yuan, you can’t give them any more money. Zhou Wei will never change. Don’t come here and meddle with me again…!”

Aunt Fen had not even finished the latter half of her sentence before someone clamped a hand tightly over her mouth again.

“Three million.”

The man at the front did not want to make things too big. “As long as you transfer the money, we’ll let them go immediately.”

“I can give you five million.”

Not far away, another voice suddenly sounded without warning.

Xin Yuan froze for a few seconds. Turning back in disbelief, he actually saw Xiang Zhufeng standing behind him.

“…You?” Xin Yuan’s voice was trembling uncontrollably. “Why are you here?”

Xiang Zhufeng did not answer. He pulled Xin Yuan behind him in one motion, looked at the man at the front, and said, “But for the extra two million, you’ll need to work a little harder and make sure Zhou Wei can never owe another debt again.”

“What did you say?!”

Zhou Wei froze for two seconds. Not knowing Xiang Zhufeng, he could only point at Xin Yuan and curse furiously, “Xin Yuan! You fucking ingrate! If it weren’t for us back then, you’d have been dead long ago! Now that you’ve got some success, you’re even finding people to harm me instead!”

Xiang Zhufeng ignored him completely, casually took out a bank card, and threw it onto the ground. “This is the deposit.”

Xin Yuan still wanted to say something, but Xiang Zhufeng had already silently pulled him away.

Zhou Wei could tell that Xiang Zhufeng was not an ordinary person. Knowing that he could not escape this disaster, his eyes darkened, and then he suddenly shook off the man behind him and charged straight at Xin Yuan.

In the darkness, no one saw when Zhou Wei had gotten a knife in his hand. Only Xie Fen rushed up at the first moment and held Zhou Wei’s leg tightly.

But Zhou Wei had already gone completely red-eyed. He actually twisted the blade around directly and slashed straight at Xie Fen.

“Watch out!”

Xin Yuan watched the blade draw a silver line through the air. With no time to think at all, he instinctively broke free of Xiang Zhufeng and threw himself back.

Time seemed to slow down a hundredfold. One ten-thousandth of a second before the blade was about to land, Xin Yuan finally hugged Xie Fen and used his back to take the blow.

Everything after that became long and blurry. Xin Yuan felt as if someone had been talking to him the whole time, but he could not hear anything clearly.

When he opened his eyes again, the familiar smell of disinfectant had already surrounded him.

He blinked sluggishly. Just as his vision focused again, he met a cold gaze.

“…Mom?”

Xin Yuan tried to speak, but his throat felt as if it had been scraped by a knife, and he could only make out a hoarse breath.

“You still have the nerve to call me Mom?”

He Ye clenched her teeth. As if avoiding the people outside the ward door, she lowered her voice. “You think that now that you’ve become so capable, you can do whatever you want, is that it?”

He Ye’s eyes were red, and she looked ready to drag Xin Yuan straight out of the hospital bed. “You disappeared from the set without saying a word, fine, but you even dared to secretly go to that kind of place to find Xie Fen behind my back! If Xiaonuan had not found Xiang Zhufeng in time and followed the surveillance footage all the way to find you, how much bigger of a mess were you going to make for me!?”

Xin Yuan let out a faint, colorless bitter smile.

Why could he never remember the lesson?

Just moments ago, he had still felt a trace of joy because his mother was coming, but it turned out that, whether in the past or now, the one his mother had never worried about was him.

The wound on his back throbbed with pain. Xin Yuan endured it and squeezed out a few syllables from his throat. “…Is Aunt Fen okay?”

He Ye gave a cold laugh. “She’s fine. It’s just a pity that from now on, I won’t give you any chance to see her again.”

Xin Yuan had no doubt about He Ye’s words at all, and immediately panicked. “What right do you have to do this?”

“What right?” He Ye seemed to have heard some huge joke. She laughed for a long while before asking back, “I should be the one asking you what right you have!”

“I used up so much effort to pull you out of that mud-like place, but what about you? Not only did you repeatedly go behind my back to find her, you also kept secretly helping a gambling addict like Zhou Wei pay off debts! Why are you so despicable, Xin Yuan?”

“Because without her, I’d already be dead now.”

Xin Yuan looked at the ceiling, calm as if he were talking about someone else’s business. “When I had a fever and was sick, she took me to the hospital overnight. When someone came to make trouble at home, it was she who desperately protected me. Even when I was called a bastard by others, she was the one who stood up for me. But where were you during all that time? Spending the night in different men’s beds?”

For a moment, He Ye could hardly believe what she had heard. Only after a while did she grab Xin Yuan by the collar and say in a trembling voice, “Say that again!?”

Xin Yuan’s gaze did not even flicker. He only gave a self-mocking laugh.

That contempt completely set He Ye off. She screamed hysterically:

“Xin Yuan! If it weren’t for you, I never would have had to live this kind of life! I am low, I am shameless, but everything you have now was exchanged for by me sleeping with different men!!”

“You did it for yourself!”

Xin Yuan finally exploded. He struggled upright from the hospital bed. The wound on his back instantly seeped blood, but he seemed to have lost all sense of pain. Straightening his body, he looked at He Ye:

“Every day I wore a mask and lived like a puppet, living step by step into the person you and Xin Jianye wanted me to become according to your design! But did you ever care how I felt? Did you ever ask me what I really wanted?!”

The moment he finished speaking, He Ye’s slap came down hard as well.

Five red fingerprints instantly appeared on Xin Yuan’s pale face.

In the vast room, only Xin Yuan’s muffled groan could be heard as he forcefully held it back. After a long while, He Ye spoke again.

“Yes, you’re right, I did it for myself.”

Her voice suddenly became very light, very slow, and in a volume only Xin Yuan could hear, she said:

“For so many years, haven’t you always regretted not being able to tell the truth back then?”

“If you really don’t care about everything now, then go hold a press conference. Go tell those media outlets that you, the dignified big star, the only son of the Xin family, are actually just a bastard born from a prostitute, and not only that, your mother is also the murderer who caused a hit-and-run and found someone to take the blame.”

“And you are the number one accomplice who helped me give false testimony.”

Xin Yuan blinked his empty eyes, and two lines of tears fell unconsciously.

“What, after so many years, you still can’t do it?”

He Ye sneered twice. Bending down, she gently brushed away Xin Yuan’s tears with her fingertips. “Since you can’t bear it and you can’t do it, then behave and be my puppet, and keep your mouth tightly shut forever.”

Xin Yuan often thought that this world had once treated his mother too unfairly, which was why she harbored so much hatred.

But if his mother had to choose the person she hated most, it would definitely be him.

Because of him, his mother’s life had been dragged down into what it was now.

Xin Yuan’s throat was full of the taste of blood. He could no longer tell whether that was the wound He Ye had torn open, or the flesh and blood inside him that had been ground to pieces over and over.

Before leaving the ward, He Ye raised her head, wiped away her own tears, and once again became the elegant, generous Mrs. Xin in the eyes of outsiders.

On her face, which looked no older than thirty-nine, there was almost no trace of time, and of course, there was also no emotion a mother should have when facing her child.

“Listen carefully, Xin Yuan. From the moment you changed your surname to Xin, your life was no longer your own.”

“I won’t let anyone block my path upward, including you.”

The moment the ward door was slammed shut, through the crack in the door, Xin Yuan saw Xiang Zhufeng’s figure.