Jing Pei turned her head, caught off guard by who she saw.

“Senior Zhou Qian.”

“Hello, Long Jin.” Zhou Qian gave her a weak smile and leaned against the railing. “Didn’t expect to run into you out here.”

He was nineteen this year, dressed in a white T-shirt, with silver-blue dyed hair and a lean, handsome build. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night; stubble had already surfaced along his jaw.

He had spent the entire night wandering outside instead of going home.

“Do you need something?” Jing Pei asked.

“I came to apologize. I’m sorry. Because of Long Ling, I misunderstood you before. If I was rude in any way, I really am sorry,” Zhou Qian said, looking ashamed.

Jing Pei looked at him in surprise, as if she couldn’t remember him ever doing anything rude to her. Zhou Qian’s face flushed red on the spot.

So she hadn’t noticed him at all. That only made him feel ridiculous.

As expected of Long Jin. She really did stay focused on her own path, never sparing a glance for the little self-directed dramas of people who looked down on her. No wonder his father and the other family heads cursed her one moment and praised her the next. For the past two days, every other sentence out of their mouths had been, Look at that one from the Long family, then look at the lot of you.

“I really envy you,” Zhou Qian said before he could stop himself. There was a faint weariness and melancholy beneath the envy. “You were born to lead, weren’t you? You’ve only been brought back for a few months, and you already handle everything with ease. If it were you, I think no matter what kind of family you inherited, you could still turn it around—cut away the rot and keep what matters.”

“Senior, aren’t you the Zhou family’s heir?” Jing Pei looked at him with a small smile, as if she could see straight through him. “And you’re already thinking about giving up before you’ve even begun?”

Zhou Qian froze.

Then the next thought hit him: how could she know? No matter what, she could never imagine what kind of great family the Zhou family really was. The Long family had gone two hundred years without producing an Atavist and had been kicked out of the great atavist families. Their power and prestige had plummeted—and maybe that was a blessing in disguise. Otherwise, who could say the Long family wouldn’t have become another Zhou family?

He wished the Zhou family had gone through the same thing.

Jing Pei glanced toward an advertisement billboard. “That Miss Zhou Yongzi is your younger sister, right? It’s rare for someone from an atavist family to become a celebrity.”

At least in Hualan, Zhou Yongzi was the only star born into an atavist family. That was one reason people paid so much attention to her.

The moment she brought up Zhou Yongzi, Zhou Qian’s expression made it clear he didn’t want to keep talking. Then Jing Pei added, “Aren’t you Snake Atavists? Why did her eyes mutate into that?”

“Sorry. I’ve got something to do—I should go.” Zhou Qian straightened at once. Not daring to meet Jing Pei’s eyes, he hurried away.

…

The Zhou family.

Zhou Yikai had suffered from insomnia the night before. He didn’t finally fall asleep until after six in the morning, missed lunch entirely, then jolted awake from a nightmare and sprang upright in bed, drenched in sweat. Panicked, he reached for his wife—only to remember a beat later that she was away on a business trip and not home.

Still shaken, he got up, washed, and went out intending to walk in the garden and clear his head in the cool mountain air.

Instead, he ran into Zhou Yongzi again.

She was sitting on a swing bench, rocking back and forth. A middle-aged woman was kneeling on the ground, kowtowing to her, while a young man beside her cried and tried to pull her up. Quite a few members of the Zhou family stood around watching.

“Auntie, it’s not that I don’t want to forgive him,” Zhou Yongzi said in that lovely voice of hers. The malice in it was so thick it made even that beautiful voice sound grating. “But just look at his attitude. Doesn’t seem like he knows he did anything wrong.”

“He knows he was wrong, I promise he does,” the woman pleaded. “That day he acted on impulse and said things he didn’t mean. He wasn’t sincere. Xiaozi, please, show mercy and forgive him, all right?”

“Oh? He really knows he was wrong, then? Brother?” Zhou Yongzi turned to the young man with a smiling face.

The young man looked at his mother. In the end, he gritted his teeth and abandoned his pride. “I was wrong.”

“Hahaha, that’s more like it.” Zhou Yongzi beamed. “I was only playing around with your girlfriend. Who knew she’d be that fragile? One shove and she ended up in a vegetative state. Calling me vicious over that was way too much. And you’re still holding a grudge now—you were glaring at me just a moment ago.”

He hadn’t glared at her at all. He’d even gone out of his way to avoid her. She was picking a fight on purpose.

The young man’s fists clenched so tightly his palms were already slick with blood. Faced with his mother’s pleading eyes, all he could say was, “I went too far. Please forgive me.”

“Fine. Since Brother apologized, I’ll forgive you.” Zhou Yongzi sounded satisfied. “I’ll tell Father to send someone else to guard the mausoleum.”

The mausoleum held the buried dead of the Zhou family, and only a tiny handful of relatives knew where the family graveyard actually was. That was a safeguard the proud great atavist families had put in place to keep their atavist genes from being stolen. Those genes were tenacious; even after cremation, they could still be extracted from ashes for a certain period of time. They had to wait for them to fade on their own.

So anyone sent there would be blindfolded and have their ears blocked on the way in. There was no internet inside the mausoleum grounds, no one else around, only a special phone that could contact the Zhou family and no one else, used solely to report whether anything out of the ordinary had happened there.

In the Zhou family, the closer your blood ties to the family head, the greater your power—and the tighter your hold over the rest of the clan.

This young man wasn’t afraid of spending the rest of his life guarding the mausoleum alone. But his mother would never allow that to happen. She would even kneel and beg for him.

The mausoleum…

Zhou Yikai’s heart contracted. Back then, they had forced him to choose in exactly the same way: guard the mausoleum, or trick his girlfriend into coming to the house.

As a child, he had once been sent there for the experience. It had only lasted a week, but it left a wound in his mind. He never wanted to go back to that place again, never wanted to endure that kind of loneliness—the sort that could drive a person mad. Let alone think about how many years they might leave him there if he refused to obey.

So he had made that choice.

He didn’t want to die.

They forced me into it.

Zhou Yongzi was about to keep tormenting the mother and son when one of the Zhou family members watching from the side spoke up to distract her. “Why isn’t the family head up yet today? Or did he already go out?”

Another person coughed, as if hinting at something. The atmosphere instantly turned strange.

Zhou Yongzi shot them an odd look, but she caught on almost at once. Her face tightened for a split second. She leaped off the swing, forgot all about the kneeling mother and son, and strode away.

Elsewhere, the head of the Zhou family was emerging from a side courtyard. He was in his fifties. Though he was an Atavist, he didn’t do much of anything anymore and had the protruding belly of a middle-aged man. He straightened his clothes, looking satisfied, then told a maid to go in and clean the room.

The maid’s face stayed blank. Once inside, she began tidying the mess scattered all over the floor, without sparing an extra glance for the young woman lying on the bed with deadened eyes.

The woman looked very young, cool-featured and elegant. She was the family head’s newest favorite. He had only caught sight of her once on the street and immediately wanted her. She was an outstanding university student at a prestigious school, taken just a month ago. He was still in the stage where everything felt fresh, so sleeping until noon was only natural.

Not long after the family head left, two members of the Zhou family peered into the courtyard from outside, their eyes full of hunger.

“Wonder when Big Brother’s finally going to get tired of this one. It’s already been a month.”

“He’s still not tired of her after a month? The way she tastes…”

They looked at each other and grinned. It was disgusting.

They hadn’t been gone long before Zhou Yongzi stormed over. The maid outside the courtyard only dared make the faintest attempt to stop her before letting her in.

“I’d like to see what little slut is seducing my dad this time.”

Very soon, the sounds of fists and kicks came from the room, along with a woman’s crying and pleas for mercy.

The impassive maid’s expression shifted at last. This wasn’t the first time Zhou Yongzi had beaten one of the women the family head had taken by force. A person like her had no sense of restraint. She hit as hard as she pleased, until she felt satisfied. Even if she beat someone to death, the family head would do no more than scold her a little and still treasure her like the apple of his eye.

The maid hesitated. If she went to get the family head, he might stop it—but Zhou Yongzi would definitely retaliate against her afterward. And her whole family served the Zhou household. They all lived here. If anything went wrong, she might drag them down with her.

What was she supposed to do?

Then she spotted Zhou Qian in the distance. Her eyes lit up at once, and she waved to him urgently.

That alone was enough for Zhou Qian to know what had happened. His face darkened and he ran over.

By then, the woman inside had suffered multiple fractures. Blood dripped from her nose and the corner of her mouth; she was barely conscious. Yet Zhou Yongzi still bent to pick up a shard from the floor, intending to slash her face.

Zhou Qian grabbed her wrist and hauled her away in one swift motion, dragging her outside and flinging her into the courtyard.

“What are you doing?!” Zhou Yongzi snapped in fury, hurriedly touching her own face in case she’d been scratched anywhere.

“I should be asking you that,” Zhou Qian shot back. “You come back and start trouble the second you arrive. Can’t you ever just stop?”

“So what if I can’t?” Zhou Yongzi scrambled up from the ground and shouted, “Don’t think the family head is yours just because your atavist purity is high. It’s still anyone’s game. Who are you putting on this hypocritical act for? Who have you ever managed to save? If you hate it so much, then get out! Go on, try yelling at Dad for once!”

Zhou Qian’s face turned ugly.

That was all it took to make Zhou Yongzi feel better. She gave a cold snort and turned to leave.

Zhou Qian went back inside. The maid had already wrapped the woman’s body in a blanket. He lifted her into his arms and hurried her to the family doctor.

Maybe it was that act alone that gave the woman a sliver of hope. Clutching at his collar, she begged weakly, “Save me… I want to leave this place…”

She was brought here against her will. She had been forced. For the past month she had been locked here, unable to leave even a single step.

Pain flashed across Zhou Qian’s face. He pressed his lips together and said nothing.

She wasn’t the first.

There had even been some men who suffered the same fate. Some people in the family cared about neither sex nor propriety; others simply preferred the same sex. When they wanted someone, there were plenty of ways to get them.

Back when Zhou Qian had still been naive, he had secretly let a few people go. Nothing seemed to happen at home afterward, and he had thought that was the end of it.

Only later did he discover that those people had been captured again, locked up elsewhere, abused and ravaged.

One of the people he released had fled to another prefecture with his lover. Not long after, Zhou Qian saw the news: both had drowned at sea.

Was it really an accident?

The thought filled him with misery.

When no answer came, the woman understood. She stopped begging, lay on the hospital bed with the face of the dead, and let the doctor treat her as bottomless despair closed around her.

After the doctor and nurses finished treating her, they chatted outside.

“I heard there’s some kind of information broker…”

“Like the ones you see on TV?”

“Stronger than the TV kind, probably. If they can get that kind of information… honestly, I’m starting to wonder whether they’ve got people around us…”

…

Chu Xusheng stopped in front of a street stall and looked at the sunglasses hanging there. The quality at places like this was poor, but they were cheap. His eyes were far too conspicuous; he’d had no choice but to keep his head down the whole way.

The moment he looked up at the display, the stall owner caught sight of his face and his eyes and froze, then hurriedly stood to greet him.

“Which pair would you like?”

“…Can this one be any cheaper?” he asked, pointing at one pair.

“Sure. Fifteen yuan each, but I’ll let you have it for ten.” Having offered the discount, the owner finally dared ask, “Handsome guy, your eyes are really special.”

“Colored contacts,” Chu Xusheng said.

“Oh? Colored contacts? Then why are you buying sunglasses?”

Chu Xusheng put the sunglasses on and scanned the area with nervous vigilance. He was afraid the Zhou family would find him before he could get help from Jing Pei.

Last night, when he’d wanted to kill someone, his potential had exploded. He had somehow learned on instinct how to control his atavist power with remarkable precision. Now, maybe because he couldn’t focus as well, his control was slipping, or else he wouldn’t need sunglasses at all.

He pulled a wad of crumpled bills from his pocket, paid, and left in a hurry, not noticing the young man on a little stool behind the stall owner lifting his phone and secretly taking a picture of him.

…

Zhou Yongzi hadn’t enjoyed getting under Zhou Qian’s skin for very long before a call from her manager darkened her face all over again.

She looked at the photo her manager sent.

It had been taken in secret. a beautiful handsome boy was standing there studying a row of sunglasses hung on a wall. His eyes shimmered with seven-colored light, dreamlike in a way no pair of colored contacts could ever imitate.

After the person who took the photo posted it online, it very quickly started gaining traction. Fortunately, her manager spotted it in time, bought the photo from the person who took it, and had it deleted before it drew even more attention.

Those eyes were too distinctive—and exactly the same as Zhou Yongzi’s.

At the time, people online had been guessing whether he was related to her, especially since the two of them did look somewhat alike.

Wasn’t it obvious?

This had to be family of that bitch baker.

The one who’d tried to set a trap to murder her on the stage of Good Morning, Hualan was probably him.

Zhou Yongzi’s expression twisted. Her eyes blazed with jealousy and greed. The second she hung up, she immediately called several of the Zhou family’s retainers.

“I want you to find this person and bring him back before the end of today!”

She would never allow a second person with eyes like that to exist in this world.

And he had two of them.

Perfect. She could dig them out and put them in her own sockets.

Then everything would finally be perfect.