Atlas Studios

  Atlas Studios

  Song Nianmu did not speak. She stared straight at him, not daring to believe what he had just said.

  “Let’s come to an agreement first. If you don’t agree to my conditions, I can send you back right now and the amount that your father owes, together with the interest, will all be settled today.”


  “However, if you agree to my conditions, we won’t need the interest that your father owes us anymore. We’d only need the principal sum, and it’ll be fine as long as it’s returned to us within a week. All I need is for you to obey every word I say unconditionally.”


  He said again, “You have to think about this carefully. You won’t be able to turn back once you’ve decided to follow me.”


  Song Nianmu nodded her head and Third Young Master smiled once. It was a smile that she could not describe. She had been habitually afraid of that type of smile in the first few years, as she had classified that type of smile as a Devil’s smile in her heart.

  It was really a scary smile that seemed to have come from hell.

  He took off his shirt and stood up. He looked down at Song Nianmu, who seemed exceptionally small under his feet as he folded his sleeves and said, “Then…… let me give you your first lesson right now.”


  He kicked Song Nianmu’s stomach with his strength and her body bounced towards a leg of the table opposite of her. She moaned in pain when she bumped into it, feeling as if her internal organs were all smashed to pieces. She could no longer stand up. The man opposite her picked her up like he was carrying a small chick and threw her down on the floor again. “You’ll be able to fight me openly in the future after surviving the first lesson. I will teach you the know-how so you can beat me in a fight.”


  He said to her as he hit her, “One more thing. You’re no longer to be called Song Nianmu in the future. You’ll be called Lina. She used to be a young girl by my side, though it’s a pity that she didn’t make it past 15. Theoretically, she’s your predecessor and you will be taking over her position in the future.”


  “I hope that you can survive past 18.” The man kicked her heavily again. She rolled to the other side of the floor and spat out a mouthful of blood.

  She felt that she was definitely going to die. If it was not so, how could breathing be so difficult? She no longer had the strength to protect her head as she desperately arched her body up on the floor like a dying shrimp.

  The amount of blood that she spat out increased as the blood dripped down her chin and onto her white dress. It continued to drip down onto the floor and she watched as the blood gathered under her and spread into patterns.

  Song Nianmu fell into unconsciousness. She thought that she would not be able to wake up again. However, she had survived. She woke up in a dark little room, lying on the icy cold floor without anything around her. The places where she was injured had been bandaged, though it still hurt.

  She was no longer Song Nianmu. Her current identify was Lina.

  Song Nianmu did not know how she survived the first two years. The majority of her memory seemed to be her getting hit, as pain was the only thing she felt in that two years. When she had first gotten her period at 12 years old, she had been beaten the next day. She would be hit by Third Young Master sometimes, and by other people at other times. They would make her hit them back as they hit her. She would give them a soft punch after she had gotten up, though those people would kick her straight away and make her kneel on the floor.

  She used a full two years to achieve a merciless fighting skill while her gaze had also became more sharp. The 13-year-old her was not even at the shoulders of those men, yet she had already learnt the fastest method to strike them down.

  Slowly, she was able to beat everyone that had hit her before. It was until that day when she finally punched Third Young Master on his stomach and saw him bowed and rubbing his stomach that she finally realized that she had actually survived so many days.

  “Congratulations. You can learn the second skill now. Follow it in the future.” Third Young Master said this to her before he left.

  From then onwards, she kept standing by his right side.

  The second skill that Third Young Master had mentioned was to make her learn how to maintain a different appearance in front of different people. At 14 years old, her body started to develop and she started to have the basic features of a woman. Third Young Master bought a lot of things for her and let her move into a big house. He hired teachers to teach her to play the piano and to paint. There were some times where Song Nianmu would feel like he was raising her like a daughter of a rich family.

  He was not, however. The daughter of a rich family would not be brought to a club, would not be forced to drink and would not have to hear other people around her saying, “This young girl is really pretty.” She secretly held in the disgust felt when they were quietly touching her body.

  If she was the daughter of a rich family, she would not be taken to the various social gatherings. She would not have been made to learn all the different types of superficial smiles and would not be made to linger amongst fat men that held onto wine glasses all year round to flatter them and extract their secrets.

  Her age was her biggest disguise. The pure and innocent smile that she wore on her face had seemingly enchanted all the men as they quietly touched her body in obscure places. Song Nianmu would lure them into her trap and make them obsessed with her and follow her so that they would do anything she wanted them to.

  On the surface, those men were perfectly normal businessmen. However, under the blurry and beautiful lights in the clubs at night, they would change into a completely different persona. They liked younger girls. The younger the girls were, the better. Those men liked to smell a type of smell of youth that had been long gone from them.

  She had managed to accomplish many things for the Third Young Master because of these men. Yet, it was also because of these men that she would strip herself bare every time she came back and soak herself in the bath for a very long time.

  Third Young Master said, “If you have the ability to make those men do what I’d told you to obediently without touching your body, you can do anything you want with them afterwards, as long as you don’t kill them.”


  She did not know how she did everything in these few years either. She had never let any of those men really touch her. She had mastered every type of expression in order to achieve this, especially her smile. Those people were willing to do anything once she smiled.

  Slowly, people started to know that Third Young Master had a delicate beauty with him and anyone would be smitten by her when she smiled. However, not many people dared to really touch her, because she was Third Young Master’s.

  However, Song Nianmu knew that it was not like this. She barely conversed with Third Young Master. She would always bow her head slightly as she stood on the right side behind Third Young Master whenever they were alone. It was always Third Young Master instructing her about her missions and him telling her whatever was necessary for them.

  Slowly, she was 15 years old. When other 15-year-old girls were probably still pouting at their parents so that they would buy them pretty clothes, she was already used to smiling coyly in front of different men. She was used to not speaking and not batting an eyelash when she fought. She would calmly strangle those people by the neck and watch as their faces slowly turned purple so that they would taste the fear of being strangled to death before she would let go of them.

  Third Young Master would even say later that Lina’s means had become more and more merciless and it was hard to imagine that she had just turned 15 year old.

  Sometimes, however, Song Nianmu would feel that she had actually lived a hundred years. There was probably no more other possibilities in her life as she would most likely stay here until she died.

  Because, she realized that she had fallen in love with Third Young Master.

  Third Young Master was older than her by 11 years. When she had first saw him, she was 11 years old while he was 22 years old, though his gaze on her was like that of a mature man in his thirties.

  She did not know when she had fallen for Third Young Master, nor did she know why she would fall for him, because love was something that was irregular and could not be explained.

  After that, she had secretly thought of a reason after many sleepless nights. It was probably because of the way he had smiled at her after she had given him the first punch when she was 13. It may also be because that Third Young Master held her hand to attend all the various social gatherings like she was a child, and it may be because Third Young Master was the only person that had accompanied her in such a long time.

  Ever since she had understood that she had fallen for Third Young Master, she had never dared to look at him in the eyes anymore. She would always have her head bowed whenever he would instruct her on her mission when they were alone together. She would listen to him respectfully and try to hide her inner thoughts.

  She watched at the women next to Third Young Master change one after another. She had personally heard him having sex with a woman, and also personally seen the way he sat by the bed and smoke calmly as a woman kneeled by his leg as she cried and begged him.

  Ever since the day she had known that she liked Third Young Master, she also knew that it was best if she did not tell him anything or let him know anything about what she was thinking.

  She had to kill this feeling without a doubt silently.

  The process of killing this feeling was very painful. She was so desperate to make scenes that she should not think about appear in her mind. She was doing all she could to pull things back to where they should be, but she could not do it. As a result, she would kneel on the floor in her room and stifle her cries every night. She would pinch her palm to make herself wake up, but she kept falling in deeper.

  Just as she had been tortured by this pain, she met Xiao Ye, a boy that was younger than her by two years.

  She had just handled a very troublesome matter outside and was reporting back to Third Young Master back in the room on the day he had saw her. She had just entered Third Young Master’s room when she saw a boy lying on the floor with blood all over him.

  He was Xiao Ye. He had struggled to stand up even though he was almost at his last breath at that time.

  “Is everything settled?” Third Young Master asked her.

  She nodded and passed him a document. “This is the thing that you wanted.”


  Third Young Master did not seem to care about that boy who was getting up shakily. He opened the document that she had brought and read it carefully. “You handled it well.”


  The few people standing next to that boy started to hit him again after seeing that boy stand up shakily. The sound of flesh hitting each other started to sound clearer in the room. Third Young Master slowly and calmly explained from the side, “It’s his bad luck to have beat one of our men to death. Second Master had said to give him a lesson and to chop away his hand.”


  She still had her head bowed as she received the thing that Third Young Master had passed to her before she turned to leave this place. However, when she was walking over, she stopped when she saw that boy’s bright eyes. She turned to say to Third Young Master, “Keep his hand please.”


  The people who had been hitting him stopped to look at her. Third Young Master was also looking at her as nothing could be heard in the room apart from that boy’s faint panting from the floor.