The penthouse was no longer a palace of gold; it had transformed into a labyrinth of clinical silence and jagged shadows.
Bai Qi and George moved like twin storms, parting ways at the junction of the service hallway. George's voice, raw and desperate, echoed through the stairwells as he interrogated the building staff.
"A boy! A ponytail! Pale! Have you seen him?" But the responses were a litany of staccato denials. No one had seen the ghost in the light brown suit.
Meanwhile, Bai Qi's pulse was a frantic hammer against his ribs. Every hallway felt too long, every doorway a mocking mouth. His heart—that cold, obsidian organ—was screaming a warning he finally couldn't ignore.
Something is wrong. Something is fundamentally, horribly wrong.
He reached the heavy, industrial corridor leading to the cellar. The air here was stagnant, smelling of iron and old wine. Naina followed behind him, her footsteps a frantic, uneven rhythm. She looked like a woman walking toward her own gallows, her eyes darting like trapped birds.
In his haste to call George, Bai Qi's fingers betrayed him. His phone slipped, clattering against the cold tile before sliding across the floor. It came to a rest directly against the steel base of the cellar door.
Bai Qi hissed a curse, crouching down to retrieve the device. But as his fingers brushed the floor, his eyes caught a glint of something that wasn't glass.
It was a small, pearlescent button.
He picked it up, his breath hitching. It was a fragment of the fine silk shirt Shu Yao had been wearing—the one Bai Qi had criticized earlier for being too "fragile."
He stood up slowly, the button pressed into his palm until it drew blood. He didn't even look at his phone. He turned his head sharply toward the cellar door, his gaze landing on Naina with a lethal, visceral intensity.
"Naina," he whispered, the name sounding like a death sentence. "Open the door."
Naina's soul seemed to wither under his stare. She began to stammer, her hands fluttering toward her pockets. "But... but Sir, how can he be inside? The door locks from the outside, and I... I saw him leave..."
"OPEN. IT."
With trembling fingers, she slid the keycard. The light flickered from red to a mocking, clinical green.
The heavy lock disengaged with a sound like a bone snapping.
The door swung outward.
A gust of sub-zero air hit Bai Qi's face like an ice-fanged predator. He flinched, the sheer intensity of the cold making his lungs burn. He stepped over the threshold into the dark, his eyes adjusting to the dim, blue light of the industrial refrigerator.
And then, his world stopped.
Shu Yao was crumpled on the floor near a rack of vintage reds. He looked less like a man and more like a discarded marionette. His head was turned away, his skin a translucent, white-washed blue.
One hand lay over his chest in a final, protective gesture; the other was dragged straight against the concrete, as if he had tried to crawl toward the light before the sedative took him.
"No..."
The word was a strangled sob. Bai Qi's pride, his anger, his loathing—all of it incinerated in a single second.
He dropped to his knees, the freezing floor biting through his trousers. He scooped Shu Yao's head into his lap, his hands shaking so violently he could barely function.
He pressed two fingers under Shu Yao's nose.
Nothing.
The cold was so absolute that it seemed to have stolen the very concept of breath.
"Shu Yao? Shu Yao, stop it!" Bai Qi's voice was a jagged rasp. "Stop playing tricks on me! Open your eyes!"
He pressed his ear against Shu Yao's chest, shutting his eyes tight, praying to a God he had never believed in.
Thump...
A heartbeat. Faint. Erratic. Slow as the ticking of a dying clock.
"He's alive," Bai Qi gasped, though the terror didn't leave him.
He looked down at the boy in his arms. Shu Yao was a portrait of winter. His lips were a deep, bruised violet.
His long eyelashes were heavy with a fine, crystalline frost. His fingertips were tinted a terrifying shade of indigo.
Bai Qi didn't wait. He gathered Shu Yao's stiff, frozen body into his arms, rising with a roar of pure, adrenaline-fueled strength. He ignored Naina, who had turned her head away in a fit of cowardly guilt.
"Fetch blankets! NOW!" Bai Qi barked as he stormed out of the cold room.
Naina scrambled away, her footsteps disappearing into the pantry.
Bai Qi didn't head for the lobby. He headed straight back to the dining room—straight back to Ming Su.
As he walked, Shu Yao's head lolled against his chest. The boy was so silent, so profoundly still, that it felt like carrying a statue made of salt. The coldness of Shu Yao's skin seeped through Bai Qi's fine shirt, chilling his own blood.
He burst into the dining room.
Ming Su was still seated, acting like she is the inoccent one. When she saw Bai Qi—disheveled, wild-eyed, and carrying the "dead" weight of his secretary—her eyes went wide.
Underneath the shock, a cold panic flared. He found him. The fool actually found him.
She stood up, her face instantly morphing into a mask of horrified concern. "Ah Qi! Oh my God, what happened? Why is he?—"
"He was in the cellar," Bai Qi said, but the words fractured as they left his mouth, his voice stripped of warmth, stripped of air. He didn't look at her. He couldn't. His gaze was locked on the corpse-pale face in his arms, on the lips already losing their color.
Too still.
Too light.
"Ah Qi— take him inside," Ming su said sharply, already moving. "He's freezing."
Bai Qi didn't answer. He only nodded once, muttering a clipped, breathless, "Thank you, Ming Su," as he turned and carried Shu Yao through the door.
The warmth of the room hit him too late.
He laid Shu Yao down on the red, luxurious velvet bed, the color obscene against skin so pale it looked carved from stone. Too still. Too quiet.
Bai Qi dropped to his knees, his movements devoid of his usual calculated grace. He seized Shu Yao's hands—they were stiff, the fingers curled like frozen talons.
He began to rub them frantically, his palms creating a desperate friction.
He brought Shu Yao's fingertips to his mouth, exhaling his own hot, ragged breath onto the icy skin.
Live, he thought, a command that felt like a prayer. I did not give you permission to leave.
Behind him, Ming Su watched with narrowed eyes. She realized the narrative was slipping through her fingers; the "Ice Monarch" was melting, and not for her. She moved toward the wall, her silk dress sibilant against the floor.
"I'm turning on the heater," she murmured, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. The mechanical click of the vents echoed in the room, followed by the low, artificial hum of rising warmth.
Bai Qi nodded curtly, not looking back. He began to pile every silk sheet and wool throw he could reach over Shu Yao's frame, creating a cocoon.
He slid his hand beneath the layers, pressing his palm flat against Shu Yao's chest, rubbing in slow, heavy circles to stimulate a heart that seemed to have forgotten its purpose.
"Come on, Shu Yao," he whispered, his eyes fixed on the boy's closed lids. "Come on... If you didn't breath then you'll regret it."
But Shu Yao remained stilled. No gasp. No flutter of an eyelid. Just a terrifying, hollow silence that scared Bai Qi more than any corporate rival or physical threat ever could.
The doors burst open again, the heavy wood slamming against the stops. George stood there, his face a map of absolute devastation.
"Shu Yao!"
The name escaped George's lips as a broken plea. He lunged toward the bed, his heart lurching at the sight of the boy.
Ming Su stepped aside, her face a mask of innocent shock as George surged past her.
"What happened?" George barked, his voice trembling with a lethal frequency. "Why does he look like this? Where did you find him?"
"Uncle, call the doctor. Now!" Bai Qi cut him off, his voice cracking with urgency.
George stood frozen for a split second, looking at Shu Yao's blue-tinged lips and frosted eyelashes, unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes. "But... but what happened? How could—"
"There is no time for this!" Bai Qi roared, his obsidian eyes flashing with a raw, primal panic. "I will explain everything later! Just call the doctor!"
Recognizing the genuine terror in his nephew's voice, George didn't waste another second. He fumbled for his phone, his hands shaking as he dialed his private physician, stepping out into the hallway to demand a medical evacuation.
The room fell into an uneasy, pressurized quiet. Bai Qi looked up, his gaze landing on Ming Su. Even in his state of panic, the ingrained habit of his status remained.
"Ming Su, I am sorry for the inconvenience," he said, the apology sounding hollow and strained. "The dinner... this night... I didn't mean for it to end like this."
Ming Su shook her head slowly, a single, fake tear shimmering in the corner of her eye. "It's okay, Ah Qi. None of that matters right now."
She turned on her heels, her movements fluid and practiced. "I'll be back, Ah Qi. I'll fetch more blankets immediately. He needs all the warmth we can find."
Bai Qi nodded, his focus immediately returning to the boy under the sheets.
And there he was—the Ice Monarch, left alone with a boy who might be dead, or might be mocking him with this final, ultimate silence. He watched the rise and fall of Shu Yao's chest, so faint it was almost invisible, and felt the first true chill of a world without his shadow.
The silence in the room was a physical weight, pressing against Bai Qi's lungs. He pulled his hand away from Shu Yao's chest, his fingers numb from the contact with that marble-cold skin. He hovered his hand beneath the boy's nose again, praying for the faint brush of warmth, but there was nothing—only the stagnant, heated air of the room.
Bai Qi's jaw clenched so hard the muscles in his neck stood out like corded steel. The terror inside him was fermenting into a dark, volatile brand of desperation.
"You know my limit shu Yao, "If you keep silent like this," he hissed, "Do you want to make me angry? Is this what you want? To cover your insolence with this... this scene?"
He was talking to a ghost. Shu Yao remained stilled, his head tilted back, his long eyelashes casting skeletal shadows against his white-washed cheeks.
The "Ice Monarch" looked down at his secretary, and for the first time in his life, he felt the throne of his arrogance crumbling.
"Then you leave me no choice," Bai Qi whispered.
He didn't think about the intimacy. He didn't think about the proprietary nature of his touch. He only saw the blue tint of Shu Yao's lips and the terrifying stillness of his lungs.
Bai Qi leaned in, his obsidian eyes narrowed to slits. He seized Shu Yao's jaw, forcing the cold mouth open, and tilted the head back with a clinical, desperate precision.
He pressed his lips to Shu Yao's, forcing his own hot, living breath into the boy's frozen body. Once. Twice. He pulled away for a fraction of a second, his own chest heaving, his eyes searching the pale throat for a sign of movement.
"Come on," he growled, a frantic order directed at the soul that seemed to be slipping through his fingers.
He leaned back in and did it again, the heat of his life meeting the absolute zero of Shu Yao's.
When the breaths didn't work, he shifted. He placed the heel of his palm against the center of that fragile, bird-like chest and began to press.
One. Two. Three.
Bai Qi wasn't a doctor. He was a man driven by a predatory need to reclaim what he considered his. He pushed with the full weight of his panic. Suddenly, a sickening crack echoed in the quiet room—the sound of bone yielding under the pressure of his hands.
Bai Qi froze, his eyes widening.
A jolt of pure, unadulterated horror shot through him.
I broke it. I broke his rib.
The thought nearly paralyzed him, but before he could retreat, Shu Yao's body reacted. It wasn't a gentle awakening; it was a violent, convulsive jolt.
Shu Yao's torso arched off the red velvet with such force it nearly knocked Bai Qi backward.
"Nngh—ah—!"
The sound tore out of him—raw, strangled, ugly. Not a cry, not a breath, but something dragged up from a body that had already begun to shut down.
His throat convulsed around it as air finally ripped back into his lungs, violent and burning, as if life itself had returned without permission.
"Thank God," Bai Qi breathed, his hands hovering over the boy, unsure if he should touch him or stay away.
Shu Yao's eyes flew open, but they weren't seeing the room.
The pupils were dilated, rolling upward as his nervous system struggled to process the sudden influx of oxygen and the agonizing return of circulation.
Shu Yao began to shiver violently—a systemic, bone-deep vibration that rattled the whole bed. His teeth chattered with a sound like breaking glass, and a low, guttural groan of agony escaped his blue-tinged lips.
The "rewarming shock" was setting in, and it looked like a slow-motion execution.
Bai Qi stood up, his legs feeling like water. He looked toward the door, his voice echoing with a frantic, lethal urgency. "When will the doctor arrive?
Uncle!
Where is the doctor?"