"Get inside!"
Gu Li was groggily jarred from her sleep as the heavy steel gate of the enclosure was unlatched, followed by the rough thud of another body being violently shoved into the dark enclosure.
"Ugh! What is that horrific stench?! Can't you move me somewhere that doesn't smell like a sewer?!"
The woman who had just been tossed onto the concrete immediately pinched her nose, clutching the steel bars and shrieking at the departing footsteps of the enforcers.
However, the handlers who delivered her simply locked the heavy industrial deadbolt and walked away without looking back, ignoring her frantic screaming entirely.
"Save your breath... and stop screaming," Gu Li muttered weakly from the dark corner, her voice hoarse and hollow.
"Who the hell are you? How can a person be so utterly shameless?!"
Qu Xiaoxiao turned around, squinting through the glare of the overhead spotlight at the naked figure curled on the floor, her tone dripping with instinctive disgust.
The woman lying in the corner was completely bare from the waist down, her hair matted and tangled like a feral madwoman. Worse still, a rancid, suffocating stench lingered around her body—a nauseating blend of dried sweat, stale water, and biological waste that made Qu Xiaoxiao gag.
Over the past few days, Gu Li had been forced to eat, sleep, and relieve herself within the confines of this 1.2-meter steel cage. Nan Xiang only bothered to blast the floor with a cold-water hose when she remembered, leaving the enclosure smelling foul.
"Hmph... who the hell do you think you are, daring to put on airs in front of me?"
Hearing the arrogant tone, Gu Li—who had been lying motionless like a corpse—suddenly snapped. The endless physical degradation inflicted by Nan Xiang had pushed her to the edge of madness, leaving her boiling with suppressed venom and desperate for an outlet.
She pushed herself upright, glaring through her matted bangs.
"Gu Li?!"
"Qu Xiaoxiao?!"
The moment Gu Li sat up under the beam of the laser spotlight, Qu Xiaoxiao recognized her instantly. The filthy, naked woman curled on the concrete floor like a dying dog was none other than the proud, sharp-tongued princess of the Gu Group!
The Gu and Qu conglomerates commanded roughly equivalent market valuations in Shanghai's commercial circuit, and the two heiresses were close in age. Naturally, they had crossed paths at various high-society galas.
However, because Gu Li had been an elite, top-tier finance scholar in Shanghai while Qu Xiaoxiao was an unmotivated party girl studying abroad in the United States, their social circles rarely overlapped. They were merely nodding acquaintances who acknowledged each other with icy politeness.
After all, both young ladies possessed their own devoted entourages of sycophants; neither had ever felt the need to lower herself to flatter the other.
"How... how did you end up like this?!" Qu Xiaoxiao gasped, staring in absolute disbelief at Gu Li's bare, grime-streaked skin. In her memory, the eldest daughter of the Gu family was notoriously arrogant, perpetually looking down her nose at everyone around her. How could an untouchable socialite ever fall into such an animalistic state?
"Did your Qu Group go bankrupt too?"
Gu Li didn't bother answering. She merely cast an appraising, cynical glance over Qu Xiaoxiao's disheveled designer clothes, her cracked lips curling into a mocking sneer.
"I asked you first!" Qu Xiaoxiao raised her chin defensively, glaring back. She refused to lose the upper hand in front of her old rival.
"Tch. Keep it to yourself then."
If this had been the old Gu Li, she would have torn Qu Xiaoxiao apart with cutting insults. But now... she lacked the physical stamina to waste energy on useless banter.
'You've been locked in the exact same dog cage as me,' Gu Li thought bitterly. 'What pathetic pride do you have left to defend?'
"Hey... do you want to talk or what?"
After waiting in tense silence for several minutes, only to watch Gu Li curl back into a fetal position on the floor, Qu Xiaoxiao nudged the other woman's shoulder in frustration.
"Get lost. I don't have the energy to entertain you," Gu Li swatted her hand away weakly.
"Stop acting like you're still high and mighty!" Qu Xiaoxiao pinched her nose, scoffing loudly. "You smell like a stray hound! Did you soil yourself in here, Miss Gu?!"
"If you can't stand the smell, crawl to the other side! Nobody invited you into my cage!"
"Don't get cocky with me, Gu Li! Look at yourself—you look neither human nor ghost! Do you honestly think you're still the golden daughter of the Gu family?!"
Qu Xiaoxiao's own mind was still spiraling in sheer disorientation. By all logical calculations, she was supposed to be sitting in first class on a flight to Los Angeles right now!
The Qu Group's sudden collapse had unfolded like a terrifying, calculated nightmare over the preceding two months.
First, her useless older brother, Qu Lianjie, had been detained over a standard traffic collision. What should have been a minor inconvenience resolved with a few million yuan in hush money had mysteriously exploded into a massive national scandal online. The judiciary had clamped down with zero tolerance, handing him a devastating sixteen-year prison sentence.
Before Qu Xiaoxiao and her mother could even celebrate the elimination of her rival for the family inheritance, the state authorities struck again—arresting Chairman Qu Liancheng himself!
Qu Liancheng had built his fortune in the rough-and-tumble construction sector during the economic boom. In that industry, nobody's financial ledgers were entirely clean; the moment a high-level authority launched a targeted audit, finding criminal kickbacks and contract fraud was effortless.
With her father behind bars, Qu Xiaoxiao couldn't afford to gloat. She had frantically tapped her personal network to secure high-level political intervention.
Yet the results had chilled her to the bone.
Her loyal admirer, Yao Bin, had vanished completely—his phone disconnected, all messaging channels blocked. When she desperately marched to the municipal compound to plead with Acting Governor Yao Daping—whom she had always warmly called 'Uncle Yao'—the armed security detail had ruthlessly thrown her onto the street without letting her past the lobby.
Before she could even process the political betrayal, several veteran board members within the Qu Group suddenly staged an internal coup, liquidating company assets and transferring the entire corporate portfolio to an outside buyer overnight.
Her family accounts frozen, her parents locked in detention cells, and her elite friends vanishing like smoke—Miss Qu had suddenly realized that the entire world had turned its back on her.
If this had been an inspirational novel, the heroine would have rallied her strength to overturn the crisis. But in reality, Qu Xiaoxiao was merely an incompetent, pampered rich girl. In the past, her cleverness had relied entirely on her father's multi-billion-yuan empire and a ring of eager male admirers. Once those pillars were dismantled, she was just as useless as her imprisoned brother.
Realizing that an unseen titan was systematically orchestrating her family's execution, Qu Xiaoxiao had secretly liquidated her private jewelry collection, stashed two million yuan in cash, and booked an immediate one-way flight abroad.
'Staying in the country is suicide,' she had reasoned. 'Saving my own skin is the only logical choice!'
Yet, while standing in line at the airport terminal waiting to check her luggage, two silent, black-suited operatives had flanked her on either side, flashing official clearance badges before dragging her into an unmarked black van.
Recalling the sequence of events, Qu Xiaoxiao rubbed her throbbing forehead, the horrifying reality finally sinking in.
"Whether I am still the eldest daughter of the Gu family is completely irrelevant," Gu Li turned over, resting her chin on her knees as she stared at Qu Xiaoxiao with hollow, dead eyes. "The real question is... do you honestly believe you are still the privileged princess of the Qu Group?"
"Can we stop with the useless bickering and figure out a way to break out of here?!" Qu Xiaoxiao leaned in, lowering her voice to an urgent whisper.
"Escape?"
Gu Li let out a dry, raspy laugh that sounded completely devoid of sanity.
During her first forty-eight hours inside this steel cage, she had tried every frantic method imaginable to force the door. But that psychotic viper, Nan Xiang, never unlocked the reinforced deadbolt—operating strictly through feeding slots and high-voltage remotes.
"Look around you, Qu Xiaoxiao," Gu Li whispered, gesturing toward the pitch-black void beyond the blinding spotlight. "Where exactly do you think you can run?"