Inescapable.

Ye Changlin lunged at her. He was rather stout, and she did not know how much clear liquor he had drunk; the stench of alcohol hit her face, and Ye Mian, without a second thought, darted aside.

Missing his chance, he went on pretending to be drunk, smiling benignly. “Sorry about that. Uncle twisted his ankle. All right, you close the door. Uncle’s leaving.”

Ye Mian dared not go near him, unsure whether he truly meant to go.

Sure enough, just as he reached the doorway, Ye Changlin seized her hand and pinned her against the wall, the reek of urine and alcohol assaulting her at once.

He was brutally forceful, using his large, bloated belly to hold her down.

“What’s this? Why are you hiding from Uncle like that?”

Ye Mian had already drunk too much and could not stand properly, yet her mind suddenly cleared. She swung her fist hard at the back of Ye Changlin’s neck.

“Beast. Get lost.”

But his neck was buried in fat; he hardly felt a thing.

He wrestled her legs apart, his greasy hand lifting up her skirt.

Ye Mian let out an involuntary scream and began to shout for help in desperation.

No one could save her.

In that instant, it felt to her as if Zhong Qian’s case was playing itself out again, and in the person she had least expected, a demon had taken up residence.

In the dark space, she fought wildly, while those oily hands slid over her body.

She reached out for her key and drove it viciously into Ye Changlin’s back.

He cried out in pain and recoiled.

Ye Mian immediately scrambled toward the stairs, trying to flee.

But just as she reached the edge, the drunken man kicked her hard, and she rolled heavily down the staircase.

Her eyes were red. Her dress had already been torn to shreds, and her body tumbled in a disordered heap to the bottom step before crashing to the floor.

Ye Changlin slowly descended the stairs and reached out toward her.

“All right, stop making a scene, Mianmian.”

That middle-aged voice calling her Mianmian made Ye Mian feel sick to the core. She gritted her teeth and tried to get up, but her ankle had twisted and swollen so badly she could hardly move.

Her voice trembling, she lay in miserable ruin on the floor. “If you do this... you’ll go to prison.”

Ye Changlin did not care. “You little girl, have you no shame? Or do you want your father to suffer? Getting slept with by your own uncle—oh, how are you going to live with yourself afterward? How upset would your father be?”

Unfortunately, his words could not frighten Ye Mian.

But his actions could.

To keep her from running again, Ye Changlin planted his foot on her swollen ankle. Pain numbed her nerves, and then she was slapped across the face.

His massive belly pressed down on her body, and he leaned close to her ear, sighing softly. “You’re just as stubborn as your mother.”

“...”

Ye Mian stared at the face before her, mouth open in stunned disbelief.

Her mother...

As the meaning of his words sank in, Ye Mian screamed through her tears, “You beast.”

“Is that so? Your mother ended up willing to be with me too, didn’t she? It’s just a pity she fell ill and died. Didn’t your father tell you that?”

The fat, pig-like man threw himself upon her, using his words to strike at her drunkenly fragile nerves, and she felt the whole world go dark.

“All right, you’re grown now. Stop pretending to be modest. Uncle won’t do anything. Just touch a little. Uncle wants to see whether, on your butt, there’s a black mole like your mother’s.”

Ye Mian could not have said what she felt in that moment. She only knew that this beast was defiling the finest image her heart had ever held of her mother, and now he was defiling her too.

Her eyes bloodshot, she found, when her body was turned over, a stone someone had left in the corridor to prop open a window.

She closed her eyes, and a single tear slipped from the corner of them.

Then she lifted the stone and brought it down hard on Ye Changlin’s head.

That blow carried all Ye Mian’s hatred.

Blood immediately began to run down his face.

His whole body jolted.

He rolled off her.

Outside, the rain and thunder grew heavier and heavier.

Ye Mian numbly pushed the man off her.

Not caring whether she had shoes on, or whether he was dead, she staggered out of the stairwell.

The night was pitch-black. Even though the streetlamps cast a dim glow, she felt as if the world around her held no light at all.

When Ye Changlin told her that her mother had once suffered the same thing, she remembered a very early memory: a pair of gentle hands holding her.

As the years passed, that memory had almost become impossible to recall.

And her father had described her over and over as a very good and very gentle woman.

But that very good and very gentle woman...

...had been destroyed by that beast.

Ye Mian limped along the street, her eyes red and swollen, tears brimming in them as she wandered without direction.

It seemed as though standing in the rain might make her feel a little better.

Not until the pain in her ankle became so intense it felt as though it might break did she finally have to crouch by the roadside to rest.

The rain came down like a calamity.

She buried her head in her arms and cried softly.

On the empty long street of Birch Garden, a black car was just about to turn around. Inside the car, Jiang Chen cast one last look through the window. His gaze fixed on the young woman in the corner.

Rain drummed down in sheets.

The girl’s figure looked strangely familiar.

He paused, thinking it could not be her. She had just gone upstairs; how could she be back down?

But after the car had gone only five meters, he still took off his suit jacket and ordered the driver to stop.

He crossed the road in long strides and walked out into the rain toward the young woman.

The very second he heard her choking sobs, he recognized her.

Her current miserable state made it feel as if a long needle had pierced straight through his heart.

His face was grim to the point of fright, his jaw clenched so hard it hurt. The muscles in his arms tightened as he endured that overwhelming, searing pain in his chest, a pain that seemed capable of killing a person.

He did not need to ask what exactly she had been through.

He wanted to go up there and find out which bastard had done this.

The one he had in his heart could never be allowed to suffer this.

But not now.

He had to take her home.

...

Wind and rain battered both of them. Trembling, he crouched down and gently draped his jacket over her.

Feeling someone beside her, the girl slowly lifted her head. Her face was covered in dense streaks of tears, there was still a trace of blood at the corner of her mouth, and the terror and pain in her eyes were impossible to hide.

Jiang Chen pressed his lips together hard, not wanting the look of fury on his face to frighten her. He forced down the violence churning inside him.

Without asking anything, he said in a hoarse voice, “Ye Mian, don’t be afraid. I’ll take you back.”

At the words back, Ye Mian’s whole body began to tremble. The beast was still lying in the stairwell, and she did not want to see him at all.

“Jiang Chen...”

But this familiar scene made her shudder again.

The memory that had been dredged up before flashed suddenly in her mind.

At this very moment, apart from the setting, everything was so eerily like that memory.

Even though she had tried so hard to avoid it, she had never once dared to make male friends easily.

Yet events had veered so absurdly beyond anything she had imagined. She had never thought the criminal would be her own uncle.

So sudden, and impossible to escape.

Broken, helpless, she nearly cried aloud.

She had thought she could bear it, but when memory turned into reality, and she learned all at once what had happened to her mother, it felt as though the sky itself were collapsing.

All she could do was repeat again and again, “Jiang Chen, Jiang Chen, I’m not going back.”

Only then did she suddenly understand that fate had never spared her.

End of chapter.