199: Chapter 200 No Longer the Shadow Blade! Shen Du Gives a Home to the Lone Bird at the Bottom.

The words "Our Mom" were as light as a whisper, yet as heavy as a mountain collapsing with a roar.

In an instant, they completely shattered the hard barrier Hong Yun had stubbornly maintained for over twenty years.

Her beautiful eyes, which had been filled with shock, were quickly veiled by a thick mist of tears.

Immediately after, large, warm teardrops, like pearls on a broken string, rolled uncontrollably down her pale cheeks.

They landed on the suit jacket Shen Du had draped over her, staining it with small, dark water marks.

No one knew what the word "Home" truly meant to Hong Yun.

She was a girl who had fought for her life to escape from a remote, deep mountain area.

In that place where men were valued over women and ignorance prevailed, she had never felt a shred of parental love.

In the eyes of her birth family, she was merely a commodity to be raised and then traded for a high bride price to build a house and secure a wife for her younger brother.

For over a decade, she had drifted on the fringes of the vanity fair that was Magic City, a place bizarre, grotesque, and ruthless.

She had seen enough of deceit and treachery, and had seen through the coldness of human relationships.

She was like a rootless, wandering soul, clawing her way up with all her might.

She played along with everyone, acting the part, all just so she would never be trampled underfoot again.

Yet, even after she had acquired vast wealth, whenever the night was deep and quiet, the depths of her heart remained a desolate ruin with no place to call home.

When she first got together with Shen Du, even she believed it was merely an attachment of power and lust, a transaction born of a twist of fate.

But as this man swept away all obstacles, playing with various capitals in the palm of his hand, step by step ascending to the altar, becoming the business deity who now held hundreds of billions in cash flow and made global conglomerates tremble...

The extreme inferiority deep in Hong Yun's bones was infinitely amplified.

She had long ago accepted her fate in her heart.

How could a woman like her, with a humble background who had crawled through the gray zones and the fringes of the red-light districts, ever be worthy of the radiant Shen Du?

She didn't even dare to imagine it.

She felt that as long as she could remain the sharpest, most loyal Shadow Blade in his hand, as long as she could be a secret lover who couldn't see the light of day, and occasionally crave the warmth in his embrace, she would have no regrets in this life.

But she never expected that this man, standing at the very pinnacle of power and wealth, would not only entrust his life and fortune to her without reservation but also want to hold her hand, lead her into the sunlight, and give her the "home" that all women dreamed of.

Ecstasy and the inferiority buried deep in her bones clashed violently.

Hong Yun didn't even dare to reach out and grab Shen Du's warm, large hand.

She shrank back half an inch, trembling, her beautiful face covered in tear tracks, her voice trembling in a way that was heartbreaking:

"Shen Du... Is this really okay?"

She bit her bloodless lips, her eyes filled with a heartbreaking anxiety of gain and loss:

"The place where I used to work wasn't exactly clean. The money I earned was all gray income that couldn't see the light of day... How can someone like me enter the doors of the Shen Family? If people on the outside find out about my past, it will tarnish your reputation..."

"Didn't you give your first time to me?"

Shen Du leaned forward slightly.

In those deep eyes, there was an unquestionable tenderness, locking onto Hong Yun's evasive gaze:

"In that quagmire where people are eaten without a trace and everyone is forced to degenerate, you were able to hold firm to your bottom line and walk to me, clean and pure. Hong Yun, that is already one-in-a-million excellence."

Shen Du's warm palm gently cupped her beautiful, tear-stained face.

His thumb gently stroked the corner of her bloodless lips, his tone resolute:

"As long as I, Shen Du, think you are clean, no one in this world dares to say a single dirty word about you. If I were to let myself miss a woman like you, who has entrusted her entire life to me, just because of those ridiculous worldly prejudices..."

He looked into her eyes and said, word by word: "That would be the greatest loss of my, Shen Du's, life."

"Shen Du..." This sentence was like a wildfire, instantly burning through the last remaining trace of inferiority and fear in Hong Yun's heart.

The bitterness of struggling on the fringes of the red-light districts, the loneliness of licking her wounds alone in countless dark nights, the despair buried deep in her marrow of feeling she was "unworthy"... at this moment, were all completely shattered and melted by this man's tenderness.

She could no longer suppress the emotions in her heart.

Hong Yun let out a sob that was choked to the extreme, like a lone bird returning to its nest that had finally found a harbor.

She threw herself into Shen Du's arms, regardless of everything.

She held onto the man's waist tightly, burying her cheek deep into his broad, warm chest, sobbing uncontrollably.

In this silent early morning, there was no killing of a business tycoon, nor the coldness of a Shadow Queen.

Shen Du reached out and hugged the trembling woman in his arms tightly, his chin resting gently on the top of her head.

Outside the window, the first rays of dawn were struggling to tear through the heavy night curtain of Magic City.

Through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, they shone quietly on the silhouette of the two embracing tightly.

Everything was understood without words.

In the blink of an eye, it was January 22, 2014.

There were only two days left until the Lunar Little New Year.

From the steel and concrete financial jungle of Magic City to the tense capital battlefields across the ocean, Shen Du's nerves, which had been taut for an entire year, finally relaxed completely the moment he stepped onto the soil of his hometown in Yunnan.

He brought Hong Yun back to the mountains.

There were no multi-million dollar luxury car fleets, nor bodyguards surrounding him.

Shen Du changed into the most casual clothes, and Hong Yun also shed the professional attire filled with the murderous aura of the overseas offshore markets.

Wearing a soft beige down jacket, she followed quietly by his side.

As the car drove into the village entrance, what came into view was not rows of luxury villas, but a row of temporary housing located at the foot of the mountain.

After months of large-scale demolition, the old houses in the village had long been leveled, and new houses were still under vigorous construction.

Although the villagers were destined not to spend the New Year in their new homes this year, the row of neat temporary housing was already hung with bright red lanterns, and cured meat and sausages hung under the eaves.

The rich atmosphere of the New Year and the joy overflowing on every face could not be faked.

"The Shen Family boy is back!"

"Hello, Mr. Shen!"

As soon as they saw Shen Du get out of the car, the simple villagers immediately gathered around enthusiastically.

In everyone's eyes, there was the most sincere awe and gratitude.

In the mountain villages of this era, people's hearts had not yet been completely eroded by the twisted material desires of later generations.

After Shen Du became successful, he not only sent people to deliver rice, flour, and oil to the village during festivals.

This year for the New Year, he even directly gave each of the more than one hundred households in the village a thick red envelope that was worth half a year of their usual fixed salary.

A few tens of thousands of yuan, in the eyes of Shen Du, who now held hundreds of billions in cash flow, was not even a drop in the ocean.

But this money was enough to let these villagers, who faced the yellow earth and turned their backs to the sky, have the most abundant and prosperous New Year of their lives.

No family would harbor malice like "a measure of rice breeds gratitude, a bucket breeds enmity" just because Shen Du earned hundreds of billions and they only got a few tens of thousands.

In the hearts of this group of simple villagers, the fact that the Shen Family could produce such a true dragon was a blessing from the smoke rising from the ancestral graves of the entire village.

Moreover, what Shen Du brought them was far more than just a few tens of thousands of yuan for the holidays.