51: Chapter 51 Rebirth

At five in the morning, the sky over Shanghai was still a thick, impenetrable ink.

Accompanied by a hangover pain so sharp it felt like it would tear his skull apart, Shen Du slowly opened his eyes.

The room was permeated with a lingering, decadent atmosphere, the air thick with the distinct scent of alcohol mixed with perfume.

He turned his head slightly.

Beside him, Red Phoenix lay with her back to him, her breathing steady and deep.

It seemed that after the near-uncontrollable madness of last night, she was sleeping very soundly.

Shen Du rubbed his throbbing temples, lifted the corner of the quilt, and stepped out of bed quietly.

However, just as he turned to retrieve his shirt scattered on the carpet.

His gaze inadvertently swept over the side of the bed where the two of them had been intimate just moments ago.

The next second, Shen Du's eyes, usually as calm as an ancient well, contracted violently.

On the snowy white, rumpled sheets, there were several glaring, bright red spots of blood. Virgin blood.

Shen Du stood frozen in place, as if cast under a petrification spell.

The dizzying sensation of the hangover in his mind was instantly dispelled.

Countless images of last night's madness flashed back in his mind like movie film.

No wonder... No wonder this big sister of Shanghai, who was so slick and seductively charming in front of others, had reacted with such awkwardness and clumsiness once she shed all her defenses and disguises.

She even trembled with instinctive pain the moment he completely possessed her.

An indescribable shock and guilt surged into his heart like a tide, instantly shattering Shen Du's heart, which was always cold and accustomed to calculation.

He had always taken it for granted that a woman like Red Phoenix, who had spent over a decade mingling in the debauched and murky world of pleasure, must have long ago become a thorny rose who had seen countless men in order to survive and climb the social ladder.

In this circle of rampant lust and dog-eat-dog competition, for an unsupported, beautiful woman to keep her innocence was harder than ascending to heaven; it was practically a huge joke.

But the glaring crimson before his eyes was like a loud slap, striking hard against Shen Du's self-righteous and prejudiced conventional wisdom.

The reality was completely beyond his expectations.

This glaring crimson became the heaviest weight on the scale of Shen Du's heart.

As a manipulator accustomed to weighing human nature with interests and bargaining chips, Shen Du knew all too well what this meant.

In this treacherous Vanity Fair, the innocence Red Phoenix had guarded for over a decade was not only her dignity as a human being but also the final line of defense she had kept for herself in this cannibalistic world.

Yet last night, she had handed this trump card, along with that massive fortune of two hundred million, completely over to him, without reservation and with a determination akin to a sacrificial offering.

Shen Du took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the violent surge of guilt and shock in his chest.

He was not the kind of ordinary man to wallow in romantic sentimentality or indecision, but he had his own principles and rules.

Since this woman had entrusted everything to him in such a resolute manner, then from now on, he, Shen Du, could never again regard her merely as a "gold pocket" to be bled at will, or a cold, unfeeling ATM.

He had to accept this heavy loyalty and chastity in a man's way, and use the wings of his immense power to protect her for the rest of her life.

Matters having reached this point, everything was settled. Shen Du did not regret last night's impulse, because in this cruel world of capital, regret was the cheapest emotion.

He silently bent down, picked up the clothes scattered on the floor, and put them on one by one in an orderly fashion. With every button of his shirt he fastened, the turmoil in his eyes lessened by a fraction.

When he finally put on his crisp suit jacket, he locked all his emotions back into the depths of his heart, transforming once again into Young Master Shen—the cold, unfathomable figure who remained expressionless on the chessboard of capital.

Shen Du glanced at the still "sleeping" Red Phoenix. To avoid breaking this delicate morning atmosphere, he did not wake her, nor did he leave a single word behind.

Having gathered his thoughts, he did not linger for a moment and picked up the spare key from the table. With a soft "click" of the lock, he walked straight out of the room, leaving this quiet space to each other.

As the soft sound of the lock faded into the empty room, the suite fell into a deathly silence.

On the large bed, Red Phoenix, who should have been "sleeping soundly," slowly opened her eyes. In those long, alluring peach blossom eyes, was there any hint of the grogginess of just waking up? There was only clarity and an indescribable, complex emotion.

Her earlier slumber was merely a protective color she had deliberately feigned to avoid the awkwardness of facing each other when waking up in the morning.

She knew Shen Du, this kind of high-and-mighty man who was accustomed to controlling everything, too well. At this moment, a silent departure and the unspoken tacit understanding were more real than any sweet words.

Red Phoenix gently lifted the quilt and slowly sat up. The silky duvet slid down her smooth shoulders, revealing the slightly mottled marks on her large expanse of fair skin, silently telling the story of last night's near-tempestuous demands.

She did not pay attention to the faint soreness in her body, but habitually leaned over and fished a pack of cigarettes and a metal windproof lighter from her handbag on the nightstand.

"Ding—" The crisp sound of the metal flipping open was exceptionally abrupt in the silent room.

A faint blue flame jumped up and lit up in the dimness, illuminating her face—unadorned by makeup, yet still breathtakingly beautiful.

Red Phoenix took a deep drag, then tilted her head slightly and slowly exhaled a plume of gray-white smoke. Through the swirling, constantly shifting smoke, her gaze lingered for a long time on the door through which Shen Du had left.

Deep in her heart, there was not even a shred of regret for having surrendered her innocence, nor was there any humiliation in having submitted to a man.

On the contrary. As the nicotine permeated her lungs, an unprecedented and extremely heavy sense of security was spreading wildly through her limbs and bones.

It was like a broken ship that had been drifting alone for countless days and nights in rough seas, on the verge of capsizing at any moment, finally hearing the dull, powerful sound of an anchor dropping in the fiercest storm.

Everything was settled. Amidst the swirling smoke, Red Phoenix's thoughts drifted far away, pulled back to those dark years she had deliberately covered up with luxury and toughness.

In this wandering life, Red Phoenix had tasted the most bitter sufferings and the most vibrant poisons of the human world.

Time dialed back fifteen years to that isolated, poor, and ignorant deep mountain forest. When she was sixteen, just to exchange for a meager bride price, her biological parents had heartlessly wanted to sell her to the neighboring village to be a child bride.

That was the first time in her life she witnessed the coldness of blood relations in the face of profit. It was also that day, under the cover of night, she gritted her teeth and escaped in the dark from that mountain that was like a cage, completely cutting off her retreat.

From the humid and sweltering streets of Guangzhou, she drifted all the way to the bizarre and kaleidoscopic Shanghai. In these fifteen years of struggling at the bottom, she had not slept a single truly peaceful night.

Because she gradually realized with despair that in this jungle society where the weak were prey to the strong, if a woman possessed beauty that stunned the world but lacked a sufficiently powerful background to protect it, then this "natural beauty" was not a gift from heaven at all, but the deadliest poison—it was the original sin of harboring a treasure.

From the first day she entered society, she had been stared at by countless eyes filled with greed, lechery, and even sinister intentions. Those men lurking in the gray zones were like jackals that had smelled blood, ready to pounce and devour her skin and bones at any moment.

With no one to rely on, to preserve her last shred of innocence from being defiled by those beasts in human clothing, she had to force herself to shed all her innocence. She learned to wear a mask, learned to use every scheme to play along, cleverly maneuvering between various forces and fighting hand-to-hand with this cannibalistic society.

Over time, she had forcibly draped herself in an impenetrable suit of armor in this mud pit full of thorns. And the name "Red Phoenix," which made countless underground forces fear and respect her, was earned bit by bit through countless days and nights of walking on thin ice, using her scars and disguises.

Everyone thought she was a poisonous spider that ate people without spitting out the bones, but no one knew that this slick, scorpion-hearted persona was merely a sad weapon used by a lonely, unsupported woman to protect her most fragile core.

In fact, peeling away that mask that was so formidable it inspired awe, at her core, Red Phoenix was still just a lonely woman who was extremely lacking in security and yearned for the ordinary happiness of a normal family.

It is lonely at the top. When she relied on her schemes and tactics to climb step by step to the pinnacle of Shanghai's gray zone, she knew better than anyone that she was stepping on nothing but a thin layer of floating ice.

She dared not stop, dared not show weakness. Even when exhausted to the point of collapse, she could only grit her teeth and swallow it down. Because she knew that if she showed even the slightest flaw, she would be torn to shreds by the hungry wolves circling around her.

But now, everything was different. The fingers holding the cigarette began to tremble uncontrollably. Looking back on this half-life of wandering and walking on thin ice, and feeling the overbearing residual warmth left by that man in the room and the sense of security that she no longer needed to fear, an unprecedented emotion instantly shattered the last hard line of defense in her heart.

The warmth that had been building up in her eyes could finally no longer be suppressed. A hot tear passed through the swirling smoke, slid quietly down her beautiful cheek, and hit the snowy white quilt with a "plop." Following that, a second drop, a third... like spring water breaking a dam, it gushed down.

She made no whimpering sound, just bit her lip hard, letting the tears wash over her face wantonly. But these were not tears of regret, nor did she feel wronged. This was ecstasy, this was relief.

It was the tears of nirvana shed by that lonely bird, which had flown for fifteen years in the storms, exhausted and almost falling, having finally found that mountain that could protect her for a lifetime!

She finally did not have to constantly guard against those open spears and hidden arrows, finally did not have to wear that slick mask to cater to those nauseating faces. Because from the moment last night, she could finally completely take off that heavy armor she had worn for fifteen years, which was so heavy it made her unable to breathe.

Behind her, from now on, stood a true backer capable of shielding her from all wind and rain, and grinding all covetous ones into dust!

The cigarette burned to the end, burning her fingertips, and that crimson spark extinguished between her fingers. Red Phoenix crushed the cigarette butt heavily into the ashtray, reached out the back of her hand, and wiped the tear stains on her cheeks hard.

When she raised her head again and looked at the first ray of dawn light piercing the thick ink and shining into the window, the fragility and fear in her eyes had been completely washed away by this final tear of fifteen years.