Chapter 14: The Little One is Actually the Villain!

◎ How could such a kind and cute child be a cold-blooded, heartless criminal! ◎

Xue Huiyu had a dream.

In the dream, Pei Wenyu was in a car accident. The entire car sank into a river and was pulled out two hours later.

When the car was retrieved, Pei Wenyu had already drowned in the back seat.

She didn’t dare to look at Pei Wenyu’s body as it was pulled out, and she was acutely aware that it was just a nightmare.

Desperate to wake up from the nightmare, she found herself unable to move, as though her entire body was weighed down, making it impossible to break free!

Just then, the scene in the dream changed, and a young man in a suit, his face cold, picked up an iron rod from the ground.

His handsome features resembled the brooding Pei Wenyu but were not exactly him.

Although Xue Huiyu had married into the Pei family, she didn’t know much about its side branches. As she tried to identify who the man was, she saw him sneer coldly and raise the iron rod to smash it onto the head of a young man who was lying on the ground, tightly bound with ropes.

“Bang——!” The loud noise echoed.

The bloody scene made Xue Huiyu scream in fear. The nightmare that she couldn’t escape from just moments ago suddenly snapped her awake.

Her face was pale, drenched in sweat, and her heart raced uncontrollably. But before she could steady herself, she heard the system coldly speak: [Host, that person just now was your son, Pei Yuqi.]

“???” Xue Huiyu almost collapsed from shock. “Say that again? The person who just committed murder was my son?”

Using an iron rod to smash someone’s head, and binding them tightly first… it was clearly a crime! It could kill someone!

How could her son, so kind and adorable, be such a cold-blooded, heartless criminal!

The system, as it often did when the host was in disbelief, quickly explained: [Host, I’ve already informed you that your son is the villain in this world. Villains are naturally crime-ridden, ruthless individuals.]

The system’s firm words immediately angered Xue Huiyu. She was about to continue defending her son when suddenly, a flood of words and images appeared in her mind, and the impact of the storyline left her speechless.

After Pei Wenyu died, Pei Yuqi inherited their fortune and was taken back to the Xue family. It was said to be for care, but the woman, Xia Lanzhi, never treated him well.

She knew he had autism but told him that his parents didn’t love him and that their marriage was purely political with no feelings. She even said that his mother, during her confinement, preferred practicing ballet to holding him… and cruelly scolded him for being the “star that killed his parents.” From time to time, she would abuse and beat him, making Pei Yuqi’s autism worsen.

He already rejected other people’s touch, and over time, he locked himself in his world, developing a secondary personality to protect himself and escape the pain.

At the age of four, Xia Lanzhi secretly transferred their family’s inheritance to her account, slowly filling the large holes left by her son Xue Hongjun’s foolish mistake.

Meanwhile, Xia Lanzhi, who held the majority of Pei Group’s shares, dreamed of making her own son the chairman of Pei Group.

However, after Pei Wenyu’s death, Pei Yongyu, who was released from prison due to insufficient evidence, wasn’t an easy opponent. After setting a trap for Xia Lanzhi’s useless son, Pei Yuqi’s financial woes deepened, forcing Xia Lanzhi to sell her Pei Group stock.

Having never received love, Pei Yuqi grew up in this environment.

Unlike his weak, introverted main personality, his secondary personality was cold, ruthless, and psychologically twisted.

When Xia Lanzhi abused him, he silently retaliated by cutting her clothes and smashing her makeup box.

After Xia Lanzhi had a grandson, he would occasionally appear by the baby’s crib when no one was watching. Once, he even took a nail clipper and nervously clipped nails by the crib, scaring Xia Lanzhi into never bothering him again. When he was in fifth grade, she dumped him back to the old villa where he originally lived.

After being sent back to his old home, Pei Yuqi’s illness worsened.

Originally, his secondary personality would only appear in dangerous situations, but his main personality, which struggled with learning, began to retreat more and more. On the contrary, his secondary personality learned things quickly and even possessed exceptional intelligence…

Feeling increasingly weak and incapable, his main personality refused to emerge, and at that point, the clever secondary personality replaced him and took control of the body.

This secondary personality was a violent, paranoid personality born out of hatred.

As an adult, driven by ambition and hatred, his first act was to frame Xia Lanzhi for infidelity, tarnishing her reputation. After kicking her and Xue Hongjun out of the Xue family, he took back his parents’ inheritance and inherited the Xue Group.

Although Pei Yongyu gained control of Pei Group, it remained fragmented due to years of internal struggles.

After Pei Yuqi strengthened Pei Group, he discovered that his parents’ deaths were related to Pei Yongyu, and using his high intelligence, he blackmailed Pei Yongyu into jail.

Pei Yongyu was eventually imprisoned, and Pei Yuqi seized the opportunity to acquire Pei Group. After merging Pei Group and Xue Group, he made them the largest conglomerate in Shangshui City, controlling almost everything.

Pei Yuqi also had a well-known hobby: watching ballet performances and investing in ballet troupes.

People thought he was interested in ballet because he inherited his mother’s genes, but in truth, he resented his mother, who loved ballet more than him and passed away when he was just a month old, and his irresponsible father, who was preoccupied with the missing mother and died in a car accident shortly after his birth.

But in Shangshui City, where Pei Yuqi could walk with authority and everyone would respectfully call him “President Pei,” he met a woman who refused to bow down to him: Xia Sisi.

At a ballet performance, he immediately noticed Xia Sisi, who was performing a solo dance in the center. It wasn’t love at first sight, but he felt that her movements and expressions while dancing were eerily similar to Xue Huiyu’s.

The bones of Xue Huiyu were unexpectedly discovered the year Pei Yuqi turned an adult.

The river overflowed into the drainage system, and Xue Huiyu’s body was swept downstream, where it got stuck in an abandoned sewer. It wasn’t until the abandoned waterway was under reconstruction that the decayed body was found.

The former ballet queen, who had left the most beautiful Chinese figure on the world ballet stage, had died in such an insignificant and foul-smelling place, which left people mourning deeply.

The internet was filled with tributes to the famous ballet dancer, and it triggered Pei Yuqi’s childhood memories.

He had watched many of Xue Huiyu’s ballet performances as a child and knew that his mother had regarded ballet as a sacred pursuit.

So, he decided to destroy it.

He lavishly sent gifts, calling it “sponsorship,” but in truth, it was a shortcut to corrupting those bright young ballerinas. Eventually, these dancers, driven by greed, would fall into the hands of the rich, completely ruining the career his mother had once been so proud of!

Thus, he employed his usual method: he proposed to “sponsor” Xia Sisi in exchange for her dancing for him alone.

However, Pei Yuqi was coldly rejected, and Xia Sisi splashed water in his face.

Enraged and humiliated, Pei Yuqi began to seek revenge on Xia Sisi, but during his retaliation, he gradually found himself drawn to her resilience and unwillingness to surrender.

Having never received love, he didn’t know how to love or understand love.

To possess Xia Sisi, he became obsessive, pathological, and ruthless. He ruined her family, had her fiancé imprisoned, and even resorted to cruel methods to break her leg, keeping her by his side.

Xia Sisi, however, didn’t develop Stockholm Syndrome. She harbored deep hatred for Pei Yuqi, the one who had ruined her life and taken away her ability to dance. While enduring numerous humiliations and pretending to be compliant, she collected evidence of Pei Yuqi’s crimes, and, with her released fiancé, planned to bring him to justice.

In the end, Pei Yuqi drowned while fleeing from the police after jumping into a river.

[The world you are in, Host, is a romance novel about forcible takeovers. The story takes place twenty-five years later. As you just saw, Pei Yuqi, who lacked love as a child, eventually developed into a violent, paranoid, and villainous figure due to his childhood trauma. And you, Host, are the biological mother of the villain, Pei Yuqi.]

The plot summary automatically flooded Xue Huiyu’s mind, shattering her rationality.

The system had indeed mentioned that Pei Yuqi would turn into a villain due to the lack of love after losing his parents, but she never imagined that they were in a fictional world—a novel’s setting.

Her son wasn’t the male protagonist, but instead the villain: a twisted, obsessive, and ruthless character in the story.

She wasn’t a supporting female character or a minor character; she was simply a peripheral figure in Pei Yuqi’s memories—his biological mother who barely appeared in his recollections!

Moreover, Pei Yuqi hated the parents who had abandoned him and died early. By elementary school, he had burned all their photos…

Yet, even after burning the photos, he could not erase the ballet performances that Xue Huiyu had starred in, which still circulated online.

The hatred was unbearable, and it peaked the year Xue Huiyu’s body was discovered. After acquiring Pei Group, Pei Yuqi deliberately led young ballerinas into traps, turning them into playthings for the rich elite, all to destroy the profession his mother had once been proud of.

Now, thinking of her autistic son who couldn’t even speak, Xue Huiyu, unable to reconcile her perception of “How could my son, so well-behaved and adorable, be so terrifying and twisted?” struggled to accept this reality.

She trembled as she asked, “The novel… doesn’t that mean the ending is already set in stone? How can I change such a future?!”

Xue Huiyu was in a panic.

Seeing the data glitch again in her mind, the system corrected her: [Host, you have already started to change the future. Pei Wenyu’s surgery was successful, and he is now out of danger. He is in the ICU awaiting further treatment. As a result, you have earned 2 revival points.]

[Due to your fever and fainting last night, Pei Wenyu’s secretary arranged for you to be placed in a VIP luxury ward. Currently, your medical report indicates…]

“Wonderful, Pei Wenyu survived… If I can change Pei Wenyu’s fate, I can surely change Pei Yuqi’s future!” Xue Huiyu sighed in relief.

Suddenly, she caught onto an important detail and sternly interrupted the system, which was still reading her health report: “Since Pei Yuqi is the villain of this world, did the system choose me to return because I’m his mother? Pei Yuqi turned out twisted because he lacked love as a child, and I’ve been revived to change him…? Then why restrict me from revealing my identity?”

Author’s note:

Revival points: 4/100

Xue Huiyu: My baby! My poor little one! The female lead doesn’t love you, but Mama loves you!

Autistic little one: Why haven’t Dad and Mom come home… Do they not want me anymore…?