He Yisheng looked up at the two of them. “She was taken into the palace seven months ago.”

Shi Buyu had already guessed some of it and wasn’t surprised. She just gestured for him to continue.

The young eunuch had clearly prepared for this day, and he spoke in an organized manner. “My sister was engaged to someone—his family background was comparable to ours, and our families had been on good terms for generations. The man was decent in every way, except his looks were quite disappointing. My sister didn’t want to marry him, but it wasn’t her choice to make. On the Lantern Festival, our mother asked me to accompany my sister, who was in a bad mood, to see the lantern displays and help say some good things about her fiancé. Everything was going fine, my sister was feeling better… until we ran into a few girls from other families who deliberately mocked her fiancé’s appearance and made a few cutting remarks. My sister was so upset she ran off crying. I chased after her—and saw her being drugged and carried into a carriage. I was afraid something would happen to her, so I yelled to stop them. It wasn’t even a remote place—I figured if I shouted loud enough, someone would come.”

Even now, recalling it, He Yisheng’s body trembled slightly. “Then they held me down and drugged me too. I woke up once on the way, but they found out and drugged me again. When I next woke up, I was in a place I’d only ever read about in books—carved railings, jade inlays, golden walls, all extravagant. But I didn’t dare think in that direction. I just assumed it was some lavish brothel. I had already been washed, dressed in sheer gauze clothing, like…”

He Yisheng paused, swallowing the vile words he almost said.

“I was carried into another room, even more luxurious than the last—beyond anything I’d ever seen. A man and a woman sat surrounded by attendants. Every one of them—male or female—was dressed like me, only gauze over bare skin. I was placed on a huge bed, so large that I only occupied a tiny corner of it. I wanted to run, to see if my sister was among them. With her personality, she wouldn’t survive something like this.”

What happened next didn’t need to be said. Everyone already knew. Yan Shian glanced at Miss Shi but saw her listening with utmost seriousness.

He Yisheng kept ripping open his wounds. “But I barely had time to think before my body stopped obeying me. I started feeling aroused—though I was in agony and crying, I still smiled. I blacked out in the end. When I woke again, my body felt like it had been beaten with a heavy hammer, aching everywhere—especially… that place I can’t describe. I thought I was going to die. I wished I would. But I didn’t. Their drugs were too effective. No matter how injured I was, I recovered in less than ten days. Then came the torment again.”

Yan Shian asked, “What about your sister?”

“She died.” He Yisheng lowered his gaze. “She didn’t survive the first time.”

“You weren’t castrated when you were first brought to the palace?”

“I’m the youngest one they caught who managed to survive the longest.” He Yisheng gave a slight smile. “The others didn’t make it to the age when their voices start changing. I did. When they noticed, they castrated me. Unexpectedly, that became my turning point. After that, their surveillance of me relaxed a lot. The real eunuchs, maybe because they saw me as one of them, started treating me much better. I stopped passively enduring and started cooperating, making them happy in exchange for small benefits. Speaking up for someone here or there—it was easy. The more people I pleased, the more information I got.”

He looked at the two again. “From one old eunuch, I learned we were all destined for the mass graves. From a steward eunuch, I found out when people would be sent away. I’d secretly practiced playing dead—holding my breath, not moving my eyelids, even mimicking the stiffness of limbs after death. Then I persuaded a young maid who had once helped me to sneak me a handful of tiny shrimp. I really liked those shrimp—but I couldn’t eat them. When I was little, I once ate a few and broke out in red welts all over my face, looked like smallpox, almost caused a citywide alarm. Before being sent out for ‘entertainment’ again, I ate the shrimp. The reaction hit midway. I was immediately thrown into an empty room. I played dead for two days, not daring to move. I fooled them. That night, I was taken to the mass grave. If I’d waited another day, the rash would’ve faded—I would’ve been found out. Everyone fears smallpox—no one dared to get close and examine me. Even the one assigned to scar my face didn’t dare, so my face stayed intact. That’s how it happened.”

It all sounded watertight. Shi Buyu nodded, but suddenly asked, “That day you woke up in the mass grave—if we hadn’t shown up, where would you have gone?”

He Yisheng looked out the window, where sunlight poured in. “Home.”

“Even knowing the consequences?”

“No.” He Yisheng turned back with a slight smile. “The He Yisheng of today wouldn’t let such consequences happen.”

“That sounds more like you,” Shi Buyu also smiled. “A person who’s fallen from a great height, dropped from the human world into hell—after such a fall, how could they still be simple? A simple person wouldn’t have gotten out of that place.”

He wasn’t, indeed.

He Yisheng smiled again, but the smile carried a shadowy edge—like someone who’d been seen through and no longer cared to pretend.

A man who survived hell—how could anyone expect him to remain clean and pure? He only wanted to overturn the world, raze everything beneath his feet, make people cry, make them hate, make them fear the very sight of him.

“He Yisheng, how about a deal?”

“You know I’m not a good person, and you still want to make a deal with me?”

Shi Buyu’s brows arched. “Why not? When you were a good person, maybe you never helped anyone. Now that you’re bad, you haven’t even had time to hurt anyone. So what’s the difference? If your cruelty can bring down the truly wicked, isn’t that a kind of goodness? I like that kind of bad.”

“…Is that how it works?” It sounded… oddly pleasant. He Yisheng smiled, his fangs seemingly pulled back a little.

“Besides,” Shi Buyu pointed to Yan Shian beside her, “the ones in front of you aren’t exactly good people either. That noble young master with the gentle manner—behind the scenes, he’s all schemes and calculations.”

She then pointed to herself. “I look like a decent person, but I start fires, pick fights, and scheme plenty too. So what’s the problem? Add you in—three villains.”

He Yisheng looked at her, trying to spot falsehood in her eyes, deceit, anything to remind himself not to believe. But what was there not to believe? She said she wasn’t a good person. Neither of them were. Just like him.

Suddenly, he felt that maybe he didn’t have to be the one to do all the dirty work, to devise plans, to pay the price. Maybe… there was still a place for him in this world.

He wasn’t alone.

He didn’t have to go back and drag everyone into the dark with him.

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Lhaozi’s Note: Hello, hope you are enjoying this one, if there was or will be an error about this novels character names and etc., please feel free to comment and I will fix it asap, thankyou so much!