Twenty minutes later, the black Mercedes G-Wagon rolled to a stop in front of an imposing villa. The night pressed down heavy and thick around them, and the entire residential district lay wrapped in oppressive silence. The building before him loomed like some predatory creature crouched in waiting, every window a black void, not a single spark of light visible anywhere in its facade.
From this distance, the structure gleamed with a cold, metallic sheen under the anemic moonlight—it looked disturbingly like those gothic vampire castles from old horror films, all sharp angles and foreboding architecture.
Marcus climbed out of the vehicle with emotions churning in chaotic patterns through his chest. His feet touched down on the frigid pavement. That floaty, disconnected sensation from the bar still clung to him like cobwebs, but it was rapidly being overtaken by something far heavier—the gnawing dread of whatever awaited him beyond that iron gate.
"The Young Master has returned!" A woman's voice, pitched slightly too high and sharp, sliced through the quiet like a blade. She must have been stationed just inside the entrance, listening for his arrival, because she immediately called deeper into the house: "Miss! The Young Master is back!"
Yes. He hadn't stayed out all night at some hotel or mistress's apartment. He'd come back. Marcus felt a tiny measure of tension ease in his chest. Perhaps that meant something. Perhaps it meant there was still room for damage control, still a possibility of salvaging this catastrophic situation.
That brief moment of optimism lasted approximately three seconds.
Click.
The harsh white security lights mounted above the villa's entrance flared to life with blinding intensity, forcing Marcus to squint against the sudden glare. His pupils contracted painfully.
Immediately following that assault of illumination came another sound—the tortured screech of metal grinding against metal as the heavy, ornately carved iron gate began its slow journey inward. Creeeak. Creeeak. The noise was particularly grating in the dead silence of the night, reminiscent of chains being dragged across stone in some medieval dungeon. Or perhaps the sound of Death himself arriving to collect a debt.
Then, cast long and distorted by the angle of the light, a wheelchair's shadow glided forward through the opening gate.
Where light and darkness intersected in sharp contrast, a young woman sat enthroned in that wheelchair.
Her skin was so pale it seemed almost luminescent, nearly reflective in the harsh lighting—like fine porcelain or polished marble. She wore an impeccably tailored black vintage-style suit dress that looked like it had stepped out of a 1940s film noir. Her exposed calves and slender arms were heartbreakingly delicate, thin as the stems of flowers, fragile enough that you could imagine them snapping like dried twigs under the slightest pressure.
The night breeze stirred around her, lifting the cascade of her long, straight black hair and the hem of her dress. The movement only emphasized how ethereally insubstantial she appeared—like some exquisite ghost that might dissipate into mist if you looked away for even a moment.
Her face was small and perfectly proportioned, her features arranged with such precise, delicate beauty that they seemed almost supernatural—as if some divine sculptor had spent centuries perfecting every plane and angle. She looked like a priceless artifact that belonged behind museum glass, something rare and irreplaceable.
But this breathtaking portrait had one glaring, horrifying flaw.
Around her right eye, stark against that porcelain skin, spread a bruise roughly the size of a walnut. The colors were vivid and ugly—deep purplish-red fading to sickly yellow-green at the edges. Against her pale complexion, it stood out with shocking clarity, like a crack running through a perfect marble statue, like deliberate vandalism inflicted on a masterpiece. It was beautiful in the way disasters are beautiful—terrible and compelling and impossible to look away from.
At this moment, Elena Nightshade's dark eyes—deep as wells, deep as graves—fixed on him with unblinking intensity. Those eyes held unfathomable depths of sorrow and bitter resentment, like staring into a lightless abyss. Marcus felt the weight of that gaze like a physical thing trying to pull his soul right out of his body.
His breath caught in his throat. Every hair on his body stood at rigid attention as primal alarm bells started clanging in his hindbrain.
"System! Fortune!" He screamed internally, his thoughts edged with rising panic. "That injury on her eye—please tell me that wasn't... that the Original Owner didn't actually hit her?!"
He clung desperately to one final thread of hope. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe she'd fallen. Maybe it was old, from before the wedding.
[Fortune's response came loaded with sympathy and devastating certainty: "I'm sorry, Host. But yes. It was you—or rather, it was this body—approximately four hours ago."]
The moment those words registered, a flash of cold white light stabbed through Marcus's consciousness like a spike driven into his brain!
In the span of mere seconds, the system forcibly uploaded compressed memory data, replaying the events of the wedding night in high-definition clarity, like watching a movie on fast-forward directly inside his skull—
The wedding reception. Crowds of well-dressed guests milling about with champagne flutes and artificial smiles. The Original Marcus Chen, strutting around in an obscenely expensive white designer suit covered in garish red logos, preening like a peacock showing off its plumage. He moved through the crowd with a glass perpetually raised, making endless toasts.
His ears filled with hollow flattery: "Congratulations, Young Master Chen!" "The Nightshade family's new son-in-law!" "Such a powerful alliance!" The words were syrup-sweet and completely meaningless.
He was drunk on success and alcohol in equal measure, using "my wife's mobility difficulties" as an excuse to drink round after round after round, basking in the attention.
Eventually he collapsed into a corner sofa to recover, feeling weightless and victorious. The impossible dream—marrying into obscene wealth—had somehow become reality. He'd done it. He'd actually pulled it off.
But then, filtering through a thin decorative curtain, came the whispered conversations of guests who thought they couldn't be overheard. Their words pierced through his euphoric haze like ice picks jabbing into soft tissue:
"Marrying a cripple? What's even the point?"
"Legs that don't work, can't spread them properly—takes all the fun out of it, doesn't it?"
"Marcus Chen? Please. He's just the trashy son of some nouveau riche coal baron who got lucky..."
Those whispers became the world's most effective hangover cure, igniting his simmering insecurities and wounded pride into a roaring inferno of rage and humiliation.
He forced his face into a smile to bid farewell to the departing guests, playing the gracious host. But once they were gone, he carried all that festering resentment and self-loathing back to the bridal suite like a bomb waiting to detonate.
He found Elena struggling to transfer herself from her wheelchair onto the bed—a simple task made difficult by her disability. The sight of her weakness triggered something ugly in him, that violence born from his own profound inadequacy.
She noticed him enter. Her eyes held shy anticipation, maybe even hope. Her voice was soft, almost tender: "You're back... We should rest now."
"Rest?" The Original Owner's sneer was vicious. He grabbed her roughly—no gentleness, no care—and then deliberately hurled her onto the bed like she was a sack of garbage.
Elena's voice went sharp with confused panic: "Husband? What are you—"
But he was already tearing off the careful mask he'd worn for three months, revealing the rot underneath. He loomed over her, one foot braced on the edge of the mattress, and unleashed a torrent of the vilest verbal abuse: "Cripple." "Useless." "Why don't you just die already?" "When you're dead, everything you own becomes mine anyway." He even threatened to "bring another woman here and fuck her right in front of you so you can watch what you'll never be able to do."
Elena's hand shot out, fingers wrapping around his wrist with desperate strength, her voice breaking: "Were the last three months a lie? Did any of it mean anything to you?"
They struggled. She tried to hold on. He tried to shake her off.
And then, whether by accident or dark intent, his fist swung around and connected with brutal precision—directly into her right eye, that innocent, doe-like eye that had looked at him with such vulnerable trust.
The sound was awful. Flesh striking flesh. Her sharp gasp of pain. Then terrible, ringing silence.
Leaving his bride crumpled and sobbing on the bed, the Original Owner had stormed out and gone straight to the bar to celebrate his successful con.
The memory stream cut off abruptly, leaving Marcus reeling.
His own right eye throbbed sympathetically, as if his body remembered the impact even though his consciousness hadn't been present for it. That visceral sensation of violence, combined with the echo of Elena's despair and helplessness, made his stomach lurch with nausea.
What kind of absolute monster does something like that?
He stared at the livid bruise encircling Elena's eye, visible even from this distance in the harsh security lighting. That wasn't just an injury. It was irrefutable evidence. Damning proof of the Original Owner's cruelty. And now it was a burden Marcus had to carry, a weight shackled around his neck.
Guilt crashed through him—guilt for something he hadn't technically done but was being held accountable for nonetheless. Anger blazed hot on its heels—fury at the Original Owner for being such irredeemable human garbage. And beneath it all, threading through everything else, was cold, visceral fear.
Elena sat perfectly still in her wheelchair, watching him with those fathomless dark eyes. She didn't speak. Her pale lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line. She didn't need to say anything. The bruise spoke volumes. Her fragile appearance, the betrayal written in every line of her posture—it was the most powerful condemnation possible, made all the more devastating by its silence.
In the span of perhaps five seconds, Marcus's mind raced through the full catalog of atrocities the Original Owner had committed, reviewing each one in excruciating detail.
The sickening sound of knuckles impacting delicate flesh. Those cruel, cutting insults designed to inflict maximum psychological damage. The way the light had shattered and died in his bride's eyes as she realized the man she'd trusted was a monster wearing a human mask.
The images were crystal clear. Nauseatingly vivid.
So yes. He—this body—had hit her. The evidence was literally branded on her face. That bruise was a Sword of Damocles hanging over his head, a ticking time bomb, an accusation that couldn't be erased or explained away.
"Fortune," Marcus thought desperately, feeling his fragile hope crumbling like sand through his fingers. "Tell me honestly—do I have even a remote chance of fixing this?"
He could practically feel the killing intent radiating from Elena's unblinking stare, cold as a morgue drawer.
[Fortune's voice crackled with static, electronic distortion barely concealing genuine anxiety: "C-cough, Host, please, you must try! Think about it—one hundred million! One hundred million yuan! Surely that's worth the effort!"]
"I want to die right here on the spot," Marcus thought miserably. "Just let me collapse and be done with this nightmare."
[Fortune's response came sharp and immediate: "Absolutely NOT! Non-mission-related death will trigger catastrophic penalty protocols! Your soul will be permanently trapped in the spatial rift between dimensions—which I can assure you is considerably worse than being fish food! No escape! No second chances! Eternal suffering!"]
Marcus said nothing. There was nothing to say.
To be brutally honest with himself: the Original Owner had been an irredeemable piece of human garbage who'd left behind a situation so catastrophically damaged it seemed beyond any hope of salvaging.
But... forcing himself to think rationally, to analyze the situation with cold logic... maybe it wasn't completely hopeless yet.
At least—and this was the thinnest possible silver lining—the Original Owner hadn't followed through on that ultimate threat. He hadn't actually brought another woman back here to humiliate Elena with a live demonstration of sexual betrayal. If he had, Marcus wouldn't be standing here facing a cold stare. He'd probably already have a knife buried between his ribs, bleeding out on the marble steps.
So this was... well, calling it a "blessing in disguise" would be absurdly generous. But the script, while horrifically difficult, hadn't quite reached the absolute point of no return.
The game was still technically playable.
He just had no idea how to win it.