Chapter 1: The Engagement
Night fell.
White Horse Manor was buzzing with noise and excitement.
At the center of the estate stood a towering building in an old European court style. A silver full moon hung high in the sky, its pale light casting a touch of chill along the side of the castle, completely at odds with the bold sculptures around it. In the garden, roses were lifted by green branches and bloomed with exceptional brilliance. Even the night itself could not hide the extravagance and decadence of tonight’s social gathering.
The manor had a history of more than a hundred years. Back then, it had been purchased in one stroke by the wealthy and high-profile Second Young Master of the Huo family. Whether as a collectible property or a commercial opportunity, White Horse Manor was a prime symbol of both profit and prestige.
Who would have thought that the news afterward would be this: White Horse Manor would not be opened to the public, would not be lent out, and had completely turned away all traces of business and ambition.
Everyone had assumed it was being preserved as a treasured collection.
What shocked people even more, however, was that after Huo Beixing bought the estate, he used it for nothing but pleasure and indulgence. Every time his romantic escapades were mentioned, people could not help but click their tongues in disbelief. Such a fine estate had truly been wasted in the hands of a playboy like Huo Er.
These past few days, the Huo family had sent out invitations. No one knew how they had managed to persuade Huo Er, but White Horse Manor was finally being used.
Just as people’s guesses were running wild, the Huo family deliberately let certain news slip. Details about Huo Beixing spread through their social circle, leaving everyone stunned speechless for a time.
The news was so explosive it made for perfect mealtime gossip. It was the kind of thing people had to roll around on their tongues before and after meals, the kind of thing that would make you suffocate if you went a whole day without telling someone else.
By the night of the banquet, most people had already digested the contents of the news. That, at least, could be considered the bit of dignity the Huo family had tried to preserve.
Greeters and attendants received the prestigious guests and led them, after registration, toward tonight’s main venue: the grand hall inside the castle.
The hall, built in an old European style, was rich with strong colors and ornate detail. The carved stone pillars, court-style murals, carpets, and decorations all radiated luxury and elegance, steeped in history and meaning.
To sum it up in one word: expensive.
Inside the hall, musicians and an orchestra played a graceful stream of classical music.
All around, the place sparkled brilliantly as everyone waited for the appearance of tonight’s host—the Huo family.
“Huo Er is getting married off in an alliance with the Fang family’s third daughter. Everyone in the industry has heard about it by now, right?”
“The Fang family’s third daughter? Wasn’t it supposed to be the Li family’s only daughter?”
“Where are you getting your information? It’s clearly with the An family.”
“The An family? The An family has a daughter?”
“No. I heard they’re sending their adopted son into the marriage alliance.”
Rumor had it that Huo Er was interested in both men and women, but a marriage alliance with a man was still a first in their circle.
No matter how outrageous Huo Beixing was, the Huo family was still an old and prestigious household. What he did in private was one thing, but appearances in public still had to be maintained. The fact that they were now agreeing to an alliance with a man meant the Huo family must truly have been driven to desperate measures over Huo Er’s situation.
“Anyway, whether it’s a man or a woman, it won’t end well. Haven’t you heard how wild and brutal Huo Er is in private?”
“Exactly. I heard all those little stars under his entertainment company have gone through him already.”
“I heard he also likes to play bleep—bleep—bleep—”
“Oh! Really?! I heard it was bleep—bleep bleep—bleep——”
“Ah, wasn’t it bleep—bleep bleep bleep——bleep bleep——”
Anyone who did not know better would think Huo Beixing was some kind of human telegraph machine reborn.
“If that An Yi from the An family marries over there, won’t he be played to death?”
One person clicked his tongue and shook his head. “This An Yi really isn’t afraid of anything.”
A few steps behind them stood a slender figure. An Yi lifted his head from the food.
I’m scared to death, okay? 🙂
Honestly, the whole thing was ridiculous. Tonight, An Yi had been brought to White Horse Manor by his father, An Shaofeng, who told him they were attending an engagement banquet.
But after coming in, An Shaofeng had been dragged off to socialize, leaving An Yi standing there alone in utter confusion.
Luckily, An Yi had been independent since childhood. He knew that if he was hungry, he should eat, and he did not need anyone to accompany him, so he happily helped himself in the dining area.
At the same time, he also overheard plenty of different versions of the inside story behind the engagement banquet.
Very appetizing stuff.
There were too many versions, but the general content was all more or less the same. After mentally blending and filtering everything he had heard, An Yi came to this conclusion:
The Huo family’s Huo Er was a complete bastard. Something had happened to him recently, and now they needed to find an honest person for a marriage alliance.
And whether that honest person was willing or not, he had no choice.
“Ah… the person getting married into that alliance is way too pitiful.”
An Yi chewed his steak and nodded. Exactly, exactly.
“I kind of feel sorry for him.”
An Yi puffed out his cheeks. So pitiful, so pitiful.
“Although this is a bit immoral of me, once they get married there should be plenty of juicy drama to watch.”
An Yi: So immoral, so immoral.
“A grown man marrying over there… I wonder how that adopted son of the An family feels. His name is An Yi, right?”
The movement of An Yi’s cheeks suddenly stopped. Who?
“Yes, that’s right. His name is An Yi.”
An Yi: Are you sure?!
Just a few minutes ago, An Yi had been listening and shaking his head, thinking that poor honest guy really was fate’s chosen unlucky bastard. He had even been curious who the unfortunate soul was.
Turns out it was him.
🙂
Even more ridiculous was the fact that at his own engagement banquet, not only was he the last one to find out, he found out by gossiping about it.
But perhaps because he had already lived through twenty-three years of a life so absurd it defied reason, hearing this ridiculous news did not shock him much. He just felt unlucky.
After all, the last giant wave of life had nearly smashed him to death on the beach of fate.
If he had to sum up the first twenty-three years of his life in one sentence, it would be:
“Outrageous beyond all reason.”
Ever since An Yi could remember, he had known he lived in a remote mountain ditch so isolated not even birds could be bothered to fly over it.
Every day he had to walk several kilometers just to barely make it to school. The rest of life was farming, farming hard, and farming like his life depended on it.
Then one day, a group of tall men in black suddenly appeared. They claimed to be bodyguards and told him he was the long-lost young master of a wealthy family. They were here to rescue him from hardship and take him home to enjoy riches and luxury.
An Yi: Hilarious. As if I’d believe that.
I have a high school diploma, okay? Don’t try to fool me.
Before the men in black had even finished speaking, he turned and ran.
Don’t think I don’t know what you are—you’re human traffickers stealing people for their organs!
An Yi had grown up in those mountains, and he knew the terrain like the back of his hand.
Even so, that group still had to chase him over two mountain ridges before they finally caught him. Two of them even got heatstroke in the process.
Looking at the captured An Yi, if he had been their own child, they would have swung their slippers so hard smoke might have come off them.
Ridiculous as it sounded, they had actually needed to use grappling techniques to catch him.
One of them tried to get close and calm him down. “We’re not traffickers. If we really were human traffickers, we could just grab anyone in the village.”
Why would we go running all over the mountains after you?
Damn it, this isn’t even as romantic as chasing my own wife.
“What exactly do you think we’re after?! Your cheap potatoes that aren’t worth any money?”
An Yi said, “I grow peanuts.”
Bodyguard: …
But if they were talking about what they wanted from him, there was a lot.
An Yi said, “You want my kidney that’s worth hundreds of thousands, my healthy corneas, my un-stented heart, and…”
He paused there.
The bodyguard asked, “And what?”
An Yi lowered his head shyly. “And my beautiful qualities.”
Bodyguard: …
After the long chase over two mountains, they had realized that An Yi’s brief cooperation was only an illusion. To avoid him escaping again—and to prevent any more cases of heatstroke among the staff—they unanimously decided to tie him up.
If they tied him too loosely, he might run.
If they tied him too tightly, they were afraid of hurting this young master.
Well, if it hurts, it hurts. Better that than letting him run away.
Most importantly, the pain wasn’t theirs.
One bodyguard stepped forward with a hemp rope in hand. “My apologies.”
An Yi said, “Even if you didn’t say that, I’d still know.”
Bodyguard: …
Maybe we should gag him too.
So they tied up his hands and feet like they were bundling a piglet for slaughter, planning to take him back and report mission accomplished.
The whole commotion was not small. Most people in the village had some kind of grudge against An Yi. Watching him get trussed up and hauled away like a pig being butchered for New Year, not a single one of them came forward to help.
They always said harsh lands bred difficult people. Before coming, the bodyguards had even watched a few gritty realism films and mentally prepared themselves to be attacked by angry villagers with rakes. But despite how openly they were carrying someone away, no one reacted at all.
Seeing the villagers’ blank faces and total indifference, the bodyguards assumed they had been cowed by their imposing presence and dared not step forward. They felt rather smug about it.
An Yi leaned in and whispered by one of their ears, “No. It’s just that I’m bad with people.”
Bodyguard: …
The roads in that poor backwater were extremely hard to travel. Or rather, there were basically no roads at all. The ground was steep, one slope after another, one hill after another, and cars could not get in. They did not know any shortcuts or mountain paths. Carrying their “spoils of war,” An Yi, they actually spent an entire day just getting down the mountain.
Even after leaving that remote, barren mountain ravine behind and heading into a technologically advanced metropolis, An Yi still refused to believe the bodyguards’ story. He remained convinced they were trying to brainwash him.
That was, until he saw a grand villa as big as half a mountain.
An Yi turned to look at the bodyguard.
The bodyguard smiled in relief. Now you believe it, right?
See, kid? We weren’t lying to you.
Everything we said was true—truer than pearls! Even if you don’t believe us, you’ve got to believe my mom!
You were the lost pearl in the vast sea, the long-misplaced son of a wealthy family, heaven’s chosen young master. Even if you had spent more than twenty years in some mountain ravine—two or three years longer than Wang Baochuan in her shabby hut—we still had to drag you back and make you a proper young master.
The bodyguard carrying An Yi looked positively delighted.
An Yi chattered right by his ear, “Didn’t expect your crime scene to be this luxurious.”
Bodyguard: …
After An Yi was brought inside, a woman dressed in opulent elegance rushed forward and pulled him into a fierce embrace.
She squeezed so hard An Yi could barely breathe. There was a kind of excitement in her that clearly did not care whether he lived or died.
The woman looked at him with tears and snot running down her face, her fair fingers trembling as they touched his cheek. Her voice broke down on the spot.
“My god… why is he so dark?”
An Yi: …
Bodyguard: …
He had spent more than twenty years in some mountain ditch, exposed to sun and wind every single day, planting peanuts after finishing with corn. How could he not be dark?
Compared to how he looked now, back then An Yi had been black as charcoal.
Being dark would have been one thing, but there was also a slight flaw around the left side of his brow and eye. His left eyebrow was split. Really, the only striking feature he had was a pair of grape-black eyes.
When mother and son finally met, she could not find a single trace of shared genes between them. He looked nothing like the son she had imagined.
Chen Lin: They didn’t just pick some random guy up off the roadside and bring him back to me, did they?
After forcing herself to get used to his face, Chen Lin declared, “You look like your father.”
An Yi: …
It took An Yi a full week before he finally understood and believed the truth about his background. He should have been the eldest son of the An family, but when he was born, a nurse made a mistake and swapped him with the child of a pregnant woman who had suddenly gone into labor while traveling in the city with her husband.
And just like that, he had drifted into some mountain backwater, living off wild greens for more than twenty years.
No one would believe it if you said it out loud, but life really was that melodramatic.
Compared to the sudden rise from mountain ditch to wealthy family back then, this engagement banquet was practically nothing. An Yi felt no particular waves in his heart. He was already planning to go back and talk to An Shaofeng. This was the twenty-first century—how was it that the city was even more feudal than the mountains, still doing this old aristocratic marriage alliance nonsense?
A few decades ago, this kind of thing would have gotten people publicly denounced!
Not to mention, it was two men getting married. Truly unheard of.
An Yi shook his head profoundly. Rich people really were something else.
“This adopted son of the An family seems to have appeared out of nowhere a year ago. I don’t really remember him.”
“The An family suddenly adopted him a year ago. They announced it at the capital’s charity banquet, but they only brought him out once, so it’s normal not to remember.”
“What does he look like?”
“I don’t really remember. His skin was pretty dark, he spoke with an accent, and his manners were pretty rough too. He didn’t even know how to use a knife and fork. He didn’t bother cutting his steak—just stabbed the whole thing with a fork and shoved it straight into his mouth.”
At that exact moment, An Yi, who was indeed shoving steak into his mouth with a fork: …
How rude.
“Doesn’t he have any good points?”
“His teeth are pretty white.”
Well, when you’re that dark, how could your teeth not look white?
Actually, when An Shaofeng had first brought An Yi to that banquet, he had intended to publicly introduce him as his long-lost son. But An Yi had never received any etiquette training. His behavior was too rough and too wild, so by the time the words reached his lips, “son” had somehow turned into “adopted son.”
After that, he was never brought out again.
An Yi puffed out his cheeks as he chewed the steak in his mouth. Suddenly, it hit him that today he could technically be considered half a main character. It would not be good if people started noticing him. So An Yi upgraded from openly chewing steak in the dining area to standing in a corner and chewing steak.
Before long, the arrival of the Huo family officially marked the start of the banquet.
The people from the Huo family who came were not any truly central figures either. Perhaps they also felt that marrying a male spouse was somewhat damaging to the family’s honor and reputation. So the one who came forward as the Huo family’s representative was Old Master Huo’s fourth son—Huo Beixing’s uncle.
Huo Zhanfeng stepped onto the main stage.
“Thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend the engagement banquet of my nephew Huo Beixing and the An family’s son.”
He spoke slowly, then paused for a long while without saying anything else. Clearly, he had been pushed out at the last moment and had not even prepared any lines, so now he had to make them up on the spot.
An Yi listened obediently, fully intending to be invisible. Invisible on the way in, invisible on the way out—ideally with no one noticing him at all.
The next moment, Huo Zhanfeng said, “My nephew is unable to be here today, so let us invite the An family’s son, An Yi, to come up and say a few words.”
An Yi: !
Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you!
Don’t think I can’t tell you’ve run out of things to say!
If you’ve got no lines left, what makes you think I do?!
It was honestly miraculous. Even though An Yi had been hiding in the corner, the second Huo Zhanfeng spoke, the attendants seemed to activate some kind of internal radar and spotted him instantly.
Before he could even recover from the shock, he had already been ushered onto the stage, and someone had stuffed a glass of champagne into his hand.
An Yi: …
The young man on the stage had refined features and a good-looking face. He stood at one meter eighty-two, but because he was on the thinner side and his frame was smaller than that of most adult men, he looked shorter than his actual height. He wore a well-fitted black formal suit with a black bow tie at the collar. His skin was snow-white, his hair thick and jet-black, and his expression was one of blank confusion.
Who am I? Where am I?
All eyes in the room turned toward him. The musicians beside the stage stopped playing when they realized he was about to speak.
The graceful music came to a halt, and suddenly all was silent.
An Yi’s scalp went numb. Was he not worthy of background music or what?
How was this any different from taking a dump in public?
He turned his head to look at Huo Zhanfeng, only to see the man smiling at him with kindly benevolence.
Absolutely lacking in basic human decency.
Although he had only attended this kind of occasion twice, he still knew in his heart that he could not openly embarrass anyone here. Everyone present was rich and influential, and none of them could be offended. If the engagement was going to be called off, it would have to be discussed privately after they returned.
An Yi had no words, so he could only repeat what Huo Zhanfeng had said earlier.
“Thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend my engagement banquet.”
“I hope everyone has a good time.”
Baptized by the gaze of the crowd, An Yi glanced at the band and added,
“Keep the music going. Keep the dancing going.”
