People like Lin Qing, who were resistant to anesthetics, were extremely rare. He might even have been the only one.

So after Su Yao inhaled the anesthetic, she knew her plan had failed, no matter how unwilling she was to accept it.

He couldn’t experience the ** of killing.

All that effort, wasted at the last moment!

Damn it!

As Su Yao’s body swayed unsteadily, Lin Qing clenched his injured hand to slow the bleeding. Then he reached out and wrapped an arm around her slender waist, not letting her fall to the floor.

It wasn’t because he was trying to be a gentleman. Her bodyguards were right outside.

If he let Su Yao fall and hurt herself, the bodyguards outside wouldn’t let him get away with it.

Thinking this, Lin Qing lifted Su Yao onto the hospital bed, then pressed the call button by the headboard.

“Help! I’ve been cut!”

After speaking, Lin Qing immediately took the scalpel from Su Yao’s hand and wiped off her fingerprints with the bedsheet. Then he hurried over to Li Mei, who had fallen to the floor, and shoved the scalpel into her hand.

Li Mei had committed plenty of crimes. After killing so many people, one more charge for attacking someone with a blade hardly made a difference.

Saving Li Mei from Su Yao didn’t mean Li Mei was innocent.

Criminals can never escape punishment under the law.

As the old saying goes… Those who do evil won’t go unpunished forever. The time just hasn’t come yet.

Once he’d done all that, Lin Qing felt dizzy and disoriented.

He looked down at the wound on his hand. He hadn’t expected to be the one who’d been hurt the worst.

“Why…? I wanted to kill you, but you saved me… You’re so strange.”

After Lin Qing’s legs gave out and he slumped to the floor, Li Mei, who was lying there after her fall, spoke up.

Li Mei hadn’t passed out when she fell. She’d simply watched everything unfold in silence.

The crazed look had vanished from her face. In its place was a lonely sadness, as if she’d just woken from a terrible nightmare.

It was just too late.

“There’s no need to ask why. You’ve killed so many people, and you’re guilty. But you shouldn’t be punished by me or her. You should face justice under the law.”

Lin Qing naturally wasn’t going to reveal the skull’s special ability, or openly announce that he’d stopped Su Yao from becoming the most terrifying serial killer of all time.

So he could only choose the most righteous-sounding reasons he could think of to explain what he’d just done.

Still, anyone else hearing him would probably think Lin Qing had something wrong with his head.

All for a reason like that…

He’d nearly paid for it with his life, and he was badly injured now, too.

When Li Mei heard Lin Qing’s words, she couldn’t help laughing. But as the corners of her mouth lifted, tears began streaming down her face.

One wrong step, and every step after it was wrong.

She’d been wrong.

All because of her ex-boyfriend, she’d caused so many people to die.

“Oh, and one more thing. Su Yao is the only daughter of a powerful family. It’d be best if you left her out of what happened today.”

As Li Mei kept laughing, Lin Qing’s face had gone deathly pale. He wondered why the doctor still hadn’t come… If they didn’t hurry, he was going to pass out from blood loss.

Had he spoken too softly when he pressed the call button? He should’ve said there was a murderer on the loose!

He must’ve been a traitor in his last life. That was the only reason he’d ended up with Su Yao, this walking disaster, and gotten dragged into this mess.

Should he transfer schools?

Even if he didn’t have any money to spare.

But if he kept hanging around Su Yao, he’d lose his life.

He’d better think it over!

“Oh my God, what happened here?”

“Miss!”

“Doctor, hurry! There’s been a murder!”

Just as Lin Qing’s thoughts were running wild, a commotion suddenly broke out at the door.

He felt a wave of relief. Then darkness rushed over him like a tide, and Lin Qing slowly lost consciousness.

Finally, he was safe!

“You need to watch out for that woman, Su Yao. She’ll kill you.”

But as his consciousness grew hazy, Li Mei’s murmured words drifted into Lin Qing’s ears.

……

When Lin Qing woke up, he was still lying in a hospital room that reeked of disinfectant.

The sun shone brightly outside the window, and birds chirped away in the branches.

But the wound the scalpel had left in his palm was starting to hurt.

Lin Qing frowned slightly, pressed his lips together, and opened his eyes to look at his hand.

But his bandaged hand didn’t catch Lin Qing’s attention.

The handcuff around his wrist did. It left him speechless.

He hadn’t felt the handcuff’s coldness earlier because it wasn’t a steel cuff for arresting criminals. It was a pair of sex handcuffs wrapped in leopard-print fabric.

The kind of handcuffs you see in those unmentionable pictures from pop-up ads on websites.

“You’re awake?”

Just as Lin Qing was wondering why he’d been handcuffed like this, Su Yao’s voice suddenly came from the bed beside his.

Once the curtain between their beds was pulled aside, Su Yao, back to her usual self, smiled at him.

There was no trace of last night’s madness. She’d regained her usual composure.

But her gaze was cold, proof that last night hadn’t been a dream.

“Did the police take Li Mei away?”

Lin Qing looked at Su Yao, who seemed bright-eyed and refreshed. Apart from being held down with a cloth soaked in anesthetic, she hadn’t been hurt at all last night.

She was still the beautiful goddess in everyone’s eyes.

Meanwhile, unlucky old him had not only a knife wound on his palm, but also the spot on his arm where a needle had been jabbed into him. Both still throbbed, impossible to ignore.

In short, it was a world where he was the only one who got hurt.

“By the time I woke up, Li Mei had already been taken away. The police station just called and said she confessed to all her crimes without putting up any resistance. They also said they wanted to give you a certificate for being a brave citizen.”

As Su Yao spoke, she got out of bed and padded barefoot across the carpet toward Lin Qing.

She wasn’t walking fast, but she was in front of him almost in the blink of an eye.

Looking down at Lin Qing, bound to the bed, Su Yao’s smile grew gentler, a stark contrast to the coldness in her eyes.

Clearly, Su Yao was a woman who held a grudge.

Especially after what happened last night. Lin Qing had suddenly turned on his teammate, making himself seem like a traitor.

“So tell me, Mr. Lin, brave citizen—why did you stop me yesterday?”

Su Yao sat beside Lin Qing and asked the question that had been bothering her.

As she spoke, she leaned quickly over the reclining Lin Qing. Her ample breasts pressed firmly against his chest, followed by her slender, graceful hands.

Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it wasn’t.

The hand resting on his chest didn’t stay there. It traveled upward, leaving a tingling sensation wherever her fingertips touched. By then, Su Yao’s hands had reached Lin Qing’s neck.

She stopped teasing him and tightened her grip instead.

Lin Qing’s slender neck was in her hands. With his hands bound and no way to fight back, she could end his life with a single squeeze.

“If you don’t give me a good explanation, you’ll die horribly.”

Su Yao tightened both hands around Lin Qing’s throat, and the smile vanished from her face.