Chapter 5: The Three Life-Saving Pearls Were Given to Someone Else

“Exactly. Huỳnh Huỳnh is far too stubborn. How could she joke about her own life like that? Mộng Vũ has felt so guilty these past few days that she can barely eat.”

But the comforting words they expected never came.

Lục Thâm stood frozen. He didn’t reach out to catch Lâm Mộng Vũ as she rushed toward him.

She missed him and hit the ground in a graceless heap.

Lâm Mộng Vũ stared up at him in disbelief.

“Thâm?”

Lục Thâm looked down at her, his gaze fixed on her face as if she were some bloodsucking monster.

“You ate her three pearls.”

His voice was hoarse, frighteningly so.

“Why are you still so weak?”

Something flickered in Lâm Mộng Vũ’s eyes. In a panic, she clutched her skirt.

“I… I don’t know either. The doctor said my constitution was just too weak…”

“Bullshit!”

Phó Lâm, who had been silent until now, suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Giang Nhứ by the collar, his eyes blazing.

“Who was that person back in your hometown? Who told you there was a Heart of the Sea Pearl beneath the ocean?”

Giang Nhứ screamed in fright.

“Have you lost your mind, Phó Lâm? It was… it was someone from Mộng Vũ’s hometown who told me!”

Mạnh Tự strode over, seized Lâm Mộng Vũ by the hair, and hauled her up from the floor.

“Ah! Brother Tự, what are you doing? That hurts!”

Mạnh Tự ignored her screams. He dragged her upstairs and kicked open the door to my room.

It was cold and empty.

Like a man possessed, Mạnh Tự tore through every drawer.

At last, deep beneath the bed, he found a thick stack of diaries inside a locked metal box.

And… a pile of silvery-blue scales streaked with dried blood.

The moment the three men saw them, their breathing stopped.

Lục Thâm shakily picked up one bloodstained scale.

The diary fell to the floor. On the open page were my desperate words:

[Third day of the countdown. My legs hurt so much, like they’re being sawed apart. I told A Thâm how much it hurt, but he said I should stop pretending. Then he gave Mộng Vũ the medicine instead.]

[Last day of the countdown. Without a pearl, I really will turn into a monster. Mom, they don’t believe me.]

Mạnh Tự stared at the bloodstained scales and finally understood why I had been limping these past few days, and why the water in the bath had turned red whenever I washed.

Because I had been ripping the scales off my own body as they grew!

I had done it to keep looking human, so they wouldn’t see me as a monster.

“Aaah!”

Mạnh Tự suddenly raised his hand and slapped himself twice, hard enough to split the corner of his mouth.

“I’m an animal! I’m a damn animal!”

He dropped to his knees, cradled the scales, and broke down sobbing.

Lục Thâm slowly turned to look at Lâm Mộng Vũ, still sprawled on the floor.

His eyes were full of hatred. He looked ready to devour her alive.

“Giang Nhứ, investigate.”

Lục Thâm gritted his teeth, each word coming out clipped and hard.

“Find out whether she really swallowed those three pearls!”

The truth came out in less than half a day.

Phó Lâm used every connection he had to have Lâm Mộng Vũ’s attending physician dragged straight down to the basement.

Under threat, the doctor confessed everything.

Lâm Mộng Vũ hadn’t been sick at all. All the signs of weakness and the blood she’d vomited were fake symptoms caused by medication.

As for the three life-saving pearls…

“She… she told me to grind them into powder and mix them into imported pearl cream.”

The doctor was shaking like a leaf.

“She said this ancient pearl was the best thing for her skin. If she wanted to keep President Lục’s heart, she had to stay beautiful…”

Boom!

Lục Thâm felt as if a bomb had gone off in his head.

The very thing my mother had begged for with her life—the last thing protecting the sliver of humanity I had left—

She had ground it up and smeared it on her face as cosmetics!

And for the sake of that ridiculous beauty routine, the three of them had pushed me into the abyss with their own hands.

“Lâm! Mộng! Vũ!”

Lục Thâm’s eyes were bloodshot. He strode over, clamped a hand around Lâm Mộng Vũ’s neck, and lifted her off the ground.

Her legs kicked wildly. Her face turned purple as she struggled to pry his hand away.

“Th-Thâm… I was wrong… please, forgive me…”

“You used my little sister’s life as face cream? How dare you!”

Mạnh Tự rushed over. Instead of stopping Lục Thâm, he kicked Lâm Mộng Vũ hard in the stomach.

She let out a piercing scream and immediately vomited sour fluid.

Giang Nhứ was cowering in the corner, so terrified she wet herself. She scrambled toward the door.

“This has nothing to do with me! Mộng Vũ said… once Tang Huỳnh was dead, she could become Mrs. Lục openly and officially. I only helped pass the message…”

Phó Lâm stepped forward and ground his heel into the back of Giang Nhứ’s hand without mercy.

“An accomplice deserves to die too.”

That day, Lâm Mộng Vũ’s screams echoed through the villa for a long time.

Lục Thâm didn’t kill her. He thought that would be far too easy on her.

He stripped Lâm Mộng Vũ and Giang Nhứ of every last shred of social standing, dumped them in the city’s most lawless red-light district, and had people keep watch over them day and night.