CHAPTER 375: THE DEVIL’S REVENGE (2)

Mingshen adjusted his gloves with deliberate care, his movements sharp and methodical. Across the room, Fenhua sat stiffly on a metal chair, wrists bound neatly with medical-grade restraints as if she was nothing more than a problematic patient awaiting treatment.

Fenhua’s back pressed against the chair. "Wi-wife?"

"Are your ears not working?"

Fenhua stared at his disdainful sneer and gritted her lips. "So w-what if I said that? Everybody knows it. She is just a charity case you picked up! She was always like that! Even now! In the party she had said that there was nothing going on between you two but here you claim that she is your wife. This is what I called her! A liar!"

The next moment, Fenhua’s head snapped sideways as Mingshen’s gloved palm struck his face. The sound was soft, almost gentle, no more than the brush of a feather but it left a harsh red imprint across Fenhua’s cheek.

Fenhua jerked in the chair, trembling in disbelief. "You...H-How dare you..."

Mingshen tilted his head, almost fascinated. "Considering how much humiliation my wife bore by your filthy mouth, you turned out to be too weak to even take a slap."

"You hit me!" Tears flowed as her cheeks stung with a burning pain.

His eyes gleamed with something far more dangerous than anger. It was amusement - cold, calculating amusement. He walked closer, the scalpel gleaming under the white lights.

"The pain you have put my wife through is a hundred times worse than this."

He then arched his brow.

"Will you be now screaming that I abused you physically? A doctor doesn’t differentiate between sexes. We know only one term and that is a problematic patient and we do everything we can to cure their problem. So tell me, do you know how the body reacts under different kinds of pain? Physical pain. Psychological pain. Shame

Embarrassment," He twirled the scalpel between his fingers with a surgeon’s grace.

Fenhua swallowed visibly, her earlier bravado slipping away.

"You humiliated Jia," Mingshen said, voice low. "You dragged her parents with your rotten mouth without having the faintest idea what they mean to her. You threw filth at a woman a hundred times stronger than you will ever be. And you laughed."

He bent to her level, his smile sharp as broken glass.

"So now I am going to teach you a little biology lesson about how easily the body remembers shame."

Mingshen pressed the scalpel gently, almost lovingly, against Fenhua’s forearm, letting the cold metal kiss her skin without piercing.

Fenhua froze.

"Ahhh!! Stop! Stop!"

"Don’t worry, I won’t cut you," Mingshen’s smile widened. "Not yet. First, you are going to sweat. Your nerves will spike with adrenaline. Then you will start to shake, anticipating pain that might never come. It’s not the injury that terrifies a human the most - it’s the waiting."

He leaned in, his breath brushing Fenhua’s ear.

"You will think you are strong. You will think you can endure. But eventually, the shame and fear of helplessness will eat you alive from the inside out."

Mingshen straightened and walked back to his tray, neatly placing the scalpel down. He then picked up a syringe instead with a clear liquid inside.

"What’s that?!" Fenhua barked, her voice trembling with fright.

"Saline," Mingshen muttered to himself that wasn’t audible to her. He then said loudly to reach her ears. "It’s completely harmless. But I will let your mind drive you crazy, imagining all the poisons you think I could have used~"

He tapped the syringe thoughtfully. "Fear is an interesting feeling. You plant a small seed and the mind waters it into a jungle."

He approached again, slowly and pressed the syringe against Fenhua’s neck without injecting it.

Fenhua’s breath hitched, her eyes widening as she saw the liquid inside moving against the syringe’s cylindrical walls.

"Hmm, how much should I pour this into your system? Even a fourth is enough to drive you insane. So...full?"

Fenhua thrased against the chair, screaming at the top of her voice but which only got absorbed into the void.

"Voices cannot escape from this place," he smiled. "You are just unnecessarily straining your vocal chords. Ooo, that gives me an idea. Should I play around with your vocal chords for a while~? I mean, the whole source of the problem was your ability to speak, isn’t it?"

She froze as if dropped in Arctic.

"Or should it be the injection only?" He pouted. "Such a difficult thing to decide when I have so many toys to have fun with.

"Y-You are a maniac!" She exclaimed. "You are a psycho!" She resisted fiercely bound to her chair.

"Well, you can call me a psycho all you want but you invited me on this lovely date yourself. I almost feel like the villain cheating on my Spicy."

He liked the needle further, throwing her breaths into a disarray and sweat pooling in her temples. Her chest expanded with fear rather than her erratic breaths.

But he withdrew the next second.

"No injection today," Mingshen said, "You don’t deserve the mercy of quick panic. I prefer the slow kind."

He stepped back, removing his gloves with precise movements. His hands were steady, his gaze calm as if this was just another experiment for him to enjoy.

"You are going to stay tied there for a while," Mingshen said. "No one will hear you if you scream. No one will ever find you here. It’s only you and the darkness here. Ooo and what if you start smelling some strange gases from time to time? Will they be poisonous or not? It will be interesting for you to figure out, is it not?"

Fenhua violently thrashed against the chair again. "You bastard! You cannot do this to me! Do you know who I am-"

Mingshen tilted his head, almost pitying.

"I know exactly who you are," he said softly. "A coward who thought he could break a woman like my Spicy with a few filthy words. But she is built from stronger steel than you could ever understand. So now my job is to make you understand how incredibly weak you are like delicate glass."

He turned and walked toward the door.

"Oh and one last thing."

Mingshen looked back, a glint of madness in his eyes.

"If you ever breathe her name again, even in your sleep, I will make sure your fear tonight will feel like a day at the spa."

"No wa-wait! You cannot leave me here! I-I will tell you!"

He flipped the lights off, leaving Fenhua in utter darkness when he switched them back on again. He raised his brow, staring at her paled and ghostly expression.

"Tell me how Jia used pity to climb my bed again?"

"No! No!" She shook her head vigorously. "I-It was Minmin! Sh-She told me to humiliate Song Jia in front of everyone!"

He frowned. "So now you want to exchange the person sitting on the torture chair? That’s not a good sportsmanship. Or sportswomanship. I am a feminist."

"No, you have to trust me! Minmin told me to do it!" She cried. "That’s why she invited Song Jia to the reunion party in the first place!"