The moment the lock clicked into place, the air seemed to be sucked out of the room in an instant.
That single "click" made Jiang Nuan's shoulders snap rigid, a reflex she couldn't control.
Lu Shiyan didn't take another step forward. He simply stood there, looking down at her from his full height, as if waiting.
Waiting for her to speak.
Waiting for her to explain.
Waiting for her to pay the price for that half-second of hesitation back in the meeting room.
Jiang Nuan's mind was racing at full speed.
She kept her eyes lowered, her lashes shielding the storm of thoughts churning beneath. The man standing before her was extremely dangerous.
But the danger wasn't just Lu Shiyan. There was also Bai Siyuan, still in the meeting room.
Bai Siyuan's words from earlier had sounded tender and sincere, but on closer examination, every single sentence overstepped its bounds. He hadn't asked whether she wanted to leave. He'd simply claimed her as a "closest family member" and demanded her from Lu Shiyan directly.
It was like he'd picked out the vegetables at the market, paid for them, and even packed them into a bag—before turning around and asking her whether she wanted to eat.
And more importantly, the whole memory situation was too strange.
The physical familiarity she felt told her clearly that Bai Siyuan couldn't be a fake. That deep sense of closeness from the depths of her heart couldn't have been manufactured.
But if the fragments of that boy in the white shirt weren't a delusion, but something that had truly existed...
Then that meant—after that black car, she and Bai Siyuan had met.
But then why did she have zero memory of it?
Why did Bai Siyuan also act as if the two of them had never seen each other after that car?
Had his memory been tampered with too?
Or... was he deliberately avoiding that period of time?
And moreover—did Bai Siyuan not know that she still had a fragment of memory that hadn't been erased?
[Don't trust anyone]
Did that instruction apply to Bai Siyuan as well?
Jiang Nuan's fingertips went cold.
An intense sense of insecurity seeped into her bones like a biting winter wind, little by little. She was alone in this world—a transmigrator with missing memories, surrounded on all sides by people she couldn't trust. She was standing on a sheet of floating ice.
Every inch beneath her feet was melting away, and she had no idea which step would crack the surface.
The mysteries piled on top of one another, wrapping her in a bone-deep sense of isolation and helplessness.
In comparison, the man in front of her—the one who had loosened his collar, his eyes churning with barely contained emotion—somehow seemed far less terrifying.
Lu Shiyan was a control freak.
There was no doubt about that.
But he laid all his rules out in the open.
He wanted her to stay within his field of vision. He decided where she went. He approved everything she learned and explored.
Whether as a squad member... or as a purification resource.
Every single chain, he locked on while she was watching. He didn't even try to hide who held the keys.
But at least—he never pretended to be anything else.
In this world that devoured people alive, an open spear was easy to dodge, but a hidden arrow was hard to defend against.
Bai Siyuan felt like a hidden arrow—one wrapped in warmth. When it shot toward you, you might mistake it for an embrace.
But Lu Shiyan, at least, was a gun openly aimed in your face.
His danger had limits.
His rules could be learned. Adapted to. Exploited.
Once she reasoned this through, the tension in Jiang Nuan's shoulders loosened just slightly.
She had to take the initiative to break this deadlock.
Lu Shiyan's shadow completely enveloped her. A thin line of light from the window cut across his profile, sharp contrast of light and dark, the hard lines of his face utterly unyielding.
"Talk."
His voice pressed down, dark and low.
"You thinking about going with him?"
The fingers hanging by Jiang Nuan's side twitched slightly.
She gritted her teeth. Steeled herself.
Then she raised her eyes.
Her shoulders, which had been tight with tension, slowly relaxed. Her eyes quickly welled up with a thin sheen of tears. She looked startled, innocent, and wronged—her lash lines faintly red, her lower lip marked by a shallow bite she'd given herself.
She stepped forward half a pace.
Just that half step took her directly into Lu Shiyan's absolute territory.
The distance between them compressed to less than a fist.
She could see the angle of his jaw. Could smell the cold, sharp scent of him. Could even feel the faint warmth of his breath brushing across her forehead.
Lu Shiyan didn't move.
He still stood before her like a wall, his eyes lowered slightly, watching her—waiting to see what trick she'd pull.
Jiang Nuan reached out.
Pale, slender fingers gently brushed against his shirt cuff.
Then, she pinched a small bit of the fabric between her fingers.
In that second, the air seemed frozen still.
He lowered his gaze, landing on that hand.
Those thin, pale fingers, trembling slightly, were pinching his cuff. The hard gray fabric of his shirt wrinkled into a small crease under her grip.
Jiang Nuan held that bit of fabric and gently... tugged it.
Like a small animal testing the limits of a predator.
"Captain..."
Her voice came out soft, carrying just the right amount of hurt.
"I wasn't planning to go with him."
Lu Shiyan's gaze moved from her fingers to her face.
The oppressive pressure that had felt like it could crush her bones stalled for a moment.
But he didn't let it go.
"Is that so?"
His voice was low and heavy.
"Back in the meeting room, you hesitated."
He called her out without mercy.
"That was because... I didn't react in time."
Jiang Nuan swallowed. Her thoughts were spinning at full speed, and she layered a bit more genuine hurt into her voice.
"He's someone I knew from many years ago. Seeing him suddenly like that—my mind went completely blank. I could barely even remember what he looked like."
"People change."
Jiang Nuan slowed her pace, making sure each word sounded sincere.
"So many years have passed in between. Who knows what kind of person he is now? How could I just go off with someone I don't know the background of?"
She raised her head, looking straight into Lu Shiyan's eyes.
"Captain, I didn't even get the chance to speak earlier. He made the decision for me on his own."
"I don't want to leave Zero Squad at all."
By the time those words left her mouth, she couldn't even tell how much of it was true and how much was a lie.
Maybe thirty percent truth. Three parts genuine—at least in Zero Squad, she knew the rules, knew the boundaries, knew what she could and couldn't do.
Plus, on the White Whale, she'd genuinely felt the squad's cohesion and reliability. She'd even started to grow a thread of attachment.
Seven parts survival instinct.
The air in the room seemed to soften slightly.
Lu Shiyan looked down at the girl before him. She stood in front of him, only coming up to his chin, her fingers still holding his cuff.
His gaze lingered on her face for a few seconds.
She tilted her head up, the tears still glistening in her eyes, but her gaze was steady. Then he looked at her lower lip, marked by her own bite, and at the hand gripping his sleeve.
The way fragility and composure were fused into the same person made his Adam's apple move slightly.
"At least you still have your wits about you."
He let out a cold snort.
His tone still wasn't friendly, but the explosive killing intent from moment ago had faded by more than half.
Before Jiang Nuan could breathe a sigh of relief—
Her wrist was suddenly seized.
The hand that had been clutching her sleeve turned over before she could react, fingers reversing their grip to firmly close around her wrist in a role reversal.
The force was not great.
But it was not to be shaken off.
His palm was dry and scorching hot, pressed against the pulse that jumped beneath her skin.
Lu Shiyan leaned in slightly, closing the last bit of distance between them.
His cold, sharp scent enveloped her completely.
“Do you know what position the Bai family holds in the Federation?” he asked, staring into her eyes, word by word.
Jiang Nuan honestly shook her head.
“One of the three great families of the Federation,” Lu Shiyan said, his voice calm. “They control more than sixty percent of the Federation’s medical resources and the underground black market.”
He paused.
“Bai Siyuan, a bastard son taken in from the refugee district. In just a few years, he managed to gain a foothold in a place that eats people without spitting out the bones, even getting the old head of the Bai family to hand him the core business.”
His thumb brushed against her wrist.
Her wrist trembled slightly.
“What do you think he relied on?”
A chill ran down Jiang Nuan’s spine.
She kept her head down, looking at the wrist he held, her mind racing through countless answers.
What did he rely on?
It couldn’t be love and peace.
“On cunning. On means that don’t bear the light. On crushing everyone who stands in his way.”
Lu Shiyan answered for her, each word spoken lightly, as if it were nothing.
But Jiang Nuan could tell these details were not pulled from thin air.
Lu Shiyan had investigated Bai Siyuan, and deeply.
“A man who can climb to the top of a place like the Bai family—when he wants you, do you really think it’s just because a brother who hasn’t seen his sister in years misses her?”
That sentence struck directly at the most uncertain part of Jiang Nuan’s heart.
Lu Shiyan released her wrist, straightened up, and looked down at her.
“And besides——”
His tone dropped slightly.
“He is a psychic-type ability user. His mental power is on par with Shen Wu’s.”
Jiang Nuan’s head snapped up.
“Shen Wu can’t read his mind.”
Those words were like a bucket of ice water poured from the top of her head down to her feet.
Jiang Nuan knew how powerful Shen Wu’s “Eye of Truth” was.
The entire Zero Squad, including herself, had almost no secrets in front of Shen Wu.
But Bai Siyuan… Shen Wu could not read him?
That meant everything Bai Siyuan had said in the reception room—those gentle, affectionate, watertight words—how much of it was real, and how much was carefully woven fiction, no one could verify.
Such powerful psychic abilities…
An icy thought surfaced in her mind, creeping slowly up her spine.
Because if that hypothesis were true, then Bai Siyuan’s words today— “It’s normal if you don’t remember”—were no longer considerate, but rather…
A confirmation.
A confirmation that he had wiped things clean enough.
She had shown no sign of remembering that period of time… those fragments of memory from years ago.
So, he was reassured, and casually played along as if they had never met again after that black car.
So… had the original owner’s memories been erased by him?
Why erase them? What had happened?
Jiang Nuan’s palms had broken into a thin layer of cold sweat, and goosebumps rose on her back.
That feeling of standing on floating ice grew stronger.
No, it was worse than floating ice.
It was that the ground beneath her feet itself was fake.
She had thought she at least had one person from the past—warm, trustworthy.
But now even that last “at least” was wavering.
…And there was that record Qinian had mentioned.
Her fingers began to tremble uncontrollably.
It was a genuine fear and sense of utter isolation, rising from the deepest part of her heart.
In this world, she had no home, no family, no one she could fully trust.
Even her memories were not her own.
Lu Shiyan watched her.
Her eyes were rimmed with red, her lower lip bitten white, her shoulders trembling faintly.
No longer the calculated, purposeful pretense of weakness from earlier.
This was real fear.
Something extremely faint passed through those always-calm eyes of his.
He let out an extremely soft sigh.
The next second, Jiang Nuan was suddenly drawn into an embrace by a hand pulling her close.
The motion came almost without warning—she collided with his chest, feeling hard muscle and a high body temperature through his thin shirt. One hand pressed against the back of her head, the other looped around her back, sealing her into a space that was nearly airtight.
Not gentle. The force was tight enough to hurt slightly.
“Don’t be afraid.”
His voice came from above her head, low and steady, but within that steadiness was an absolute certainty.
“As long as I’m here, he can’t touch you.”
Jiang Nuan froze.
Her nose was filled with his scent—cold and sharp, mixed with the faint, ever-present smell of blood that never washed away.
Was this embrace dangerous?
Yes.
The way he enclosed her in his arms was the same way he did everything else—with a grip that did not allow escape.
But strangely, it was precisely this unapologetic control that gave her an almost absurd sense of safety in this moment.
Because he truly had that ability.
The captain of Zero Squad.
One of the people at the very top of this world’s food chain.
When he said “he can’t touch you,” then he truly couldn’t.
Jiang Nuan closed her eyes.
Then slowly, she raised her arms and wrapped them around his waist. Her fingertips clenched the fabric of his shirt at his back, pressing herself closer to him.
She was not acting.
In this moment, she truly needed this.
Even if it came from a man who might devour her at any time.
The embrace deepened.
Lu Shiyan’s arms tightened a notch, pulling her fully into his chest, his palm holding the back of her head firmly, her breathing following the rise and fall of his ribs.
He lowered his head, his lips brushing her hair.
“On the condition that you are only mine.”
A pause.
“Zero Squad’s.”
The latter half came a full beat slower than the former.
Jiang Nuan’s body stiffened, but she did not pull away.
The heat of his body was seeping through his shirt, slowly, into her skin. A gradual, undeniable invasion.
The next second, she was lifted off the ground entirely.
“C-Captain?!”
Jiang Nuan let out a startled cry, instinctively wrapping her arms around Lu Shiyan’s neck.
Lu Shiyan carried her, walking toward the inner room.
The sliding door was open. The bedroom lights were off, only a sliver of dim light from the living room cutting diagonally across, landing at the foot of the bed.
“You don’t need to go back to the dorm tonight.”
His tone was like saying “overtime tonight.”
“What—” Jiang Nuan’s words cut off before she could finish.
She was set down on the bed with the utmost gentleness.
The mattress sank slightly.
Lu Shiyan braced himself above her on either side, looking down at her. His shirt collar was open, a strand of hair falling loose across his forehead from the motion.
Those eyes, so often cold and devoid of warmth, now held a dark, deep smoldering fire.
Jiang Nuan felt her own breathing grow shallow under his gaze.
That overwhelming presence engulfed her once again.
Like that night.
But strangely, beneath this suffocating pressure…
The heart that had been suspended in her throat all afternoon slowly settled back down.
It wasn't that she wasn't afraid.
It was that the danger within this embrace was far brighter than what lay outside.
She slowly raised her hand, her fingertips hesitating for a moment before reaching out to grasp the hand at his side.
Lu Shiyan paused for a beat.
He lowered his gaze to that hand.
And looked at it for a long, long time.
So long that Jiang Nuan thought he might snap her fingers.
Then, slowly, he turned his palm over and enclosed her entire hand in his.
His knuckles, clean and defined, tightened bit by bit.
Like a lock falling into place.
