Chapter 127: Ch 127: How Dare You!

While the two alphas remained locked in a fierce staring match, sparks practically visible between them, Zhao Yichen and Qin Yuran finally shook off their stunned silence.

They exchanged a quick glance, silently weighing whether they should step in before things worsened. Their eyes drifted to Mo Xingxue—still terrified, still crying in Han Jiho’s careful hold—and then back to Su Wanyan, whose usual gentle demeanor had been replaced by raw, barely contained fury.

The contrast was startling. The soft-spoken friend they knew had vanished, leaving someone colder and far more dangerous in her place.

After a brief pause they both looked away.

They didn’t know the full story, but they knew Su Wanyan. Their friend was normally easygoing, soft-spoken, and difficult to provoke. If she was reacting like this, it wasn’t over nothing.

The safest choice, they decided, was to stay out of it. The grass pressed under their bottoms as they remained where they sat, the quiet decision settling between them without words.

Back in the center of the clearing, Su Wanyan forced herself to breathe through the anger. Sharp exhales left her lips as she kept her grip on Gu Chengze’s collar. The once-neat fabric was now thoroughly crumpled beneath her fingers.

Gu Chengze recovered from the earlier blow and scowled. This fucker. His nose still throbbed with a dull numbness. The repeated public humiliation burned hotter than the physical pain. The carefully maintained image of the Zen Corporation CEO had been cracked open in front of the others, and the sting of it sat sharp in his chest.

"I was just asking what the fuck your problem was!" he barked, conveniently ignoring that he had thrown the first punch. The words were raw and defensive, the earlier polished tone completely gone.

Su Wanyan’s glare remained fixed on him, cold and sharp enough to cut through even his usual icy composure. When she spoke, her voice was low and stripped of every emotion—no anger, no frustration, no sorrow. Only controlled, suppressed coldness.

"Don’t go near her ever again." The sentence landed with quiet finality.

Gu Chengze frowned. "You can’t tell me what to do," he growled. The refusal was automatic, rooted in the same entitlement that had guided every previous interaction.

Su Wanyan’s brows twitched. "You’re right. I can’t." Her grip on his collar tightened further, the fabric straining under the pressure. "But if you actually cared about Xuexue, you would distance yourself from her. Especially since you’re the reason she ended up like that."

The image of Mo Xingxue sobbing in her arms flashed through her mind—tears, trembling, the broken repetition of I’m scared—feeding the fury she was still trying to keep in check.

Gu Chengze laughed—an unsettling, humorless sound. "I care about her. That’s exactly why I won’t distance myself." The brief amusement vanished, replaced by a furious, cold expression. "You’re the one who needs to stay away from her. You’re nothing to her, yet you keep making decisions for her."

He pushed himself slightly upward from his kneeling position. Without warning his fist clenched and drove toward her face again.

Su Wanyan’s head snapped to the side under the force of the second punch. The impact was sharp and immediate. Pain bloomed across her cheek, hot and throbbing, but she locked it down with the same control she used in an operating room.

A satisfied smirk began to form on Gu Chengze’s mouth—"Ka—"—but the sound never fully left him. Su Wanyan yanked him downward hard and threw him onto the grass, her hands still locked on his shoulders.

Before he could process the sudden shift, her fist connected solidly with his cheek. The impact forced his head the opposite direction. A hot, numb, throbbing pain bloomed across the side of his face. The carefully arranged composure he still clung to, cracked further under the force.

When he managed to look at her again, the complete lack of expression on Su Wanyan’s face sent an involuntary chill through him. The soft golden light through the leaves caught the edges of that blank, controlled fury, making it colder still.

"I just paid back what you did," she said evenly. She released him and stood, already turning toward Mo Xingxue. The movement was deliberate, the priority clear.

Just as she neared, a hand clamped onto her shoulder from behind. Then Gu Chengze punched her once more.

"Fucker!" he snarled, still gripping her. The word was raw and ugly, stripped of every polished edge.

Su Wanyan turned her head towards him. She raised her left fist and struck him squarely on the jaw. His head snapped sideways; his hold loosened. He clutched at the joint with a sharp cry, forcing it back into place. The hushed forest air carried the sound of the impact and the subsequent pained breath.

Su Wanyan regarded him with the same cold calm. "Please stop this madness." The plea carried the weight of someone who healed for a living and hated being forced into violence. "Just leave Xuexue alone. She’s already gone through enough."

The words encompassed far more than the present moment—every hardship Mo Xingxue had endured, every wound still unhealed. The soft grass pressed under Su Wanyan’s feet as she stood her ground, the quiet request sitting solid and unyielding between them.

Gu Chengze only stared at her, expression icy. Then a cold smirk curved his mouth.

"Gone through enough?" he repeated, letting out a short, derisive laugh. "Enough of what, exactly? Enough of dick?"

In his mind the answer was already decided. He knew how the entertainment industry worked. Celebrities of Mo Xingxue’s status, he believed, had all climbed the same ladder. There was no chance she was any different. The crude assumption settled into place with the same warped certainty that had guided every previous misreading of her fear and her resistance.

Just then, a cold breeze swept through the clearing. Su Wanyan stood still for a moment, staring at the smug expression on Gu Chengze’s face.

The irony was almost grotesque. Only a short while earlier he had thought of Mo Xingxue as an unattainable flower high on a mountain peak—rare, precious, one of a kind. Now the same mouth reduced her to something cheap and interchangeable. The shift was so abrupt that even Gu Chengze himself seemed unaware of the contradiction.

The other guests froze. They did not want to believe that he had uttered those words, yet there was no mistaking them. His casual generalization about people in the entertainment industry landed like a slap. Many of them had built careers through years of relentless work.

They knew the industry’s uglier corners existed, but they also knew plenty of honest careers had been forged without those compromises.

Hearing the blanket accusation from someone who had never stood in their place turned the already heavy dislike for Gu Chengze into something colder and sharper.

Su Wanyan heard every word and whatever rational restraint she still possessed.. simply left.

She closed the distance in a few rapid strides. Without speaking she drew her right hand back and drove it into Gu Chengze’s cheek. His head snapped sideways. The impact was solid and immediate. However, she did not stop. She seized his shoulder, forced him to face her again, and struck him repeatedly.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

The solid impacts rang out one after another. The soft forest air carried each sound clearly—dull, heavy, unrelenting. Grass and leaves scattered under the force of the struggle. Blood began to trickle from Gu Chengze’s nose, bright against the sudden pallor of his skin. His knees buckled, then he collapsed onto the grass.

Su Wanyan followed him down, settling over him, and continued. Tears blurred her vision. The carefully controlled fury that had guided her earlier punches had broken open into something rawer and less contained.

"How dare you!" The scream tore out of her, raw and unfiltered, carrying every quiet injustice her friend had endured. "How dare you speak ill of her!"

Each punch landed harder than the last. Tears spilled freely down her face as she stared at the bloodied man beneath her. It still did not feel like enough—not for what he had put Mo Xingxue through.

Not for the fear, the silence, the months of carefully locked trauma. She struck again, a broken cry escaping with the motion, then sobbed openly while her fists remained clenched in his collar.

"ARGHH!!" Su Wanyan cried out again. The sound rose into the leaves above them, sharp and full of everything she had been holding back.

Meanwhile, Gu Chengze lay sprawled and barely conscious, thoughts scattered. The carefully maintained image of the Zen Corporation CEO had been reduced to blood, grass stains, and the lingering echo of the words that had finally broken the last of Su Wanyan’s restraint.

Seeing Gu Chengze’s dangerous state, only then did Zhao Yichen and Qin Yuran move. They reached her at nearly the same moment.

"That’s enough—that’s enough," Zhao Yichen said firmly, pulling her back. The words were steady, the hold careful but unyielding.

To their relief Su Wanyan did not resist. She allowed herself to be lifted away, though the sobs continued without pause. The moment she was free she walked straight to Mo Xingxue and pulled the omega into a tight embrace. The soft snow-lotus scent mixed with the forest air between them as she gathered her close.

"I’m sorry," she cried against her. "I’m so sorry."

The words were broken and repeated, carrying the weight of every moment she had not been there sooner, every time the truth had remained unspoken. Fresh tears rose in Mo Xingxue’s eyes. In the middle of the storm of emotion one clear realization settled over her.

She knows.

Mo Xingxue did not know when Su Wanyan had learned the truth, or how. But the certainty was absolute. And against every fear she had carried for months, the knowledge did not feel terrifying or shameful. Instead it felt as though a heavy weight had finally been lifted from her shoulders.

Someone understood.

For the first time in a very long while, she was not alone with it.

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I KNOW IT’S BAD! BAD AS HELL! BUT BE LENIENT THIS TIME BECAUSE IT’S THE FIRST TIME I WROTE THIS KIND OF SHI T_T!