Chapter 17

The moment she felt his weight pressing down, Bo Li went rigid, her mind blank.
What was he doing?
Some kind of end‑of‑life mercy—or a new way to terrorize her?
In this world, he wasn’t just a predator. He was a predator who liked to toy with his food.
“What do you want…” Bo Li rasped, her voice on the edge of breaking, a choked sob in it.
She hadn’t expected an answer.
But he spoke.
“…Lawrence Boyd,” he said against her ear, word by word, his voice cold and level, without a ripple of emotion, “is a fraud.”
It was the funniest joke she’d heard in weeks.
He’d broken into her room for days, like a cat playing with a mouse, inching closer and closer until she was terrified beyond reason—only to finally show himself…
Just to tell her that Boyd was a fraud?
Bo Li’s voice went even hoarser, almost numb. “I know he’s a fraud… I just didn’t dare fall out with him… But thank you for telling me… You’re really such a warm‑hearted good man…”
“You knew?”
He asked it flatly, and the words dropped her straight into ice.
Until now, he had never spoken two sentences in a row.
Yes, his voice was beautiful. It made a current run from behind her ear up into her scalp.
But hearing him spill out that many words at once didn’t feel like a blessing—it felt like she was about to…die.
Bo Li started missing the days when he didn’t speak.
Back then, a hug or a kiss could buy her another breath.
Not like now, where she had to wring her brain dry to answer him.
Who knew if there were “correct” answers.
If she answered wrong, would she lose fingers the way Boyd did?
Bo Li clenched her fists and forced her racing heart to steady.
“There was an Austrian doctor,” she said carefully, “named Mesmer. When he treated patients, he would first make them drink water with iron filings in it, then touch them with a magnetic rod… Most of his patients were wealthy ladies who reacted strongly to even the slightest touch, so they believed in his ‘medical skill’ completely.”
“Boyd’s trick,” she continued, calming as she spoke, “was probably borrowed from Mesmer…”
If this were some quiz show, she would’ve advanced to the next round.
Too bad this was a madman’s Q&A game.
Right or wrong was decided entirely by him.
Bo Li hoped that when he decided, he wouldn’t speak.
When he stayed silent, she was afraid.
When he suddenly became talkative, she was even more afraid.
…What happened these past few days that taught a mute how to speak?
Her wish was denied.
He tilted his head slightly and stared at her for a long time with a gaze that made her skin crawl, then spoke again.
“What else do you know.”
Bo Li didn’t understand. “…About Mesmer? That’s all I know. I—I also know he laid the groundwork for hypnosis…”
“Anything.”
She had no idea what to say. “…Can you give an example?”
Eric’s hand closed around her throat, his thumb pressing a warning into her windpipe. His voice didn’t rise or fall.
“Don’t make me impatient.”
His body was like a high‑consumption machine, radiating heat in waves, but the black leather glove on his hand was cold as ice, raising gooseflesh along her neck.
Bo Li understood.
He was tired of the hunting game.
Now he wanted to play *One Thousand and One Nights*.
She had to become the heroine of the tale, telling him new things without end—until he decided not to kill her.
Who could even invent a game like this?
Bo Li could only be grateful she was a modern person who read books, watched movies, and played games.
She didn’t dare imagine what he’d do if she were a local nineteenth‑century girl with a tiny world and nothing in her head to offer.
“Then let’s stay with Mesmer,” she said, voice trembling. “The reason people say he laid the foundation for hypnosis…is because his ‘treatment’ had two crucial elements. One was suggestion—using the iron‑filings water to plant an idea. The other was group effect, amplifying the hypnotic result…”
In the dark, Eric watched her from behind. The white mask was still hollow as wax.
But in his eyes there was something else now—something hot and frightening, like it could melt wax.
She was timid, greedy, self‑important. From her eyes to her breathing to every small movement, she filled him with a sharp discomfort.
A discomfort that felt like she could tear his mask off at any moment.
When he imagined that one day she would pull his mask away and stare—her gaze like a wet pen tip sliding and drifting over his bare face—
He felt humiliation unlike anything he’d ever known.
He wanted to kill her. End it. No loose ends.
But she always slipped out of his hands.
That was strange.
He never spared anyone.
His parents had said he was mad—unhinged, prone to fits—and that if they didn’t lock him in an asylum, he would go insane and kill everyone. 1
After that, he’d been locked in the asylum’s ward for severe cases—dunked in water, beaten, shocked with electricity, forced to pray every night.
Even now, whenever a clock struck the hour, the murmured prayers of the other patients seemed to echo in his ears.
When the attendants discovered what he looked like, they would amuse themselves by ripping off his mask and forcing him into everyone’s line of sight.
It felt like being flayed alive, inch by inch.
They used every method they could think of to force him to speak, then mocked his voice.
“If you weren’t crazy, how would you look like that—and sound like that? You were born wrong…”
“There’s something wrong with you.”
“You’re going to lose control someday.”
…
But he didn’t lose control. He planned, step by step, calm and clear, and escaped the asylum with his mind intact.
There was nothing in the asylum.
Except books—not Bibles, but the books no one touched. All donated by the rich, who’d schemed to lock their relatives away for life, then tried to buy off judgment after death with money and “generosity.”
Besides the Bible, every other volume lay buried in shadow, dust thick on the covers, untouched.
Ironically, he’d learned more in the asylum reading room than his parents had ever taught him.
After escaping, he traveled far. He walked Europe end to end and learned everything he could—composition, ventriloquism, magic, how to play half a dozen instruments.
In India he learned how to kill with rope—a method they called the “Punjab lasso.”
In the end, he settled in the Mazandaran palace.
The Shah of Persia made him a favorite, praising his cold‑blooded methods of killing and rewarding him heavily for “improving” the palace.
His talent for architecture was terrifying. He turned the palace into a maze of traps and tricks.
In that palace, the Shah could move like a ghost—appearing and vanishing at will.
There were hidden mechanisms, secret passages, trapdoors everywhere. No one knew where the Shah really slept. 2
Those were the closest he’d ever come to living like a human being—until the king began to fear his mind, afraid someone else would buy his loyalty, and ordered him and anyone who had ever worked for him killed.
One Persian he’d once helped saved his life. But the man didn’t dare keep him and passed him on to a circus manager, hoping the circus would smuggle him out.
He stopped speaking, because words were useless. They changed nothing. People only wanted to hear what they already believed, only wanted to see what they’d decided was real.
Most of all, every time he opened his mouth, the voices of the attendants came back—
“If you weren’t crazy, how would you look like that—and sound like that? You were born wrong…”
His face was shame. His voice was shame.
No matter that Bo Li had never criticized his voice—whenever he spoke, gooseflesh shivered along her skin.
She was a coward who wanted to live. She would flatter anyone if it kept her alive.
He had no need to spare her.
The night she thought he’d left, he’d still been in the room, right next to her, dagger in hand, ready to drive it into her back.
Then, suddenly, she stripped off shirt and trousers and pulled on a printed dress.
Even knowing she was a girl, the sight hit him harder than he’d expected.
She was so white. Like a white wave, flooding his vision.
His first instinct had been to look away. But she was everywhere. White knees. White calves. White ankles. White toes.
A feeling he had no words for surged up into his throat.
His heart pounded. Discomfort came roaring back—scalp prickling, eyes aching, every hair on end, like he’d swallowed some dark, slick liquid that made even his heartbeat feel sticky.
At first he’d thought the only reason he hadn’t killed her that day was because he’d seen something he shouldn’t.
But as the days passed and she never showed that whiteness again…he still didn’t move.
She had no sense of danger. Anyone could follow her.
When she went to the theater with Boyd, he’d meant to kill her, but in the end he’d cut off Boyd’s fingers instead.
Maybe there hadn’t been a reason.
Maybe he just hated show‑offs, like always.
For days he’d toyed with her like prey caught in a trap, tightening the net little by little until she had nowhere left to go.
Every night he told himself he’d kill her tomorrow. Every day he put it off.
A few days later, he’d finally made up his mind.
—She would die by his hand eventually. Why not now?
He’d come at her from behind, watching coldly as his shadow swallowed her inch by inch, the blade gliding along the white of her throat.
Boyd had touched that throat too.
She was so unguarded. Anyone could lay a hand on her pulse.
The realization made him…angry.
For a few seconds, the urge to attack boiled through his veins like water, hissing in his ears.
But looking at her terror, her panic, the sweat streaming down her skin, the first thought in his mind had been to hold her.
Whenever she was afraid, she always hugged him.
He’d thought she was well trained—that no matter how extreme things got, she’d still use embraces and kisses to soothe him.