Had this dance taken place a month ago, Ming Li might not have been able to keep pace with Chun Liuyi’s rhythm.
However, in her quest to rejoin a professional troupe, she had been sending out audition tapes to various theaters and carving out time to practice nearly every day for the past month.
The stage wasn’t particularly large, and since she and Chun Liuyi hadn’t rehearsed together, they nearly drifted off the edge several times. Each time, Chun Liuyi would timely pull her back toward the center.
To the audience below, it looked like a meticulously choreographed piece of performance art.
Chun Liuyi’s carefully prepared solo had transformed into a duet. As the dance concluded, half of the gossamer silk draped over Chun Liuyi’s face, lending her an air of enchanting allure that could bewitch the masses. Yet, her eyes remained ice-cold.
Ming Li caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of her eye, but Chun Liuyi turned away, leaving Ming Li with only the view of her sleek profile and the sharp, almost aggressive line of her jaw.
She could sense the other woman’s simmering displeasure.
As the music faded, the low hum of conversation in the banquet hall surged back into the foreground. Voices blurred together into a chaotic soup of syllables; it was impossible to discern exactly what anyone was saying.
Standing there on a stage that wasn’t truly a stage, the spotlights beaming down on her, Ming Li felt a sudden, dizzying sense of vertigo.
It felt as if she had traveled back in time to when she followed her teacher to competitions.
Back then, she would stand alone under the spotlight, facing a dark sea of heads. Her palms would be damp with nerves, but the moment the music started and she took that first step, she would dissolve into the beat.
Every step landed perfectly on the rhythm. She was free, lost in the moment, fearless of the gaze of the crowd. She was composed, confident—she and the stage were one.
Ming Li’s dance instructor once said she was born for the stage.
When she performed, she seemed to set her very soul ablaze. Combined with her natural physical advantages, she exerted a powerful, visceral visual impact on any audience.
Ming Li truly loved dancing. Out of all the extracurricular classes her family had shuttled her to as a child, and despite the endless parade of tutors, she loved her dance teacher the most.
She was long-limbed and slender with a natural elegance, so of all her hobbies, dance was the one she chose to keep.
Back then, many parents pushed their children toward ballet, wanting to see them in little white tutus playing the Little Swan. Ming Li, however, preferred Chinese classical dance.
Every glance, every smile, every movement and moment of stillness held an indescribable charm.
As she grew older, she realized this charm came from the restraint and composure born of cultural depth. It appeared soft, yet it possessed a formidable sense of power and vitality.
But she hadn’t stood on a stage to dance in a very long time.
Moments of such self-forgetting abandon were rare now.
As she took her bow, Ming Li felt her heart pounding frantically, as if it were trying to break free from its cage.
But this glittering banquet hall was not a theater, and she forcefully suppressed the impulse to stay in that moment.
She was now Ming Li, the wife of Gu Qingshuang.
With that prefix attached to her name, she could no longer act with reckless abandon or grow wildly toward the sun. She had shackles now.
By the time she raised her head after the bow, she had donned a standard socialite’s smile—calm, composed, and perfectly appropriate.
Suddenly, a voice rang out from the crowd, followed by a laugh. “Is this a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal?”
The comment was jarringly loud against the backdrop of hushed whispers. Every head in the room turned toward the source.
It was a man in a gray suit wearing glasses. He looked to be in his thirties, relatively young and seemingly refined.
Several guests frowned, clearly finding his remark vulgar.
He didn’t care. He shrugged and chuckled. “Just a joke. I heard the one dancing just now was the famous Princess Ming?”
Someone immediately joined in with a sneer. “What ‘Princess Ming’? She’s been bankrupt for years.”
“It’s been years since Zhou Bai jumped off that building. Who still treats his daughter like a treasure? Hahaha!”
“Who’s Zhou Bai? He took his wife’s surname ages ago; his name was Ming Bai. Otherwise, where would the Ming Group have come from?”
“The Ming Group owed over a billion back then. Even after they lost the headquarters, they were still short two or three hundred million. Didn’t Princess Ming end up paying that back?”
“I guess being a beautiful woman really does have its perks, hahaha…”
Their comments grew increasingly bold and unrestrained. On stage, Ming Li’s fists were clenched tight.
During the months following her family’s ruin, words like these had crashed over her like a relentless tide. People had even gone to the bars where she worked part-time specifically to mock her.
She had learned to endure.
“Miss Ming, where have you been dancing all these years?” a man in the crowd suddenly shouted. “Why don’t you come dance on my bed tonight? Show me how you do a—”
Before the word “split” could leave his mouth, a fist swung into his face.
A woman who appeared slender and frail suddenly erupted with immense power. Her fist slammed into his cheek with a sickening thud of flesh on bone. Without missing a beat, she grabbed him by the collar and sent him crashing to the floor with a perfect over-the-shoulder throw.
The onlookers had been busy gossiping about the Ming family’s downfall, while those who knew of Ming Li’s later struggles looked at the heckler with disdain, wondering how the Gu family would eventually deal with him.
None of them expected someone to charge through the crowd and beat him senseless in the blink of an eye.
The woman dropped a knee onto the man’s portly chest, pinning him down as she delivered another savage punch to his temple. He let out a shrill, pathetic wail.
“Who the hell are you?! I’ll—”
Another punch cut him off.
The crowd fell into a state of chaos. Security guards rushed in to maintain order and try to break up the fight.
However, Gu Xueqiang stood there coldly. With a single sharp look, she froze them in their tracks. They glanced at each other, not daring to interfere.
On stage, Ming Li was stunned. The person handing out the beating was none other than Gu Qingshuang—the woman who was usually cold to everyone and stayed out of everything.
Ming Li knew Gu Qingshuang had trained in Taekwondo and other self-defense skills.
But she hadn’t expected her to be this formidable. She had easily thrown a man weighing nearly two hundred pounds to the ground and was now pummeling him into a state where he couldn’t even fight back.
The man had started out cursing, but Gu Qingshuang was fighting with a lethal ferocity. She hit him until his speech turned into a gargle; every time he opened his mouth, blood sprayed out.
A crowd had gathered, yet no one dared to intervene or even speak a word of protest.
Finally, someone in the crowd whispered, “She’s going to kill him if she keeps going.”
Gu Qingshuang suddenly stopped. She looked up, her eyes rimmed with a terrifying, violent red.
The person who had spoken flinched, wishing they could vanish into the floor.
Gu Qingshuang threw another punch. Flecks of blood splattered onto her beautiful gown. Under the chandelier light, she possessed a beauty that was as vibrant as it was horrifying.
At that moment, Gu Xueqiang spoke in a low, sharp voice. “Shuangshuang, that’s enough.”
Gu Qingshuang acted as if she hadn’t heard. As she threw another punch, she hissed, “Do a split for your father.”
Her voice was so suppressed it sounded like cracking ice. The air around them seemed to freeze.
“Shuangshuang!” Gu Xueqiang raised her voice, warning her that she had gone far enough. Gu Qingshuang remained unmoved.
Even Chun Liuyi climbed down from the stage with a deep frown. She stood beside Gu Qingshuang and grabbed her arm. “Gu Qingshuang, stop it.”
Gu Qingshuang’s bloodshot eyes cleared for only a fraction of a second before she shoved Chun Liuyi’s hand away. The man tried to squirm out from under her, but she pinned him down even harder.
“You… you slept with that bitch, didn’t you?!” the lecherous man spat, blood spraying from his lips as he struggled to speak.
The pristine Gu Qingshuang who had arrived at the party was now stained with crimson.
Especially her eyes.
In this moment, her usual germaphobia had vanished. She looked like she wanted to drag this man into a pool of blood with her, to shove the gore down his throat and silence him forever. It looked as though she was genuinely intent on killing him.
Chun Liuyi couldn’t hold her back, and even Gu Xueqiang was losing her composure.
To kill a man in public, regardless of the provocation, would mean a murder charge that Gu Qingshuang would never escape.
If that happened, she would never be the legitimate heir to the Gu family.
Gu Xueqiang frantically called her name, but Gu Qingshuang ignored her entirely. She wrapped her hands around the man’s throat, the veins on the back of her hands bulging as if they were about to burst.
Ming Li watched from the stage in a daze. She was seeing a side of Gu Qingshuang she never knew existed.
Vicious, dark, and utterly indifferent…
For some reason, Ming Li subconsciously took a step back.
The Gu Qingshuang before her was a stranger. The man’s face was turning purple, his bloodshot eyes bulging, yet Gu Qingshuang refused to let go of his neck.
Ming Li had no doubt that Gu Qingshuang was going to commit murder right here.
Suddenly, Chun Liuyi looked back and screamed at her, “Ming Li! You call her!”
Ming Li froze for two seconds before suppressing the primal fear rising in her body. She ran toward Gu Qingshuang, the crowd parting to make way for her.
“Gu Qingshuang.”
Gu Qingshuang’s movements slowed slightly.
Ming Li approached and knelt down, calling out again, “Gu Qingshuang.”
It was as if Gu Qingshuang’s soul finally returned to her body. Her grip loosened, and she turned her head with slow, stiff movements.
Ming Li saw that her eyes were so red they looked as if they were weeping blood. Her pupils were dilated and dull, yet she managed to twist her lips into a haunting, eerie smile. Slowly, the light returned to her eyes, like a scattered soul recollecting itself. But just as she tried to say something, she fell straight backward and collapsed.
Gu Xueqiang moved with lightning speed, catching her before she hit the floor.
