The Downtrodden Villain In A Redemption Romance Novel Chapter 9

Chapter 9 Don’t You Dare Die!

The bathroom door closed softly behind Lu Qingrang with a quiet click, locking into place.

Inside, Lu Qingrang leaned his back against the cold door panel, not looking at the showerhead. He surveyed the cramped, damp, water-stained space, his gaze finally settling on the old door panel and the sturdy spherical doorknob beneath it.

His eyes were still vacant, but his movements carried an unusually clear sense of purpose.

He slowly removed the white T-shirt that had nearly accompanied him to his death. There was no hesitation in his actions, as if he were performing a predetermined ritual. The fabric was repeatedly and forcefully twisted in his pale, slender fingers, like wringing out a towel soaked in despair, until it became a rough, tough cloth rope.

Then, he bent down and wrapped one end of the cloth rope several times around the spherical doorknob, tying an extremely secure knot—the only dead knot he had learned during countless times locked in dark storage rooms in his childhood, the only one that ensured the door could not be easily opened from the outside.

The other end, with an almost practiced dexterity, he fashioned into a slipknot of suitable size.

Throughout the entire process, his breathing was terrifyingly steady, and his face was devoid of expression, as if his soul had already departed, merely operating a shell unrelated to himself to complete the final task.

He slowly sat down, his back to the door, and slipped the rough noose over his pale neck.

It was time.

He closed his eyes, without the slightest hesitation. His body yielded to gravity, tilting forward resolutely, surrendering his entire weight to the tightening noose around his neck.

The sensation of suffocation surged instantly, not violent, but a dull, heavy pressure, precisely compressing his trachea and carotid arteries. Ominous black spots began to rapidly appear at the edges of his vision, and in his ears was the roaring sound of his own blood rushing…

Just as his consciousness was about to be completely swallowed by this eternal darkness—

“BANG!!!”

A violent, explosive sound of the door being slammed erupted fiercely behind him!

The poor-quality door panel and frame shook and groaned violently, as if they would fall apart the next second. Outside, Xu Wen’s voice was completely distorted by terror, a heart-wrenching roar:

“Lu Qingrang! Open the door! What the hell are you doing?! Open the door!!!”

The immense noise and physical vibration, like a searing flash of light, accompanied by that familiar voice, brutally slammed into his already dissipating consciousness, forcibly pulling him back from the edge of the dark abyss.

Immediately following, came a second, more violent, more desperate impact!

“CRASH—!”

Accompanied by the grating sound of the door panel splitting, the bathroom door was violently forced open from the outside by a brute force!

Xu Wen stumbled in due to inertia, his eyes wide with terror. He immediately saw Lu Qingrang, sitting on the floor with his back against the door, a noose around his neck, his face already turning blue.

“Shit!!”

A bomb seemed to detonate in Xu Wen’s mind, leaving a buzzing blankness. All reason and thought were blown away. He didn’t care about anything else, using all his strength to tear and pull at the cloth rope, twisted from the T-shirt, that was constricting Lu Qingrang’s neck. The rough fabric was deeply embedded in the flesh, pulled extremely tight, and he felt a burning pain in his fingertips.

“Let go! You damn well let go!” He roared incoherently while frantically trying to undo the secure dead knot tied around the doorknob.

Sweat, ragged breathing, and uncontrollable trembling enveloped him.

Finally, the dead knot was yanked open, and the noose loosened.

Lu Qingrang, like a delicate puppet whose strings were suddenly cut, had all the strength instantly drained from his body. He slumped backward, falling right into Xu Wen’s trembling embrace, who was shaking from exhaustion and immense fear.

A rush of air surged back into his damaged lungs, triggering a series of violent, heart-rending coughs that felt like they would expel his internal organs. Physiological tears uncontrollably spilled from the corners of his tightly closed eyes.

Xu Wen held him tightly, feeling the rise and fall of his chest and the tremors of his coughing. His own heart felt like it was about to leap out of his throat. He looked down at the fragile figure in his arms, and a surge of post-trauma anger and an indescribable heartache rushed up.

“You want to die that badly?!” Xu Wen’s voice was hoarse from shouting.

However, seeing Lu Qingrang close his eyes, allowing the cold tears to slide down his temples, yet remaining silent, all the reproaches and questions on the tip of his tongue were choked back, ultimately transforming into a deep, almost drowning sense of powerlessness.

He collapsed onto the floor, holding the exhausted Lu Qingrang even tighter in his arms. “What… am I supposed to do with you…” he muttered, his voice filled with confusion and fatigue.

In the cramped bathroom, only the chaotic gasps of two people who had narrowly escaped death intertwined.

After a long while, until his legs began to go numb, Xu Wen slowly regained a sliver of strength from the massive shock. He carefully picked up the completely drained and semi-conscious Lu Qingrang, walked heavily back to the room, and placed him back on the single bed.

Looking at the person on the bed who had once again become silent, seemingly ready to dissipate at any moment, an emotion mixed with fear, frustration, and deep helplessness wrapped around his heart, slowly tightening.

He leaned down, a hint of gritted-teeth annoyance in his voice, and complained softly to the eyes whose tightly closed lashes were still damp with moisture: “Liar… If I trust you again, I’m a dog!”

The moment he straightened up, his gaze inadvertently swept over Lu Qingrang’s body. The chest and abdomen, so thin that every rib was visible, were covered in old scars of varying depths, crisscrossing one another. These marks were like silent brands, recording a cruel, unknown past.

Xu Wen’s heart violently seized.

“System!” he demanded sharply in his mind. “What are these injuries?!”

[According to the loaded background data from the original novel: Target Lu Qingrang was adopted by a politician’s family in his childhood, which was essentially a charitable performance by his adoptive father to shape public image. He existed as a pawn within the family and suffered long-term exclusion and bullying in his growth environment. The above scars are remnants from that period. More specific details are missing.]

The cold, mechanical voice summarized a person’s entire dark and painful childhood into a few dry, manual-like sentences of background information, delivered in an utterly flat tone.

Hearing the System so lightly summarize the days and nights of fear and helplessness behind those hideous scars into cold text, Xu Wen felt an absurd chill and an anger he couldn’t vent.

How much pain must those injuries have caused?

He looked at Lu Qingrang’s tightly furrowed brow, even in his unconscious state, and a thought suddenly struck him! In a sense, wasn’t this life he had salvaged given to him by Lu Qingrang?

If the other party hadn’t decided to die, the System would never have found his lone soul, which had already been extinguished in the original world.

Money and life were indeed the driftwood he had desperately clung to initially.

But now, illuminated by the dim light bulb in the bathroom, he saw clearly that he was never the only one struggling and sinking in this cold, deep water called despair.

Xu Wen reached out, his fingertips tracing the raised and sunken scars extremely lightly and slowly, as if trying to soothe the long-standing pain. He leaned closer, speaking to the sleeping person in a low, firm voice, declaring word by word:

“Your life…”

“I’m determined to save it.”