Chapter 47: Comfort Zone

. The morning light was breaking, and the storm had just stopped.

Feng Ran was crammed onto the plane, a rented private jet, and they were the only passengers.

This time, before he could speak, Shen Zhi came up behind him and quickly untied the ropes.

Feng Ran broke free from the restraints, fortunately still conscious, but his upper limbs were numb, as if thousands of needles were pricking his flesh.

He raised his hand, flexed his wrist, and slapped Shen Zhi in the face.

Hearing him laugh again, his chest felt constricted and he raised his hand to slap him again.

Shen Zhi's cheek was swollen, and he put his hand on the back of his neck, sneering, "Keep going."

He said, "Mad."

He shook him off, staggered to his feet, and walked to the window. White clouds flew by below, and his palms were numb and painful, as if he were holding a ball of fire.

He couldn't tell the direction of the flight, but his intuition told him that Shen Zhi didn't have the ability to take him abroad without anyone noticing.

What about Shen Yuan? Probably not either.

That year, after he was released from prison, the driving force behind the entertainment industry's top resources paved the way for him, overcoming all obstacles, allowing him to successfully leave the country.

The Shen family definitely had no comparable connections.

He rested his palms on the cold glass, a chill spreading from them to his body. His heart felt empty, like a cold machine, reasoning mechanically, but could not find the answer. The facts were right in front of him, but his emotions remained unchanged.

Sadness, disbelief, pain, despair... all turned into a dry pond.

As he sat there in a daze, Shen Zhi hugged him from behind and murmured, "Feng Ran, Feng Ran."

"Go away, don't scream at me."

"I haven't taken my anti-inflammatory medicine lately, and my wound is a little uncomfortable."

Seeing Feng Ran ignore him, he said with a sense of disappointment, "You really don't care about me at all?"

Feng Ran said coldly, "I care about you so much that I've become like this myself, what do you think?"

Shen Zhi said, "I will definitely treat you well."

"Go away."

At the word, Shen Zhi was speechless for a moment. This reaction was amusing and satisfying, so Feng Ran only replied with that one word no matter what Chen Zhi said.

Finally, Chen Zhi tired and fell silent.

Each of them had their own concerns.

Feng Ran suddenly asked, "What about Ruoruo? You're taking me away, and you're not planning on visiting her anymore, are you? Whether she gets sick, grows up, gets adopted, or anything else, you won't care?"

Chen Zhi said, "I've added the dean's contact information and will definitely call her often."

"Naive," he said. "Even if something really happened, they wouldn't have come all the way to notify you."

Chen Zhi said nothing more.

On the plane, even if he wanted to leave, he couldn't jump out the window. Arguing was pointless, and the atmosphere was unusually harmonious.

As they neared landing, Feng Ran noticed that he looked pale. After the laparotomy, the change in air pressure inside the plane had affected the wound.

Before, he would have been more anxious than anyone else, insisting on dragging Chen Zhi to the hospital.

But now, he didn't want to say a word.

Chen Zhi endured it as long as he could, forcing himself to hold on until he reached his accommodation. The journey took them all the way inside the sealed black glass car, like a coffin, suffocating.

After getting off the car, he saw an exquisite building with simple furniture, showing signs of habitation.

Feng Ran took a shower, and when he came out, Chen Zhi was lying on the sofa, looking gloomy.

"Tell me where this is? You can't go abroad." He said.

"Does it matter where it is?"

"I guess it's only two hundred kilometers away from Hai City, and there are probably no more than five cities that are certain."

Shen Zhi gently slid his hand down his abdomen, opened his eyes and looked at Feng Ran, his eyes like water: "Yes, as you wish."

Feng Ran held his hand and pressed it down, saying: "There is really no need for you to be like this. What's the point of pestering me? Don't worry, you can trap me for a while, but one day I will leave and never come back."

"Then I will find you back." The pain extended from Feng Ran's palm to the depths of his organs, and Shen Zhi frowned.

Feng Ran chuckled and said, "Where to find it? Under my bed and the next one's? Are we still going to continue monitoring and eavesdropping? But you're a bit overconfident. How are you going to get out of prison?"

In a verbal battle, Shen Zhi was no match.

His gaze was as cold as a knife, and Feng Ran glared back angrily.

Ultimately, he was defeated. As he lowered his eyes, a flash of pain and helplessness pierced Feng Ran's heart like a cat's claw, causing him to suddenly panic. Finally, a trace of pity rose in his heart, and he turned his head away, no longer provoking him with words.

These days, stomachaches plagued Shen Zhi periodically, like signals from another world, unsettling him physically and mentally.

He woke in the middle of the night, sweating profusely from the pain, only to see his father's figure before him. He retained the terrifying appearance of his death, but with immense strength, gripping his throat.

He woke just before suffocation and realized he had fallen into a dream within a dream.

He began to sleep more and couldn't eat.

Feng Ran feigned deafness, trying to please him at every turn, refusing to mention key words like hometown, friends, or going out.

He had a rough guess in his mind as to who owned the building and where the place was.

Furthermore, was he really "dead"? He was often puzzled.

Impossible. If he was dead, then his sister, Ren He, and his mother would surely come to find Shen Zhi, right?

And at his "funeral," wouldn't Shen Zhi show up?

He was certain that Shen Zhi was merely trying to scare him and wouldn't go so far as to say such a thing. However, Shen Yuan called him and described his funeral in vivid detail, including the number of people present and where he was buried... He pricked up his ears and listened for a long time, his hair standing on end.

When his spatula was snatched away, he woke up from a dream.

Shen Zhi had already hung up the phone, and the food in the pot had all turned to charcoal.

The kitchen was filled with a burning smell. Shen Zhi opened the window and said, "Are you distracted?"

Feng Ran stared at him blankly, full of words to say, such as "How could you be so cruel to me?" "What are you thinking?" "Can you just let me die and stop torturing me?"

But in the end, he said nothing.

He turned and hurried upstairs. When Chen Zhi asked what was wrong, he said two words: "Shower."

He stripped off all his clothes and stood in front of the floor-length mirror in the shower room. He hadn't looked in the mirror in a long time. The person inside was so unfamiliar, his breath stopped for a few seconds, and a wave of fear washed over him.

Because he didn't exercise and didn't control his diet, the figure he once prided himself on was now thin and shrunken, with only the faintest hint of abdominal muscles. It was a body he would have sneered at in the past, the kind of body he found most uninteresting, a body devoid of tension.

The face was haggard and slovenly. The hair was unkempt, unwashed, dark circles under his eyes, the stubble and eyebrows were untrimmed, the lips were dry and pale... He pulled at the corners of his mouth, revealing an expression uglier than tears.

He remembered the day he was released from prison at the age of twenty-three, returning home and looking at himself in the mirror in the same way. He hadn't looked in the mirror for over a year, and apart from the snack bag or the reflection in the water, he had no chance to see himself.

His emotions inevitably brought him back to that situation.

One cannot step into the same river twice, so how could he end up with nothing again?

His heart suddenly palpitated and he walked to the shower head. This might be the only place where Shen Zhi could not monitor him, but he could only stay there for twenty minutes. Once he exceeded the time limit, Shen Zhi would knock on the door.

The sound of the running water was so loud that it drowned out everything, his suppressed crying, his trembling breathing... His hands moved up and down, but after more than ten minutes, the thing did not move.

He slowly squatted down, the shower gel rushed into his eyes, and the stinging tears fell with the water.

His mind was blank.

Fuck him. He cursed. Disgust rose from his chest, and his stomach had a slight cramp. He clenched his fists and punched, and the fragile organs were tense under the skin, hard as stone.

He beat himself hard until he saw stars and could not straighten his back. Looking down, his skin was blue and purple.

You deserve it, he thought, who made you so disgusting.

Shen Zhi knocked on the door, his voice muffled. "Feng Ran, what's wrong?"

He stood up, enduring the dizziness, and wrapped himself in a towel.

Seeing he didn't speak, Shen Zhi raised his voice a little. "Feng Ran? Are you okay?"

Feng Ran sighed. "You're more punctual than the warden."

He opened the door and brushed past Shen Zhi.

Shen Zhi said, "Wipe off the water. Be careful not to catch a cold."

He went to the bedroom and casually wiped himself, changed into clean clothes, applied face cream, shaved, and gave himself a good spruce up. But the intense rejection and pain in his body didn't ease at all.

Someone once told him that the stomach is an "emotional organ." This sudden discomfort was its signal that excessive emotions were taking over and hurting him.

He sat in bed, dazed, his expression gloomy.

Shen Zhi poked his head in the doorway. "What's wrong? Are you upset?"

He blurted out. "You called me out in the middle of the fight. What do you think?"

Shen Zhi's eyes flickered. "Wait until tonight—"

"No need," he interrupted abruptly, his heart blank and desolate.

How could he convince himself that, without his obsession, his body could no longer generate any desire?

He had long been tamed, slain.

He suddenly shuddered. In the countless nights of pain and pleasure, was he longing for more, or resisting more?