Chapter 1: The Day the White Veil Turned Red

If not for that ear-splitting roar of an engine, this day should have been the most perfect beginning of An Yilin's life.

The early-autumn sun was cool and bright, filtering through the church's stained glass into a shimmering, many-colored glow. The best man, Song Yunze, gripped a dark blue velvet ring box tightly in his hand as he walked beside Li Yu'en, his steps hurried but his face unable to hide a smile.

"Good thing we made it in time. I swear that jeweler's manager is so scatterbrained he nearly sent something this important to the wrong place." Song Yunze let out a long breath, half-joking. "If we'd held up you and Yilin exchanging rings, those three 'sister-protecting maniacs' from the An family would've torn me apart. You should've seen the look An Jingche gave me just now — like he wanted to shoot me on the spot."

Walking beside him, Li Yu'en wore a crisp, pure white tailcoat, a champagne-colored rose pinned to his chest that matched the bride's bouquet. Hearing his friend's complaint, he smiled gently, an unmistakable anticipation and tenderness flickering in his eyes. "Stop grumbling. You got it back, that's what matters. Yilin's still waiting for me."

Their pace quickened without either of them noticing, the towering church doors now within reach. Faintly, they could even hear the organ's prelude drifting from inside — An Yilin's favorite piece.

But death's footsteps arrived faster than the wedding bells.

A roar—!

An abnormally violent sound, like a beast's roaring engine, suddenly tore through the air. Before Song Yunze could even turn his head, he caught sight from the corner of his eye of a black sedan barreling toward the sidewalk where they stood, like a bullet gone out of control, at a savage speed.

The distance was too short. The car was too fast.

His brain didn't even have time to issue the command to dodge before everything went dark, and the next instant, a tremendous force slammed into his shoulder.

"Get out of the way!"

It was Li Yu'en's voice, carrying a desperate, unhesitating resolve.

The force sent Song Yunze flying, his body losing balance in midair before crashing heavily onto a stone flower bed nearby.

Crack—

The crisp sound of bone breaking, accompanied by searing pain, shot through Song Yunze's right arm instantly, but he didn't even have time to cry out. Because right after came a bone-chilling, dull, heavy impact.

Bang!

In that instant, the world seemed to have its sound muted.

Song Yunze, gritting through the agony of his broken arm, forced his head up through a cold sweat. There was no crashed vehicle in front of him that had stopped — only a long black skid mark on the road, and... lying several meters away, the man who should have been walking the bride down the aisle.

The dark blue ring box had been thrown aside, two glittering diamond rings rolling onto the dusty asphalt. And Li Yu'en lay there quietly, his once pure white tailcoat now unrecognizable in color. Thick, warm blood was spreading from beneath him at a despairing speed, pooling into a shocking pool of dark red.

"Yu'en...!" Song Yunze's voice was hoarse, as if torn apart, as he dragged his broken arm, half-crawling, half-rolling toward his friend.

Just then, the church's heavy doors were pushed open.

Perhaps having heard the tremendous crash outside, An Yilin, holding up the elaborate, pure white wedding gown, rushed out in a panic surrounded by a crowd of people. Sunlight fell on the skirt personally designed by Xia Xingcheng, adorned with tiny scattered diamonds, refracting a dreamlike glow.

But the instant her gaze fell on that streak of crimson on the ground, all that glow shattered in an instant.

"Yu'en—!"

A shrill, piercing scream cut through the sky. An Yilin, like a puppet who had lost her soul, threw herself heedlessly into the pool of blood. Her trembling hands tried to press against Li Yu'en's constantly gushing wound, but only managed to soak her own hands in warm scarlet in vain.

Blood mercilessly soaked her pristine white skirt, and that veil, once a symbol of purity and the future, was in this instant utterly dyed the red of despair.

Extreme terror, like a pair of invisible, ice-cold giant hands, choked An Yilin's throat mercilessly. She gasped in great gulps of air, yet felt as though her lungs couldn't draw a single breath of oxygen. The screams of the surrounding crowd, the rustle of wind through leaves — all of it turned into a piercing buzz in her ears. She stared at Li Yu'en's tightly shut eyes and bloodless face, trembling all over as if standing in an icy wilderness, unable to piece together even a single complete sentence, only able to let out broken whimpers like a wounded young animal.

"Bang!"

A deafening explosion erupted not far away. The black sedan that had struck Li Yu'en, having lost control, had crashed into the stone wall beside the church.

A tall, imposing dark figure charged down from the church steps like a leopard, moving at astonishing speed — it was the eldest son of the An family, An Jingche.

His usually composed and cold face was now covered in a terrifying killing intent. An Jingche closed the distance to the totally wrecked front of the car in a few strides and, with his bare hands, wrenched open the deformed door. Amid a pungent wave of alcohol, he dragged out the driver — head covered in blood, still slurring drunken nonsense in the passenger seat — like picking up a chick, and stomped him hard into the asphalt with one foot.

"Call an ambulance! Seal off the scene, no one leaves today!" An Jingche's voice carried the particular authority of a soldier and the ruthlessness at the core of the underworld, his overwhelming presence pressing the surroundings into dead silence.

At the same time, another slender figure had already crossed through the crowd, sliding precisely to his knees in the pool of blood.

"Yilin, let go, leave it to me!"

An Jingheng's voice was calm and quick. As a top authority in cardiac and neurological medicine, he showed not the slightest panic, though the tense line of his jaw betrayed the urgency within him. He swiftly took off his suit jacket and cushioned it beneath Li Yu'en's head, his hands moving deftly to check his carotid pulse before immediately undoing his tie and shirt buttons, beginning the most professional emergency compression to stop the bleeding and assess the injuries.

"Second brother... second brother, save him... he's lost so much blood..." An Yilin stared at An Jingheng's blood-covered hands, terror completely shattering her reason, and she instinctively lunged forward, only to be caught tightly from behind by a pair of strong, powerful arms.

"Little Lin, don't look! Don't look!"

An Jingchuan, his eyes red-rimmed, forcefully pulled his sister back, pressing her firmly against his chest, using his body to block her view of Li Yu'en. "Breathe deeply! Little Lin, second brother is saving him, you have to calm down!"

"Let go of me... third brother, let go! Yu'en is still over there!" An Yilin struggled desperately, tears mixed with blood on her face streaming down, her fear having transformed into unconscious panic, her heart feeling as if it would leap from her chest, her heart-wrenching cries bringing tears to the eyes of everyone present.

"Yilin, look at me! An Yilin!"

Gu Yanxi, in a crisp business suit, rushed over, cupping An Yilin's pale, tear-streaked face in her hands, forcing her to look directly into her eyes. This COO of Duskstar, normally decisive and ruthless in the business world, had tears welling in her eyes, yet her tone was unusually firm and forceful:

"Listen to me! Jingheng is the best doctor in the country, if you go over there now you'll only get in his way! You cannot collapse, Yu'en is still waiting for you, breathe deeply, do you hear me? Breathe with me!"

Under An Jingchuan's tight protection and Gu Yanxi's forceful yet warm comfort, An Yilin's struggling finally weakened. She gripped Gu Yanxi's arm tightly, her nails nearly digging into the flesh, her whole body trembling violently like a falling leaf in An Jingchuan's arms.

The piercing wail of an ambulance siren finally came from the distance, cutting through the sky, yet unable to dispel the deathly silence hanging over the church.

An Yilin's hollow eyes stared past the two of them's shoulders, fixed on the blood-soaked diamond ring on the ground. The blood kept spreading, dyeing the veil red, and dyeing red all her imaginings of the future. In that suffocating stench of blood, she felt her soul being drawn out of her bit by bit, and as Li Yu'en's breathing grew gradually fainter, she fell in despair into a bottomless abyss where light would never shine again.

That day, the wedding's blessing became a curse, and love's vows became blood.

And An Yilin's time stopped there, forever.