Trapped in a Cage - Chapter 1

The air was heavy and oppressive, as if the cacophony of desire from the outside world had been completely severed by a single door.

Beads of sweat on the nape of his neck soaked through his cheap white shirt. Jiang Ruobai knelt on the floor, his body curled into a ball out of a primal survival instinct as he trembled in terror, watching the scene unfolding before him.

Inside the luxurious private booth, the manager, who usually acted with overbearing arrogance, was currently being stepped on like a dog. Every trace of his former swagger had vanished.

“Young Master Pei, I was wrong. I won’t, won’t ever dare again. Please, please spare me.” The man’s pleas were intermittent, his voice thick with blood and trembling with fear.

His face was so bruised and swollen that his expression was unrecognizable. Only his struggling hands, feebly clawing at the floor, left a trail of bright red blood as a silent testament to his agony.

A ruby ring flashed piercingly under the lights. Pei Sichen swirled the ice sphere in his whiskey glass with one hand, casually lifting his gaze to look at the blood-soaked figure.

“Do you know what kind of person I hate the most?” he asked. His tone was light, yet it carried an undeniable, crushing authority. “A fool who doesn’t know his place.”

The man’s body shook like a leaf in the wind, his expression filled with horror and despair. “Young Master Pei, I, I was wrong. I truly know I was wrong. Please, in your great mercy, forgive me just this once!”

Leaning back on the sofa, Pei Sichen rose languidly. Holding his whiskey, he walked elegantly toward the man.

The sound of his leather shoes hitting the floor felt like a heavy stomp on the man’s heart with every step.

Trained bodyguards hoisted the bloodied man up. Pei Sichen looked down at the man’s pathetic state from a superior height.

The rim of the glass clinked against the man’s forehead. The cold liquid trickled slowly down his face until only the ice sphere remained rattling in the glass.

“Swallow it, and I’ll let you go.”

Pei Sichen looked up, his eyes filled with indifferent contempt.

The man’s pupils constricted. Before he could even beg for mercy, someone pried his mouth open and forced the egg-sized ice sphere down his throat.

“Argh!”

A wretched scream instantly echoed throughout the booth.

The massive ice ball became lodged in the man’s throat. The intense sensation of suffocation sent him writhing to the floor, his face turning a bruised purple-blue.

Pei Sichen, however, showed no mercy. He stepped on the man’s face and suddenly applied force. Accompanied by an even more shrill scream, the man’s pupils dilated instantly, his eyes bulging. After a final, violent struggle, his life was completely extinguished.

Pei Sichen’s shoe remained pressed against the now-rigid, twisted purple face. He didn’t relax his strength, acting as if he had merely crushed an annoying insect.

He tilted his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over the contorted corpse. There was no ripple of emotion in his eyes; he was as cold as if he had not just ended a life, but had simply tossed away a piece of trash.

The ice sphere, mixed with blood and saliva, slid slowly out of the mouth that could no longer close, landing on the carpet and forming a filthy puddle.

Pei Sichen slowly withdrew his foot. He looked down, noticing a small amount of filth on the tip of his shoe, and his brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.

A subordinate standing by immediately stepped forward to quickly wipe away the offending bloodstains.

“Throw him out,” he commanded softly.

“Yes, sir.”

The trained bodyguards dragged the half-dead man away like a sack of garbage.

Pei Sichen sat back on the sofa. The kaleidoscopic lights of the room played across his face, making his features appear dark and ambiguous.

As the sole heir to the Pei Group, which is a top-tier conglomerate, he never lacked the capital to be arrogant.

At this moment, everyone in the booth remained kneeling on the ground, not daring to make a sound, fearing that if the Crown Prince in front of them became displeased, disaster would befall them.

Jiang Ruobai knelt at the back of the crowd, his body shivering. He buried his head as low as possible, inwardly praying to the great figure across from him: “Please, do not notice me.”

Though such situations were not uncommon at Anse, for Jiang Ruobai, who was seeing this for the first time, the name “Pei Sichen” became a nightmare he would never escape.

He had come to work as a waiter at Anse only to scrape together the exorbitant medical fees for his seriously ill wife. He had never imagined he would witness something so soul-shattering.

As the largest club in Haishi City, those who frequented Anse were almost exclusively the elite with net worths in the hundreds of millions. Even a common waiter earned a salary far above the market average.

However, he had not expected to encounter such a horrific situation on his very first day.

Pei Sichen sat in the center of the sofa, his gaze scanning each person kneeling on the floor. His finger pointed randomly, landing squarely on Jiang Ruobai’s position.

“You. Come here.”

Jiang Ruobai looked up. Following the dim light to the beautiful hand pointing at him, his body instantly stiffened. He was paralyzed.

In that moment, his mind went completely blank.

“What? Is this how you train people at Anse?”

Seeing the person fail to move, Pei Sichen’s gaze darkened, and his expression turned cold.

“Young Master Pei, please calm down. He is new and does not know the rules. Please do not lower yourself to his level.”

Facing the fawning supervisor, Pei Sichen gave no face at all: “If I do not lower myself to his level, should I lower myself to yours?”

The smile froze on the supervisor’s face. After slapping himself hard, he dared not say another word. He only glared at Jiang Ruobai with a vicious look, signaling him to get over there quickly so as not to bring bad luck to the entire room.

But Jiang Ruobai felt as if he were nailed to the spot. Immense fear had stripped him of his ability to think. His sluggish mind seemed unable to accept that he was the unlucky one.

Seeing that he still would not move, Pei Sichen was amused into a cold laugh. He tossed his glass back onto the table and sneered, “The quality of Anse’s stock has not been great lately, but their tempers are certainly getting bigger.”

By now, the supervisor’s back was soaked with cold sweat. He could only manage a strained, awkward smile: “Young Master Pei, he is just a waiter. If you want someone, I will go rearrange things for you right away.”

“Drag him over,” Pei Sichen commanded the bodyguards, his patience exhausted.

While he had no interest in an old, ugly Beta, he would never allow such a creature to defy him.

Several bodyguards strode over to Jiang Ruobai’s side, ruthlessly grabbing him by the neck to drag him across the floor.

“Wait.”

As if thinking of something interesting, Pei Sichen spoke, halting the bodyguards’ movements.

The bodyguards let go instantly. Jiang Ruobai staggered, nearly collapsing.

Pei Sichen lifted his eyes, looking gloomily at the unremarkable man. He issued a command, syllable by syllable, slow but incredibly clear:

“I will give you one last chance. Now, crawl over here!”

Those words hit Jiang Ruobai’s heart like a thunderbolt, instantly shattering his remaining logic and snapping him awake.

His body jolted violently. In the choice between dignity and life, he hesitated for only a second before dropping his body low. Using both hands and feet, he crawled pathetically to Pei Sichen’s feet.

Knowing he had offended someone he should not have, Jiang Ruobai kept his head down. Gritting his teeth against the fear and humiliation, he knelt upright and kowtowed: “Young Master Pei, I was wrong.”

Pei Sichen looked at him, using the tip of his shoe to lift Jiang Ruobai’s chin.

After only a few seconds, he lost interest.

The man had a mediocre appearance, neither beautiful nor soft, barely counting as plain. His gender was also that of a Beta, fitting his unremarkable looks. Pei Sichen could not muster a shred of interest.

In a den of luxury like Anse, someone like Jiang Ruobai was not even the green leaf to a flower; at most, he was a common weed found anywhere.

“Anse is getting worse at doing business. You actually dared to put this kind of stock in my booth.”

Pei Sichen’s eyes were icy. He leaned back, lounging arrogantly on the sofa.

Everyone in the booth was too terrified to speak, fearing Pei Sichen would take his anger out on them.

The supervisor knew he was in deep trouble. If he could not serve this Great Buddha properly today, his life and perhaps even Anse itself might end here.

“Young Master Pei, we did not know you were coming today. The staff upstairs was a bit short, so we brought up a batch of clean waiters from downstairs. I did not expect to bring up such an ignorant fool. I will definitely take him down and discipline him properly. If I have spoiled your fun today, we have a batch of newcomers who just arrived. I will have them accompany you.”

Pei Sichen picked up a wine bottle from the table and smashed it over the supervisor’s head.

“When did I give you permission to speak?”

The supervisor, his head cracked open, stood still. He let the blood stream down his face, his expression still forced into a fawning smile: “It is Anse’s poor hospitality today. I hope Young Master Pei can let go of his anger.”

Pei Sichen looked coldly at the groveling man and pointed to the remaining alcohol on the table. “Either you or he finishes this bottle, and I won’t pursue today’s matter.”

He tilted his head, looking at the two of them teasingly. “Which of you will drink it?”

Naturally, the supervisor did not want to. Pei Sichen had opened a bottle of 60% ABV Macallan. Drinking the whole thing could result in a stomach perforation and an emergency trip to the hospital.

Jiang Ruobai carefully looked up, glancing at the vicious-looking supervisor beside him, then at Pei Sichen, who was waiting for a good show. Finally, he fixed his gaze on the golden liquid shimmering under the lights.

Thinking of his wife lying in the hospital bed, he realized he could not escape this today. Rather than continuing to be humiliated, it was better to end this decisively.

Jiang Ruobai closed his eyes. As if making a final resolution, he grabbed the glass, tilted his head back, and poured the alcohol into his mouth.

The pungent liquid hit his throat, making his eyes turn bloodshot. The worst part was the searing pain; it felt as though his throat were being burned by fire and then repeatedly slashed with a knife.

“Cough, cough, cough!” Before he was even halfway through, Jiang Ruobai was forced into a violent coughing fit. He turned his head to the side, the pain increasing with every cough, as if he might cough up his lungs. He held his breath for a long time before he could barely suppress the discomfort.

Even though he could not take it anymore, Jiang Ruobai did not dare beg for mercy. He knew very well that begging would only lead to a worse end.

He took a deep breath, looked at the remaining alcohol, and continued pouring it down his throat. By the time the last drop was swallowed, he was swaying, on the verge of fainting.

The world before him blurred and split. Fearing he would pass out, he pinched his thigh hard, knelt upright, and said in a hoarse voice, “Young Master Pei, I have finished.”

Pei Sichen raised an eyebrow. When Jiang Ruobai had stopped the first time, he thought the man would beg for mercy. He had underestimated this plain Beta; though uninteresting, he was at least someone who knew how to adapt to the situation.

His gaze returned to the Beta who looked like he could collapse at any moment.

“Look up.”

Hearing this, Jiang Ruobai obediently raised his head.

Pei Sichen looked down at him. His gaze swept over the man’s flushed cheeks and settled on his pupils, which were trembling and lost due to alcohol and fear.

The cold tip of his finger, bearing the ruby ring, lightly brushed against those moist lips that had been unconsciously bitten until they bled. The gesture carried a weird, hair-raising intimacy.

“Has anyone here touched you?”

Jiang Ruobai lowered his gaze, his heart racing. Although he tried his best to remain calm on the surface, his trembling eyelashes and sudden stiffness betrayed him.

“No.”

“Is that so? That’s quite pitiful.” A faint smile curled at the corner of his mouth; a flash that vanished instantly, but it gave Jiang Ruobai goosebumps.

“How about I find someone to help you?” Pei Sichen intentionally drew out his words, the smile on his face full of malice.

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