Chapter 27: Everthing in this world has a price

*TAP*

*TAP*

*TAP*

*TAP*

With muffled steps sound, Hai walked down a dark corridor with only a white door at the end.

Right now, he is in one of his emergency hideouts, one deeply hidden below the sea.

Carrying an unconscious Stella on his shoulder, Hai grabbed the door's knob, twisted it and opened the door.

Entering the room, he arrived at his office in this base.

The place had transparent walls and ceiling from the inside, making it so one can observe the sea and maritime life around while on the outside this place will seem more like some rocks.

Arriving on the couch, Hai unceremoniously threw Stella on it.

*THUD*

"Argh…!" Stella groaned upon hitting her nape on the couch backrest.

Hai took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it and put in his mouth.

He looked at Stella and used a simple cleansing spell to get rid of all the filth she had on her.

Stella's eyelids started fluttering and she eventually opened them.

She gazed around confused as to what she is doing here and what happened, but a couple of seconds later she remembered what happened.

She looked ahead and saw Hai with his arms crossed, smoking and looking at her with a carefree expression.

"You!" Stella shouted when she remembered what he did to her.

"Yes, me." Hai nodded and looked back at her.

"…" She gazed deeply at him, as if trying to make out what was on his mind.

After some seconds of silence, she eventually opened her mouth.

"Where are we?" She asked and looked around noticing the sea around them.

"Somewhere on this planet." Hai said and walked closer to her.

Stella's eyebrow twitched in annoyance.

"If you don-"

*BAM*

Hai raised his right arm up and swung it down.

He slammed his right hand on the couch's backrest and the thing along with the ground sank down a bit.

Stella looked at his right arm that was just a few centimeters away from her head and slowly followed the arm until she looked at Hai's face.

Hai was smiling and with calm eyes, his whole expression was calm.

However, Stella saw the anger hidden in his eyes.

"Now, now. Where we are is not important. What is important is: How things are going to work from now on."

Stella frowned when she heard him.

"Do you think you can walk over me like this? We have a deal and it was accorded that I would be the 'leader' as I'm the only one who knows what the project needs."

Hai crouched down and looked into Stella's eyes.

"Yes, yes. We have a deal. You would use us as pawn, maybe take some interesting ones to you after you discarded the useless one, then you would go back to your family and be congratulated for finishing a project they deemed as delusional or a fool's idea." He slowly said, his smiled stretching along with each word.

Stella started to feel an ominous feeling inside her chest.

Her instincts were screaming at her that if she doesn't leave now, she will never again be free.

Stella tried to get up but Hai used his right hand and held her shoulder.

Stella widened her eyes when she noticed she couldn't even budge.

Hai stood up and jumped while rotating his waist towards the right.

*PUFF*

Despite of all Hai's weight, he landed like a feather on Stella's lap.

He stretched his legs, then crossed them and looked at her eyes.

"Well then, I said you were going to pay a price higher than you could pay, didn't I?" Hai smiled.

Stella struggled and tried to throw Hai out of her lap, but although he seemed to weight like nothing as she was barely feeling him on her lap, when she tried to move him, she felt like trying to move a mountain.

"So, how is it going to be?" Stella stopped struggling and turned to look at him again after hearing his question.

"You know that you can't hurt me, right?" She asked after concluding that there was no way out.

Hai smiled.

*SLAP*

Stella's mind went blank, then she widened her eyes and touched her cheek where she felt a stinging sensation.

She looked back at Hai in disbelief.

"Did you just slap me?"

Hai's smile stretched.

*SLAP*

He slapped her other cheek.

Stella previous confusion vanished and she felt anger.

She looked back at Hai and when she was going to scream, she felt him moving.

Hai adjusted his position and sat up cross-legged on her lap while his arms were hugging her neck and his interlacing behind her nape.

Hai inched close and arrived dangerously near her face.

Both of them could feel each other breaths.

"What do you think?" He asked with a mischievous smile, but his anger was still present in his eyes.

Stella's anger gave place to surprise and then anger once again.

"What do you think you are doing?" She asked while feeling that her pride was being constantly damaged.

Just Hai's position is messing with Stella's mentality.

After invading her personal space, Hai was now in a position where normally, the one sitting would be the "dominant" part and the party who was on the lap would be the subservient one, but not only is Hai the dominant one, he is even toying with her.

Stella was unconsciously being affected by those simple gestures and was starting to show little gaps she normally wouldn't.

"Me~? Oh, I'm thinking about how should punish you~" Hai started to make his voice as if he was having fun with her.

Stella fell silent.

"Hum…. How about I discipline you~?" He nodded at his own idea.

Stella looked at him.

"Don't you dare to lay a finger on me." She growled.

Hai gazed at her eyes while smiling.

"It depends on you, if you want, I think you can house/ endure three." He commented.

Stella looked at him confused for a second but then she understood the hidden meaning of his words.

Her cheeks flushed red but she didn't explode. She needed to remain calm.

"What do you intend to do with me?"

Hai tilted his head to the left while looking at her.

"Honestly, I don't know." He admitted with a relaxed expression.

Stella stared dumbly at him.

"But it should be something which will mess with you. You will never be the same, after all." His next words confirmed Stella's bad feeling.

"I just want to remind you, that my family will hunt you down should you do something to me." With no apparent solution, Stella decided to threaten him.

Hai looked at her with a contemptuous gaze.

"Let's play a game. I ask a question, you answer it." Hai stated.

Stella opened her mouth, but Hai started talking before she could.

"When was the last time you contacted your family?"

Stella's bad feeling suddenly started to increase several folds.

"…"

"B*tch, answer me." Hai lost his previous more easy-going gaze and looked at her coldly.

Stella's body trembled a bit at his gaze.

But it wasn't out of fear.

Stella noticed a small tinge of euphoria inside herself when Hai looked at her with such a gaze.

Although shocked, she felt she should answer him.

She quickly shook her head and got rid of this feeling.

"Before everything went downhill." She said looking back at his eyes, which by now were back at their previous relaxed gaze.

She felt a pang of sadness but instantly sobered up.

"How many in your family actually believed this project could be pulled off?"

Stella's brain started to work at high speed.

She was starting to understand where he was going and her dread was increasingly growing with each passing moment.

*GULP*

Gulping down a mouthful of saliva, she felt that it didn't happen to solve the dryness of her throat.

"Only my father and mother." She almost whispered this time and looked at Hai's eyes trying to hide her trembling body.

"How many would believe you were captured by an infamous trash instead of the Krakler Firm?"

Stella's fear was confirmed when he finished asking this question.

Nobody would believe in it.

And the Krakler Firm obviously would disclose nothing about her as it involves their experimental sites.

If she vanished or anything happened to her, it would be all on the Krakler Firm. Hai could walk scot-free as nobody would ever suspect him.

And if this wasn't enough, the most dreadful fact was that: Hai was strong.

Stella had noticed it before but she only stopped to think about it now.

Hai is strong as hell.

He literally walked in a building filled with squadrons armed with the latest weaponry, and killed his way until where she was without taking a single hit.

His clothes were in perfect state when she saw him.

All her chances to escape were shattered.

She looked back at Hai; her previous pride and arrogance clearly toned down by a considerable degree.

"Now, instead of me suggesting a punishment, how about you suggest one?" Hai spoke while he moved his face and rested his chin on her left shoulder.

"…" Stella's brain was working overdrive trying to find a solution to this predicament but alas, she couldn't find any.

She looked to her shoulder and saw that Hai was leisurely playing with her hair.

She tried to calm down and started to search with mana sense through her whole body to see if she had anything to aid her in escaping.

Then, she noticed something strange.

Although her body was clean of the filth she had previously, her crotch was wet.

She examined it more closely and she was stunned when she concluded what it was.

"Well, about that… It seems that you are a M. By the way, it happened right when I slapped you." Hai commented while playing with her hair.

Stella's brain stopped working.

She stood there for good 30 seconds until she regained herself.

She looked at her crotch again and then at Hai.

Then, she remembered the small sensations she felt when he looked coldly at her and when his gaze went back to normal.

"…" She opened and closed her mouth repeatedly but nothing came out.

She was like a fish trying to speak.

As much as she wanted to argue, she knew that it was futile, her reactions already gave her away.

Her already crumbling poker-face broke down completely and she turned to look at Hai with a rather pitiful gaze.

The prideful and arrogant b*tch from before was no more; now, only a defeated business woman remained.

She looked at Hai and opened her mouth.

Hai took his chin off her shoulder and pulled his body back to look at her.

"Mercy…" She hoped that her pitiful appearance would stir his emotions.

Sadly, she saw for the first time, Hai sporting a sadistic smile.

"N-o-p-e~" His neon blue eyes glowed while the surrounding's illumination dimmed.

Stella for the first time in her life considered starting to pray.

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(Unknown location)

In a dark room, a man could be seen sitting cross-legged on the hard ground.

Only a small piece of cloth covered his lower-body.

This man was no other than Ye Chen.

Right now, he was working nonstop to get his cultivation back to where he was previously.

He had isolated himself and went into secluded cultivation leaving all his important meetings to his subordinates, mainly, his women.

Although he was getting his cultivation back at a relatively fast speed, Ye Chen wasn't satisfied.

He wanted more.

He wanted enough to crush that bastard with a simple snap of his fingers.

He wanted more power.

He had noticed that both his sister and master were awkward whenever they were with him. And he already knew the motive.

Hai had somehow manipulated their memories.

He had swapped places and put Ye Chen as the aggressor.

When he first found out about it, he was fuming with anger and was red enough to explode.

He was forced by his master to train and meditate for at least 12 hours a day, and if he was to touch any woman during this time, she would castrate him.

Obviously, Ye Chen was furious when he was put under such restrictions. He felt that his master was punishing him unfairly.

He even said that she was choosing Hai's side instead of his, but he was quickly shot down when she said he had killed Hai.

Ye Chen obviously knew he didn't kill Hai, he didn't have this pleasure yet.

But no matter who he talked to, his master, sister or women, nobody believed him when he said that Hai was alive. All of them believed he had killed him and thought he was being affected by Hai's death, that he was starting to be delusional or starting to go crazy.

Ye Chen got angry with them for not believing in him and decided to use this secluded training to calm down.

But no matter how much he meditates or tries to be calm, the memories of that day always resurface his mind.

Mainly Hai's playful expression.

Gritting his teeth, Ye Chen closed his eyes harder in a futile attempt of calming down.

He only wished for power to erase Hai, that pest from the face of this world.

To teach his master that he is her disciple and not Hai, that she should support him.

To make her his woman, because even after years of courting her, she showed no signs of seeing him as a man.

To teach his sister that she should obey him.

To teach his women that he isn't crazy.

If only he had power…

- Do you wish for power?

A deep, creepy, eerie and extremely cold voice was heard inside Ye Chen's head.

Not caring about what or who was talking to him, he answered.

"Yes! I wish for enough power to reduce this world to dust. To rule above all."

- What would you offer in exchange for power?

"Anything!" He yelled.

- Very well. I shall grant you power. The price shall show itself eventually.

Suddenly, Ye Chen felt strength filling his body.

His cultivation skyrocket and he felt stronger than ever.

Ye Chen noticed this and started laughing like a madman.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

With this power, he could finally crush that bastard.

Ye Chen was so drunk in his newfound power that he didn't even bother in thinking who or what was it that gave him power.

Without him noticing, inside his body, his soul which was bright golden in color, almost like a sun, had dimmed a bit and a small crack appeared on his soul.

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A/N: Hello there, I hope you are having a wonderful day!

So, what do you guys think about this chapter?

This one was more focused on showing Stella slowly losing her bossy attitude and turning into a more bearable person.

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