Chapter 2: Activation

The mother and son pair—one massaging shoulders, the other slightly squinting, lost in thought—found the atmosphere suddenly growing tense.

Yang Haoran grew anxious inwardly. He couldn’t let the conversation die out; if it did, things would quickly escalate to the punishment phase.

Just as he was frantically scrambling for something to say, Liu Ruoxi spoke up.

“That’s enough, stop. Turn on the computer.”

At her words, Yang Haoran’s heart leaped violently. He continued massaging her shoulders, pretending nonchalance as he replied, “Mother, why do you need the computer? Is yours not working?”

“Heh… My computer is fine. It’s your brain that’s broken, and your courage that’s grown fat,” Liu Ruoxi’s voice was piercingly cold. “Stop dawdling.”

“Right away, right away.” Yang Haoran didn’t dare play any more tricks. He knew that if he kept stuttering and stammering, a taste of the feather duster would be inevitable.

He crouched down, fumbled for the power button on the CPU, and then stood up to switch on the monitor.

After the startup sound, the Windows boot screen appeared.

Thankfully, restarting the computer after shutdown didn’t preserve the pages that were open before.

“Move aside.”

Liu Ruoxi stood up, glared at her son, and Yang Haoran obediently stepped aside with a submissive demeanor.

Settling into the computer chair, Liu Ruoxi took control of the mouse, clicking through each drive one by one, opening every folder she encountered to inspect its contents.

After seven or eight minutes, she had browsed through all the folders but found no trace of the video she was looking for. Yang Haoran, standing slightly off to the side with his head slightly lowered, breathed an inward sigh of relief. Fortunately, he had been cleverer this time. After his mother had found and deleted all his videos last time, he had searched online for ways to hide folders.

It seemed his foresight had paid off!

Noticing the slight upward curve of her son’s lips from the corner of her eye, Liu Ruoxi let out a cold laugh. “I’ll give you one more chance. Will you confess voluntarily, or shall I find it myself?”

“Find what?” Yang Haoran played dumb. “Mother, whatever you’re looking for, just tell me, and I’ll help you find it.”

“Last chance.”

Liu Ruoxi turned her gaze to her son, her eyes cold and fixed on Yang Haoran as she repeated herself.

Under his mother’s piercing stare, Yang Haoran felt a chill run down his spine. But having held out this long, how could he possibly confess now?

“I really don’t understand,” he said, noticing his mother’s expression growing colder by the second. He quickly added, “I truly don’t.”

He was gambling, betting that his mother wouldn’t find it. If she could, why would she be pressuring him to confess? The logic didn’t add up, and he was brimming with confidence.

“Heh heh…” Seeing her son stubbornly clinging to his lies even in the face of imminent doom, Liu Ruoxi’s lips curled into a beautiful, almost smiling arc. “I gave you a chance, but you didn’t cherish it. Don’t blame me for what happens next.”

Yang Haoran, seeing his mother’s expression, suddenly felt a foreboding sense of dread. Her demeanor, her tone—it was as if she had already won. Could she really find it?

Liu Ruoxi clearly had no intention of saying more. She deftly opened the browser, typed into the search bar: “How to find hidden folders on a computer.”

Seeing those words, Yang Haoran was stunned.

Outsmarted by his own cleverness! It had occurred to him to search for how to hide folders, but it never crossed his mind that the reverse was also possible.

With a click of the mouse, the page refreshed, displaying a long list of methods. Liu Ruoxi randomly selected one and began reading.

A few minutes later, Yang Haoran stared hopelessly at the folder labeled “Study Materials” now displayed on the screen.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Liu Ruoxi’s tone was indifferent.

“My beautiful and merciful mother~”

Yang Haoran fell to his knees with a thud, his face full of despair. “Could you possibly give me one more chance? I swear I’ll never dare again.”

Liu Ruoxi watched her son, now on his knees and putting on a dramatic performance, her face expressionless though the corners of her mouth twitched slightly.

How did she end up with a son like this?

“As usual, which will it be? Your butt or your hands?”

Liu Ruoxi sat in the computer chair like a queen issuing decrees from on high.

“C-could I choose neither?” Yang Haoran ventured cautiously, looking up at his mother with hopeful eyes.

“What do you think?” Liu Ruoxi replied with a cold laugh.

“Understood, Mother.”

Yang Haoran’s face fell, dejected like a wilted plant, as he retrieved a feather duster from under the bed.

The process was familiar, clearly not his first time.

He handed the feather duster to the old witch respectfully, still hoping for a last-minute reprieve. “My beautiful and merciful mother~ Could you possibly go easy on me?”

“No.”

Liu Ruoxi’s response was flat.

“Fine!”

With all hope lost, Yang Haoran resigned himself to his fate and lay face down on the bed. Compared to his hands, his buttocks had more flesh and could withstand a beating better.

“Take your pants off.”

Just then, a cold, clear voice from behind sent a chill down to his very core.

“You can’t be serious, old witch!” Yang Haoran jumped up in fright, on the verge of cursing.

“What did you call me?”

Liu Ruoxi’s icy gaze was like frozen tundra, piercingly cold.

Realizing his slip-up, Yang Haoran quickly switched to an ingratiating smile, as if changing masks. “I said, my beautiful and merciful mother, why go this far? I’ve never had to take my pants off before.”

“That was then, this is now. If I don’t teach you a lesson you’ll remember, will you even regard me as your mother in the future?”

Liu Ruoxi冷笑一声：“脱？还是不脱？”

Is this even a choice? Yang Haoran didn’t think so.

His face fell, his heart sinking into an icy abyss. He’d be lucky to get out of bed in three days.

Resigned, he placed his hands on his waistband, about to pull his pants down, when he noticed his mother still watching.

“M-mother, could you please turn around first?”

Yang Haoran’s face showed a hint of embarrassment.

“Heh…”

Her son was usually shameless, so this bashful act was a first for Liu Ruoxi. She couldn’t help but laugh aloud. In that instant, her cold, stunningly beautiful face, usually like eternal ice, seemed to melt, becoming breathtakingly vivid.

Yang Haoran was spellbound. He had always known his mother was incredibly beautiful, but reading [Li Yannian’s Song], the first image that came to mind was her celestial beauty.

In the north, there is a beauty, peerless and independent.

With one glance, she topples a city; with another, she topples a nation.

Better to topple cities and nations than to lose such a beauty.

A beauty like this is hard to find again.

At the same time, he felt a surge of heat rush to his lower body, an involuntary reaction he didn’t even notice, for all his attention was fixed on his mother’s exquisitely beautiful face.

Seeing her son’s staring gaze, Liu Ruoxi snapped back to reality, her cold expression returning instantly. “Hurry up and take them off! Do you need me to help you?”

“Oh—oh—”

Yang Haoran came to his senses and, without thinking, tugged his waistband down, completely unaware that his penis was already standing erect.

Distracted, he used too much force, and the zipper’s teeth scraped sharply against his proudly standing member.

As everyone knows, the male penis is the most vulnerable part of the body. Any injury to that area is excruciatingly painful.

“Ah—!”

A cry of agony burst from Yang Haoran’s lips. Suddenly unsteady on his feet, his face contorted in pain, he collapsed onto the bed, his complexion instantly pale, covered in cold sweat. His hands instinctively clamped over his crotch, as if trying to stifle the pain.

Moans of suffering spilled from his mouth as he writhed and rolled on the bed in agony.

Her son’s sudden scream stunned Liu Ruoxi. A few seconds later, she snapped out of it, her cold, stern expression vanishing, replaced by panic and anxiety. “What’s wrong? Haoran? Where does it hurt?”

“It hurts… it hurts… so much…”

Yang Haoran’s face was slightly twisted with pain, deathly pale and devoid of color, drenched in cold sweat. He could barely speak, his words broken and intermittent.

In that moment, the searing, heart-piercing pain blanked Yang Haoran’s mind.

His hands clutched his lower body tightly, trickles of bright red blood seeping through his fingers, dripping onto the bed. Soon, his hands were covered in blood.

Seeing her son clutching his crotch, his hands stained with blood, the scene before her made Liu Ruoxi’s head spin. Suddenly, it felt as if the sky had fallen.

She forgot everything else. Anxious didn’t even begin to describe her state of mind. Her face slightly pale, filled with urgency, her hands trembled as she fumbled for her phone.

She knew where her phone was, of course, but in her panicked state, it took her a while to find it.

Her trembling fingers struggled to unlock the screen. She tapped the phone icon, her finger instantly pressing the 1-2-0 keys for emergency services.

But now, of all times, her fingers were so tense and sweaty that she accidentally pressed 2-0 instead. She didn’t bother with that, wiping the sweat, deleting the mistake, and re-entering the numbers—all in a split second—before hitting call.

The pain was too intense to bear. His brain activated its defense mechanisms, and Yang Haoran passed out from the agony. Just before losing consciousness, he faintly heard his mother’s anxious voice, ethereal and dreamlike, gradually fading away.

Yet, in that moment, neither of them noticed that on Yang Haoran’ blood-stained right hand, traces of blood were seeping into the black ring on his index finger.

The ring was pitch black all over, with a recessed layer in the middle of its surface, inside which were carved various mysterious, unknown patterns.

Upon closer inspection, one would see that these mysterious patterns actually formed two distinct sections, upper and lower.

A few seconds after the blood seeped into the ring, a faint glimmer flashed across its surface. Then, as if activating something, the first of the unknown patterns carved into the recessed middle layer lit up, emitting a soft glow. The light then spread downward like a liquid, flowing toward the second mysterious pattern at the base of the ring.

As the light gradually flowed, most of the pattern at the base lit up. Just as it was about to continue spreading, a crack, like a bottomless abyss, blocked its path. On the other side of the abyss was the remaining part of the pattern.

The incomplete pattern clearly couldn’t activate fully. Before long, the mysterious pattern at the base of the ring dimmed, returning to its original state.

Only the first mysterious pattern continued to emit a faint glow.

The first pattern flashed three times, then released a wave of energy invisible to the naked eye, spreading outward in all directions like a radar scan.

Liu Ruoxi, right beside Yang Haoran, was the first to be swept into the scan zone.

A few seconds later, a voice sounded in Liu Ruoxi’s mind:

【Conditions met. Game program loading…】

All of this happened within ten short seconds. But in her frantic state, Liu Ruoxi didn’t notice the prompt that seemed to echo in her mind.

All her focus was devoted to her son, Yang Haoran.