Shen Yun was dead.

The blood dyed the bathtub red, strand by strand.

Like a sprite swimming in the water, intimately kissing the person in the water, or like a tangled rope, binding the body under the water.

The milky white skin was soaked in blood, and only the face was exposed, and it was small and white.

It was just that the lips were as pale as the face, with no hint of blood.

Because of this, the hair and eyelashes look darker, darker than the night when you couldn’t see your fingers, darker than despair.

Shen Yun’s eyes were closed lightly, as if he had fallen asleep, quietly and peacefully, without pain, even with a faint joy of relief.

It seemed to be very cold, and the cold air coming from the water made people tremble, shake like branches swayed by the wind.

Out of control…

“Shen Yun!” Zhou Lan woke up from his dream sweating profusely, clutching his chest and gasping for breath. His body leaned forward slightly, as if he tried to hug someone.

“Having a nightmare?”

Lin Jianyang sat up from his side of the bed in a daze, turned on the bedside lamp, and the light illuminated the room, driving away the darkness.

Zhou Lan looked at Lin Jianyang’s face that was tinged faintly red, as if his pupils were dyed red by the blood in his dream, and what he saw was illusory.

He didn’t say anything, got up and dressed.

The scene of Shen Yun’s nightmares every night appeared in front of him. He struggled, gasped, cried out, and his whole body was wet with sweat…

Helpless and hopeless, bullied physically and mentally.

It turned out that the nightmare was so terrifying. Zhou Lan clenched his fists.

Lin Jianyang also woke up, leaned over and hugged his waist: “It’s only past three o’clock, what are you going to do when you get up?”

He smiled, tempting: “What did you dream about? I will help you get rid of the things in your dreams.”

His fingers slid teasingly on Zhou Lan’s body, his eyes gleaming like spring waves.

Zhou Lan pushed him away. “You sleep on your own.”

He got into the car and drove quickly towards Shen Yun’s place. He wanted to see him, immediately, immediately!

He knew it was a dream, but Shen Yun’s strange smile still echoed in his mind, making him afraid.

That smile was self-deprecating, desperate and icy cold, showing him the depths of Shen Yun’s soul, with no light at all and shivering with cold.

At first he only felt angry, then slowly felt a little distressed, but now he felt desperate…

“Shen Yun.” He murmured the name in a low voice, his heart aching.

The streets in the early hours of the morning were extremely empty, and the road extending forward was like a beast’s mouth so huge that you couldn’t see the end of it.

Zhou Lan threw himself into it without hesitation, just eager to go faster, faster.

It was not even five o’clock when he arrived downstairs at Shen Yun’s house, but he had calmed down from the initial confusion and fear.

He felt a little embarrassed and could hardly believe his own out-of-control behaviour.

On a rare occasion, he lit himself a cigarette and stared quietly at the windows of Shen Yun’s apartment.

Those two windows were pitch black, and no sign of anyone’s presence could be seen.

All kinds of thoughts flashed in his mind randomly. If Shen Yun didn’t come down, should he go up and take a look?

What if he didn’t come home at all last night?

The cigarette between his fingers changed shape. Where would he go if he didn’t come home?

As soon as this thought appeared, every minute and every second became torment.

He didn’t dare to imagine those pictures.

Shen Yun was lying in someone else’s arms, making a sweet and unctuous hum through his nose. After his whole body was soaked in sweat, his skin was slightly pink…

Zhou Lan leaned heavily into the back of the seat and closed his eyes fiercely.

Shen Yun finally appeared. It was six o’clock or so, the sun had just risen, and he walked out of the dark cave of the building.

The sun shone on him, faintly golden, as if he himself glowed.

Zhou Lan also woke up completely from the nightmare of the night, and he even felt rather ridiculous.

But his gaze was still glued to the young man.

He was back to the way he used to be.

The soft bangs were a little damp, probably with the drops of water when he washed his face in the morning.

A grey hoodie, black trousers, and a pair of sneakers on his feet.

His steps were light, as if he was a student who hadn’t graduated yet, and he was still a little childish in his composure.

When Zhou Lan saw him, he slowly let out a sigh of relief from the bottom of his heart, and his tight nerves finally relaxed.

Shen Yun was not dead, nor did he stay out, he was standing not far from him.

Shen Yun didn’t see Zhou Lan’s car, he just walked to the bus stop as usual.

The spring wind blew in his face, with vitality and vigour.

After a few days of not paying attention, the leaves appeared on the branches, their tender green colour reflecting the soft sunlight.

Shen Yun stopped, frowned slightly, found his mobile phone and took a few pictures of the young leaves in the sun.

These trivial and boring little details of life brought him unlimited inspiration.

Recently, he took on a design job for a bar. The owner was a young man, also with a thin cigarette between his long fingers.He said he wanted his bar to be passionate, psychedelic, full of desire to be immortal and to die…

Shen Yun was a little bit tempted to laugh at his adjectives, but he still recorded his request seriously.

The little glimmer of sunlight penetrating the young leaves gave Shen Yun a psychedelic feeling. He remembered the request of the bar owner and smiled slightly.

The owner of the bar was called Xiao Bo, so the bar was capriciously named BOBO.

BOBO’s decoration took a lot of twists and turns, and Shen Yun made several drafts that couldn’t meet the requirements of the other party’s desire for immortality and death.

Ding Ning thought that the other party was simply unreasonable, and the setting of desire to be immortal and to die was simply illusory to the point of being terrifying.

Shen Yun frowned. Ding Ning was very smart and diligent, but not patient enough, like a spoiled child.

His ego always rushed out when it shouldn’t have, yelling loudly, making people laugh and love him.

Like most people, when they were not yet proficient in their art and had little foundation and experience, he was prone to complacency and self-satisfaction.

But with the deepening of professional knowledge, this kind of complacency often developed into self-doubt.

Shen Yun wanted to pull Ding Ning out of this immature state, but in the end he gave up with a wry smile.

With most young people, if you want them to grow up, you still have to let them suffer enough, and ten thousand sentences from someone else wouldn’t work as well as them banging their own heads once.

Xiao Bo was obviously also a very self-centred person, holding a cigarette, shaking his legs, always smiling with his fox-like charming eyes.

If it is not satisfactory, change it, don’t worry about time, he always said.

It was early June when the draft was finalised, and the Lanqiao project had been preliminarily concluded.

Xiao Bo was very satisfied with the draft. The solution was to use a variety of materials similar to the patchwork to create different sensations.

When the rendering came out, Xiao Bo’s slender eyes rippled with smiles: “Shen Yun, I really love you, I love you so much that I want to be immortal and to die.”

Shen Yun smiled and raised his eyebrows, and Ding Ning immediately got goosebumps.

When the bus came, Shen Yun ran two steps and jumped on it. Right behind his heels, the door slammed shut.

Zhou Lan, far behind him, was really worried that he would be caught by the bus door.

It was great that Shen Yun was not dead.

Until now, he was still thinking about this in his heart.

It was just a dream.

Unexpectedly, he drove after the bus.

The place where Shen Yun got off was an old high-end neighbourhood in the city centre.

He got out of the bus and didn’t do anything. He just leaned against the lamppost and lit a cigarette, staring at the entrance of the neighbourhood with his eyes clouded with the smoke.

Shen Yun’s expression was very calm, as if he was just passing by inadvertently.

It wasn’t until an elderly couple came out together that his expression fluctuated slightly, the one of avoidance, greed, and grievances.

Those emotions seemed to be as light as a fallen leaf, fluttering and fleeting.

Then he put out his cigarette and entered a billiard room across the street.

Shen Yun stood at the door very familiarly and said hello, then walked in. It could be seen that he was a frequent visitor here.

***

Lanqiao’s showflat was on display to guests as scheduled, although a portion of the house had already been sold prior to this.

But after all, it was an elaborately packaged house, and the showflat was a more straightforward way to show customers exactly what their future home would look like.

So the official sales peak also appeared in June.

Designer name plates were specially placed in the showflat, and many competitors and people in the real estate industry also came to visit the property of Zhouquan.

All the work Shen Yun had done in the early stages played its part at this time.

The several room configurations he followed up received praise from many people in the industry. For a while, a lot of people came to inquire about who this little-known designer was.

After the finished product came out, even Zhou Lan was a little surprised, feeling that he not simply underestimated the other party, but probably underestimated greatly.

He had known that Shen Yun had no experience in engineering, so he predicted the problems that were likely to arise early on.

He also thought of helping him to secretly hide all those problems and remedy them afterwards.

But he didn’t expect that the remedial measures he prepared wouldn’t have a chance to be used at all.

He thought of Shen Yun’s humility when he begged for this opportunity, and he suddenly understood why he only wanted one opportunity and not anything else.

Because, as long as he was given an opportunity, he could rise sky-high.

What he lacked was just a chance.

Shen Yun’s appointments increased, and even Meng contacted him privately.

Meng was an old customer of Moxi, the joint responsibility of Gao Xi and Xu Moran, and although the scale was not as large as that of Zhouquan, it was still a close second.

Meng had always pursued innovation, so it mainly adopted Gao Xi’s designs.

Once Meng Xiang lamented the limitations of home design, saying that if Gao Xi didn’t do this, he might consider becoming an artist who travelled all over the world.

Gao Xi said at that time that even the greatest innovation and spirituality of home design did have its limitations, and if you wanted to do trend-setting design, you had to do industrial design.

He even smiled and encouraged Meng Xiang to develop in the direction of large supermarkets.

Meng was indeed Shen Yun’s goal, but right now he still couldn’t eat it.

He was just thinking that he could take on a small-scale project and reestablish the relationship first.

It just so happened that Meng had a small commercial and residential apartment building. After contact, the two sides had reached a preliminary consensus on the general style.

At the same time, a small hot spring resort also contacted Shen Yun.

Compared to Meng’s intention to cooperate, Shen Yun was more favourably disposed to this one. After all, although the hot spring resort was small, it could also be considered a kind of industrial design.

Many things were fermenting and going on in places that others couldn’t see.

Shen Yun was busy, trying to gain a foothold in the circle, and then in a fair manner get back the things that belonged to him.

Or destroy them.

The weather at the end of June was already very hot, and it was when Zhouquan held a celebration banquet for Lanqiao.

Unexpectedly, this celebration banquet caused a crisis in Shen Yun’s design path.

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