At the age of seven, I became a number on a human trafficking list.
From a villa in the provincial capital to a remote mountain village, my name was erased and changed to "Ying Hexi".
The adoptive parents said that I was their son in exchange for two pigs.
But they didn't know that my biological father was a powerful underworld tycoon, and that my "missing" was a trap carefully designed by my three brothers to silence me.
Ten years later, I was admitted to the No. 1 Middle School in the county with the third highest score in the county.
I just want to study quietly and take my sister Ying Lingshu out of the mountains.
But the peaceful days did not last three days:
An off-road convoy of unknown origin appeared on the mountain road;
A typed threatening letter - "Stay away from that girl" - was stuffed under the door of the dormitory;
The dean of the Academic Affairs Office gave a meaningful warning: "There is some water that you cannot afford to wade through."
Until the girl named Lin Wei came to the door and said:
"We also received a letter in our dormitory - 'Shut up if you want to survive'."
And she was the only survivor among the group of missing children ten years ago.
I was shocked to realize that this was never a simple search for relatives.
This is a chess game that has been played for ten years, and Lingshu and I are both pawns on the chessboard to be slaughtered.
When a boy from a mountain village is forced to pick up the blood-stained scepter, he has to face not only the family's bloody storm, but also the ultimate question:
Become the underworld prince and take back everything? Or tear up the chessboard and rebuild your own "promised land" on the ruins?
