The Obedient Substitute Redeemed Me, Though I'm Cruel and Vicious

Urban dark romance | Unhinged scientist seme | The replacement is the original | Reunited after heartbreak | Happy ending | Younger man

Shen Yanting spent eleven years searching for someone.

He spent the summers of his childhood in Liuhe Village, where a boy called Xiao Shitou was the only pure light in his life. Later, Shen was taken back to the Shen family, and Xiao Shitou died in an accident, or so he thought.

At twenty-four, Shen Yanting returned from Germany. On the surface, he was the playboy eldest son of the Shen Group. In secret, he was a neuro-scientist obsessed with memory reconstruction. He wanted a substitute, someone he could hypnotize and possess to bring his Xiao Shitou “back.”

In an airport restroom, he met a young man wearing an eyepatch over his right eye, someone who bore a faint resemblance to the person in his memories. The young man was named Zhou Xingye, shared Xiao Shitou’s surname, and was also nineteen.

Shen Yanting laid a gentle trap: he replaced Zhou’s phone, rented him an apartment, and signed a contract to keep him. He thought he was only keeping a substitute, but day after day, he found himself falling for Zhou. Zhou, too, gradually realized that he was nothing more than a carefully chosen vessel, meant to house the soul of a dead man.

After an argument, Zhou Xingye was tied up and locked in a basement. For three months, he was confined while the red lights of the hypnosis equipment flashed day and night. When he was finally rescued and escaped, Shen Yanting was already on the verge of collapse, consumed by his own demons. A second before he took his own life, he fell into a warm embrace…

Only then did the truth that had never disappeared come to light:

It had always been him. The boy from childhood was him, the substitute was him, the one held captive was him, and the one who made Shen Yanting fall in love was him.

A prison of possession, madness, and fate had never held just one person captive.