Old Dust of the South

Content warning: This story features snakes! Read with caution. This is the abstract world of a person with mental illness. Please stop reading if it bothers you! If it's not your thing, run! Hope you enjoy the story!

The genius painter Ting Zhunan has long, tea-red hair, skin as pale as glass, and light brown eyes filled with ice that has yet to melt. His painting Frozen Python has been hailed as "the most astonishing visual art of the twenty-first century." The python frozen in ice is ferocious and beautiful, so much like the artist himself: fragile yet mad, delicate yet dangerous.

When Xie Zhichen, the owner of a top-tier gallery, first meets Ting Zhunan, the artist is dancing alone in his studio. His tea-red hair is flecked with titanium white paint, sparkling like crushed diamonds in the sunlight. Xie Zhichen thinks he's just a pretty madman, until he understands the python trapped in ice in Frozen Python, still struggling to break free. It is Ting Zhunan's soul, screaming in silence.

One is a genius tormented by high-functioning mental illness; the other is a cold-blooded businessman who controls the art market. They should be hunter and prey, but they see the same abyss in each other's eyes.

"Your life matters more than the painting." Xie Zhichen grips Ting Zhunan's bloodstained wrist.

"But this is proof that I'm alive." The artist smiles as he answers, dipping his fingertips in his own blood and drawing a python over Xie Zhichen's heart.

When an icy, ferocious nature meets an obsession that will never burn out, who is the one trapped?

A genius painter with long tea-red hair × a cold-blooded gallery owner who controls the art market. Their love is a dangerous and beautiful mutual salvation.

For readers who enjoy fragile, beautiful men, mutual salvation, art and mad aesthetics, and intense angst and sweetness.

Theme: When an icy, ferocious nature meets an obsession that will never burn out, who is the one trapped?