The Golden Shackles

Chapter 1: Shell

Kunshan in early autumn resembled a classical beauty holding back her words. The air still lingered with the sweet, soft, and mellow fragrance of late-blooming osmanthus, yet the wind carried a hint of crisp, thinning coolness. This chill was pervasive, seeping through the fabric of my shirt, thread by thread, into my skin, eventually reaching my heart.

I pulled a black 20-inch carry-on suitcase behind me, its wheels emitting a monotonous, rhythmic clack on the smooth stone pavement. The sound seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet dusk, like a tireless metronome beating time for my journey home. I stood before a familiar dark brown solid wood door. The metal nameplate reflected the dim sensor light from the hallway, but it didn’t reveal my expression. I raised my hand, my fingertips hovering over the doorbell button for half a second, then pressed down firmly.

This apartment, a flat located in the heart of the city's west side, was bought when I got married. Its one hundred and eighty square meters had been, at the time, a respectable promise. Zhang Jing had overseen its entire decoration. She adored Nordic minimalism, so the entire space was dominated by large swathes of emptiness and warm, natural wood tones. Everything was pristine, immaculately tidy; every piece of furniture, every ornament, was precisely where it belonged, as if calculated with exacting precision. Yet, precisely because of this, it felt oppressively spacious and cold, like a meticulously crafted showroom perpetually awaiting its true occupants. A display piece devoid of life, possessing only design aesthetics.

The door hinge gave a soft groan as it opened.

Standing behind it was Zhang Jing.

She wore a set of pale grey silk loungewear, the soft fabric draping elegantly over her slender yet shapely figure. Her jet-black hair was loosely gathered at the nape of her neck with an unbranded wooden hairpin, revealing a small section of smooth, graceful swan-like neck. She was thirty-one, a full decade younger than me, a woman at the peak of her youthful bloom, like a plump fruit freshly picked, still glistening with morning dew. Her beauty possessed an inherent aloofness; her features were as exquisitely crafted as the finest celadon porcelain from a Song Dynasty imperial kiln – a touch more would be gaudy, a touch less would be bland. Her skin was pale and fine, almost poreless. But her eyes, always cool and detached, seemed veiled in a persistent, misty haze like the Jiangnan rainy season, making it impossible to see them clearly or draw near.

"You're back," she said, stepping aside to let me in. Her voice, like her gaze, was flat, calm, devoid of any emotional inflection, as if greeting a long-known neighbor with whom she had little connection.

"Mhm," I responded, changing into the men's slippers she had already placed beside the entryway cabinet. These slippers were also wood-toned, and like the leather dress shoes I wore specifically for business trips, they had their fixed, unbreachable sphere of use. I stood my suitcase upright in the entryway; its surface still held the cold scent of the conveyor belt from Guangzhou Baiyun Airport.

"Daddy!"

A crisp, childish cry, like a beam of warm light, instantly pierced the pervasive chill of the room. My four-year-old daughter, Nuonuo, dashed towards me like a joyful little pink butterfly from the direction of the living room. She wore pink cartoon pajamas, her two tiny pigtails bouncing merrily behind her as she ran. She threw herself at me, wrapping her arms tightly around my leg, looking up with her rosy, apple-like little face. Her large, dark grape-like eyes brimmed with pure, unreserved delight.

She was the only source of warmth in this house.

All my pretense found its purpose in this moment. I bent down, carefully scooping her soft little body into my arms, my face instinctively forming the practiced, standard smile of paternal affection that belonged to the role of "father." I kissed her plump, warm cheek, inhaling deeply the faint milky scent of her hair mingled with the clean, sun-dried fluffiness.

For a split second, I almost drowned in this false illusion. I had a happy family, a beautiful, gentle wife, an innocent, adorable daughter. I was a successful man, loved.

But the warmth in my arms was so tangible, and this tangibility felt like a dagger quenched in fire, cruelly reminding me of my own hypocrisy. I was an impostor, a despicable thief who had stolen the identities of "husband" and "father." I had built this splendid stage with money and lies, performing a role upon it daily that felt increasingly alien even to myself.

Carrying Nuonuo, I walked into the living room. Zhang Jing had already turned and walked into the kitchen, leaving only her slender back in view. The dining table was already set with bowls and chopsticks, three dishes and a soup: steamed sea bass, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, stir-fried lettuce in oyster sauce, and a tureen of lotus root and pork rib soup. All dishes I had once favored.

The dinner atmosphere was, as always, oppressive yet orderly.

"How did the project go?" Zhang Jing asked, scooping a spoonful of fish, meticulously picking out the tiny bones before placing it in our daughter’s bowl. She didn’t look up. Her question sounded like the opening line of a weekly work report.

"Mhm, fine. Phase one is wrapped up. The follow-up is handed over to the team in Guangzhou," I replied, my voice as steady as if reporting during a remote conference call.

"So you’ll be in Kunshan for a while now?"

"Depends. I might need to go to Vietnam next month, to scope out the Southeast Asian market."

"Mhm."

The conversation ended there. We were like two actors, skilled to the point of numbness, performing the play titled "Harmonious Family" with seamless coordination. We talked, we served each other food, we occasionally exchanged smiles, but every interaction felt obscured by a thick pane of frosted glass – blurred, distorted, and cold. The only audience, and the most engrossed one, was the little girl across the table, diligently wrestling with her rice using a small spoon. Her existence was the sole meaning and fig leaf for our shoddy performance.

After dinner, Zhang Jing cleared the table, while I, as expected, assumed the role of playmate. I sat with Nuonuo on the soft wool rug in the living room, building blocks. Nuonuo loved the brightly colored plastic bricks, constructing her castles and wonderlands with boundless imagination. I simply sat beside her, mechanically handing her the "materials" she needed.

I was forty-one. Years of discipline had kept my body from succumbing to the typical middle-aged spread; faint muscle contours were still visible on my abdomen. But I knew aging was inexorable. The fine lines around my eyes that no expensive skincare could smooth, the anxiety over my thinning crown every time I saw fallen hair circling the drain while washing it – all silently betrayed the erosion of time and the weight of life. I wore scholarly gold-rimmed glasses, a high-quality non-iron shirt, and well-tailored casual pants. I still looked the part of the social elite, a graduate of a top-tier domestic university.

No one could glimpse, beneath this refined and respectable exterior, the soul that had long been ground into the dust, twisting and struggling in the mire.

The quartz clock on the wall, its hour, minute, and second hands tirelessly chasing each other. Exactly nine o'clock, not a minute more, not a minute less. Zhang Jing’s figure appeared punctually in the living room doorway, like a pre-programmed robot. She walked over to us, bent down, and spoke to our daughter in a voice deliberately softened, as if afraid to disturb something fragile: "Nuonuo, time's up. Bath and bed now."

"Goodnight, Daddy," Nuonuo said, putting down the last block in her hand, obediently scrambling up from the rug, waving her chubby little fist at me.

"Goodnight, sweetheart," I smiled and waved back.

Nuonuo was led away by Zhang Jing’s hand, heading towards the master bedroom. As their figures vanished around the corner of the hallway, the warm, bright crystal chandelier in the living room seemed to instantly lose its warmth. The entire space was engulfed in a vast, suffocating silence. I could hear the tick-tock of the quartz clock's second hand, the occasional sound of traffic outside the window, even the heavy, oppressive thud of my own heart within my chest.

Between Zhang Jing and me, only this silence remained.

She emerged from the bedroom carrying a glass of water and walked straight to the balcony. I remained seated on the rug, frozen in my previous position. Our eyes met – just for a second – then flickered away as if pricked by needles. The familiar, viscous, drowning awkwardness descended upon the air once more, pressing heavily on my heart.

"I... I’m going to take a shower," I finally said, unable to bear it, breaking the deathly stillness. I stood up, brushing dust off my trousers, my voice tight and dry with tension.

"Mhm," Zhang Jing leaned against the balcony railing, gazing out at the night, not turning around. "The guest bathroom. Your things are all ready for you. Towels and pajamas are in the cupboard."

Her tone was always so polite, so considerate – polite as if entertaining an occasional, overnight guest from afar.

The guest room. Yes, my room.

We had slept in separate rooms for three full years. Ever since that damned, sunny afternoon three years ago, when Zhang Jing accidentally discovered the secret buried deep within an encrypted folder on my laptop – that filthy, sordid fetish that had made her rush to the bathroom to retch uncontrollably for half an hour – our marriage had been reduced to nothing but a cold, legally binding certificate and the shared, inescapable responsibility for our daughter, Nuonuo.

The door labeled "Love" and "Intimacy" had been slammed shut by her own hand. Not only that, she had poured cement over it from the outside, bricked it up, forever cutting off any possibility of my approach.

Late at night, I lay alone on the single, one-and-a-half-meter-wide bed in the guest room. The décor, like the master bedroom, was cold minimalism. The aromatherapy diffuser on the bedside table emitted the scent of lavender essential oil – prepared by Zhang Jing to aid sleep. The irony was, I was allergic to this very scent. But I had never told her. Perhaps, in her mind, I was merely an "object" that needed to be stored appropriately; whether this object was comfortable was not within her sphere of concern.

My "role-playing" time was over. This was home in Kunshan, but for me, it felt more like a headquarters I was required to periodically return to, to report and be inspected. My real life, or rather, the life I craved, was over seven hundred kilometers away, in Guangzhou, in the empty apartment I rented.

I closed my eyes. In the darkness, memories surged forth like a tidal wave out of control.

I was once considered a child prodigy. Due to accelerated intellectual development, I skipped grades all the way, entering that nationally renowned top university at fifteen. The price of this "genius" halo was becoming the smallest, weakest outlier in my class throughout my entire hormone-fueled adolescence. I still vividly remember one afternoon in high school, when several girls who ranked near the bottom academically but were exceptionally tall and well-developed, dragged me into the girls' restroom in the library. They forced me to kneel and thrust my head into a toilet bowl they had just used. Chewing bubble gum, they took turns kicking me, erupting in bursts of piercing, unrestrained laughter.

"Hey, genius, got any pubes down there yet?"

"Look at his puny body, like a bean sprout, one gust of wind would blow him over!"

"Sing us a song! Your head's in the toilet, it'll echo like a sound system!"

They delighted in this game they called "stereo sound," subjecting me to this humiliation two or three times almost every month. I had tried to resist, only to be beaten with belts and subjected to an even crueler humiliation they called "Plain Noodles in Broth": they would tear toilet paper into strips, throw them into a toilet bowl filled with urine, then hand me chopsticks and force me to "fish out the noodles" and eat them.

So, I yielded. I could only tremble in that vast, inescapable shame, feeling like a tiny insect ensnared in a spider's web.

That experience was like a needle dipped in potent poison and barbed, thrust deep and hard into my still-forming subconscious.

Later, at university, during that era of liberated thought and surging ideologies, I encountered some radical feminist theories that were then considered gospel. My already fragile self-esteem was utterly shattered by those sharp, incisive, and subversive theories. Like a drowning man, I indiscriminately grasped a floating plank, pathologically absorbing those theories whole and internalizing them as a judgment on my own gender: women were comprehensively, overwhelmingly superior to men – in the ingenuity of their physiology, the resilience of their minds, and the purity of their morals. And I, this inherently base, cowardly, filthy-desiring male creature, was born only to be the lowly dirt beneath their feet, an insignificant, disposable appendage to their glamorous lives.

I became irretrievably consumed by the desire to be dominated, objectified, to have my human attributes and dignity utterly stripped away.

The rise of the internet gave my twisted, real-world-unplaceable craving a concrete and horrifying form – toilet slave .

It was the ultimate degradation I could find within my cognitive limits, and what I considered the most complete form of devotion.

To become a toilet, a vessel for filth. Base, dirty, unclean, yet an indispensable component of a modern household – this gave me an indescribable, pathological sense of security and belonging. I knew it was vile, perverted, but I couldn't control myself. Like an addict unable to resist drugs, I couldn't resist this self-destructive descent.

I had naively believed that worldly success could cure the deep-seated sickness in my soul. When my designer clothing brand gained prominence domestically, when my import-export company thrived, when I drove luxury cars, lived in mansions, and was surrounded by countless envious and flattering gazes, I once felt like a "normal man." I learned to construct a hard armor from money and status, locking that base, cowardly self firmly away in the deepest recesses.

But the sudden pandemic struck like an irresistible tsunami, demolishing the commercial empire I had built with ten years of sweat and toil. Broken capital chains, breached contracts, factory closures... I was reduced to nothing. Those dark desires temporarily suppressed by wealth and success, under the shadow of failure and immense pressure, grew wildly and spread relentlessly, ultimately consuming me whole.

Now, I had lost the halo of my career. All that remained was this shell of a marriage and a false identity named "father."

I feared Zhang Jing. It was a fear that seeped from my bones, from the depths of my soul.

This fear didn't stem from her dominance – in fact, she was mostly quiet, even gentle – but from the absolute "normality" and inviolable "respectability" she represented. Her existence, her gaze clear and devoid of any impurity, was like the most powerful X-ray machine, effortlessly piercing through all my disguises, illuminating the corners of my soul that had long rotted, breeding maggots and reeking of decay. Her very presence was the harshest, most merciless judgment upon me.

I retrieved my laptop from a hidden compartment in my suitcase, booted it up, deftly entered a long string of complex passwords, and clicked open the heavily encrypted folder. The folder's icon was a plain, unremarkable recycle bin.

Inside were no pornographic pictures or explicit videos. Only text – some writings, screenshots from niche forums, and private chat logs.

As I looked at the discussions about "Mistress/slave," "training," "personality stripping," "complete objectification," a familiar tremor ran through my body, a mixture of extreme shame and extreme excitement. Those cold words were more provocative to me than any erotic image.

I reread one particular post repeatedly. It was a "Mistress" sharing her experience on how to train a slave into a "human furniture" piece. The post detailed a series of mind control techniques: sleep deprivation, dietary restrictions, repetitive commands, noise punishment... I read it feeling feverish, my breathing ragged.

I knew I wasn't eloquent, nor could I master those greasy, explicit lines to flatter a true "Mistress." What I craved was never role-play interaction. It was passive endurance. It was complete objectification, stripping away any vestige of personal will.

Toilet slave. This role required almost no verbal interaction, no emotional exchange. It only required lying there, like a true, lifeless piece of furniture, silently fulfilling its function.

It was a fate tailor-made for me. The destiny I was born to fulfill.

And Zhang Jing, she was the largest, most insurmountable obstacle on my path to realizing this dark dream. She represented the normal world I could never integrate into and which filled me with terror. As long as she existed in my life, I would forever be a masked fraud, a soul torn asunder between respectability and depravity, suffering excruciatingly.

My gaze finally settled on a business forum discussing investments in Southeast Asia. There, it seemed, was a new world of infinite possibilities. A place far from all familiar eyes, where I could finally rip off the disguise. A true "Promised Land."

A mad idea began to take root in my mind.

Chapter 2: The Chasm

The first rays of morning sun filtered through the blinds, casting striped, piano-key-like patterns of dappled light on the floor of Zhang Jing’s bedroom.

She woke early, almost a physiological instinct. The bed beside her was cold and smooth, the other pillow devoid of even a single crease, as if never occupied. For three years now, every morning without Chen Rui at home had been like this. Silent, cavernous, like a valley forever awaiting an echo that never comes.

Zhang Jing walked barefoot across the cool wooden floor to the expansive floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, in the community garden, a few elderly residents practiced Tai Chi, their movements slow and deliberate. Kunshan in early autumn offered clear air, carrying a hint of the sweet, ash-like residue of spent osmanthus blossoms. It was an utterly ordinary Wednesday morning, yet for Zhang Jing, this ordinariness itself felt like a prolonged execution.

This home, for the vast majority of the time, belonged only to her, her daughter Nuonuo, and the taciturn nanny. Chen Rui’s presence was more like an urban legend, a ghost who visited periodically. He would appear briefly, bringing a faint trace of masculine scent and the exhaustion of another world, only to vanish again within forty-eight hours, leaving behind a deeper, thicker emptiness and their daughter's innocent question: "When is Daddy coming back next?"

She opened the closet door. It was a massive built-in unit covering an entire wall. The left side was meticulously filled with her clothes, sorted by season and color – dresses, blouses, cashmere sweaters, coats… They were her respectability as an English teacher at a key middle school, her armor as Zhang Jing the individual. The right side, once Chen Rui’s domain, stood utterly empty now, save for a few lonely camphorwood balls emitting a forgotten, futile scent.

Zhang Jing’s fingertip unconsciously traced the smooth metal hanging rod. Her thoughts drifted involuntarily back many years.

She remembered clearly those first two years after their marriage, when this half of the closet too had been filled with Chen Rui’s shirts and suits. White, light blue, pinstriped. She would iron his shirt for the next day herself, watching the fine steam rise from the iron’s soleplate, smoothing out every wrinkle in the fabric. Back then, she liked standing behind him, rising on her toes to adjust his tie. He smelled of clean soap mixed with faint cologne. She’d press her cheek against his broad back, feeling the warmth of his body and the fine quality of the shirt, her heart filled with a sense of stable, solid happiness.

Back then, she naively believed she had married for love.

Zhang Jing came from an ordinary bureaucratic family. Her parents held modest positions in obscure government departments their entire lives, resulting in a particularly rigid and strict upbringing. She had always been the "good girl" praised by everyone, her life trajectory like a precisely calculated math problem – every step clear, unambiguous, with no room for error. Study hard, get into a top university, return home after graduation, become a respected teacher. Marriage, naturally, was also the safest choice arranged by her parents.

When the family, through complex networks of connections, placed the name Chen Rui before her, she hadn’t resisted much.

He was a full decade older, but time seemed to favor him. He was handsome, refined, wore gold-rimmed glasses, and spoke with elegance. More importantly, he possessed an aura of melancholic genius that felt out of place in the clamorous world – a resonance with the independent designer clothing brand he’d founded, exuding a mysterious and fatal attraction. At that time, his career was soaring; he was the "genius" praised by the teachers, an idol chased by countless cultured young women. For a young woman raised in a rigid environment, filled with romantic illusions about the outside world, Chen Rui fulfilled all her imaginings of an ideal partner.

She naively believed they could do as novels described: marry first, love later. That the long, mundane, smoke-and-fire-filled days of ordinary life would weld their two separate selves together, inseparably.

She tried. Hard.

A young lady who’d never lifted a finger for housework learned to read cookbooks, learned to simmer the slow-cooked broths Cantonese people love, just so he could have a bowl of hot soup to warm his stomach when he returned late at night. An arts student who couldn’t comprehend financial statements clumsily learned to help him with company minutiae, checking invoices that made her dizzy. During the toughest days of his startup, when the funding chain nearly snapped, she gave him all her savings, even secretly sold a small apartment her grandmother had left her behind her parents’ backs, just to help him pull through. She gave him unreserved trust, support, and encouragement. She believed her love could melt anything.

But slowly, she discovered Chen Rui was ice that couldn’t be warmed. Or rather, he was a distant, frozen planet; no matter how fiercely she burned herself, light and warmth could never reach his core.

He never shared his inner thoughts. Whether work pressures or life’s troubles, he carried them alone. His gentleness always carried a layer of polite distance, courteous and remote, as if dealing with a business partner requiring careful maintenance. He was good to her, remembered her birthday and their anniversary, bought expensive jewelry and designer bags as gifts. But when he did these things, there was no love in his eyes, not even… desire.

Their marital intimacy felt more like a task to be completed periodically. In the dark, she sensed no passion from him, only a suppressed, perfunctory, almost self-punishing detachment. It was as if he wasn’t making love to his wife, but performing a solitary, shameful sacrifice.

At first, she thought he was too tired, that the pressure of entrepreneurship was too great. She made allowances for him, consoling herself that things would get better.

Until the straw that broke the camel’s back landed with the most grotesque, abrupt force.

It was a weekend afternoon three years ago. Nuonuo was napping, the house so quiet she could hear the sun baking the curtains. She needed to look up some English teaching materials; her own computer was broken, so she opened Chen Rui’s laptop in the study.

It wasn’t password protected. She opened the browser, about to type in a URL, when an unusual forum page caught her eye – logged in but not exited.

It was a crude, niche subculture forum she’d never seen before, with an unsettling dark red and black color scheme. Unintentionally, she clicked on a post he had been viewing. Its title read: "【Newbie Check-in】How can I become a qualified piece of 'furniture'?"

She didn’t understand at first, thinking it was perhaps some behavioral art discussion group. Curious, she scrolled down. Then, the words slithered into her eyes like sticky, multi-legged insects, crawling into her brain, leaving a trail of filthy slime across her pristine world of understanding.

"Toilet slave," "holywater（femalepiss)," "gold（femalescat）," "objectification," "personality stripping," "humantoilet"...

Every Chinese character she recognized, but combined like this, they formed a lexicon from the abyss of hell – unheard of, worldview-shattering.

Her mind became a blank field of snow in that instant. Then came overwhelming, violent physical nausea. Her stomach clenched by an invisible hand, churning wildly. She pushed back the chair, stumbled into the bathroom, knelt before the toilet, and vomited until she was dizzy, vomiting bile, her throat left with nothing but a burning sting.

She couldn't reconcile the outwardly respected, brilliant, impeccably dressed husband with the slave in that forum, speaking in tones of abject humility, yearning to be used as a toilet, craving to consume female excrement.

Impossible! Absolutely impossible!

That night, when Chen Rui came home, she sat in the dark living room like a statue turned to stone. She placed the laptop on the coffee table, screen facing him, frozen on the page that had made her soul tremble.

"What is this?" Her voice was dry, hoarse, like sandpaper rubbed together.

He looked at the screen. His face instantly drained of all color – a pallor she would never forget. He didn't deny it. Didn't explain. Didn't even try to justify anything. He was silent. A long, dead, suffocating silence.

That silence hurt her more than any frantic denial could have. Because it was admission. Because it meant it was all true.

From that day on, she moved to the guest room.

She could no longer touch him. Any skin contact made her instantly recall those filthy words, sending a chill seeping from her very marrow. To her, this wasn’t something that could be categorized as a "special fetish." It was a complete collapse of personhood, an active abandonment of self.

How could a man—a male creature meant to stand upright beneath the sky, called a "human"—be so base? How could he willingly abandon his dignity, thoughts, and rights as a "person," to crave becoming a vessel for filth?

The traditional expectations ingrained in her bones, shaped by family and society, of male "backbone" and "responsibility," were pulverized in that moment. What she felt wasn’t the anger of betrayal, but a deep, piercing disgust mixed with pity.

She asked for a divorce.

But both sets of parents vetoed it with implacable firmness. Their union, from the beginning, wasn't just about two people; it was the integration and exchange of resources between two families. Though Chen Rui’s company was already declining, it still needed the minor yet crucial connections from her father’s side to navigate relationships. Her family, too, needed Chen Rui, this successful middle-class son-in-law, to adorn their facade and satisfy their vanity.

More importantly, they had Nuonuo.

She couldn't let her daughter grow up, from the moment she could remember, in a broken, incomplete home.

So, she chose to wear a mask. She became a consummate actress, performing with Chen Rui before their daughter, before parents and friends, the play titled "Harmonious Family." All her tenderness and love poured unreservedly onto her daughter. For Chen Rui, she retained only a cold, procedural sense of duty.

The woman in the mirror had a calm face, perfect makeup. Only her beautiful eyes resembled stagnant water untouched by ripples for years. Zhang Jing splashed cold water on her face, trying to wash away the nauseating memories along with the droplets.

She didn’t hate Chen Rui. Hate was too forceful, too consuming an emotion; she was tired, exhausted. She just felt sorrow. For herself. And for him.

In the darkest days, she had tried to understand him. Was there unspeakable childhood trauma? Had the pressures of entrepreneurship driven him to the brink? She tentatively probed, hinting, but each time, he responded with deeper silence and swifter evasion.

She gave up. A person who actively chooses the abyss is beyond anyone’s salvation.

Now, her sole purpose was to protect Nuonuo. She would use all her strength to build for her daughter a childhood that looked intact, full of love, shielding her from the bottomless, putrid chasm between her parents. For that, she could endure anything.

She poured all her energy into work. Being an English teacher allowed her to find a sliver of self-worth confirmation in her students’ clear, admiring gazes. She began obsessively saving money, making investments, improving herself. She needed to ensure that even if this precarious shell of a marriage shattered completely one day, she would have the resources and confidence to take her daughter and live well.

________________________________________

Guangzhou. Zhujiang New Town.

In a high-rise office within a premier CBD tower, Chen Rui chaired a video conference on expanding into Southeast Asia. The large LCD screen was divided into a dozen small squares, each containing an eager, young face. They debated fiercely the market potential, tariff policies, and labor costs of Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Chen Rui leaned back in his expensive leather executive chair, unconsciously spinning a Montblanc pen between his fingers. He listened to the professional jargon and detailed data, his mind already drifting thousands of miles away.

Overseas.

Must go overseas.

Once the thought took root, it became like a toxic seed buried in damp soil, germinating and shooting up into a towering, sky-blotting tree at a frenzied pace within his heart.

This was far from a purely commercial decision.

True, his subordinates on screen analyzed correctly. With the domestic retail sector increasingly cutthroat and costs rising relentlessly, shifting the industrial chain and market focus to Southeast Asia was indeed the best path for the company seeking new growth. Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand… their low labor costs, vast market potential – these were promising new blue oceans for his apparel and retail business.

This was the most plausible, the most impeccable reason he could use to convince the board, Zhang Jing, his parents.

But only he knew: he was running away.

Like a cowardly, hunted deserter, he needed to escape Zhang Jing’s judging eyes. Those eyes, like the most precise X-ray machines, always penetrated all his disguises, illuminating the rotten, maggot-infested, hopeless corners of his soul. He needed to escape that cold, model-home space in Kunshan called "home." He needed to escape this suffocatingly "normal" world.

He craved, pathologically, a brand new environment, a place where no one knew him. Where he wouldn’t be Chairman Chen, Zhang Jing’s husband, Nuonuo’s father. He could finally rip off the human disguise named "Chen Rui" to find a… a true Mistress.

A woman who could shatter him completely, remold him, transform him into the "thing" he was destined to be.

He had fantasized about the scene countless times:

On a humid, sultry night in a foreign land, the air thick with cheap spices and motorbike exhaust. Kneeling at the feet of a strange woman, offering his entirety—his pitiful dignity, his already polluted mind, even his lowly flesh and life—unreservedly into her hands.

She could use him at will, trample him, humiliate him. She could make him a chair, a footstool, a… humantoilet. And he, in this ultimate abasement, ultimate objectification, ultimate degeneration, would find unprecedented, eternal peace.

This fantasy made him tremble uncontrollably. It was a guilty shudder, a mixture of utter terror and utter anticipation.

"Chairman Chen? Chairman Chen?" The voice of the project director on screen pulled his thoughts back to reality. "Regarding the preliminary proposal for establishing a branch in Ho Chi Minh City, do you see any additions needed?"

Chen Rui adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses. Behind the lenses, his eyes regained their usual cool sharpness.

"The proposal is viable." His voice was steady, revealing nothing. "But it’s too slow. I can’t just listen to paper theories."

He paused, his tone turning decisive, leaving no room for argument.

"Meeting adjourned. Cynthia," he looked at his assistant, "book me a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Next week. I’m going to survey the market personally. Also, start contacting local headhunters and agents immediately to scout office locations and localized management teams. Our new company starts there."

He would personally build his own bridge to hell.

And at the end of that bridge, perhaps, lay the paradise he had longed for.

Chapter 3: The Encounter

The air in Ho Chi Minh City was an unyielding assault on the senses—a chaotic blend of exhaust fumes from roaring motorbikes, the pungent aroma of lemongrass, fish sauce, and spices sizzling at street stalls, and the humid, primal vitality of tropical flora. These scents fused into a thick, oppressive net draped over the city.

Chen Rui hated it.

It was too raw, too loud, too invasive. It felt like an overbearing stranger barging into his space without permission.

His new office occupied a nondescript building in District 1, wedged between faded French colonial structures and sleek glass towers. The space was utilitarian—white walls, gray desks, a few token potted plants—a self-imposed exile where he worked 14-hour days. Meetings, reports, and market analyses were his bulwark against the void within. He believed relentless work would starve the darkness festering in his soul.

Then came Nguyễn Thị Vy.

She arrived for her interview in a faded blue áo dài, the traditional Vietnamese dress clinging to her weathered frame. At 31—the same age as Zhang Jing back in Kunshan—life had etched deeper lines around her eyes. Her sun-baked skin held a quiet resilience, and her plain features were anchored by eyes like still ponds, reflecting a life-hardened practicality.

Her résumé was sparse: a high school graduate who’d spent a decade selling souvenirs to backpackers on Phạm Ngũ Lão Street. Under languages, she’d written: Chinese, English (basic).

Chen Rui hired her for her blunt honesty.

"Why do you want this job?" he’d asked, leaning back.

She didn’t recite rehearsed platitudes. Instead, she bowed slightly, her accented Chinese deliberate: "Sir, the pay is better here. I need money. My daughter starts high school soon. My parents are ill. My husband... his salary isn’t enough."

Her raw need was a gust of fresh air in a world of masks.

As a shop assistant, she proved tireless—stocking shelves, cleaning, handling fussy customers with silent efficiency. Within months, Chen Rui promoted her to office administrator, trusting her with logistical drudgery.

——— The night the company secured its first major order, Chen Rui treated the team to dinner. Vietnamese toasting rituals overwhelmed him. Eager young employees hailed him as their generous Chinese boss, thrusting glasses of local beer into his hands. "Gānbēi! To Chairman Chen!"

He rarely drank heavily back home, dodging with polite excuses. But here, their guileless enthusiasm disarmed him. Worse, the alcohol became both anesthetic and accelerant—dulling his pain while igniting his buried hunger for ruin. He drank recklessly.

By the meal’s end, the room spun.

"He’s in no state to go alone," fretted a staffer as they hauled him outside. "Who’ll take him to the Sofitel?"

"Vy! Don’t you live near Lê Lợi? You’re on the way!"

All eyes turned to her.

A married woman escorting her drunken boss alone at night? Gossip would follow. But seeing Chen Rui’s limp form and the panicked junior staff, she nodded. "Alright."

They wrestled him into a taxi’s back seat.

Inside, the city’s clamor faded. Chen Rui slumped against the window, his gold-rimmed glasses askew, hair disheveled. He mumbled incoherently, brow furrowed like a lost child.

Vy sat rigidly beside him, keeping distance. Still, his scent enveloped her—sour beer undercut by crisp, woody cologne, a ghost of his aloof persona.

Under neon streaks from passing streets, she studied him.

This was the legend: the Beijing-educated founder, the millionaire. Yet drunk and vulnerable, he seemed no different from her husband, Trần Văn Hùng—a meek clerk at a logistics firm. Both fragile. Both exhausted.

Hoisting his dead weight, she felt the solid muscle beneath his fine shirt. A privileged body, meticulously maintained.

Her mind drifted to Hùng. Decades of manual labor had toughened his body but not his spirit. He was pliable, directionless—a man who deferred every decision to her. She didn’t hate him. They’d survived the city’s grind together since leaving their village. But she knew: Hùng would never lift them out of their rut.

Her bright daughter Ngọc dreamed of an elite international high school—a tuition far beyond their means. Her ailing mother needed expensive medicine. The weight of their needs crushed her.

Chen Rui had cracked open a window in her airless life. His salary had kindled hope. She respected him—a stern but fair boss who rewarded hard work. She wanted his company to thrive.

Now, seeing him defenseless in sleep, that stern face softened by childlike helplessness, an unwelcome pang of pity struck her.

So successful, she thought, yet lonelier than any of us.

———————————————————————————————————————————

Alcohol burned through Chen Rui’s restraints.

The black tide within him surged—shame, craving, the need to surrender.

He floated in warmth, lulled by motion. A woman’s presence enveloped him.

Not Zhang Jing’s clinical perfume, which always felt like an indictment. This scent was humble, human—shampoo and faint perspiration. The smell of ordinary life.

His longing wasn’t sexual. Since Zhang Jing’s discovery, "love" revolted him. This hunger ran deeper: a primal ache to be broken and remade.

Drunk, the timid creature inside him writhed, desperate to shed the skin of "Chen Rui."

In his haze, memory dragged him back to a damp school restroom. Taller girls circled him—shadows looming, laughter sharp with cruelty. He remembered the fear, the shame... and beneath it, a perverse, engulfing safety.

"Shuǐ(water)..."

The word scraped from his throat—half plea for water, half prayer for degradation.

That inarticulate murmur was a spell. The night, heavy with fate, had just begun.

Chapter 4: The Key

The doorman at the Sofitel Plaza Saigon pulled open the heavy glass door with rehearsed warmth. A wall of refrigerated air hit Vy, instantly severing the humid chaos outside. The lobby smelled of luxury—floral arrangements and subtle perfume—its polished marble floors reflecting the chandelier’s molten glow.

Vy, hauling Chen Rui’s dead weight, felt like an intruder. Her worn sandals, three years old and peeling, and her faded áo dài seemed shabby under the crystal light. She caught the receptionist’s fleeting, appraising glance.

"Need help, madam?" A uniformed attendant approached.

"Thank you… I’m taking my boss to his room." Vy fished the cold metal keycard from Chen Rui’s suit pocket.

With the attendant’s aid, she wrestled him into the elevator. Mirror walls reflected their dishevelment: Vy’s damp hair clinging to her temples, cheeks flushed; Chen Rui’s unconscious form still radiating privilege through his bespoke suit and wristwatch. A chasm separated them—invisible, absolute.

At the suite door, the attendant swiped the card and helped deposit Chen Rui inside before discreetly withdrawing.

The latch clicked shut. Silence.

Cool air filled the spacious room. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling window, Saigon’s nightscape glittered like spilled stars. Vy dragged Chen Rui to the bed. He collapsed into the pillows with a groan, unconscious.

She straightened, arms aching. His shirt was sweat-soaked, the tie cinched tight around his throat. He’d be sick by morning if left like this.

She should leave. Duty done. Yet the sight of his vulnerability stirred something soft in her. He’d given her hope. Finish the job, she decided.

She fetched a warm towel from the bathroom. Kneeling by the bed, she gently wiped his face and hands. His skin was pale and smooth, unlike her husband’s calloused roughness. Seeing the tie’s red imprint on his neck, pity flared again. At least get him comfortable.

Leaning close, she fumbled with the slippery silk tie, then began undoing his shirt buttons. Ivory buttons, one, two… At the third, his chest was exposed—lean but defined. Her cheeks warmed.

She reached to remove his suit jacket. As she tugged a sleeve, her fingers brushed his hip. Through the thin fabric, she felt it: cold, hard, unnervingly shaped.

Vy froze.

What is that?

Not medical hardware. Metal. Smooth. Too large for a belt buckle. More like… a metal undergarment?

Dread coiled around her heart. Curiosity warred with fear. Her hand moved on its own.

Trembling, she unbuckled his belt. The metallic snap echoed in the silence. Then, the top button of his trousers.

She held her breath. Eyes squeezed shut, she peeled the waistband down a sliver.

One glance.

She recoiled as if scalded, scrambling backward until her spine hit the wall. Her heart hammered against her ribs. The image seared her vision: an intricate, cold-steel cage, brutally encasing the most vulnerable part of him. At its center, a small brass keyhole stared back—a mocking, knowing eye.

Vy gasped. What was this? Some perverse punishment? A depraved game beyond her comprehension?

Panic surged. She paced the plush carpet, desperate to flee—the room, the man, his horrifying secret. To pretend she’d seen nothing. To return tomorrow as the diligent assistant.

But she couldn’t. He was incapacitated. Leaving him alone felt unconscionable.

Duty battled shock. Duty won.

Steeling herself, she rushed back to the bed. Without looking, she yanked his trousers up, fastened them, and threw the duvet over him.

Exhausted, she curled into an armchair in the corner, arms wrapped tight, eyes wide open through the endless night.

———

Chen Rui awoke to a skull-splitting hangover.

He blinked, disoriented, at the unfamiliar ceiling. Fragments returned: the dinner, the reckless drinking…

His gaze shifted. And froze.

Vy slept fitfully on the sofa, still in her faded áo dài.

Ice flooded his veins. Blood turned to sludge.

He jerked upright, looked down. Shirt unbuttoned. Trousers folded on the nightstand—belt undone, top button gaping open.

No.

The word crushed him. His face drained of color. Breath hitched; his heart clenched with suffocating pain.

His secret—the darkest, vilest part of him—was exposed. Seen by Vy, his newly promoted, unassuming assistant.

He saw it in his mind: her eyes filling with the same disgust Zhang Jing’s had. That surgical glare flaying him alive. Terror seized him, deeper than any he’d known.

Vy stirred, awakened by his movement. She saw him—pale as death on the bed—and jolted fully awake.

She stood awkwardly, hands twisting together. Silence thickened, broken only by the air conditioner’s drone.

Finally, Vy spoke. She took a shuddering breath, pointed a trembling finger at his groin.

"M-Mr. Chen… that… what is it?"

Chen Rui went rigid. He looked up, a condemned man awaiting the blade.

But in Vy’s eyes, he saw shock. Confusion. Bewilderment. Even… a flicker of pity.

Not the soul-crushing revulsion he feared.

This fragile observation was a lifeline. A spark of desperate hope in his drowning despair.

He teetered on a precipice. Behind him: the abyss of his false world. A leap could destroy him. Or… set him free.

He studied this ordinary Vietnamese woman. Plain. Weathered by life. Utterly practical. She understood survival, not Zhang Jing’s lofty judgments. He would gamble everything.

Silence stretched. Vy thought he’d never answer.

Then, his voice emerged—a raw scrape.

He didn’t speak of childhood shadows or psychology. He stated his warped philosophy with detached, chilling clarity. He was a genetically inferior male, he claimed. Unworthy of equal love or normal bonds. Destined only as property—an object, stripped of thought and dignity. A piece of furniture for a woman’s use.

The chastity cage? Custom-made. Self-locked. He sought only a Mistress to hold its key. To claim him.

His words were toneless, academic. Each one detonated in Vy’s mind.

Her blood ran cold. This was insanity. A grotesque, alien world.

Finished, Chen Rui slumped. A gambler who’d pushed all his chips forward.

Now, the reveal.

"If… if you’re willing…" He forced the words out, eyes burning with desperate hope. "I can give you that key."

"I don’t need love. Or understanding. Only… use. Accept me. As your humantoilet."

He paused. Unleashed his final stake.

"In return… a new position. Office Manager. And…" He named a figure. "Four times your current salary."

He saw Vy’s pupils contract at the number.

He’d gambled right.

He licked dry lips, adding fiercely, "Just this… preference. I swear, no physical desire for you. Not sex. Belonging."

He laid his soul and fate bare before this woman he’d known barely two months.

———

Each word spun Vy’s world. But that number—four times—drowned the shock in a vast, crushing reality.

Her mind raced through the sums.

Ngọc, instantly enrolled in the elite international school.

Their family, moving out of the roach-infested hovel into a decent house.

No more sleepless nights over bills. No more watching Hùng’s defeated face.

Morality warred with raw temptation. The scales tipped violently.

She looked at Chen Rui again. His face was a mask of despair, hope, shame, and supplication. Not a monster. A tormented man.

He’d sworn no physical intent. His eyes pleaded, humble. Her fear eased slightly.

Maybe… just a job? A profoundly bizarre job. Hold a key. "Use" him. However that was meant to work… it couldn’t be worse than her nightmares.

Ngọc’s bright, hopeful eyes flashed in her mind.

Her parents’ work-ravaged hands.

Hùng’s apologetic, helpless gaze.

Survival instinct. A mother’s fierce drive. The scales slammed down.

Her voice, dry but steady, cut the silence.

"Alright."

A single word. Feather-light. Thousand-pound weight.

It was the key. Not just to his steel cage, but to a Pandora’s box—unlocking a future hurtling down an unknown, irreversible path.

Chapter 5: The Dungeon

The single word "Alright" rippled through the Sofitel suite like a stone cast into still water, sending invisible waves that would change everything.

True to his reputation as an efficient businessman, Chen Rui acted with decisive speed.

At 9 AM the next morning, Vy’s phone chimed with a bank notification. The balance made her doubt her eyes. Chen Rui’s call followed moments later, his tone devoid of emotion, crisp as a routine work order:

"Company advance for relocation and your first year’s salary. Effective immediately, you are promoted to Office Manager, responsible for all logistics, administration, and partial business liaison for the Vietnam branch. Appointment letter this afternoon. Also, find suitable housing in Saigon soon. Requirements: quiet, private. It should be comfortable for you. Crucially, the bathroom must be… adaptable."

Vy leaned against the peeling wall of her old apartment building, gripping her battered Nokia, sweat prickling her palm. The dizzying power of money and authority washed over her.

"Yes, Mr. Chen," she replied, her voice steady and firm for the first time.

Her first stop was the ATM downstairs. The staggering balance confirmed on the screen seized her heart, then released it in a flood of euphoria, fear, apprehension, and raw ambition. Thirty years of moral barriers crumbled.

Over the next week, Vy worked like a precision machine. She scoured Saigon and finally found the perfect house in Phú Mỹ Hưng, District 7—a serene, affluent enclave.

A two-story French colonial villa. White walls, blue shutters, a courtyard shaded by a tall flame tree. Slightly aged, but spacious and bright. Crucially, it stood back from the main road, screened by lush foliage—perfectly private.

She signed the year-long lease with Chen Rui’s money without hesitation.

When she led her husband, Trần Văn Hùng, and their children inside, Hùng’s jaw dropped.

"Vy… where… is this?" he stammered, staring at the polished teak floors and sunlight streaming through the windows.

"Our new home." Vy placed keys on the entryway shelf, her voice calm but laced with pride. "Company provided. The boss said as a senior manager, I deserve housing that matches my position. An employee benefit."

It was the script she and Chen Rui had agreed upon.

Hùng wasn’t stupid. He saw Vy’s new, quality dress, her newfound confidence—a mix of elation and unease churned within him.

"Senior manager? What benefit is this good? Vy, you and that Chinese boss…" He trailed off, afraid of the answer.

"What are you thinking?" Vy shot him a look, gathering their excited children. "Mr. Chen is a respectable man. He values my ability. He said the company will rely on me heavily. Hùng, our good days are here."

Blinded by the beautiful house and Vy’s promise, Hùng chose to ignore his nagging doubt, embracing the dreamlike fortune.

However, this happiness began to fray two weeks later. Vy embarked on a strange, secret project.

First came construction workers. She claimed the master bathroom’s sewage pipes were failing, requiring deep excavation and a new "water retention and settling tank" to prevent flooding during monsoon season—on the Chinese boss’s advice.

Hùng winced as workers smashed pristine tiles, digging a pit nearly two meters square and over a meter deep. Dust and noise filled the house.

"Why wreck a perfectly good bathroom? The old one was fine!"

"You know nothing!" Vy cut him off sharply. "The boss requires it. Company pays. He said Vietnam’s infrastructure is unreliable, especially in old houses like this. Preventive measure."

Hùng was silenced. He realized his wife’s status at home had fundamentally shifted. She was decisive, commanding. He was relegated to passive observer.

The digging lasted days. Hùng sighed with relief when the workers left. But the next day, Vy brought another crew.

This group looked like specialized interior installers. They carried thick rolls of black leather and peculiar adhesives. Vy explained: cutting-edge waterproofing and soundproofing materials, the boss’s requirement for the "settling tank."

Over the following days, Hùng watched, baffled, as the concrete pit was meticulously lined from floor to walls with the thick black leather. It became an airtight, pitch-black box, reeking of leather and glue. This defied comprehension. Leather for a water tank? It looked more like… those peculiar rooms he’d glimpsed on fringe websites.

His heart sank.

The final phase was the most unnerving. Vy dismissed all workers, personally hiring only a plumber and an electrician. She supervised them relentlessly, barring Hùng’s access.

He only knew an unusually shaped toilet was installed, connected to the black pit by a thick PVC pipe. Complex wiring was also embedded in the walls, leading to the pit’s ceiling.

Finally, the pit opening was sealed with an incredibly heavy iron plate, matching the floor tiles perfectly. Only a close inspection revealed its edges. At its center, a custom lock required a special key.

The bathroom returned to normal, but the thorn in Hùng’s mind burrowed deeper. A terrifying secret lived there.

One moonless night, he uncovered it.

Waking to use the bathroom, he found Vy’s side of the bed empty. Alertness jolted him.

He crept to the master bathroom door, slightly ajar, light spilling out. Peering through the crack, he saw Vy sitting on the new toilet, video-calling someone.

Chillingly, he heard her murmur to the receptacle beneath her.

"...The dungeon is built as you ordered. Just tested the toilet. Wish you were already down there..."

Hùng’s blood froze.

Who was she talking to? Dungeon under the toilet? Who lives down there?!

A horrifying, absurd thought slithered into his mind. He couldn’t bear it. He shoved the door open!

"Vy! What the hell are you doing?!" he hissed, voice trembling with fear and rage.

Vy jumped, startled. Panic flashed across her face, quickly replaced by icy calm.

"You… why aren’t you sleeping?"

"I should ask you!" Hùng’s eyes were bloodshot. He glared at the seamless floor plate, then the grotesque toilet. "Tell me the truth! What’s under there?! Are you and that Chinese boss… doing something filthy?!"

Vy knew this confrontation was inevitable. She looked at her husband’s contorted face, her eyes devoid of fear, only cold, detached serenity.

She stood silently, adjusted her clothes, and walked past him out of the bathroom.

"Hùng, come. Sit." She turned on the living room lights, her voice terrifyingly calm. "I’ll tell you everything."

Hùng followed like a furious bull.

Vy gave him no chance to erupt. She spoke dispassionately, narrating events as if they concerned someone else. From Chen Rui’s unthinkable desires and the metal chastity cage, to their shocking bargain struck in the hotel room.

Hùng listened, dumbstruck, his worldview shattering. When she finished, he slammed the table, leaping up.

"You’re insane! Vy! You’re fucking insane!" He pointed a shaking finger. "This is illegal! Do you know that?! Keeping a man locked under our toilet?! Are we harboring a pervert?!"

"He’s not a pervert," Vy said coldly, meeting his gaze. "He’s… a patient. With special needs. And we are his physicians."

"I don’t care! Get him out! Now!" Hùng was unraveling.

Vy didn’t argue. She watched him silently. Then, she pulled the life-altering bank card from her pocket and placed it on the coffee table—a silent hammer blow.

"Hùng, calm down. Look at this first." She stated the balance. A number staggering to any ordinary worker like him.

Hùng’s eyes bulged. His fury sputtered, doused by icy shock. He stared at the flimsy plastic card, then at his wife.

"Th-this… all… from him?" His voice rasped.

"This is just the start," Vy pressed her advantage. She stood, taking his cold, rigid hand. Her voice softened, laced with pleading and persuasion. "He promised. If I help him, if I become his ‘Mistress,’ he pays us monthly. Hùng, think. What could this money change?"

She leaned close, a serpent whispering sweet poison.

"Our daughter can attend the best international school, get the best education. Never end up like us, stuck forever."

"And you, Hùng. No more back-breaking crates under the sun at that godforsaken dock! No more begging for overtime pay! No more foremen’s sneers! You can buy the car you want, wear designer clothes. Live with dignity, like a real man!"

Each word pierced Hùng’s softest, deepest insecurities. His mind reeled.

Anger, shock, disgust, fear… still warred within him. His wife was mad, agreeing to this monstrous, unnatural farce. How could a man debase himself so? How could she be so cold?

But…

That card. That number. The future Vy painted—a future he’d never dared dream of… His fragile morality buckled violently.

He was weak. His greatest wish was a good life for his family, but he lacked the means. He ground himself to dust at the logistics company, seething with jealous rage at the bosses driving fancy cars. He hated his impotence, hated the unfair world.

Now, a colossal windfall dropped into his lap.

The price? Tolerating a rich man’s bizarre, depraved kink.

The price? Housing an invisible "family member" beneath their beautiful, spacious home.

He looked at Vy. Her eyes were resolute, fervent. He knew she’d done this mostly for the family, their children… even for him.

Shame wrestled with greed within him.

He saw his daughter’s bright eyes, his wife’s work-roughened hands, his own perpetual slouch of inadequacy.

A sick, twisted thought also surfaced from his darkest corners. He secretly browsed images and videos of bondage, domination—aching for the illusion of control.

Now, a real, willing slave was coming to live in his house.

A man who’d once stood leagues above him.

The thought of trampling such a man, wielding power over him, held a perverse, fatal allure.

"H-he… he won’t hurt us?" Hùng finally rasped, the question itself an admission of defeat.

"He won’t hurt us," Vy said, a faint, triumphant smile playing on her lips as she saw his resolve crumble. "His fate, his wealth—it’s all in our hands. Hùng, this is our only chance to climb out. Our only one."

Hùng’s defenses collapsed before the onslaught of money, future, and the dark pull of power.

He slumped back onto the sofa, defeated. He buried his face in his hands, shoulders trembling.

He didn’t say another word.

Silence. Consent.

---------------

Days later, on an unnaturally still, sweltering night, the custom-built "home" welcomed its first and only occupant.

At 9 PM sharp, the doorbell rang.

Vy opened the door. Chen Rui stood quietly outside. No luggage. Just plain grey casual clothes, unobtrusive branding. His signature gold-rimmed glasses perched neatly, his expression calm as if attending a regular meeting.

Vy stepped aside without a word.

Hùng sat rigidly on the living room sofa, his gaze complex and uneasy as he watched the man who would become their subterranean resident.

Chen Rui ignored him, following Vy directly to the master bathroom—a room he’d never entered, yet knew intimately.

Vy walked to the center, inserted a special key into the floor lock, and turned.

A heavy clank. The iron plate lifted, revealing the dark, leather-scented square below.

"Get in," Vy commanded, her tone cold, impersonal—addressing an inanimate object.

Chen Rui didn’t hesitate. He removed his glasses, folded them carefully, and placed them on the vanity. Then, he crouched and lowered himself into the void.

The dungeon was pitch black.

As his feet touched the floor, something soft landed on his head.

"Put this on." Vy’s voice came from above.

Chen Rui picked it up. Silk. He silently shed his expensive clothes and pulled it on. It was a woman’s silk nightgown, washed thin and faded—Vy’s old one. His tall, masculine frame folded into the feminine garment looked grotesquely ill-fitting.

Another object landed beside him.

A black leather collar with a metal buckle and a small, blinking red LED light—a GPS tracker.

"Put it on."

Chen Rui obeyed. The leather was rough against his neck, the metal clasp cold on his throat.

The cold sent a shiver of burning relief through him.

The brand of belonging he craved.

Vy stood at the opening, looking down at the transformed man below. Her feelings tangled. From her pocket, she drew the brass chastity key Chen Rui had given her and the key to the dungeon plate. She threaded them together and slipped them into her deepest pocket.

Slowly, deliberately, she lowered the heavy iron plate back into place.

It settled with a final thud.

She turned the key, locking it from the outside.

Click.

A definitive, decisive sound.

One world was sealed shut, buried beneath another.

Chapter 6: Brainwashing

Life in the dungeon began with pure sensory deprivation.

Absolute darkness. Near-total silence.

The thick leather padding swallowed all sound, even his own breath and heartbeat echoing dully, distorted, as if from a great distance. He curled on the cool leather floor, the thin silk nightgown clinging to his skin.

The only signal came from above.

Click.

The bathroom light switched on overhead.

Simultaneously, blinding white LEDs flared to life across the dungeon ceiling. Chen Rui squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden glare.

At the same moment, a 15-inch screen embedded in the leather wall opposite him activated. It displayed a live feed: a slightly elevated view of the specially designed toilet and the tiles around it.

A reminder. A command.

His body reacted before his mind.

Instinctively, he shifted position: knees hit the floor, head tilted back, mouth positioned precisely around the end of the PVC pipe descending from the ceiling. He sealed his lips around the opening, ready to receive whatever flowed.

This was his function. His sole purpose as a toilet.

On screen, Vy seemed awkward. She avoided looking at the toilet or the hidden camera, adjusting her skirt before sitting down.

Chen Rui heard the soft rustle of fabric. Then, a faint trickling sound.

A moment later, warm, pungent liquid streamed down the cold pipe, flowing directly into his waiting mouth.

His first "sustenance" in the eight hours since entering the dungeon.

No hesitation. No waste. He held his breath, swallowed convulsively, consuming every drop infused with another person's heat.

The flow ceased. Drips echoed in the pipe.

On screen, Vy stood, adjusted her clothes, and walked out of frame. No flush. The scene played out in eerie silence.

Seconds later, the LEDs and the screen cut off.

Darkness and silence reclaimed the dungeon.

Chen Rui knelt in the blackness, eyes closed. No nausea. No humiliation. Instead, a profound, unprecedented wave of peace and satisfaction washed over him. That warm, salty liquid felt like holy water, scouring away the final residue of "Chen Rui." The anxieties of career, the guilt of family, the doubts of self-worth—all dissolved into insignificance beneath this abject baptism.

He had become what he always desired: a debased, unclean, yet indispensable object. A vessel stripped of thought and dignity, reduced to pure function. In this ultimate degradation, he found ultimate serenity.

---------------

A strict, pendulum-like rhythm soon established itself.

Every morning at 8 AM sharp, the iron plate opened. Vy stood above, tossing down a neatly pressed, high-collared shirt and trousers.

"Change. Come out."

Chen Rui would swiftly don the "Mr. Chen" disguise, concealing the collar beneath the high collar. He climbed out. Vy handed him his phone, wallet, and car keys—programming a machine for its daily task.

"Be back by 7 PM. Close the 'Sunny Textiles' contract today. No mistakes."

"Yes, Mistress." He bowed his head, voice devoid of inflection.

He would leave the villa, drive the black Mercedes, and transform back into the sharp, capable Chinese CEO managing a dozen employees.

He washed at the office, then spent eight hours in meetings, reviewing files, handling complex deals. By 7 PM, he was back at Vy’s house.

His first act upon entry: surrender phone, wallet, keys—shedding every shred of "Chen Rui's" societal identity. Then, change into the silk nightgown and crawl back into his dark "home."

Weekends meant 24/7 confinement, fulfilling his sole purpose: swallowing all liquid waste descending the pipe.

Three months passed.

Chen Rui believed he’d found paradise. He reveled in this meticulously scheduled existence, utterly objectified.

He didn’t see the flaw his architect perceived. A more intricate cage, designed to annihilate his soul, was being woven.

-----------

Vy sat in the upstairs study, watching a dedicated surveillance tablet. On screen, Chen Rui sat in his CEO chair, assigning tasks to department heads with sharp clarity. Gold-rimmed glasses, focused expression, logical reasoning—the elite graduate, the decisive businessman.

Vy frowned. Deep unease stirred.

She didn’t want a part-time slave. She wanted total ownership—soul and body, 24/7.

As long as he could think independently, make complex decisions, the "Chen Rui" persona—uncontrollable, autonomous—still existed.

It was a ticking time bomb.

Fear gripped her. What if, during a multi-million-dollar negotiation, he suddenly "woke up"? Why am I living like this? I’m a wealthy CEO. Why kneel like a dog beneath a Vietnamese woman?

He might rebel. Escape.

Then everything—this house, this comfort, this power—would vanish.

No.

She couldn’t allow it.

She had to rip out those weeds—"thought," "logic," "dignity"—before they took root deeper. She needed a true human toilet: an obedient tool, incapable of judgment.

Vy became obsessed. She scoured the internet for everything on mind control, psychological manipulation, brainwashing. She lurked anonymously on foreign BDSM forums, absorbing bizarre theories and practices of "training" and "enslavement."

Combined with Chen Rui’s own whispered desires for objectification and mental deprivation, a unique brainwashing blueprint took shape in her mind.

---------------

An ordinary Friday night.

Chen Rui returned to the dungeon after work. Something new awaited.

Embedded in the wall directly before his kneeling spot was a small metal panel. Two buttons: one circular, one square.

Before he could wonder, Vy’s icy voice came through the speaker.

"New rules starting today."

An electronic female voice, synthesized and emotionless, filled the dungeon. Not loud, but piercing. It droned a relentless stream of disjointed, useless information:

"Usain St. Leo Bolt, born August 21, 1986, Jamaican sprinter, world's fastest man..."

"Japan's nominal GDP 2015: $4.39 trillion USD; real GDP: $5.04 trillion USD..."

"Atomic number 56: Barium. Symbol: Ba. Silvery-white alkaline earth metal..."

Information garbage. A data dump forced into his ears.

Vy’s voice cut back in, announcing the rules:

"From now on, except during sleep hours—midnight to 5 AM—you will listen to this whenever you are in here. Randomly, I will interrupt with instructions or questions. When you hear a question, you have five seconds to choose. Circle button: Option A. Square button: Option B."

"Correct answer: no reward. Wrong answer, or timeout: punishment."

"You will learn punishment soon."

The brainwashing commenced.

---------------

The first few days were hell.

The meaningless data flooded his mind, consuming cognitive space, denying him peace.

During a crucial contract negotiation at work, his brain would suddenly blare: "The Nile River is 6,650 kilometers long..." He’d lose his train of thought, struggling to purge the viral mental static and refocus.

He became forgetful. Sluggish. Prone to errors.

Nights back in the dungeon brought direct mental torture. Constant vigilance was required. He strained to memorize convoluted names, dry figures, obscure terms—ready for the electronic voice’s sudden probes.

Beep! "Select: Year of birth for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt? A. 1986. B. 1988."

Chen Rui’s mind raced. 1986! Circle button! He jabbed the circular button.

Beep! "Answer correct."

Relief. A brief respite. Minutes later:

Beep! "Select: Japan's real GDP for 2015? A. $4.39 trillion. B. $5.04 trillion."

He faltered. Nominal vs. Real GDP blurred. He hesitated, guessed, pressed Circle.

Beep! "Answer incorrect."

A deafening, nails-on-chalkboard screech mixed with grinding metal erupted from hidden speakers! The sound drilled into his temporal lobes.

Chen Rui screamed, clamping hands over his ears. The noise stopped after agonizing seconds. Silence returned, broken only by his ragged gasps and the ringing in his skull.

Vy’s voice, laced with cruel amusement, followed: "Incorrect. Minus one point. Twelve points deducted... you earn the ultimate punishment: consuming gold（eat scat）."

Chen Rui collapsed, drenched in cold sweat. He knew what "consuming gold（eat scat）" meant—the ultimate degradation he’d read about on forums. Fear clenched him.

But gradually, within the daily torture of data bombardment and sonic punishment, he tasted a familiar, perverse pleasure.

This forced ingestion of useless knowledge, this deprivation of active thought—it resonated with his deepest desire for objectification. His brain was losing autonomy, being violently stuffed with meaningless trivia. It felt... safe.

No more agonizing over life’s meaning, career success, family duty. Those burdens were lifted. He only needed to know Bolt was Jamaican. The Nile was 6,650 km long.

Each time he frantically recalled an answer and pressed the correct button under threat, a servile joy bloomed—the validation of a tool performing its function.

He stopped resisting. He actively memorized, complying with the system designed to shatter his will.

His descent into the abyss found firmer footing.

---------------

Upstairs, in the bedroom, Vy lay on her side, back turned to her loudly snoring husband. Sleep eluded her.

She held the surveillance tablet. The screen showed infrared footage of the dungeon and a real-time data panel:

`Total Questions: 87`

`Correct: 81`

`Incorrect: 6`

`Points Deducted: 6`

She analyzed the data like a cold scientist. His error rate was visibly dropping—from dozens initially to single digits. His mind was being successfully formatted. Her plan was working.

But a new problem emerged.

The "ultimate punishment"—"consuming gold," meaning forced consumption of human waste—was meant to be the ultimate humiliation, the final shredding of human dignity.

Yet... he didn’t seem to resist it. He might even... crave it. Wasn’t a true toilet meant for more than just liquid waste? For him, "consuming gold" was perhaps an inevitable function, merely delayed.

A chill crept up Vy’s spine. She’d underestimated the depth of his craving for abasement. The void within him was bottomless.

The "punishment" she’d devised might not be punishment at all—just advanced "functional training"!

Frustration bit her. Her control wasn’t absolute. She needed a punishment that inflicted genuine pain and fear. Something that would make his bones tremble. Otherwise, she didn’t truly hold the reins.

As she pondered, an unexpected source offered a brutal alternative.

"Just noise? That’s nothing. Doesn’t hurt."

Hùng had woken up, peered at her tablet, and snorted dismissively. He’d fully accepted their subterranean "tenant," even developed a disturbing fascination with the "game."

"Listen," he yawned, tone matter-of-fact. "Just hit him. Minus one point? Three solid slaps. Minus three points? Five lashes. Pain sticks. Simple."

Vy whipped her head around. In the dim bedside light, she saw it in Hùng’s eyes: a bright-eyed eagerness she’d never seen before.

The pure, cruel excitement of a child discovering a new toy.

Chapter 7: Power

"Mr. Chen, you reviewed this supplier contract yesterday afternoon and verbally confirmed it was fine. Why today..."

Ánh Quang, the newly promoted project manager—a driven young Vietnamese graduate—stood bewildered before Chen Rui’s desk. In his hand was a printed contract marked with red circles, minor pitfalls he’d uncovered during a late-night review.

Chen Rui rubbed his throbbing temples, staring blankly at the dense Vietnamese text.

Had he seen it yesterday?

He genuinely… couldn’t recall.

His mind felt like an old computer crippled by viruses, memory fragments floating chaotically, refusing to coalesce. He remembered sitting here yesterday afternoon, a document in his hand, but his thoughts had been hijacked by another voice:

"...Atomic number 56: Barium. Symbol: Ba. Silvery-white alkaline earth metal..."

The emotionless electronic drone, like an icy probe, churned relentlessly in his skull. It took immense willpower to maintain a facade of concentration in front of Ánh Quang, stopping himself from blurting out "Barium is silvery-white."

"Is that so?" he mumbled dismissively, masking vulnerability with false authority. "Perhaps… I misremembered. Too many details, easy to overlook. Leave it. I'll review it again."

Ánh Quang dared not press further. He placed the file respectfully on the corner of the desk and retreated silently.

The moment the office door clicked shut, Chen Rui sagged into his plush executive chair, drained and utterly defeated.

He was losing control. No—his mind was being forcibly reformatted by another, in ways he couldn’t resist.

The junk knowledge shoved into his head strangled his once-clear thinking. It tangled with business data, complex financial reports, intricate contract clauses, turning his brain into a boiling, chaotic sludge.

During meetings, analyzing market trends, his mind would blurt: "The Mariana Trench is 11,034 meters deep!" He’d falter mid-sentence, meeting his team’s bewildered stares with a flustered, "I need to reconsider."

Reading reports, he’d skip lines, confuse purchase costs with sales profits. Just last week, he’d nearly transferred a massive payment to a defunct supplier’s account.

Vy had caught it. Just in time.

Vy…

The name sent an involuntary tremor through him—a complex cocktail of dependency and… belonging.

His commercial empire, his once-proud career, was crumbling in his own hands. And the woman who’d dug his grave circled like a patient, shrewd vulture above his collapsing kingdom, poised to snatch every sliver of power that slipped from his grasp.

The office door opened softly.

Vy entered, heels clicking a precise rhythm on the wooden floor, carrying a steaming cup of coffee.

She wore a perfectly tailored black suit, a sleek silk blouse underneath. Her hair was pulled into a severe bun, revealing a clean neckline and a determined jaw. Subtle makeup accentuated sharp, calculating eyes. She radiated the absolute authority of a sovereign.

The Vy who’d worn cheap uniforms with a hint of deference in a souvenir shop months ago was gone.

"Mr. Chen, you look exhausted. You need rest," she set the coffee beside him, her tone mimicking subordinate concern with chilling precision.

But her eyes, like high-resolution scanners, saw through every layer of his pretense and struggle. They landed on the red-circled contract at the corner of his desk.

"Ánh Quang brought it?" she asked casually.

"Hmm," Chen Rui grunted, reaching for the coffee, a shield for his discomfort.

"I’ve dealt with the owner of 'Yongfa Company.' Infamous for playing dirty, hiding traps in the fine print," Vy stated coldly, barely glancing at the document. "Probably trying to take advantage of Ánh Quang’s inexperience."

She paused, her tone brooking no argument. "I’ll handle this contract for you. Rest assured, not a single loophole will slip through. You clearly didn’t sleep well last night. Don’t trouble yourself with trivialities."

The phrase "didn’t sleep well last night" was a cruel code only they understood.

Because last night, he’d answered incorrectly again. The punishment had escalated beyond noise.

A new element, authorized by his Mistress, executed by her husband Hùng.

Chen Rui had initially tried to cling to a shred of dignity.

"N-no need. This is my work, I’ll—"

"Are you sure?" Vy cut him off. She leaned down, her breath cold as a serpent’s whisper against his ear. "If you mess this up today, if the company loses money… tonight won’t be resolved with just a few slaps or lashes."

Chen Rui froze.

An icy dread shot up his spine.

All resistance crumbled.

He slowly released his grip on the contract, collapsing back into his chair like a puppet with severed strings.

"Alright… then… I’ll trouble you," he rasped.

A ghost of a triumphant smile touched Vy’s lips. Her slender, strong fingers picked up the contract—and stripped the last vestiges of "Mr. Chen’s" authority and dignity clinging to it.

She turned and walked towards her own office, her stride elegant and assured, like a queen returning victorious from battle.

Chen Rui watched her go. No anger, no resentment stirred within him. Instead, a twisted wave of relief washed over him—a perverse contentment.

His chosen Mistress was systematically claiming his life. Not just his body, but his mind, his business, his everything.

It validated his choice. Proved him right.

His descent felt justified. Inevitable.

---------------

For Vy, the taste of power was a drug more potent than money.

Sitting in bright conference rooms, dressed impeccably, verbally sparring with suppliers and clients she once had to grovel to, signing contracts worth billions of VND—it delivered a thrill that bordered on the divine. An exhilaration utterly foreign in her first thirty years.

Though lacking formal education, her street-smarts—that weed-like tenacity—gave her an uncanny business instinct. She was shrewd, pragmatic, her insight into human nature making her formidable at the negotiation table.

She could haggle tirelessly over fractions of a cent with a sales director, weaving tears and vulnerability into pleas for sympathy, then pivot instantly to steely resolve to secure rock-bottom prices.

She could sniff out shifting market winds in a dry industry report, ruthlessly axing a profitable but stagnant product line to pour resources into explosive new potential.

Under Chen Rui’s "passive delegation" and Vy’s "active takeover," the company’s performance didn’t just stabilize—it surged, surpassing even Chen Rui’s own management.

This cemented Vy’s position as the company’s de facto ruler.

Employees revered her now. Some feared her deeply. Privately, they no longer called her "Assistant Lâm" or "Supervisor Lâm." They used an unspoken moniker: "Empress Dowager Lâm."

Chen Rui had become the "Retired Emperor"—a figurehead whose only function was to sign documents.

Vy adored it.

She relished trampling a man who’d once soared so high—a graduate of China’s elite institutions, his entire empire—beneath her feet.

Every morning, standing at the dungeon’s opening, looking down at the man curled in darkness, clad in a woman’s nightgown, she felt a god-like surge of absolute control.

This sensation intensified, grew complete, only after her husband Hùng joined the "game."

---------------

Hùng’s transformation began that night.

When he’d suggested "direct physical punishment," Vy had hesitated. She feared pure brutality might shatter the game’s "psychological core," making it crude and vulgar, provoking resistance.

But Chen Rui’s rising error rate proved noise alone was losing its bite. She needed a sharper, more visceral tool to crush his will.

So, she agreed.

That night, when the electronic voice announced Chen Rui had accumulated three penalty points, Vy unlocked the dungeon’s heavy iron lid. Harsh light flooded the cramped space below.

Chen Rui flinched like a startled mole, raising a hand to shield his eyes.

"Put your hand down," Vy’s voice froze the air.

He obeyed.

"You made three mistakes last night," Vy announced deliberately. "New rule: three slaps per mistake. Hitting three mistakes triggers five lashes."

The man kneeling below her—the man who drove a Mercedes, stayed in luxury hotels, who’d once made Hùng feel worthless—was now garbed in a ludicrous nightgown, wearing a dog’s collar, trash beneath their toilet.

The sheer, shattering reversal ignited Vy’s blood.

Her mouth went dry. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

"Present your face," her voice trembled slightly, laced with a cruelty she hadn’t known she possessed.

In the dungeon, Chen Rui stood silently, obediently. He tilted his head up, offering his face completely.

Crack!

A sharp, loud slap echoed unnervingly in the tiled bathroom.

Vy had put her full strength into it.

She felt the solid, slightly elastic impact of flesh meeting flesh.

Chen Rui’s head snapped sideways. Five vivid, crimson fingerprints bloomed instantly on his cheek.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t make a sound. He slowly turned his head back, his gaze meeting Vy’s calmly, awaiting the next blow.

Vy looked at her own stinging, reddened palm, then at the welts and the trickle of blood at the corner of Chen Rui’s mouth. A wave of unprecedented, sickening excitement—raw power—electrified her entire being!

Crack!

Crack!

She lost count. Left hand, right hand, she rained furious blows on his face.

With the first slap, she ceased being a passive facilitator. She became an active, exhilarated participant in the cruelty.

She loved it.

---------------

From that day, the house revolved entirely around the dungeon—a perverse seat of power.

Hùng, naturally, began using the "toilet" too.

Vy didn’t stop him. She watched, almost pleased.

She used Chen Rui’s money to buy Hùng the latest phone, expensive branded clothes and watches, and the used BMW he’d always dreamt of owning.

Material indulgence and the cruel thrill of domination satisfied both Hùng and Vy.

The darkest, most hidden corners of Hùng’s psyche were laid bare and unleashed.

He grew to relish this life.

The household achieved an unprecedented, macabre "harmony," centered entirely on the man in the dungeon.

And Chen Rui, under the relentless assault of mental bombardment and physical torment, felt the persona of "Mr. Chen" being swiftly, irreversibly murdered.

He was becoming a true puppet. Perfect. Compliant.

Chapter 8: Belonging

The thread connecting Chen Rui to his life back in China was thinning, fraying, like a spider’s strand stretched taut by the wind, nearing its breaking point.

At first, he maintained weekly video calls with his daughter. Then, it became fortnightly. Eventually, he only dialed the long-memorized number when Zhang Jing messaged with an unrefusable command, acting like a programmed robot under Vy’s watchful eye.

Almost half a year had passed since he’d last set foot in that home in Kunshan.

The word "home" had faded for him, like an old photograph—blurred, distant, stripped of all warmth and substance.

Today was his daughter Chen Nuonuo’s sixth birthday.

His phone screen lit up as Chen Rui sat in his cavernous CEO office, staring blankly at the overcast sky of Ho Chi Minh City.

The vibration of the video call request jolted him from a near-catatonic haze.

He glanced at the caller ID: "Zhang Jing."

His heart instinctively clenched.

He turned his head, looking towards Vy who sat on a nearby sofa, meticulously filing her nails without looking up.

Vy didn’t lift her head, merely issuing a soft, dismissive "Hmm" of permission.

Chen Rui took a deep breath, straightened his shirt collar ensuring the black leather collar beneath was completely hidden, and pressed 'answer'.

His daughter’s face, slightly pixelated but radiant with childish joy, instantly filled the screen.

"Dad!"

Nuonuo’s voice was bright and clear. She wore a dreamy pale pink princess dress, its tulle skirt blooming like a cloud. A sparkling rhinestone tiara sat on her head, her cheeks flushed with excitement like ripe apples.

Behind her was the living room Chen Rui once knew intimately. Colorful "Happy Birthday" balloons adorned the wall; a massive strawberry-and-cream birthday cake dominated the coffee table.

Zhang Jing sat beside their daughter, dressed in a plain beige knit top, her long hair softly draped over her shoulders. Her face wore a gentle smile, carefully maintained for the birthday occasion.

But the warmth didn’t reach her eyes. They regarded the man on the screen like ice behind glass.

"Nuonuo, look, Daddy’s talking to you," Zhang Jing said softly, stroking her daughter’s head.

"Daddy, when are you coming home? Nuonuo misses you," the little girl asked, her large, dark eyes filled with pure, unadulterated hope.

The question pricked Chen Rui’s numbed nerves like a tiny needle.

He scrambled through the chaotic hard drive of his mind, cluttered with useless data and noise, searching for a suitable answer.

"Daddy… Daddy will be home soon," he rasped, his voice dry. The muscles in his face seemed sluggish; the smile he forced felt like a rigid mask.

"Soon when?" Nuonuo persisted, a child’s understanding demanding specifics. "Tomorrow? Next week?"

"Just… soon," Chen Rui repeated. His mind stalled. His daughter’s adorable face seemed to blur into the definition of some dry economic term flashing on the dungeon screen last night. Dizziness washed over him.

Zhang Jing’s patience finally snapped.

The pretense of warmth vanished from her eyes, replaced by cold, suppressed fury.

She leaned forward from behind Nuonuo, her face filling the frame, her voice like ice shards:

"Chen Rui, look at yourself! What in God’s name are you doing in Vietnam? You’re barely human anymore!"

Her voice wasn’t loud, but each word sliced through his fragile facade like a scalpel.

Chen Rui flinched involuntarily.

He caught sight of his reflection in the phone’s dark border. Hollowed eyes like dark pits. Sharp, prominent cheekbones. Skin a waxy yellow from chronic exhaustion and malnutrition. His gaze was unfocused, empty—a puppet drained of spirit and soul.

"I... I’m not. Work is busy," he mumbled, a pale, rehearsed lie escaping on instinct.

"Busy?" Zhang Jing let out a cold, humorless laugh dripping with scorn and rage. "Too busy to even pretend to care about your daughter on her birthday?! You haven’t been home in almost half a year! Half a year!"

Her voice rose sharply, her chest heaving with fury.

She wasn’t concerned for him. She was furious.

Furious that this man was destroying his daughter’s image of her "invincible" father. Furious at his irresponsibility, his self-destruction, his complete surrender.

"Chen Rui, I’m warning you for the last time," she hissed, staring directly at him. "If you want to die out there, have the decency to let me know first! I need to prepare the papers. Don’t drag Nuonuo and me down with you!"

She hung up without waiting for a response.

The screen plunged into darkness.

Chen Rui sat frozen, phone still held aloft in the same position.

Zhang Jing’s final words were like stones dropped into the stagnant pond of his heart, sending out faint, stinging ripples.

But the sting was so weak.

It was swiftly drowned, swallowed whole by a far more potent, familiar numbness.

Zhang Jing’s rage, Nuonuo’s hope, that distant, so-called "home" in Kunshan… it all felt like a story from another century—remote, unreal, illusory.

He even felt a pang of irritation.

This forced connection to his past world felt like a pesky pop-up ad, disturbing his inner peace. What he craved was pure, thoughtless tranquility—filled only with darkness and commands.

He slowly lowered the phone and turned to look at Vy.

Vy had set down her nail file. She watched him with an appraising, utterly detached gaze.

"Fight with the family?" she asked, tone flat as if discussing the weather, though she knew the answer.

Chen Rui nodded silently.

"Because you didn’t go back for your daughter?"

He nodded again.

A cold, mocking curve touched Vy’s lips. She rose, her elegant strides bringing her before Chen Rui, the click of her heels echoing ominously in the silent office.

She reached out, her cool, crimson-nailed fingers gripping his chin, forcing his head up to meet her eyes.

"What are you now?" Her voice was soft, yet imbued with irresistible authority.

Chen Rui’s lips moved soundlessly.

"Look at me. Answer."

"I am… yours…" he struggled out.

"You are my slave. My furniture. My toilet," Vy finished for him, her fingers tightening, nails biting into his skin. "Tell me, does a toilet need family?"

She leaned close, her warm breath brushing his ear, yet her words were colder than Siberian winds:

"That world has nothing to do with you anymore. Your only value is here. Serving me. Serving my family. Understand?"

A tremor ran through Chen Rui’s body at her words.

This wasn’t humiliation. It was redefinition.

This wasn’t a threat. It was direction.

Vy’s pronouncement didn’t bring pain. Instead, it acted like a powerful sedative, instantly smoothing away the agitation stirred by the video call.

Yes. The Mistress was right.

He shouldn't have those superfluous emotions and attachments. He was an object. A tool. Tools only need to be used. They don’t think. They don’t feel.

An immense, unprecedented sense of peace washed over him.

"Un-understood," he answered submissively. The last flicker of confusion and struggle in his eyes died, replaced by placid obedience.

"Good. You won’t go hungry tonight. I’ll grant you Gold," Vy said, satisfied. She released his chin and wiped her fingers with a tissue, as if touching something filthy. "Remember your words. If those irrelevant things affect your mood, affect the 'work' I give you again… you know the consequences."

She returned to the sofa and picked up her nail file, as if the confrontation had been a trivial interruption.

Chen Rui felt like a pet reassured by its master, filled with serene contentment. He could hardly wait to end this interminable "Mr. Chen" day and return to his true "home."

---------------

At precisely 7 PM, Chen Rui returned to Vy’s house.

He mechanically surrendered his phone and wallet in the entryway, changed into his faded lilac silk pajamas, and silently proceeded towards the master bathroom, awaiting the order to descend into the dungeon.

His existence in this Vietnamese "home" was an open secret.

Vy and Hùng had never bothered to hide it from their sixteen-year-old daughter.

When she first asked, curious, why there was an iron door in the bathroom floor, Vy had calmly explained:

"Below lives a Chinese man. He committed grave crimes against our Vietnam. We imprison him beneath the toilet. He works to earn money for us and handles our waste. This is his atonement."

Raised on patriotic education steeped in anti-Chinese sentiment, their daughter accepted this easily. It became routine. Sometimes, she even specifically avoided her own bathroom to come to the master suite and "use" this Chinese toilet.

"Mom! Mom! I need to pee! I want to use the pee-punishment on the Chinese man!"

The girl's voice came from the bathroom doorway. Fresh from the shower, wearing pink bear pajamas, her hair damp, she looked at her mother expectantly. "Go ahead," Vy's voice drifted from the living room, tinged with indulgence.

The girl cheered, tiptoed into the bathroom, and flicked the wall switch.

In the dungeon, blinding LEDs and the wall screen flared to life simultaneously.

In the darkness, Chen Rui instantly adjusted from his curled position. He knelt fluidly, tilted his head back, opened his mouth, and aligned it precisely with the cold PVC pipe descending from the ceiling.

The screen showed the girl.

She seemed aware she was being watched, playfully waving at the camera before sitting down on the toilet seat, giggling—a clear, crystalline sound.

As the girl’s mocking laughter mingled with a warm, faintly astringent liquid descending the pipe, Chen Rui felt an unprecedented, immense sense of completion—of profound belonging.

In this moment, he was no longer Chen Rui. Not the prodigy graduate. Not the failed entrepreneur. Not the inadequate husband or the forgotten father.

He was simply a component of this household.

A tool completely accepted and routinely "used" by every member of the family.

His connection to this home was intimate, unbreakable. It transcended blood, law, and morality.

It was his only proof of existence.

Zhang Jing’s video call felt like a resentful ghost from a distant past, futilely trying to drag him back to that suffocating world of judgment, pretense, and responsibility.

Vy’s icy reprimand, and now, this family’s "use" of him, felt like strong, warm hands pulling him back from the edge of that world and firmly, gently, pressing him back into his rightful place—the only place that belonged to him.

He felt an unprecedented, bone-deep security.

Here, he didn’t need to think. He didn’t need to be responsible. He didn’t need to pretend to be a "normal" man.

He only needed to kneel here. Endure. Obey. And distill his existence to its purest essence: a receptacle.

A filthy, debased, yet profoundly warm belonging.

---------------

Kunshan, Zhang Jing's Residence

After hanging up, Zhang Jing trembled with rage.

She walked to the living room wall and stared at the enormous wedding photo that dominated it.

In the photo, she wore a pristine white gown, smiling with blissful shyness. Beside her, the man in a sharp suit, gold-rimmed glasses, smiled warmly and gently, his eyes holding just the right amount of affection.

That face stood in such sharp, cruel contrast to the haggard, vacant-eyed specter she’d just seen on the screen.

What had happened to him in Vietnam?

Had his business utterly collapsed? Or… had he succumbed to drugs?

Zhang Jing didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. She only felt a deep, betraying fury and disgust.

Love between them had died long ago, but they still shared a daughter. They still shared the responsibility called "father."

How could he? How could he abdicate so easily, so irresponsibly?

She walked to the wedding photo. Without hesitation, she grasped the heavy frame and tore it from the wall.

She didn’t smash it.

She simply turned it around, pressing the faces of the former "perfect couple" against the cold wall, and silently leaned it against the corner.

This man, from this moment, was declared utterly "dead" in her life.

Her only concern now was how to explain to Nuonuo why her daddy couldn’t come to her birthday party anymore. Why he couldn’t come back at all.

She would have to hold together the shattered remnants of their home, preserving nothing but its pristine surface.

---------------

Vietnam, Vy's Residence

Late at night. Utter silence.

The children were long asleep. Beside her, Hùng emitted deep, contented snores.

Vy lay wide awake.

She lay on her side in the darkness, picked up her phone from the nightstand, and deftly opened the encrypted surveillance app.

The screen immediately displayed the infrared feed from the dungeon.

In the grainy image, the man lay curled on the leather floor in the corner, like a baby returned to the womb.

He slept deeply, peacefully, a faint, satisfied smile touching the corners of his lips.

Vy watched him silently, her gaze complex and profound.

This man was her slave. Her ATM. The bedrock of all her power and wealth now.

She could scarcely imagine life without him.

The training for consuming Gold needs to be accelerated, she thought. She would mold him into a true toilet, incapable of returning to normal life, utterly dependent on her. She’d even secretly procured poppy seeds from the black market, brewing them in water to mix into his future "Gold" feasts.

She would bind him tighter, more irrevocably, in her grasp—until all his edges were worn smooth, all his thoughts drained away, leaving only a soulless husk, a true "human toilet" that reacted only to her commands.

She turned off the phone, rolled onto her back, and began planning tomorrow’s agenda.

Tomorrow, she was meeting a crucial client. Landing that contract could double the company's size and profits.

She needed a vaster commercial empire to house her swelling ambition.

As she plotted the future, deep within the dungeon, the next cycle of the brainwashing program, set to her precise timetable, prepared to activate sharply at 5:00 AM.

The cold, electronic female voice would pierce the darkness right on schedule:

"The Mariana Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean, has the deepest known point on Earth at 11,034 meters..."