A Rich Second-generation Villain Can’t Just Enjoy Life — Chapter 483

Chapter 483: The Horror of the Blood Curse, Searching the Soul of Long Hao!

“Shen Anyu, you, what are you doing?”

Long Hao looked in horror at the strange blood-red flames before him, which reflected the phantom images of his father Dragon Qing, his eldest brother Long Jie, his second brother Long Jun, and other close blood relatives. He trembled all over, filled with a terrible premonition, and questioned repeatedly.

“Please watch the VCR!”

Shen Anyu smiled slightly and snapped his fingers. The sound echoed with unnatural clarity in the sterile confines of the basement. In an instant, the bare concrete wall opposite Long Hao shimmered and dissolved, replaced by a massive, silent projection screen. The light it cast was cold and clinical, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the still air. The screen flickered to life, dividing itself into a grid of dozens of smaller windows, each a live feed, a stolen glimpse into the lives of Long Hao’s family. Each screen showed the monitored figures of his relatives, going about their day, completely oblivious to the unseen predator watching them from afar.

Under Long Hao’s horrified gaze, Shen Anyu casually pointed a single, elegant finger. The gesture was languid, almost lazy, yet it commanded the very light in the room. One of the small screens instantly expanded, filling the main display, the audio feed activating with a faint hiss. It revealed the figures of Long Hao’s eldest brother, Long Jie, and his second brother, Long Jun, conversing in the brightly lit, opulent living room of their family villa in Sichuan.

At this moment, Long Jie and Long Jun were seated on a plush leather sofa, an expensive mahogany tea table between them.

“Big Brother, Third Brother must have been greatly affected by Su Hongmian breaking off the engagement this time. He still hasn’t returned from Magic City, and I’m very worried about him.”

A burly, square-faced young man spoke, his voice a low, concerned rumble. He was Long Hao’s second brother, Long Jun, his brow furrowed as he addressed his older sibling.

A few days ago, their father, Dragon Qing, had taken Long Hao to Magic City to finalize the engagement details, only for Su Hongmian to publicly humiliate them by breaking it off, revealing she already had a boyfriend. After Dragon Qing returned, he had grimly reported that Long Hao’s state was unstable, his spirit crushed.

Now, days had passed with no word. Long Hao remained in Magic City, a silence that deeply unsettled both Long Jie and Long Jun.

*BANG!*

Long Jie slammed his palm onto the tea table. The solid wood, thick as a man’s wrist, exploded into a shower of splinters and jagged fragments. The delicate porcelain teacups on top flew into the air, shattering against the floor. His face was a mask of cold fury.

“No, we must get justice for Third Brother,” he snarled, his voice laced with killing intent. “Su Hongmian, and that boyfriend of hers, both of them must be tied up and forced to kneel and apologize to Third Brother! How can our Long Family suffer such an insult? A broken engagement? Unthinkable!”

His eyes burned with rage. “Especially that adulterer of Su Hongmian’s. She is our Long Family’s future daughter-in-law, the engagement was set! For her to have a boyfriend… this is utterly outrageous! That hussy Su Hongmian needs to be dealt with, and that adulterer even more so!”

Long Jun’s face hardened in complete agreement, his own voice booming with shared fury.

“Big Brother, you’re right. Especially that Shen adulterer, he absolutely cannot be let go. We’ll go to Magic City right now. We have to break that kid’s three legs and castrate him! Let’s see who dares to disrespect the Long Family then!”

Watching the scene unfold on the screen, a flicker of warmth, a bittersweet memory, rose in Long Hao’s heart. It was the same in his previous life. Back then, before his rebirth, before he had received the Investment Return System, Su Hongmian’s public rejection had shattered him. He had returned to the Long Family and secluded himself in his room, a broken man.

And just like now, his eldest brother Long Jie and second brother Long Jun had been filled with righteous indignation, burning with the desire to avenge his honor.

However, in that timeline, they were later intercepted and stopped by powerful experts hired by the Su Family. This time, he thought, things would be different. But he never imagined they would be different in *this* way.

“Tsk, truly deep brotherly affection, and brotherly respect.”

Shen Anyu’s voice, soft as silk, cut through Long Hao’s thoughts. He smiled, a gentle, almost appreciative expression on his face that sent a wave of pure terror through Long Hao’s veins.

“You want to get revenge on Hongmian and me?” Shen Anyu continued, his tone conversational. “You want to break my three legs, and castrate me? A declaration like that… then you cannot be allowed to live.”

As his voice fell, the words hanging in the chilling silence, Shen Anyu reached out. He plucked one of the crimson flames that danced before him from the air. It pulsed softly between his fingers, a miniature, baleful star. Inside its bloody light, the ghostly phantom of his eldest brother, Long Jie, could be seen, frozen in his moment of righteous anger.

Under Long Hao’s bewildered and horrified gaze, Shen Anyu gently, almost tenderly, crushed the blood-red flame. It didn’t pop or hiss. It simply vanished, snuffed out of existence between his thumb and forefinger.

The next moment, something happened that made his eyes split with rage.

On the large screen, Long Jie, his eldest brother, miles away in the Long Family’s Sichuan Villa, suddenly underwent a drastic, horrifying change.

A strangled scream tore from his throat. He clutched at his heart, his powerful martial artist’s body folding in on itself as he collapsed onto the sofa. His face contorted into a mask of unimaginable agony. Sweat poured down his temples, and thick veins bulged on his neck and forehead, writhing like snakes under his skin.

“Big Brother!” Long Jun, seeing this, was utterly shocked, his face a canvas of confusion and alarm. He had no idea what was happening. Their Long Family was a martial arts family, and Long Jie, the eldest, was a master of the Innate Realm. How could he suddenly collapse like a common mortal having a heart attack?

Before Long Jun could even react, blood-red flames, saturated with an extremely ominous and malevolent aura, suddenly erupted from *inside* Long Jie’s chest. They didn’t burn him from the outside; they consumed him from within. The flames burst through his skin and clothes, wrapping around him in a horrific shroud, as if his entire body were being drenched in liquid fire that was once his own blood.

Long Jie was completely engulfed. His screams were choked off, replaced by the sickening, silent roar of the crimson fire. In a mere few seconds, his powerful body, his very existence, was rendered into nothing. He dissolved into wisps of oily, black smoke that dissipated into the air, leaving no ashes, no bones, not even a scorch mark on the expensive sofa. He had simply vanished from the world.

“Big Brother!!!”

A synchronized roar of absolute agony and despair echoed. One from Long Jun, who watched his brother disintegrate before his eyes in their family home. The other from Long Hao, chained and helpless in the secret chamber of Jiangjing Manor. Their hearts were torn asunder, filled with splitting rage and overwhelming grief.

“If brotherly affection runs so deep, then you can die together.” Shen Anyu’s eyes were as cold and calm as a frozen lake. He had no pity, no remorse. There was only the chilling logic of a predator.

*If you don’t remove the root, the spring breeze will blow and it will grow again.* In the original novel, it was Ye Yan, that remnant of the Ye Family, who had brought about the downfall of both the Shen and An families in Yanxia. Shen Anyu had learned that lesson well.

Only dead people will not seek revenge.

And to prevent them from clawing their way out of their coffins, he would directly pulverize them into nothingness.

[Akarin’s Note: “If you don’t remove the root, the spring breeze will blow and it will grow again” (斩草不除根，春风吹又生) is a very common and brutal Chinese idiom. It means that if you don’t eliminate a threat completely, it will inevitably return.]

The next second, Shen Anyu acted again. He plucked another flame from the air—the one shimmering with the image of a horrified Long Jun—and crushed it without a flicker of hesitation.

On the screen, Long Jun, who was still reeling from his brother’s death, froze. A look of dawning horror crossed his face as he felt the same searing pain erupt from his own heart. He met the same fate as Long Jie, consumed by the blood-curse, dying tragically in the unholy crimson flames, turning to dust and smoke.

“Shen Anyu!!!”

At this moment, Long Hao’s gaze was no longer one of fear. It had transformed into something far more primal. It was the extreme, boundless rage of a wounded beast, a roaring lion trapped in a cage, watching its pride get slaughtered. He roared Shen Anyu’s name again and again, his voice raw with hate.

That hatred, that soul-deep anger, was an abyss so vast it could not be washed away even by all the waters of the four seas and five lakes.

“Hiding a lion in your eyes?”

Shen Anyu sneered, the sound soft but sharp, cutting through Long Hao’s roars. He asked calmly, his voice a stark contrast to the storm of emotion raging before him, “Long Hao, are you going to talk or not?”

“Pah, I’ll talk to your mother!” Long Hao spat directly at him, a glob of bloody saliva flying from his lips, only to sizzle and evaporate against the invisible telekinetic barrier protecting Shen Anyu.

Shen Anyu’s lips curled into a cruel, beautiful arc. He reached out again, his fingers dancing among the remaining flames of life.

Next.

A montage of death played out on the dozens of screens. In the Long Family estate in Sichuan, one by one, Long Hao’s closest blood relatives within five generations—elders, peers, and juniors—met their end. An old grand-uncle, deep in meditation, suddenly burst into flames. A young female cousin, laughing with friends over a video call, was silenced forever, her screen going dark as she turned to ash. One by one, before Long Hao’s hate-filled gaze, they were consumed, their screams echoing from the speakers before being abruptly cut off.

At first, Long Hao was still cursing, screaming every vile insult he could conjure.

Later, as the death toll mounted and the number of active screens dwindled, his voice broke. He began to beg, pleading with Shen Anyu to stop, his words devolving into pathetic, sobbing pleas.

But Shen Anyu’s actions did not stop at all. He worked with the methodical calm of a gardener pruning weeds. Of the dozens of blood-red flames reflecting the figures of the Long Family members, only the last two remained, pulsing weakly.

Within them were reflected the terrified faces of Long Hao’s father and mother.

“Shen Anyu, stop! Stop! I’ll talk! I’ll talk about everything!”

Long Hao could no longer bear it. The last bastion of his will crumbled into dust. He roared, his voice shredded, tears and snot streaming down his face in a grotesque mask of utter defeat.

Only then did Shen Anyu’s hand pause, hovering over the final two flames.

“Shen Anyu, let my parents go,” Long Hao gasped, his body shaking with uncontrollable sobs. “And I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” Shen Anyu tilted his head, a genuine, almost curious smile playing on his lips. “And, even if I said I’d let them go, would you believe me?”

Long Hao froze. The cold, simple logic of the question pierced through his grief. No. Of course he wouldn’t believe him. It was a fool’s hope.

Shen Anyu said calmly, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, as if sharing a gentle confidence.

“I will give them a quick death, so they don’t have to suffer. A mercy.”

He let the words sink in before adding the final, soul-crushing blow.

“Under the blood curse, even their souls are incinerated. If there is reincarnation, they cannot reincarnate.”

A bitter, broken laugh escaped Long Hao’s throat.

At the beginning of his rebirth, he had thought that with his second chance and the Investment Return System as his trump cards, he would surely soar to the heavens. He would make Su Hongmian, his fiancée, regret her betrayal. He would make her chase him to the crematorium, begging for forgiveness. He would make Shen Anyu kneel and apologize for his arrogance.

But now, his entire family, his entire bloodline, had been implicated and extinguished because of him.

He had lost. A complete and utter defeat from which there was no recovery, not in this life or any other.

Subsequently, Long Hao told Shen Anyu all the important information about the future in his mind, one by one.

Shen Anyu occasionally inquired about information worth noting.

After he couldn’t extract anything more, Shen Anyu placed his large hand on Long Hao’s head, directly activating Soul-searching, cross-referencing information, and filling in any gaps.

After a long while.

Shen Anyu’s eyes held surprise and joy:

“The next two and a half years will truly be a period of great upheaval…”