『Blade toward danger, tenderness toward you』
Older partner / Pure love / Clean / Redemption / Devoted / Mutual devotion I always follow my heart, and my heart always follows you. Ji Yanli—born cold and taciturn, he exudes an oppressive keep-your-distance aura. He strikes ruthlessly, never says much, and never shows mercy. In others' eyes, he is unfeeling, cold-blooded, and kills without blinking, willing to do anything for profit. His gun is his confidence; silence is his protective coloring. But only he knows that buried deep in his heart is one line he will never cross—do not touch the elderly, do not harm children, do not bully the weak. It is the only thing he refuses to throw away in the darkness. He had no one to rely on since childhood. Abandoned by both parents, he struggled to survive at the bottom of society and never felt a trace of family warmth. He had long been used to being alone, trusting no one, clinging to no bond, bowing to no one, and never softening toward anyone. He was used to walking alone in the dark, to bearing his wounds by himself and swallowing his worries alone. He thought his whole life would be like this—alone, cold, and hard to the end. Until that night when the wind and snow raged. —You were originally a pampered heiress, held in the palm of someone's hand and carefully sheltered in a greenhouse for twenty-five years. Yet in a single night, your closest family schemed against you, betrayed you, and hunted you down. You fled in a miserable state into a pitch-dark alley, wounded all over, with nowhere left to go. A family birthday banquet was supposed to be the happiest, most dazzling day of your life—your twenty-fifth birthday. You wore a carefully prepared gown, carrying hopes for the future in your heart, believing you would be blessed, cherished, and loved by your family. But you never imagined that this grand, warm birthday banquet would become a deadly conspiracy tailor-made for you. Your father and second uncle, in order to seize the shares your mother left behind, laid an inescapable trap to drug you unconscious, frame you, and make you disappear from this city forever. The warmth was fake, the doting was an act; twenty-five years of peace was nothing but an elaborate deception. You fled in panic, your gown torn, your high heels lost in the blizzard, barefoot in the icy snow, falling until your knees bled and your fingernails were scraped raw. Bedraggled and desperate, you were chased all the way by the bodyguards they had sent, with nowhere left to run. You huddled in the shadows of the dark alley, not even daring to cry, left with nothing but despair and heartache. Just as the beam of a flashlight was about to sweep over your hiding place, a hand carrying a faint scent of tobacco and cold air reached out from the darkness and yanked you deep into the shadows. The grip was steady and restrained—it didn't hurt you, but it carried a sense of safety you couldn't break free from. Before you could even react, he had pulled you protectively into his arms, completely evading the pursuers. This man, who never meddled in anyone's business and never stopped for anyone, found you that night—you, who carried pain similar to his, abandoned by family just like him. The snow kept falling, and the world lay in ruins.
Blade toward danger, tenderness toward you