The sudden death of He Yu’s father comes as a great shock to Xie Qingcheng…but he soon learns that the ramifications go far beyond grief. He Yu is now saddled with the role of chairman of his parents’ pharmaceutical company—and with horrifying new revelations that shake the foundations of his world.
As He Yu is swept up in his family’s connections to the crime boss Duan Wen and his sinister, scientifically-advanced organization, Xie Qingcheng finds himself facing him, for the first time, as an enemy. Is He Yu really cooperating with the organization that killed Xie Qingcheng’s parents? Has he truly been consumed by hatred—or could some vestiges of his feelings for Xie Qingcheng remain?
I can’t believe the absurdity and hilarity of the situation I faced for a few seconds. Apparently, out of all places, Goodreads is not the place to express your thoughts. I find it not much, but a little bit funny maybe because my sense of humour is broken. I had my first fun little experiment with Twitter, and I shouted into the void, which is not bad, I guess. But time is precious, and I don’t want it to slip away like grains of sand. So farewell, old friends. I will never write anything negative related to anything that might trigger anyone. Peace is first and foremost.
edit 1 (jan 8/26) are we really ready for this volume? i know i am not, because based on what happened in volume 6 plus the synopsis of this one!? we're COOKED 😭 looks like meatbun isn't sparing us AT ALL 💔😭
My Vol. 7 Emotional Breakdown Call me crazy, but this volume gives you every emotion imaginable! I know people who DNF (did not finish) at the end of this volume, but I just can’t do that. I don't care for the smut, I would be fine without it. I have to see how this impacts them both, especially since this story has impacted me so deeply. The ending was beyond frustrating, and I desperately need Volume 8 to see what happens next. I'm also a reader who sees beyond what is written on the page. What a deeper meaning of these words can be and that's why I can never give this novel a bad review. There is way too many deeper meanings involved in this story.
So much happened in this novel and so much was revealed. I am still in utter shock! These two truly pain me. I would love for them to just sit down and lay everything out in the open: the lies, the misunderstandings, all of it. They need this discussion! They need communication.
Xie Qingcheng & He Yu I seriously need Xie Qingcheng to talk! I need him to let out his emotions and tell He Yu everything, especially his true feelings! And He Yu... what happened? How did things get so much worse just when we were starting to see development? He was becoming so gentle. What did they do to him?!
Honestly, it’s the classic Meatbun formula, and it absolutely destroyed me! It’s a toxic, heartbreaking cocktail of extreme angst, soul-crushing misunderstandings, and that cruel psychological manipulation that makes you want to scream. My heart is literally in pieces watching them get pushed to their absolute breaking point—I feel just as shattered and exhausted as they are! Happy reading!🥺😭
SPOILERS FOR FUTURE VOLUMES IN MY COMMENTS = AUTOMATIC BLOCK
🪦The Villains & The Trauma (Major Spoilers/TW)🪦
Duan Wen absolutely played a part in the terrifying changes we see in He Yu. When He Yu has a flare-up, his physician, Anthony, uses hypnosis as a "treatment." What are they actually doing to him?! Also, I loathe Anthony. He lied to Xie Qingcheng about sleeping with He Yu! There is no way He Yu would be with anyone else. Anthony knew the nature of their relationship and just wanted to get under Xie Qingcheng’s skin. It makes me furious!
The "Death" and the Aftermath After He Yu’s "death," the impact on Xie Qingcheng was devastating. He lost sight in one eye, shed a single bloody tear, and was literally dying from grief. When he embraced the cold stone of He Yu’s anonymous tomb and said, "Little Devil... Let me hold you. One last time," I cried my eyes out! He finally sought treatment, and after a year, he finally shed the tears that had been bottled up for so long.
Of course, He Yu never died. His foot was severed and he fell into the ocean, but he was recovered, and likely tortured, in Australia. I only say tortured because he has changed so much.
The Truth Revealed We finally found out who killed Xie Qingcheng’s parents: it was He Yu’s mother! But even she was a fraud. a woman who killed the real mother and took her place because she was obsessed with He Jiwei. When He Jiwei found out, he committed suicide via weed killer a month later. During that slow, painful death, he told He Yu the truth.
I believe He Yu only went to deliver those illegal drugs to Duan Wen to find a cure for Xie Qingcheng. That is how he "died" on a ship, suffering a flare-up after seeing Chen Man. He thought Xie Qingcheng was protecting Chen Man, when really, Xie Qingcheng was trying to protect him. To make matters worse, to ensure He Yu’s "loyalty," Duan Wen implanted a device in his heart. I hate that man so much!
Soap opera levels of drama. Plot armor at every turn (of course they have advanced technology that even the military doesn't have access to). Misunderstandings born from the most frustrating levels of stubbornness ever depicted in written form. This series is truly bizarre and the cover for the next book tells me things are only going to get more outlandish from here.
I have no idea how to rate this because there were times when I thought this was the strongest volume yet, but the last few chapters walked the "romance" back so far that I might be beyond convincing at this point. But, of course, I'm going to keep reading it.
Xie Qingcheng, Xie Qingcheng. I might never get to be He Yu again.
Let me hold my teddy bear one last time, okay? You have to remember how tightly I held you, the same way I’ll remember all the warmth you ever gave me.
……
Little Devil, won’t you come back?
note: god how i WISH i could share all the quotes i highlighted from this volume, just to have them speak for themselves….maybe soon i’ll reread it on kindle to share it with you all bc i don’t think my words give justice to how i feel about the story.
sigh…is this what it feels like to be as stubbornly loyal to something so controversial like xqc is with hy??
but here we go! to sum it all up, when i read vol.2, that’s when i knew what i was getting into with this series and i fully accepted it. it is really fucked up :’)
i still loved the characters, enough that he yu really struck out to me and then xie qingcheng also bowled me over in his complexity. so when i saw some negative comments on my goodreads feed about this story yesterday, i had to kind of just accept them after venting to a friend about it. it also made me rush to read this new volume to form my own opinion.
this series really isn’t for the feint of heart, and i respect anyone who knows this isn’t for them. if they get angry, i understand. but i personally feel there’s a lot of merit and heart to this story that can’t be erased, even when this pairing do such painful things to each other. there’s a lot of symbolism and small moments that are keyed in at crucial points to give you insight into the whirlwind going on in he yu’s head.
for example:
’Why did he stop resisting? Why did he stop paying attention? Why did he stop giving me any reaction—like he’s given up on me, like he’s already dead?!’
…’How strange’, he thought. He had debased Xie Qincheng so, yet the yawning void inside him only grew larger and larger. He felt like an idiot performing a monologue for himself. A surge of malice rampaged through his chest.
He Yu let that malice fuel him.
so the opinion that meatbun would purposefully write these non-con scenes just for kicks feels very strange, considering how multi-faceted she writes her characters beyond the explicit content.
we got a small taste of how far meatbun (the author) pushes her pairings with chu wanning & taxian-jun in ‘erha’. it just so happens that with ‘case file’, we’re getting the full brunt of it with he yu & xie qingcheng. they are the most dumbass pairing i’ve ever had the strange luck to discover, and their miscommunication is….heartbreaking as hell. this doesn’t even read like a dark romance to me, it’s just plain sad.
a lot of creative liberties are used as it feels like you’re constantly watching he yu switch back & forth between madness and sanity (the goddamn fucking idiot) to throw off the course of the story. but i still see a lot of depth in him, even in all his inexcusable actions. there’s just so much tension & chemistry in his scenes with xqc (especially in their reunion later on in this vol!!!), as bittersweet as things become. through that, i also can’t help but be compelled by how xie qingcheng responds to it as well.
xie qingcheng really felt like the star in this volume in all his grief & hurt. even when he yu wasn’t in the picture, you could see how irreversibly intertwined xqc was with him. they’re a twisted pairing that find cruel comfort in each other, but it reads so unmistakably human to me.
another example:
It was dark. The lights of the amusement park had gone out. With that person [He Yu] gone, even his dreams lost all color. And his eye, which had quietly shed a final trail of bloody tears in the night, seemed to be blind for good.
i see something really special in this story that makes me read it in one sitting with every volume. even with how bizarre the ending of this volume was (i don’t know what’s worse; a spit kink or piss kink….allo people scare me), it only makes me want to see more of what will happen between these two.
hexie are a one of a kind relationship, so of course i’ll stick with them to the end. lingering behind them is this top-secret criminal organization that keeps fueling the flames surrounding them, and that same org is also the heart of where all hexie’s madness began.
they hold a special place in my heart and the writing’s just always incredible, so idk…..to be continued, i suppose!!
найважча частина, я буквально продиралась крізь текст, настільки це було боляче. майже після кожної глави було бажання відкласти і подихати, це якась прірва відчаю 💔 дуже їх люблю, але це ще більше розбиває серце 😭
"They were each other's healing salve. It wasn't just He Yu who needed Xie Qingcheng; sunk into useless confusion, Xie Qingcheng also needed He Yu."
2.5 stars - god I'm so conflicted about this again. And just when He Yu was doing so well TvT. The first half of this volume was so well done, heartbreaking reading their first scene together in the rain then He Yu trying to take down Duan Wen on his own. Only for
"I'm sorry, Little Devil. You told me do many times that you loved me, yet I never told you once that actually, I also..."
Really the whole of their issues is the fact that they're both so stubborn they refuse to communicate first. While other people haven't helped (Xie Lishen there's a special place in hell for you istg), if they just talked they would clear up so many misunderstandings. And He Yu wouldn't then decide to resort to terrible acts which make Xie Qingcheng hate him again.
The new art in this was absolutely gorgeous though, very well done. And there were still aspects I found sweet. In a bit of a morbid sense, to be fair, because it was mainly around the little moments in between that neither He Yu or Xie Qingcheng let the other see. But the way I was also tearing my hair out because He Yu's toxic jealous ass had to make things twenty times worse with the conference TvT. I'm really intrigued to see how everything plays out still though, especially with The cover for volume 8 really hasn't given me any sense of relief though I fear.
It's one step forward and three steps back constantly. And while I totally understand people that have said that they'll drop the series now, I feel like I've invested too much time to not see their happy ending TvT. Self-torture reading Meatbun's works but so good.
i waited for this volume for ages and let's just say it did not disappoint me because i saw this coming and the first 60% of the story was SOOOO well written and heartbreaking and made me cry actual tears, so i just had to rate this five stars. whatever happened after that.... yeah well... hahahahaha.... we'll just see in the next volume i guess ;-; (which i hope will be interesting with the mechanical pegasi and the new blondie lmao) xie qingcheng being a girl-uncle is so canon like i totally love the idea of it. he's always given me such severe girl-dad vibes. also i fucking LOVE him. i will literally die for him. every single time he cried, i cried with him. i just want to give him a hug so bad :((((((( my favourite part of the book was when he broke down in the streets of new york city, holding that bouquet so tightly to his chest as he mourned his dead lover. and he yu before the naval battle... my heart will mourn you forever, twin. they really destroyed my baby in australia :( and FUCK ANTHONY. i will literally murder him before xqc does istfg. also i still find duan wen super interesting and i really want to know him as a character. you know what's actually funny? the whole reason i started this series was because a certain twitter yaoi circle was talking about a particular scene (the most infamous one for some reason? although i would argue there are much more scandalous scenes) which seemed so absurd to me that i just had to know more about bing an ben and i ended up reading it. and that scene happens in this book and i was judging the fuck out of myself for ever seeming interested about it. ANYWAY. whatever i read and enjoyed in this entire series is between me and god, please do not come at me.
WHAT TF HAVE I JUST READ?!!! He Yu tak keplak ndas mu suwi2, eling cah. Gua kira pada bercanda about He Yu pissed inside Xqc cok 😭 ini mah misterinya dijadiin sampingan doang, main genrenya emang maunya mbak meatbun full smut anying... ngeri ngeri sedep ye
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.