I was a mortuary reconstruction specialist.

On the eve of my wedding, I restored the remains of an unidentified woman, only to discover, shockingly, that she was Mike’s long-missing mother.

Before I had a chance to tell him the news, I was kidnapped and dragged into an underground fighting arena.

They disfigured my face, poisoned my voice into silence, drugged me and tied me up onstage to be auctioned off as a human stress toy.

With my eyes swollen to a narrow slit, I saw Mike holding his lover, passionately kissing her amid the rowdy crowd. "Mike, do you think your fiancée’s off fondling corpses again? No wonder you came here to throw your bachelor party with your sweetheart!"

After the kiss, Mike reluctantly let go of the woman in his arms and said nonchalantly,

"Karen likes fondling corpses and I like fondling Jane. We each have our own preferences! I'm getting married tomorrow, so of course I need to make Jane happy tonight!"

As the arena announced the stress-relief method and price, I struggled to wink at Mike, trying to signal him.

But he thought I was flirting with him.

Disgusted, he paid thirty thousand dollars to win the bid for slapping me a hundred times.

Mike was invited up on stage, yet he didn’t even glance at me.

He put on the special gloves handed to him by the host and raised his hand, slapping my face back and forth.

By the twentieth slap, my eardrums were already ringing.

Warm liquid trickled down the corner of my mouth that I couldn't tell if it was saliva or blood.

Mike shook out his wrist, then turned to the audience and gave Jane a doting smile. "Jane, want to come try it? It’s really stress-relieving! These people are just deadbeats who owe gambling debts anyway. It feels damn good to hit them!"

Jane covered her mouth and shook her head, but her eyes sparkled with excitement. "Mike, you go ahead. Watching you hit her is enough for me!"

The thrill and provocation in her eyes made me start to wonder. Did she know who I was?

I tried to widen my swollen eyes, letting out muffled cries through the tape over my mouth.

Jane, however, pointed at me and said, "Mike, she looks like she’s enjoying it. Go on, keep going!"

Jane was a psychologist, so naturally, her words carried weight with Mike. But I didn’t want to be hit anymore—much less die in this hellhole.

As Mike’s next slap came flying, I summoned all my strength and dodged.

The slap missed.

To please Mike, the host grabbed my hair with a mocking grin, forcing my head up. "Looks like our stress-relief toy has a bit of an attitude!"

"Mr. Genevan, as tonight’s top bidder, you get two special bonus rounds on the house."

The host publicly recited all kinds of shameful deeds I had supposedly committed while skirting the edge of legality.

After that, Mike no longer held back.

He tossed aside his bloodstained gloves and his slender fingers slid down the list of "special programs"—each one more brutal than the last, sending chills through me.

Sensing my fear, he deliberately paused at each item, commenting on them one by one.

Just last night, these very hands had tenderly prepared soup for me.

Now, they were soaked in my blood.

His gaze lingered on the line labeled "Rebellion Correction."

He chuckled softly, "This one. Karen loves studying human bones, so do I. Let’s try them while they’re still alive."

The moment electricity surged through my body, Mike raised a hammer and smashed it down, shattering my wrist.

In the throes of agony, I heard myself let out a scream so raw it barely sounded human.

‘Mike, do you even realize that the wrist you just crushed belongs to your fiancée of ten years, the woman who’s been by your side all this time?’

But then again, maybe it no longer mattered. After all, even before the wedding, you’d already cheated and taken on a mistress.

The so-called love felt like nothing more than a cruel joke.

My agonized screams drew thunderous cheers from the audience.

Those few degenerate friends praised Mike for being swift, accurate and ruthless.

"Mike, that thirty thousand dollars was really worth it! Look at how badly you’ve beaten her, yet there’s still a sparkle in her eyes when she looks at you! Honestly, her voice does sound a bit like your fiancée’s. Even that red mole on the back of her hand is in the same spot. Maybe she came here for you?"

Mike stared intently at my red mole, momentarily stunned.

I was filled with hope, thinking he had finally recognized me.

But the next second, his face twisted with disgust and without a moment's hesitation, he shattered all the joints in my fingers.

"A heartless gambling addict like you dares to resemble my Karen? I’ll break your hands and see if you can still gamble then!"

The pain nearly made me pass out and not a single word could escape my throat.

It was my fault. I never should have gambled on human nature.

I had stood by Mike from his days as a down-and-out boxer to now, a rising star in the business world.

I thought tomorrow's wedding would be the start of our happiness. But I didn’t realize that it had all been my delusion.

To better capture my suffering, Jane ran up with her phone to record me.

"Mike, the way she's clawing at the floor is just like that ragdoll cat your fiancée used to have."

"Too bad I accidentally killed it today. You think she’ll blame me?"

"It's dead, so what. Karen and I are already trying for a baby. Cat fur isn’t good for pregnant women."

A violent tremor ran through me.

Snowball was the cat Mike and I raised together. Just this morning before I went to work, he said he and Snowball would be waiting for me to come home.

But Snowball was dead now and I couldn’t go home either.

Mike didn’t want to meet my gaze and directly pressed the electric shock button. The current suddenly intensified, making me convulse and curl up.

The stabbing pain in my abdomen reminded me of the two lines on the pregnancy test I saw yesterday.

I had planned to surprise Mike with the news at our wedding tomorrow. It was a double blessing.

But I never got the chance. What was meant to be joyful had now become a thorn in my heart.

For a fleeting moment, amidst the chaos in my mind, I wondered. If I had told him yesterday that I was pregnant, would I have been spared this torment today?

He once said that even if I turned to ashes, he would still recognize me. But now, I stood right before him and he didn’t know me at all.

Worse yet, at the host’s suggestion, he chose another torture method. "Add another seventy thousand dollars. I want to see the water punishment."

Mike's voice was laced with ice, sending a chill through my entire body.

The host, thrilled that I had fetched such a high price, kept praising Mike and Jane as a golden couple.

My vision blurred with blood, but it didn’t stop me from clearly seeing Jane leaning smugly in his arms.

Her fingers, adorned with a diamond identical to mine, drew slow circles on his chest.

“Mike, you’re always so thoughtful… You know I faint at the sight of blood...”

Suddenly, two tubes were shoved into my nostrils and ice-cold water mixed with chili powder was poured in.

I convulsed violently like a fish out of water, the pain in my abdomen growing more unbearable by the second.

Warm liquid streamed down the inside of my thigh, pooling into a small puddle of blood on the iron chair.

"She seems to be bleeding heavily!" Someone suddenly shouted.

Jane turned sharply at the sound and when she saw the bloodstains, an immense hatred flashed in her eyes.

But in the next moment, she staggered twice before collapsing with precision onto the floor beside me.

Amidst the frantic footsteps of the crowd, her cold fingers suddenly gripped my ankle.

"Karen, good luck! Hope you can live to see tomorrow's sun."

Anger surged within me and I lifted my foot, kicking her hand away with all my strength.

She let out a painful cry, closed her eyes and fainted.

Mike rushed over and picked her up, turning to shout at me in anger.

"You bitch dare to kick my Jane? Are you looking for death!"

"I'll offer another 700 thousand dollars! Anyone here can come up and have a go, just don't kill her!"

My vision began to darken and the host hurriedly gave the order, "Quick, untie her! If she really dies, how are we going to deal with Mr. Genevan afterward?"

At the moment the ropes were loosened, I used my last bit of strength to lunge at Mike.

My deformed fingers, twisted in the blood, shakily wrote the first stroke of the character “Karen" in the pool of blood. The pain from having all ten fingers broken made me tremble all over.

Someone asked in confusion.

"What is this crazy woman doing?"

Mike stopped in his tracks and looked down at the ground.

When the incomplete character “Karen" entered his sight, his pupils suddenly contracted.

"Karen?"

I desperately nodded, tears of blood mixing as they dripped onto the name.

Looking at my miserable state, Mike felt a sharp pain in his chest and even his throat felt like it was clogged with damp cotton, unbearably uncomfortable.

But as Jane in her arms cried out in discomfort, his shiny leather shoe viciously crushed my fingers.

"How dare you write my fiancee's name? You knew Jane fainted from blood, how dare you bleed this much?"

Even though my consciousness was already fading, Mike’s anger was still unquenched.

He lifted his foot and kicked my abdomen with all his strength.

"They really guessed it right, you thought you could seduce me to save you? Dream on! You’re not even worth a single strand of my fiance’s hair!"

If he hadn’t been holding Jane in his arms when he said this, it might have been more convincing.

A large amount of warm liquid spilled out from below and Mike’s shoe sole was stained with blood.

But what he didn’t know was that this blood-soaked ground was from the child he cherished so much.

"Mike, this blood loss is abnormal!"

"You're getting married tomorrow, it’s unlucky to get blood on you, should we just stop?"

"Shut your mouth, you damn crow!"

Mike snapped sharply, then ordered the arena staff to hurry and call a doctor to stabilize my life.

"If she really dies, it’s only because her life is too weak!"

The pain crashed over me in waves like the tide and even fainting seemed like a luxury.

Mike’s friends took turns standing guard, ensuring that if I died, they could handle it in time.

They treated me like a living corpse, casually discussing my fate, their voices intermittently drifting into my ears.

"Mike is amazing. He even made Jane willingly be his mistress for life!"

"Yeah, and Jane became his lover even before she graduated, right? I remember that he had just proposed to Karen not long before that."

So, Mike had been cheating two years ago.

I didn’t know how his heart could be torn in two, yet he could still act so deeply affectionate in front of me.

I lay in the pool of blood, feeling my life slowly draining from me.

After emergency treatment, the bleeding finally stopped.

The child in my womb was gone.

In a daze, I heard Mike’s footsteps as he returned.

"Mike, she lost the child, it’s so pitiful. How about we just let her go? The money can be considered as charity..."

Jane pleaded for me with a sob, but Mike sneered coldly. "Jane, you're too kind! The law can’t educate people like her, the scum of society. Someone has to discipline her parents."

A new round of torment was about to begin.

After all, the rules of the underground fighting arena were clear—if you owed a debt you couldn’t pay, your body was the collateral.

As long as I didn't die, I could continue to be their tool for stress relief.

My consciousness fluctuated between excruciating pain and unconsciousness.