Cold! So cold it felt like her very soul was freezing!
This was Lan's only sensation before darkness claimed her. The river water, imbued with a malice far exceeding any winter storm, clung to her, dragging her relentlessly towards the lightless depths. Her lungs burned as if filled with magma. Every futile gasp for air only drew in more icy water, thick with the stench of rotting weeds and silt, ravaging her from the inside out.
No! She couldn't die like this!
Driven by a final thread of obsession, Lan forced her eyes wide, her gaze piercing the veil of death, fixing on the two figures on the bank who ignited a bone-deep hatred within her!
Lucian! Her fiancé, to whom she had given everything, even defying her family for his sake!
Samantha! Her childhood confidante, the cousin she treated like a sister, sharing all her secrets!
It was them! This despicable pair stood side-by-side on the bank, watching as if appreciating the finale of a meticulously staged drama! Lucian's handsome face, which she once adored, now held only cold indifference, perhaps even… a hint of relief? He tilted his head slightly, murmuring something to Samantha beside him.
Across the barrier of life and death, through the roar of the water, Lan still caught those poisoned words:
"...shouldn't have known…"
Samantha, the ever-gentle Samantha, now had a faint, cruel smile playing on her lips as she nodded slightly.
"This way… it's clean."
Clean…
So, her existence, Lan's existence, her wholehearted love and trust, were nothing more than a "stain" in their eyes, needing to be ruthlessly wiped away?!
A towering inferno of hatred erupted, instantly eclipsing the fear of death and the agony of suffocation! Why?! What had she done wrong to deserve such vicious betrayal?! How dared they?!
"I—AM—NOT—RESIGNED—!!!" (Translator's Note: A more forceful rendition of '我不甘心').
This bloodcurdling roar, in the final moment before consciousness completely dissipated, became the most venomous curse, branded deep within her soul.
"Cough, cough… cough cough cough!"
Violent coughing tore at her throat, forcibly dragging Lan back from that endless, icy darkness. She gasped greedily for air, each breath scraping her throat like an icy knife, her lungs still aching and tight.
But this feeling… was wrong!
Not the bone-soaking wet cold, but a dry chill thick with the heavy stench of mildew and decay. Beneath her wasn't the cold riverbed, but something hard, rough, prickling with sharp stalks of… straw? What covered her was coarse as sackcloth, scratching painfully against her skin.
Lan snapped her eyes open.
Her vision swam into focus on a scene of dim dilapidation. The only light source was a narrow, filth-encrusted crack high up on the wall, dust motes dancing visibly in its weak beam. The low ceiling was draped in grey-black cobwebs, looking ready to collapse. The walls were cracked mud and stone, letting the cold wind seep in relentlessly. The stench in the air—mildew, rot, a sourness like excrement—was almost nauseating.
What hellhole was this?!
She struggled to move, but her body felt heavy as lead, every bone and muscle screaming with soreness and weakness. She lifted her hand, only to see a completely unfamiliar, small hand, thin to the point of being skeletal. The skin was sallow and rough, knuckles covered in the purplish scars of healed chilblains and old calluses, fingernails packed with black dirt.
These were not her hands! Lan shuddered violently, her heart seized by an invisible, crushing grip!
Her hands, which had played piano for over a decade, pampered with the most expensive creams, without a single fine line—how could they look like this?!
"Am I alive?" The thought had barely formed before she rejected it. She had died, died under the cold smiles of that vile pair!
"Then… where is this?" Fear, like a cold serpent, coiled around her heart, tightening its grip. "My body… What happened to my body?!"
Confusion, terror, disbelief… emotions churned wildly in her mind, triggering waves of splitting headache. She wanted to scream, to demand answers, but lacked even a shred of extra energy.
She could only curl up like a truly abandoned infant in this cold, filthy pile of straw, letting the chill and despair seep into her, bit by bit. Everything around her—the smells, the textures, the pain—felt intensely real, cruelly real.
A suspicion, more terrifying than death, more unbearable in its injustice, began to take shape like a phantom in her chaotic consciousness—
She, Lan, perhaps hadn't completely died after all.
But rather, had been thrown, in a way she couldn't comprehend, filled with malicious mockery, into another hell, to continue "living."