“Go ahead and tell me as we walk.” Liang Sheng shrugged off her jacket and draped it over Ling Dang, then took hold of the other woman’s ice-cold hand.
Ling Dang’s words no longer came out in stutters. Instead, they flowed smoothly and with great force. “Da Hai and I met during the late Qing dynasty. I was eight years older than him. Our first encounter was on the street, where a tanghulu vendor had caught his eye. Greedy for a taste, he darted over and nearly died under an official’s horse. I rushed in without a thought for the danger and saved him…”
Da Hai?
“Wait, hold on, Sister Lingdang. The Da Hai you’re talking about is…” Liang Sheng had a vague inkling of the answer already.
Sure enough, the shape of Ling Dang’s slightly parted lips confirmed her guess.
“Su Ze…”
“He’s gone by so many aliases over the years.” Ling Dang’s hand grew even colder, and the thin jacket draped over her did nothing to warm her body.
Liang Sheng had suspected as much for a while, but hearing it straight from Ling Dang’s lips still hit her like a thunderbolt. Su Ze—or Da Hai, as he’d once been known? Had he really lived this long?
“By my count… Da Hai and I have been alive for nearly two hundred years now…” A gust of wind swept through, and Ling Dang shivered.
“Ah…” Liang Sheng had no idea what to say.
Ling Dang came to a sudden halt. She lowered her head, staring at the toes of her shoes and the puddles dotting the uneven ground. Then, just as abruptly, she spoke again. “I’ve lived long enough. I don’t want to go on.”
“Sister… Lingdang?” Liang Sheng fumbled for words, unsure whether to offer comfort or not.
“Every day, I live like an idiot—unable to remember a thing, muddled through in a haze of eating, sleeping, and staring blankly. You could call it being waited on hand and foot by servants. Truth be told, it’s nothing but surveillance and captivity. I can’t even die if I want to.”
“Whenever a memory starts to surface, my head throbs like it’s splitting open. Even if something flashes into my mind, it slips away in an instant. Day after day, I strain to recall, sensing I’ve lost something vital. It’s too painful to keep living. I have no will left to continue.”
Ling Dang unleashed this torrent of despair—life wasn’t worth the pain—and Liang Sheng found herself at a loss, unable to grasp that depth of isolation.
“In truth, I stopped wanting to live over a hundred years ago. A human life is only meant to be so long. Stretch it further, and all that remains is loneliness. But Da Hai, he…” Ling Dang shook her head and resumed walking alongside Liang Sheng.
Liang Sheng ventured, “Because the System was with him, you couldn’t make the choice yourself, right?”
“No,” Ling Dang said, turning to meet her eyes. “At the start, the System was with me.”
“What… what…?” The plot’s wild twists left Liang Sheng reeling. “If the System was yours at first, then how did it end up with Su—Su Ze, no, Da Hai?”
“Da Hai erased that memory from me,” Ling Dang sighed, then hurried to add, “But apart from that one, I remember everything else now. It’s all come flooding back!”
Liang Sheng’s heart had plummeted at the mention of the deletion—she’d feared the trail had gone cold once more—only for relief to surge in its wake. Her emotions were on a roller coaster.
For some unfathomable reason, Ling Dang’s hand began to tremble, and her words tumbled out faster. “There’s more—let me go on. Why did I end up with the System in the first place?”
Oh! Finally, the answer to the question that had plagued her for so long! Excitement flared in Liang Sheng. Her grip tightened on the umbrella handle and on Ling Dang’s hand.
“I died.”
“Huh? What?”
Those three blunt words left Liang Sheng dumbfounded.
“I was twenty-three that year. Some officials took a liking to my looks and dragged me into an alley…” Ling Dang’s voice trailed off, choked with emotion. “They… violated me…”
“…”
Ling Dang spared the details, but that single revelation made everything click for Liang Sheng in an instant—though there was nothing she could do about it.
“Da Hai wanted to kill them, but he was up against too many. He was only fifteen back then, a naive boy who’d never seen the world’s cruelty.” Tears welled in Ling Dang’s eyes. “They dragged him to the execution ground, and as for me… my husband cast me aside.”
“You were… what?” Liang Sheng’s mind reeled, a huge question mark hovering over her small head. “Husband? What did you say?”
The green-haired girl’s thoughts dissolved into chaos. What was this supposed to mean? That Su Ze had been the man—the male mistress? Ha? What kind of outrageous twist was this?
Ling Dang pressed her lips together. “It’s embarrassing to admit… I saved Da Hai when he was eight, and I was already sixteen—old enough for marriage. Two years later, at eighteen, I wed the son of a farming family.”
“Was it… your choice?” Liang Sheng stammered. This cuckold drama was beyond her—she couldn’t even picture it!
Ling Dang paused, then shook her head. “The family was destitute back then. My father scraped together a few strings of cash to send my brother to the capital for the imperial exams, so…”
“And Da Hai’s family was dirt poor—no way they could afford a bride price for me…”
“…”
Liang Sheng swallowed hard, her throat burning with bitterness.
“There was no helping it. My husband treated me well enough, though he was timid, honest to a fault, and obsessed with saving face. Well, after the violation, he felt humiliated on one side and terrified of reprisal from those powerful officials on the other. So he divorced me.”
To boil it down, wasn’t he just… at best, honest to the point of crippling insecurity; at worst, a gutless coward devoid of any loyalty?!
“Three days before they were set to execute Da Hai, I emptied every last savings I had for a single prison visit.” A faint smile touched Ling Dang’s lips. “I caressed his face, pulled the hairpin from my head, and slit my own throat. I died right there in his arms…”
Liang Sheng’s eyes went wide as she drew in a sharp breath. “Sister Lingdang…”
She couldn’t fathom enduring something like that. If it had been her, she’d have lost her mind right then and there.
“But I heard Da Hai’s wails. I was so full of regret, such bitter regret. Why? Why, even after I’d sacrificed myself by marrying a man I didn’t love, did heaven refuse to spare me—to spare the one I truly cared for?” Tears traced down Ling Dang’s cheeks, mingling with the rain as they splashed to the ground.
Drawing from years of devouring novels, Liang Sheng could guess what came next. “So that’s when the System appeared?”
Ling Dang nodded. “Yes. A voice echoed in my mind all of a sudden: ‘Welcome to bind with the Strategy Value System.’”
“Strategy Value System?” Liang Sheng frowned.
Akino Kazuko jumped right in. “That’s not right! There’s no Strategy Value System among the six of us!”
