Lin Zixi had never encountered a mental patient like this before, and she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of helplessness. Somewhat frustrated, she pressed a hand to her forehead, drawing on her good upbringing to explain softly, “Because you aren’t dead at all.”
Madwomen gonna madwoman, she thought. Otherwise, why would a living person keep insisting they’re already dead?
Ye Can’s eyes widened as she raised her voice. “Impossible. I clearly died already.”
“The poison on the dagger was applied by my own hand. When I arrived in Hell, the wound on my chest was still bleeding.” As she spoke, Ye Can hurriedly clutched at her chest, only feeling smooth skin beneath her fingers.
She looked down, pulling aside her clothes, her eyes filled with shock. “This is impossible. I clearly slit my own throat in the palace hall. This must be Hell’s scheme, numbing me into thinking I haven’t died yet.”
That’s right. It has to be. This must be a trial for entering Hell.
Lin Zixi felt like she was about to be defeated by her. She couldn’t help but explain, “I’m sorry to say, this truly isn’t Hell. Though it’s far from perfect, it is very much a living, breathing human world.”
“Look at the morning light outside the window. Look at me standing before you. Feel your heartbeat. Which of these belongs to Hell?”
Ye Can lifted her hand upon hearing this, placing it cautiously over her chest.
From her fingertips came a steady, powerful throb. It was the symbol of life, the sole proof of existence among the living.
This was utterly different from the stillness she’d known in the darkness before. This was the most beautiful pulse of life itself.
Ye Can pressed carefully against her heart, her brows furrowing tightly. She looked up at Lin Zixi, as if seeking confirmation, and asked, “You mean… I am still alive?”
Lin Zixi nodded firmly. “You are still alive.”
A smile graced her face as she spoke in the gentlest tone. “I don’t know what you’ve been through to make you think you’re dead. But right now, without a doubt, you are alive. In the human world, under the sunlight, living well.”
Ye Can stared at the smile on her face, her mind descending into chaos.
What joke is Heaven playing on me? The dead can’t come back to life, and rivers don’t flow upstream—these are basic truths! So why is something so earth-shattering to my understanding happening now?
Why am I still alive? On what basis? If this is living, then what was the place I existed in before?
Ye Can’s tone grew urgent. “You say this isn’t Hell—what is this place, then?”
Lin Zixi’s gaze was gentle. “I told you, this is the human world. The real human world.”
I see. If this is real, then what am I—the one who was once a king? Ye Can thought. Storybooks mention souls borrowing corpses to return to life, but nothing about rebirth into a new world after death.
Ye Can found this far too unbelievable. She yanked back the blanket in one motion, ripped out the IV needle, leaped off the bed, and dashed to the window.
Her series of actions left Lin Zixi stunned. Lin Zixi hurried after her and saw Ye Can shove open the half-closed window, leaning out to peer downward. Anxiously, she asked, “What are you doing?”
Ye Can gazed at the towering buildings in the distance, like mountains upon mountains, at the ceaseless flow of traffic far below, and then down at the ground so very far away. In a cold voice, she declared, “I am going to die.”
Surely I haven’t died enough yet, for something this absurd to happen.
Lin Zixi’s face drained of color at her words. She reached out hurriedly to grab Ye Can. Ye Can braced one hand on the windowsill, twisted her head to give Lin Zixi a deep look, then threw herself forward, plummeting from the high-rise.
The piercing morning wind whipped across her cheeks. Ye Can kept her eyes open, letting her body fall straight down in the pull of gravity.
Accompanied by a scream, her head struck like an egg dashed against hard stone. With a thud and a crack, it shattered.
Blood and brains oozed out from beneath her skull like the whites of a broken egg. Ye Can tilted her head back, gazing at the brilliant sun above, her body pressed flat against the ground as she once more felt the chill of life departing.
The flowing blood stole away her warmth, leaving only endless pain and cold. Her vision blurred steadily; the sun overhead grew hazy in her faltering gaze, gradually encroached upon by spots of darkness.
Around her, people screamed and ran, but all sounds stretched distant and ethereal in her dazed thoughts.
A frantic alarm rang out like a death knell, repeating over and over: “World connection lost… World connection lost… Forced logout… Forced logout…”
As the voice sounded, the scene before Ye Can’s eyes crumbled like a sandcastle swept by a gale.
Reality ebbed away, everything reverting to illusion. Ye Can instinctively turned her eyes toward the hospital’s main entrance not far off.
In the disintegrating world, Lin Zixi—black hair and white clothes—rushed toward her desperately, as if crossing through time itself.
Ye Can watched her blurring figure, her fingertips trembling faintly amid the searing pain.
Those memories of death sharpened as Lin Zixi drew near. Inevitably, Ye Can recalled that cold late spring in the third month.
She lay on the icy ground in thin clothes, blood blooming across her chest like the most vivid flower.
In her dimming vision, a woman in white robes with black hair approached, cradling a camellia shrub.
The woman placed the camellia on Ye Can’s chest and pressed her warm body atop hers. It seemed like the first warmth Ye Can had ever known in her memory.
Ye Can closed her eyes contentedly, surrendering to eternal sleep in the darkness. All sounds faded with the wind, leaving only the woman’s soft sigh in the desolate night: “May we not meet again in a winter night in the next life…”
“Too cold.”
In the darkness, Ye Can murmured those words softly, awakening from the agony of death.
She slowly opened her eyes. A full moon hung in the night sky, its reflection serene in her gaze. Moments later, she felt pain spreading from the back of her head. She sat up gradually, clutching the spot.
Her fingertips met damp stickiness. Ye Can hissed softly, bringing her hand to her face for a close look.
Under the moonlight, the vivid red, viscous liquid revealed the brutality of the wound on the back of her head. With damage like this, I’ve finally died for good this time, Ye Can thought.
Death should be an endless slumber.
Just then, a gust blew from the east. Ye Can turned her head toward the depths of the darkness.
The thick gloom around her parted like stagnant water in a lake stirred by the wind. An unfamiliar aura, distinct from the night, furrowed her brows.
A faint breeze grazed Ye Can’s ear, and the world came alive, vibrant once more.
A small moth fluttered out from the darkness, beating its wings toward the bright moon above.
Ye Can seemed to grasp something, staring fixedly at the moth flying toward the moon. In the dim light, her vision began to scatter.
Then, an exceedingly gentle female voice sounded by her ear.
It was the Deity speaking. “It seems you still do not know your own sins.”
Sins? What sins could I have?
Yan Kingdom was already beyond saving before I ascended the throne. I was a puppet king thrust upon it—surely incompetence isn’t my sin?
The Deity refuted her. “No, that was your fate.”
If it was fate, then where is the sin? Is it because I abandoned my life? But if I hadn’t died, countless others would have died because of me.
The Deity sighed. “That was your choice.”
Not that, not this—what is my sin, then?
The Deity offered guidance. “It is that white camellia.”
The white camellia? Ye Can thought of that woman, the one who followed her in death. After pondering, she found it laughable. “Just because she died for love with me?”
“She loved to death and death she got—what does that have to do with me?”
The Deity under the moonlight spoke with pity. “It seems you still don’t understand. Ye Can, sentenced to Avici Hell for a hundred years.”
As the Deity’s voice fell, the surrounding darkness collapsed. It felt as if an invisible giant hand shoved Ye Can from behind, ejecting her from the dense black mist.
Ye Can stumbled a few steps. No sooner had she emerged from the darkness than two blinding beams of light struck from behind.
She whipped around to see a colossal, glittering beast charging straight at her.
Ye Can reflexively raised her arms, but the behemoth roared toward her body. In an instant, it pierced through her like lightning, slamming into the nearby mountainside.
With a boom, the colossal thing crashed against the cliff wall and halted abruptly.
Ye Can stared in shock at her own body, then turned to the steel monstrosity that had shattered against the rock face nearby.
A cold wind carried the thick scent of blood to her. Sensing something, Ye Can walked step by step toward the roadside behemoth.
Before she even drew near, she heard a woman’s anguished cry. “Help… save me… Someone, please save me…”
Through the window, Ye Can saw Lin Zixi slumped inside the behemoth. Shards had lacerated her face, covering it in blood. The fatal wound was at her neck—a jagged shard of glass impaling it, blood gushing forth.
The blood-soaked woman pleaded weakly, on the verge of death.
The violent impact had ruined her delicate makeup, with blood as her final vivid hue amid the frigid night.
A stabbing pain surged in Ye Can’s chest. Separated by a pane of glass, she watched the dying woman and clutched at her own heart.
Ye Can watched the blood dripping from the woman’s fingertips, heard her faint cries for help, and instinctively reached out to touch those fingers. But Ye Can’s ethereal body passed right through, filling her with dread.
She watched helplessly as the woman’s breaths grew fainter and fainter, until she died slowly in the icy night. In the end, Ye Can knelt powerless on the ground, clutching her heart.
It hurts—so much more than when I stabbed myself before dying.
So this is it—the punishment I deserve after death. This is Avici Hell.
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