Chapter 5: Mistakes of a Past Life

This cell was dark and gloomy, yet it was still far better than what the others got.

Clean, fully furnished, even the daily meals were carefully prepared. No one dared slight Qi Yunchu, a prisoner though she was.

She sat on the bed, one leg bent, leaning against the wall. Her head hung low, the strands of hair across her forehead covering her eyes and half her face, making her look utterly defeated.

Someone came every day to deliver her medicine. Her wounds were slowly healing, but her muscles and bones had been damaged too deeply. Her martial arts, it seemed, were ruined for good.

She had been locked up here for three days now. The people of the South had posted soldiers to watch her, but they never put her in shackles. They even gave her medicine, letting her live.

Just whose idea did she think that was?

Qi Yunchu’s lips curled slightly as she listened, indifferent, to the Little System’s startled squawking in her mind.

【Host! Ahhh! It went up again! The Bone-Deep Love Value is at seventy! Seventy-three!】

【You’re noisy. Quiet down.】

The voice was giving her a headache, Qi Yunchu said flatly in her mind.

At once, the cold mechanical voice grew muffled, as if a hand had been clapped over its mouth.

Qi Yunchu closed her eyes and considered the mission that was so nearly complete, feeling utterly bored.

She had done countless missions. She admired and respected those who could cut things off decisively, clean and sharp. As for someone like Qin Youning, who wavered endlessly and let her emotions spin her in circles, she had no interest whatsoever.

Once you’d done the deed, shouldn’t you be prepared to face the consequences?

But the steadily climbing Bone-Deep Love Value told her that Qin Youning had begun to regret, to worry, to fear… to not dare face it.

If the Qin Youning of now could have held true to her original heart, kept her hatred, and walked her path without fear, the mission would have been harder, but Qi Yunchu might have looked at her in a new light and granted her the best possible future.

She had roamed the Main Plane all these years, and honestly, she didn’t care much for the mission rewards. If someone could stand against her and make her taste the bitterness of a failed mission, she would actually find it thrilling. She might even… be willing to bring that person back to the Main Plane and give them a chance to grow.

And in the end… let that person… kill her!

Heh heh heh…

Qi Yunchu let out a few stifled laughs, though there wasn’t a trace of warmth in the curve of her lips.

Soft footsteps sounded outside the cell. She didn’t lift her head, her eyes still closed.

A burning gaze fell on her from across the bars. Someone stood there, watching her intently.

“…A-Yun.” Someone called her name softly, but the voice trembled uncontrollably.

Qi Yunchu opened her eyes, gave her a calm glance, tilted her head, and pulled at the corner of her mouth. Then she laughed lightly. “Ha. If it isn’t the Female Lord.”

“Has the Female Lord come to see me off to my death?”

Leaning against the wall, she regarded the other woman with lazy eyes, cold as ice, without a shred of the infatuation and adoration she once held. She asked the question with an air of amusement.

And then she watched as pain and regret flashed across the face of the woman in the green dress, who still stood there pure and flawless as a clear moon on fresh wind.

Her fingertips pinched white within her wide sleeves, Qin Youning’s lips quivered, her voice hoarse. “…I never wanted to kill you… I came to take you away…”

Her face was pale, sicklier than Qi Yunchu’s, a wounded patient’s. Those eyes, always so calm and cold, were now full of panic and unease.

Qi Yunchu said nothing, watching coldly as the woman’s face grew whiter and whiter, her voice pressed low as if afraid of frightening someone, laced with a faint, almost inaudible pleading.

“I… let me take you away, all right? I’ll treat you well… We’ll marry… We can spend our whole lives together…” The words grew more and more tangled until she was nearly choking on them.

She looked up at the person she loved with hope in her eyes, and found only coldness there, and a flicker of disgust.

It was as if something had seized her throat. She stared blankly at Qi Yunchu, her lips trembling. “…You said… you would marry me…”

How long does it take, to go from certain of victory to anxious and terrified?

Qin Youning slowly fell silent. She stared, dazed, at the woman before her, at the unmoved expression on her face, her own throat dry and blocked.

How had it come to this?

She asked herself vaguely. She had hesitated for a long time before coming to see Qi Yunchu, and what she saw matched exactly what she had imagined. The only difference was her own heart…

It shouldn’t be like this.

This person was the one who betrayed her first.

Now that her revenge had succeeded, she should be happy.

She was the one who used her, who deceived her first…

She was the one who drove a sword into her heart first…

She was the one who… first made a lifelong vow, then broke it…

She deserved it!

All it would take was one word from her, and this person could be locked at her side forever…

They could be together forever. They could spend their lives side by side…

Qin Youning ached to seize her hand, to cage the woman in her arms and tell her:

Look, this is what happens to those who betray me!

You deserve it!

But the moment her eyes fell on her, that still-youthful face told her: this was not the Qi Yunchu who had betrayed her. This was the one who had promised her a lifetime of devotion, one heart for one heart… the one who had loved her with everything she had.

And so the resentment that had festered and wavered for so long dissolved in an instant, leaving no trace behind.

A heart steeped too long in darkness pushed away its salvation the moment it saw the light. The filthy monster grasped the hand the deity extended… and dragged the deity down into the mud with it…

The world sank back into darkness and silence.

The person who once gazed at her with stars in her eyes now held nothing in hers but disgust.

One look was enough to make her hands tremble uncontrollably with the pain of it.

How utterly ridiculous…

Plop!

“…I was wrong…”

“…I was wrong…”

The woman in the green dress, her eyes rimmed red, lowered her head and wept until she couldn’t speak.

Tears struck the ground with crisp little sounds, chipping away, piece by piece, at all the pride she carried.

She murmured it over and over, and the high walls she had built around her heart collapsed in an instant.

Qi Yunchu watched coldly, watching her wallow in regret, her own heart calm and still.

A person only ever gets one chance at life.

If you want revenge, then do not fall in love again.

If you fall in love, then let go of the hatred and work toward a better ending.

So why was it that there were always people who, only after doing everything, knelt here weeping and drowning in remorse?

Too late, by then.

【Regret Value +1】

【Regret Value +1】

…+1, +1, +1, +1…

Laughable. Pitiable.

“Where is the Mandarin Duck Jade I gave you?” Qi Yunchu said abruptly, her tone indifferent.

“You can return it to me now.” That was what she said.

Qin Youning’s head snapped up. Her mouth worked, her eyes full of begging.

She looked at the woman across from her and finally answered in a low voice, “…I didn’t bring it. It’s at home…”

In truth, it hung at her chest, every moment of every day.

The woman across from her suddenly smiled, her brows smoothing out, yet the smile could not scatter the chill and mockery in it.

Qi Yunchu unhurriedly lifted a black cord from around her neck. Hanging from it was her half of the Mandarin Duck Jade.

“Since the Female Lord is unwilling to wear it, there’s no need to trouble yourself with it in the future.” She hooked one finger through the jade and slowly raised her hand.

“…No… no!” Qin Youning’s eyes went wide. She rushed forward and gripped the bars, then fished out her keys, desperate to unlock the cell door and stop her.

But it was useless…

Too late…

Qi Yunchu simply watched her the whole time with an amused smile, as if watching a clown perform. And then, as Qin Youning flung open the cell door and rushed in…

Crack!

The jade shattered.

It fell an inch before her feet, breaking into several pieces on the ground.

The last thing Qin Youning’s fingertips touched was the tassel strung so carefully beneath it.

It slipped through her fingers. She grasped with all her strength, and nothing could be undone.

It was just like a joke.

Qi Yunchu seemed to have been truly amused. She raised a hand to cover her eyes and laughed into it.

Frozen in the posture of someone reaching out to catch it, Qin Youning paused for a moment, then slowly bent down and picked up the pieces of jade from the ground, one by one.

She said nothing more. In silence, she turned and left.

She stepped out of the cell, closed the door, and locked it. Then she raised her eyes once more to the woman smiling back at her from across the bars. Her lips moved, and every trace of expression drained from her face.

Qin Youning didn’t know how she made it out of there. The first ray of sunlight that struck her outside the prison stung her eyes so badly they ached.

“…Young Lady… Young Lady, you’re bleeding!” It was Qingsu’s voice, blurred and indistinct, as if drifting from somewhere very far away.

Bleeding?

Qin Youning looked down, dazed, at her palm, sliced open by the shards of jade and bleeding without stop. The vivid red had already dripped onto her long dress, staining her clothes.

“Young Lady, let go! You’re gripping too tightly!” Qingsu tried to bandage her hand, but she couldn’t pry her fingers apart.

She was gripping too tightly. Her fingertips had gone white, pierced bloody, and still she refused to let go.

Qin Youning lowered her gaze to the shattered jade. After a long moment, as if something had finally registered, she lifted her other hand and closed it over the first, dodging Qingsu’s reaching hands, shaking her head again and again.

“I can’t let go.”

“…I can’t let go.”

If she let go, she wouldn’t be able to hold on.

If she let go, she would run.

She couldn’t let go…

She staggered toward her residence, walking faster and faster, until at last she broke into a run.

Behind her, someone was anxiously telling her to slow down.

Everywhere, people were looking at her strangely.

But Qin Youning kept her eyes fixed only on the shards of jade in her palm, cradling them carefully as she ran back to the estate, ran into her room, and then… gently, with the utmost care, placed them inside the brocade box.

Her expression finally eased a little. Her face was dry and sore, her eyes dark and hollow.

Kneeling before the table, she gazed greedily at the jade. At last she closed the lid, hugged the brocade box to her chest, and suddenly her whole body shook as she burst out laughing.

Plop!

Plop!

Tears from the corners of her eyes fell one by one, striking the dust. She lifted a hand and pressed a devout kiss to the brocade box, her expression unhinged.

Don’t let go.

This way, it’s fine.

This way, she won’t run away.

This way, it’s fine…

She carefully took the jade hanging at her neck and placed it into the brocade box as well.

Look, the jade is together now.

She watched the jade with a smile, though everything before her eyes had blurred.

【Host, you’re toying with her, plain and simple.】The mechanical voice, silent for so long, sounded again.

【Oh?】Qi Yunchu raised a brow, a soft laugh echoing in her mind.

【She’s the one whose will wasn’t firm. How could that possibly be my fault?】

【But it was you who provoked her in the first place, wasn’t it?】the System analyzed coolly.

【You seduced her first and made her fall in love with you. Then you betrayed her and made her taste despair.】

【Anyone, in that situation, would want revenge, wouldn’t they?】

【So she hated you and wanted to destroy you. That is what she had been steadfastly doing ever since she was reborn.】

【But you refused to let her succeed so easily. You were bent on completing the Bone-Deep Love mission, so you needed to construct a lie.】

【You were reborn into the same life as her, yet pretended to know nothing, following her plan step by step, playing the innocent admirer who had never hurt her at all. Then you seduced her again, moved her again, and made her begin to waver.】

【A heart full of hatred, aimed at an innocent, unknowing enemy. Nearly twenty years of scheming, and what she destroyed was the admirer who truly loved her… Yunchu, you are deliberately driving her mad.】

【Her revenge is righteous and justified, yet you keep telling her: this is wrong, all your suffering is of your own making…】

The System’s voice rose sharply, tinged with what sounded like indignation.

Qi Yunchu had been listening with her cheek propped on her hand. Now she chuckled softly and began to clap, slow and unhurried.

【Not bad. You’ve improved.】she praised.

【Whoever flirts first is shameless, but whoever loves first loses.】

【I was the former. She was the latter.】She settled back into a half-recline, a smile in her mind as she spoke, her voice soft.

【See? Haven’t I already won?】

The System said nothing more. After a long while, its cold voice sounded once again.

【Number One Bounty Hunter of the Planes. The reputation is well deserved.】

【Congratulations, Host. Bone-Deep Love Value: 99】

【You flatter me.】