Lu Zhiling stood by the roadside, her soul feeling as though it had been shredded. She wanted to scream, to let out a primal howl that would shatter the night, but her throat was constricted by an invisible hand. Not a single sound emerged.
Bo Wang looked at her from the driver’s seat, his expression a mask of cruel indifference. As if anticipating the plea for mercy or time she was about to utter, he cut her off with a voice like jagged glass. “What? Are you planning to stay here and keep Shou Ye [a traditional wake or vigil for the deceased] for her? She’s dead, Lu Zhiling. Move on.”
Her pale lips parted, trembling, but no words came. She could only watch with hollow eyes as he slammed the car into gear, the distance between them growing until the taillights were mere pinpricks in the dark.
Eventually, she found herself back in the confines of his car, the silence between them heavy and suffocating. The air felt thin, as if the night itself were sucking the oxygen out of the cabin. Drenched in Gu Na’s drying blood, Lu Zhiling leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window.
“Bo Wang,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the tires. “I want to get out. I want to walk for a while. Is that alright?”
“Do you truly take me for your chauffeur?” Bo Wang scoffed, his grip on the wheel tightening.
“No… I just feel a bit suffocated. You go back first. I’ll take a taxi later.” She spoke with a fragile gentleness, terrified of sparking his volatile temper.
But Bo Wang was past the point of reason. He didn’t slow down. He caught her reflection in the mirror—that look of total, abyssal despair, her eyes as vacant as they had been during her months of blindness. It galled him. “Just one of your brother’s old flames,” he spat. “Anyone watching would think your own lover had died. I’m still sitting right here, aren’t I?”
“She was different,” she murmured, staring at the blurred lights outside. “She could have been… family.”
Bo Wang let out a sharp, derisive laugh. “Family? It’s just a thin, invisible thread of sentiment. When you’re dead, your ashes go into separate urns. Why mythologize a corpse? It’s hypocritical.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning swept through her. She looked at his sharp, handsome profile—so beautiful, yet so utterly devoid of warmth. “Let me out,” she said, her voice gaining a hard edge of desperation.
He ignored her.
“Let me out! Let me out!” she persisted, her voice rising until it was a jagged needle in his ear.
Bo Wang slammed on the brakes. The tires shrieked against the asphalt, and the car lurched to a violent halt. He turned to her, his eyes flashing like a winter gale. “Lu Zhiling, who are you trying to deceive with that ghostly, inhuman face? Fine. Get out! I’m done with your theatrics!”
The momentum of the stop threw her forward, her small frame jolting painfully. She grabbed the back of the passenger seat to steady herself, her breath coming in ragged hitches. Without a second’s hesitation, she pushed the door open and stepped out into the night.
Bo Wang stared at the space she had occupied, a nameless, scorching fire erupting in his chest. She actually left. Where was the shivering, pleading girl who had begged him to save Gu Na? He gritted his teeth, floored the accelerator, and roared away, the wind of his passage whipping her hair into a frenzy.
The night in Jiangbei was an ink-wash painting gone wrong. The streets were a cacophony of life—young parents laughing with children, elderly couples pushing wheelchairs, a mother and daughter on an electric scooter singing a folk song.
Amidst this normalcy, Lu Zhiling drifted like a You Gui [a wandering ghost]. Half her face was the color of bone; the other half was a gruesome mask of dried blood. It trailed down to the corner of her eyes, a macabre teardrop. Her skirt fluttered in the breeze, releasing the faint, metallic scent of a slaughterhouse.
“Mommy, that lady has so much blood!” a child cried out.
The bubble of normalcy burst. People recoiled, some screaming in fright, others hurling curses. “Are you crazy? Scaring people in the middle of the night!”
Lu Zhiling offered a robotic, shallow bow of apology to each of them and kept walking. She had no origin, no destination—until her phone vibrated in her pocket.
She pulled it out under the sickly yellow glow of a streetlight. A message from Gu Na.
Her eyelashes trembled. She swiped the screen, leaving red smears over the text.
[Xiao Qi: I don’t know how many times I’ve set the timer for this message. I’d set it for three hours, then postpone it, over and over. If you are reading this, it means the ‘other side’ has finally made their move. I am gone.]
Lu Zhiling’s vision blurred instantly.
[The night I learned the truth, I stood on the hospital rooftop wanting to jump, but I thought of you. You are Jingcheng’s most beloved sister. I wanted to protect you for him, even if only for a little while. Two factions of the Bo family approached me. I recorded everything. I betrayed them, and they won’t let me live for it. But I’ve hidden cameras in the car, in the villa’s curtains… use them. I don’t know if they will help you find the mastermind behind my ‘death,’ but they will help you gain a Zhan Lu Tou Jiao [a foothold/firm standing] in the Bo family. This is the last thing I can do for you.]
Gu Na had been planning her own end just to ensure Lu Zhiling’s survival. Lu Zhiling’s knees buckled. She collapsed onto the pavement, her fingertips scrolling frantically.
[I’m sorry I can’t go further. These two months with you were the only happiness I’ve had in five years. I know you saw me as a substitute for your brother. I wanted to be that for you, but every night I dream of him… the motorcycle, the mountain roads, his promise to marry me. Those memories are like a drug in my veins. I am addicted, and I am in agony. Don’t blame yourself. Even if they didn’t come for me, I couldn’t have stayed. It hurts too much. I just want the torment to end. You are stronger than me, Xiao Qi. You carried your pain in silence while I was too fragile to even bear your expectations. I’ve left my affairs to Manshi. Please, do not come to the funeral. Do not look at my body. Manshi will turn my ashes into two rings. When you finally go back to Jiangnan, place them at Jingcheng’s tombstone. Let me finally be with him. My dearest Xiao Qi, live well. You still have Bo Wang… and the baby in your belly. Don’t grieve for me.]
The finality of the words hit her like a physical blow. Immense despair, vast and cold as a black hole, swallowed her whole. She huddled by the roadside, hugging her knees, wanting to shriek until her lungs burst, but she remained silent—a broken doll in the dirt.
Why? Why did everyone leave her? She wasn’t strong. She was falling apart.
Passersby began to huddle around. “Miss, are you okay? Should we call an ambulance?”
Lu Zhiling didn’t hear them. She looked up, her bloodshot eyes fixing on the horizon. Beyond the chaotic traffic stood a majestic bridge, its diagonal lights flashing like a stairway to another world.
It was the bridge spanning the river. A bridge that pointed… toward the South. Toward Jiangnan.
“When you go back to Jiangnan, put the ring by his grave…”
The thought sparked a sudden, delusional clarity in her mind. Everything around her—the people, the noise, the smell of exhaust—became illusory. Only the glowing bridge remained, a radiant path telling her that if she just kept walking, she would be home. Home, where her parents were. Home, where her brother waited. She wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.
She stood up, ignoring the gasps of the crowd, and walked straight into the flow of traffic. A massive truck roared past, its horn blaring a deafening warning, missing her by inches.
In a dark corner of a nearby parking lot, an orange sports car sat idling. Bo Wang sat inside, his knuckles white as he watched her small, blood-stained figure move into the path of death.
“Are you insane?!” he hissed, his voice a mix of fury and a terror he wouldn’t admit.
He saw her crossing the road, step by agonizing step, drawn toward the hazy light of the bridge. She reached the railing, the wind off the river whipping her hair back. Below, the water was a dark, swirling abyss, hiding lethal currents beneath a calm surface.
The orange car tore through the traffic, causing a chain reaction of screeching brakes and cursing drivers. It spun around, tires smoking, and came to a dead stop at the bridge’s edge.
Bo Wang leaped out, his heart hammering against his ribs. Lu Zhiling was walking toward the edge when he reached out and snatched her arm, wrenching her back with enough force to bruise.
The white light vanished. The silence was gone. There was only the hot wind, the screaming sirens, and the ashen, murderous face of the man holding her.
Bo Wang’s eyes were wild, flickering with a sinister, crazed light. He didn’t just pull her back; he lifted her by her waist and shoved her up onto the narrow stone railing of the bridge.
The wind howled around them. Her feet dangled over the murky depths of the river. Bo Wang stood between her knees, his hands on her shoulders, the only thing keeping her from toppling backward into the dark water.
“You’ve finally come to your senses?” he whispered, his voice dripping with a wicked, suicidal venom. “Ready to die with me, then?”
Lu Zhiling stared at him, the fog in her mind clearing just enough to realize the horror of the situation. She shook her head stiffly. No. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to go home.
“Still prefer drowning?” Bo Wang glanced down at the river. “Fine. I’ll let go now. Go on. Sink.”
He loosened his grip. Lu Zhiling felt her center of gravity tip dangerously toward the void. Terrified, she lunged forward, grabbing his expensive silk sleeves, her red-rimmed eyes wide with panic. “No… please…”
Bo Wang’s lips curled into a devilish, predatory smile. “What are you afraid of? I told you—I’ll go with you.”
He meant it. In his twisted, obsessive mind, a double suicide was a form of eternal union.
Lu Zhiling trembled, the fear of him finally eclipsing her grief. “I don’t want to die,” she sobbed, her voice a fragile thread in the wind. “I just… I feel so terrible. It hurts so much.”
“It hurts? Then end it. Death is the only cure for a heart like yours.” He looked at her, almost eager for her to give up.
She shook her head again, her hands slowly moving up to rest on his shoulders. She looked at him with such a piteous, soul-crushing vulnerability that even his darkness seemed to waver. “Bo Wang… please. Just hug me. Please.”
The wickedness in his eyes didn’t vanish, but it dimmed, replaced by a sharp, focused intensity.
“Just once,” she pleaded, tears carving clean paths through the dried blood on her cheeks.
Bo Wang didn’t move for a long moment. Then, his large hands slid from her shoulders to her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. Lu Zhiling wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in a dissolving universe.
For the first time that night, her heart stopped its frantic hammering. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, inhaling the scent of expensive tobacco and cold rain. She felt a sense of security that she hated herself for needing.
He stood there, his body rigid and unyielding, yet he didn’t push her away. He let her stain his shirt with her blood and tears.
“Bo Wang… I want to go home… I just want to go home…” she whispered against his skin.
She wanted the old house in Jiangnan. She wanted the smell of incense and the sight of her parents’ graves. She closed her eyes, a single hot tear sliding down the pulse point of his neck.
Bo Wang’s rage finally ebbed into something deeper, something more possessive. He lifted her bodily from the railing, carrying her back to the car like a child. “I’ll take you back,” he murmured, his voice an unfathomable growl.
Lu Zhiling looked up at him, her fingers tightening on his lapels. He placed her in the passenger seat and tore off, making a violent U-turn that ignored the traffic police and the blaring horns.
She watched the steering wheel, waiting for the turn that would lead them out of the city, toward the South. But as the bridge lights began to recede, she realized they were heading back toward the center of Jiangbei. Back to his cage.
“What are you looking at?” he snapped.
Lu Zhiling opened her mouth, but the words died. She shouldn’t have expected a monster to show mercy. No one was coming to save her.
Suddenly, a searing, white-hot pain ripped through her abdomen. It felt as if her body were being cleaved in two from the inside out.
“Ugh…”
She gasped, her face contorting as she clutched her stomach. The world tilted, and she collapsed against the door, the darkness finally claiming her as the pain became more than her heart could bear.