Two days later, news reached the Xie family on the capital planet that Xie Yijin was missing and might have been blown to pieces without even a body left behind.
The moment Xie Yijin's mother, Jiang Zhaohua, heard the news, she fainted on the spot. Xie Fan and Cheng Yan hurriedly caught her, both unable to believe it.
Xie Yizhen rushed forward and grabbed Shen Jianbai by the collar, almost beside herself. “How is that possible?! How could my sister die? Whether it was mecha piloting or commanding, she was the best of the best! How could she die?!”
Shen Jianbai was silent and grief-stricken. She patted Xie Yizhen's shoulder, her expression grave. “My condolences.”
Xie Fan felt as though a knife had been twisted through his heart. He tightened his arms around his beloved wife.
Of his two daughters, Xie Yijin was wild and free, easygoing and unconcerned with petty details, yet decisive and ruthlessly efficient whenever she acted. She had been born with S-class mental power and resembled him most when he was young. On reaching adulthood, she differentiated as a 3S-class Alpha. Her formidable mental power made controlling mecha effortless, and she possessed extraordinary talent for command. Few among her generation could rival her.
Xie Yijin had always been their pride.
Xie Yizhen's eyes reddened and her breathing gradually grew rough.
She shook her head, utterly unable to accept it. Tears rolled down one after another. Gripping Shen Jianbai's hand, she growled in agitation, “I don't believe it… My sister is so strong… I don't believe it! You must be lying to me!”
Seeing this, Cheng Yan hurriedly pulled Xie Yizhen away from Shen Jianbai. His own eyes were red as he comforted her. “Azhen, calm down first.”
“The one who died is my biological sister! Not yours! How am I supposed to calm down?!” Xie Yizhen roared at him, eyes nearly splitting with grief.
The words pierced Cheng Yan like a needle. His face went pale, cold spreading through his heart.
For an instant, his gaze turned hollow, as though he were standing inside an abyss, both grief-stricken and suffocating. Biting his lip, he slowly let go and lowered his head without speaking. The sharp nail of his thumb dug relentlessly into the knuckle of his index finger until bright red blood appeared.
Xie Yizhen shoved Cheng Yan away and rushed forward to seize Shen Jianbai's collar, her eyes bloodshot, her tone absolute. “My sister's body hasn't been found! If it hasn't been found, then she's not dead! Search! Keep searching!”
Her voice was hysterical, as though she wanted them to dig three feet into the ground.
Shen Jianbai opened her mouth but didn't know how to comfort her.
After all, she herself still hadn't completely accepted the truth.
Just then, Song Chang'an, captain of the villa's security detail, came running out in a panic.
“General! General! Eldest Miss is in the courtyard! She's unconscious right now!”
Everyone stared at him in shock.
Who?! Who was in the courtyard? Xie Yijin?!
A few minutes later.
They saw Xie Yijin, who had spent her entire life flamboyant and unrestrained, lying quietly on a bed, lips pale and unconscious.
Her body, cut open by fragments from the command warship, was wrapped in thick bandages. The gland at the back of her neck gave off a sharp scent of strong liquor, proof that her Alpha gland had been damaged.
“General, Eldest Miss's legs were pierced by shrapnel. She needs surgery immediately.”
“And it has to be done as soon as possible. Otherwise, both legs will have to be amputated.”
“The gland at the back of her neck has been damaged. In future susceptible periods, suppressants alone will likely no longer be enough to control her agitation. She'll need an Omega's help to soothe her. If their compatibility is high enough, there is a chance the gland could recover…”
“Also, damage to the gland will likely affect her mental power.”
“As for the other wounds on her body, none are too serious…”
“…”
After examining Xie Yijin thoroughly, the doctor carefully explained everything to them.
Xie Fan's fingers slowly clenched. He closed his eyes and buried his grief.
When he opened them again, he looked steadily at Song Chang'an. “Arrange the surgery immediately.”
No matter what, Yijin was alive.
That mattered more than anything.
At least she was alive.
Song Chang'an gave a solemn salute. “Yes!”
Outside the operating room.
Xie Fan and Shen Jianbai sat on a bench in silence, both grave-faced. Xie Yizhen paced back and forth, repeatedly looking at the red-lit sign reading “Surgery in Progress.”
Meanwhile, Xie Yijin, lying on the operating table, had sunk into a sweet dream.
One moment she was a child again, falling from a high branch after climbing a tree, with Jiang Zhaohua crying while bandaging her wounds and Xie Fan spanking her whenever she failed to protect herself properly. Then it was Xie Yizhen crying over her homework, tugging at Xie Yijin's sleeve with a babyish voice and begging her to help. Then there was her adopted younger brother Cheng Yan, always taciturn and hiding behind Xie Yijin, punished again and again for defending her, kneeling stubbornly in the garden with books balanced on his head and refusing to say a word… Then Shen Jianbai's chattering voice appeared again…
“My boyfriend is super handsome! Super smart!”
“You don't understand. That's love. Once it happens, there's nothing you can do.”
Then her cold-faced mortal enemy Jiang Zui took advantage of her injured hand to cuff her to a hospital bed and jabbed her with one injection so hard she lay there like a corpse.
Her mortal enemy gave her the injection with ruthless indifference, insults coming naturally the moment he opened his mouth. “If you're so capable, then don't fall into my hands. If you fall into my hands, that proves you're not capable enough.”
Then her past twenty-eight years flashed by like lantern slides.
Her life as a commander, military academy, high school, middle school, primary school…
A vicious, cutting voice sounded inside her head.
“Xie Yijin, Xie Yijin…”
“I'm not dead yet. Try dying before me and see what happens. Whoever dies first is a gigantic bitch!”
“If you die, tomorrow I'll spread rumors that you're gay! That you're tangled up with a whole bunch of Alphas! Then Fu Shuheng and I will go dance on your grave! I'll get an Omega to give me a whole pile of children and make you die of envy!”
“…”
Fuck! Such BIG nerve!
Absolutely no way was Fu Shuheng allowed to dance on her grave!
She didn't even have children yet! Over her dead body would Jiang Zui get there first!
Xie Yijin angrily forced her eyes open.
She stared at the cold white ceiling. The acrid smell of disinfectant lingered at the tip of her nose. Her body felt as though it had been shattered and sewn back together, too painful to move, even breathing difficult. A terrible premonition flashed through her mind.
“Ajin! You're finally awake.”
Lowering her eyes, she saw Jiang Zhaohua's swollen red eyes, full of excitement. Holding Xie Yijin's hand, she looked on the verge of tears again.
After that, several groups of people came and went—representatives of the Third Military District paying formal visits, members of collateral branches of the Xie family coming to see her…
Over the next several hours, as her consciousness repeatedly scattered and gathered again, Xie Yijin remained blank and silent. The doctor's words kept repeating inside her head.
“Miss Xie, both of your legs were penetrated by shrapnel. You've lost sensation in the knees and everything below them.”
“In addition, your gland was attacked by drugs and then physically damaged. In future, you will probably have difficulty suppressing agitation through self-control alone. During susceptible periods, you'll need an Omega with an extremely high compatibility rating to soothe you. Even with an Omega's assistance, however, the probability of recovery is only one percent.”
“You will never be able to return to the battlefield.”
Xie Yijin felt as though she'd fallen into an endless sea, unable to breathe.
She, Xie Yijin, had lived unrestrained for more than twenty years, getting whatever she wanted and almost never encountering anything that didn't go her way. And now she was supposed to spend the rest of her life lingering on in a wheelchair.
A strange, swollen, aching despair swept overwhelmingly through her body.
Every cell, every inch of skin, felt as though it were being torn apart, lost and suffocating.
Ha.
Ha.
Hahahaha…
Every breath felt like ten thousand needles stabbing into her.
She remained dazed until evening. Jiang Zhaohua, Xie Yizhen, Cheng Yan, and Xie Fan all wanted to stay overnight at the hospital. She gave them one icy “Get out,” rolled over, and showed them the back of her head. In the end, she drove everyone away.
She lay on the hospital bed, staring blankly at the moonlight climbing across the window, no one knowing what she was thinking.
At one in the morning, she struggled out of bed. A terrifying, extreme thought circled inside her head. Her weakened body couldn't withstand the effort. She fell twice before barely managing to sit in the wheelchair, then clumsily rolled herself out of the ward.
At that moment, two nurses pushed a transport bed out of another ward.
As they passed each other, Xie Yijin casually glanced at the unconscious male Alpha lying on the transport bed. Who else could it be but Jiang Zui?
Ha! So she wasn't the only one who was going to become useless!
Her mortal enemy was going to become useless just like her!
The extreme thought shrank back, retreating into its cage.
On an impulse, she turned her wheelchair around and followed them to Jiang Zui's room. From the two nurses, she learned that he had suffered two superficial wounds and collapsed from exhaustion. They wouldn't know anything more until he woke up.
No matter what, before she died, Xie Yijin had to beat him one more time.
She sat motionless in her wheelchair watching Jiang Zui, from the moment moonlight filled the window lattice until the first ray of dawn fell inside. At last, she thought of how she could beat him.
If—if she stole his unforgettable first love, would he come after her with a blade and kill her?
At that moment, she devised a flawless, unprecedented plan, far more interesting than simply rolling her wheelchair off the roof and smashing into the cold ground below.
She had been fiercely competitive all her life. Even for something like this, she wanted to do it her own way.
Even after becoming like this, if she had to die, she would make Jiang Zui remember that she would always beat him!
Three months later.
The room at the far end of the second floor of the Xie family villa.
Heavy curtains blocked every trace of light from entering.
Wine bottles lay scattered chaotically across the floor, the smell of alcohol filling every corner of the bedroom. The room was a complete wreck. The coffee table and chairs were in disorder, broken glass littered the floor, and dirty clothes lay scattered everywhere…
It looked as though the room had suffered incomparable devastation.
“Knock, knock, knock.”
“Knock, knock, knock.”
Someone knocked on the bedroom door.
Outside came Xie Yizhen's cautious voice. “Sis, your future spouse is here. Aren't you coming out to have a look?”
There was no movement from inside.
Xie Yizhen's heart rose into her throat and even her breathing stopped. She called again, “Sis, are you still in there?”
More accurately, she should have asked whether Xie Yijin was still alive.
After all, if she were dead, she truly wouldn't be able to answer.
Ever since the Cromwell War ended, Xie Yijin's condition had grown steadily worse.
At first, Xie Yijin had even joked that once she was in a wheelchair, she wouldn't have to do anything anymore. She could retire early and happily wait for Xie Yizhen to support her. But she'd lost the use of both legs, her gland was damaged, and her mental power had become difficult to control. How could she possibly accept all of that so calmly?
Who was Xie Yijin?
The favored daughter of heaven since childhood, always the most dazzling person in any crowd.
She had never admitted defeat.
She had never lost heart.
Before long, Xie Yijin broke down.
Her once-mighty mental power had been reduced to fifty percent. Mecha she once controlled with ease now took enormous effort. She needed help with daily life and couldn't even dress herself or use the bathroom independently. What she found even more unbearable was that every visitor's eyes overflowed with sympathy and pity, their gazes drifting again and again toward her legs…
Worse still, because of the gland damage, her susceptible periods no longer came on any regular schedule. Their frequency became unpredictable. Her body and mind suffered pain magnified a hundredfold. Sometimes an episode came once every week or two; sometimes every two or three days. Each time, Xie Yijin became violently agitated. She had no choice but to drink heavily to ease the pain, smashing things and hurting both others and herself.
Jiang Zhaohua used the Alpha-Omega Matching Center to find four Omegas with suitable compatibility in hopes they could soothe her, but Xie Yijin drove every one of them away.
She refused to let an Omega soothe her and refused to go to the hospital, simply allowing her gland to deteriorate. Her personality became gloomy and eccentric, irritable and explosive.
How could the current Xie Yijin still resemble the high-spirited figure who had once dominated the capital planet?
Xie Yizhen tightened her grip on the doorknob and pressed it down, intending to open the door.
Unexpectedly, there was a loud bang from inside as something slammed directly into the door, followed by one cold, irritated word: “Get out.”
Hearing her voice reassured Xie Yizhen somewhat. She smiled. “Sis, I'll make sure to arrange a wonderful wedding for you!”
Truthfully, the whole family was terrified she would do something foolish!
Sitting in the darkness, Xie Yijin let out a cold “Heh.”
She slowly took another sip of alcohol and tilted her head, her voice chilling. “How many days after the wedding before we divorce?”
Seeing that she refused to let any Omega soothe her, her parents had decided to marry her off so there would be someone to keep an eye on her.
Following her original plan, she had proposed marrying Fu Shuheng. Her parents had been delighted.
Who would have expected Fu Shuheng to vanish from the entire capital planet? Her parents couldn't wait another moment and didn't believe Fu Shuheng would willingly soothe her anyway, so they settled for choosing from among the Omegas they themselves approved of.
The first step of her plan died at her parents' hands.
If she wasn't marrying Fu Shuheng, what use was there in getting married at all?
Apparently, she couldn't even control this tiny piece of her own fate.
Because of it, she fell into even deeper despair. The whole world seemed black and white, not a single ray of light able to enter. She was no different from a puppet on strings.
By now, Jiang Zui was probably popping champagne to celebrate.
She had become completely useless, while he had spent only two weeks in hospital before bouncing back to full health and continuing to rise through the ranks at the Third Military District hospital.
Xie Yizhen coaxed her gently. “Sis and your future spouse will definitely grow old together. He's really handsome! You know him too, so you know exactly what he's like. And he likes you so much! He was the one who personally came to propose the marriage!!”
The family had carefully screened all the candidates for Xie Yijin's marriage.
The final selection differed slightly from the one originally planned: Li Yanjin, the youngest son of the wealthy Li family on the capital planet, a surgeon in the Third Military District and, in a sense, one of Xie Yijin's comrades.
Since childhood, he had practically followed behind Xie Yijin wherever she went, impossible to shake off no matter what she did.
The Xie family didn't particularly like Li Yanjin.
But for the sake of his sincere devotion to Xie Yijin, they had accepted him after repeated consideration.
Fu Shuheng was Jiang Zui's ex-boyfriend. Her sister insisting by name that she wanted to marry Fu Shuheng made it obvious she was fooling around with something as serious as marriage purely to aggravate Jiang Zui. Their parents would never allow her to act so recklessly!
“Is that so?”
As though she'd heard a joke, Xie Yijin said mockingly, “Then can he tolerate his husband being impotent and spend the rest of his life in a living widowhood?”
After speaking, she kept drinking, one sip now and another much later.
Her susceptible period was flaring up. Stabbing pain flooded both her body and mind without end, as though nothing could ease it.
Alcohol dulled some of the pain and blurred her sense of time, but the torment day after day had already reduced her to a shadow of a human being.
Xie Yizhen: “…”
Perhaps she had grown used to every word from Xie Yijin coming armed with knives, never stopping until she infuriated someone. She pretended not to hear and laughed awkwardly. “Your spouse won't care about any of that.”
After saying that, she hurried downstairs with thudding footsteps.
Xie Yijin heard the anxious movement and took another sip of alcohol.
Marriage? What marriage? Who could tolerate what she looked like now?
“Gulp, gulp—”
“Gulp, gulp—”
Xie Yijin drank until she passed out completely.
When would this torturous susceptible period finally end?
Why couldn't someone just come kill her?
Come on. Kill her.
Kill her, and she would finally be free.
Author's Note:
Revised the text the next day. Hahaha, late at ni—
