(Catching bugs)
"Since I was little, I lived with my mother in Yangzhou. She was skilled in the six arts and made a living by teaching merchant families' daughters who were about to be married. Life was quite good—she even bought a maid specifically to take care of me. But then, in April this year, Mother suddenly sold the house and took me north by boat..."
Images flooded An Jiu's mind, and she saw those memories.
Mei Yanran took Mei Jiu by waterway, but halfway through the journey, their boat was ambushed. Bandits boarded the vessel, killing everyone in sight. Mei Yanran grabbed Mei Jiu and jumped into the water. Two bandits, captivated by the mother and daughter's beauty, chased after them relentlessly.
An Jiu saw nothing but the undulating water before her eyes. She couldn’t see how Mei Yanran swam, but the fact that she carried another person and still outdistanced two grown men proved she was no delicate, helpless woman.
Mei Jiu fainted as soon as she reached the shore and had no memory of how she became separated from Mei Yanran. She only remembered waking up in a cave with a money pouch in her arms—inside was all the wealth they had from Yangzhou.
Thinking her mother would return soon, Mei Jiu waited in the cave, clutching the pouch until she was on the verge of starvation. A hunter eventually found her and took her home.
The hunter was an honest man who, despite Mei Jiu’s striking beauty, harbored no ill intentions.
His family was kind-hearted, but the hunter’s wife feared that keeping such a beautiful girl in their home would bring trouble sooner or later. So while the hunter was away, she took Mei Jiu to a nearby town and told her to find her relatives on her own.
What followed was predictable. Mei Jiu, an innocent girl who had never stepped beyond her family’s gates, was swindled out of her money within hours and sold to a human trafficker.
After learning this part of the story, An Jiu gained a deeper understanding of just how naive Mei Jiu was. "You’re so stupid it’s earth-shattering!"
Mei Jiu protested, "I never left home before, and all my neighbors were good people. How was I supposed to know outsiders could be so wicked?"
Seizing the opportunity, An Jiu said, "So you admit you’re ignorant. From now on, when I tell you to do something, you’ll obey without question!"
"But you’re also a woman. How much more worldly could you be?" Mei Jiu thought to herself, worried that An Jiu might lead her astray.
An Jiu disliked both her spoken words and inner thoughts. "If traveling across a thousand years doesn’t count as worldly, then what does?"
"A thousand years? Are you... a noblewoman from a thousand years ago?" Mei Jiu, now accustomed to An Jiu’s presence, wasn’t frightened by the topic—instead, she was deeply curious.
"Noblewoman?" An Jiu scoffed.
Mei Jiu suddenly recalled how An Jiu had killed her own father and shuddered. Yet she also felt sympathy for her—who would harm their own parent unless driven to desperation?
Mentioning the past made An Jiu momentarily dazed. Memories of gunfire and battlefield chaos surfaced in her mind. The most vivid was when she participated in a war between two nations. Her organization had been hired as mercenaries by Country B—a small but wealthy nation—against a superpower. Their mission: to destroy the enemy’s signal station at the border with a team of fifty-seven.Their mission had been going smoothly until the very end, when thirty-five of them infiltrated enemy territory only to be counter-encircled by over three thousand. Fortunately, the enemy hadn't yet mobilized heavy firepower. The scene was one of blood and gore, with severed limbs flying everywhere.
This battle became An Jiu's defining moment. Stationed in an outer ambush position, she single-handedly took out 364 enemy soldiers and a helicopter. In that relatively peaceful era, many of the world's top ten snipers hadn't even killed as many people in their entire careers as she had in that one engagement.
Yet none of the thirty-five encircled comrades survived. Even An Jiu, positioned on the periphery, barely escaped with her life.
In an instant, she lost thirty-five friends she'd lived and trained with daily. The pain was suffocating, the loneliness inescapable—just like when she'd killed her own father years before.
Mei Jiu asked with a trembling voice, "W-what was that?"
An Jiu snapped back to the present, her tone as cold as a blade's edge. "You saw it?"
Mei Jiu rushed to the spittoon and vomited. The images flooding her mind were filled with blood, corpses, and warfare—surrounded by death without a shred of life, like hell itself.
Only then did An Jiu confirm that whenever she recalled certain memories, Mei Jiu would receive them too. She'd just grown accustomed to burying herself deep and avoiding reminiscence.
It seemed heaven was fair. While An Jiu possessed strong self-control to protect herself from being consumed by fusion, Mei Jiu was this body's original owner, with innate dominance over it.
An Jiu wasn't despairing. Even innate abilities could fail—why else would comatose patients exist?
The smoke-filled recollections in An Jiu's mind weren't particularly clear. Without truly experiencing that despair, one couldn't fully comprehend it.
It took Mei Jiu a long while to recover her composure.
"That was where I used to live," An Jiu said flatly.
"Is it the eighteenth level of hell?" Mei Jiu's face was pale, tears welling up. "I've never done anything evil—why would I see hell?"
An Jiu had only taken control of Mei Jiu's body twice, yet effortlessly offended two people. Mei Jiu had been anxious, thinking An Jiu didn't know restraint. But now she understood why An Jiu didn't fear offending others—someone who killed as easily as cutting grass wouldn't care about displeasing a few individuals.
Mei Jiu realized she'd been wrong before. This person didn't just disregard others' feelings—she disregarded everything.
"It's my homeland," An Jiu said, ignoring Mei Jiu's thoughts as she sank into her own reflections.
An Jiu had never complained about her misfortunes, nor pondered why they happened. But today, she suddenly understood. "My homeland was peaceful and beautiful. Most people lived their whole lives in tranquility. Some lived on the knife's edge—that was their own doing. Like me."
She murmured, "If I get another chance in this life, I want to live an ordinary existence."
At least there was some normalcy! But given An Jiu's track record, Mei Jiu remained cautious. Tentatively, she asked, "If... if your future husband takes many concubines and carouses outside... what would you do?"
An Jiu reminded herself: Violence isn't the solution! No killing! Stay calm!An Jiu dismissed her usual straightforward and brutal solutions, pondered seriously for a moment, and said, "Castrate him, then bring all the women he likes home for him!"
"An Jiu," Mei Jiu sighed, "your life is destined to be extraordinary."
"Madam," Wen Cui knocked on the door.
Mei Jiu hurried to the dressing mirror to tidy herself up, making sure she didn't look too disheveled. "Come in."
Wen Cui pushed the door open and entered, giving a slight bow. "Madam, all the boats at the ferry have been taken by Cloud Brake Residence. The people from Cloud Brake Residence insist on keeping them, and it's getting late. Perhaps you should postpone your trip for another day? There's no need to provoke Second Madam again."
Mei Jiu's heart tightened—An Jiu's prediction had indeed come true.
Though inexperienced, she wasn’t truly foolish. After An Jiu's thorough analysis, no matter how perfect Wen Cui’s excuse sounded now, she wouldn’t rashly believe it.
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