Chapter 62: Heart Discomfort

Only Liu Feng and Su Li remained in the room.

Su Li buried her cheek in Liu Qiu’s palm, feeling her life force slipping away, and whispered softly, “Wife, I’m in so much pain.”

Her heart felt unbearably uncomfortable, as if it were about to explode.

Liu Qiu could still hear her.

“Xiao Li, if it hurts, then go rest.”

The shove from Liu Huang just now had been quite forceful; with Su Li’s frail body, she must have been hurt from the fall.

The thick smell of blood flooded mercilessly into Su Li’s nose.

Holding Liu Qiu’s hand, she stood up and stared at those unfocused eyes that continued to shed tears, helplessness spreading across her face.

There was not the slightest trace of acting.

Su Li truly felt at a loss.

She didn’t know why Liu Qiu’s body had suddenly become like this.

She had never intended to harm her.

Liu Qiu had even said she would feed her for a lifetime.

The demonic energy she had poured into Liu Qiu’s body had no effect at all.

Liu Qiu’s life aura was growing weaker and weaker.

With trembling fingers, Su Li wiped away her tears.

“Wife, wait a little. Your younger sister has gone to fetch a doctor.”

Liu Qiu slowly smiled, but the blood staining her body made that smile unbearably tragic.

“Xiao Li, I’m sorry. Something like this happened on the first day of our marriage.”

“Wife, I don’t blame you.”

Su Li kept wiping her tears, and when she realized they would not stop, she grabbed a cloth and gently cleaned the blood from the corner of Liu Qiu’s lips.

Liu Qiu had lost all sensation.

She could not feel pain, nor could she feel Su Li’s touch.

In her vision, there was only Su Li’s blurred figure.

She thought she finally understood why her body had suddenly turned like this.

It was the irresistible force of the plot.

Her body had been slowly recovering, and if this continued, the storyline would no longer be able to proceed.

So she had to die.

If she died, the Liu sisters would probably be very happy, while the Liu couple would be heartbroken.

But all emotions would eventually be smoothed away by time.

Liu Qiu coughed dully, and with each weak cough, fresh blood spilled from her lips.

Su Li didn’t know what to do.

She only knew how to use demonic power, yet even that could not heal Liu Qiu.

Turning her head, she looked at Liu Feng, who stood silently to the side.

As if encountering something utterly incomprehensible, Su Li frowned deeply.

“Why are you so calm?”

This human was clearly Liu Qiu’s sister.

Liu Feng lowered her long lashes slightly, her voice gentle and faint.

“I am sad.”

This time, Liu Qiu had died even earlier than before.

It was not Liu Feng’s first time experiencing this.

This was her seventh rebirth.

She seemed trapped within this stretch of time.

After Liu Qiu died, she herself would not live much longer.

Then everything would return to the year she set off for the capital.

But this time was different.

Liu Qiu had married.

She had married a beautiful woman and done what married couples were meant to do.

Everything was developing in an unpredictable direction.

Not only that, this Liu Qiu was especially captivating.

From the very first moment Liu Feng lifted the bridal sedan curtain, her eyes had precisely found Liu Qiu standing at the very edge of the crowd.

Perhaps that was what it meant to have brows like distant mountains tinted with ink, and eyes like autumn waters rippling with light.

Her pale, delicate skin clung to bone, growing almost translucent under the sunlight, as though the bluish veins beneath could be seen.

Her eyes were clear and pure.

Though a lingering air of sickness clung to her features, a small seductive mole at the corner of her eye made her strangely enchanting.

Like a demon.

Like a deity.

Did she hate Liu Qiu?

Of course she did.

Because of Liu Qiu, she had been forced to repeat death and rebirth over and over.

At first, she hadn’t realized it.

Not until the third lifetime, when—just like the previous two—she died shortly after Liu Qiu did.

In the fourth and fifth lifetimes, she tried every method she could think of to save Liu Qiu.

But Liu Qiu’s death seemed predetermined.

She would always die in the year Liu Feng earned her scholarly title.

And Liu Feng herself would die not long after Liu Qiu’s death.

She could not uncover the cause.

Nor could she break this curse-like cycle.

She hated Liu Qiu.

She wanted revenge.

She wanted to toy with her, to see her collapse, to see her despair.

The hallucinogenic powder could drive a person mad.

She wanted Liu Qiu to go insane.

She also wanted her dead.

Yet at the same time, she wanted Liu Qiu to live.

She did not want to be reborn again.

But she also did not want to die.

“How could I not be sad? But heaven’s will is like this.”

Liu Feng’s gaze rested on Liu Qiu’s face.

“Sister Qiu, do you think I am not sad?”

Liu Qiu could not see clearly, but Liu Feng’s voice carried no fluctuation whatsoever.

Her eyes shifted blankly toward the bright sunlight outside the window.

“Liu Feng, you wouldn’t be sad.”

No one would be sad for someone who had bullied them since childhood.

Liu Feng smiled faintly and walked to the window, half-closing it to block some of the glaring sunlight.

“Sister Qiu is wrong. I am very sad.”

She was sad that she had to keep repeating this endlessly.

“This is the last time.”

In her previous life, she had learned a method.

Carve a thousand-year-old blood locust tree into a wooden doll.

Place inside its heart a blood-stained relic.

Engrave the eight characters of birth upon it, and one could trap that person’s soul.

If one wished for that soul never to leave, then mix one’s own blood with that person’s blood upon the relic.

Since death was inevitable, she might as well try.

Su Li tightly gripped Liu Qiu’s hand, pressing her cheek against it as if using its warmth to lie to herself that she was not sad at all.

Liu Qiu’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

“It’s alright. Anyway, I also…”

Su Li covered her lips with her hand.

“Don’t speak. Wait until your younger sister brings the doctor back.”

The worse one’s body was, the less one should talk.

Even she, a demon, understood such logic, yet this sickly human did not.

Meanwhile, Liu Huang rode her horse recklessly, urging it to run faster and faster.

She clenched her teeth desperately.

She hadn’t even finished tormenting that sickly girl, and now this had happened.

It hadn’t even been two days.

This time would surely be fine.

As long as she was faster—just a little faster.

“Neigh—!”

The horse let out a painful cry.

Its front legs suddenly buckled.

Liu Huang reacted quickly and leapt off at once, but it had happened too suddenly.

She stumbled.

Rising from the ground, she glanced at the fallen horse, bit her lip, and began running toward town on foot.

It would be fine.

The smell of blood on her clothes gradually faded into the air.

Her eyes were red.

That fading scent felt just like Liu Qiu’s life, slowly disappearing.

As long as she brought the doctor back, everything would be fine.

The sun climbed higher and higher, yet Liu Qiu’s breathing grew weaker and weaker.

She did not close her eyes.

Instead, she stared at some unknown point.

She could hold on a little longer.

Fang Lian might want to see her one last time.

“Waaah, wife…”

Su Li’s sobbing echoed out.

For some reason, Liu Qiu found it faintly amusing.

Who cried like that?

Like a little fox.

Xiao Li.

Little Li.

What a strange coincidence.

[System, is this what dying feels like? There’s a faint sense of loss in my heart.]

The system showed no sadness.

[Host, how is it? Isn’t the experience rather unique?]

Liu Qiu thought for a moment and answered honestly.

[It is quite unique.]

She clearly knew she was about to die, yet she felt no fear.

Perhaps because she was merely a passerby in this world.

“Bang!”

She heard the door slam open.

Then came Fang Lian’s anguished cry.

“Qiu girl! Why are you bleeding so much!”

Her clothes in front were completely soaked.

Fang Lian was heartbroken to the extreme.

Just this morning she had looked so well, so rosy and beautiful.

Liu Qiu’s voice was hoarse.

“Mother, I’m sorry.”

After the original host’s death, the one who would suffer the most would certainly be Fang Lian.

No one would grieve more than her.

Fang Lian sat at the bedside, touching Liu Qiu’s cheek as tears streamed down her chin.

“So cold. Qiu girl, don’t scare Mother.”

Liu Qiu slowly curved her lips.

“Mother, don’t be sad. I’m just changing to another place to play.”

Fang Lian broke down completely, wailing loudly.

“Heavens, please spare our Qiu girl. Don’t take her away.”

She rushed to the doorway, clasped her hands toward the sky, and knelt.

“Heavens, please. Qiu girl has never done a single bad thing in her life. Why take her?”

It was something everyone already understood.

Liu Qiu could not be saved.

Her dim eyes swept across the blurry figures in the room.

She could only distinguish them by the color of their clothes now.

The one standing before her was Su Li.

She seemed to be crying.

Liu Qiu could see the shadow of tears falling midair.

She lifted her hand slowly and hooked her little finger around Su Li’s little finger.

A faint smile appeared on her lips.

“Xiao Li, don’t cry.”

“Your ‘waaah’ sounds like a little fox.”

“I once had a little fox too, but it left. I wonder if it will ever come back to see me.”

“I’m so tired, Xiao Li. I need to rest.”

Her voice grew softer and slower with each word.

Her lashes drooped, completely covering those eyes that had lost their light.

“Xiao… Li…”

As the final note faded, her hand slipped from Su Li’s finger.

Su Li stared blankly at Liu Qiu, whose eyes were closed, her expression serene as if merely asleep.

She pressed a hand to her own heart.

It felt strange.

An emotion she had never experienced before.

It made her suffer unbearably.

This human had stopped breathing.

This always-sickly human, who carried the scent of medicine and spoke such gentle words, had died.

Su Li bent down and pressed her ear against Liu Qiu’s chest.

“Mmph… this isn’t fun at all.”

Suddenly, her eyes narrowed.

No.

There was still a trace of vitality left.

A thought surfaced in her mind.

---

“Faster!”

Liu Huang had nearly dragged the doctor all the way back, her clothes completely soaked with sweat.

They were almost there.

The doctor was exhausted beyond measure.

This girl was absurdly strong.

She had been pulled the entire way and was now drenched in sweat.

Suddenly, the girl dragging her stopped.

The doctor bent over, hands on her knees, panting.

“You— you girl— you nearly exhausted me to death.”

“Your knees are bleeding and you’re still running this fast.”

Liu Huang said nothing.

She stared at the white mourning cloth ahead.

All her strength drained away, replaced by pain and exhaustion.

Her eyes were red as blood.

Clenching her fists, she suddenly ran forward again.

Only the dead were covered with white cloth.

It couldn’t be.

This time, Liu Qiu’s door was not closed.

Liu Huang did not step inside.

She had already seen the body lying on the bed beneath the white cloth.

Inside the room, her mother’s cries echoed piercingly.

Her mind went blank.

She walked in stiffly.

No one stopped her.

Standing by the bed, her trembling hand lifted the white cloth.

It was Liu Qiu.

She hadn’t even seen her one last time.

Su Li suddenly slapped her hand away.

“What are you doing? Don’t disturb my wife!”

Liu Huang’s dry eyes shifted toward her.

Suddenly, she reached out and grabbed Su Li by the throat.

“It’s all because of you. If you hadn’t married into this family, if you hadn’t done those things with her, how would she have died?”

Her grip tightened.

Su Li let out a cold laugh and grabbed her wrist, squeezing hard.

Liu Huang was forced to release her.

Fang Lian cried out hoarsely.

“Why are you still arguing? Do you not want Qiu girl to leave in peace?”

Her voice was raw.

No one suffered more than she did.

Liu Huang’s lips trembled.

She looked at Liu Feng.

Liu Feng shook her head slightly.

Her heart fell into an icy abyss.

Dead.

She was truly dead.

How could that sickly girl leave so cleanly and decisively?

Yesterday was a wedding.

Today was a funeral.

The bright red double-happiness characters in the courtyard were torn down and replaced entirely with white mourning symbols.

Bleak and bitter.

Because the weather was too hot and the body could not be kept long, the funeral lasted only two days before burial.

That night, torrential rain poured down.

A slender figure walked through the rain to Liu Qiu’s grave.

Lightning flashed, illuminating a bewitchingly beautiful face soaked completely by rain.

Su Li narrowed her fox-like eyes and smiled faintly.

She was going to take the body away.

She was a fox spirit.

What ordinary humans could not do, she could.

White fox ears emerged from her head, and her features grew even more enchantingly demonic.

There was still a trace of life.

And that meant she could still be saved.