So I Had No Choice But to Stop Being the White Moonlight

So I Had No Choice But to Stop Being the White Moonlight – Chapter 86

by Little Panda

I’m Not Going to Be the White Moonlight

Good Morning Kiss

Take my life and be done with it.

What kind of talk was that!

When Chi Qian heard Shi Jinlan’s words, her heart seized in shock.

She suddenly felt she couldn’t keep up with Shi Jinlan’s logic. Weren’t they supposed to get married for a happy ending? Why would Shi Jinlan suddenly want to die?

In high school, Chi Qian had loved to hide under her covers, defying the dorm supervisor to secretly read novels. Whenever she saw a protagonist say, “I’ll give you my life,” no matter how cliché it was, she would bawl her eyes out. The next day, she would cry all over again while recounting it to her deskmate.

Young and unversed in the ways of the world,¹ she had thought that one person giving their life to another was the most romantic thing imaginable.

But now that this classic novel trope was happening to her for real, she suddenly felt very differently.

What part of that line was romantic? Here were two people who could both live perfectly good lives. Why would they be so bored as to demand each other’s lives?!

In the daylight, Shi Jinlan’s eyes were calm and rippleless as she looked up.

But no matter how scorching the midday sun, its heat could not penetrate the darkness in her pupils. The fine powder from the destroyed small world² was like transparent blood, coiling around her fingers and spattering across her cheek in a way that was terrifying to behold.

The oppressive feeling was too strong.

Even though Chi Qian mustered her courage and walked over as Shi Jinlan beckoned, she felt as if she were trespassing on someone else’s territory.

“Stop joking. I would never take your life!”

The indescribable feeling made her throat tighten, and her voice was thick with emotion as she spoke. The moment her hand touched Shi Jinlan’s arm, an unprecedented wave of pain shot through her fingertips.

It seemed the system’s program, which maintained the world’s balance, had fallen into disarray because of Shi Jinlan’s recent actions.

Under the sun, silvery dust danced in the light.

But this wasn’t dust. It was the programmatic stream of the small world she had crushed, now coursing through her.

To get revenge on the system, she had crushed a world.

The resulting backlash forced her to digest its remains.

A wind picked up outside. The sunlight, like a flickering flame, danced across the glass. The chirping of cicadas was shut out by the window, but Chi Qian thought she could hear a sharp, sorrowful cry.

It wasn’t the pain of an electric current.

It was Shi Jinlan’s pain.

Even without the aid of her emotion-reading golden finger,³ Chi Qian could once again clearly feel the emotions radiating from Shi Jinlan.

She just sat there in the chair, an irrepressible gloom and ferocity clinging to her. The cold air drifted across the floor, making the hem of her dress billow. Her slender ankles were bare and exquisite, as if crafted from the finest porcelain by countless master artisans.

But now, that porcelain seemed to be shattered.

The heavy, oppressive aura kept anyone from getting close, and it was impossible to see the fractured lines in her eyes that were barely holding the surface of her composure together.

Humans cannot hear the cry of sorrow from a thorn bird.⁴

But Chi Qian could.

Everyone’s feelings were complex; nothing was ever truly black and white.

Shi Jinlan felt hatred and disgust for Shi Hongpin, but also respect and love.

She had been raised by his side from a very young age. This grim old master was her only relative. Although he was strict and cold toward her, Shi Jinlan still remembered the hand that had wiped the sweat from her brow after she had practiced the piano for hours.

It was strong and old.

Wasted muscles could no longer support the skin. When that hand brushed against Shi Jinlan’s neck, she could almost hear the sound of life draining away from it.

For a long time, a young Shi Jinlan had been terrified that Shi Hongpin would die.

People around her were like tigers watching their prey. She was like a little beast with nowhere to hide, left with no choice but to depend on him.

She hated him for stripping her of all her choices, forcing her to grow according to his plans. But she also loved him for how he had exhausted his mind and body to ensure that she could one day carry the burden of the Shi family on her own.

Shi Hongpin had other heirs to choose from.

Yet every time a young Shi Jinlan felt she was about to be abandoned, he had always brought her back to the Shi family’s old residence.

Shi Jinlan thought that Shi Hongpin would probably be gratified to see the monster she had become today. He should have known she would never willingly submit to another’s control.

That was why, after this power struggle was over, Shi Jinlan had planned to send Shi Hongpin off to enjoy his twilight years in peace. She wanted to hold all the power; she wanted Shi Hongpin to experience what she had as a child—to be helpless and terrified. The one thing she had never wanted was his life.

A fatal fall from a great height.

The system couldn’t even be bothered to think of a different way for Shi Hongpin to die; it insisted on cruelly smashing another corpse into Shi Jinlan’s world.

The system should not have preempted her and made her decisions for her.

Shi Jinlan was consumed by hatred. A powerful, grim pressure gathered overwhelmingly in her world. She viciously trapped the struggling electric currents in her palm. It didn’t take much effort at all, just like when she had driven Thirteen from her domain. With one hundred percent certainty, she selected and destroyed the small world the system had so carefully nurtured.

Having already done that, Shi Jinlan decided her revenge shouldn’t stop there. Her gaze fixed on Chi Qian, and she asked wistfully, “Were you scared when you jumped off the cliff back then?”

Shi Jinlan’s voice suddenly softened. The warmth of melting glaciers flowed over Chi Qian’s fingertips, making her freeze for a second.

She thought that jumping off a cliff should be scary. Any person would be scared. But as she tried hard to remember, she couldn’t recall feeling any fear in that moment.

The biting wind had howled past her ears, and in the end, there was only pain.

A pain that wracked her entire body, so intense it felt as if all her bones had shattered. It created a physiological sense of suffocation, as if thousands of insects were burrowing into her flesh and blood, gnawing at her bones. The pain swelled, pressing down on her until she couldn’t breathe.

But how could Chi Qian tell Shi Jinlan any of this?

The midsummer iciness felt exceptionally sharp. For a moment, she felt as if Shi Jinlan’s skin and flesh had separated.

Shi Jinlan was in a truly terrible state.

Her thin lips were covered in a deathly pallor, and her long hair clung to her neck. Beneath the cold sweat, veins bulged, just like when Chi Qian had pulled her out of the sea.

It made sense. Even if Shi Jinlan had the power to annihilate an unformed world, how many restrictions must she have had to break through to do it? A single silver bracelet had tormented them until they were drenched in cold sweat. In this seemingly eye-for-an-eye revenge, how much pain had Shi Jinlan endured?

Compared to the agony Shi Jinlan was in now, what Chi Qian had suffered back then was nothing.

She suppressed her true feelings and shook her head at Shi Jinlan with a smile. “I wasn’t scared, and it didn’t hurt.”

“I just felt like I’d fallen asleep. When I woke up, I was inside the system. It wasn’t that painful.”

Shi Jinlan had never asked if it was painful.

This woman was a terrible actor. She didn’t seem to know that the more a person cared about something, the more they would emphasize it when trying to explain it away.

Even though Shi Jinlan’s heart and spirit were both shaken⁵ by the chaotic currents swirling around her, she saw through Chi Qian in an instant. “Liar.”

As she said this, Shi Jinlan raised her hand and sought out Chi Qian’s, clasping it. The icy fingertips slid across the back of Chi Qian’s hand like countless icicles piercing her skin. But Chi Qian knew Shi Jinlan wouldn’t hurt her. She let her trace a path up her wrist, precisely locating the marks that had once been left on her body.

“You had three major bleeding points and countless minor ones. Your left arm was broken in three places, your right in two. Your ribs were fractured, your leg bones were fractured. But the most dangerous was here.”

The light voice landed on Chi Qian’s chest like a wisp of white mist. Shi Jinlan pressed her palm against the thin fabric, right over Chi Qian’s now vividly beating heart. “A broken bone pierced it.”

It was hard to imagine that Shi Jinlan remembered such a long and starkly clinical list of words.

But what was there she couldn’t remember?

Chi Qian didn’t know that after she had fallen into a deep sleep in this world, a hand had once carefully measured her body. The air in the morgue had been colder than the central air conditioning here, and her lips had been no less pale than Shi Jinlan’s were now. For as long as she had lain there before the cremation, Shi Jinlan had stayed there with her.

A gentle crimson blush spread across her pale lips. Shi Jinlan delivered the good morning kiss that she was supposed to have given upon waking.

“The stories all say there’s no happy ending for those who follow the villain,” Shi Jinlan said slowly after a few seconds of silence. She laughed, almost inaudibly, her dark eyes filled with confusion, disdain, and obsession. “But I still don’t understand. Why did those two little brats get to have a happy family with both parents alive, while I could only come home one day to find black-and-white photos of my parents sitting in the living room?”

This was the question of a free will that had broken the shackles of a book.

If she had never realized it, she would not be in pain.

But she would rather be in pain.

Anything but numb.

Having just carried out her revenge against fate, Shi Jinlan looked exhausted. She leaned back in her chair, lacking the strength to even tie a chicken.⁶ Her entire body seemed to be riddled with vulnerabilities.

“You really don’t want my life?” Shi Jinlan looked up at Chi Qian, an irrepressible crimson glint in her calm eyes. She traced Chi Qian’s features, taking in her beautiful, vibrant appearance. “Perhaps one day I’ll come back from a business trip, open the door, and see a black-and-white photo of you.”

As if disgusted by the bad luck her own words might bring, Shi Jinlan’s voice trailed off. Her tense body seemed to be holding on by a single thread, ready to shatter at any moment. The fingertips pressed against Chi Qian’s palm trembled uncontrollably.

Because she had already experienced what she was describing once before, three years ago.

She thought that if Chi Qian took her life to save her own, she wouldn’t blame her. At least it would prove that she loved her, just a little bit more than she loved her back.

“I don’t want it!”

But Chi Qian was just as resolute.

With that one sentence, she pulled Shi Jinlan out of her self-destruct sequence.

She stared fixedly at Shi Jinlan, her tone filled with an unprecedented stubbornness. “Even if you want to die, you have to wait until after we’re married.”

The chaotic currents continued to surge through Shi Jinlan’s body, and Chi Qian felt her pain as her own. This girl, who was always so afraid of bitterness and pain, forced herself to endure it as she cupped Shi Jinlan’s face, her round, almond-shaped eyes filled with sincerity. “I’ve thought it all out. I want to marry you on the island where we first met. I want to have our wedding with Ah Qing and Imperial Consort Ling Ji as witnesses.”

“Once we’ve stabilized the world in the protagonist’s place, I’ll hunt down every last system—the one that wrote this plot, the one that supervised us, and the ones that killed your parents and grandfather. I’ll get them all, one by one! What a crappy system! The plot is total garbage!”

Chi Qian spoke straight from the heart, getting a little carried away by the end. She clenched her fist and threw a punch at the air.

The childish gesture stirred a breeze against Shi Jinlan’s cheek. A few strands of her hair floated up, and a clean scent mixed with the smell of the sun-baked air.

In the sunlight, she looked up at Chi Qian.

It was like in ancient times, when humans gazed up at the sun.

“How can you make everything sound so simple when it comes out of your mouth?” Unable to hold back, Shi Jinlan couldn’t help but let out a wry laugh.

“Maybe I’m just a fox assuming the tiger’s might.⁷ You’re so powerful, I’m just borrowing some of your light.” The electric currents weaving through her fingers had weakened considerably, and Chi Qian had more energy to joke around with Shi Jinlan.

She raised a hand and wiped away a tear that had fallen from Shi Jinlan’s eye at some point. Her dry fingertip was coated with a cool dampness. When the cold air hit it, the sensation made Chi Qian’s heart ache even more than the torment of the electric currents.

“I still prefer the tears you shed when you were in my arms that day,” Chi Qian said softly, looking at the tears that seemed to be uncontrollably welling in Shi Jinlan’s eyes.

A gentle warmth suddenly brushed past Shi Jinlan’s ear, plucking at her frayed nerves. Her heavy heart, weighed down with sludge, gave a single, thudding beat.

Then, the rotten mud splattered away, shaking itself clean.

Shi Jinlan suddenly felt that the pain in her body wasn’t so intense anymore.

And maybe she didn’t want to die at Chi Qian’s hands so much after all.

“Kiss me,” Shi Jinlan commanded, pulling Chi Qian’s waist toward her as she tilted her head up.

The author has something to say:

The Pigeon:⁸ Wuwuwu, there have been so few comments lately, this pigeon is so lonely QAQ. Making a sound that says I’ll give out red packets for comments on this chapter, will send them out with tomorrow’s update~

Footnotes

Hanzi: 不谙世事 | Pinyin: Bù Ān Shì Shì | Context / Meaning: Innocent, naive, or ignorant about the complexities of society.
Hanzi: 小世界 | Pinyin: Xiǎo shìjiè | Context / Meaning: A sub-dimension, pocket world, or the setting of a single mission in System-related webnovels.
Hanzi: 金手指 | Pinyin: Jīn Shǒuzhǐ | Context / Meaning: Webnovel slang for a cheat ability, an overpowered advantage, or a plot device that helps the protagonist.
Hanzi: 荆棘鸟 | Pinyin: Jīngjí Niǎo | Context / Meaning: A mythological bird that sings its most beautiful song while impaling itself on a thorn; a metaphor for achieving greatness through immense suffering.
Hanzi: 心神俱动 | Pinyin: Xīn Shén Jù Dòng | Context / Meaning: Deeply emotionally stirred.
Hanzi: 手无缚鸡之力 | Pinyin: Shǒu Wú Fù Jī Zhī Lì | Context / Meaning: An idiom describing someone as extremely weak.
Hanzi: 狐假虎威 | Pinyin: Hú Jiǎ Hǔ Wēi | Context / Meaning: Bullying others by flaunting powerful connections.
Hanzi: 鸽子 | Pinyin: Gēzi | Context / Meaning: Internet slang for someone who stands others up or is late/absent. Often used by authors for themselves when they miss an update.

I’m Not Going to Be the White Moonlight

Footnotes

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