Volume One: First Scroll
Seagulls
Lin Yan was blunt: “I want to have s#x with you.”
“Tsk, how truly touching.” The man sitting in front of the computer applauded.
I never expected Song Yuhang’s skills to be this good. She didn’t fall behind in the slightest, even when facing two well-trained adult men who were twice her height and weight.
And I never expected Lin Yan to find a way out of a desperate situation time and time again. I really have underestimated this little sister of mine.
The man pressed the micromike on his ear. “Jackal, begin the operation.”
“Yes, Young Master.”
The sniper centered the man in Song Yuhang’s grip in his crosshairs.
“Surrender. You can’t beat us. It’s useless even if you have a gun. Your friend is badly injured and needs to be sent to the hospital right away. I don’t know who promised you fifty thousand US dollars, but you have to be alive to spend it, don’t you?”
“Put down the gun, come with me to turn yourself in, and tell us everything you know. I’ll record it truthfully in the case file. When you go to court, perhaps the judge will see that you surrendered and show some leniency1 with a lighter sentence.”
“What do you say? It’s not worth losing your life over a baseless2 fifty thousand dollars. Has a single cent of that fifty thousand made it into your accounts?”
The stout man looked at her sincere face, then at the grim-faced Lin Yan, and slowly lowered the muzzle of his gun.
“Will the sentence really be lighter?”
Song Yuhang nodded. “It’s better than fighting us to the death here. When the main police force arrives in a while, for an armed struggle like this, violent criminals like you are usually shot on sight.”
Lin Yan could have rolled her eyes to the heavens. Damn, she could talk a dead man back to life, making such extravagant promises3.
Suspected in multiple child trafficking cases, assaulting a police officer, kidnapping… with combined punishment for multiple crimes, he’s facing a dead end in court either way.
“I… I surrender… Don’t… don’t kill me…” The thin man in Song Yuhang’s grasp was panting heavily, on the verge of death. With every passing second, he could feel his blood draining away.
He was terrified.
“I… I’ll turn myself in… I’ll confess… I’ll… I’ll tell you… I’ll tell you everything…”
The sniper thought silently: Too late.
He released the trigger.
The bullet traveled silently through the darkness just before the dawn.
A spray of blood mixed with white brain matter erupted before Song Yuhang’s eyes.
A neat hole appeared on the tall, thin man’s forehead, scarlet blood trickling out. He fell backward.
“Song Yuhang, get down!” Lin Yan shrieked in terror.
She looked back and saw a flash of light from the distant lighthouse.
It was the muzzle flash from a bullet leaving a gun.
She dropped and rolled, sparks flying from the guardrail next to her.
Witnessing his friend’s gruesome death, his eyes not yet closed as he stared in his direction, the stout man collapsed to the ground. His legs trembled, his pants grew wet, and a foul smell filled the air.
He looked at the two women, trusted no one, threw down the gun, gritted his teeth, and scrambled up. From under the tarp covering the shipping container, he fumbled to pull out a motorcycle that had long been hidden there, hopped on, and fled.
This was what he and the thin man had planned: grab the U-disk and the money, then bolt.
As he rode his motorcycle past the blue speaker, he snatched it up and stuffed it into his jacket.
Jackal’s black muzzle aimed at him once more. He thought silently: Think you can run, baby?
He lightly squeezed the trigger.
But the gun didn’t fire.
His gun would never fire again.
Jackal’s throat was slit by a switchblade, his neck sliced open, blood pouring out like a fountain.
The black-clothed person let go, and he fell limply from the lighthouse.
“01, target eliminated.”
The black-clothed person pressed the micromike on their ear.
The moment that shot rang out, Song Yuhang knew there was a sniper behind them.
She looked at Lin Yan, dragged her behind a shipping container, and panted, “You stay here, I’m going after him!”
Lin Yan pulled at her. “Get back here! If you go out now, you’re a live target! Forget the U-disk—”
Song Yuhang squeezed her hand, quickly kissed her on the forehead, and pulled away.
“Why would the other party want to kill him to silence him? They must know some hidden secret about the mastermind. I’m not just going after the U-disk now. The suspect will only be safe in our custody!”
Lin Yan understood, of course. Only by capturing that stout man could the mastermind possibly be drawn out. But right now, besides this one container, there was no other cover on Wanghai Bridge. Once the sky brightened and visibility improved, going out there was suicide!
“Come back!” Lin Yan’s voice was hoarse. She lunged to grab the corner of her shirt, but it was too late.
Song Yuhang sprinted back to her car at the speed of a hundred-meter dash.
She scrambled up from the ground, ran out recklessly, and stood in the middle of the bridge, closing her eyes and spreading her arms to block the car.
“If we die, we die together!”
The fierce wind whipped the hair at her cheeks. The front of the car stopped less than five centimeters from her.
Song Yuhang’s eyes were moist. She pulled open the car door and dragged her in. “Go!”
But very soon, she would regret this decision.
If it weren’t for the critical situation, Lin Yan really wanted to lunge over and give her a deep kiss.
The ruthlessness when she fought, the patience when she persuaded the kidnappers, the thoroughness when she protected her, and the expression on her face when she dragged her into the car to face life and death together—all of it fascinated her so much.
Song Yuhang’s black hair was a mess, stained with dust and blood. Her exposed neck, her wheat-colored skin was covered in sweat, and the firm line of her pressed lips held a certain coldness.
Because of the recent fight, the top button of her shirt had long since been torn open.
Noticing her scorching gaze, the corners of those cold lips curved slightly.
“What are you looking at me for?”
Lin Yan was blunt: “I want to have s#x with you.”
Song Yuhang’s Adam’s apple bobbed several times. The tip of her heart trembled.
“Wait. Once this is over, we’ll take a seven-day leave and won’t go anywhere.”
“But for now—” She looked at the container blocking the road ahead, her gaze hardening as she spoke with emphasis.
“Sit tight. Hold on.”
She quickly shifted gears and floored the accelerator. The white car shot forward like an arrow leaving a bowstring. Lin Yan’s vision went black. The container they hit slammed into the guardrail with a bang, sending sparks flying. The railing teetered on the verge of collapse.
The stout man on the motorcycle shrank to a black dot in their vision.
Perhaps it was no longer convenient to speak, so the man began to type to him.
“Your people don’t seem to have stopped them.”
“No rush,” the person sitting at the computer leaned forward slightly.
“She’s about to die.”
The other party paused for a moment, then sent a line of text: “Lin Yan is still in the car.”
The man’s pupils contracted, and he shot to his feet.
It was already too late.
After crashing through the container, Song Yuhang tried to slow down. She stomped on the brake, but it didn’t move an inch.
Her heart sank. The car was still accelerating, rocketing toward 300 kilometers per hour. There was still some distance left on the Wanghai Bridge. She kept the steering wheel steady and reached for the handbrake.
Pulling it was a mistake. The tires locked up abruptly. Who knows which screw had come loose, but the car’s body swerved violently, slamming into the railing.
Beside them was the vast, open sea.
Song Yuhang’s pupils shrank. With lightning speed, she wrenched the steering wheel back. The car executed a 180-degree drift on the road, just barely scraping past the guardrail and continuing to speed forward, while the numbers on the dashboard continued to climb.
Lin Yan was thrown hard against her seat. Now, even she realized something was wrong.
“What’s happening?”
Song Yuhang glanced at her, her expression unreadable, a gentle smile on her face.
“Lin Yan, who am I to you?”
A dreadful feeling rose in Lin Yan’s heart.
“What do you mean?”
“Answer the question.”
“My fiancée.”
“Since I’m your fiancée, will you listen to what I say?” Song Yuhang’s eyes were slightly moist, but she controlled it perfectly, holding the steering wheel and keeping the car stable, not letting her see.
“I will.” Lin Yan looked at her and nodded slightly, as if with deep meaning.
“Good. Unbuckle your seatbelt.”
The gravel and steel debris scattered on the bridge made it incredibly difficult for the already unstable vehicle to move at high speed.
Song Yuhang felt the steering wheel starting to lose control.
She looked at Lin Yan, carving her image into her eyes.
Lin Yan’s eyes turned red. She roared, “You bastard! I’m f#cking not unbuckling it! If we die, we die together!!!”
Song Yuhang gripped the steering wheel with both hands, stomping on the brake with all her might, clinging to one last sliver of hope.
But the brake was completely dead.
She just said, “Lin Yan, you’ve pursued the killer for fourteen years. Chunan has not yet been laid to rest. Are you going to give up now?”
She knew exactly how to twist the knife in her soft spot.
The moment the name “Chunan” left her lips, tears instantly welled in the corners of Lin Yan’s eyes.
She gritted her teeth, staring at her, panting like a cornered young animal. Her gaze fell on the steering wheel.
Lin Yan lunged over to fight for control. “I won’t give up, but I won’t give up on you either!”
The car spun on the bridge. Song Yuhang was thrown about, dizzy and disoriented, desperately prying her hands off, her eyes feeling like they would split open4.
“Lin Yan, listen to me! Didn’t you say you’d listen to me no matter what?!”
“I can f#cking listen to you on anything but this!”
Lin Yan roared, her eyes looking as if they were submerged in tears.
Song Yuhang’s heart ached terribly. She pressed the back of her neck, controlling her, then leaned over and pushed her to the other side of the car. Just like she always did, she held her gently, softly tucking the hair at her cheek behind her ear.
“Alright. Then I’ll say something else. I want you to live. I want you to pursue your own ideals. I want you to seek the truth for all the souls who died unjustly.”
“And I want you—” She pressed her forehead hard against hers, looking into her eyes, her own eyes red, enunciating every word, their tears mingling.
“to be happy.”
At this moment, it should have been bumpy, she should have been dizzy, but Lin Yan couldn’t hear a thing.
There was only her choked voice in her ears, only the feeling of her kiss landing on her long eyelashes.
In her peripheral vision, she could already see the out-of-control car about to crash into the railing. Song Yuhang cruelly pried her fingers, which were clutching her clothes, off one by one.
Throughout this process, Lin Yan was a mess of tears, her whole body trembling, ceaselessly calling her name, begging, “Song Yuhang, Song Yuhang, I don’t want to be happy, I want you, I want you…”
Song Yuhang smiled faintly. Before she could even pull the ring out from her chest, she was swallowed by a blaze of light.
She only had time to unbuckle her seatbelt and, with every ounce of strength she possessed, shove her out of the wide-open car door.
Lin Yan tumbled onto the side of the road like a kite with a broken string.
Flames erupted on the bridge. The massive explosion even startled Duan Cheng and the others waiting at the entrance.
The group glanced over hastily, and all of them felt their eyes would split open.
Duan Cheng ran over like a madman. “Captain Song! Lin-jie!”
Watching Song Yuhang’s car plunge into the sea, Ji Jingxing, who was holding the unconscious child in her arms, also had a mental breakdown. She collapsed onto the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Yuhang…”
In the distance, police sirens began to wail.
Zheng Chengrui threw down his remote, grabbed him by the waist, and dragged him back. “Go, let’s go! Fang Xin, help!”
“I’m not going! I’m not going! I have to save them!” Duan Cheng pried his hands off, roaring through a face full of tears.
Fang Xin wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, walked forward, and slapped him hard across the face, making his head snap to the side.
Duan Cheng stared at her fixedly.
“There is still an unconscious child over there whose life is in danger at any moment! Did you forget what Lin-jie said about getting her to the hospital safely?! If you go to save them now, everything she did for us will have been for nothing, do you understand?!”
Duan Cheng choked out, “I understand, I understand, but…”
The bridge was so high, the sea so cold, and so deep.
Seeing him cry, Fang Xin couldn’t take it anymore either. She pulled him into her arms, holding his head to comfort him.
Duan Cheng wailed. Fang Xin, holding back tears, exchanged a look with Zheng Chengrui. He nodded, helped Ji Jingxing and Xiao Wei into the car, picked up his remote, retrieved the drone, and while he was at it, scuffed up their footprints to make them indistinct, covering them with dead branches and leaves.
A small car disappeared into the mountains just before the police arrived.
With a plop, the splash was swallowed by the waves.
Feng Jianguo threw open his car door and jumped out. “Stop her!”
It was too late.
No one even touched the hem of her clothes. They could only watch as she leaped into the deep sea, disappearing like a fish.
Winter was not the season for diving.
Lin Yan had also never dived in unfamiliar waters, let alone jumped from such a height.
She was frantic, her entry into the water was a mess, and she was nearly knocked unconscious by the impact. She swallowed several mouthfuls of salty seawater before coming to her senses, surfacing for a desperate gasp of fresh air before plunging back down again.
The deeper she went, the lower the temperature. The blood in her body felt like it was freezing, and the wounds steeping in the seawater were a piercing, stabbing pain.
Lin Yan seemed to have lost all feeling. A trail of faint red blood mixed with seawater spread from where she swam.
Tears started to flow again, but she couldn’t close her eyes. She had to rely on the faint fluorescence of the plankton in the dark environment to determine where the car had fallen.
This was truly looking for a needle in the ocean5.
She had never been in the deep sea for so long. All sorts of sea fish and jellyfish swam past her, but she was in no mood to appreciate them.
She moved through the seabed like a madwoman, searching for her beloved.
The deep dive without any protective equipment made her eardrums ring and her head feel like it would split. As her oxygen depleted, it felt like countless steel needles were stabbing her lungs.
The most fatal thing was the cold. Hypothermia could cause her to lose consciousness at any moment and sleep forever at the bottom of the sea.
Lin Yan had to bite her tongue, using the pain to keep her mind clear.
She wept, silently repeating in her heart: Song Yuhang, where are you? Come out.
Don’t hide from me anymore. I’ll listen to you, I’ll listen to everything.
Her feet touched a reef. Lin Yan pushed forward with all her might, breaking through the water. As far as she could see, a large school of fish was gathered together.
She gritted her teeth and swam in that direction. The fish, startled, swam away.
When she saw the severely damaged car, Lin Yan wept with joy, bubbles escaping from between her lips and teeth.
She swam over in a few strokes, pulling and tugging at the car door, kicking and ramming it, but it wouldn’t budge.
Lin Yan changed her approach, squeezing through the shattered windshield. The glass shards added several more cuts to her body.
She slapped Song Yuhang’s face forcefully. Song Yuhang leaned quietly against the seat, her eyes closed, as if she were asleep.
The seawater had washed her blood-stained face clean. Her soft, short black hair swayed gently with the current.
Lin Yan cupped her face, choking on sobs, and pressed her head against her cold forehead, pulling her into her embrace, trying to warm her with her own body heat.
But it was of no use. It was simply too cold here.
She too was trembling from the cold, like a block of ice.
Lin Yan looked around, used her foot to kick the opening in the shattered windshield wider. Shards of broken glass and traces of blood drifted away with the current.
She turned back, supported Song Yuhang with her own thin shoulders, held her by the waist, and together, they swam out with all their might.
The already thin supply of oxygen in her lungs was consumed even faster by the strenuous movement.
Lin Yan choked on several mouthfuls of seawater, bubbles escaping from her nose.
The weight of another person was dragging her down. Gravity made every movement a struggle.
She looked up. The water above was still black. She had no idea how much longer she had to swim before she would see the light of day.
But Song Yuhang couldn’t last that long.
Her face was pale, her lips purple. She had already been in the deep sea for some time.
Without hesitation, Lin Yan cupped her lover’s face and pressed her lips to hers.
The moment she touched those ice-cold lips, Lin Yan trembled, and tears rolled down her cheeks.
She passed over all her remaining warmth, her life, all her love and breath.
Lin Yan tightened her arms around her waist, deepening the kiss.
The leather band tying her hair came loose, falling into the deep sea. Her soft hair spread out in the waves like seaweed.
They twisted, intertwined, rising and falling with the waves, the faint red bloodstains dissipating around them.
Playful fish came to chase them. Lin Yan wrapped her arms tighter around her waist, pulling her as she swam desperately upward.
She could no longer feel the cold or the pain. Her mind was even a complete blank.
She had only one thought: Take her away.
The seawater lapping against her body even gave her the illusion that Song Yuhang was gently responding to her.
Lin Yan wept with joy. A flash of white light exploded in her mind. She swam desperately towards it, and then she realized—
It was the light of the sky.
She broke through the surface of the sea. The east was already showing the fish-belly white of dawn.
The morning sun spread across the sea, glittering and sparkling.
Lin Yan cried, almost wailing. She dragged her and swam for the shore as if her life depended on it, cursing as she went.
“Song Yuhang, didn’t we agree to get married? Does this engagement still count or not? Fine, play dead, go on and play dead! I won’t marry you then!”
“I’ll go find ten or eight f#cking lovers, and I’ll come back every day to piss you off! Get up! Get up and curse at me!”
Lin Yan roared, stumbling, her face a mess of tears as she dropped her on the sand.
The waves washed over their bodies. The police also gathered around, forming a circle around them.
Lin Yan paid them no mind, bending down to listen for a heartbeat.
It was quiet. There was only the sound of the waves.
A seagull swooped across the sky, letting out a mournful cry.
Tears gushed like a spring from those eyes that were always full of affection. Her face was a mask of grief, and her whole body trembled.
Feng Jianguo pushed through the crowd and ran over. When he saw the pale face of the person lying on the ground, his whole body shook, his eyes growing moist.
Someone wanted to step forward to carry her away.
“Don’t anyone move!!!” Lin Yan shrieked hysterically, tearing open her clothes and, refusing to believe it, began to perform CPR.
After thirty consecutive compressions, she bent down to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The flat chest began to rise and fall.
But it was only for a moment. The second she let go, there was no autonomous breathing. It was entirely sustained by her breaths.
Lin Yan was choking on her sobs. In truth, she had reached her physical limit long ago. She had pulled her out from the bottom of the sea on sheer will, swam to shore on sheer will, and was kneeling here giving her artificial respiration on sheer will.
As she worked, everyone around her watched her disheveled and wretched state, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair was a mess, and her body was covered in wounds.
The seagulls circled overhead, their mournful cries lingering for a long, long time.
Feng Jianguo watched her break down, watched her wail, watched her desperately shake Song Yuhang’s shoulders. He couldn’t bear to watch any longer.
The old man turned his back, wiped away his tears with the back of his hand, and said in a heavy voice, “Take her away.”
LP: Re-translated on July 01, 2025
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