So I Had No Choice But to Stop Being the White Moonlight – Chapter 24

(Two-in-One) “Isn’t Yours Mine?”

The wind rose, casting tree shadows into the cave and startling a rustling tremble.

Mottled moonlight spilled in, the light slanting across the small bed Chi Qian had made, illuminating the depths of Shi Jinlan’s pupils.

Shi Jinlan lay face-to-face with Chi Qian just like that, her faint voice tinged with a layer of warmth, brushing across Chi Qian’s face in the cool night breeze.

Thump, thump.

Chi Qian’s heart was pounding fiercely. She clearly didn’t mean it that way, yet her heart was like a thief with a guilty conscience¹.

She didn’t want Shi Jinlan to misunderstand and quickly opened her mouth to clarify, “I don’t…”

But the hasty words had just reached her lips when it was as if a bustling crowd was all jammed at the doorway, completely unable to get out.

That damn system wouldn’t allow Chi Qian to deny “Chi Qian’s love for Shi Jinlan,” just like that time when Chi Qingyan had asked her, she was unable to explain herself.

And in the darkness of the night, it wasn’t just words that were unclear, but emotions too.

Shi Jinlan also hadn’t expected her words to provoke such a reaction from Chi Qian.

Her thin lips parted slightly, wanting to just clarify things here and now, to tell Chi Qian not to waste her time, that liking her was useless, that she would never like anyone. But then she felt she was imagining herself to be the object of affection².

Let’s not even talk about whether she truly liked her or not.

This was someone else’s business; it should have nothing to do with her.

But perhaps for this very reason, Shi Jinlan felt as if a pole was lodged horizontally in her throat.

From the moment she wanted to open her mouth to admonish Chi Qian, it had pressed against her, telling her not to say it, not to open her mouth and deny it.

Shi Jinlan defined this emotion as hesitation.

And she, who was one to kill and attack with decisiveness, hadn’t hesitated on any matter for many years, let alone on such a trivial emotional matter that wasn’t difficult at all.

Strange.

She shouldn’t be like this.

Shi Jinlan’s brow furrowed slightly. She was astonished that she had produced such superfluous emotions, and then she drew a cross over all these thoughts born from emotion.

The straw bedding rustled. She turned over and said to Chi Qian, “Just idle chatter, don’t take it seriously. It’s late, I’m going to sleep first.”

The moonlight cast a hazy shroud over their figures. Chi Qian watched as Shi Jinlan turned, leaving only her back to her. Unable to speak, she closed her eyes, her cheeks puffed with anger.

For fuck’s sake³, I’m so pissed.

Once she completes the mission, she must go and properly study this damn system!

---

The night was quiet, the long wind gentle, sending people into slumber.

Early the next morning, Chi Qian, under the guise of searching for a water source with Shi Jinlan, actually followed Thirteen’s navigation to the riverbank where she had heard the sound of flowing water the night before.

The fish were fat in spring, and Chi Qian had a lighter with her.

Lighting a fire to roast fish, enjoying the beautiful scenery of the mountain stream, Chi Qian felt it was quite similar to her company’s team-building events in her original world.

It was just that she, who had always despised others for hovering around the boss, now had no choice but to do these things herself.

From a certain perspective, Shi Jinlan was her superior. She had to serve her properly and comfortably, so her favorability score would shoot up.

Chi Qian rolled up her sleeves, hitched up her pant legs, and waded into the river.

At any rate, this body of hers had grown up by the sea since childhood. Catching fish shouldn’t be difficult——

And then Chi Qian came up empty-handed.

After succeeding once, catching that fat fish for Shi Jinlan, she was henceforth insulated from all fish.

Watching Chi Qian nearly fall into the river for a fish, Thirteen couldn’t help but laugh: 【Hahahahaha, Host, can you even do this?】

Chi Qian was furious: 【No, is there a beginner’s halo for catching fish too? Why is it so hard for me to catch another one!】

She stood with one hand on her hip, panting heavily.

She was truly tired. Looking at Thirteen, who was enjoying the show in her mind, a flash of inspiration struck her: 【Aren’t cats good at catching fish? You come out and help me catch fish!】

【Doesn’t the Host think my appearance at this time would be very strange?】 Thirteen lazed in Chi Qian’s mind, refusing to come out. 【A cat that specifically catches fish for you would look too deliberate. Shi Jinlan is a very intelligent human.】

Chi Qian was somewhat convinced by Thirteen, and asked again: 【Do you have a fish-catching golden finger⁴?】

【The Host’s points are insufficient,】 Thirteen replied honestly.

Chi Qian’s lips drooped.

She heard Thirteen talk about points every day, but to this day, she had never seen how many points she had.

Thirteen had said that points were linked to mission completion. Chi Qian thought about her current neither-close-nor-distant relationship with Shi Jinlan and feared that her progress in capturing Shi Jinlan’s heart was probably less than 0.0001%.

It was better not to ask Thirteen to check her points. If it turned out to be zero, that would be too much of a loss of face.

She had to be at least a one, right?

The flowing water continuously washed over Chi Qian’s calves as thoughts flew about chaotically in her head.

Thirteen watched and reminded Chi Qian: 【Host, if you can’t catch any fish, it’s better to come ashore. The river water temperature is currently quite low. The probability of the Host developing a fever is 19.7%.】

【That’s not even 50%, nothing will happen.】 Chi Qian said dismissively, waving a hand at Thirteen.

Her competitive spirit had squeezed out all room for her usual caution. The high-probability warnings from the health monitor had been wrong several times in the past, so she didn’t take Thirteen’s reminder to heart this time either.

In the distance, under the shimmering water, another fish swam over, wagging its tail.

Under the sunlight, Chi Qian rolled up her sleeves again. She tucked her water-soaked long hair behind her ear, revealing a face with a determined gaze, which made her rich eyebrows and eyes appear all the more heroic.

A person like this should be under the sun, unafraid of any amount of tanning.

The dense, interwoven green leaves cast down a patch of shade, the mottled light and shadows concealing one’s line of sight.

The cart was parked to the side. Shi Jinlan sat leaning against a tree, her gaze fixed on a certain someone’s figure running back and forth like a rabbit. The hand resting on her knee toyed with a piece of string.

The string, made of a cloth strip, had no stiffness and lay so limply in the grass it was almost invisible.

This was a simple trigger trap Shi Jinlan had just asked Chi Qian to help her make. A simple animal cage made from the cart’s basket was connected to the cloth string. When prey entered and the cage door shut, the string would also serve as a notification.

This was Shi Jinlan’s plan B.

It wasn’t that Shi Jinlan didn’t trust Chi Qian, but rather that she would never place all her hopes in one place.

That was very dangerous, and not very efficient.

In their current situation, the more, the better⁵ was the right approach.

And now it seemed she really hadn’t been wrong to prepare it.

Although this person grew up by the sea, her fishing skills were far from what she had claimed when she patted her chest in assurance just now.

A splash of water sounded, sending droplets leaping and flying in the sunlight.

Chi Qian bent down, the shimmering golden light sprinkling over her body, vibrant and brilliant. But a glance at her face revealed a tightly furrowed brow.

It seemed the fish she had aimed for had escaped again. Having victory slip through her fingers, this person’s little face puffed up with anger.

It was clearly her own lack of skill, yet the commotion she made was loud and noisy. It was truly hard for anyone to find peace.

Shi Jinlan watched from afar, unable to stop her brow from knitting.

She was a solitary animal. She disliked noise and hated the feeling of being soaking wet.

Wet strands of hair stuck to Chi Qian’s face, and the glistening water traced her figure along the fabric of her clothes.

The faint sound of ocean waves came from the distance, causing Shi Jinlan to be momentarily dazed.

The sun shone on her face, warm and toasty. For a fleeting moment, she felt as if she had returned to the seaside that day.

That afternoon was one of the rare times in her twenty-plus years that she had felt tranquil and at ease.

Can a person have the same feeling in different situations?

Shi Jinlan’s eyelashes lowered slightly, her jet-black pupils gradually deepening.

Immediately after, her finger was suddenly tugged.

It was the cloth string.

Shi Jinlan’s eyes instantly lost their gentleness as she looked sharply toward the trap.

She saw that the propped-up trap had already snapped shut. The cage was moving, again and again, as if something was struggling inside.

“Miss Chi.” Shi Jinlan’s mobility was limited, so she called out to Chi Qian.

At that moment, Chi Qian’s gaze was fixed; she had targeted another fish.

They say one cannot do two things at once, but when she heard Shi Jinlan’s voice, she still reflexively brought her hands together and immediately turned around. “Huh?”

The sunlight was bright, and water splashed up.

A fat, silver-white fish was taut in Chi Qian’s hands, struggling nonstop.

In the instant Chi Qian had pulled back her hands, the fish she had been staring at happened to dart right over.

A crooked hit lands true⁶. Incredibly, she, who had failed so many times, had caught a fish just like that.

The splash from the river created a beautiful line of water under the sun.

Golden light shimmered, pouring down along Chi Qian’s figure, making everything around her sparkle.

Chi Qian’s pant legs were rolled up, one long and one short. She was clearly not trimming her borders⁷, yet she was full of life and vitality.

Her surprise was exceptionally vivid, and her joy was even more so. The entire scene, embraced by spring, was more vivid and dazzling than any scroll painting depicting a spring landscape that Shi Jinlan had ever seen at an art exhibition.

Under the light and shadow, Shi Jinlan watched the Chi Qian of this moment with calm and restraint, yet her eyes were still, uncontrollably, in a bit of a daze.

It wasn’t until a few seconds had passed that she managed to pull herself out of her daze, just before Chi Qian’s joy could cool down, and said to her, “The trap caught something.”

“Something was caught over there too! What kind of luck do we have!” Chi Qian’s eyes lit up. She efficiently ran ashore, knocked the fish unconscious, opened her bag, and placed it together with the first fish she had caught.

“Let me see what it is——”

Chi Qian was impatient and ran to the cage as she spoke.

Nestled among the lush green blades of grass was a ball of dark, fluffy fur.

Chi Qian looked, and then met its grayish-blue eyes.

“A rabbit?!” Chi Qian blurted out, deftly lifting it by its ears. “Miss Shen, it’s a rabbit!”

Shi Jinlan looked at the black rabbit in Chi Qian’s hand, her gaze assessing it briefly before stating, “Let’s go back. The temperature in the mountains isn’t high. We’ll kill it today and roast it with the fish. If we can’t finish it, it will be easier to store.”

“Ah… kill, kill it?” Chi Qian hadn’t expected Shi Jinlan to be so direct, and her joy suddenly faded.

She had never killed a rabbit.

Forget rabbits, she didn’t even know how to kill a fish. If Thirteen hadn’t told her she could knock them out first and wait for them to “die naturally,” she wouldn’t have known how to handle them.

Killing a fish was already hard enough.

Killing a rabbit…

The body temperature of a warm-blooded animal was far warmer than the river water. The soft fur pressed tightly against Chi Qian’s palm, twitching.

This rabbit was completely unaware of its fate of being eaten. Its eyes looked longingly at the grass, a half-eaten blade still dangling from its mouth. It was so skinny and small that one hand could strangle it.

Chi Qian didn’t quite dare, and her heart couldn’t bear it. “Miss Shen, can we not eat it?”

“Then what will we eat?” Shi Jinlan asked back indifferently.

“Fish!” Chi Qian said. “It’s not even noon and I’ve already caught enough fish for us today! I’ll come back this afternoon to catch more, or tomorrow morning. If we have fish to eat tomorrow, we won’t have to eat the rabbit!”

“Besides, look how skinny this rabbit is. It’s so tiny, you can tell at a glance there’s not much meat to eat. I’ll still have to come catch fish tomorrow.”

For once, Chi Qian’s mind worked quickly, and she rattled off a pile of reasons.

Listening to Chi Qian’s words, Shi Jinlan’s eyes slowly filled with incomprehension.

She didn’t understand what meaning saving such a tiny life held for Chi Qian.

She understood even less why, at a time like this, this person was still thinking about protecting the weak.

Shi Jinlan was a hunter, and a hunter does not abandon her prey. She stated to Chi Qian, “I used my ham sausage to catch it. If we let it go, we’ll lose more than just a rabbit.”

Chi Qian blurted out, “Then I’ll compensate you with my ham sausage.”

“Isn’t yours mine?” Shi Jinlan retorted.

The two had been speaking quickly, one sentence after another.

It wasn’t until this question was thrown out that both Chi Qian and Shi Jinlan paused.

Indeed, they were locusts on the same rope⁸; their things were not divided into “yours” and “mine.”

But saying it out loud like this felt strange somewhere, as if… as if their relationship was incredibly intimate.

Were they really that intimate…

Usually, it’s the thief who has the guilty conscience first, but at this moment, an unexpected silence hung in the air.

The rabbit struggled twice in Chi Qian’s hands, hastily pulling her back to the previous question.

Chi Qian knew Shi Jinlan had her own concerns.

The environment she grew up in didn’t allow her to have too much kindness; to think of danger in times of safety⁹ was her most basic skill.

It seemed that to save this rabbit’s life, she had to think along Shi Jinlan’s lines.

After a slight pause, Chi Qian proposed to Shi Jinlan, “Then Miss Shen, how about this? We don’t kill it for now. The day I can’t catch any fish, or if I don’t catch enough, I’ll kill it then. It’s better to eat it fresh anyway, okay?”

Chi Qian’s proposal had too many assumptions and too many variables. A living thing was not as easy to preserve as a dead one. Shi Jinlan did not like such a plan.

Under normal circumstances, Shi Jinlan would choose to reject, or even ignore, such a suggestion——

“I’m begging you, Miss Shen.” Chi Qian walked over to Shi Jinlan, holding the rabbit. She held its ears with one hand and supported its legs with the other. “Look how small and pitiful it is.”

The spring day was bright and beautiful. The clouds and leaves in the sky couldn’t block the sun’s brilliance, illuminating the world with clarity.

Chi Qian came over holding the rabbit, her damp little face flushed pink by the sunlight, her pair of round eyes filled with an amber luster.

Speaking of pitiful.

She looked far more pitiful than the rabbit.

Shi Jinlan’s gaze skimmed over the rabbit she had caught. She watched the hand holding it sink into the dark fluff, white jade and black ink colliding. Her gaze shifted for two seconds before returning to Chi Qian’s face.

The one who was so cautious in the sick ward was her, and the one now acting cute and coquettish with her for a rabbit was also her.

Why isn’t she afraid of making me angry now?

Could it be that to Chi Qian, this rabbit is more important than me…

Before the thought was complete, Shi Jinlan’s furrowed brow cut off this line of thinking.

She didn’t know if her displeasure was because Chi Qian valued an animal more than a person, or for some other reason. In any case, she disliked the rabbit in Chi Qian’s hands even more.

Forget it.

This rabbit didn’t look like it had much meat anyway. Just let her raise it for two days. It would be better to eat when it was bigger.

Shi Jinlan didn’t want to argue over this rabbit anymore. She lowered her gaze and compromised in a cold voice, “If there’s no fish tomorrow, I will eat it.”

“Of course, of course!” Chi Qian nodded repeatedly, holding up the rabbit and fawning over Shi Jinlan. “Thank you, Miss Shen! Miss Shen is the best, best fairy in the world!”

As if to match the rabbit’s image, Chi Qian put on a high-pitched, childish voice.

But she wasn’t a professional voice actor. Her imitation was a bit clumsy and off-key, comical, but it was also amusing.

Shi Jinlan really didn’t know what went on in Chi Qian’s head every day. She watched her with a blank expression, and in a split second that Chi Qian didn’t notice, she smiled faintly and thought to herself: Clever words and a pleasing countenance.¹⁰

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The morning’s harvest was bountiful. Chi Qian pushed the cart, with the bag of fish hanging from the left handlebar, the cage with the rabbit from the right, and Shi Jinlan sitting in the back.

Summing it up, Chi Qian suddenly felt like she was dragging the family along.

It was like an ancient hunter returning with his wife from a hunt, fully loaded with spoils.

Actually, if they could be self-sufficient, it wouldn’t be impossible for her and Shi Jinlan to live here.

But Shi Jinlan wouldn’t think so, would she?

She had her own world. She was just a lone bird stranded on an island due to injury.

Once her wounds healed, she would fly back to her own vast world.

One time, one meeting¹¹.

Chi Qian sighed silently in her heart and brought Shi Jinlan back to the cave.

After lighting the fire and setting up the prepared fish, Chi Qian took advantage of the interval to take the cage made from the cart basket and find a place for the rabbit.

The smell of rabbit droppings wasn’t pleasant. Chi Qian was worried that Shi Jinlan, in her displeasure, would make her kill the rabbit, so she prepared to find a place for it that was close to the cave, yet ventilated and shaded.

The wind came and went in gusts across the green grass. Another gust blew by, and Chi Qian shrank her neck. “Reserve Rations, do you think it’s cold here?”

——Reserve Rations was the name she had given the rabbit.

Reserve Rations didn’t speak. Its trefoil mouth twitched as it continuously ate the grass that poked into the cage.

Seeing it eat so happily, Chi Qian didn’t move it to another spot. She squatted to the side and watched the rabbit eat grass.

“There’s no other way. Miss Shen has spoken, so you’ll have to live with us for a while.” Chi Qian took the initiative to pluck a tender blade of grass and feed it into the cage, unable to resist muttering in a low voice, “But don’t blame her. She’s just thinking of danger in times of safety. Once we get out, you’ll be able to get out too.”

“She’s actually a very good person. If you want to repay someone later, you should repay her, you know?” Chi Qian spoke earnestly, as if she absolutely had to make Reserve Rations listen and understand.

But how could a rabbit understand human words?

It was just a little rabbit, so frail it was on the verge of not surviving.

Shi Jinlan listened silently to the sound of the wood burning. Amidst the crackling, Chi Qian’s muttering could be heard from afar.

She was just squatting in front of the cage, talking to herself, which Shi Jinlan found very hard to understand.

Why was she trying to curry favor for her, and with a rabbit of all things?

Lower animals do not possess human thought, let alone the ability to remember her words, much less understand them.

Everything she was doing was just a useless effort.

What an idiot.

A kind idiot.

“Do you know why she died?”

The long wind blew into the cave, and amidst the cold, astringent chill came her grandfather’s voice from Shi Jinlan’s memory.

That memory was so faint that Shi Jinlan could barely recall it.

But she still remembered it. The woman’s bright red blood had splattered on her skirt, tragic and pitiful.

Shi Jinlan didn’t know why her aunt had jumped from the building. She had clearly liked this elder who was willing to come and play with her the most.

She hugged her teddy bear and stared at her aunt’s body for a long, long time, with only one thought in her mind: She’s so beautiful. Even after jumping from the rooftop, with her limbs broken, she still looks like a splendid and dazzling blood lotus.

Her clean white dress bloomed on the grass, slowly being devoured by blood.

And it also slowly devoured Shi Jinlan’s vision.

Shi Jinlan was about to lose awareness of whether she was crying, or if she was even still standing there, until her grandfather’s old but firm and powerful hand landed on her shoulder, and he said to her with a blank expression, “People who are too kind will have short lives.”

Short lives.

It felt as if a knife was twisting back and forth in Shi Jinlan’s heart. A sharp pain seized her.

She clenched her hand tightly. The phone in her pocket, which she had just taken off airplane mode, lit up.

It was a text message.

Looking at the message, Shi Jinlan instantly reined in all her emotions.

She glanced outside, and after confirming that Chi Qian wouldn’t notice, she raised her hand and opened it.

The person who sent the text was the trusted subordinate Shi Jinlan had contacted yesterday. The wording of the text was very cryptic and encrypted with a Baconian cipher.

It seemed her message from yesterday had been received. Due to the intermittent signal, her phone had only just received this text.

Shi Jinlan read it unhurriedly. At some unknown moment, the clouds in the sky suddenly pressed down low, and along with them, her jet-black eyes sank with a layer of gloom.

The people on the other end had acted swiftly. The text was concise and to the point. In short, they had already found out how many people Shi Cheng had sent out, what he currently had in his hands, and, as a precaution, the news that Shi Cheng’s men were preparing to make a move on Chi Qingyan’s family.

Shi Cheng’s men still hadn’t found Shi Jinlan, but they were uneasy about a miracle-working doctor who was researching the pharmacology of poisons on Xiaoyu Island, so they wanted to kill him to cut off future troubles.

On that list, besides Chi Qingyan, was his granddaughter, Chi Qian.

And that person Shi Jinlan had heard of once, Yuan Ming.

Shi Jinlan looked at these two simple characters, her brow furrowing without her even realizing it.

The final sentence was an inquiry from the other side, asking if she wanted to not beat the grass to startle the snake¹² and let this matter pass, so as to lower Shi Cheng’s guard.

That was right. Shi Cheng was a suspicious person by nature. He would rather kill by mistake than let one person go.

So, if she used Chi Qingyan’s death to relax Shi Cheng’s pursuit of her faction, it would be a good choice for Shi Jinlan. This would give her time to breathe, organize her people, and, according to her previous plan, unite with those who could be united.

But…

“Reserve Rations, you’re really so skinny.”

“It must be hard being outside all alone. Eat more, you poor little thing.”

The wind blew over with a whoosh, carrying Chi Qian’s voice into the cave.

She was still squatting in front of the rabbit cage, her hands cupping her cheeks, talking to herself, yet she was truly naive.

Shi Jinlan’s eyes were dark as she watched this figure from behind, her gaze filled with an obscure and unclear light.

This person pities this, pities that, but does she know to pity herself? Her life is now hanging by a thread, and no one can save her.

She is about to die.

Along with her grandfather, and that “childhood sweetheart” of hers named Yuan Ming.

The light from the phone illuminated Shi Jinlan’s jaw, tracing a fair and noble line in the daylight.

Her fairness was tinged with cold indifference, as elegant as a white swan, not of the same world as Chi Qian.

So she could save her.

As long as she was willing.

The cave was filled with silence. The phone, set to silent, made no sound.

Shi Jinlan’s expression was icy. She expressionlessly typed a reply to the other side: 【He’s having an infatuated heart and absurd thoughts¹³, daring to touch my people.】

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The author has something to say:

Lanlan is furious: Who the hell is Yuan Ming!

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