The bullet pierced the man’s forearm, and he screamed as he stumbled back a step.
Song Guanyan instinctively looked over. The young girl gripped the gun tightly, her face cold as she fired three consecutive shots, taking down every remaining gunman still standing.
From over ten meters away, every shot was lethal and unerring.
Even a professional marksman couldn’t have been that accurate.
She holstered the gun with a steadiness that was chilling.
Song Guanyan blinked twice in stunned silence, then sat up from the ground.
“Xiao Yi…” His voice trembled as he suddenly lifted his head. He hadn’t expected her to save him.
The two words were squeezed from his throat, faint and fragile, frayed with emotion. “You…”
“Song Guanyan,” Shen Yi cut him off. “When I was young, I truly hated you. I blamed you for every misfortune in my life.”
She paused, then continued: “But hate takes energy. I just can’t be bothered with you anymore.”
There was no resentment or sharpness in her voice—only a simple statement.
The gunfire here would draw more people.
Shen Yi decisively tucked the gun back into her waistband and tightened her grip on the dagger.
She tilted her head, offering him half her face in profile, and tossed out a line: “You better stay hidden.”
More than a dozen arrivals closed in, their eyes locked on Shen Yi. Song Guanyan had been reduced to a mere spectator.
Most of the corridor’s lights had gone out during the chaos, and the dim glow traced only the silhouette of her movements.
Shen Yi moved fast, like a cut-out shadow.
Song Guanyan could only vaguely make out how she killed them.
When the last one fell, Shen Yi withdrew her dagger, recalling something Wen Ya once said to her:
“Sometimes, a cold weapon works better than a firearm.”
Shen Yi thought her mother was right.
She flicked the blood off the blade, straightened up, walked a few steps, and stopped in front of Song Guanyan.
Song Guanyan was still shaken, pale-faced.
“Xiao Yi…”
His hand touched the bruise on his shoulder where she had kicked him, his mind replaying the image of her shooting to save him.
He thought… he thought she wouldn’t look back at him.
Song Guanyan knew he had been a terrible father.
He had been absent in every moment she needed him.
And he also knew that Shen Yi resented him.
As a child, Shen Yi had once feared and loathed him—he had glimpsed that in her eyes during their few encounters, her fingers twisting the hem of her clothes as if ready to flee at any moment.
Now that she was grown, Song Guanyan had assumed Shen Yi would be happy to see him dead.
Even his own son thought the same.
Song Sijun had bluntly told him: “If you died, she’d probably just laugh with joy, right? That’s about the only value you have.”
But they were both wrong.
Shen Yi had saved him.
In that moment, her reflexes had outpaced her thoughts.
Song Guanyan understood clearly: Shen Yi saved him not because he was her father, but simply because he had bought her some time a moment ago.
She is good to those who are good to her.
It was a simple logic.
So simple it stung.
“I have no interest in talking with you about now, and no desire to drag up the past.”
She lowered her eyes, calm:
“I won’t look out for you anymore.”
As she spoke, she waved a hand.
“Just die here, Song Guanyan.”
The hem of the girl’s dark coat was stained with blood—both dried and fresh, mixed together.
Song Guanyan watched her retreating figure and bowed his head, struck by a bitter realization: his child had been raised well.
Or perhaps, even without anyone guiding her, she would have turned out fine.
She could have grown up on her own. She didn’t need anyone. She would thrive anywhere.
What shattered Song Guanyan even more was that when she was younger, he could still detect her resentment and dissatisfaction toward him.
But now that she was grown, she faced him with a calm that never wavered.
It was as if all debts and grudges between them had been wiped clean.
Or perhaps, they had simply been evened out.
Even though Song Guanyan was always the one in her debt.
He stared blankly at the bloodstains on the floor, opened his mouth to tell her to be careful.
And to ask her what she was planning to do.
Had she killed her way through half a corridor on this ship alone? What exactly was she after?
But every fatherly thing he should have said was no longer his to speak.
From the day Song Guanyan made the wrong choice, he had forfeited that right.
He had even wondered if dying here would count as a form of redemption.
When the barrel of the gun was pressed to his forehead, the thought had flashed through his mind.
End it here, and at least he wouldn’t have to face all the people he had wronged.
But Shen Yi hadn’t given him that chance. A single well-placed shot ended the situation.
In the end, Shen Yi hadn’t even let him have that.
Song Guanyan felt a chill run through him.
Uncontrollably, his mind drifted back to Shen Yi’s disappearance when she was a child.
His daughter had been taken—someone had bribed a servant to snatch her away unnoticed.
Perhaps they wanted to raise her and later extort him, or use her for some other scheme. He never knew the reason.
In the end, the child passed through many hands and wound up in an orphanage.
At that time, Song Guanyan had searched every seller across the country but found no trace of her at all.
Unable to face his wife, who cried every day, he could only try to adopt a child born in the same year and month, with a similar appearance.
Song Guanyan knew that children were mostly the same; once you raised them, they would become dear to you.
He had even tried to persuade his wife to give it a try, saying time would solve everything.
His wife was called Ni Yue, a very gentle woman.
She had once told him, with a look that made his bones run cold, "You don’t care about my wishes at all. You just want another child to make up for your own guilt. You don’t care about her at all. From beginning to end, only I have shed every tear for my child."
"You disgust me."
Yes.
He was exactly that despicable kind of person.
Song Guanyan had thought about ending it all with his own death.
But Shen Yi didn’t give him that chance.
The child he thought needed protection easily killed two shooters, left a few words behind, and vanished.
At that moment, Song Guanyan couldn’t help but weep bitterly.
The man buried his face in his hands, despairingly realizing for the first time what he had truly lost from start to finish because of his own cowardice and baseness.
Shen Yi would never look back. She didn’t even have resentment; when she saved him in the end, all that remained was calm acceptance.
His daughter would never come back.
At first, he had thought Shen Yi had no one to rely on in the Shen family—perhaps she needed him.
He could let her rely on him, and he wasn’t entirely worthless; as a father, he could offer her help—money, connections, resources, anything she wanted.
But this scene made him understand that Shen Yi had never needed him from start to finish.
He had no right whatsoever to go looking for her anymore.
...
