"My name is Xu Qinghuan, the only daughter of the Xu family. Whoever touches my people, I'll make sure they can't even be a person."
The candlelight flickered on the desk, stretching the shadow of the window lattice long and thin.
The chill of the late night seeped through the cracks in the window, wrapped in a blanket of cold.
Xu Qinghuan's fingertips holding the brush were slightly stiff, no longer as brisk and lively as when she used to write in her diary.
When the brush fell, it was as heavy as a thousand-pound boulder, and every word carried the coldness of ice.
The ink spread out on the rice paper, no longer the agile appearance it used to have.
Instead, it looked like a pool of cold water that couldn't be melted, so gloomy that it made people breathless.
She remembered that when she was in Taoyuan and Jiangning at the beginning, she was still biting the tip of the brush under the lamp, full of thoughts of going home, calculating how to do a big job and how to make herself exiled to Lingnan.
How to escape the power struggles in this book and return to her own world safely.
She once thought that as long as she followed the requirements of the [Rich but Cruel] system and played the role of a villainess to the end.
Do all the bad things.
Offend everyone, and she could get a boat ticket home.
Then she could get rid of this disastrous start of a corrupt official father, a bully brother, and a traitor second brother, get rid of this ridiculous reverse positive review, and get rid of this involuntary life of transmigrating into a book!
Xu Qinghuan even foolishly fantasized that when she returned to reality, she would write this absurd experience into a book, maybe it would become a little popular and earn a handsome manuscript fee.
At that time, she was naive and selfish...
Her eyes were only on her way home, only on the sea-view house and big villa in the real world, only on the stable life taught to her by the three years of college entrance examination and five years of simulation.
She never thought that the wind and rain in this book would actually hit the people she cared about the most, and smash all her luck and escape to pieces.
Xu Qinghuan always felt that she was an outsider, a passerby, a transmigrator who came to complete the task and leave.
The honor and disgrace of the Xu family, the safety of her family, and the suffering of the people were all just stepping stones on her way home.
They were props for her to play the villainess well.
She complained that her father was a corrupt official.
Her eldest brother was a bully.
Her second brother was a traitor.
She said that the family would be together even if they were beheaded, but she had never really regarded them as blood-related relatives before. She only regarded them as NPCs in the book and the background board for her to complete system tasks.
But a slaughter on a rainy night completely integrated her into the Xu family's blood.
But an edict to enter the capital completely shattered all her illusions.
That was the first time she saw Xu Youde like that.
So ruthless, so merciless in killing.
So.
It made her feel safe.
Her eldest brother made a miserable appearance, but he still fought a bloody battle to the end.
Li Sheng fought half to death, but he also protected her.
All of this made Xu Qinghuan moved, and she could even risk everything for them.
Because she was the only daughter of the Xu family, a member of the Xu family.
No matter if it was a life-saving grace or something else, she was no longer the transmigrator who only wanted to go home.
She couldn't play chess.
But she could overturn the chessboard.
Thinking of this, Xu Qinghuan's brush strokes were no longer brisk.
Replaced by all determination!
After the rainy night.
The emperor issued an imperial edict, summoning her and her cheap father Xu Youde to the capital immediately, under the beautiful name of rewarding their merits.
In fact, the dignitaries in the capital had long set their eyes on the Xu family's property, the wind and clouds she stirred up in Jiangnan, and the Xu family's power in the local area.
...
They wanted to trap our family in this dragon's pool and tiger's den of the capital, slowly wearing us down, eating us up step by step, until the Xu family was gnawed to the bone.
The moment I really stepped into the capital, I knew what real step-by-step startling meant, and what it meant that open spears are easy to dodge but hidden arrows are hard to defend against.
Those small fights in Jiangnan, those bad things that were praised by the people in reverse, were just children playing house in this big game of power in the capital.
There were no people here who ate porridge mixed with sand and still praised me as a true Buddha alive.
There were no merchants who were collected protection fees by bullies and were still grateful.
There were only eyes hiding calculation, faces hiding knives in smiles, and traps set up waiting for us to jump in.
The aristocratic dignitaries in the capital saw that our father and daughter were newcomers and had no one to rely on, so they began to suppress and exclude us unscrupulously.
They cut off all the room for the Xu family to maneuver.
The overt and covert ridicule, difficulties, and temptations were like dense needles, making people feel uncomfortable all over.
What they wanted was not the life of the Xu family, but the dignity of the Xu family. They wanted to step on us in the mud and make us beg for life and death.
It seemed that without squeezing dry the last drop of blood of the Xu family, the dignitaries and even the royal family would not let the Xu family go!
I watched my old father, who was always smiling and didn't care about anything on weekdays, bow and scrape in front of the dignitaries in the court in order to protect me.
In those eyes that were always narrowed into a slit, there was exhaustion and forbearance that I had never seen before.
I recalled that on the way to the capital, I saw a snake with horns, a group of insects, and roaring horses.
Okay.
The real dragon is actually a flood dragon.
The group of insects are all pests.
Only the horse steps on everything.
I started to use everything I had to hold up a piece of the sky for my old father in the capital.
I was acrimonious and mean, I resorted to every conceivable means.
I ruined their calculations.
I played the image of a villainess more vividly, just to let them know that Xu Qinghuan was not to be trifled with, and the people of the Xu family were even less to be touched. But the water in the capital was too deep, and the net of power was too dense. My little tricks were just like hitting a stone with an egg in front of the deep-rooted aristocratic forces.
Their suppression became more and more ruthless, and their traps became more and more poisonous. They pressed step by step, leaving no room, as if they wanted to completely trap our father and daughter in this cage of the capital.
I realized.
The way to break the game in the capital is not in the capital.
It's the unparalleled merit in the northern border!
I thought of my second brother far away in the northern border, the second brother who was complained by me as a traitor, the second brother who I had never really taken to heart.
I originally thought that he was just muddling along in the northern border, at most greedy for life and afraid of death, doing some fence-sitting deeds.
But I never thought that he would end up like this.
When I exhausted my efforts and rushed to the northern border all the way, and stepped into that dark, damp death row that exuded the smell of blood.
My whole body froze in place, and the blood all over my body seemed to solidify at this moment.
The death row was dark and cramped, and the sound of iron chains rubbing against the ground was harsh and desperate. The air was filled with a mixed smell of rancidity, blood, and mustiness, which made people nauseous.
And my second brother was locked on the cold torture rack by thick iron chains. His clothes were torn, his body was covered with scars, and his flesh and blood were blurred. What made my heart stop beating the most was that one of his arms was cut off neatly from the shoulder. The wound was ulcerated and inflamed, and the flesh and blood were sticky, which was horrible to look at.
The blood stains on the severed limb had long turned black and coagulated into blocks. It made people's scalp tingle, and their hearts seemed to be tightly grabbed by an invisible hand, so painful that they couldn't breathe.
My throat was blocked with boiling fishy sweetness, and I couldn't say a word.
I wanted to call his name, wanted to ask him what happened, wanted to hug him, but my feet seemed to be filled with lead, and I couldn't move an inch. I looked at the soldiers guarding the death row, and those people in official uniforms with ferocious faces. They held a piece of yellow paper with black characters on it, which read four shocking words:
Colluding with the enemy and treason.
This was a capital offense that warranted the execution of one's entire extended family, a death sentence meant to wipe out the entire Xu family. And yet, they were forcibly pinning this fabricated charge on my second brother's head.
They yanked my second brother's only movable arm, pressing down on his festering, bleeding wrist to force him to press his fingerprint onto that confession. Trembling all over from the agony, cold sweat mixed with blood dripping down his forehead, his teeth chattering, my second brother struggled with the last ounce of his strength. He refused to bow his head, refused to admit to this false accusation that would destroy him and our entire family.
This scene stung my eyes and completely crushed my last lingering thought of escaping.
They wanted to drag everyone in our Xu family into an abyss of eternal doom.
Standing in the death row cell, listening to my second brother's suppressed cries of pain and seeing his desperate yet defiant eyes, all my surviving playfulness, all my cynicism, and all my obsession with going home completely collapsed at this moment, shattering into dust.
To hell with the Heartless Rich system.
To hell with exile to Lingnan.
To hell with the grand villa in the modern world.
To hell with the script of a transmigrated villainess! None of it could compare to a single finger of my family, to their safety, to their lives!
I was once a transmigrator who only wanted to escape, a selfish spectator, an outsider who treated everything as a game.
I thought that as long as I was bad enough, ruthless enough, and heartless enough, I could retreat unscathed and return to my own world.
But I forgot that human hearts are not made of iron, and family bonds are not fake.
Every day I spent in this book, every meal I ate, every time I was protected, had long bound me to the Xu family.
It had long made me treat my father, my eldest brother, and my second brother as my true family.
It turned out that my so-called going home was nothing but cowardly escapism, and the so-called villainess was just a disguise for my fear of facing reality.
The candlelight flickered, reflecting the icy coldness on Xu Qinghuan's face.
Tears slid down silently, smashing onto the rice paper and mixing with the ink, blurring into a messy stain.
The hand holding the brush no longer trembled, replaced by a bone-chilling coldness and resolute determination.
Her former lightheartedness was completely gone, leaving her heart and eyes filled only with a murderous, heavy, and bone-deep hatred.
Those who hurt my family, those powerful figures who pushed us at every turn, those treacherous officials who fabricated the false charges, and even the so-called supreme Emperor of the court!
I will not let a single one of them off.
I am no longer that Xu Qinghuan who only wanted to go home.
No longer that villainess who just muddled along.
No longer that cowardly, escaping transmigrator.
From today onward, I will carry the debts of the Xu family.
I will avenge my family.
All the suppression, framing, and harm, I will return a thousand, a hundred thousand times over.
Whoever touches my family, whoever harms my loved ones, I will make them wish they were dead, make them forever unable to live as human beings.
In this world, there is no longer any path that can make me retreat.
I once wanted to be the gentle breeze in the wind, free and joyous.
Only now do I know that the gentle breeze is too soft to protect those I want to protect.
Only by turning into solid ice, freezing and shattering all the thorns, crushing all the enemies, can I protect everything I care about.
The tip of the brush fell, the strokes piercing through the back of the paper, every word weeping blood, every sentence resolute. There was no trace of playfulness, no trace of leaving things to chance, only a murderous aura that sank to the very bottom, and a determination to never look back.
Outside the door, the scent of conspiracy and blood drifted over once again.
The light belonging to her father was no more; that lantern ultimately appeared in Xu Qinghuan's hand.
She pushed the door open and walked straight out, no longer caring the slightest bit about what was behind her.
As the room gradually descended into darkness.
On that desk.
Lay two halves of a broken brush.
And on that piece of white paper.
Only one straightforward sentence remained:
I wish to become ice, and I have no way back.
End of this volume.
