Chapter 56

“Don’t be reckless! Guo Jianglong, think about your son back in your hometown!”
Seeing Guo Jianglong growing more and more unhinged, Qin Yuanzheng’s hand gripping the gun began to tremble. Suddenly, he remembered, Guo Jianglong had a childhood sweetheart…
“Son? Where the hell would I get a son? Qin Yuanzheng, you’re even making up ghost stories now, are you really that hung up on this woman? Too bad though, she likes pretty boys.”
Jianglong instinctively thought Qin Yuanzheng was lying. At a moment like this, people would say anything to save someone. Ever since he started running with the underworld, Jianglong had never gone soft on any woman, precisely because he feared having a weakness.
No ties, no burdens, no fear. Qin Yuanzheng had been undercover for so long; he should’ve figured them out thoroughly by now.
“Guo Jianglong, real name Du Xing, from Shaxian, Yucheng. After raping his neighbor’s distant cousin, Shen Fang, he fled by fishing boat.”
Yucheng. Xiaofang.
Those words dragged Jianglong’s long-blurred memories back to the surface.
“Brother Xing, I want the candy that comes in jars. But they only sell it at the department store in the city.”
“What’s so hard about that? If you want it, I’ll get it for you.”
“Really? But how do you have that much money?”
“Just wait.”
…
“You’re marrying the boy from the next village?! Xiaofang!”
“Brother Xing, my father said he won’t agree to us.”
…
Seeing that Jianglong had clearly remembered, Qin Yuanzheng continued calmly, “She didn’t abort the child. She gave birth to a boy.”
“I… I actually have a son.”
While Jianglong was lost in memories and longing, Bai Xinmei suddenly bit down hard on the web between his thumb and forefinger. He cried out in pain and kicked her away. Like a kite with its string snapped, she flew into the raging river.
Jianglong immediately fired several more shots into the water.
Qin Yuanzheng’s eyes split wide. “No!”
“Meimei!” Song Jinping let out a heart-rending scream.
At the same time, he raised his gun and fired straight at Jianglong’s face. As death came, there was satisfaction and release in Jianglong’s eyes. Qin Yuanzheng even felt a twinge of regret for fabricating the story about the son, it had let Jianglong die far too easily.
Qin Yuanzheng rushed over and pinned down Song Jinping, who was struggling to jump in. His voice was heavy with grief. “If you go down like this, you’re just throwing your life away. Someone will come to extract you soon. Stay here and wait.”
As Qin Yuanzheng leapt into the river, Jianglong, who wasn’t completely dead yet, fired two final shots toward the water, catching everyone off guard.
Blood-stained ripples surfaced on the river, carrying a faint but chilling aura of slaughter.
Unable to stop any of it, Song Jinping let out an anguished roar and pounded his bullet-pierced calf. He really was useless.
Time ticked by, minute by minute. About half an hour later, the extraction team finally arrived. It wasn’t their fault, avoiding detection was the reason they’d hidden on the far side of the mountain forest. Given the complex terrain, this was already fast.
“Comrade, where is Deputy Regiment Commander Qin? And what about the other hostage?”
Song Jinping lay on the deck, struggling to lift his arm. He closed his eyes in pain and pointed at the river. “Guo Jianglong may have hit Qin Yuanzheng just now. Both of them are in critical condition. Please… I’m counting on you.”
Qin Yuanzheng had indeed been shot in the arm and waist. Yet sustained by sheer willpower, he continued searching underwater for the woman he loved.
In the end, he found her.
Just as he’d thought, she would never escape his grasp in this lifetime.
With one arm injured, he could only wrap her with his good arm, forcing his wounded arm to paddle weakly.
Fortunately, there were comrades waiting along the riverbank. As long as he surfaced within their line of sight, help would reach him.
Before losing consciousness from blood loss, he heard someone shout, “Look! What’s that?!”
“Quick! Save them!”
A military hospital in a certain military district.
After re-examining him, the doctor in a white coat called Bai Xinmei and Jiang Weimin, who had been guarding the bedside, outside.
“Colonel Qin had old injuries from a previous mission. This time, with gunshot wounds to the waist and arm…” The doctor paused, his expression grave as he looked at the final test results. “What I mean is, this may affect his lifespan. As his family, I hope you’ll be more considerate of him. If nothing unexpected happens, his internal retirement approval will come through in a few days. He’s no longer suitable for frontline duty.”
“What do you mean, ‘affect’?” Bai Xinmei asked.
“It means he might live another three years… or five… or ten. We can’t guarantee anything. All his indicators are currently substandard. His liver function is severely damaged, and because he was shot in the abdomen twice and soaked in river water for too long, microbial contamination caused extensive infection. We had to remove most of his intestines. From now on, eating will also be a major problem.”
“The hell are you saying?! You can’t cure him?! He’s a soldier who’s contributed to Huaguo! You’ve read all those medical books, even studied abroad, and you still can’t handle this?! Damn it!”
Jiang Weimin completely lost control. A brother who had gone to military academy with him, fought alongside him, taken bullets together, ending up like this. He grabbed the doctor’s collar and roared, only to be slapped hard by his wife, who had rushed over.
She shot him a sharp look and scolded pointedly, “The man’s wife isn’t even making a fuss, what are you yelling for?! Making a fool of yourself! The doctor’s already done everything he could. Come home with me.”
Likewise, Bai Xinmei couldn’t believe this outcome. How could it be like this?
Her face was deathly pale. In the original storyline, Qin Yuanzheng would have died in battle, allowing the original host to be with Song Jinping without guilt. The original host was merely a pampered young lady shaped by feudal times, not heartless.
But now, because of this tiny deviation in the plot, she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Song Jinping’s blackening hadn’t reached 100%, and Qin Yuanzheng was in this state. What should she do… to complete the mission without collapsing her character setting?
She stood silently for a long time before returning to the senior officers’ ward and sitting by the bed.
Qin Yuanzheng was already awake, half-reclining against the headboard. When he saw her, a flicker of joy passed through his eyes.
“I thought you’d leave with Song Jinping,” he said softly. “After all… I’m basically a cripple now. I won’t live much longer.”
She snapped her head up, her expression calm. This time, she shed the gentle, pitiful façade and revealed her cold, self-interested core, though she still hadn’t lost her moral bottom line.
“Qin Yuanzheng, is that really how you see me? If I did that, I’d be worse than the venomous snake in The Farmer and the Snake.”
She was holding a small knife, planning to peel him an apple and cut it into bite-sized pieces.
After a few awkward exchanges, the room fell into silence.
Qin Yuanzheng knew that in the four years he’d been absent, the woman he loved had fallen for that male educated youth from the city. He’d always known she had a stunning, alluring exterior paired with a thin-hearted nature, but he never imagined she could truly love someone else.
The thought tortured him more than bullets tearing through his body, pain multiplied a hundredfold, as if his heart were being fried in oil.
If Bai Xinmei knew what he was thinking, she’d look at him with a complicated expression. Silly child, your appearance has made my mission much harder, but to me, you and the mission target are treated exactly the same.
Because the situation had become far too complicated, the male lead seemed to have fallen for her, yet the mission completion rate stubbornly refused to rise. The early-dead ex-husband had made a dazzling return, the female lead had easily given up on her “true destined man,” and the plot had collapsed so badly it didn’t even recognize its own mother. It had absolutely nothing to do with the script the system had given her.
What should she do?
Being with Song Jinping would let her complete the main quest, but it would destroy her character setting. Staying with Qin Yuanzheng preserved her persona, but the main quest would almost certainly fail. She thought bitterly, no man would deeply love a woman lying in another man’s arms.
She wiped her face gloomily and silently clicked Report + Complaint in the system interface. Normally, if she asked questions or begged for cheats, the damned system ignored her completely, after all, she was just a stand-in intern. Until one time, while watching barrage comments, she accidentally clicked a certain button and passed out from pain on the spot.
Unexpectedly, the “Victor System” appeared immediately, and she could even hear irritation in its mechanical voice.
[Intern, do not randomly click buttons unrelated to the main quest.]
[I’ll click whatever I want. You won’t let me break character, but I still have to complete the main quest, or else you’ll humanely erase me. Now the plot’s already wrecked, and there’s that ex-husband, I strongly suspect there’s been an internal operational error in your system. Either way, if I can’t finish the mission, I die. I’m reporting and complaining.]
As the highest-tier system in the female supporting-role department, Victor was momentarily speechless.
[So, intern, what exactly is your demand?]
[Help me cheat, set the male lead’s conquest value to full. Or kill off the ex-husband. Otherwise what am I supposed to do now…]
A battle-hardened system, Victor had always been the one employees begged. This was the first time it had encountered someone who casually clicked complaints and reports. System complaints meant mental lashings, each one unbearable, soul-deep agony. Who in their right mind would click that? This intern was probably facing imminent death and planning to drag it down with her.
Although it ultimately wouldn’t change much, given this intern’s report frequency, Victor would be downgraded after this mission, from a top-tier, fully equipped system to one that could only be matched with trash-level taskers. Future upgrades would never come its way.
No.
At this thought, Victor actually developed a human-like emotion, anger.
For the first time ever, the Victor System, known for never helping taskers, pulled the basic data of both mission targets and analyzed all variables of this period-drama world. In its data-processing core, it generated the optimal solution.
After hearing the system’s so-called optimal solution, Bai Xinmei was left with a head full of black lines. Could this really work? If she didn’t choose Song Jinping and instead stayed with Qin Yuanzheng, would Song Jinping truly become utterly devoted to her?
[If you are with the male lead now, after experiencing the initial joy of obtaining you, his affection may briefly rise to its peak. But as time passes, love will gradually fade. When the veil clouding his eyes is lifted, he will remember that you abandoned the husband who risked his life to save you, while calmly enjoying the material benefits he provided. In his eyes, you will become nothing more than a woman with a beautiful shell, empty inside, even cold and ungrateful. His favorability will then begin to decline. You are not the chosen daughter of fate. Unable to break character, you were never destined to receive all of the male lead’s love.]
So this had been a dead end from the very beginning?
After hearing Victor’s explanation, Jiang Wei, no, Bai Xinmei, felt her entire body tremble. Cold sweat poured down her back. It wasn’t as simple as she had thought at all. Those audiences who seemed to like her were actually throwing her lethal riddles. If she hadn’t stumbled upon the system’s hint by sheer accident… she would’ve been eliminated in the very first round.
[Your ex-husband in this world is not as badly injured as the doctors claimed. He exaggerated his condition to gain your sympathy. He won’t die anytime soon. Of course, if a BUG appears, the mission world will self-repair. He won’t live long either. Good luck, intern.]
That was likely the cold, aloof system offering her its final bit of help.
After this half-coercive, half-pleading exchange, she knew what she had to do.
She returned to continue caring for Qin Yuanzheng. When he saw her enter, his eyes lit up. “Meimei, you’re here.”
“I’m your wife. Shouldn’t I be?” she raised a brow, pretending to be annoyed.
She carried a thermos and a lunch box, wearing a beautiful orange maxi dress, bright and vivid, as if symbolizing her embrace of a new life.
“No, it’s just… Educated Youth Song is also in the hospital. I thought you’d go see him.”
Bai Xinmei curved her rosy lips into a soft smile, warmth veiling her fair cheeks. “What nonsense are you saying? You’re my man. Niuniu’s father.”
Joy flickered in Qin Yuanzheng’s heart, though his face showed a hint of grievance. He desperately wanted Meimei to stay, yet he knew that if he hadn’t conspired with Weimin and Hai’an to exaggerate his injuries, creating the illusion of being bedridden and dependent, he wouldn’t have been able to keep her at all. Touching the scar left by a bullet across his face, then thinking of his battered body, a deep sense of inferiority and desolation rose within him.
“Educated Youth Song suits you better than I do… I’ve never been worthy of you.”
Bai Xinmei set down what she was holding and covered his mouth. “You’re not allowed to say that. You’re a hero. We’ll… live well together from now on.”
“Then what about Educated Youth Song?” Qin Yuanzheng stared at her without blinking.
“He and I are just ordinary friends,” she said softly. “Yuanzheng, let’s live well together from now on, okay?”
“Meimei… that’s all I’ve ever dreamed of.”
There was a faint rustling sound outside the door, quickly fading away. Bai Xinmei was about to turn around to look when she was suddenly pulled back. A scorching kiss descended like a storm. She seemed to lose herself, never noticing the person outside the door, whose expression had turned dark as water.
Ordinary friends.
Song Jinping chewed over those words again and again. Then he saw the two of them kissing passionately on the hospital bed. Through the glass, he caught sight of the provocation and triumph in Qin Yuanzheng’s eyes. His vision went black, and he fainted on the spot.
He had originally come to check on Qin Yuanzheng, assuming Meimei would be here as well. These past few days, with Bai Xinmei not visiting him, Song Jinping had already been restless with anxiety. Now, an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and finality crushed him.
Soon after, the Song family arrived. Naturally, they couldn’t tolerate their outstanding son, grandson, being trapped by love, clinging to a woman day after day, accomplishing nothing, even interfering in someone else’s marriage. They forcibly took him to the capital.
Bai Xinmei quietly observed everything from the shadows. Watching the favorability meter rise on the system interface, she half-understood and half-wondered, so it really was true that what you can’t have is the best?
After recovering from his injuries, Qin Yuanzheng returned to the army. Not the front line, but certainly not a cushy administrative post either, he was still on the battlefield.
With accumulated merit and seniority, he was promoted again, this time transferred to the capital. When Qin Yuanzheng told her the news, his gaze evasive, Bai Xinmei looked at him with a faint, knowing smile. He immediately understood, she had always known his injuries weren’t that severe. Pretending to go cook, he hurried away to hide his embarrassment.
Despite that, he was deeply moved. Although Song Jinping had been taken back by his family, Qin Yuanzheng was constantly plagued by unease, afraid she’d one day go to the capital to find him. When the transfer order came, he agonized over it for a long time before finally speaking up. One step closer to the center of power, and the bustling metropolis with all its dazzling temptations… he knew this was what Meimei wanted. What Song Jinping could give her, he could give too.
She was about to meet the male lead again. This time, she felt the mission would finally be completed.
Yet Song Jinping never came to find her. Had he forgotten her?
Finally, one day when Qin Yuanzheng went out on another mission, she went to pick up the child from school, and ran into Song Jinping.
Unlike Bai Xinmei, after being brought back by his family, Song Jinping had gone on a hunger strike, spiraling into madness for a long time. Then one day, his cousin slammed a photo of Bai Xinmei and Qin Yuanzheng into his face. He woke up.
Childish. Foolish.
That was how he judged himself during that period.
If Meimei sought power, then compared to Qin Yuanzheng, a high-ranking military official with real authority, he was just a second-generation rich kid with no education, no status, living under others’ shadows. If she sought emotional bonds, she and Qin Yuanzheng were childhood sweethearts, had known each other for years, been married for four, shared life-saving grace, and had a child together.
He collapsed, realizing he hadn’t lost unfairly.
But he wasn’t reconciled.
After pulling himself together, he immediately tested into Imperial Capital University. Abandoning his previous aspirations, he entered politics instead, becoming a rising star in the political arena.
From the moment Bai Xinmei set foot in the capital, Song Jinping never stopped investigating her. He hired private detectives to secretly photograph her, searching for cracks in her marriage with Qin Yuanzheng. He even investigated Qin Yuanzheng’s health. He had overheard the doctor’s words in the hospital and had fervently hoped Qin Yuanzheng would die soon, yet found the man didn’t look short-lived at all.
Further investigation revealed the truth. Suddenly enlightened, he realized it.
That old man had lied.
He had deceived him. Deceived Meimei. Qin Yuanzheng wasn’t as honest as he appeared. He had deliberately exploited Meimei’s sympathy. Song Jinping knew Meimei only seemed shallow and money-loving, deep down, she was a woman who valued loyalty and had a conscience.
So even if she had once loved him, she had no choice but to give up, shackled by the debt of a life saved.
Qin Yuanzheng was truly despicable.
She stood at the gates of a middle school, wearing a bright yellow beach dress, bold and uninhibited for this era. Thin straps rested on her smooth, pale shoulders. Light green earrings swayed gently in the wind. Her wavy hair cascaded down her back, flamboyant and alluring, drawing countless glances from passersby.
Song Jinping stood behind her, gazing for a long time, as if unwilling to look away. “Meimei.”
She turned around, surprise flashing in her eyes. “Jinping, it’s you.”
Bitterness welled up in his chest. He didn’t know whether to be glad she still remembered him, or sad that she seemed to have already treated him as a passing figure in her life, someone she had let go.
Harboring dark intentions, he told her everything about Qin Yuanzheng deceiving her, eagerly waiting for her reaction.
“I know,” Bai Xinmei said calmly. “Jinping, I’ve always known.”
She knew?
It felt like a violent blow to Song Jinping’s mind. So she had never loved him? He was merely a desperate choice? Once Qin Yuanzheng returned, he was cast aside without a second thought?
Then what was he?
Seeing his expression, Bai Xinmei inwardly panicked, had she pushed too hard? Her eyes softened as she asked, almost nostalgically, “Jinping… have you been well these past few years?”
“Whether I’m well or not has nothing to do with you,” he replied coldly, turning his head away.
His legs, however, refused to move. He couldn’t leave this place, the place that kept hurting him, the woman who kept hurting him.
“But I’ve always been worried about you. Actually, Uncle Song and Aunt Song came to see me. Jinping, I truly hope you can live well.”
As she spoke, she forced a smile, trying to ease the atmosphere between them.
His parents?
He’d never heard of this before.
She wasn’t lying. Song’s parents really had gone to see her.
“So that’s why you chose him?”
Song Jinping’s voice trembled slightly, disbelief threading through it. His parents had clearly supported him, so how had things turned out like this?
What he forgot was that when he’d told his parents about it back then, Bai Xinmei had been a widowed single woman. Now she was a married military wife with a child. Naturally, Song’s parents wouldn’t let their promising son smash himself bloody against a wall.
“Jinping, I don’t want to talk about the past anymore,” Bai Xinmei said, her expression troubled. “Things being like this now… is already good.”
Her reluctance only convinced Song Jinping further that she had loved him once, forced apart by circumstances beyond her control.
“Then you… did you ever… love-”
The school bell rang.
Bai Xinmei glanced at her watch and stepped forward to pick up the child. As she passed Song Jinping, he reached out, trying to grasp something, but caught nothing.
He stood frozen in place, murmuring a question into the emptiness, the gloom in his eyes refusing to disperse.
Only silence answered him.
She didn’t respond to that question.
So in the end… had it all been just his one-sided infatuation?
From the moment the system delivered its optimal solution, Bai Xinmei took “what you can’t get is the best” as her guiding creed, never realizing that excess becomes deficiency, nor noticing that someone’s darkening value had already skyrocketed.
One day, as she was on her usual route to pick up the child, her vision suddenly went black and she lost consciousness. When she woke up, she found her hands and feet bound with fine chains, lying on a bed.
At first, she thought she’d been kidnapped again, after all, she was far too familiar with that sort of thing. But when she saw Song Jinping walk in carrying dinner, she belatedly realized something was very wrong, yet still foolishly asked, “Jinping, if you wanted to invite me to dinner, you could’ve just told me directly.”
Song Jinping shook his head. “Meimei, this will be your home from now on. Until you truly answer the question I asked you, you’ll stay on the bed.”
That was when she really panicked.
Had the male lead snapped?
She had never encountered something like this before and hurriedly blurted out, “I loved you. I did love you.”
Clearly, such a perfunctory response fooled no one.
Song Jinping fed her gently, his movements tender, his face still as handsome as ever, so much so that Bai Xinmei was nearly scared to tears.
“Jinping, don’t be like this. We can talk things out properly.”
This had gone way too far.
She called out to the system again and again, but there was no response. Things had already turned this twisted, did this count as a successful mission or not? She was practically on the verge of crying.