Author: Cherish the World | Original Source: SFACG |
Translator: raltzero | English Source: Re:Library |
A pitch-black world.
If a certain person’s life was recorded into a documentary, there would surely be a scene of opening her big eyes within her mother’s bosom and glancing around at the world in curiosity during her youngling years. Even though it wasn’t possible for such a scene to appear in this certain person’s memories, for everyone else, this was the most important link to integrating into this world.
But unfortunately, this scene had never appeared before in Fang Thirteen’s life.
This is one of the most unremarkable side rooms within the Overlord of Zhao Chen’s mansion, a place that usually isn’t swept clean and the inside of the room is even somewhat damp and cold. Young Fang Thirteen is lying down on top of a very hard bed with closed eyes and appears as serene as sleeping beauty. Outside the room, there are several children around the same age as her noisily playing. They are chasing after butterflies, grabbing sparrows, flying kites, standing barefoot in the flower-filled courtyard, sitting around a tree debating about who’s the strongest Grand Sword Hero throughout the generations that have served the state, and just chatting happily in general.
Fang Thirteen could only lie down on bed inside the room and listen to everything.
There were times that she really wanted to join in on the discussion, but nobody would listen to her ideas, so she forced herself to swallow down her desire of wanting to speak out.
There wasn’t anyone who wanted to play with her either. This couldn’t be blamed on everyone deliberately discriminating against her and not wanting to play with her but rather on the fact that she simply couldn’t walk or see. Someone would say “Today’s flowers are really pretty” and everybody else would reply “Right, right”, but only Fang Thirteen would be unable to make any comment. When everyone was together kicking a ball, Fang Thirteen could only wait on the side sitting in her wheelchair. Then, one of the little children would have to be separated from the group to attend after her.
As time passed by, everyone became unwilling to bring such a drag out to play.
Fang Thirteen was forced to stay alone in her room, fantasizing about what color the flowers outside were, fantasizing about how impressive that Grand Sword Hero’s mountain severing slash would look, fantasizing……about there being a day when she could also open her eyes and stand up to run under the sunlight hand in hand with them.
It was also when she was feeling the most depressed that she met Fang Lita.
That one was quite the naughty child, but he was the only one who was willing to keep her company and play with her. Fang Lita often brought a book with him and sat by her side to read it aloud. His reading actually wasn’t that good and didn’t have any cadence or emotion in his words. There were even many times when he didn’t know a certain word and he would stumble on his words, causing his fluent reading to disappear.
But even so, it was a little mote of brilliance within Fang Thirteen’s drab life.
At that time, Fang Lita closed the book and spoke of his lofty heroic aspirations of wanting to become the Overlord of Zhao Chen, then unify Eternal Heaven State and sit on the throne of the king. In those times, Fang Thirteen and Fang Lita were merely children, yet Fang Thirteen kept those thoughtless words from Fang Lita deep within her heart.
Perhaps it was to repay his kindness, perhaps it was because she wanted to dote on him, or perhaps she merely wanted a little tender care in return.
Maybe she only wanted to keep this bit of warmth from the outside world close to her and merely wished to not lose the only younger brother who didn’t shun her.
Fang Thirteen strived to become “useful”.
And in this process, she slowly turned into a tool.
There was a time when Moon was once Bai Feng’s running dog, but he grew up in the Overlord of Tian Cheng’s mansion, so he had seen all sorts of partings and ugly sides of human nature. Therefore, when Li De threw out an olive branch to him, Moon didn’t hesitate in the slightest on his choice to leave. She would rather not foolishly stay in the brothel and delude herself into thinking that Yun Hai’s Bai Feng would one day redeem her.
Fang Thirteen was also unlike Felita, who had undergone unjust treatment ever since she was little. She was never beaten up nor scolded every day of her life, she wouldn’t react so desperately whenever somebody treated her just a little well. No, Fang Thirteen is actually just very pure, very innocent. While she might be able to mobilize an army and create countless changes in her battle formation, emotionally, she is just your average little girl. Whoever is good to me is whoever I will be good to, it’s that simple for her. Moreover, this ‘good’ isn’t the ‘if you give me candy, I will give you a candy back’ type, it’s the ‘if you give me a little of what I need in my most desperate time, then I will give you my all when you need it’.
She feels that only if she does this will it count as repaying a kindness.
Fang Lita’s the first person who’s ever shown her goodwill, so she gave everything she had to him.
According to convention, Fang Thirteen should’ve become the City Lord, but she voluntarily renounced the position and handed Sky Star City over to Fang Lita. When Sky Star City was still a lone city, she racked her brains and frequently thought up strategies to slowly expand Fang Lita’s influence, to slowly plan out a perfect formation. Attack when advancing, defend when retreating, she practically established their invincible position. So long as she continued expanding outwards, it was possible for her to slowly nibble away on the surrounding cities and continuously build up strength to further move up in the world.
Alas, her beautiful expectations will never be realized since an internal problem already occurred.
Having experienced the sweet taste of power, Fang Lita was unwilling to return authority back over to his older sister and became increasingly distrustful of her.
Apart from handing over military affairs to Fang Thirteen, Fang Thirteen had stayed within the City Lord’s mansion like she was under house arrest. Fang Lita would always protect himself, defend himself against the chance that his older sister would bring the army and rebel, prevent others from getting in touch with his older sister, stop this, stop that, and keep himself on guard for so many years. Due to the fact that he’s a selfish person, he’s fundamentally never believed that there could be a genuine selfless person in this world.
——Therefore, I, who has been by Fang Lita’s side for so long, will ultimately meet such an imperfect ending as well, right?
This point, Fang Thirteen had long since thought about.
But on the battlefield, she had to be an iron-blooded, merciless, and naturally cold and indifferent strategist. Outside of the battlefield, however, she was still a soft natured little lass.
Maybe it will be such an imperfect ending, but there’s the possibility that there will be a day that Fang Lita will suddenly wake up to reality and we will return to those innocent days where he would lie on the bedside and call me ‘big sis’ and read me books, right? Wouldn’t that be such a wonderful future?
Fully aware that the possibility of this happening was small, she still resolved herself to believe in it.
How foolish.
The ice-cold rain water washed away the bloodstains on her body, yet it couldn’t eliminate the scars on her entire body. What was even harder to heal were the bursts of pain within her mind, like a tsunami engulfing her mind. The beauty and innocence of the past, those chapters in a person’s memories that make them unable to stop themselves from recalling, they’re now over. Now, she was collapsed in front of the City Lord’s mansion, listening to the rustling of the rain, listening to her heartbeat slowly declining.
For reasons unknown, that person’s words once more flashed by in her mind
——“Fang Thirteen, you seem to have been living the life of a dog.”
The bone-chilling rain fell onto her body and for the first time in Fang Thirteen’s life, actual tears gushed forth.
Within her eyes that would eternally never open, her tear glands began working like the final radiance of the setting sun and tears poured forth and mixed in with the rain. Or perhaps it was just that she had become accustomed to staying strong throughout the years and always maintaining a certain degree of rationality whenever something happened that she had never cried. Now that she had unloaded all her burdens, she could finally feel reassured in crying aloud.
The sounds of her crying was covered by the sounds of the downpour and then, nobody could hear her clearly.