By this point, Su Jinxia had already drunk three cups of water and had completely recovered her senses, so she began examining her space.
After dying a miserable death in her previous life, her soul had transmigrated to a place called the apocalypse. Her space had awakened there as well, and it contained some of the supplies she had collected before. There was not much food, only a few dozen bags. She had struggled to survive for ten years in the apocalypse, learning many things along the way. Her willpower and combat abilities had also been tempered.
Looking at the gold stored inside her space, Su Jinxia smiled happily. This was her source of confidence. Gold was worthless in the apocalypse. While other people refused to collect it, she had gathered it anyway. After calculating, she figured she had at least several tons. Thinking about how valuable gold was in this era, she smiled even more brightly.
The thing she had stored the most of in her space was weapons. Su Jinxia believed there would always come a time when she would need them.
Hearing the sound of the door opening outside, Xiao Ying’s loud voice came from the other room. “Where are you? You damn girl, where are you hiding?
“Hurry up and come out! Look at what you’ve done to me and your sister. I should have reported you and sent you to the police station to sit in jail. You’re so young, yet so vicious.”
Su Jinxia pushed open the door and walked out. Seeing that the mother and daughter had their injured hands wrapped in gauze, she gave a cold laugh.
From the moment they had beaten her to death, they were no longer relatives connected by blood.
Looking at them was like looking at the mutated zombies she had seen before, and it filled her with disgust. Her hand unconsciously moved to her waist.
When she failed to touch the hilt, she remembered that her saber was in her space. It was a Dragon-Cutting Saber sharp enough to slice through iron as easily as mud.
There was nothing it could not cut through. Even hard diamonds could be reduced to pieces in an instant beneath its blade.
“Why are you staring at us? Hurry up and pour us some water!” Xiao Ying forced herself to say it, gathering her courage and putting on a bold front. Her elder daughter’s gaze was far too cold.
The way she looked at them was far too unfamiliar, making Xiao Ying begin to feel uneasy.
How had this person changed so much after falling ill and sleeping for two days? She was still the same person, yet somehow she seemed different.
Su Jinxia strode over, swiftly extended her right hand, and directly seized the other woman by the throat. Then she lifted her into the air.
“You said I should do what?”
Xiao Ying was completely stunned. With her throat clutched, she could no longer speak. She could only claw at Su Jinxia’s hand with both of her own while looking toward her younger daughter in terror, signaling with her eyes for her to come help.
Only after seeing her mother calling for help did Su Mingyue react. She had just moved closer when a kick struck her in the abdomen.
She fell to the ground with a cry, the back of her head banging against the armrest of a chair. The pain was so intense that she nearly fainted.
Su Jinxia said, “From today onward, I am the law in this family. You’ll do whatever I tell you to do!”
When Xiao Ying saw her younger daughter fall, her heart ached terribly. Her throat was clamped shut, leaving her unable to breathe, and the intense feeling of suffocation made her feel as though she was about to meet her ancestors.
At that moment, she finally realized that her eldest daughter really was different.
She could only nod to show that she understood. Tears welled in her eyes. It was unbearably painful—far too painful.
Su Jinxia made sure the woman had only one breath left in her. If she squeezed any harder, she would die. Only then did she release her hand.
Xiao Ying collapsed onto the floor and began coughing violently as she lay there. The feeling of being on the verge of death was something no one who had not experienced it could possibly understand.
She raised her head to look at her eldest daughter, tears hanging from the corners of her eyes. The pain in her throat made it impossible for her to utter a single word.
“Mom… I want to go to the hospital!” Su Mingyue cried out in agony. She felt that she would die if she did not go to the hospital.
Xiao Ying could only endure it. She crawled over, pulled the girl up from the floor, and touched her younger daughter’s head with one hand. Blood was seeping from it.
“Blood!” Her voice was hoarse, and the arrogance and domineering attitude she had displayed before were gone.
“You won’t die.” After saying this, Su Jinxia returned to her room.
After marrying Song Jianping, beatings like this had occurred almost every day.
She had resisted and made a scene. At first, whenever he beat her too severely, she would run to the police station.
In the end, that man had grown clever. He began beating her in places that other people could not see. She had her own sense of shame, after all, and could not expose her injuries in front of everyone.
Eventually, he had beaten her until she became numb. Lying on the bed, she sank into her memories again.
Later, when her younger sister’s cheating on the examination was exposed, they came begging her for help.
They claimed, under the noble-sounding excuse that one person had already been ruined and they could not ruin her younger sister as well, that she should come forward and declare that she had willingly given up her admission letter. That way, her younger sister would be free of trouble.
How could she possibly admit to that?
Song Jianping had beaten her viciously again. That day, she finally fought back with all her strength, picking up the hoe on the ground and bringing it down on Song Jianping’s head. Only after seeing him collapse into a pool of blood did she run out of the house.
She did not know where to go. Somehow, without realizing it, she entered a courtyard. She found a room at random and hid there.
Only at night would she sneak into the kitchen to steal something to eat.
By observing her surroundings, she learned that a disabled military officer lived in the courtyard, along with a young soldier who came at a fixed time every day to take care of him.
He cooked for the officer, which was why there was always ready-made food in the kitchen.
She would take only a little of each dish, then quietly hide in that room and eat it in secret. She also went to the bathroom only in the middle of the night.
She did not know whether Song Jianping was dead or alive. Every night after eating, she would gaze at the moon in the sky. She longed for freedom and light.
Then, one night, when she came out to steal food again, she encountered the man.
Their eyes met. The man sat straight in his wheelchair, wearing a white shirt on his upper body and military-green trousers below.
“Who are you? How did you get into my home?”
The man’s low, magnetic voice, like a cello, lingered in her ears. Thinking of her circumstances, Su Jinxia unconsciously clenched the corners of her clothes with both hands.
“I…”
“Have you been hiding in my home all this time?”
“Yes. It’s because…”
“That explains it, then. The leftovers have been decreasing every other day because of you.”
“Eldest Brother, I was forced into this. I had no choice. Someone was beating me, so I injured him. I didn’t want to be beaten to death!” Forgetting her shame, she pulled up her sleeve. The old injuries left on her arm were fully exposed beneath the moonlight.
“A dispute between husband and wife?”
“I was married to him. He isn’t even human. He just likes to beat me whenever he wants to vent his anger.”
“You didn’t report it?”
“I’ve gone to the police station several times. They said it was a domestic matter and that there wasn’t much they could do. They only criticized and educated him. At most, they detained him for three days. After he came back, he beat me even more viciously.”
“But hiding here isn’t a long-term solution either.”
Looking at the man’s resolute and exceptionally handsome face, at the thin line of his lips, she suddenly dropped to her knees with a thud.
“Please, let me hide here for a few more days!”
“Then I’ll pretend I never saw you, and you can pretend you never saw me.”