Outside the cave, night had completely fallen.
The shouts of the search party and the barking of the dogs had vanished entirely. In their place were the sounds of the wind, the chirping of insects, and the occasional howl of an unknown beast echoing from the distance. To anyone else, these sounds might have been terrifying, but to Lin Xi’s ears at this moment, they were a symphony announcing her freedom.
She did not leave the cave immediately.
After a day of harrowing terror, she was like an overstimulated little animal, curled up in the deepest part of the cavern, hugging “Huzi” (Little Tiger) and remaining perfectly still.
The scenes of the day replayed vividly in her mind.
Li Guilan’s vicious curses, Lin Dajun’s violent carrying pole, Wang Cuihua’s face twisted by greed—and those villagers who were willing to become accomplices just for ten work points…
And then, there were the sparrows, wild rabbits, and squirrels that had led the pursuers away at her most critical moment.
The ugliness of humanity and the warmth of the animal kingdom formed the sharpest, most ironic contrast on this day.
Slowly and carefully, she pulled out the wild pheasant eggs she had protected with her own body, keeping them perfectly intact. In the darkness, she couldn’t see the color of the shells, but their smooth, warm touch felt like a magical force, thawing her frozen fingers and soothing a heart that was nearly consumed by hatred.
She touched the pinecones again; their rough scales seemed to still carry the lingering kindness of that little squirrel.
Suddenly, she understood.
Family is not determined by the closeness of blood, but by how sincerely you treat one another.
The people of the Lin family shared her blood, yet they were enemies who wished for nothing more than to feast on her flesh and drink her blood. Meanwhile, the creatures of these mountains were strangers to her, yet in her moment of deepest despair, they had given her the hope to live on.
A gust of cold wind rushed into the cave entrance, making her shudder involuntarily.
She knew she couldn’t hide here forever.
Slowly, she crawled to the mouth of the cave, parted the vines, and looked out at the world.
A bright, clear moon hung high in the night sky. Silvery moonlight poured down like water, draping the entire forest in a holy, mysterious veil.
It was beautiful—so beautiful it felt surreal.
As Lin Xi gazed at that bright moon, all the pain, grievances, resentment, and fury from both her past and present lives surged up like a crashing tide.
In her previous life, after she was sold, she had looked at the moon just like this on countless nights. She had cried, she had hated, and she had once fantasized: Would her soldier father descend like a god one day to rescue her from this sea of bitterness?
But she had waited until the day she died, and he never came.
In this life, she was back.
She had escaped that hell using her own strength.
She would never again passively wait for salvation like she did before. She would be her own god!
Bathed in the cold moonlight, she slowly straightened her tiny body. Her clothes were tattered, her skin was covered in cuts and bruises of all sizes, and her face was smeared with mud and streaks of blood—she looked utterly wretched.
Yet her eyes, reflecting the moon, were startlingly bright, as if two unquenchable fires were burning within them.
She raised her thin, mud-stained little hand toward the bright moon. In a solemn and resolute tone that completely defied her age, she spoke every word with heavy emphasis, making the first and most important vow of her new life.
“I, Lin Xi,”
Her voice was soft, yet it rang with absolute clarity in the silent forest.
“Do hereby swear upon this moon!”
“From this day forward, all ties of kindness and duty between me and the Lin family of Shanglin Village are severed! The debt for giving me life and the sentiment of raising me—if any ever existed—were paid in full the moment I was given a price tag and sold for their glory! From now on, I have nothing to do with Wang Cuihua, Lin Dajun, Li Guilan, and Lin Dazhuang! You are no longer my kin; you are my enemies!”
“If the day comes that we meet again, I will repay the suffering of my past and present lives a hundredfold! I will make sure you taste what it’s like to be treated like livestock, to be trampled underfoot, and to wish for death rather than life!”
“In this life, I, Lin Xi, will never look back! I will survive, and I will live better than anyone else! I am going to the frontier to find my father, Lin Weiguo. I will tell him the truth! I will stand with him, living upright and proud under the sun!”
“Let this oath be witnessed by Heaven and Earth, and judged by the Sun and Moon! If I break this vow, let Heaven strike me down and the Earth destroy me!”
She practically roared those last few words.
Her tender child’s voice, carrying a monstrous hatred and an unyielding will, echoed through the valley.
As if in response to her oath, a distant wolf howl drifted from the depths of the mountain forest.
With the vow made, Lin Xi felt the heaviest, darkest stone in her heart crash to the ground.
From this moment on, she was no longer the pitiable little Lin Xi of Upper Lin Village who let anyone bully her.
She was Lin Xi—born for vengeance, living for herself!
Having severed the past, only the road ahead remained in her heart.
She took a deep breath and, with an unprecedented sense of determination, turned to leave this temporary refuge and head deeper into the woods.
But the moment she turned, a violent cramp—as if her internal organs were being twisted together—seized her stomach.
“Gurgle—!”
An embarrassingly loud stomach growl shattered the solemn, dignified atmosphere.
Immediately following it was an overwhelming wave of hunger.
The few wild berries she had eaten during the day had long since been digested. Making an oath required spirit, but staying alive required actual food!
The wild eggs in her shirt were still raw, and pine nuts weren’t going to solve the root of the problem.
She rubbed her empty belly, then looked at Huzi, who had also grown noticeably thinner, and her small face instantly fell.
The grand plan for revenge was magnificent. The thousand-mile journey to find her father was touching.
But the most realistic problem right now was—where was dinner for her and Huzi tonight?
What about tomorrow? Or the day after?
She couldn’t rely on the “charity” of animals forever.
She had to learn to find a stable food source by herself in this mountain forest fraught with danger.
The first and most brutal test of survival had only just begun.