This winter seemed exceptionally cold. The snow-laden, biting wind raged through the gaps into the room. Ji Hua’s ears were faintly red from the chill, and the wind made her brows and eyes look even colder, as if her very heart were freezing over. She stood by the wooden windowsill, reached out to catch a snowflake, and watched it quickly melt into a drop of icy water that chilled her to the bone.
How strange. She was actually feeling cold.
How long had it been since she last experienced this kind of human temperature? Was it because she hadn’t fed on blood in too long?
Ah, what a hassle.
She pulled her overcoat tighter around herself, closed the window, walked straight over to the computer, and glanced at the time displayed on the screen.
February 1, 20xx. It had been a little over a month since she arrived in this world. She was an illustrator who occasionally helped people draw novel character designs. A month ago, she accepted a commission for some derivative fan art of a web novel. To better understand the characters, she had gone and read the book.
To put it briefly, it was a story about an arrogant, wealthy female protagonist and a powerful elite male protagonist. Perhaps the character setups were appealing enough and the career trajectory was clear, with the male and female leads joining forces to build their own business empire, kicking off a satisfying, face-slapping power fantasy. Ever since its publication, the novel had been quite famous.
Ji Hua had neither interest in nor aversion to the main characters. But halfway through reading, an indistinct sense of irritation had suddenly welled up in her heart.
For no other reason than the fact that a cannon-fodder female supporting character in the story shared her exact name.
This was a face-slapping web novel, so crushing antagonists was inevitable, and the cannon-fodder who shared her name happened to be one of those trash characters. This particular trash was a severe love-brain, pulling all sorts of wild stunts like making a scene, crying, and threatening suicide against the male lead, while grinding her teeth in hatred toward the female lead and picking fights every three days.
Unfortunately, she was just a foolish idiot whose brain was consumed by romance. No matter how wildly she jumped around, she was nothing more than a clown on a stage. Finally, her romantic obsession became completely terminal, and she actually kidnapped the female lead’s most cherished younger sister, attempting to use her as leverage against the female lead.
The result?
Naturally, she was no match for the female lead and ended up in the miserable state of lifelong imprisonment.
Back then, Ji Hua had only uttered a few short words.
A brainless idiot.
Humans really were hopelessly stupid. Ji Hua had sneered at the thought. Having lived for hundreds of years, she had watched hundreds of such melodramas of people dying for love. Every time, Ji Hua simply viewed them as tedious human farces.
That’s right. She was not a human in the true sense of the word. Although her appearance and habits were indistinguishable from ordinary people, she was most definitely not an ordinary human.
Most of the energy she maintained came from human blood, but unlike humans who needed three meals a day, a single feeding of blood could sustain her for months, or even longer. If she could find a truly suitable blood source, a single drop could last her at least several years.
However, Ji Hua hasn’t fed on blood in over a hundred years.
She was extremely repulsed by almost everyone’s blood, forcing her to continuously search for a compatible source. Over the centuries, the ones she managed to find were a mere handful. And not long after she found her very last blood source, that person died. Dead blood was useless, so she had discarded it, and she never managed to find a suitable replacement afterward.
Still, relying on the blood of that final donor had managed to sustain her for around a hundred years.
She had set the novel aside for a few days before going on a business trip. As a result, an earthquake struck the local area, and she was knocked unconscious by falling debris. When she woke up, she found herself transmigrated into the book.
And it happened to be the exact scene where the original owner kidnapped the female lead’s younger sister in an attempt to use her as a threat.
Even now, Ji Hua could still remember the little girl’s tear-stained face, her eyes wide open with panic. Especially when Ji Hua had offered a slight smile toward the younger sister, the child’s eyes had nearly popped out of her skull, thinking she was about to be murdered right then and there.
Afterward, as she jumped into the ocean, Ji Hua had even heard the child’s piercing screams.
So noisy. So annoying.
She wasn’t that easy to kill, and she had safely swum from the sea to the shore. Despising socialization and relying on the original owner’s memories, she had made her way to the original owner’s hometown: Nanshan Ancient Town.
The original owner was an orphan whose parents had died when she was very young. The house her parents left her in Nanshan Ancient Town was in a relatively remote location, right at the end of a blue-stone alley where few people passed by. Ji Hua was quite satisfied with that.
She went downstairs and casually ate a piece of bread, too lazy to cook. The phone sitting on the table rang, and she picked it up while biting into her bread.
“Hello,” she mumbled vaguely.
“Xiao Ji, are you asleep?” The voice on the other end belonged to an elderly person, accompanied by the sound of pattering rain. Ji Hua glanced past the door.
It was raining.
“No,” she said.
“Then would you mind coming over to Lianli Bridge to pick up me and my old man? Oh my, it’s raining outside, and the two of us old bones are carrying things and can’t walk back.”
The speaker was her next-door neighbor. She had heard that this elderly woman had watched the original owner grow up and had always been quite caring toward her. Ji Hua actually held a relatively favorable impression of this old woman.
“I know.” Ji Hua grabbed her car keys, picked up a black umbrella, and headed out the door.
The rain outside, mixed with wind and sleet, lashed fiercely against people’s faces. Ji Hua’s face turned pale from the freezing cold; lately, it seemed she was becoming less and less resistant to low temperatures.
Night fell quickly. Orange-red lights enclosed in gauze lanterns hung all over the ancient-style town, casting mottled, rippling reflections in the puddles on the ground.
Holding her umbrella, Ji Hua walked over to the pavilion beside the bridge. “Granny Lin, Grandpa Zhang.”
“Oh my.” The two kindly-looking elderly people stood up. “Thank you so much, Xiao Ji.”
“Mhm.” Ji Hua gave a faint acknowledgment, reaching out to help them with their things. “The car is outside, let’s go.”
“Hey, wait a minute, Xiao Ji.” Grandpa Zhang called out to her, looking around with a grave expression. “Just now, me and the old lady saw someone lying under the bridge over there. Do you think she might have fallen in the water? Let’s go take a look.”
Ji Hua frowned ever so slightly, but quickly relaxed her expression and smiled faintly. “Grandpa Zhang, it’s too dark. You must have seen wrong.”
“I really think that was a person,” Granny Lin said, looking deeply worried. “We should still go check, Xiao Ji.”
Ji Hua’s hand holding the umbrella was stiff with cold, and she only wanted to go back quickly because she had no desire to rescue anyone. In the dead of winter, what idiot would run into a river?
Yet she felt bad rejecting the kind intentions of the two elders. Twitching the corner of her mouth without a shred of warmth in her eyes, she slowly said, “Then let’s go take a look.”
The three of them arrived beneath the bridge. The two elders had poor eyesight, and since it was too dark and the stones below were slippery, they almost took a tumble.
Ji Hua frowned. “You two stay right here, I’ll go.”
Her vision was much better than an ordinary person’s. Supporting herself with the umbrella, she slowly walked toward the riverside. There were many boulders in this area. Ji Hua squinted and gazed forward for a moment, and indeed saw a dark lump near the edge of the rocks.
Granny Lin called out, “Xiao Ji, is that it?”
“I’ll go check.” Ji Hua walked closer and finally saw that the dark lump had hair covering its face; it looked like a child. She squatted down and brushed the hair aside, revealing a large laceration on the forehead that was still oozing blood. She placed her hand under the child’s nose, and felt a faint breath.
Not dead.
Not dying was troublesome, and dying would be troublesome too.
With a cold face, Ji Hua picked the child up with one arm and walked back up to the bank.
“It really is a child,” the two elders said tremblingly. “How is she, child?”
“Not dead.”
“Quick, take her to the hospital first, we can’t delay this,” Grandpa Zhang said.
Ji Hua let out an impatient sigh. She didn’t possess ordinary people’s concepts of life and death; having lived for hundreds of years, the long passage of time had ground her sympathy down to scattered grains, leaving behind only a barren wasteland.
However, she would always reserve a trace of warmth in her cold heart for those who were good to her. The two elders had treated her well, so she had no reason to dismiss their kindness.
“What about you two?” Ji Hua asked.
“We can walk back ourselves,” Granny Lin said. “Human life can’t be delayed.”
“Then put your things in my car, I’ll drop them off for you later.”
“Ah, alright.”
Ji Hua placed the child in the back seat. The little girl’s face was covered in blood, making her features unclear, but judging by her build, she looked to be about seven or eight years old.
The space inside the car was small, and the smell of blood began to diffuse. Ji Hua suddenly felt a surge of restlessness inside her body, her mouth going dry, though she didn’t think much of it at the time.
Lying in the back seat, the child was shivering uncontrollably, her teeth chattering nonstop. Finding the noise annoying, Ji Hua cleanly and efficiently stripped off the little girl’s wet clothes, took a long hoodie of her own from the car, and dressed the child in it directly. Then she pulled out a thick blanket and rudely covered her with it.
Instinctively seeking a heat source, the child unconsciously moved closer to Ji Hua. A smudge of blood from the child’s forehead smeared onto Ji Hua’s hand. Ji Hua instinctively wanted to wipe it away in disgust, only to find that she wasn’t repulsed by the blood at all; there was none of the usual piercing pain she felt when touching ordinary people’s blood.
She stared straight at the blood on her hand. Gradually, that streak of red seemed to transform into a seductive demon, stirring up a craving deep within her entire circulatory system. She licked her lips, seized by an intense desire to feed on blood.
It had been a very long time since she had felt this kind of craving.
Every time she felt this way before, it meant she had encountered a suitable blood source.
Ji Hua’s heart stirred, and a greed born of long drought surged within her. She looked at the shivering child, her gaze dark and unfathomable.
Nanshan Ancient Town wasn’t particularly well-developed; it was merely a tourist town without any large hospitals. The doctor checked the child over, bandaged her wounds, and told Ji Hua, “Overall, there’s no major issue, but she received an impact to the back of her head and might have a moderate concussion. When she wakes up, she could experience short-term memory loss. To be safe, it’s recommended that you take her to a larger hospital for another check-up.”
Ji Hua gave a perfunctory murmur of acknowledgment, her attention entirely focused on the child.
The blood on her face had been wiped clean, revealing a complete face. She had already felt a sense of familiarity earlier, and now she finally realized where that familiarity came from.
The little girl in front of her was clearly the female lead’s younger sister, Wen Huaiyue, that kid who, in her impression, only knew how to cry.
Nanshan Ancient Town was worlds apart from Lancheng; how did a child like Wen Huaiyue end up here, looking like a drowned dog? Did that older sister of hers really bear to let her precious sister go through such an ordeal?
However, what did that have to do with her?
The little girl slowly woke up, blinking her eyes several times before opening them. The very first thing she saw was Ji Hua sitting on a stool with her arms crossed. The girl’s slightly opened eyes suddenly widened, and she burst into tears unprepared.
Ji Hua said nothing, merely staring at her.
Was this kid sick in the head?
Ji Hua loathed crying children the most. Maintaining a completely expressionless face, she said in a cold voice, “Shut up.”
The little girl shrank back in terror, stunned for a few seconds by her shout before crying even harder. Sobbing, she whimpered, “You are that bad woman who choked my neck.”
Ji Hua twitched the corners of her mouth into a cold smile. Seeing this, the little girl wanted to cry even more. Just as the child looked like she was about to open her throat and wail, Ji Hua impatiently warned, “Cry again and I’ll throw you outside.”
The threat worked. The little girl immediately stopped crying, opening her eyes pitifully wide as she hiccuped between breaths.
“Where is your sister?” Ji Hua asked.
The little girl blinked in a daze. She was very attractive; even with a layer of gauze wrapped around her forehead, it couldn’t hide her exquisitely carved, doll-like features. Her watery eyes were opened slightly wide, making her look exceptionally adorable and arousing a desire to protect her.
Ji Hua was not an ordinary person and possessed no such protective instincts. Seeing her acting like a total airhead, she clicked her tongue, irritably running a hand through her long hair. “I asked where your sister is. Where is she?”
” I do not know,” the little girl said softly.
“What do you mean you do not know?”
Frightened once more by Ji Hua’s fierce and chilly tone, the little girl shrank back again and replied through her tears, “I do not know who my sister is.”
Ji Hua froze for a second. Remembering something, she asked, “You do not even know your sister’s name? Then what about your parents?”
The child thought for a moment, then shook her head with a wronged expression.
Ji Hua thought of what the doctor had mentioned earlier regarding memory loss. She hadn’t expected it to actually happen.
“Then how do you remember me?” Ji Hua crossed her legs, tilted her head, and asked.
” I do not know,” the little girl answered honestly, her tone heavy with a nasal whine.
Ji Hua let out a soft sneer. “You do not remember your own parents, yet you remember a complete stranger.”
“You really are a filial child.”