Yun Song’s Perspective (Part 1)

Chapter 33

Yun Song’s name was given to her by her grandmother. She had been a sickly child, falling ill every few days. Her grandmother was somewhat superstitious and, after hearing people say the child had a “light fate¹,” went to find a fortune teller to take a look.

The grandmother consulted the fortune teller, who said, “The child’s birth chart is too light. You should take her to find an ancient pine tree, pay your respects, and recognize it as her godparent.”

Her grandmother truly believed this, so Yun Song recognized a large pine tree in the residential compound as her godparent. Her grandmother then gave her the formal name Song, meaning Pine.

Her parents were initially unwilling, feeling it was all superstition. Later, however, Yun Song’s health really did become more robust. Furthermore, since the child spent most of her time being raised by her grandmother, her parents eventually let the matter drop.

Both of Yun Song’s parents worked, so they had little time to look after her. Fortunately, her grandparents lived very close by, just one street away.

Consequently, she spent most of her time at her grandmother’s house, eating her meals and doing her homework there. Her grandmother was strict. Yun Song loved watching cartoons back then, but they wouldn’t let her, saying that watching too much would make her lose interest in her studies.

So, Yun Song would wait until her grandparents were taking their afternoon nap, then she would sneak out from the third floor and go to the small convenience store outside the compound to watch cartoons.

When she was seven years old and in the second grade, she went to her grandmother’s house after school to do her homework as usual. After finishing her work, she climbed out from the third floor again and joined several other children to go to the convenience store for cartoons.

Back then, that was what life was like for her. She was happy every day.

This lasted until a day during the second semester of third grade. It was raining exceptionally hard that day. She walked home from school by herself. She was supposed to go to her grandmother’s house first, but on the way back, she went splashing through puddles, soaking her shoes and socks completely.

Grandmother would definitely scold her, so she decided to go to her own home first to change her shoes, socks, and clothes before heading back to her grandmother’s.

The door opened, and the smell of blood hit her nose. This was immediately followed by the sight of blood covering the floor. Her father and mother were lying on the ground.

Her brain hadn’t even processed it yet; she only felt the world spinning before her eyes.

She didn’t even know how she reached their side. There was so much blood. She wanted to plug the wounds. The bleeding had to stop…

When the ambulance arrived, what they saw was a child covered in blood.

From then on, Yun Song had nightmares every rainy day. In her dreams, she was sometimes doing homework at home when the criminals arrived, and she was killed along with her parents.

Other times, she would climb in through the window and see her bleeding parents… She dreamed of herself constantly using her hands to plug the bloody holes. She would block one, but blood would start flowing from another.

She would cry throughout the dream, continuing until she woke up.

Her grandparents hired a psychologist for her. Every time she woke from a dream, she would record it and analyze her own condition.

During holidays, her grandmother always took her out to clear her mind, but she only wanted to stay home and do her homework. She didn’t want to go out.

When she graduated from elementary school, her grandmother heard about a very skilled old doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. It was said his prescriptions were miraculous, and many people began lining up at five in the morning.

Yun Song was taken by her grandmother to join the queue. They waited for three hours, and Yun Song spent the whole time listening to people talk about how many lives this old doctor had saved.

A peculiar emotion stirred in her heart. It would be wonderful if she were a doctor, too.

She took the medicine the old doctor prescribed every day, but the nightmares persisted.

However, she gained something even greater: she became willing to leave the house during her breaks. She wanted to go to that Chinese medicine shop.

When Yun Song was eleven, she would go to the shop to help out whenever she was on holiday.

She liked interacting with the patients and loved seeing them being cured.

Later, she tested into a medical university.

During her junior year, she often thought that if she were her current self, perhaps she could have saved her parents.

On another ordinary morning, while she was out for a morning run, she encountered a mother and son. The mother had been hit by a car, and the driver had already fled.

Because it was so early, there was hardly anyone around.

The child was crying while looking for someone to save his mother.

Yun Song froze for a moment. Especially when she saw the mother’s wound and heard the child’s cries, her hands began to tremble.

The child begged her through tears, “Please, I beg you, save my mother. She’s losing so much blood.”

When Yun Song recalled those events later, especially after becoming a criminal investigator, she could remember many, many things that were wrong. The mother and son had different speaking habits, and the child wasn’t even wearing a coat in the freezing weather.

The driver of the car that eventually stopped had the same accent as the injured mother.

But in that moment, she didn’t realize any of it. Her mind was entirely consumed by the need to save this mother.

It wasn’t until she got into the car that she discovered there were two more men in the back.

Just like that, she was trafficked.

At first, Yun Song didn’t even know that the human traffickers had given her the name Ming Wen.

This was because she couldn’t understand the local dialect.

On the day she arrived, she had a bit of heatstroke. She was dizzy and disoriented, her ears filled with nothing but gibberish.

The traffickers were talking to the locals, while the villagers formed circle after circle of onlookers watching the spectacle.

Her leg throbbed with pain. She knew it would be very difficult to escape in the short term.

Her gaze swept across the crowd, seeing one curious and excited face after another.

Soon, she spotted a middle-aged woman in the crowd.

The woman stood among the people, her body tense, her expression solemn, and her lips tightly pressed together. Her eyes were constantly darting toward others rather than looking at her, the Trafficked Bride. It was as if everything around her was unsafe, and she had to avoid some kind of danger at all times.

Yun Song also noticed that the woman’s face had the typical features of a woman from the southwest², unlike most of the local women.

Yun Song guessed that this person likely shared her fate. Furthermore, this woman had not been completely assimilated by this place. It was because she wasn’t fully assimilated that she was in such pain, as if she might die at any moment.

She thought she had to find a way to establish a connection with this woman.

However, before any plan could be put into action, an accident occurred in the village.

The woman who had been sold into the village along with her had died.

It was only then that she realized just how insignificant she was.

The two of them both spoke Mandarin, so they had talked on the way there. She knew the other woman had two children. Her husband had died in an accident at a machinery factory, crushed by a machine. The boss was a monster who insisted it was her husband’s fault, refusing to pay compensation and even demanding they pay for the damaged equipment.

Left alone to raise two children, she had three mouths to feed. Fortunately, the eldest was six years old and could look after the younger one.

So, she would lock both children in the house during the day while she went door-to-door collecting scrap to earn a bit of money.

That day, she had locked the children inside as usual. She was supposed to go out and collect scrap, but she never expected to run into human traffickers.

She had been brought here, frantic with worry the entire journey.

“I have to get back quickly, my two children are still locked in the house.”

Yun Song had tried to soothe her emotions throughout the trip, telling her that once they reached their destination, they would find a way to escape together.

If the two of them put their heads together, there would surely be a way out.

But for a mother, every minute and every second was agonizing. She had to run.

Yun Song knew the woman was dead now. Somewhere in the world, two children would never see their mother come home again.

Yun Song lost her grip on sanity for those next two days. Aside from fighting with Madman Zhang, she fought with everyone else in the Zhang Family. It was as if she had entered a den of wild beasts; either she would die, or the Zhang Family would.

Until that afternoon, when her window was opened from the outside, and a girl with a silly, happy grin climbed in.

The girl called her, “Immortal Lady.”

She spoke in Mandarin. The contours of her eyes and brows looked somewhat familiar. Yun Song remembered now; she was the daughter of that distinctive middle-aged woman she had seen after arriving here.

The silly girl trusted her completely. Whatever she asked, the girl answered.

She hadn’t guessed wrong. That woman had also been abducted and brought to this place.

After so many days, hearing a familiar language again felt like returning to the world of human beings.

Amidst the silly girl’s repeated cries of “Immortal Lady,” Yun Song finally calmed down.

Yun Song suddenly realized that in a place like this, her status as a medical student was useless. Studying medicine couldn’t save people from despair. What they truly needed was an all-powerful Immortal Lady.

Translator’s Notes