Rebirth: After Becoming the Villainess-Chapter 297: Farewell, Zhou Cangyan

Song Lianhe forced herself to focus, squinting as she continued to suture the wound. To keep her mind from being clouded by the poison, she talked to Zhou Cangyan nonstop.

"You... you’re really lucky you ran into me! With a wound like this, I’m the only one in all of Da Cheng who can suture it! Just look at my technique... COUGH COUGH... I guarantee you won’t find anyone else who can do this... COUGH!"

Her hand trembled, and the needle plunged in a little too deep. A bead of blood immediately welled up.

Song Lianhe froze. "Oops... sorry about that. Went a little too deep."

Her veil was soaked, making it hard to breathe.

She finally ripped it off and tossed it aside. Half her face was already smeared with blood, and her nose was still bleeding.

She just wiped her face with her sleeve and went back to treating his wound.

"You’re supposed to be the big villain. You should just focus on seizing power, raising your army, and fighting for your woman... Why are you wasting time on me? I know I’m a bit charming, but you can’t let that get in the way of your career! Once you lose your purpose as the villain, who knows if you’ll just be... erased?"

The thought made her genuinely worried.

"I can’t help but feel like I’ve ruined you... Sigh. But what can I do? I was just dropped into this world out of nowhere. I had to find a powerful backer to cling to!"

Her vision was blurring, and her head was growing heavy.

Without a second thought, she took the needle and jabbed it into the Tingmin acupoint below her earlobe to clear her head.

The jab indeed cleared her head considerably. After finishing the sutures, she tore a strip from her inner tunic to bandage his wound.

After all that exertion, Song Lianhe was drenched in sweat and utterly exhausted. She was also inhaling more and more of the poisonous miasma.

"COUGH COUGH..."

She coughed violently until she spat up a mouthful of blood.

She stared at the blood in her palm, her face falling. "You’ve got to be kidding me."

’She had tried so hard to survive in this book, only to end up going down the same old path of a disposable side character?’

’If I have to die, so be it!’

’But can’t they at least let me die with some dignity?’

In the real world, she had died of illness, ending up emaciated with a sallow complexion. She hadn’t looked good at all.

And now, in the world of this book, it was even more absurd—she was going to be poisoned to death by miasma!

A person dying from this poison would suffer gradual organ failure and might even lose control of their bowels in the end...

"AH! I don’t want that!"

The thought of dying in such a state, and—and of Zhou Cangyan seeing her like that, made her lose all composure.

"Damn you, Zhen Niang! Did you pick this place so you could drag everyone down with you one day?! Just because you couldn’t get the one you love, you had to show your twisted self to the whole world! It seems a violent death was too good for you!"

They say a person’s words are kind when death is near.

’Sorry, but thinking about the pathetic state I’ll be in after I die, I just can’t bring myself to be kind.’

In the cramped space, faint curses could be heard.

Song Lianhe kept cursing until she was exhausted and wanted to rest for a bit.

The moment that thought surfaced, she collapsed uncontrollably, her eyes landing on Zhou Cangyan’s face, just inches away.

A slow smile spread across her face.

’He’s so handsome.’

’Who looks this good even when they’re unconscious?’

She lifted her hand and gently traced the contours of his face with her fingertips—his strong brows, his eyes, his nose, his lips...

Song Lianhe’s expression changed abruptly, and another mouthful of blood surged from her lips.

She no longer had the strength to even lift a hand to wipe the blood from the corner of her mouth. With a pang of regret, she said, "I’m so sorry. When you wake up, you’ll have to see me like this..."

But on second thought, what did she have to be sorry for?

"No... I’m the one who saved you. If you dare to be disgusted by me, I’ll haunt you as a ghost and never forgive you! You should set up a memorial tablet for me and burn incense for me three times a day! And since I’m your Princess Consort, you should mourn for me for three years... no, you should never marry again! Only that would make it worth me giving my life to save you!"

The miasma underground was far more severe than she had imagined.

She vaguely recalled something her grandfather used to say: doctors are human, not gods. They can only do their best. If fate has decreed it, there’s no need for self-blame.

Her only "blame," she feared, was tied to that little boy.

Back then, if she hadn’t been so impulsive and arrogant, he probably wouldn’t have died...

’Now, by dying in such a brutal way, I suppose it counts as paying for his life.’

Her mind began to drift. She could faintly see the little boy from all those years ago. Even though she knew it was a symptom of the poisoning, she couldn’t help but sink into the hallucination she had created.

He watched her quietly, with a silence and composure that a boy his age shouldn’t have possessed.

She had never forgotten those eyes.

When her mistake had left him on the brink of death, the look he gave his parents as they started to beat her was filled with helplessness, and even a hint of... heartache.

At the time, Song Lianhe had only been a girl of about ten, too shocked and bewildered to understand the meaning in his eyes.

It wasn’t until now, seeing that day’s scene so clearly again, seeing him again, that she understood.

’This must be the obsession buried deep in my heart.’

Gradually, the little boy’s gaze began to overlap with Zhou Cangyan’s.

As if a special effect was playing, the boy’s face began to change, aging year by year.

Until it became the face of Zhou Cangyan!

He was still looking at her with that same, indescribable, heart-aching gaze.

Song Lianhe began to cry again.

Her sobs were suppressed.

"I finally see you again... I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry... It was all my fault!"

But today, she had finally atoned for her sin.

Crying, she started to laugh. "Zhou Cangyan, you have to live a good life... Even though you’re the villain, you have to try your best to live on. The laws of right and wrong in this world have always been written by those with intent. As long as you live with all your heart, you haven’t failed anyone..."

She let out a long sigh, suddenly feeling tired.

She closed her eyes, then opened them again.

’Sigh, I’m still so reluctant to leave.’

She had once strictly maintained the boundary between reality and fiction, knowing this was a world of words, and she hadn’t dared to give her heart away so easily.

She was afraid of goodbyes and hated being alone.

But now, the man before her was all she could think of, all she could see.

The small moments she had spent with him were gradually replacing her fear.

She couldn’t remember when she had allowed this man into her heart. By the time she suddenly realized it, he had already been living there for a long, long time...

She wanted to raise her hand to touch his face again, but she just couldn’t do it.

She coughed up more and more blood, and tears blurred her vision.

Song Lianhe thought helplessly, ’I must look so ugly right now~’

Pain began to spread through her entire body. She frowned, unable to stop herself from wanting to roll her eyes. ’Other people get poisoned by miasma and just keel over instantly. Why do I have to suffer through all this pain?!’

The once-bearable pain suddenly made her feel deeply wronged the moment she looked up at the man across from her.

’It really hurts so much...’

It felt as if tens of thousands of ants were gnawing away inside her, yet she didn’t even have the strength to struggle. She could only lie motionless, quietly enduring it.

She looked at the person opposite her and forced herself to smile again. If a person’s expression could be frozen at the moment of death, she hoped hers would be a smile.

Her breathing was already faint, but with her last ounce of strength, she struggled to reach out and slowly take his hand...

’Goodbye, Zhou Cangyan.’