In a small hotel room,
Qin Hanyue was treating the injury on her arm for her.
Outside, the rain was getting heavier and showed no sign of letting up. The sound of rain was deafening, and Qin Hanyue's mood was also greatly affected, making it difficult for him to calm down.
Reincarnation of the soul.
For not only materialists but also any normal person, this term was a major test.
It would overturn all the conventional ideas and pursuits they had been following and seeking, breaking the laws of natural growth of all things in the world, completely detached from reality, beyond cognition, standing at the other end of science.
Before Qiao Ying said she was Blood Shadow, in the short two to three minutes when he had completely lost his sense of direction about her identity, Qin Hanyue chose not to speculate.
If he had to guess who she really was, then obviously none of his assumptions would stand.
No matter how he thought about it, he would never have imagined that after a person died, another person's soul could live in their body.
Reincarnation of the soul was too unreasonable.
But only this unreasonable statement could explain all the unreasonableness about her.
All of Qin Hanyue's puzzles and confusions about her, all his curiosity about her, were answered at this moment.
Hacker X was Blood Shadow, not Qiao Ying; the former boss of Heishui was Blood Shadow, and still is now; Dr. Seely was Blood Shadow...
The beautiful woman in Yisai's mouth, the decoding expert mentioned by Shangguan Qingmu, they were all her, including everyone who felt she was familiar, they would also be her.
Cheng Jinyan, Ye Si, Blood Shadow, it had always been the three of them.
The reason why she was so familiar with Dark Shadow was because she was actually a part of Dark Shadow, and even the most influential and mysterious powerful existence in Dark Shadow.
Blood Shadow, the one he had been facing turned out to be that genius killer.
It was really inconceivable and unbelievable.
Qiao Ying: "Is it so hard to accept?"
Qiao Ying's words suddenly rang out, sounding a little abrupt in this atmosphere. She didn't have much emotion in her tone.
Qin Hanyue's thoughts were interrupted.
He looked up at her and after a long pause, said, "No, I was just thinking..."
He looked at her, hesitating to speak, with unease in his eyes that was not the emotion and reaction that one should have when facing such a bizarre event like reincarnation of the soul.
What was he uneasy about?
After some inner struggle, Qin Hanyue did not ask the doubts in his mind for the time being. He suppressed the uneasy feeling in his heart and sorted out his thoughts.
He asked, "...There are hidden circumstances around your death, right?"
Such a question was somewhat bizarre.
Qiao Ying: "It was no damn failed mission at all. I blew up that island in Southeast Asia, it had to count as a mutual destruction at the very least."
Mutual destruction, Qiao Ying said it lightly, but it made Qin Hanyue's heart trembled when he heard it.
When he first learned of her death, he had lamented it.
"Dark Shadow is greedy by nature. They wanted the full 100% of the agreed genes instead of the 80%, and they wanted to take it and kill me afterwards."
Qin Hanyue: "So during that period of time when you disappeared without a trace, you were in the lab cooperating with them to extract genes?"
Qiao Ying: "Um."
Qin Hanyue fell silent. His throat felt sour.
He asked again, his voice hoarse, "...You had been with Dark Shadow all this time? Very small, so small that you couldn't speak or walk yet, before you could form memories."
Hearing his question, Qiao Ying looked at him puzzledly, seeming to be thinking, didn't she make it clear enough just now in the alley? Why was he still asking? But she saw the distress in his eyes.
Qin Hanyue felt as if there was a fishbone stuck in his throat: "...It hurt a lot, didn't it?"
As he treated the wound on her arm, he didn't know for a moment whether he was asking about this wound, or her days struggling to survive in Dark Shadow, or the torment in the lab.
It was all of it.
The inhumane training in Dark Shadow, the dark and endless torture in the lab, every injury on her body, every bitterness she ate, every hardship she endured, the stronger and calmer she was, the more it reflected the price she paid.
There was a prickling pain in Qin Hanyue's heart. He was trying his best to restrain his emotions. His big hand held the back of the girl's neck, his chin touched her forehead, and gently nuzzled it.
He was too heartbroken to speak.
The room fell into silence.
Qiao Ying's eyelashes fluttered. Qin Hanyue's heartache had almost taken tangible form and completely enveloped her. She actually fully received it.
An indescribable feeling.
In fact, she had never felt bitter or tired about the training in Dark Shadow. On the contrary, she quite enjoyed the process of strengthening herself.
She didn't have much feelings about those days in the lab on the Southeast Asian island either. She didn't have that many emotions. All the torments she suffered were transformed by her into hatred for Dark Shadow.
The environment she grew up in and her experiences made her not need to be sentimentally cared about at all.
Being heartbroken like this out of the blue, as she recalled those dark days, she actually felt a little aggrieved inwardly too.
Of course, this dull grievance was only towards Qin Hanyue.
It seemed quite nice to be heartbroken over.
Qin Hanyue calmed down his emotions, gave a long sigh, let go of her, and asked worriedly, "Did they use your genes?" Didn't that mean she was cloned too?
Qiao Ying: "Blown up." Probably.
She wasn't sure.
Qin Hanyue breathed a sigh of relief. He was a little puzzled, "No matter how perfect the clone is, it also has flaws and is inferior to the original. Why did they do this?"
Qiao Ying: "Feng Ying wanted to leave Dark Shadow and was discovered."
Qin Hanyue: "Then what about you?"
Qiao Ying: "Naturally, I would leave with him."
Qin Hanyue was silent for a moment and tentatively asked, "Can you tell me why he chose to end his life that way? "
Why did he die for her? Why did he choose suicide?
Qiao Ying lowered her eyes slightly. Facing Qin Hanyue, she did not find it as difficult to say as she thought, so she told him, "Dark Shadow discovered his different intentions and threatened him with me."
She looked at the small window. Outside, the sound of rain was pattering loudly. Her speech was neither hurried nor slow, "I had always thought I was the first test subject, but in fact, before I was taken to that lab, he had already been there. He stayed there longer than me, and suffered far more torments than me."
"Yet I didn't know at all."
Her tone was flat and slow, without much emotional input, yet it made people listen with heartache. But her eyes did not have the same calmness as her voice.
Qin Hanyue listened quietly.
"He knew my temperament. He didn't dare tell me. With genes extracted, the original body would then face execution."
"He couldn't escape death either way, so he simply used his own death to let me leave——I had no feelings for Dark Shadow. Wherever he went, I would go, and with him dead, naturally I wouldn't continue staying in Dark Shadow, not to mention, his death was also to let me leave."
"So he proposed to accompany me on a mission."
Qiao Ying's thoughts were once again pulled back to that time.
"He asked me to leave Dark Shadow immediately after his death, I didn't take his words seriously." She paused for a moment before continuing, "Not until I saw his corpse..."
Qiao Ying sank into her memories: "At that time, he proposed to act separately. He asked me to go first. I went very far out, looked back at him...I found that he had been standing still watching me the whole time...If only I could have noticed something off about him then."
