"You're just trying to scare me… right? Then… then I admit defeat… okay? Stop scaring me… Do you know… I… I…" "I'm very scared."

She stared at him, frozen in a dead silence.

"Or… must you punish me with death? But… you are so foolish… Even if you die… you won't scare me…" The four walls of the sickroom were stark white, quiet, warmed by the circulating air conditioning, yet the air felt as cold as an ice cave. She was cold, so terribly cold, shivering slightly, growing colder, so cold it felt as though every rib was shrinking inward.

He lay there, utterly still, as if already dead.

As if he couldn't hear a single word she was saying, his dark lashes lay weakly over his pale skin, not stirring even the slightest bit.

It was as if… he had died already… slowly.

Yin XiaMo slowly turned her body.

Slowly.

She walked slowly toward the door of the sickroom.

Luo Xi… you can’t scare me… She dazedly opened the door to the room.

Then.

She slowly.

Walked straight down the corridor engulfed in a vast, milky fog.

You can’t scare me… Rain began to fall from the sky, and she walked silently in the downpour, before her eyes a blinding, white curtain of rain mist. She walked aimlessly, swaying slightly in the cold wind laced with rain streaks. She imagined the screech of car brakes, the sound of someone leaning out of a car to yell at her, the concern in the voices of passersby asking what was wrong… If… you died… Amidst the slanted, scattering lines of rain… lost within the phantom crowd… she walked slowly, as if her entire life was this endless trek through the chilling rain; the sun might break through occasionally, a rainbow might flash, but ultimately, the rain never stopped falling.

The thick, white fog of rain obscured all vision. The rainwater was chilling, yet she was long since numb, long accustomed to it. No matter what she encountered, she feared nothing. Yes, she was her mother’s strongest daughter; she feared nothing… In that case, I’ll pay you back with this life of mine… that would be enough… Walking in a daze, she walked for an unknown duration, an unknown distance. Day seemed to turn into night; the rain lessened, then began again. Her body alternately grew soaked and dried, wet and dry again.

She floated along lightly.

Her body experienced waves of burning heat followed by waves of icy cold.

A dull roaring sound persisted in her eardrums.

Her steps, which had felt as if they were filled with lead, gradually became ethereal and unsteady, without purchase, as if treading on cotton wads—white, vast, empty. She didn’t know where she had come from, nor where she was heading.

In a trance, she walked into a hospital.

A long corridor.

The air was thick with the familiar, sharp scent of disinfectant.

She stood, lost in thought, before the door of a sickroom.

Suddenly.

A sharp shiver ran through her.

Her chaotic, scattered, tearing thoughts began to be pulled back, thread by thread. She breathed deeply, trembling. No, she couldn't be weak, she couldn't be defeated! She still had Xiao Cheng; tomorrow was Xiao Cheng’s surgery. Even if the devil had already twisted and devoured every bit of her soul and flesh in agonizing pain, she absolutely could not collapse now… She desperately restrained the trembling in her hands.

Yin XiaMo slowly reached out for the doorknob.

"CRASH—!!" But the door was violently thrown open from the inside!! Summer’s Foam III