The feeling of seawater pouring into my lungs was like swallowing a handful of broken glass.
Ye Qingzhou's consciousness rose and fell in severe pain, and every breath was a futile struggle. She had a hole in her back – bullets went under her shoulder blades, grazed her ribs, and drilled out of her chest. The blood flowed down her spine like a warm snake, pulling out a gradually diluted red line in the icy water.
She was still sinking.
In the East China Sea in March, the water temperature is less than 10 degrees. Blood loss and low temperature are depriving her of sensation at the same time, her fingers can no longer feel the seawater, and so are her toes. Only the wound on her back is still faithfully transmitting pain signals - it is the body telling her: you are alive.
But how long can they live?
Ye Qingzhou opened his eyes. The salty sea water pierced his eyeballs, and his vision was blurred, and he could only see the moon above his head twisted by the water, like a melted silver coin, swaying in the dark dome.
She was getting farther and farther away from the moonlight.
The oxygen in her lungs had been exhausted, and her body instinctively wanted to inhale, and she gritted her teeth, suppressing the fatal urge with the last trace of reason. You can't suck, it's over if you suck.
But she knew that she wouldn't last long.
Three minutes. Maybe five minutes. Then either drown or die from blood loss.
She remembered the code name. Startled by hibernation. One of the twenty-four solar terms, spring thunder begins to move, and all things recover. The organization gave each agent a solar term code, and she used to think it was some kind of romantic ritual, but now she only thinks it's ironic.
Recovery? She was about to die in this cold sea.
And the person who killed her was the one she trusted the most.
"Qingzhou, this mission is over, you are free."
Six hours ago, the voice of "Daddy" still had the gentleness she was familiar with. He stood in the shadow of an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Binhai City, handing her a file bag, his eyes loving like a father sending his daughter on an expedition.
"The last step," he said, "is that after completing this order, the 'Ourouroboros' branch in Binhai will be completely eliminated. You can leave and live the life you want. "
She believed it.
How could she not believe him? This man had appeared in her life since she was twelve, teaching her martial arts, shooting, stealth, and assassination, teaching her how to survive in the most dangerous environments. He was her instructor, her superior, her father—the only family she had in her life.
In the file folder was a detailed action plan. Target: Pier 7 of the coastal port, midnight, a batch of 'cargo' would be transferred from there. She needed to install a tracker on the cargo, then follow the convoy to locate the 'Ouroboros' core base in Binhai City.
It sounded simple. Too simple.
But at the time, she had no doubts. She only thought—it was the last time.
Ye Qingzhou spent three hours infiltrating the dock. She wore a black wetsuit, passed through the currents from the breakwater, avoiding all patrolling security personnel. The dock was full of containers, like a gray steel maze. She moved through the shadows, her footsteps silent, her breathing steady.
The cargo consisted of frozen containers labeled 'medical equipment.' She found a gap at the bottom of the third container and attached the tracker. A chip the size of a grain of rice, military-grade, with a signal range of fifty kilometers.
Mission complete.
She should have retreated.
But at that moment, all the lights on the dock suddenly turned on. Blinding white beams shot out from all directions, exposing her in the middle of the open unloading area. There was no cover, no escape route.
She heard footsteps. Many footsteps. Neat, strong, well-trained ones.
At least thirty people surged out from the gaps between containers, fanning out to surround her. They all wore black combat suits, masked, with automatic rifles glinting coldly under the lights.
The leader took off his hood, revealing a face she knew well.
"Ah Gui." Ye Qingzhou's voice was very calm.
Ah Gui was the only person she could call a friend in the organization. They trained together, carried out missions together, and had struggled countless times on the line between life and death. He had once taken a bullet for her, and she had once dragged him out of a burning car.
"I'm sorry, Qingzhou." Ah Gui's gaze flickered, unable to meet her eyes.
"Whose orders?"
Ah Gui did not speak.
Then, she heard that voice. From the dock's broadcasting system, processed, carrying a metallic electronic tone, yet she still recognized the rhythm of the speech — that leisurely pace, as if everything was under control.
"Jingzhe, mission canceled. You are terminated."
It was "Old Man."
She didn't even have time to be angry. The first round of gunfire started before she even reacted. She rolled, dodged, and used the corners of containers for cover; bullets struck the steel, scattering sparks.
She killed four people. Bare-handed weapon grabs, close combat, every strike deadly.
But there were too many opponents.
When the eighth person fell, a bullet hit her shoulder. She bit her lip, made no sound, and continued to fight back with her injured arm.
When the twelfth person fell, another bullet grazed her side, taking a piece of flesh.
When the eighteenth person fell, she had exhausted all the captured ammunition. She threw down the empty gun and drew the last dagger from her waist.
At that moment, Ah Gui appeared behind her.
She didn't turn around, but she knew it was him. She smelled the scent on him—a mix of cheap tobacco and mint toothpaste.
"Qingzhou, don't resist," Ah Gui's voice trembled, "you can't run away."
She didn't respond. She just tightened her grip on the dagger in her hand.
Then, she heard gunfire.
It didn't come from Ah Gui's gun. It came from afar, from somewhere high that she couldn't see. A bullet flew out of the darkness, piercing her back and exiting through her chest with precision.
She looked down at the hole in her chest and felt not pain, but an absurd calm.
Oh, so that's how it is.
Before falling, she turned around and saw the shock and guilt in Ah Gui's eyes. She wanted to say something, like "It's okay," or "I don't blame you." But the blood surging into her mouth blocked all sound.
She fell backward.
The edge of the dock was right behind her. She plummeted, without struggling, without shouting, letting gravity pull her toward the sea.
The moment she hit the water, she heard the last broadcast: "Cleanup complete. Recovery team, enter."
Then came the cold. The darkness. The silence.
At this moment, she was still sinking.
The wound on her back had gone numb, and the blood loss was making her consciousness fade. The moonlight overhead grew more distant, like an unreachable dream.
She was going to die.
This realization surfaced in her mind, but it did not bring fear. Only a strange calm, like an outcome long anticipated.
She remembered many things. She remembered when she was twelve, and 'Old Dad' reached out his hand to her at the orphanage gate. She remembered the first time she fired a gun, the recoil making her wrist go numb. She remembered surviving for two whole weeks in the Siberian forest at minus thirty degrees. She remembered in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, how she opened a locked door with a single hairpin.
She remembered Agui saying, 'Qingzhou, you are the strongest person I have ever seen.'
She remembered 'Old Dad' saying, 'You are my masterpiece.'
Masterpiece. Ha.
She was not human; she was a work of art. A tool that had been manufactured. Once used, it should be destroyed.
Anger burned like fire from her chest. Not anger at betrayal, but at herself—for having believed those lies, for having thought she could really gain freedom.
No.
She would not die here.
She would not die in this filthy sea, like a discarded animal. She would not let her bones become fish food. She would not let those people think she no longer existed.
She still wanted to live. She wanted to get back to shore. She wanted to know who had betrayed her and why.
She wanted to make them pay.
Ye Qingzhou opened her eyes wide in the seawater.
She began to swim. Every inch of movement came with intense pain, the wounds on her back tearing open again, fresh blood gushing out. But she didn't care. She used her arms, her legs, the very last bit of strength in her body, to fight the resistance of the water and the pull of death.
One meter. Two meters. Three meters.
It felt like fire was burning in her lungs, her consciousness teetering on the edge of collapse. She bit her tongue, using the pain to stay awake. The taste of blood spread in her mouth, mingling with the brininess of the seawater.
Five meters. Ten meters.
The moon began to grow larger. The surface of the water was approaching.
She heard a sound—not the sound of flowing seawater, not the thud of blood hitting her eardrums, but a deeper, older sound. Like thunder, coming from far away, passing through the water, shaking her bones.
The waking of insects. Spring thunder.
Using the last bit of her strength, she lifted her head out of the water.
The air was like a knife, slicing through her throat and rushing into her lungs. She coughed violently, spitting out seawater and blood foam; every breath felt like swallowing fire.
But she was alive.
She floated on the surface of the sea, face up to the sky, staring at the moon and the clouds above. In the distance, the lights on the pier were going out one by one. They thought she was dead.
Let them think that.
Ye Qingzhou closed her eyes, letting the waves carry her toward the unknown. In her mind, a voice echoed repeatedly, like a spell, like a vow, like the echo from the depths of hell—
I will come back.
I will find each and every one of you.
I will make you understand that the waking of insects is not the beginning of spring.
It is the countdown to your apocalypse.
Three hours later, the spotlight of a fishing boat swept across the sea and illuminated a floating black object. Captain Lao Chen thought it was a corpse, cursed under his breath, and prepared to turn the boat around and leave.
But the "corpse" suddenly moved, a hand reaching out from the water and grabbing the side of the boat.
Lao Chen was startled. He swung the spotlight back and saw a pale face. The face was colorless, the lips purple, but the eyes were open—a pair of pitch-black eyes burning with a terrifying light.
"Save... me..." The voice was hoarse, unlike a human voice.
Lao Chen hesitated for three seconds, then lowered the rope ladder and pulled the woman he had just retrieved from the sea onto the deck.
He didn't know that he had just pulled up a fire of vengeance that was about to overturn the entire underground world.
He also didn't know that before this dying woman was dragged onto the boat, she had last glanced toward the direction of Binhai City, silently opened her mouth in the darkness, and said four words—
"I'm back."