Flower Street had always been the lowest, most despised quarter.
Those brought here were the pitiful ones—almost none had come by choice. If anyone had signed away her freedom of her own accord, it was only because her family had suffered some unutterable calamity. Their “choice” was just another sort of coercion.
The world said those on Flower Street were broken, dirty, so they could only be seen as dirty and broken.
They were fed harmful medicine from a very young age, suffering agonizing pain, just to ensure they would never get pregnant. If anyone did, she would be beaten to miscarriage with a stick.
Life here was unbearably hard.
With so much suffering, what more could they do?
Were they supposed to bash their own heads in for someone else’s idea of virtue?
Would that not, in fact, confirm all those insults hurled at them—that they were filthy? The women of Flower Street lived openly; they had never broken up other families, never forced anyone to come. Their earnings were nothing but hard-earned, tearstained money.
Faint sounds of shouting drifted from deep within Flower Street, and Jin Yuebai slowly curled her hand into a tight fist.
Pingping reached for her, gently prying her fingers open and touching her reddened palm. “Let’s run, hurry.”
Jin Yuebai closed her eyes and looked down at her.
“I can’t run, little sister.”
Jin Yuebai had no idea why Master Fang was doing this to the women of Flower Street. She thought perhaps they’d offended him somehow, that he meant to kill every last one of them. That was why she had nowhere to run, no way to escape.
But Pingping knew better.
Jin Yuebai had no knowledge of the yingling flower, but Pingping did.
Flower Street was just a test plot.
In the eyes of the local lords, nowhere in the village was lower than Flower Street. Even with the whole village sealed off, when it came time to pick rats for their experiments, Flower Street was always the first choice—after all, if human lives had weight, then here, lives were worth the least.
There were enough people here for Master Fang’s tests. One more like Jin Yuebai meant nothing, but one less was just as trivial. Master Fang had plenty of test subjects; he wouldn’t come looking for her specifically.
Thinking this, Pingping pushed Jin Yuebai, intent on fleeing together—but as soon as her hand touched Jin Yuebai’s arm, a question prompt was triggered.
With a soft “ding,” Pingping looked up at the sky.
[On your way home with Jin Yuebai, you encounter Master Fang, who is wiping out everyone on Flower Street. The foggy, dazed state of the people inside reminds you of something Liu Shaochun once described—her husband smoking opium until he forgot who he was, staring off emptily, sometimes retching and convulsing.
At this sight, you decide—
1. Tell Jin Yuebai about it. Poison ruins a person’s entire life, and you want to scare her into fleeing.
2. Say nothing, just push her to leave. This place is too frightening—every second feels unbearable.]
Pingping wanted to choose the second, but she could only select the first.
A few breaths later, she was forced to tell Jin Yuebai everything.
“They look like they’re smoking opium,” Pingping heard herself say.
“Sister Shaochun told me, once you take that stuff you’re just a walking corpse, don’t recognize anyone, have to smoke every few days or you go mad and hurt people… Sister, let’s go. That thing is terrifying.”
Jin Yuebai was silent.
After half a minute, she pulled Pingping aside by a wall, crouched, and hugged her tight.
Pingping asked, “Are you going to take me and run away now?”
Jin Yuebai didn’t answer directly, instead saying, “I get it, now.”
“If you want to kill people, you don’t do it this way. Opium is expensive. If that was his goal, Master Fang has many methods; he wouldn’t use this.”
“So Master Fang must have gotten hold of something like opium—a thing he could make money with. He wants to see how people react. Watching just today isn’t enough; he’ll want to see Day Two, too. But he doesn’t care about the women of Flower Street. He just wants quick, obvious reactions, so he’ll keep increasing the dose, until no one can stand it…”
“And the dose they can’t endure—that’s the peak.”
Pingping hadn’t expected that, without knowing anything, Jin Yuebai could analyze things so close to the truth.
Pingping was still under the prompt’s control, and her next words came out on their own: “But you still can’t do anything. One time is all it takes for addiction. Even if you save them now, they won’t ever truly be well again. But you’re still fine, you’re always good—can’t you just stay that way?”
“Sister, let’s hurry and go, okay?”
Jin Yuebai held her even tighter, just as Pingping regained control of her body.
“Do you remember Sister Chuchu?” Jin Yuebai whispered.
Pingping nodded.
Of course she remembered. Sister Chuchu was the girl lying dead on the steps.
She’d been knocked unconscious and sold here by her boyfriend. While in a stupor, her palm was forcibly stamped on the contract. She had tried to kill herself countless times—starvation, slamming her head against the wall. But it was Jin Yuebai who’d talked her through, becoming her close friend later.
Just these past days, when Pingping was bored at home, Chuchu would bring her fruit—and a little stuffed dog she’d made herself, sewing all night.
“What about Sister Ayan?” Jin Yuebai asked in a whisper.
Pingping nodded again.
Ayan was a genius at bookkeeping—her abacus always rattling away. Anyone on Flower Street who couldn’t balance their books came to her; she never asked for pay.
Yesterday, Jin Yuebai had started saving money for Pingping, asking Ayan to keep the record. Ayan, thinking Pingping so sweet, had even said: when she died, she’d leave her own savings to Pingping.
—“I don’t know who else to give it to, so your little sister can have it.”
—“Have her visit me when she’s free, I’ll keep her company, too.”
“Little Shen’s just a few years older than you—she’s still in there.” Jin Yuebai said softly.
Little Shen was a somewhat solitary deaf girl, newly thirteen, who’d come here by herself. Her family had too many children, and the useless, crippled daughter got tossed aside. She nearly starved before making it to Lingren Village.
That was three years ago, before the bad drought. The sisters on Flower Street had found her, pitied her, gave her free meals, told her they’d feed her a few months, no need to sign a contract. But Little Shen felt embarrassed, and signed anyway.
—“I just want to earn my own keep. I won’t eat free food.”
In her days here, Pingping had really lived among them, and knew just how strong, how bright these women were.
That’s why she could already guess what Jin Yuebai would say next.
“I can’t just stand by and watch them die.”
She heard Jin Yuebai say it.
“It’s always better to be alive. Only living lets you look for a way out. Once you’re dead there’s nothing left—and who knows, maybe this stuff won’t even make them addicted.”
Saying this, Jin Yuebai lowered her eyes, thinking for a moment, apparently with nothing left to add.
She let go of Pingping, pushing her forward: “Follow the base of the wall, go to the theater, find your grown-up friends.”
“We’ll say our goodbyes here today.”
Pingping stared blankly at her—thinking how Jin Yuebai was so brave, but also naive and arrogant. How could one person save a whole street?
Jin Yuebai seemed amused by her expression, lifting her hand to hide a smile. “I’m not the only one, am I?”
“When Shiqing pretended to be a tree and fell over just now, she looked this way. The spot where we stood is a blind spot—only from where she was lying could we be seen. She must have guessed we’d returned, so she fell there.”
“She used to be a thief, always stealing food, and it took ages for her to quit. But she kept the skill, and she got on well with Little Shen, so she learned sign language. Just now, she signed to me: the patrol has four people, three loaded guns. Everybody’s fighting, one gun she managed to steal in the chaos and hid it under the bed.”
“She doesn’t know how to fire, but I do.”
“That’s it then—”
Jin Yuebai started shooing Pingping away, giving her a little push, then turning herself, walking around the wall and heading to Flower Street by the back gate.
The storage shed at Shiqing’s house had a half-meter-high door connecting to Flower Street’s back lane. That door was usually locked, but Jin Yuebai knew Shiqing would have unlocked it as soon as trouble started.
A few minutes later, Jin Yuebai pushed open the door painted the same color as the wall and crawled through, hunched low.
Most of the junk piled in front of the door had been pushed aside, as if someone was planning to escape that way but changed her mind at the last second.
Jin Yuebai moved carefully, listening to the sounds outside, confirming no danger before quietly opening the storage room door.
The first thing she saw was Little Shen’s corpse.
The deaf girl lay staring up at the sky in the center of the courtyard, a bloodied stick in her hand, her clear eyes wide open.
She hadn’t inhaled any of the drug. She’d been beaten to death.
Jin Yuebai took a deep breath, tamped down the storm in her chest, and went to Shiqing’s bedroom.
To keep things under control, everyone had been brought to several houses in the center of Flower Street, so no one noticed Jin Yuebai’s movements.
Finding the gun, Jin Yuebai crept to the front door, peering out through a crack.
The gun had four bullets—enough to kill every patrolman here. But firing would make noise and expose her immediately.
She listened for the patrols’ voices, then slipped over the firewood stacked two doors away, lying prone on the roof.
From where she lay, everyone below was like a cluster of tiny moving portraits, coming and going, spinning round and round.
Shiqing had already lost her mind, drooling and lying on the kindling, her fingers tapping aimlessly as if playing a beautiful tune on a piano.
A patrolman strolled by and, annoyed, kicked her. Shiqing just laughed and turned over, plucking at the air.
Ayan, in a butter-yellow gown, paced her room. Every few steps she’d turn and glance at the floor, as if a duckling followed her.
“Little duck, stop following me,” she muttered. “Go find your mama.”
Jin Yuebai had never seen Ayan so childish. She’d always been sharp, a quick study at everything—even complex bookkeeping came instantly to her. But now she staggered around like a little girl, giggling every time she stumbled into a patrolman.
The four patrolmen chatted back and forth, joking.
“You really forget your gun today?” one man asked.
His companion scowled: “Can’t find it. Must’ve left it at home. Hell if I know—I swear I checked my pockets before leaving, must have dropped it.”
The first laughed. “Maybe you lost it on the road?”
His partner shrugged: “If I did, who’d dare pick it up? If I find out, I’d beat them senseless.”
They never imagined Flower Street’s women could steal a gun off them.
After some idle chatter, Jin Yuebai finally ascertained which two were unarmed—one had left his gun home, the other’s gun was in her hands. The two stood together chatting.
The remaining two, both armed, were beating up a boy who’d lost control of his bladder.
Their blows grew more vicious, blood streaming from the boy’s nose and mouth. Two minutes later, at last, one of them paused.
A new trial run successful.
The people of Flower Street were still alive; the dosage could go higher.
The man popped a root-like thing into his mouth, went into the house for several bags of black powder, tearing them open and preparing to dump the contents on the others. At that moment Jin Yuebai raised her gun. Chen Enrong had taught her marksmanship. She was talented, sharp-sighted, and had always been a crack shot.
Even if she couldn’t kill with one shot, she could make her target stay down.
She aimed first for the man with the drugs. But after a moment’s thought, she pivoted the gun toward the one kicking the boy—both sides needed her aid, but with this old gun’s recoil so powerful, and having not touched a gun in years, she couldn’t manage two shots in a row.
She had to fire once and run—shoot, flee for her life, snd wait for a better chance.
But what good was killing just one? With two armed patrolmen, as soon as one man fell, the other could go right on beating and dosing the helpless.
Just then, Ayan—with her phantom duck trailing—swayed like a child toward the door. Near the threshold, she suddenly glanced back in Jin Yuebai’s direction.
Jin Yuebai’s heart clenched.
She had a bad premonition.
Sure enough, the next moment Ayan yanked open the door and darted outside.
She’d learned a few tricks, fast hands, so when forced to inhale the flower dust she’d hidden most of it in her sleeves. She was still lucid, if a bit dazed, and hobbled as quick as she could.
The man by the door stared, stunned. Seconds later, he stopped kicking the boy and chased her outside.
Ayan flew down the main street, hair whipping, looking utterly free.
Jin Yuebai knew what she meant to do.
She fought back her tears and lifted her gun.
At the same instant, the man raised his gun at Ayan—
Bang!
Ayan jerked, upper body folding forward as she crashed to the ground.
Disgusted, the man fired another shot through her head, then dragged her by the legs and dumped her outside Flower Street.
Done with the killing, he hummed to himself as he returned. Meanwhile, Jin Yuebai was striving to work feeling back into her numbed hands—just as the first shot rang out, she’d fired through the wall, killing the armed patrolman inside.
The two remaining men scrambled to snatch up the gun on his corpse.
But the boy who’d been beaten lunged forward, clinging to it for dear life, bloody-mouthed.
“Pain is the cure. I’m not a bird in the sky. I see you for what you are,” he spat between coughs of blood.
He couldn’t use the gun himself, but he knew which lever ejected the bullets.
As they laid into him, he struggled to pull the latch, and after ten seconds, three bullets fell to the ground.
The two men immediately dropped to grab them.
But the boy shoved all three into his mouth, tipped back his head, and swallowed them.
“I win.”
He laughed and slumped into the grass, fainting. As he passed out, Jin Yuebai fired a second shot.
Bang!
The man who’d just killed Ayan collapsed.
The old gun’s recoil had left Jin Yuebai’s arm wholly numb, but she dared not pause. The man who’d died outside still had his gun, so she leapt from the wall, running with all her strength, desperate to catch the gun ahead of the others.
But the two remaining men were just too close.
By the time she reached the door, they were both already at the threshold.
One man fondled his gun with a murderous look. The other blocked Jin Yuebai, the two of them like an impenetrable wall.
Bitterness rose in Jin Yuebai’s mouth as she caught sight of her surviving friends inside the room.
She still had seven living friends.
They were trapped in a blurry, unreal world—like flowers, like birds, like anything but human.
Jin Yuebai closed her eyes in unwilling despair.
But the gunshot she awaited never came. Instead she heard two shattering screams of terror, the purest fear—like a life’s last wail.
Jin Yuebai slowly opened her eyes.
There, at that moment—
Pingping, who should have left, was filthy from head to toe, standing behind the two men.
A foul, reeking ditch ran down Flower Street, where every household dumped their garbage. Pingping had crawled from it, her whole body dripping filth, reeking indescribably.
She’d climbed out in silence, called to the men as they turned, then, as they raised their guns, blew a handful of black flower dust into their faces.
“It’s the corpses that killed you,”
Pingping heard herself say, compelled.
“Sister Chuchu fought for so long, her clothes caked with this dust. Ayan’s sleeves were full, too. I’m giving it all back to you now.”
“With this much, you shouldn’t survive.”
The wind scattered the clouds of black powder at the startled men—and back at Pingping herself.
She’d held her breath so long; Flower Street was long, she’d inhaled plenty of powder on her way back. Now, with the warm wind, all went multicolored before her eyes.
So many things flew; her whole being started to float, but her gaze was irresistibly drawn to Jin Yuebai.
Half a minute later, she tottered and sat heavily down.
She rubbed her little face, bidding farewell to Jin Yuebai with the utmost seriousness: “Follow the wall to the theater, find your friends.”
“We’ll say goodbye here, today.”
…
“Ding dong!”
Under the blazing midsummer sun, an ominous note echoed through everyone’s mind.
【Pingping has died.
Congratulations on completing Yan Zaizai’s character arc.
Simulation continues.】