Chapter 100 Blade of Choice
——There are thousands of choices, but the most painful one is to choose with your own hands whether to lose forever the person who is willing to go into hell for her.
The glass walls of the intensive care unit were like an icy boundary, dividing the world in two. Savika lay amidst countless instruments, her body crisscrossed with tubes and wires, her face as pale as paper beneath the mask. Her chest rose and fell slowly with the ventilator, each faint tremor tugging at the hearts of those outside the ICU.
The doctor had just issued his third critical illness notice, and Mo Xiaohan's fury burned through the entire floor. He stood at the end of the corridor, gazing out the window at the endless night. His black suit wrapped around his cold, hard figure, making him look like the spokesperson for the god of death.
"Naypyidaw, any reply?" He didn't turn around, his voice was bone-chillingly cold.
A-Tai lowered his head to report, cold sweat running down his spine: "The military and the government are still arguing, saying that a vote in Congress is needed..."
"Notify those parasites that within twelve hours, they must either send troops to encircle and suppress northern Myanmar," Mo Xiaohan crushed the cigar between his fingers, the tobacco falling to the marble floor, "or the Mo family will permanently cut off all capital flows, arms supplies, and Mekong River shipping rights. I want to see how they can hold on to that position without the support of the Mo family."
"If they delay..."
"Remind them, I can support a new puppet in power faster than changing a tie. Just like... replacing the Cambodian one last year." Mo Xiaohan turned slowly, the coldness in his eyes even more intense. "Pass the order on, a reward of 8 million US dollars for the head of a relative of a high-ranking Naga official."
After A-Tai withdrew, Mo Xiaohan's gaze shifted to Su Lixia, who was curled up on a bench outside the ward. The girl's face was still stained with dried blood, like withered rose petals.
"You." He walked up to her and spoke condescendingly, "Choose a path."
Su Lixia raised her head blankly, tears dried into mottled marks on her face.
"You have two choices. One, I'll send someone to send you back to China. The Mohist School will erase all traces of you in Burma. You continue to be a medical student and never think of this place again. Whether Savika lives or dies has nothing to do with you."
A shadow completely enveloped Su Lixia's trembling body. The scent of cigar smoke mixed with the smell of blood weighed down. "Second, stay here and gamble on whether that wolf cub can crawl back from hell. But you have to think clearly. Even if he survives, he's still a monster that crawled out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. If you stay, you'll never be able to come back."
Su Lixia's gaze met the man's bottomless black pupils. There wasn't the brutality of Savica there, but rather a more terrifying, icy coldness of absolute control. At this moment, Mo Xiaohan wasn't Xingchen's gentle companion, but the dark emperor who controlled life and death.
"He has one foot in the coffin right now." His gaze swept across the intensive care unit, his voice devoid of warmth. "If I force you to stay to celebrate his wedding, no one can stop me. But I give you the right to choose."
"I..." Su Lixia opened her mouth, but fear gripped her throat like an iron clamp.
"Xiao Han."
Ruan Xingchen's voice came from the end of the corridor. She was wearing a loose silk dress that cleverly concealed her slightly protruding belly. Mo Xiaohan's hostility instantly subsided. He took a step forward and supported her lower back: "Why don't you wait for me in the lounge?"
Ruan Xingchen shook his head and reached out to pull the still trembling Su Lixia over: "Let me talk to Xia Xia."
On the hospital rooftop, the night wind blew with the scent of disinfectant, and the lights of Bangkok spread out under my feet into a blurry sea of light.
Ruan Xingchen stuffed the cocoa into Su Lixia's cold palm: "Are you scared?"
Su Lixia choked up and nodded: "Mr. Mo..."
"He's just using his own way to protect the people he cares about." Ruan Xingchen interrupted her, "Tell me, do you want to go back to China? Forget everything in northern Myanmar?"
Su Lixia nodded blankly, then quickly shook her head: "Senior..." She grabbed Ruan Xingchen's wrist and said in a hoarse voice, "What should I do..."
Ruan Xingchen looked at the endless stream of car lights downstairs and was silent for a moment. "Xiao Han also gave me two choices. Return to China and forget everything in Southeast Asia; or stay and accompany him in hell. He even hoped that I would return to China." His palm gently stroked his lower abdomen. "But I... chose to stay."
Su Lixia was stunned: "Why should I stay? Mr. Mo's world..."
"Scary? Dark?" Ruan Xingchen turned to look at Su Lixia and chuckled, "But from the moment I gave him cookies when I was five years old, I was destined to enter his world."
The evening breeze blew her long hair, and a gentle light shone in her eyes. "Later, I lost my memory, was sold, and suffered from PTSD... He was the one who pieced me back together from hell. Now here," she held Su Lixia's hand and pressed it against her heart, "every beat of my heart is engraved with his name."
"But this world... is clearly contrary to your beliefs..."
"The darkness isn't scary. What's scary is not being able to find your hand in the darkness." She took Su Lixia's hand and placed it on her belly, her eyes gentle but clear. "We still share our blood here. Do you think he'll be an angel or a devil when he grows up?"
Su Lixia's tears began to fall again: "But Savika..."
Ruan Xingchen wiped her tears, his eyes becoming serious. "You and I are different. You were forced into this, and your parents back home are waiting for you to return. How much of Stockholm and how much sincerity are in your feelings for Savika...only you know."
"I... I don't know..." Su Lixia's tears fell harder and harder, and her heart seemed to be torn in two.
"Then think it over carefully." Ruan Xingchen pointed to the window of the intensive care unit downstairs, his voice gentle but cruel. "But you have to remember, that person didn't have time to think when they blocked a rocket for you. There's no right or wrong choice, but if you make the wrong one, there will be regrets that will hurt you for the rest of your life."
…
At three o'clock in the morning, the electrocardiogram monitor in the intensive care unit suddenly sounded a shrill alarm, and Savika's heart rate curve on the monitor fluctuated wildly.
"Ventricular fibrillation! Prepare 200 joules!"
Su Lixia leaned against the glass and watched the doctors surrounding the bed and perform emergency treatment. She watched his broken chest rise and fall. Suddenly, she remembered his malicious smile as she tended to his wounds. "What are you afraid of? Didn't you remove the bullet yourself?"
"Second time! 300 joules!"
She recalled how he had gently kissed away her tears and said to her with rare tenderness, "After we've dealt with the Naga scum, we'll return to Yangon and get married. From now on, you'll always be by my side."
"Third time!"
She remembered his hot breath spraying on her ear when he blocked the rocket: "If I die...you can go back to China..."
"The heart rate has returned!" the nurse suddenly cheered. "It's stable!"
The curve on the monitor finally returned to a steady fluctuation.
Su Lixia slid down the glass and sat down on the ground, exhausted. The huge glass seemed like an invisible boundary, splitting her life in two.
On one side, there were her parents' expectant eyes and the pristine white operating table. That was the stable future she was supposed to be heading towards, warm, clear, and within reach.
On one side, there was the devil who dragged her into the abyss in the most paranoid and violent way, but pushed her back to the world in the most resolute manner, dark, hot, and unable to turn back.
One step forward, there is light, it is the correct and stable trajectory of her life. From now on, she will forever bear the burden of forgetting him and the complete betrayal he paid with his life.
Taking a step back means sinking, being buried in the darkness with him. From then on, I will forever disappoint my parents' expectations, and my future will be tied to his fate full of blood and fire, leaving only smoke and the unknown.
The hot tears surged continuously, blurring the blood-stained figure and the happy faces of the parents.
It turns out that the most desperate choice in the world is not not being able to get it, but being destined to completely lose the other half of your soul no matter what you choose.
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