After The Mission Failed, The Scumbag Alpha Ran Away - Chapter 47

47: From the Moment I Met You

Your life is a vast wilderness.

The world is wide, and you are no longer the desperate soul trapped in a place where you can barely stand.

Lou Huaiche slowed her breathing. Bathed in sunlight, she suddenly realized she was no longer that woman who had cycled through seven lifetimes, consumed by resentment and madness.

Jiang Youbai hadn’t changed the madness in Lou Huaiche’s bones, nor had she taken away her despair and replaced it with love and tenderness.

Lou Huaiche could never return to the fearless, bold, and unrestrained self of her first life, but she had regained the same peace she once had.

Jiang Youbai had dragged her out of the suffocating mire in another way.

Lou Huaiche was a passenger on the express train to hell, and Jiang Youbai was the uninvited guest standing atop the train, laughing wildly as they raced toward hell together.

No talk of love, no mention of salvation.

Theirs was not a relationship of mutual aid, let alone warmth.

Two people with completely different identities, stances, and experiences were hardly the same kind of people, to say nothing of anything else. But in this world, there would never be another person who would match Lou Huaiche’s madness and engage in such sharp, back-and-forth clashes with her.

What about Jiang Youbai?

Lou Huaiche wondered, had Jiang Youbai changed in some way too?

It was as though they were destined to be entangled like this, their fates inextricably intertwined, their trajectories forever inscribed with each other’s names, impossible to erase.

Jiang Youbai, sitting across from Lou Huaiche, picked up a bite of food with her chopsticks. After swallowing, she cleared her throat slightly and said, “Miss Lou, though this might sound strange and even a little clichéd, we should both be happy. My life is no longer a set track either. My life is also a vast wilderness.”

Jiang Youbai smiled self-deprecatingly and continued, “Often, I’ve felt that life and time were burdens to me. I didn’t choose to be a princess, didn’t choose to live. I was pulled forward by countless strings, unable to take a single step wrong or harbor any thoughts of my own.”

“I had to be that flawless princess—brilliant, gentle, and courteous, yet never provoking the emperor’s suspicion. Such a life was too dull. I could see the tedious end of my life and the tedious self I was destined to become.”

Jiang Youbai gazed at Lou Huaiche. She tilted her head slightly, her dark hair swaying with the movement. The contrast of her jet-black hair against her snow-white skin made her features strikingly alluring.

Her expression was one of bored indifference mixed with a hint of manic delight. Her face bore a neurotic smile, yet her tone was tender to the extreme.

“I liked the you from our first temporary mark. You held a dagger, half your face smeared with bl00d, fierce and savage. But from that moment on, my life was no longer about being a monotonous, perfect puppet.”

Lou Huaiche slowly bit her lower lip. She didn’t know what kind of “like” Jiang Youbai meant, nor whether her feelings from back then still held now.

The words that followed were what truly made Lou Huaiche feel ambiguous and unsettled. She understood Jiang Youbai’s implication all too easily.

What a mesmerizing implication it was.

From the moment I met you, I finally became myself.

Such an implication instantly set Lou Huaiche’s bl00d boiling, emotions surging in her chest, inexplicably stirring her.

Lou Huaiche lowered her eyes, avoiding Jiang Youbai’s gaze. Her voice unconsciously softened: “Your Highness, aren’t you afraid I’ll misunderstand when you say such things?”

Since their reunion, the two had never truly confronted the nature of their relationship. This question was practically an open invitation for Jiang Youbai to address it.

If she hadn’t wanted to “misunderstand,” she wouldn’t have asked, “Aren’t you afraid I’ll misunderstand?”

Jiang Youbai tapped the table lightly. After a moment, she said seriously, “I’m not afraid.”

She propped her chin on her hand, her voice laced with amusement: “If this were last year, I’d tell you, ‘Miss Lou, I love you.’ But now, all I’ll say is that I’m not afraid. At any time, we’ve both had an unspoken understanding about this relationship.”

An unspoken understanding.

The probing, the back-and-forth hostility—all concealed questions neither dared voice aloud.

—Do you love me? Is that why you did this, why you said that?

Jiang Youbai thought carefully. In truth, she’d always subconsciously believed that even if Lou Huaiche hated her, she must also love her. But it was like viewing flowers through fog—always obscured, never clear enough to face head-on.

Lou Huaiche couldn’t decipher the emotions in her words and simply asked, “Your Highness, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know if you love me, and honestly, I don’t know if I love you either. Neither of us can tell.” Jiang Youbai’s tone carried a hint of melancholy. “People always emphasize true love, pure love, clean love, healthy love—treating yourself well, treating others with unparalleled kindness.”

“But where do you find such untainted emotions? So many definitions have been given to love, yet I can’t find a single one that describes what we have.”

Compared to Jiang Youbai, Lou Huaiche was somewhat inept at communication. In distant memories, there had been a time when she was ambitious and full of expressive energy.

But all of that had been worn away by the pain and deaths of lifetime after lifetime, leaving only silence as still as ashes.

As Jiang Youbai spoke these words slowly and deliberately, Lou Huaiche was initially at a loss for how to respond.

All her expressive energy had been buried alongside her deaths in the recesses of memory. Even in moments of intense emotion, only fragments made it past her lips.

But perhaps it was Jiang Youbai’s earlier words that moved her too deeply, or perhaps it was the phrase “our relationship” that struck a chord.

Lou Huaiche raised her eyes, meeting Jiang Youbai’s gaze—those eyes that had captivated her countless times. Gradually, she felt herself becoming the person she’d been years ago.

“But human emotions are complex. Love that resembles friendship, friendship that resembles love—all of it is hard to define. In fact, I often feel that nothing in the world has meaning. Civilizations fall, lives end, and emotions are the most meaningless of all.”

Jiang Youbai said, “I had no idea Miss Lou was also someone in the throes of an existential crisis. I thought you were just a madwoman who’d kill anyone, love or hate aside.”

After a moment’s thought, Jiang Youbai recalled that Lou Huaiche’s most frequent act toward her was biting her fiercely, so she amended her statement: “Or bite anyone to death.”

“Even loving someone ultimately serves the purpose of loving oneself. Beneath every altruistic act lies a selfish need,” Lou Huaiche said calmly, ignoring Jiang Youbai’s teasing. “But when we sit here together, the joy or happiness that rises in our hearts—or even the calm of feeling nothing at all—everything in this moment is real and meaningful.”

Jiang Youbai suddenly found the table between them an obstruction. She wanted to kiss Lou Huaiche, to embrace her, to make this moment eternal—or preserve it in a beautiful, delicate box where she could revisit it anytime.

Lou Huaiche lifted her chin slightly, a smile blooming across her features, countless charms dancing in her eyes: “Your Highness, forget about love or whatever. We both know we’re hesitating—afraid to confirm our own feelings, afraid to confirm the other’s. So let’s not confirm anything. Let’s just enjoy the present, enjoy everything we bring each other.”

Jiang Youbai stared at the enchanting Omega before her and nodded slowly. “Alright. Let’s leave it at that. Given our current situation, we might die tomorrow. No point wasting time on other things. For now… let’s just follow our hearts.”

Jiang Youbai stood, circled the table, and cupped Lou Huaiche’s face. “Do you know what I want to follow my heart and do right now?”

Lou Huaiche grabbed her collar and pulled her down, laughing softly, her voice intoxicated: “You want to kiss me.”

Warm golden sunlight spilled over them as they embraced, lips meeting.

A long moment later, they parted. Jiang Youbai murmured, “I like hugging. I like kissing.”

In her childhood, she’d never received such affection. Even as an adult, it remained out of reach—so now, she was obsessed with this kind of closeness.

Lou Huaiche hooked an arm around her shoulders and smiled. “Me too.”

As they kissed, they ended up sitting side by side. Jiang Youbai felt they ought to do something else and asked, “Want to watch a movie?”

Lou Huaiche nodded.

She turned off the privacy mode on her personal terminal, and the two huddled together to browse recent releases. After some deliberation, they realized the highest-rated one was Lou Huaiche’s own film.

Jiang Youbai: “I’ve already seen this one.”

Lou Huaiche: “I don’t want to watch this.”

In the end, they picked a random horror movie.

Halfway through, Jiang Youbai’s terminal buzzed with two messages. The palace steward and the prime minister had simultaneously notified her to prepare for an audience with the emperor.

Jiang Youbai’s terminal was an outdated model without privacy settings, so Lou Huaiche saw the notifications as well.

Lou Huaiche frowned and paused the movie. “What does this mean?”

Jiang Youbai rolled her eyes. “Standard procedure for my uncle. If he dislikes someone, he summons them to the palace to torment them first, then observes.”

Lou Huaiche knew little about the old emperor. In all her cycles, she’d met him only a handful of times, remembering him as a gaunt, elderly man whose expressions and tone always carried a sly, vicious suspicion.

Having been sentenced by him for “crimes against humanity” multiple times, Lou Huaiche held no fondness for him. She sneered, “Tch. The closer he gets to death, the harder he clings to his imperial power.”

If the emperor in his younger days had been a diligent and exemplary Beta monarch, the aged version was little more than a creature of power.

Jiang Youbai sighed and forwarded the message to Chi Ruo. To Lou Huaiche, she said, “Guess we’re not finishing this movie today. Both messages say ‘immediate audience.’ They’re trying to catch me off guard. I’d better go.”

She packed up, bid Lou Huaiche farewell, and headed downstairs to hail a hovercar, setting the destination for the palace.

Once inside, Jiang Youbai opened her terminal. Chi Ruo was already messaging: “Now I’m starting to worry the real villain is your uncle. No idea why he’s summoning you out of the blue.”

Jiang Youbai replied, “Not likely. If he were the villain, I’d have gotten an execution notice, not a summons.”

“What’s your plan?”

A strange, almost eerie smile curled Jiang Youbai’s lips. “If I were Jiang Youbai, I’d obediently go to the palace, endure his scolding, and be sent on my way.”

Chi Ruo immediately understood. “But you’re not her anymore.”

“But now I’m Bai Mu, a Beta who happens to resemble his beloved niece…” Jiang Youbai sighed, regretful they couldn’t video call. Otherwise, they might have shared a knowing smile.

Chi Ruo seemed to share the sentiment. She sent a smoking emoji: “Just stand right in front of your uncle and ask, ‘How much do I look like the old me?’”