The White Moonlight Who Went Mad in Silence [Rebirth] - Chapter 1

The sky and sea were both pitch black, completely indistinguishable from each other. It felt as if the world had returned to its primordial chaos. On the endless ocean surface, a single worn-out boat struggled in the waves. Violent waves crashed against its rusted hull, as if the next one might swallow it whole. The silent, starless night seemed to be the only witness.

They had reached international waters, but no one on board dared to relax. This was a smuggler’s boat. Not even the lights were allowed to be turned on. Inside the violently swaying cabin, everyone sat helpless in the darkness, left to the mercy of fate.

Only the innermost cabin held a dim yellow nightlight, no larger than a soybean. Its faint glow barely lit the cramped space. In the corner, tied down to the wooden floor, was a small bed with a thick, expensive-looking down quilt that clashed with the rest of the ship’s poverty. Wrapped inside the quilt was a thin and fragile figure. The person inside was barely alive, occasionally furrowing their brows from discomfort, yet too weak to open their eyes.

Anyone could tell that she likely wouldn’t survive the night.

The flickering of the light came from the hand of the person holding it. She knelt beside the bed, trembling. Pain weighed down on her so heavily that she finally broke down, bowing her head and resting her forehead against the floor.

After days of being half-conscious, Ming Lan’s mind began to clear. The pain in her body and the salty air seemed to drift away, replaced by an eerie sense of peace. Her brain, long dormant, began to function again. It felt like she had just awakened from a long dream — one that showed her the entirety of her short life.

She remembered the first twenty years of luxury and splendor, being born into a wealthy family and adored by all. Then came the years of betrayal, suffering, and ruin. She had experienced both extremes of the world with her own eyes.

Faces flashed past her mind like a lantern show. Apart from her close relatives, every familiar face she saw had played a role in her downfall. The hatred in her heart ran so deep that her body trembled. How had she, who lived a life of kindness and generosity, ended up like this?

Her heavy eyelids slowly opened, fueled by that hatred. All those hated faces vanished. In her vision remained only the tiny yellow nightlight and the silhouette of a woman kneeling at her bedside.

Fate was ridiculous. The very people she had helped had turned their backs on her. And yet it was a stranger who had risked everything to stay by her side, giving up wealth and status to protect her in her most miserable and helpless state.

Ming Lan whispered hoarsely, unsure if she actually made a sound. “Yi An, why?”

The woman at her bedside immediately looked up, eyes wide with disbelief. Her reddened eyes filled with joy, but quickly dulled when she realized it was likely Ming Lan’s final moment of clarity before death. Grief returned, and tears welled up again.

She closed her eyes tightly as if the pain was unbearable, then lowered her head and took a deep breath. When she looked at Ming Lan again, she gently brushed aside a strand of her hair. Facing those fading eyes, she finally spoke in a soft, painful voice.

“Miss Ming, do you really not remember me?”

The gentle words pierced through the roaring waves and entered Ming Lan’s ears. At that moment, something deep within her memory was unlocked.

She remembered.

A distant afternoon, faded by time. Sunlight filtered through the tree leaves, scattering into soft specks. A young girl stood silently in hand-me-down clothes, tightly clutching a perfect test paper. She kept her head down and followed an adult nervously.

Young Ming Lan, curious and bright, had asked, “What’s your name?”

“Yi An,” the girl had answered in a soft, timid voice.

“Can I see your test paper?”

Ming Lan had reached out her pale, flawless hand. The paper was passed over to her, and the girl’s hands, covered in calluses and cracked skin, immediately pulled back once the handover was complete. She lowered her head even more.

At the time, Ming Lan had not noticed anything unusual. She simply stared at the test sheet. The perfect answers and neat handwriting made her eyes widen in amazement.

“You’re so smart. You should go to a better school. You’ll definitely do great things in the future.”

From then on, every semester, the Ming Family’s charity program received a perfect exam paper and a handwritten letter addressed to Miss Ming. Each was signed by Yi An. Occasionally, Ming Lan would write back. But after she went overseas for treatment, their communication stopped entirely. In truth, they had only ever met once.

Now everything made sense. Ming Lan had only known Yi An as the recently returned heiress of the Ye family. Their paths barely crossed. Yet when disaster struck, Yi An had abandoned everything to save her, even after being disowned by her own family.

So it was you.

Ming Lan wanted to tell Yi An that she remembered. She wanted to say it out loud. But all she could hear was the sound of the waves and Yi An’s quiet sobs. She could no longer speak.

In the darkness, the tiny nightlight finally completed its final task and flickered out as its batteries died. The room returned to pitch black. Ming Lan’s consciousness faded along with it, sinking into an abyss filled with grief and resentment.

Everything was slipping away. Silence took over.

Just as it all seemed to end, a sharp cracking sound echoed in her mind. Something broke.

In the next moment, her memories began to rewind at a dizzying speed. Through the fracture in her mind, she saw a book.

She finally understood.

She was the “White Moonlight” in a melodramatic substitute romance novel.

The book described her life from another perspective. It said Ming Lan was born into privilege, beautiful and bright-eyed, but physically frail. She was always kind and gentle, doing good wherever she could.

The main characters, supporting roles, and even the villainess she helped all came from that same story. She knew their names well.

The cold and distant neighbor she always greeted was the male lead, Li Jue.

The neglected child of a wealthy family whom she accompanied with patience was the second male lead, Bai Tingqiu.

The bruised and reckless son from the hostile Xiao family, whom she once rescued on the street, was the roguish third male lead, Xiao Shaoyan.

Every one of them saw Ming Lan as their guiding light but kept their love hidden. After she left for treatment, they could no longer bear it and found a substitute. That substitute was the story’s female lead, who bore a slight resemblance to Ming Lan.

This was where the melodrama began. They used the new girl to vent their twisted, unresolved feelings. Yet they never truly loved her. They loved Ming Lan’s shadow and hurt the substitute girl in the process. They pushed and pulled, tormented her, and themselves, until the real Ming Lan returned.

When the true White Moonlight reappeared, the story entered a new climax.

But that was also where Ming Lan’s tragedy began.

After using Ming Lan’s name to torment the substitute heroine, they suddenly “realized” the heroine was their true love. When she fled and seemingly died, they blamed everything on Ming Lan, who had been unaware of any of it from the start. They accused her of cruelty and manipulation.

And thus, her nightmare truly began.

After that, everything unfolded just like in the book.

Those people began to turn against Ming Lan again for the sake of the female lead. They worked together to drive the Ming family to ruin. Even after finding the heroine again, they didn’t stop. They insisted that only by making Ming Lan suffer everything the heroine once endured would it be fair. So they took it upon themselves to humiliate her as much as possible, all to please the heroine.

Reading this far, Ming Lan finally understood everything. Her hands trembled with fury.

She had never treated them poorly. Putting aside years of friendship, even after she returned to the country and they faced countless business setbacks, she had always helped them. Whether it was connections, resources, or money, she had given without hesitation. Yet for such a ridiculous reason, they had all turned on her with no remorse and such ruthless cruelty.

Only after seeing their thoughts from their own perspectives in the book did Ming Lan realize how blind she had been. She had treated these beasts in human skin as if they were truly human.

If she ever had the chance, she would send them to hell herself.

Her anger grew stronger and stronger. The crack in her mind widened, letting in a blinding light. The brightness snapped her out of her fury. As the crack grew wide enough for a person to pass through, Ming Lan stepped into it and picked up the book again, looking around.

There was nothing else in the space around her. She could only keep reading.

But the more she read, the more wrong everything felt.

In the latter part of the book, the story described a character named Ye An. She was portrayed as a vicious supporting role, a lost heiress of the Ye family who had only recently been found and recognized as the successor. The book claimed that Ye An had fallen in love with the male lead, Li Jue, but he didn’t return her feelings. Out of jealousy, she had turned bitter and used the Ye family’s power to get revenge, damaging his career. To provoke him further, she even kidnapped the male lead’s White Moonlight. In the end, she was defeated by Li Jue and the others, expelled from the Ye family, and jumped into the sea during an escape with Ming Lan, attempting to drag her down in a final act of vengeance.

But that version was absurd.

While those events had happened, the truth was nothing like what the book described.

Ming Lan clearly remembered the moment Ye An found her in the basement of Li Jue’s house. Her eyes were filled not with hatred, but with shock and heartbreak. Every day that followed, she had treated Ming Lan with endless gentleness. There was no kidnapping, no malice. Even when she sought revenge on those people, it was only to give Ming Lan justice.

And the most crucial detail: Ming Lan had died from illness.

How could they twist it into a story of mutual destruction from a sea jump?

Her fingertips clenched the edge of the book tightly. Ming Lan didn’t know what had happened to Yi An after her death. But if it was true, if she had really jumped into the sea…

Her heart twisted sharply with pain.

“It shouldn’t have been like this. It was never supposed to be like this.”

Ming Lan looked around. She didn’t know where she was or why she had ended up here. It defied everything she understood, but that only made one thing clear.

This place offered her a chance to change everything.

No one answered her cries. No matter where she walked, she always ended up in the same place.

There was only one path: the crack she had stepped through earlier.

That pitch-black gap looked like a giant mouth waiting to swallow her whole. Just looking at it reminded her of that lightless basement. The painful memories almost tore her mind apart.

But she couldn’t stay here forever.

After the fear came the fury. And rage burned the fear away.

She looked down at the book in her hands again. Without hesitation, she tore it apart. This version of her life could not be the truth.

Her story was not supposed to end like this.

It was the first time she had done something so impulsive and reckless. But as she watched the torn pages fall and scatter like dust, she felt an eerie sense of satisfaction. With the last page torn, something invisible shattered around her.

She didn’t know what it was.

But her heart grew firm with purpose.

She turned toward the dark crack and walked into it without looking back.