Absolute Choice

The truth is typically harsh and cruel because it packages the true rotting nature of something in sugar-coated lies.

At the age of three, Dawn had already understood this harsh reality.

The nefarious people who had left her on the uninhabited island did not know that the intelligent three-year-old girl had been pretending to remain unconscious. From the very beginning, she had seen the sins they had committed.

The lone island that was left stranded in the middle of the ocean did not exist in the human world, but situated in a particular land of trials. It was an extremely easy land of trials meant to train neophytes, but to a three-year-old, it was no different from hell.

Furthermore, the island she was on was not the only island in the land of trials. In it, there existed thousands, if not tens of thousands of islands similar to the one she was on.

Therefore, she was not the only child left alone on the uninhabited island. There might have been hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands. But all these children had a common trait, they were all orphans.

These thousands of orphans were placed in beast-infested islands in the land of trials, allowing them to attempt to survive unaided in a perilous environment. Such an extreme plan of selecting talent was termed “Project Orphan”.

When “Project Orphan” began, despite being a progeny of the Li family, due to her only direct family member, her mother, dying from an illness, the parentless her was just considered a collateral relative. Therefore, she was unluckily chosen to make up one of the numbers, making her one of the targets of the project.

And most ironic of all was that the faction behind the project was the Li family. Their initial goal was to nurture a batch of ‘outstanding’ assassins. If a three or four-year-old could survive independently for three years in a danger-riddled island, it was obvious how monstrous the child’s abilities and willpower was. Regardless of the number of children sacrificed, as long as about ten were left behind, or even a few excellent budding candidates made it all worth it. After all, those children were bought cheaply or even freely adopted orphans.

However things seldom go as one expected. The project was still overly ambitious. After three years, when the Li family was prepared to ‘reap in the harvest’, they realized that among the thousands of orphans, only a six-year-old girl had survived.

But what delighted the proposer of the project—the Li family’s Patriarch—was that the six-year-old girl was of the Li family bloodline. Even though she was just considered a collateral relative, there was no doubt that this girl who had ‘accidentally’ entered Project Orphan had Li family blood flowing in her.

As the only survivor, the girl’s value exceeded any previous estimations. And having a Li family bloodline resulted in a substantive change in her fate.

After a short test of the fruits gained from the girl’s survival on the uninhabited island, the Patriarch seemed to see a more glorious future for the Li family from her.

The follow-up plans of nurturing the girl into an assassin were immediately overruled. The Patriarch adopted the girl on the spot and proclaimed to the public that he had found a long-lost grandson.

Maybe it was on a whim or because the male progeny was too mediocre, the Patriarch made a bet after a lot of thinking. He decided that the girl who could survive three years on an uninhabited island would be nurtured as his successor. Therefore, he hid the truth of the girl’s sex from the public.

What happened was the cruel truth. It was a truth that Dawn was extremely familiar with all along.

But the Patriarch, who was mistaken to think that Project Orphan was carried out flawlessly, did not know that the girl long knew of the truth. The lies he painstakingly crafted was a beautiful layer of sugar-coating that concealed the rotten truth.

The ‘harvesters’ sent to the island were explained as rescuers. They claimed that she had fallen victim to the Li family’s enemies, and that they had never given up searching or hopes of rescuing her. It took them three years to finally find her.

The Patriarch told her in tears that her father was actually an illegitimate son of his and that she was his granddaughter. After that, he said how all the heir candidates of the family clan were mediocre and wished for her to disguise herself as a male, and work hard to inherit the role of Patriarch.

The six-year-old looked at the Patriarch’s exaggerated performance with a deadpan expression. In her heart, she could only silently sneer.

If she did not know of the truth, she might have been grateful to the Patriarch and the Li family for their kindness, eventually becoming the most loyal clansmen of the Li family.

However, even after she was six, when she really gained the treatment as the Li family’s successor and the Patriarch treated her as his real granddaughter, allowing her to grow up in an enviable environment, she never lowered her caution.

That was because she knew very well that everything was an illusion that could be shattered at any time.

If she did not work hard enough or lacked the talent, she would not be able to demonstrate her value as a ‘successor’. Then, all that she possessed would be gone. The Patriarch would also take back his kindness and benevolence.

But thankfully, she was more hardworking than anyone else. The talent she possessed was unprecedented. The value she demonstrated far exceeded the Patriarch’s expectations.

The antisocial personality that was a result of her surviving in the uninhabited island for three years was naturally pardoned. She did not need to meet anyone nor attend any family gatherings. She did not even need to deliberately act the part of the Patriarch’s grandson. All she needed was to constantly become stronger and become so dazzling that she would become the apparent heir of the Li family.

Although everything was constructed on a bed of lies, there was no way to deny that such a life was beautiful.

However, having seen through the lies and deceit, while understanding what human nature was, the six-year-old her left a lingering scar in her heart.

From the age of six, Dawn became germaphobic.

…

Being a germaphobe was having a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It treated objects that were considered hygienic by normal standards as dirty. One would feel anxiety and a strong urge to clean, examine and reject any item that was ‘unclean’.

Dawn’s germaphobia was rather unique. What she rejected as ‘unclean’ was limited to only one thing—people.

She refused to be close to anyone, nor did she allow anyone to come close to her. It was just like how a germaphobe would not be able to stand a tiny bit of dust, once someone came close to her, she would find it nauseating.

Dawn knew that she was abnormal, be it ‘not being able to hear voices’, or ‘rejecting humans’, they were very serious mental illnesses. However, she never thought of changing because she was accustomed to being alone. She was accustomed to a world without humans that only had plants, rocks and birds.

Only at that moment in time did she finally realize that it was not because she did not want to change but because she had no way of changing. It was not that she could not hear, but because the voices of humans could not reach her. It was not that others could not approach her, but because the ugly nature of humans could no longer be cleaned in her heart.

But that was not necessarily the truth.

That was because a boy named Shi Xiaobai had shattered what she believed to be an immutable fact.

He allowed her to hear a voice.

Against absolute power, not only did he not retreat, he instead held a firm obsession for victory. He used all his strength to slash out a strike without any regret, and through that, emitted the most beautiful light of humanity.

He is special, different from everyone else.

If it were him, it would be fine.

She mustered her courage to take the initiative to approach him. Indeed, she did not find it gross. She hugged him in an embrace while enduring her embarrassment. She did not find it repugnant, and instead she recalled the warm memories of her lying in her mother’s arms at the age of three.

The feeling was very beautiful and warm. It made her unable to extricate herself from it.

But how long could such a feeling last?

She suddenly understood for the first time, what it meant to be mindful about one’s personal gains and losses.

“Sigh, so you really are… are not human after all, right?”