Chapter 6: A Faint Light in the Abyss, a Silent Guardian

An Yilin's second collapse happened on an evening when everyone thought she was simply exhausted.

That day, she had just been sitting quietly in her room. The heavy curtains were drawn tightly shut, the lights kept dim, with only a dull yellow wall lamp in the corner silently stretching her shadow long across the floor.

Ever since Li Yu'en had died, she had become like someone placed under a spell, sealed alive inside a block of ice. She didn't cry, didn't make a fuss, and hadn't spoken a single word since. She needed to be watched to eat, reminded to drink water; when awake, she would simply sit like this, arms wrapped around her knees at the edge of the bed, motionless, as if she had locked herself into a cage no one could enter.

But her broken body, of all things, could no longer hold on.

She had always had an old heart condition, and her clotting function had never been particularly good either — it had only ever been kept stable through careful care and medication. But after enduring one devastating blow after another these past months, her emotions swinging wildly, on top of the repeated bleeding she'd had recently, her body had long since been pushed to its limit.

That night, it seemed she had only wanted to stand up and reach for the water glass on the nightstand, but her footing suddenly gave a violent lurch.

The next instant, her vision went completely dark, and without any warning her whole body pitched forward.

"Yilin—!"

Xia Xingcheng, carrying a food tray into the room, was the first to rush in, the bowl in her hands shattering instantly on the floor, her voice utterly warped with terror.

Gu Yanxi, right behind her, also charged forward immediately, and together the two of them, flustered and heart pounding, barely managed to catch her limp body in midair. But An Yilin's face was a frightening white by then, her lips tinged blue, fine cold sweat covering her forehead, her whole body having completely lost consciousness.

When An Jingche, radiating an icy chill, arrived, what he saw was his sister lying lifelessly beside the bed, her breathing rapid and faint. In that instant, the layer of cold that had never once melted in his eyes shattered completely, his tall frame giving a violent jolt, his voice dropping low but unable to hide its tension:

"Call a doctor, now!"

The medical team arrived with extraordinary speed, throwing the entire An family estate into a state of complete panic.

After a harrowing round of examinations and emergency treatment, the atmosphere in the hospital room sank completely, oppressive enough to leave everyone breathless.

"She's showing clear signs of hemorrhaging." The doctor's expression was grave, his tone equally heavy, as he looked at An Yilin on the bed and spoke to the An family with tremendous weight: "Combined with her existing heart condition and abnormal clotting function, this situation is extremely dangerous. She must remain in absolute bed rest from now on, properly protecting the pregnancy, and cannot be allowed even the slightest emotional stress. Otherwise, both mother and fetus will be at risk of death."

Standing to the side, the family patriarch An Hengchuan's face had gone frighteningly grim, his hands clenched tight at his sides, a storm churning in his eyes befitting someone who held power in both the legitimate world and the underworld.

And the matriarch, Shen Tinglan, swayed on her feet, nearly unsteady, her fingers trembling as she gripped the edge of the table, her eyes reddening once more.

When An Yilin was moved back to the bed, she remained deep in a heavy unconsciousness, her long lashes casting shadows over her deathly pale face, as if she had no intention of waking from this blow at all.

The doctor prescribed medication, and repeated, again and again, that she absolutely had to rest and could not be allowed any excessive emotional turmoil.

But everyone knew, deep down, that the real trouble had never been the physical pain.

It was that after An Yilin woke, she began to seal herself off completely.

She ignored people.

She didn't speak.

Nor did she look at anyone.

The meals brought in each day went almost entirely untouched; the medicine was forced down only through sheer effort. Her eyes remained perpetually hollow, without the slightest focus. Sometimes, when Xia Xingcheng sat beside her crying and talking to her, she would simply stare blankly out the window, as though she hadn't heard a thing at all; Gu Yanxi, so anxious she bit her lip until it bled, tried every way she could think of to persuade her to eat a little more, but she only maintained the same unchanging silence, quiet as though her soul had already left her.

That deathlike stillness was, in its own way, far more despairing and unsettling than any hysterical crying.

It wasn't that she felt no pain.

She had simply swallowed every last bit of it, deep into her bones and blood.

It was on that deep night, when everyone else had run out of ways to reach her, that Ji Yunshen slowly drew near.

All this time, he had, in fact, never left. In the hospital corridor, in the shadows across the street from the Li family home, in the car parked outside the An family estate... he had never once gone away, and he had never once forced himself on her. He knew that what An Yilin needed most right now was not meaningless verbal comfort, but space.

But watching her grow thinner by the day, watching her — still alive, and yet like a porcelain doll on the verge of shattering — step by step lock herself into a lightless abyss, Ji Yunshen knew he could no longer hold himself back.

That night, he stood outside her half-closed door for a very, very long time.

The door wasn't shut all the way; inside, only a single dim wall lamp was lit. An Yilin sat quietly on the bed, her slight frame turned away from the door, her long black hair scattered over her shoulders, making those shoulders look even more painfully thin, a fragility pressed to its very extreme.

Ji Yunshen stood there, his stern throat giving a slight, silent roll.

He had originally intended to wait — to wait until she was willing to see someone, willing to speak, before slowly approaching. But now, watching this near-self-destructive isolation of hers, it felt as though a sharp blade had seized his chest, the pain leaving him unable to breathe.

He raised his hand and, with the utmost gentleness, pushed the door open, his footsteps so light they stirred not the faintest breath of air, as if afraid of startling this fragile soul.

An Yilin heard the sound behind her but didn't even turn her head. She kept that same posture, her hollow eyes fixed on the pitch-black night outside the window, not moving at all.

Ji Yunshen walked slowly to the bedside and looked down at her.

Up close, the sight made his breath catch sharply. He saw that she had grown thinner by an entire size compared to what he remembered, saw that her once-plump wrists were now covered in glaring bruises left by days of intensive IV drips and blood draws.

"Yilin."

He finally spoke, his voice very low, very soft, as though afraid of shattering the girl before him.

The woman on the bed gave no response of any kind.

Ji Yunshen's fingers tightened slightly, the sharp line of his jaw drawn taut. He stood there for a good while before slowly taking another step closer. He didn't touch her, only stopped a single step away, his deep eyes settling heavily on her.

"You can't keep going on like this," he said.

An Yilin still said nothing, as though every sound in this world had nothing to do with her anymore.

Ji Yunshen looked at her, the ache churning in his eyes nearly enough to drown him. He wanted so badly to ask whether her heart still hurt, whether she was bleeding again, whether the baby in her belly was giving her trouble — but the words, once they reached his lips, were all forced back down by sheer will.

Because he understood her. He knew that what she least wanted to hear right now were hollow, pretty phrases like "don't be sad" or "you have to be strong."

So he simply lowered himself slightly and, in the steadiest, most reassuring voice he could manage, said quietly:

"You don't have to acknowledge me right now. If you don't want to look at me, you can close your eyes. You don't have to force yourself to say a single word to me either."

He paused for a moment, his voice softening further, yet carrying an undeniable strength:

"But you can't keep shutting yourself away in a place with no light."

The instant those words fell, An Yilin — who had been sitting as still as a lifeless statue — finally, in the silent night, gave a small, trembling flicker of her long lashes.

It was an almost negligibly small reaction.

But to Ji Yunshen's eyes, it made his chest clench violently, as if he had caught a glimmer of light amid boundless despair.

He didn't try to push her any further, nor did he take that one step forward. He simply undid the buttons of his suit jacket, quietly pulled over a chair, and sat down in the shadow a step away from her.

Just as he had for many years before, he turned himself into a silent yet utterly reliable wall, quietly and steadfastly standing guard behind her.

Only this time, Ji Yunshen knew, he was no longer simply watching from a distance.

He was going to walk, truly and completely, into the world she was collapsing within, and stay by her side, waiting together for dawn.