Qin Qin felt that she was having a very long dream. In the dream, a cold man wearing a white coat pointed to her and said to the woman next to him, “There’s no hereditary disease in the family… I heard that she had an accident when she was little?” 

The woman said, “Yes, the nanny took her eyes off her and the child ran away and got hit by a car.” 

The man nodded indifferently. “That’s right. When there isn’t a major hereditary influence, it’s likely to be an injury to the brain that caused damage to her temporal lobe, causing her delusions from then on.” 

While he spoke, he was standing very far away. Qin Qin raised her head. Even looking carefully, she couldn’t see the look in his eyes. She only thought that his gaze was very sinister. She was a little scared, feeling that this man could turn into a man-eating monster any time. His mouth was so big. It split up to the roots of his ears. When he spoke, uneven fangs were faintly visible, like many sharp weapons, ready to pierce a person’s heart. 

Qin Qin clutched the card in her pocket. This card was Death. On it was her knight of death, holding a banner with a white rose. This card wasn’t as frightening as its name. Behind it lay not an abyss but rebirth, all old things coming to an end, a new journey about to begin. 

She had always loved this card and believed that the knight in black armor was protecting her. Though he had only his skeleton left to him, he still held up the dawn and raised the rose banner high. 

He must have had a pair of firm and gentle eyes. When he spoke, each word seemed to strike a person’s heart. He was always walking the boundary between life and death alone, casting a shadow like night in the faint light of the morning sun, reaping with one hand and sowing with the other. 

The sound of the woman’s crying came to her ears. Qin Qin looked up at her blankly and thought, Stupid mortal. 

She had always despised this woman. Qin Qin had once thought that the person who had brought her into the world must be a goddess among mortals; though she had an ordinary human body, she had wisdom, tenderness, beauty. But she had found that she was wrong. 

She was only a woman a little stupider even than ordinary people. When the truth was revealed before her, she not only felt no pride or reverence, she wailed interminably, like a scared rat. 

The man gave her a sinister look, a hypocritical smile appearing on his face. “Qin Qin, can you wait here a bit? Entertain yourself. I’m going to say some things to your mother.” 

Qin Qin only stared at him warily, staring at his eyes, through which red light occasionally flashed, and the sharp, cunning fangs that appeared when he pulled back his lips. 

The two of them went out, and Qin Qin sat on the couch alone, tightly holding her knight’s card. 

Just then, a young man suddenly opened the door and came in hurriedly, seeming to be looking for something. At her first look at him, Qin Qin froze—he had a pair of gentle, firm eyes. When he inadvertently glanced at her, he wore a smile that was perfectly kind. 

Qin Qin’s gaze was glued to him, unwilling to leave him for a moment. 

In that instant, she clearly felt the card in her hand heat up. Yes, they had a reaction. 

Are you…my death knight of resurrection? 

Qin Qin’s heart beat faster and faster. Then the man bent down and poured her a cup of water, curved his eyes in a smile—he was very good-looking when he smiled. Her nose stung; she nearly cried. She had thought that her coming to this world was a mistake, because none of her servants could pass through that clear barrier, leaving her all alone to live in this desolate world, while they had become card after card that could only protect her in silence. 

Are you the only one? she thought. Are you the only one who always protects me and follows me? 

They only had time to exchange a few hurried sentences. Qin Qin saw tacit understanding in his handsome face. They were the only two people in the world who could understand these words. He must have understood—but the cold man with the fangs quickly came back with the weeping woman, and her knight of death was forced to leave. 

For many years after that, he didn’t appear before her again. 

Only when the world’s barrier was opened once again were all the cards freed from the paper; but Qin Qin searched for a long time and found that the twenty-two Major Arcana were gathered, and the only one missing was Death, the one she longed for most. 

Their chance meetings had always been unexpected. However, there was no need to worry. With mutual love and loyalty, no time or space could separate them…

However… Why were there always so many howevers in the world? 

Qin Qin hated the world she had lived in before. It was false, filthy, stupid. Everyone thought so highly of themselves, everyone thought they were right. They were like insects trapped in a narrow world, struggling to their death for the sake of a paltry bit of light or a few crumbs, greedy and ridiculous. 

They said she lived in a world of her own, but in fact she was very attentive towards each movement others made. They shut her up in the hospital with white walls all around, then stood outside a huge glass window, pointing at her and judging her. 

All of this disgusted Qin Qin. 

The things she loved were always forced to leave, and the things she hated lingered forever before her eyes. For her, the whole world was a hell she couldn’t be liberated from, couldn’t escape, couldn’t struggle free of. 

Each time she couldn’t stand it and began to scream, people would charge in. They held her down and put syringes in her veins, injecting her with this world’s poisons. Each time, she tensed her muscles, but her weak body still couldn’t resist the invasion of these poisons. 

They eroded her brain, sometimes even eroded her consciousness. Under the influence of the drugs, in her daze, she had actually once suspected that all the cards were fake. There was no Magician holding flowers, no Star you could wish on, no Lovers standing under the Tree of Knowledge, no Hanged Man, and also…no knight who had once again grown flesh, whose smile was as bright and pure as night sky at the border of death. 

Luckily, she had made it through. 

But her knight hadn’t. Before she could recover from the joy of their reunion, she noticed his distant and wavering gaze. She was uneasy and sent other cards to watch at his door. As a result, she suffered the greatest shock of her life—the knight of death betrayed her. 

Longing for his smile, she had waited for so long, but what had come was his betrayal. Even in the maze laid down by the Lovers, he still abandoned her without looking back, walking towards a hell full of mud. 

And that wasn’t the worst of it. Death was number thirteen among the Major Arcana, the other starting point of the Magician’s little circle. And the betrayal of a starting point card inevitably led to the weakening of all the cards’ abilities. After the Devil card was shot by a silver bullet and returned to its original shape, even the Tower disintegrated. 

After the rules of the Lovers collapsed, Qin Qin found that there were only eleven cards left that she could use! 

People did not fear the attacks of the enemy, however powerful an enemy it was, however undefeatable it seemed. The most fatal wounds always came from the thing called “hope.” 

Qin Qin thought that this must be why the last thing that flew out of Pandora’s Box was hope. 

There was nothing more dangerous than hope, and nothing darker than hope. 

After the High Priestess brought her back from the dead Lovers, Qin Qin shut herself up in the castle for two days. She seemed to be caught in a vicious circle—did “the dead Lovers” mean something? 

Then she came to a decision. 

Kou Tong holed himself up in his study, even eating in front of the computer. The computer’s fan screamed in protest and was completely ignored by him without mercy. The first time Huang Jinchen went to see him, he found him with both legs on the desk, sitting improperly. The second time he went to see him, he found that he had put his legs down and was sitting very properly, typing in commands with his fingers flying. The third time he went to see him, he found him with one leg crossed over the other, arms crossed in front of his chest, a pen in his mouth, having ruffled his hair into a bird’s nest. 

The fourth time he went to see him, he found that Dr. Kou was imitating the actions of his closely linked partner in livelihood—the gorilla. He was squatting on his chair. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he was staring dully at the screen. 

This was already…forty-eight hours after he had returned from Lao Tian’s place. 

Huang Jinchen at last decided not to endure any longer. He walked right in and patted Kou Tong on the shoulder. Kou Tong only reacted after two seconds, looking up at him woodenly. Huang Jinchen leaned down, put one arm over the backs of his knees and the other around his back, then bent over and simply lifted him over his shoulder like a big sack. 

There was a clatter—the glasses sitting loosely on Kou Tong’s nose had fallen. Kou Tong cried out, “My glasses, my glasses…ah! Please take care to raise your feet, don’t step on them, brother!” 

Huang Jinchen raised a hand and patted him on the butt. The feeling was pretty good. “Shout again and I’ll carry out the sentence on the spot.” 

Kou Tong said, “Fine, fine, fine! No problem! Just save the data for me first! How annoying!” 

Huang Jinchen’s steps paused. He turned. As if it took him no effort to carry a grown man over his shoulder, he fumbled his way back in front of the computer and obediently saved. 

“Shit, Kou Tong, what is this crappy machine of yours? It’s taking forever.” Huang Jinchen irritably put Kou Tong down. “You got this CPU out of an electronic pet, didn’t you?” 

Kou Tong said, “…so dizzy…” 

Huang Jinchen narrowed his eyes, simply pushed the computer aside, then put Kou Tong on the desk and earnestly said, “Darling, it’s wrong to tease a starving man.” 

The world spun around Kou Tong. He dizzily felt the world go dark in front of his eyes. There was a buzzing in his ears. “Thank you, I’ve noticed…” 

Huang Jinchen pounced with a sinister smile. “Uh-huh, your highness the princess, even if you shout yourself hoarse now, it’ll still be no use!”