After My Death, Everyone Repented (Transmigration) - Chapter 28

After completely stepping out of the diving area that still carried traces of Xie Shaojun’s presence, Chi Yi finally slowed her pace.

She walked onto the road, took a few steps forward, then slowly turned back. Against her own will, the tips of her shoes took two steps back in the direction she had hurriedly fled from.

The night was deep, the sea breeze salty. The shimmering surface of the water had quieted down, like an endless, viscous black curtain.

Chi Yi stood still for a long time before taking out her phone and sending Xie Zangxing a text: “Your sister is alone on the beach.”

It was already very late, and Chi Yi didn’t wait for Xie Zangxing. Her car was parked by the roadside near the dive shop.

Secretary Wang sat inside. The driver had been brought from China by Chi Yi, blending into her business team, so both Xie Shaojun and Xie Zangxing had assumed Chi Yi genuinely needed a guide.

The car was silent.

Neither the driver nor the secretary turned around.

Chi Yi’s phone rang, but she silenced it, instead opening a video. The car window was rolled up.

As the car moved slowly, neither the driver nor the secretary made a sound, making the video playing in the car the only audible presence.

The audio included the rumble of the subway, the fierce questioning of a blond-haired man, and Xie Shaojun’s yawns all of it, in the confined space, creating a vivid, three-dimensional scene.

Secretary Wang couldn’t help but turn slightly to look at Chi Yi.

Chi Yi kept her head down, not watching the video, only listening to the audio. Her fingers tapped lightly on the screen as she scrolled through the ocean photos Xie Shaojun had posted on Instagram.

After a short while, Chi Yi called Secretary Wang’s name and asked, “Has Xie Guangqi tried to say anything to me?”

Secretary Wang confirmed it, telling Chi Yi that Xie Guangqi had been waiting outside Haimi Corporation’s gates recently, as the demolition deadline approached.

“We’ll go back tomorrow,” Chi Yi said without looking up, her tone indifferent. “Arrange the travel schedule for me.”

The audio on her phone continued playing. In the darkness, the thin glow of the screen cast onto Chi Yi’s face, making her look like a lifeless, high-end doll.

Secretary Wang suddenly felt an overwhelming sadness. Two years ago, the death of Chi Yi’s wife had left everyone who knew her with an extreme sense of grief, whether it was Secretary Wang or the driver.

But human sorrow has its cycles. While everyone around her seemed to have emerged from that suffocating grief, Chi Yi’s pain had only just surfaced.

Perhaps, in this moment, Secretary Wang couldn’t live up to Chi Yi’s expectations of an all-capable secretary.

She asked Chi Yi a question she shouldn’t have: “Aren’t you planning to keep watching the sea?”

This time, Chi Yi didn’t reprimand her subordinate for crossing the line. She answered: “After handling the last few matters, I’ll find another sea to watch.”

The series of psychological suggestion therapies Xie Zangxing had conducted on Chi Yi were meaningless. Chi Yi’s mind was perfectly clear. Even under the soft lighting, when the therapist gently attempted to hypnotize her, Chi Yi could remain fully aware, predicting exactly how the therapist would proceed with the next step of guidance.

So every session ended in limited success. Xie Zangxing herself probably hadn’t realized yet, Chi Yi knew she had reverse-hypnotized her own therapist.

She would honestly share a part of what she wanted to say with others, while sealing away the things she chose to conceal and protect in a bottle, sinking it deep into the sea.

Xie Zangxing said she had depression. Chi Yi neither agreed nor disagreed, but deep down, she didn’t quite accept it.

The psychological afflictions she suffered couldn’t strictly be categorized as depression.

Chi Yi preferred to think of it as a meaningless gray zone the world had imposed on her after Xie Shaojun’s death.

It felt like nothing she did had any purpose anymore. One day, someone pointed out that Chi Yi had climbed to the top ranks of a global billionaire list.

Chi Yi responded with a strange question: “Does it matter?”

The person stammered, “Ah”

Unable to answer, they fell silent. Chi Yi said nothing more and walked away.

She wasn’t lying, she wished someone could tell her that any of this had meaning. But she was acutely aware that the status, accolades, and applause she now possessed weren’t even worth an emotional reaction.

Even as those around her seemed to grow increasingly afraid of her, as she accomplished everything effortlessly, she felt no pressure from life or exhaustion from work. Yet, once her tasks were done, she would plunge into that boundless gray zone.

When Xie Shaojun had still been alive, Chi Yi would feel tired, but just one phone call from her could soften Chi Yi’s heart and fill her with hope to keep working.

Because back then, finishing work meant she could see Xie Shaojun sooner. After Xie Shaojun’s death, Chi Yi’s work became mechanical.

She handled everything with practiced ease, as if she had mastered it all.

But when a person grows accustomed to seeking solace after work, only to find that solace gone

Something bitter and aching would rise within her, finding her the moment her tasks were done, gnawing at her bones and heart.

Chi Yi had once watched a documentary on tectonic plate movements.

Two isolated islands, brought together by shifting plates, became inseparable over a century, their roots and flesh intertwined.

When the plates shifted again, tearing them apart, the islands could no longer sustain their lush vegetation. Having grown accustomed to companionship in that century without loneliness, their separation doomed them to sink.

Chi Yi didn’t have intense emotions or a specific date to visit the sea.

The decision to go was born of pure chance and randomness so much so that she hadn’t even finished her pending tasks before the impulse struck.

Perhaps it was because she had crossed paths with Xie Zangxing’s sister again tonight, still tempted to indulge her wretched desires, using illness as an excuse to treat Xie Zangxing’s sister as a hallucination of Xie Shaojun.

Or perhaps it was because Xie Guangqi was about to reveal the truth of what happened back then.

Restless, Chi Yi found herself dwelling on the past. She didn’t work in the car, instead watching the streetlights blur into streaks of light outside the window, letting her thoughts wander.

The first thing that came to mind was Xie Shaojun’s death certificate:

During a kidney removal surgery, cancer cells spread, leading to bacterial infection. Respiratory arrest occurred midway through suturing. Resuscitation failed. Time of death confirmed.

The resuscitation attempt had been brief. The surgeon told Chi Yi, “The patient exchanged two sentences with another patient on the operating table before closing her eyes.”

After the gurney was wheeled out of the operating room, no family came to claim the body.

It was Chi Yi who returned a day later to claim her.

The white cloth was lifted, revealing lips tinged with a bluish-purple hue.

Chi Yi took out a tube of lipstick and carefully applied color to Xie Shaojun’s lips.

She held her in her arms all day, hoping to warm Xie Shaojun’s body, but it was futile. Xie Shaojun felt like a slightly larger, dried-up piece of human-shaped bread on the verge of growing mold.

Chi Yi didn’t cry. After claiming Xie Shaojun’s body, Feng Cinian and Xie Guangqi intercepted her, and a fierce argument erupted.

They quickly covered the corpse with the white cloth again, berating Chi Yi, forbidding her from recklessly claiming the body.

Hoarse with emotion, they insisted to everyone that the body wheeled out of the operating room was not their daughter.

Chi Yi ignored them. She didn’t want to speak to anyone.

Xie Shaojun had loved the sea, so Chi Yi carried her alone to the crematorium, placed her into the flames, and watched as she was devoured by fire, disappearing from Chi Yi’s sight for the last time.

After the cremation, Chi Yi took Xie Shaojun to Alaska, rented a boat, and sailed into the deep sea to scatter her ashes in the waters Xie Shaojun had once written about on her iNS as her favorite.

Xie Shaojun had been born free, yet she had never truly been free. As Chi Yi cast the last handful of ashes into the sea, she gripped the mast of the boat, sank to her knees, and wept helplessly.

The day she learned of Xie Shaojun’s death, Chi Yi hadn’t been by her side.

And just a week earlier, they had had a violent argument, leading to their divorce.

When Feng Cinian called, asking, “Do you know where Xie Shaojun is?”

Chi Yi couldn’t describe the sheer, suffocating terror that seized her, the kind that made her heart stop beating and her mind flood with panic, a feeling that still haunted her to this day.

Xie Shaojun’s death didn’t just bring Chi Yi the pain of oxygen deprivation it was the agony of an island torn apart, its bones and flesh ripped away, leaving it unable to ever float upon the ocean again.

This kind of suffering hadn’t existed even on the day of their divorce, when they had fought bitterly over No. 1.

On the day she was broken up with, the day she was deceived, Chi Yi had only been angry, thinking: *Xie Shaojun, you made our love sound so transactional.

Why couldn’t you believe that I loved you simply because you were you?*

She had been angry at that mercenary framing.

In that moment, as a shrewd entrepreneur who negotiated deals at the table, Chi Yi knew that all verbal breakups, heated words, and deceptions could still be undone, as long as nothing was finalized, there was always a chance to salvage things.

When she kissed Xie Shaojun in an attempt to reconcile, Xie Shaojun’s expression had been pitiful as she spoke those cruel words. And after Xie Shaojun finished, Chi Yi’s own sharp retorts had been even more pitiful.

They were both speaking in anger, so Chi Yi never believed Xie Shaojun would stay mad forever, nor did she think they had truly reached an irreparable end.

No matter what Xie Shaojun said about incompatibility, to Chi Yi, none of it was insurmountable. There was still so much time to work things out.

They were the perfect islands for each other, and Chi Yi believed time would soften their differences, allowing them to come back together.

Even if Xie Shaojun often spoke against her heart, she was fortunate to have met Chi Yi, someone magnanimous enough in this world to embrace all her flaws.

That was what Chi Yi had thought.

But then, days later, Xie Shaojun died, leaving Chi Yi no time at all.

After Xie Shaojun’s death, no one told Chi Yi the complete details of what exactly happened on the day she died. The only people present who knew the full truth Jian Qing, Xie Guangqi, and Feng Cinian, remained utterly silent about it.

No matter how much pressure or persuasion was applied, none of the three would reveal the complete truth.

Chi Yi never learned the full story. All she had was the recording pen in Zhu Sicheng’s possession, through which she came to understand Jian Qing’s malice.

But the audio also revealed an undeniable fact: in that incident, Jian Qing’s scheme wasn’t aimed at Xie Shaojun’s kidney it was Chi Yi’s.

To prevent Chi Yi from donating her kidney and to spare Zhu Sicheng from imprisonment, Xie Shaojun gave her own kidney to Jian Qing.

For a long time, Chi Yi couldn’t comprehend Xie Shaojun’s reasoning why, in her final moments, would she sacrifice herself for others?

It wasn’t until later, when Chi Yi heard from an organ donation doctor, that she learned Xie Shaojun’s last words were: “No one wanted me to live.”

And among those “no one,” Chi Yi was included.

That was the day Chi Yi realized she was no different from the rest they were all executioners who had pushed Xie Shaojun toward death.

Chi Yi had never been Xie Shaojun’s sanctuary. Instead, she had once suffocated her, left her isolated and helpless.

Chi Bao’er, the truth isn’t what you think. Your wife just wanted to make you all repent, she deliberately told the doctor those words.

But don’t doubt it you were once your wife’s sanctuary. Still, your suffering and remorse are deserved.

Next chapter, your wife will scold you awake. Second update at 11 PM.