CHAPTER 1 – “Die Pretty, Come Back Dangerous”

POV: Wáng Shuǒrán

Setting: Madam Qíng's covert training facility

Tone: Noir rebirth / Femme fatale origin

... ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ ΩΩΩΩ ...

She didn't wake up screaming.

That would've meant she still believed she could be saved.

Wáng Shuǒrán opened her eyes to a ceiling she didn't recognize. Velvet curtains. Low light. The scent of sandalwood and antiseptic. Her body ached — every breath tugged at stitches. Her side throbbed. The bullet had torn through her ribs.

But the pain wasn't what made her gasp.

It was the silence.

The sterile hum had faded. The gentle voice — gone. And no one waited to bring her back.

She was alone.

Until she wasn't.

"She's awake," said a voice — female, crisp.

Then: "Well, aren't you a stubborn little corpse."

A woman stepped into view. Mid-40s. Graceful like a blade. Clad in a silk qipao blacker than shadow, hair in a perfect twist, red lips curved in amusement.

"Welcome back to the living, Miss… whatever your name used to be."

Shuǒrán tried to sit up. Failed. Collapsed back into the pillows.

"Where—"

"Safe," the woman said. "For now."

She introduced herself only as Madam Qíng. No rank. No credentials. Just an offer.

"The world thinks you're dead, little swan. They left you in a river. Let them keep thinking that. But you — you get to choose what rises in your place."

🪰 THE REBUILDING

She wasn't given time to mourn.

By the fourth day, they took her out of bed and into a mirrored room. She still limped. Still bled. Still heard the gunshot in her dreams.

"Stand up straight," Madam Qíng snapped. "Victims slouch. Weapons don't."

She learned to disassemble pistols blindfolded. To apply poison without touching the bottle. To cry with her left eye while smiling with her mouth.

Every scar on her body was mapped, memorized, and beautified. Her broken ribs? Reset. Her cheekbone? Sharpened slightly. Nose refined. Voice lowered by half a register through speech training.

"Not to hide you," Qíng said. "To sharpen you. You're still Shuǒrán. But now you'll be deniable."

🧠 TRIALS

Physical: Nightly combat drills. Blade-to-blade sparring in heels.

Mental: Repetition of her enemies' names until they were muscle memory.

Emotional: Locked in a mirrored room with nothing but footage of her father's final press conference — the one before Jian ruined him.

She was instructed not to cry.

She failed.

"Good," Qíng whispered behind the glass. "That means we're not done yet."

🔍 FIRST KILL (Simulation)

They handed her a lipstick vial laced with neurotoxin. Told her to extract a confession from a fake CEO actor in under ten minutes.

She did it in five.

Never kissed him.

Never touched him.

"How did you do it?" Qíng asked afterward.

Shuǒrán looked up. "I made him believe I already loved him."

🔥 HER PURPOSE RETURNS

One night, limping past the surveillance room, she saw a man on the screen. Jian.

Alive. Powerful. Wearing that same smirk like the world still answered to him.

Next to him, a tall shadow — man in black, too poised to be ordinary muscle. He didn't turn. Didn't speak.

But something in his posture…

"Yìchén?"

Her heart flipped. No. It wasn't him. Couldn't be. Her brother was dead.

And yet—

The man on screen flinched.

That night, she carved a word into her bunk frame using a fork's edge.

REVENGE.

👠 CLOSING IMAGE

Two years later, the woman who left Madam Qíng's compound no longer wore wounds.

She wore perfume like warning.

Lipstick like a threat.

Her name was whispered in the shadows of Jiucheng's elite: Miss Red.