When Xiao Mingyue awoke again, she was inside Feng Buji’s dungeon.
Dim light filtered down through a narrow ventilation shaft, and Xiao Mingyue’s hands and feet were bound to a pillar.
The excruciating pain in her abdomen slowly brought her back to consciousness; it seemed Feng Buji’s kick had truly been meant to kill her.
In her haze, she caught the faint sound of Hua Heng’s voice.
“System, what is Feng Buji’s current favorability rating?”
[It has reached 80%.] A cold, mechanical voice answered.
Hua Heng asked it, “You said before that once his favorability reaches 100% and I marry Feng Buji, the mission will be considered complete, right?”
[Correct.]
“Good. Within these three months, I will definitely complete the mission…”
Who was she talking to? What mission was she trying to complete?
Hua Heng indeed had ulterior motives; she was bound to expose her true purpose…
Xiao Mingyue struggled to open her eyes. As her vision gradually cleared, she noticed for the first time that there was actually no one beside Hua Heng.
What was going on? Who had she been conspiring with just now? Why had that person suddenly vanished?
“Oh, you’re awake?” Hua Heng smiled sweetly, though her gaze coiled around her like a venomous snake.
“Alas, my poor angst-novel female lead, you were far too irrational. Now you know what pain feels like, don’t you?”
Xiao Mingyue ignored her gloating provocation, completely missing her reference to an “angst-novel female lead.”
She asked coldly, “Who were you just talking to?”
Hua Heng froze slightly. “Have you really gone mad?”
“I am not mad. I heard everything just now—you were talking to someone whose voice was neither clearly male nor female. Speak! What on earth are you two planning?” Xiao Mingyue, strangely enough, calmed down at this moment. Hua Heng possessed a terrifying backer, a living entity that could appear and disappear without a trace in the blink of an eye. This only proved that Hua Heng was an exceptionally dangerous individual, and she could not act recklessly against her.
Hua Heng asked her, “You really heard it?”
“Who is the System? What on earth are you planning?” Xiao Mingyue did not answer, firing back her own questions instead.
Hua Heng’s smile remained intact. She raised Xiao Mingyue’s chin with great interest. “How fascinating. You can actually hear me speaking to the System? Then tell me, what did we just say?”
Xiao Mingyue remained silent, deliberately going against her.
Hua Heng seemed completely fearless. “Do you know why I came here? Don’t look at me like that—I didn’t come here to mock you, I came to help you.”
“Bah! You poisonous woman who would even kill her own child—you would help me? If not for you, how would I have ended up like this?”
Xiao Mingyue loathed her to the core. Even now, she could not fathom how anyone could be so ruthless, until she heard her say:
“Who told you I was pregnant?”
Xiao Mingyue’s eyes suddenly widened. “How could you not be?” She had clearly bled so much.
Seeing Hua Heng’s smug, arrogant smile, Xiao Mingyue instantly understood the truth of the matter. “It was that System of yours?”
An inexplicable panic surged in Xiao Mingyue’s heart. Could it be that the stories in the storybooks were true? Were there really demons in this world? Even pregnancy and miscarriages could be fabricated so realistically.
“You heard it all, yet you still don’t understand? Right now, apart from you, the entire Xiao family has been thrown into prison—courtesy of Feng Buji. Aside from me, no one can help you.”
“Why do you want to help me? What are your conditions?”
“I want the military tally in your father’s hands.”
“You want the military tally in my father’s hands? Do you even deserve it?” Xiao Mingyue was no fool. Once the military tally was handed over, what awaited the Xiao family would be a true disaster of total annihilation.
“Sigh, why are you so obstinate? If you hand over the military tally, everyone in the Xiao family will be fine.”
“If you want the military tally, go find my father! Why come to me?”
“Your father is stubborn and unyielding, so I had no choice but to seek it from you.”
“How would I know where it is? Are you stupid?” Xiao Mingyue sneered, looking at Hua Heng mockingly; she truly did not know where the military tally was kept.
Losing her patience, Hua Heng’s face darkened. She grabbed her face in a tight grip and pointed a dagger straight at her face.
“You’re quite beautiful. If you remain as obstinate as that father of yours, I will slice down with this blade,” Hua Heng threatened, her red lips curving slightly upward.
“Does Feng Buji know you’re like this in private?” Xiao Mingyue asked.
A flash of fury appeared in Hua Heng’s eyes, and she raised the dagger high.
Xiao Mingyue closed her eyes, but the expected pain never came; instead, the ropes binding her hands suddenly snapped.
Xiao Mingyue looked at Hua Heng in shock and confusion, only for Hua Heng to smile, force the dagger into Xiao Mingyue’s hand, and firmly grip her hand to slash across her own face.
Xiao Mingyue struggled desperately to break free, but the blade still sliced across Hua Heng’s face.
“Ah!” A pitiful scream rang out. By the time Xiao Mingyue snapped back to reality, Feng Buji had already stepped in front of her with a grim expression and dealt her a harsh slap across the face.
“I never would have imagined that you could be such a vicious woman! First you caused Hua Heng to miscarry, and now you ruin her face—what a vile, cruel heart you have!”
Feng Buji lifted Hua Heng into his arms with heartache, reprimanding her gently: “Why are you always so kind-hearted? Why did you release her behind my back? A woman this vicious belongs in hell! Why help her? Now look—you helped her, yet she turned around and tried to disfigure you. It’s utterly revolting!”
How could Xiao Mingyue not realize she had been set up? Yet Hua Heng was truly ruthless, and backed by a demon of ambiguous gender, how could she have possibly guarded against it?
Feng Buji ordered his men to give Xiao Mingyue one hundred lashes to vent his anger, and Xiao Mingyue was whipped to death.
Ding!
Just as Xiao Mingyue’s soul floated out of her bloody corpse, she heard a mechanical voice.
[An invading outside mission taker has been detected in this world. A system is being assigned to you to assist you in repairing the storyline.]
Xiao Mingyue: ?
“Who is System?”
[Me, me, me! My name is Xiao Wei, and I will be your system from now on!]
Xiao Mingyue stared in shock at the glowing white ball in front of her. “So a system is a thing like you? Are you human or demon?”
[Replying to Host: We are neither human nor demon. We are nothing of the sort—we are merely a form of consciousness, an omnipotent entity of consciousness, a sphere of energy created to maintain various sub-worlds…]
The voice of this small white ball sounded like an energetic child, unlike the gloomy one beside Hua Heng. So, was this kind of thing a System?