"Stop right there."
The moment the words left his mouth, Ji Jie saw the quest log flicker, and the text unexpectedly changed.
[Incomplete — Sabotage He Lingfeng's race car]
[Incomplete — Stay at the back-hill racing grounds for forty minutes]
[Countdown — 48:00:00]
[Current — 20/100]
"We've got a race at the back hill this weekend," Zhu Yixun said. "If you're interested, you can come watch."
"…" Ji Jie couldn't speak right away.
Her train of thought had been thrown into disarray by the quest entry that had appeared out of nowhere.
Her target could actually be He Lingfeng, too?
She remembered this part — it was precisely because his attitude had been so awful that Duan Baoni, goaded by outsiders, sabotaged his racing rig.
You could call it a malicious act of revenge. She'd simply been too angry to let it go, never imagining that He Lingfeng would nearly lose his life because of it — laid up in the hospital for half a year, with one leg left permanently disabled. A real pity.
But in the novel, Huo Yuxi and Wei Chao were the protagonists. Ji Jie had always subconsciously assumed that all her quests had to be related to those two.
Zhu Yixun asked, "Coming or not?"
"…Sure." She snapped back to her senses. "But I don't know where the place you're talking about is. How do I get there?"
"I'll just come pick you up." He pulled out his phone. "WeChat."
Ji Jie added him as a friend, then watched him wordlessly as he walked over to his teammates, her hand unconsciously reaching for the name badge she'd lost and found again.
Dinner that evening was wagyu barbecue. She wasn't in much of a mood to eat, so she sat beside Cheng Yunqiao drinking beverages. Cheng Yunqiao wasn't in high spirits either.
Because Wei Chao hadn't shown up.
Each harboring their own hidden agenda. Ji Jie managed to slip away midway through and went home to mull over the new quest.
The big house was as quiet as ever. She took a quick hot shower, then sat down at her desk to sort out her thoughts.
The novel's plot had only appeared once, when she first entered this household. Afraid she might forget, she'd immediately written out the entire story in order, focusing on the scenes where Huo Yuxi and Wei Chao appeared.
But now she needed to recenter everything on herself and go through the story again from the beginning.
Chicken soup for the soul always says that everyone is the protagonist of their own world.
Applied to her, it meant that anything Duan Baoni experienced could become one of her quests.
There were more things to watch out for now.
Ji Jie hated this feeling — as if a new quest could pop up at any moment. Even with the corporate grind, you at least got a few hours off after work.
Stewing in silent anger was useless. She shifted back to a pragmatic mindset and focused on the problem she needed to solve right now.
For the first time, she had such an ample countdown. She needed to think this through carefully.
Ji Jie looked at the section she'd underlined in her notebook. In the original text, she'd been instructed by Zhu Yixun's people to secretly shift the brake line retaining clips out of position, pressing the lines tight against the frame.
At low speeds it made no difference, but at high speed over bumpy roads, with sharp turns on mountain paths, it would cause brake failure.
She didn't understand cars and hadn't known how dangerous it was, but there was no way Zhu Yixun didn't know.
She'd been used as a pure pawn.
But thinking back on tonight, Zhu Yixun had only invited her to watch the race — he hadn't instructed her to do anything.
And on top of that, he'd said he'd come pick her up… Ji Jie suspected that this poor kid probably had a bit of a crush on her.
The Zhu Yixun in the original text had never been like this.
She didn't yet understand how this discrepancy had occurred, nor did she feel the slightest bit of pride at being favored. After all, Zhu Yixun was more sinister and more ruthless, and he could be completely indifferent to the risk of causing someone's death.
These kids weren't really that young anymore—at the very least, their values had already taken shape, and trying to reform them through education was no longer very possible.
She didn't want to deal with this kind of hardened person whose character was already set.
By comparison, He Lingfeng's intimidation, which was out in the open, seemed much more endearing.
He Lingfeng really did treat her badly and deserved some lessons, but he definitely didn't deserve such a fate.
After her younger brother's accident, Huo Zhenyan would inevitably investigate. But because the wear was caused dynamically, after the race it would easily be mistaken for an accident caused by track bumps, and with no surveillance either, there would be no conclusive directional evidence.
This had to be the work of someone meticulous. How could an idiot like Duan Baoni possibly have done it so flawlessly?
In the novel, Huo Zhenyan was omniscient and still concluded that she had done it. It was only because of the lack of evidence, and because of the blended-family relationship, that he didn't send her straight to prison.
By the ending, Huo Zhenyan never gave her another cent.
The financial blow was also fatal. Indirectly, among the wicked things Duan Baoni did later, it even included stealing jewelry from a friend's house and reselling it because she was desperately broke.
Just thinking about it made Ji Jie see black before her eyes.
She still hadn't saved enough for studying abroad, so she had to protect her allowance!
Directly following the original text and sabotaging the brakes—how different was that from making her kill someone with her own hands?
But if she didn't complete it, this time she would lose 10 points. Hovering in critical health state all along, she instinctively felt it was not a good thing.
After pacing around the bedroom a few times without any ideas, Ji Jie simply got up and went downstairs to get some air in the yard.
He Lingfeng had just gotten his driver's license two months ago, and this was exactly when he was gloating.
That orange-yellow race car was an adult gift from his older brother, and it had already finished being modified in the first half of the year. Finally able to openly take it out to play, he hadn't even put it in the garage and had left it parked ostentatiously in the backyard.
It would get rained on. Ji Jie muttered inwardly while quietly approaching, circling this very cool car twice.
She didn't understand racing cars at all. If she really had to sabotage the brake pads, she wouldn't even know where to start.
Wait…
She looked up again at the mission bar.
It only said to damage his race car. It didn't specify that it had to be done on the day of the race, or exactly which part had to be damaged.
Although the two missions came from one event, it also didn't say they had to happen in the same scene.
She searched around, but the courtyard was truly too clean—there wasn't even a fallen leaf. So she had to run back into the villa, pick out a small knife in the kitchen, and come back to slash hard at the car's rear.
Two crossing cuts, with long curved trailing tails. Like a little fish in a stick figure drawing.
[Completed]
[To be completed — stay at the back-hill racing venue for forty minutes]
[Countdown — 45:10:02]
[Current — 25/100]
Heh.
Ji Jie pressed her lips together, revealing her most genuine smile of the day.
She had found a bug, hadn't she.
She gestured a few more times, thinking maybe she should give the little fish an eye.
She had already held back a lot. She hadn't even gone to the car door area, the most eye-catching and flashy place where the driver's initials were painted in livery.
Just as she was trying her hand at artistic creation, a tall figure suddenly stood up from the pavilion in the distance and walked toward her.
Ji Jie noticed the second he stood up. She froze in place, her heart beginning to pound.
She wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there or how much he'd seen. But guilt-ridden as she was, she hid the small knife behind her back and tried to leave.
Huo Zhenyan said, "Stay right there."
She nearly tripped over her own feet. Once she steadied herself, she calmly confessed, "I had a momentary lapse in judgment."
"You don't look like you're having a lapse." Huo Zhenyan bent down to look at the scratches on the car. "You even know about composition."
"…"
"Why did you do this?"
She almost wished he hadn't asked. The moment he did, a faint sense of grievance welled up in Ji Jie's heart.
She had relatively mature social experience—after entering the workforce and encountering plenty of idiots, she'd built up a tolerance, which was why she'd thought not to stoop to a child's level.
But the original Duan Baoni was just a kid in her early teens. To be bullied for no reason—how could anyone expect her to swallow her anger and take it lying down?
As the person with the highest authority in this household, Huo Zhenyan had always stood idly by.
"He treats me badly—didn't you see it with your own eyes?" Ji Jie demanded on behalf of this isolated, helpless girl.
"I know he's your younger brother. He's been by your side longer, he's closer to you. But I'm your sister too. I've never done anything to wrong him—so why can you just watch him bully me?"
Huo Zhenyan tilted his chin, gesturing for her to admire her handiwork. "You just did."
"…" So he wasn't the type to cave under pressure either.
She couldn't use moral blackmail on him, and she couldn't think of any other leverage. Ji Jie fell silent for a moment.
"Besides, do you really need me to speak up for you?" he added. "You don't seem like the kind of child who'd cry loudly to attract help from others."
Huo Zhenyan drew closer and pinched her chin with one hand. His downward gaze held a somewhat impersonal scrutiny. "Tell me—what is it you really want?"
Ji Jie felt the pressure. Her warm breath fell on his fingers, growing uneven.
He must have already sensed that Duan Baoni's personality was unfamiliar compared to before. Because the person he was staring at wasn't Duan Baoni—it was her, the imposter.
This was within expectations.
She had never planned to live her entire life fully pretending to be Duan Baoni. It was too exhausting. From here on out, this life was hers—she couldn't fake it forever.
If it came down to it, she'd just let people think she'd had a drastic change in temperament. No amount of investigation would turn up anything anyway.
Despite being mentally prepared, Ji Jie still lost her voice in front of him.
She couldn't be blamed for being timid. It was simply that the other party's aura was too strong—anyone would find it hard to lie calmly under that kind of stare.
For a moment, she even wanted to tell Huo Zhenyan directly about the back-mountain race.
Even if she didn't act, the private grudge between the two boys still existed. There might be others on that day too, sent by Zhu Yixun to tamper with things.
As the saying went, He Lingfeng didn't deserve such a fate.
But Huo Zhenyan might not believe her. Most importantly, she still hadn't gotten her five points.
If Huo Zhenyan stepped in directly and called off the race, she'd have nothing to farm.
In a flash, her thoughts spun through a hundred turns. She looked dazed, and after two seconds of blankness, her nose twitched slightly. "Smells so good. What are you eating?"
"…"
Huo Zhenyan let out a laugh, pretending not to notice she was disrupting the rhythm of the conversation. He released her and wiggled his fingers. "It's fish food."
Feeding fish in the middle of the night instead of sleeping—what kind of good person could he be?
Ji Jie seized the moment to regain her rhythm, stepping back and holding the kitchen knife in front of her. "You're right. I don't need anyone's help. At least not right now."
"He started it. Just think of it as me losing my mind, coming down here in the middle of the night to act crazy."
She said, "Anyway, you wouldn't be on my side."