The impact of the water was like hitting a brick wall. The Silver Creek was ice-cold, fed by underground mountain springs, and it was moving rapidly.
Chen Ying used the momentum, her body cutting through the white foam with powerful strokes. She was a strong swimmer, but the current was harsh, clawing at her limbs and trying to pull her under the dark, jagged rocks that lined the riverbed.
"Hold on!" Chen Ying commanded. Her voice was a sharp blade that sliced through the roar of the rushing water, reaching Wang Bai’s ears just as she was about to go under again.
They were being swept into the narrowest part of the channel, where the river compressed before the final plunge. A large log was wedged between two massive boulders, vibrating violently under the sheer pressure of the water. It was a temporary anchor in the chaos.
Chen Ying reached Wang Bai, grabbing the collar of her clothes with a grip of iron. With a surge of strength fueled by her System-enhanced physique and pure adrenaline, she heaved Wang Bai toward the log.
"Grab the branch!" Chen Ying yelled.
She managed to hook her own arm around a sturdy knot on the log, anchoring both of them. They were less than ten feet from the fall.
The spray from the falls was already blinding them, and the thunderous roar of the forty-foot drop was so loud it felt like a physical weight in their chests.
"Climb!" Chen Ying shouted, her muscles screaming as she held both their weights against the relentless pull of the river. "Get onto the log and crawl toward the bank! Move, Wang Bai! Now!"
Wang Bai was shaking violently, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely breathe. She looked at the yawning abyss of the falls just a few yards away, then at Chen Ying’s arm, which was the only thing standing between her and certain death.
In that moment of absolute terror, the "Luck System" in Wang Bai’s mind gave one final, desperate pulse. It wasn’t luck anymore—it was a survival instinct that had curdled into pure, unadulterated malice.
She realized three things in the span of a heartbeat:
If they both stayed on the log, it might dislodge under the extra weight. If she crawled up, she needed leverage to pull herself out of the water’s grip. If Chen Ying survived this, Wang Bai’s career was over anyway. After the Golden Ticket theft and the snake-bite lie, this "rescue" would make Chen Ying a saint and Wang Bai a pathetic villain.
But if Chen Ying "accidentally" slipped... the story would change. Wang Bai would be the tragic survivor who watched her "sister" sacrifice herself.
Wang Bai began to scramble up the side of the log. Her muddy boots kicked at Chen Ying’s chest and shoulders as she gained purchase on the wet wood. She reached the top of the log, panting, safe for the moment from the water’s reach.
She looked down at Chen Ying. Her "sister" was still half-submerged, her arm straining, her eyes looking up with a demand for a hand to pull her up to safety.
In the production room three miles away, Director Zhao stopped breathing. The head medic’s coffee cup shattered on the floor. The cameras were zoomed in with terrifying clarity on Wang Bai’s face.
The "Lotus" mask didn’t just crack; it fell away completely. Her eyes were dark, filled with a terrifying, cold calculation that chilled everyone watching through their screens.
She knew the drones were there, but in her mind, she could claim it was an accident. A slip. A moment of panic.
"I’m sorry, Chen Ying," Wang Bai whispered, her voice lost to the howling wind and the spray.
Instead of reaching out her hand to pull Chen Ying to safety, Wang Bai placed her heavy, mud-caked boot firmly against Chen Ying’s shoulder.
With a frantic, desperate grunt, Wang Bai ’pushed’.
The force of the kick broke Chen Ying’s grip on the branch. For a split second, Chen Ying’s eyes met Wang Bai’s. There was no fear in Chen Ying’s gaze—only a deep and silent contempt that seemed to promise a reckoning even from beyond the grave.
The current, having waited for its opening, seized Chen Ying instantly.
Zhou Yaya, watching from the bank, let out a scream of pure horror as Chen Ying’s figure was swept over the jagged edge and disappeared into the thundering white mist of the Maiden’s Falls.
Wang Bai collapsed onto the log, her face instantly morphing back into a mask of hysterical, sobbing grief.
"She fell!" Wang Bai wailed toward the drones, her voice a shrill, practiced lament. "She tried to save me and she slipped! Ying-jie! Oh, god, someone save her!"
But the screen in the production room went silent. The world of the internet, for the first time in history, went completely still for three seconds before the explosion began.
Chen Ying was gone. The Silver Creek continued to roar, indifferent to the murder that had just been broadcast to millions of people.
The digital world did not just react; it fractured. Within sixty seconds of Chen Ying disappearing, the live stream’s viewership jumped from sixty million to an unprecedented one hundred and twenty million.
But while the public was screaming for justice in the comments, a far more dangerous, suffocating silence was falling over the most powerful estates in the country.
In the ancestral manor of the Chen family, the air had turned to ice. Chen Shao stood in the center of his study. His hand, usually steady enough to sign billion-dollar treaties without a tremor, was white-knuckled as he clutched his phone.
On the massive wall-mounted screen in front of him, the footage played over and over in high-definition: the mud-caked boot, the deliberate shove, and his sister’s silent, contemptuous fall into the abyss.
"Find her," Chen Shao whispered. His voice was a low, vibrating growl. "I don’t care about the ’Safe Zone’ protocols. I don’t care about anything. Send the private rescue fleet. If she isn’t found in the next hour, I will buy that island and burn every tree on it until the dirt gives her back to me."
His secretary, a man who had seen Chen Shao destroy entire corporations without blinking, backed out of the room with ashen skin. He had never seen the ’Ice Dragon’ of the Chen family look so close to a total, violent break.
Across the city, in the sterile, high-tech headquarters of the Chen Group, the Chairman’s office was no longer a place of quiet business. Chen Heng, the patriarch who had dismissed his daughter as a "rebellious influencer" only hours prior, sat frozen.
The tablet on his desk showed the same footage. His breathing was shallow, his eyes fixed on the image of Chen Ying’s calm gaze as she fell. He remembered her at six years old, falling from a tree and refusing to cry. He remembered her at sixteen, looking at him with that same cold defiance when he told her she would never be more than a socialite.
"Chairman?" his secretary whispered at the door. "The board of directors is waiting for the acquisition meeting—"
"Cancel it," Chen Heng rasped, his voice sounding decades older. "Cancel everything. Call the maritime authorities. Tell them if they don’t provide every resource they have to that island, the Chen Group will pull every cent of investment from the coastal projects. Now! Go!"
He stood up, his legs shaking, and walked to the window. The vast city below him seemed insignificant. For the first time in his life, the man of iron realized that all his stock options couldn’t buy back a daughter he had let slip through his fingers.
On the island, the "Safe Zone" had been declared a national emergency site. The production crew was in a state of total collapse. Director Zhao was being held in a chair by two security guards, his face a ghostly white as he watched the first wave of heavy-duty helicopters crest the horizon.
These weren’t the production’s light scouting drones. These were military-grade Search and Rescue birds bearing the silver crest of the Chen Family’s private security firm.
Chen Jue was a man possessed. He had sprinted from the herbal mission site to the base of the falls, his bandaged arm trailing a bloody rag behind him. He didn’t care about the cameras. He didn’t care about his "idol" image or the fans watching his breakdown. He was screaming his sister’s name into the roar of the water, his voice cracking and raw.
"Yingying! Chen Ying! Answer me!" He tried to dive into the churning, foam-filled pool at the base of the falls, but Yang Zixuan and Wu Haoran held him back.
"Let go of me!" Chen Jue shrieked, fighting them with feral strength. "That’s my sister! She’s the only one who stayed! She’s the only one who’s real! Let me go!"
"Jue, wait for the divers!" Yang Zixuan shouted, his own eyes red and his jaw set in a hard line. "The current is too strong! You’ll just drown, and then who will she have when she comes out?"
An hour into the search, a sleek aircraft descended directly onto the beach, its blades kicking up a blinding sandstorm. A man stepped out before the stairs were even fully deployed. This was ’Chen Yan’, the second brother—a world-renowned trauma surgeon.
He didn’t look at the cameras. He walked straight to the edge of the river where the rescue teams were struggling. "Step aside," Chen Yan said, his voice a sharp command.
"Sir, the area is unsafe—" a local officer began.
Chen Yan didn’t even look at him. He adjusted specialized thermal scanning goggles on his head and began barking orders to the private divers who followed him. "Target is 170 centimeters. Check the underwater crevices behind the curtain of the falls. The air pockets are there. If she’s not there, check the downstream snags. Move!"
He looked at Chen Jue, who was trembling on the shore. Chen Yan didn’t offer a hug; he simply gripped his shoulder so tight it left a bruise. "We find her, Jue. We don’t stop."
While the Chen family moved mountains, a very different scene was unfolding in the medical tent of the Lowland camp.
Wang Bai was sitting on a cot, wrapped in a blanket. She was still shaking, but it wasn’t from the cold. It was from the dawning realization that her "accident" hadn’t been an accident in the eyes of the public. She had seen the way the crew looked at her—with a sickening horror.
With trembling fingers, she dialed a number she hadn’t called since the show began.
The call was picked up on the first ring. "Bai’er? What have you done?" her mother’s voice hissed, sharp and panicked. "The Chen family is suing for everything we own! They’ve frozen our accounts!"
"Mom, you have to help me!" Wang Bai sobbed, her voice low and frantic. "It was an accident! I slipped! You have to tell the media that Chen Ying was bullying me! Get the lawyers... get me out of here!"
"Bai’er, you don’t understand," her mother whispered, her voice hollow. "Chen Shao has blocked every exit from the island. Chen Yan is there in person. And Chen Heng... he called me. He told me that if Chen Ying doesn’t breathe again, our family will never be allowed to breathe in this country again."
Wang Bai’s heart plummeted. The luck had finally, completely run out. "Mom, please! I’m your daughter! Use the connections! Tell them the camera angle was deceptive! Just... fix it!"
"There is no fixing this, Bai’er," her mother said, sounding defeated.
Outside the tent, the sound of boots thudding against the dirt signaled the arrival of the police. Wang Bai looked at the tent flap, her eyes wide with a terror that no acting could ever replicate.
[System: Ding! Target Wang Bai’s ’Luck’ has reached -100. Status: ’Pariah.’]
[Current Balance: 2522 Points.]