After Her Death, They Begged for Forgiveness - Chapter 50.2

Xu Bingqi swiped her finger, browsing through the other posts the cat had published.

The earliest post was titled, “Is wearing something light in front of your crush a big deal?”

Xu Bingqi glanced at the posting date and then curled her lips into a smile, almost laughing in disbelief.

Was Song Guanjin wearing something light? She was wearing nothing at all!

After her amusement subsided, Xu Bingqi’s thoughts took a sudden turn, and a ripple of emotion stirred in her heart. So, had she been the object of Song Guanjin’s secret crush even back then?

Or perhaps the cat had developed feelings for her even earlier?

She continued scrolling down to check the comments section of Song Guanjin’s alternate account and, again unsurprisingly, found that the netizens had offered all sorts of outrageous suggestions.

And Song Guanjin had picked the most outrageous one to act on.

Xu Bingqi clearly remembered how, the very next day, Song Guanjin had called her in under the pretense of being scared from a nightmare. Then, she had been forced to witness Song Guanjin’s body enveloped in steam.

The cat demon had even proudly strutted toward her step by step, her straight and smooth calves dominating Xu Bingqi’s entire field of vision. The entire bathroom was filled with an ambiguous, hazy atmosphere.

She had always thought Song Guanjin was too naive, but it turned out that someone else was the naive one.

She had assumed the cat demon didn’t understand the meaning of dual cultivation, but in reality, the cat demon knew all too well what it entailed.

Song Guanjin had posted five or six scattered posts in total. Xu Bingqi browsed from the first post all the way to the latest one, feeling as though her mind had turned into a tangled mess.

The cat demon’s actions were sincere and clumsy, and it seemed she couldn’t bring herself to be angry at this version of Song Guanjin.

Because Song Guanjin had deliberately concealed too much information and detail, her posts were often abstract and very simple in content. Yet, she and her “strategist” fans managed to analyze them harmoniously, with each post garnering thousands of comments and suggestions.

And to think Xu Bingqi had stumbled upon them she even started feeling secondhand embarrassment for Song Guanjin.

She also switched to her alternate account and replied under Song Guanjin’s latest post: “Aren’t you afraid your crush will stumble upon this?”

After posting the comment, Xu Bingqi glanced in Song Guanjin’s direction again. The faint glow from her phone flickered a few times before completely extinguishing.

The cat’s courage was far smaller than she had imagined.

Having successfully teased the cat, Xu Bingqi decided to stop while she was ahead. She turned off her phone and slowly walked to the bedside. It was already past midnight, and drowsiness gradually replaced the excitement she had felt upon discovering the cat demon’s secret.

“Sister.”

Xu Bingqi heard Song Guanjin’s soft call.

“What is it?”

Feeling a bit guilty after teasing the cat, Xu Bingqi also lowered her voice.

All she could hear was Song Guanjin’s slightly hurried breathing. After a long pause, she heard Song Guanjin whisper, “Sister, I’m scared.”

Song Guanjin’s heart skipped a beat when she saw the latest comment. Clinging to a sliver of hope, she clicked into the commenter’s profile, only to find a blank page, an alternate account with no information.

Most importantly, the IP address was the same.

Could it be her sister?

Would her sister be angry if she found out?

“Don’t be afraid.” Xu Bingqi felt a pang of guilt. She shouldn’t have teased the cat so late. “It’s nothing. Go to sleep now.”

“Sister, are you still seriously considering what you promised before?” Song Guanjin poked her head out from under the covers, and Xu Bingqi could faintly see Song Guanjin’s emerald-green eyes.

“It’s about giving me an answer on New Year’s Eve.”

“I will. Don’t overthink it, just go to sleep.”

Xu Bingqi felt a pang of regret, she should have teased the cat tomorrow after the filming was over. She gently patted Song Guanjin’s blanket and said, “Go to sleep.”

“Sister, can I turn into a pomegranate to rest?”

Song Guanjin, curled up in the blanket, hesitated before asking.

“Sure.”

Feeling a bit guilty after teasing the cat, Xu Bingqi thought for a moment and agreed.

Song Guanjin set the alarm to vibrate, and her slender fingertips gradually transformed into rounded paw pads.

After turning back into a cat, Song Guanjin felt much more at ease and slowly closed her eyes.

In the darkness, all was silent except for Jiang Ruo’s increasingly rapid breathing.

“Why? Why isn’t that Song Guanjin dead yet?”

Jiang Ruo’s eyes were bloodshot, almost as if they were about to drip blood.

[Host, the notification window has sent a message your point exchange has failed.]

Jiang Ruo stared intently at the system panel, as if she wanted to tear the system to pieces. “I saw it! You don’t need to remind me!”

As if possessed, she repeatedly pulled up the novel Favoritism: The Beloved Darling and searched for the keyword “Song Guanjin.”

[Host, Song Guanjin is indeed not a character in the novel.]

The system was not afraid of Jiang Ruo’s near-maddened state; it simply felt that her actions at this point were meaningless.

The Jiang Ruo of the past would not repeat pointless behaviors.

The system halted the program simulating Jiang Ruo’s actions, it had already discovered flaws in her behavior.

As Jiang Ruo grew increasingly deranged, her meaningless actions multiplied, and the likelihood of judgment errors rose significantly.

This was the perfect opportunity to exploit Jiang Ruo’s loss of control and restore the connection with the main system.

“Then why did the exchange fail?” Jiang Ruo swept all the clutter off the desk, scattering documents across the floor. “Can’t you figure out the reason?”

[The cause of the point exchange failure cannot be analyzed at this time.]

The system cautiously probed, [If the host can re-establish the connection with the main world, perhaps the main system could analyze the reason for the exchange failure.]

Jiang Ruo took a deep breath and slowly slumped into her chair.

“Don’t even think about scheming against me!” Jiang Ruo sneered. “Even if the point exchange failed, I can still find other ways to get rid of her!”

Though Jiang Ruo was gradually descending into madness, her rationality remained. The system realized its judgment error and had to readjust its parameters for simulation.

Jiang Ruo pressed her fingers against her temples, struggling to regain her composure. “She’s an actress too. It wouldn’t be unusual for an accident to happen on set, right?”

“No matter the method, as long as she dies, Sister will accept me.”

Jiang Ruo’s lips trembled uncontrollably as she muttered to herself, her words filled with obsession. “I’ve given so much Sister is bound to like me.”

As soon as she finished speaking, the tears that had welled up in her eyes spilled over uncontrollably. Large teardrops rolled down her cheeks, soaking into her sleeves and leaving damp stains.

“If only I hadn’t been so fixated on completing the task perfectly last time,” Jiang Ruo thought.

Before her sister’s rebirth, she endured the cold indifference of all her relatives and friends except herself. At that time, her sister was most grateful to her. If she had been able to give Xiao Hua’s body to her sister earlier, her sister would have been immensely thankful.

They would have lived happily together.

In that case, that Song Guanjin would never have appeared, and no one could have disrupted her and her sister’s life.

[Host, you should never have chosen this world from the start. There were clearly other worlds more suitable for carrying out the transmigration mission.]

[In fact, you know very well, even without Song Guanjin, Xu Bingqi would never have fallen in love with you.]

Jiang Ruo stood up and overturned the entire table: “Impossible! As long as Song Guanjin isn’t here, I am the only one who treats my sister well!”

[Host, the assumption itself is invalid. Gu Xiaozhou and Xu Qingci have gradually come to their senses. Has Xu Bingqi forgiven them?]

Amid the chaos of the room, Jiang Ruo collapsed onto the floor, wiping the tears from her face haphazardly with her sleeve, her eyes hollow and vacant.

She felt she had taken too many wrong steps, yet she couldn’t even pinpoint where she had first strayed from the right path.

“When I used points to reset the mission time, everyone’s memories reverted to their initial values. So why does Xu Bingqi still remember what happened before?”

After a long while, Jiang Ruo finally sorted out her thoughts.

The source of all the mistakes lay in Xu Bingqi retaining memories she shouldn’t have. She remembered why she died and inexplicably knew she was in a fictional world.

If Xu Bingqi hadn’t retained those memories, she would still be the isolated and despised person with no means to save herself. She wouldn’t have met Song Guanjin, and perhaps with just a little coaxing, Xu Bingqi would have fallen in love with her.

Jiang Ruo had been confident that even if Xu Bingqi regained her memories, she had ways to make her fall in love again.

She had never taken those insignificant memories seriously and hadn’t anticipated that they would create so many variables beyond her original expectations.

“Why does she remember what happened before? Clearly, no one else remembers Xu Qingci, Gu Xiaozhou, none of them remember!” Jiang Ruo clenched her fingers tightly. “But my sister still remembers. She remembers why she died, which is why she went straight for a checkup after her rebirth.”

The system also noticed this loophole: [Logically, this situation shouldn’t occur.]

[You are not the first host to use points to reset a mission, but this kind of anomaly has never happened before.]

“Yes,” Jiang Ruo murmured. “There have never been anomalies before.”

[Host, an anomaly report has been generated. If we report it to the main system, perhaps the main system can analyze the cause of the anomaly.]

Jiang Ruo shook her head but didn’t sharply refute the system as she had last time.

With her own abilities, it was indeed difficult to figure out why her sister still had those extra memories.

Slumping into her chair, Jiang Ruo watched as the surrounding chaos was gradually illuminated by the morning light. Finally, she said helplessly, “Fine, report this to the main system.”

“But remember, after reporting this, I will immediately sever the connection with the main system again. So don’t even think about reporting anything else.”

Her phone vibrated. Jiang Ruo irritably turned off the alarm. It was time to carefully consider what “accidents” could happen at Song Guanjin’s filming set.

At the same time, Song Guanjin heard her phone vibrating.

She extended her paw pad and swiftly swiped the screen to turn off the alarm.

Her sister had also gone to bed very late, she couldn’t risk waking her.

The cat transformed back into human form and, holding her breath under the covers, dressed with such slow and deliberate movements that they seemed almost frozen, doing her utmost not to disturb her softly breathing sister.

However, Xu Bingqi was a light sleeper. Even though the cat moved carefully, the rustling of fabric still startled her awake. Her eyelids fluttered slightly, as if she might open her eyes at any moment.

Xu Bingqi was still caught in the hazy state between sleep and wakefulness, her mind not yet fully alert. Eventually, she managed to open her eyes just a slit, revealing a dazed gaze.

“Sorry, sis, sleep a little longer.”

Song Guanjin nuzzled her sister’s cheek, but Xu Bingqi, still half-asleep, let out a vague, indistinct sound something between a response and an unconscious murmur.

“Sis, what are you saying?”

Song Guanjin leaned in close, trying to make out what her sister was saying.

“Keep it up.”

Xu Bingqi’s slowly opened eyes gradually closed again. In her half-awake state, she kissed the cat’s cheek and murmured, “And this, returning it to you.”

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