After the Black Moonlight’s "Death Escape" Failed [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 75

Chapter 75: Future

◎Are you still inside my body?◎

“Who are you?!” Awakened by the moisture in her eyes, Wen Fengyue asked sharply.

Her cold, hard tone clashed significantly with her soft, adorable voice, giving Jiao Qingyin the sensation that she was bullying a child. If she hadn’t just been holding this child’s head underwater a moment ago, Jiao Qingyin might have quite liked this decisive and cute protagonist.

“You left fingerprints, and the glitter from your dress rubbed off on that person—if you don’t want to get into trouble, you’d better not continue,” Jiao Qingyin said.

At the start of this transmigration, her mental state wasn’t great, making her voice sound quite cold.

“You’re in my head?” Wen Fengyue immediately sensed something was wrong.

Jiao Qingyin didn’t respond. She controlled Wen Fengyue’s body, dragged the girl out of the water, and began performing chest compressions with standard CPR movements. While doing this, Jiao Qingyin suffered from a continuous headache as information about this world flooded into her mind.

This world was a derivative of a rebirth-revenge novel.

Wen Fengyue, the protagonist of this world and the rightful heir to the Wen Group, should have had a life much smoother than most—until her mother died in an accident. Her nightmare began then. Before the seven-day mourning period for her mother had even passed, a haughty woman walked into the Wen manor with a girl six months older than her. Overnight, she went from the young miss of the Wen family to an orphan whom even the nannies could spit on.

The girl who became her “elder sister” was named Wen Ziyuan. Wen Ziyuan loathed Wen Fengyue; from the day they met, she began finding ways to make her life miserable. From overt shoving to covert bullying, Wen Fengyue soon reached her breaking point. The stepmother turned a blind eye to Wen Ziyuan’s behavior, and the servants all stood on her side, so Wen Fengyue could only turn to her father, who rarely came home.

She reported the actions of her stepmother and sister to her father, but all she received was blame and the question: “Why don’t you look for the reason within yourself?” After discovering she had snitched, Wen Ziyuan cornered her that night. When Wen Fengyue was pinned to the ground by several servants who used to call her “Eldest Young Miss” and try to please her, while Wen Ziyuan slapped her repeatedly, she saw the man she called “father” standing on the balcony watching them. There was no worry or anger in his eyes, only deep disgust.

Wen Fengyue lived this kind of life until the day before the National College Entrance Examination. On that day, she was cornered on the school rooftop by Wen Ziyuan and a group of people. They told her to jump. Wen Fengyue jumped—and took Wen Ziyuan down with her.

Then, she was reborn on the day Wen Ziyuan was first brought back to the Wen family.

The identity Jiao Qingyin was supposed to play was Wen Ziyuan. The Space-Time Administration was supposed to drop her into Wen Fengyue’s first life, but due to unknown reasons, they messed up the timeline. This caused huge problems for Jiao Qingyin’s mission: first, she was now a ghost; second, she had the script for Wen Fengyue’s previous life, meaning the plot she knew had already happened.

Seeing Wen Ziyuan cough up several mouthfuls of water as her health bar slowly rose, Jiao Qingyin stopped her movements. The other was alive, but Jiao Qingyin was still in a ghost state; it seemed she couldn’t take over “Wen Ziyuan’s” identity.

Observing this, Wen Fengyue, trapped in her own body and unable to move, experienced a massive surge of emotion. Before dying in her last life, she didn’t hate anyone the most—she hated herself. She didn’t understand why she hadn’t resisted the humiliation, or why she had so easily accepted a life arranged by others. She loathed her cowardly and incompetent self.

So after her rebirth, when Wen Ziyuan tried to lure her to the back garden to drown her just like in the last life, Wen Fengyue took action first. Aside from throwing Wen Ziyuan off the building before jumping in her previous life, this was her first time using violence. But her hands didn’t shake, and her gaze didn’t waver, as if she were a natural executioner.

She thought her rebirth was a second chance from fate, but the existence that suddenly appeared in her head and easily controlled her body made Wen Fengyue realize that perhaps she was still the abandoned one. No one had ever stood on her side; fate seemed to enjoy playing jokes on her.

“I am on your side.”

The cold but pleasant voice rang in her head. Wen Fengyue bit her lip, saying nothing. She had lived in a world of deception for too long and would no longer trust anyone.

Jiao Qingyin didn’t want to explain much more. Every detail of Wen Fengyue’s previous life was crammed into her brain within these few minutes; the stinging pain made her, even as a ghost, tremble.

She got straight to business: “Someone will come looking for us soon. If you don’t want to be found out, you’d better soak in the pool for a while.”

“…Us?”

Wen Fengyue’s tone was strange, but Jiao Qingyin didn’t have the energy to parse it. She was about to return the body and rest, but then she remembered—Wen Fengyue couldn’t swim. In her last life, she had been pushed into the school swimming pool and nearly drowned.

Thinking of this, Jiao Qingyin endured the pain and crawled back into the pool.

“What are you doing!” Wen Fengyue shouted in her head.

Jiao Qingyin made no sound and sank directly into the water with her. The girl’s silver-white hair spread out in the water like scattered snow, or a galaxy flowing with starlight. Wen Fengyue felt a few seconds of suffocation, but she soon realized it was an illusion. She was in her own body but had no physical sensation—all the dizziness from holding her breath was being borne by the person occupying her body.

Wen Fengyue dazed for a moment; this was the first time she had stayed underwater so calmly—without fear, without pain, without despair. She suddenly realized that the pool water was actually quite clean, and the garden lights created shimmering ripples on the surface. Wen Fengyue was lost in this beautiful sight for a moment, then thought of another question: the person could actually keep her eyes open underwater; didn’t it hurt?

Suddenly, through the other’s perspective, Wen Fengyue saw several figures approaching rapidly and heard them shouting “Over here.” It was the family servants! Wen Fengyue immediately recognized them. She instinctively wanted to warn Jiao Qingyin, but found the other had suddenly opened her mouth.

Glug, glug.

The ice-cold pool water poured into her nose and mouth. Jiao Qingyin revisited the pain she had just experienced. She tensed her limbs and flailed about, perfectly acting out the part of a drowning person. A servant spotted her; today was the first day Wen Ziyuan and her mother arrived, and the servants’ attitude toward Wen Fengyue hadn’t changed yet, so they were terrified and ran over to fish her out.

“Eldest Young Miss! Eldest Young Miss! Are you alright?!”

Jiao Qingyin’s face was pale. After being pulled out, she moved twice and then fainted, looking as if her life was in the balance.

“Eldest Young Miss!!!”

Wen Fengyue grew anxious. This person had used her body without permission, and she hadn’t even settled the score yet; how could she—

“The rest is up to you.” The familiar voice rang out. Wen Fengyue stiffened, her cry nearly escaping her lips before she forced it back. Next, she felt her strength return. The feeling of her body being cold and her nose stinging made her realize she had regained control of her body.

Wen Fengyue should have checked her condition immediately, but she chose to call Jiao Qingyin first: “You haven’t told me what kind of thing you are!”

Wen Fengyue wasn’t stupid. When Jiao Qingyin entered the water for her, she understood the person wasn’t her enemy—at least not right now. It was necessary to figure out her purpose. After all, she had to be wary of an existence that could control her body at any time.

Hearing no response, Wen Fengyue’s heart tightened, and she called out a few more times. Jiao Qingyin ignored the ill-tempered child. Hovering in the air was tiring, but possessing someone didn’t consume her stamina. Since Wen Fengyue couldn’t see her ghost form and couldn’t tell if she was inside her body, she felt no guilt in using her as a temporary transport, huddling still. Her head hurt too much; she desperately needed quiet rest.

Three hours later, Jiao Qingyin had completely digested the information about this world. She opened her eyes within Wen Fengyue’s body, found her vision restricted, and floated out.

After floating up a bit, Jiao Qingyin looked down to see Wen Fengyue lying on the bed, hands on her chest, staring motionless at the bed canopy. Right now, Jiao Qingyin was positioned between Wen Fengyue and the canopy, so the child seemed to be staring directly into her eyes.

Jiao Qingyin silently drifted a bit to the side. Honestly, the way the other’s gaze was fixed right now was a bit creepy.

Jiao Qingyin turned her gaze to observe the room. Using the script, she immediately recognized it as Wen Fengyue’s bedroom from birth until age seven. The Wen manor was a small estate in Western style, with vintage and exquisite décor, and Wen Fengyue’s bedroom was no exception. A princess bed large enough for four adults, cute plushies filling the headboard, carved shelves full of books and ornaments…

Jiao Qingyin looked on with curiosity. She had never seen such a beautiful room—her treatment at the base was top-tier, but she lived in a model room with concrete finishes. She had only seen such lavish and cute decorations and furniture in video archives. Taking advantage of the fact that no one could see her, she floated around the room and finally stopped in front of a very soft-looking large cushion.

No, calling it a cushion was an understatement; it was huge… Jiao Qingyin instinctively propped up her chin, observing the giant “mochi” with an extremely serious and upright expression. This size made one really want to sit on it and try it out…

Jiao Qingyin ultimately restrained herself and floated back to Wen Fengyue’s side to gauge her condition. Her face was pale, her eyes and nose were red, but her hair was dry and there were no external injuries. The fact that she could lie peacefully in her room meant everything had gone smoothly—Wen Fengyue hadn’t been suspected of causing Wen Ziyuan’s drowning.

Jiao Qingyin relaxed slightly, and the system spoke up at the right time: “Host, a message from headquarters. They say the transmigration timeline was wrong, so the previous main missions are void. You only need to complete the final goal: help the protagonist (Wen Fengyue) complete her revenge to receive points.”

Jiao Qingyin gave a soft “Hm.” After a few seconds of thought, she asked: “How is the target of ‘revenge’ defined? For instance, do I only need to handle the people she hates the most, or everyone she hates? If she gets new enemies in this life while halfway through avenging her past life, do we deal with them together?”

The system hadn’t thought that far ahead. Hearing Jiao Qingyin’s analysis, it realized this was indeed a serious loophole. If Wen Fengyue kept getting new enemies, wouldn’t the host have to stay with her forever for revenge? How long would they stay in this world then… wait?

The system silently stopped its attempt to contact headquarters. Its basic instinct as a CP fan allowed it to accurately capture what this loophole represented. Such a great loophole had to be utilized properly…!

Before the system could be happy for long, Jiao Qingyin suddenly asked: “System, are my memories complete?”

The moment Jiao Qingyin asked this, the system let out a burst of static—how did the host discover this? Only a few hours had passed since she transmigrated…! But due to the confidentiality agreement, the system couldn’t give Jiao Qingyin any hints. Even if she deduced the truth, it couldn’t confirm the answer.

So, after a few seconds of lag, the system said: “…Of course they are complete.”

“Complete?” Jiao Qingyin hovered beside Wen Fengyue, her transparent face showing no emotion. “What is the number of this world?”

The system answered quickly this time: “S0521.”

But after giving the answer, it suddenly recalled the past when it first met the host. Jiao Qingyin had been brought to the Administration covered in blood, scaring everyone upon her arrival. She was covered in wounds with a cold, terrifying expression; instead of a protagonist destined to save the world, she looked more like an evil spirit crawling out of hell. The system had watched from the side, trembling.

When the system saw Jiao Qingyin again, it was when it was assigned to her and about to set out on a mission. Though Jiao Qingyin was cold then, her expression and gaze carried a power that made people instinctively want to believe in her. Every new host had a one-year adaptation period before starting missions; most would use this stage to adjust, join group activities, and socialize. But Jiao Qingyin was different. She spent the entire year alone in the Administration’s think tank, reading all available materials, so that when she went on her first mission, she performed more expertly than hosts with over ten mission experiences.

During their cooperation, the system found Jiao Qingyin to be kind and gentle, but also cold and ruthless enough. She was knowledgeable and rich in theory, not needing to rely on the system or the points mall. She could solve any problem on her own, for example—

“A number starting with S? A newcomer’s first world should be D or E rank, right?”

The system went completely silent, terrified of slipping up and being recalled to headquarters. But then it heard Jiao Qingyin chuckle softly. “Oh, I see.”

S-see what?

The system waited nervously for Jiao Qingyin to continue, but a long time passed and she didn’t say another word. The system was left alone in anxiety, wondering just how much the host had guessed. It wanted her to remember everything soon, but it didn’t want her to learn the truth from it.

At that moment, the wall clock struck the hour. A mechanical bird popped out and made a “cuckoo” sound. Hearing the bell, Wen Fengyue, who had been lying lifelessly like a doll, moved. She rolled out of bed, sat at her small vanity, hesitated for a long time before the mirror, and spoke slowly: “Are you still there?”

Wen Fengyue’s voice was a bit raspy—a lingering effect of the water—but it didn’t detract from the cuteness of her slightly childish voice. Being looked at by those beautiful, clear large eyes, it was hard for anyone to say “no.”

Jiao Qingyin hovered behind her, using the mirror to observe this person who looked like a child but was actually a high schooler. Wen Fengyue’s hair and eye color were inherited from her mixed-race mother, but unlike her mother’s light blonde hair, her hair was pure silver-white. In the sunlight, it gave off a shimmering feeling.

A photo of her and her mother stood before the mirror. It was originally a photo of three people, but the left part had been cut off—Jiao Qingyin had seen the scraps in the trash can while admiring the room. Jiao Qingyin thought that if it were her, she wouldn’t have cut the man’s photo; she would have put it in the most prominent place. Before she had the power to take revenge and pull out the roots, she wouldn’t leave any flaws for others to point at. But she could understand Wen Fengyue’s behavior; having such a father remain in a photo with her mother felt like bad luck.

“Are you still there?” Wen Fengyue asked again, her voice trembling slightly, seemingly with expectation, yet also with anger or disgust.

Jiao Qingyin couldn’t help but be curious about how the other viewed her as an uninvited guest. So she drifted down a bit and, before Wen Fengyue could stand up, spoke softly against her ear: “I am.”

“!” Wen Fengyue turned around quickly. However, there was nothing behind her except the beanbag chair. She quickly whipped her head back, staring intensely at the mirror, and asked: “Is it you?”

Doesn’t look like she hates me, Jiao Qingyin thought. She stopped teasing the child, went back into her body, and chose to speak in her head: “Need something?”

Wen Fengyue’s eyes suddenly lit up. She felt happy, but she didn’t understand why. The other was clearly a mysterious and dangerous person; even if she felt something for her, it should be wariness or hatred. Her rationality was constantly analyzing pros and cons, but her emotions dictated her actions—”What is your name?”

This was the most suitable opening question she had thought of while dazing on the bed. If she asked “what” the other was, she likely wouldn’t get an answer. It was better to get a name first and infer the identity based on performance. And… she already had a slight guess.

Jiao Qingyin was quiet for a moment, then said: “My surname is Jiao.” She didn’t want to tell a mission target in a small world her real name.

“Your surname is Jiao?” Wen Fengyue was visibly stunned.

“What of it?” Jiao Qingyin raised an eyebrow, not knowing why that would be strange.

“I thought…” You would be surnamed Wen.

Wen Fengyue didn’t say the rest, because she suddenly realized that if the other’s identity was as she deduced, changing the surname was actually quite normal. After all, she didn’t like the surname much herself. If her mother hadn’t also been surnamed “Wen,” she would have changed it long ago.

Wen Fengyue wanted to ask more, but before she could speak, she was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door.

Knock, knock, knock. “Eldest Young Miss, are you in there?”

Wen Fengyue frowned slightly. This expression would look serious on an adult, but on a child who had to step on a stool to brush her teeth… Jiao Qingyin couldn’t help herself; she floated up and pinched her cheek. Her fingers passed through Wen Fengyue’s skin, hitting nothing, and Wen Fengyue didn’t notice.

Jiao Qingyin was dazed; the movement was purely instinctive, and after doing it, even she found it unbelievable. She wasn’t a person who liked children, and her love for “cute things” was limited to pre-mutation cats and dogs. Wen Fengyue was the first child she found “cute.”

After identifying who was at the door, Wen Fengyue’s expression turned dark. She sat up straighter and flipped the photo on the vanity facedown. Jiao Qingyin also recalled the identity of the person at the door—one of the Wen family nannies, called Aunt Zhang, who was uneducated but very good at being a sycophant.

In the last life, Aunt Zhang was one of Wen Ziyuan’s favorite lackeys. Using her status as a nanny, she often withheld Wen Fengyue’s meals. When Wen Fengyue refused to eat spoiled food, Aunt Zhang would verbally abuse her or even get into a physical scuffle. With the silent permission of Wen’s father and stepmother, the blue and purple bruises on Wen Fengyue’s arms never faded during Aunt Zhang’s tenure. Because of her, Wen Fengyue never wore short sleeves between the ages of seven and ten.

Before Wen Fengyue let the person in, Jiao Qingyin looked at her terrifying expression and said: “You want to kill her?”

Most of the malice in Wen Fengyue’s heart was dispersed by Jiao Qingyin’s words. Her lips moved slightly, and finally, she nodded. Not just the person at the door; there were many she wanted to kill.

The impolite knocking sounded again. Aunt Zhang shouted a few more times, her loud, piercing voice making eardrums ache. Wen Fengyue turned sideways to look at herself in the mirror, saying as if to herself: “Are you going to stop me?”

If the other didn’t accept her desire for revenge and wanted her to be a “good person,” she would rather die again than keep this person in her head. She imagined the persuasion she might hear, but what Jiao Qingyin said was: “No, I support your revenge.”

Wen Fengyue’s shoulders relaxed slightly, but then she heard the other continue: “However…”

At this time, Aunt Zhang couldn’t wait and crudely twisted the doorknob. The click-clack sound was like a death toll.

“However, you must be methodical. If you drown your enemy with your bare hands, even if she dies, you won’t be able to live well… You have to consider the future beforehand.”

“Future?” Wen Fengyue repeated the word. Suddenly, her lips twitched neurotically. “Can a person like me still have a future?”

Jiao Qingyin gazed at the neatly dressed, smooth-haired, beautiful, and innocent little girl before her, but in her mind appeared the image of what she would become in the near future in the previous life. Just the change in her hair was so great she seemed like a different person—a month later, she would have thick bangs, messy ends, and cigarette burn marks.

Jiao Qingyin let out a soft breath, drifted to Wen Fengyue’s side, and pressed her transparent palm against her head, lightly rubbing it. She whispered: “Yes.”

She said it very seriously, like a promise.