Did I Succeed in Redeeming the Villain Today? - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: As a System, You Should Fulfill the Host’s Every…

The wind rose suddenly, as if desperate to escape the world inside the door, surging toward the exit in a frantic rush.

The sky was pressed low by black, heavy clouds. Amidst the gloom, a golden fissure cracked open in the center of the sky, and with a thunderous roar, a bolt of lightning struck.

Inside and outside the door were two completely different worlds. The howling gale was so strong that the line of text in Lu Ning’s vision wavered unsteadily.

She was utterly unprepared for such dire conditions. The wind slammed against her scalp, threatening to knock her flat on the ground.

Fortunately, Lu Ning reacted quickly. She instinctively reached out and hugged a nearby door pillar, preventing herself from being swept away.

Wait.

Hands?

The moment Lu Ning realized her movement, she immediately looked down.

Heaven knows what kind of miserable place this was; the scene before Lu Ning was covered in messy, sodden mud.

Weeds grew in profusion and withered branches lay everywhere, but the most striking sight was the pair of legs stuck in the mire.

It was impossible for Lu Ning not to recognize her own legs. She was stunned.

She let go of the tree she was hugging, and the next thing to enter her view was a pair of hands—moving hands.

This was her body.

The body from her original world!

In Mu Qiuyu’s inner world, she was a human!

Lu Ning was ecstatic, completely forgetting the wind howling around her.

She happily rubbed her own face, immensely missing her human self: “It’s so good to be human! I want to live in Mu Qiuyu’s inner world forever!”

Holding onto that joy, Lu Ning pulled her feet out of the mud.

Her thin clothes clung to her tall, slender frame, fluttering in the occasional gusts to reveal long legs with elegant muscular lines—lean yet powerful, making her look like the sole survivor on a deserted island.

But Survivor Lu Ning’s journey was exceptionally difficult. The storm from when she opened the door had turned the entire world into a muddy mess.

Lu Ning exhausted a great deal of effort to reach a relatively dry patch of ground. She looked at her mud-stained feet and then at her surroundings. Once the door was closed, the wind died down. The dark clouds hung silently in the sky, with no further trace of lightning.

Boundless darkness painted the distance black. The world seemed to consist only of the small patch beneath Lu Ning’s feet—decayed and withered.

“But… why is this inner world in such a terrible state?”

As a teacher, Lu Ning rarely used such negative evaluations.

Even with her worst-performing students, she could always scrape together one or two merits.

But looking at Mu Qiuyu’s inner world right now, Lu Ning couldn’t find a single positive thing to say.

Her expression grew complex as she recalled the Mu Qiuyu she saw on campus this morning.

Gloomy, lonely.

“That is exactly why you are needed.”

Suddenly, a woman’s voice rang out in the air.

The voice was as gentle as a breeze, brushing past Lu Ning’s cheek.

Lu Ning realized something instantly and snapped her head around to look.

But the surroundings remained empty; there was no sign of any living being. The darkness along the edges of her vision sealed off the paths into the woods, making it impossible to tell if a person or creature might suddenly step out.

Before Lu Ning could walk over to investigate, the woman’s voice spoke again: “I do not exist in this world.”

Hearing this, Lu Ning stopped in her tracks.

Her mind raced. She addressed the invisible lady with certain yet cautious tone: “You are the Main System, aren’t you?”

“As expected of the human chosen by the system.” The Main System sounded pleased with Lu Ning’s question. “Yes, I am the Main System.”

“Chosen?”

Lu Ning keenly caught the keyword. her gaze turned complicated.

She had thought becoming a system was some sort of blunder, but it turned out it was intentional.

“You really want me to be Mu Qiuyu’s system? No, wait, I can’t do it!” Lu Ning waved her hands repeatedly.

The Main System, however, thought otherwise, helping Lu Ning recall: “But you were clearly the one who said you would never betray Mu Qiuyu, that you would be her strongest support, and that you would give her the best possible future.”

“The system received your powerful wish and responded to you.”

Lu Ning was speechless: I am never, ever talking nonsense after drinking again.

Sensing Lu Ning’s resistance, the Main System added: “Furthermore, the reason you have come to this world is that while the system detected your strong wish, it also found that you had already reached physiological death in your original world.”

The Main System’s voice was calm and gentle, like a warm spring breeze, but the content of the announcement was chillingly cold.

When the word “death” appeared in this chaotic, crumbling environment, it felt particularly eerie and fitting.

It seemed her memory wasn’t wrong.

She really was dead.

Lu Ning fell silent for a moment. She had read many “transmigration” novels and understood the tropes: “So, if I act as Mu Qiuyu’s system and the mission succeeds, I can return to my world alive?”

“That is correct.” The Main System nodded.

“Fine.”

Lu Ning reluctantly accepted it. After all, she had no choice.

Looking on the bright side, at least the plot development finally resembled those novels she used to read.

Having accepted her status as a system, Lu Ning recalled the information she had seen and asked: “I just need to help Mu Qiuyu achieve a happy ending, right? What is the criteria for a ‘happy ending’?”

“Save Mu Qiuyu and reshape her inner world,” the Main System answered.

Lu Ning understood the first part—it basically meant preventing her from experiencing the terrible events of the original novel and falling into a state of blackened madness.

But the latter part…

“What do you mean by ‘reshaping the inner world’?” Lu Ning asked, puzzled.

“As you can see, Mu Qiuyu’s current inner world is in a wretched state,” the Main System explained. “The inner world is a microcosm of the host’s psychological state. As her system, you will reside here, look after this world, and turn it into a place teeming with life.”

As the words fell, a gust of wind seemed to blow.

The Main System did not exist physically in this world, but it felt as if a hand were guiding Lu Ning to look at her environment.

The dark clouds on the horizon scattered slightly. Cold moonlight brushed against the edges of the clouds, blanketing the ground.

Gnarled, withered trees were stabbed into the muddy soil, with a few dry, yellowed leaves hanging from the twisted, fragile branches.

Lu Ning looked up; even the moon in the sky was broken.

The crescent of the half-moon looked like the sneering profile of a witch from an ancient fairy tale, staring straight at her, making her skin crawl.

Lu Ning couldn’t imagine what kind of experiences would lead to such a psychological state.

And she was expected to live in such a place and transform it into a vibrant world.

Lu Ning stared at the moon, her throat tightening.

No way… I was just joking earlier.

You’re really making me live here?

“Teacher Lu, you are an outstanding teacher and a ‘hardworking gardener.’ You can certainly do this,” the Main System said in a voice full of expectation and trust.

Hearing such encouraging words, the hesitation in Lu Ning’s eyes slowly began to change.

She seemed to suddenly understand why the Main System wanted her for this job. Looking at the ruins before her, she let out a faint, dry chuckle.

It turns out that when a person is pushed to the brink of despair, they really do laugh: “Lord Main System… is there any possibility that ‘gardener’ is just a metaphor? A respectful title for a teacher? You can’t actually expect me to come here and perform literal reforestation!”

This time, it was the Main System’s turn to be silent.

It seemed to undergo a massive calculation before changing the subject: “But as a teacher, you have the duty to educate students and lead them toward goodness. We believe you can definitely influence Mu Qiuyu and transform her inner world.”

“I find a passage you wrote in your undergraduate thesis quite correct: ‘I personally believe that educating people is much like planting trees. As the saying goes, it takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to cultivate a person…'”

“Stop!” Lu Ning hurriedly raised her hand to prevent the Main System from reading further.

Was there anything more shameful than having someone read your word-count-padding graduation thesis back to you?

Lu Ning had a thousand arguments ready for the Main System, but she was so stifled by her own old writing that she forgot what she wanted to say.

While Lu Ning was cringing hard enough to dig a hole with her toes, a burst of static suddenly echoed in her ears.

The Main System’s voice became unstable. The previous gentleness turned into a hurried static: “Apologies… my presence here is limited by bzzzzt time. I will keep the rest short… please take it to heart.”

“The missions for the Happy Ending Project… will be released sequentially… you bzzzzt must guide Mu Qiuyu to complete them without exposing your identity bzzzzt. The System Manual has been sent to your storage. Please study the regulations and start work as soon as possible bzzzzt…”

A gale howled as if trying to swallow the Main System’s voice.

“Bzzzzt… As a system, you should satisfy all the host’s requirements. Mu Qiuyu is your host; you must guide her bzzzzt and do not repeat the mistakes bzzzzt—”

The static felt like a sharp needle piercing Lu Ning’s ear.

Before the phrase “repeat the mistakes of the past” could be finished, the Main System vanished from Lu Ning’s side.

In an instant, everything went quiet.

The sudden wind died down. The world was shrouded in a pitch-black silence, like a long slumber.

But her heart was still beating.

The thump-thump reminded Lu Ning of the fact that she was alive and could still hear.

Lu Ning stared blankly at the night sky, still processing what the Main System had said.

Was her desire to save Mu Qiuyu really that strong?

When she was reading the novel, Lu Ning had thought: if someone had given Mu Qiuyu a hand when she was suffering all those cold glares, she wouldn’t have been hounded into blackening, misplaced her trust in a cowardly system, and ultimately committed suicide.

Perhaps becoming Mu Qiuyu’s system wasn’t such a bad thing.

She wasn’t some low-IQ system that could be easily swayed by a female lead!

She would make Mu Qiuyu’s life complete and beautiful.

At that thought, Lu Ning felt a surge of passion in her chest.

She looked at the ruins of the inner world and decided to clean up the small patch of land by the entrance. After all, she didn’t want to step into mud and weeds every time she came in.

“Heave-ho!”

With a sudden burst of effort, Lu Ning gripped a clump of foxtail grass and rolled onto the dusty ground.

The weeds here were truly “determined” weeds.

Looking at the waist-high grass in her hand, Lu Ning decided: she was tired. Lying on the ground suited her much better.

Weeding was too much work. Lu Ning felt that instead of organizing this world, she should get familiar with herself first. After all, once she went back out, she’d be a ball again.

With a bitter smile, Lu Ning opened the manual the Main System gave her.

The highly advanced system processor allowed her to find whatever she needed, and she quickly got the hang of the system job.

In her spare time, Lu Ning tapped the electronic screen and skillfully brought up Mu Qiuyu’s character model.

Mu Qiuyu had toyed with her so wantonly earlier; it wouldn’t be too much to get a little “revenge” now, right?

Thinking this, Lu Ning reached out and poked Mu Qiuyu’s face.

The girl’s fair cheek dipped slightly under the pressure. Even though the expressionless face was cold and distant, the poke made the model seem a bit more like a doll at her mercy.

So, Lu Ning went a bit further and pinched Mu Qiuyu’s cheek.

Actually, the virtual figure lacked any real sensation; the model formed by data streams felt more like the surrounding wind—icy cold.

Lu Ning suddenly felt it was a bit boring.

This Mu Qiuyu was basically the character she had imagined while reading the book; a beautiful body like a soul-less doll.

Lu Ning felt the “Aunt” was wrong. Compared to this little figure, the real Mu Qiuyu was much more alive.

The palm that had held her body was, in fact, quite warm.

I really want to touch the real Mu Qiuyu.

I wonder what the real Mu Qiuyu feels like.

As she thought, she poked the model again.

From the girl’s cheek to her chin, then her neck.

The model was only the size of Lu Ning’s palm, so it was easy to accidentally touch other places.

When Lu Ning’s finger accidentally brushed against Mu Qiuyu’s chest, her hand snapped back instantly.

The fair face of the girl in the model seemed to have a faint pink flush. Lu Ning’s panicked eyes showed she hadn’t done it on purpose.

Lu Ning didn’t know what was happening; her hand seemed to no longer obey her.

“!”

Lu Ning’s hand jerked again, and this time her whole body jumped.

She sat up on the grass and suddenly realized it wasn’t her body that was out of control—the world itself was unstable.

She looked down at the foxtail grass beside her.

It couldn’t be because I pulled that weed, right?

Just as Lu Ning was frantically troubleshooting, a red prompt box suddenly lit up before her.

The crystal-blue font was enlarged and bolded, followed by an exclamation mark: Warning! The Host is under attack!

Lu Ning immediately recalled Mu Qiuyu’s experiences in the original novel and instantly flew toward the exit.

On the way, she didn’t forget to adjust her brightness to make it easier on Mu Qiuyu’s eyes.

Passing through a flash of white light, Lu Ning’s vision dimmed.

Suddenly, she felt as if a white film had formed over her eyes. Beneath the hazy mist was a layer of cool-toned skin pink.

What was this?

Lu Ning frowned. The control panel showed she was back in the restroom she had visited with Mu Qiuyu this morning.

The familiar stall was filled with dampness and cold. The “white film” in front of Lu Ning was actually a school uniform soaked in water.

The thin, wet fabric clung to the girl’s suddenly chilled skin, mixing warm body temperature with the freezing air and shoving the sensation into Lu Ning’s transparent body.

Lu Ning’s nose was filled with Mu Qiuyu’s scent. Her breath hitched. She looked up and saw Mu Qiuyu’s face.

The girl was a mess from being drenched. Her upturned eyes appeared strangely bewitching and reddened under the influence of the freezing water, as if she were about to cry.

However, the moment she saw Lu Ning appear, she skillfully tucked away that vulnerability, cradling the small ball in one hand: “You’re back?”

“Didn’t you say… you’d be back quickly?”

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