Forced to Act out a Strange Script with a Rival - Chapter 102

“Miss Li, Miss Si, please draw your prize…”

At this moment, both women were completely unfamiliar with Wen Xiuzhen. Si Xiaoxiao’s distance was due to her amnesia, while Li Ting’s was because she truly had very little contact with her.

Wen Xiuzhen was a director, though her career was still in the accumulation phase; she had only worked as an assistant under major directors and filmed a few short films. She came from a privileged background and was rumored to have used family connections to become a protégé of the internationally renowned director, Yan Yun.

Logically, as a singer, Li Ting should not have had any intersection with her.

In Li Ting’s memory, she had received an invitation from Wen Xiuzhen not long ago, asking her to play the female lead in her next film. However, Li Ting had rejected her outright.

At that time, Li Ting hadn’t bound herself to the “system” yet. Having finally managed to control her emotions enough to stop frequenting the clinic, there was no way she would willingly touch acting again. Naturally, her refusal had been thorough.

Furthermore, Li Ting had a very poor impression of Wen Xiuzhen because, after the initial rejection, Wen had sought her out a second time. She claimed she wanted to reboot Tongque Wujian (Bronze Sparrow Abyss). Hearing this, Li Ting dismissed her as someone trying to ride the coattails of a popular IP and politely sent her away.

After that, she had put Wen Xiuzhen completely out of her mind.

“Miss Li, Miss Si, please draw your prize.”

Currently, Wen Xiuzhen acted as if she had no memory of the awkwardness of being rejected twice. She sat with her legs elegantly crossed, leaning back slightly, a faint, unreadable—almost playful—smile playing on her lips.

Her gaze swept over the two women before settling on a large lottery box on the desk. The box was decorated so extravagantly that it felt entirely out of place amidst the minimalist business decor of the room. Her tone was as casual as if she were discussing the weather.

Hearing the woman call out their identities so naturally and clearly, Li Ting knew that disguises were now useless.

Silently, she raised her hand and slowly pulled the mask from her face, revealing a cold, beautiful countenance that seemed covered in a thin layer of frost.

Since the other party had already set the stage, she stopped hiding. She shot a sharp look directly at Wen Xiuzhen, trying to read something from her expression. Doubts grew like wild vines in her mind, but the situation was unclear. Since the “host” held the advantage and had proposed a “lucky draw,” Li Ting decided to go along with it for now.

She wanted to see exactly what this Director Wen was planning with such an elaborate setup.

“I’ll draw,” Li Ting said, walking toward the desk with steady steps. Without hesitation, she reached into the single opening of the lottery box.

However, the sensation at her fingertips made her freeze instantly. The box wasn’t filled with the expected mass of tickets or colorful balls. Instead, there lay a single, thick, solid, and neatly bound object that felt like a hardcover book.

Li Ting’s brows knitted into a tight “川” shape.

She pulled the solitary “prize” out of the box. As expected, it was a bound volume—simple in design but high in quality. The solid-colored cover had no fancy decorations, only a single line of printed black text.

The so-called “lucky draw” was a complete sham. From the very beginning, there had only been one unavoidable “option.”

“What is this?” Li Ting’s voice turned cold. She held up the booklet, her eyes burning with a clear sense of interrogation.

Wen Xiuzhen met her scrutiny without a flicker of change in her expression, appearing terrifyingly composed. She parted her red lips and clearly uttered two words that sent ripples through Li Ting’s heart: “A script.”

Almost the moment the words left her mouth, a flash of intense, familiar resistance flickered in Li Ting’s eyes, as if a nerve had been struck. She instinctively moved to repeat the answer she had given twice before: “I’m sorry, I—”

Clearly, the refusal was on the tip of her tongue.

“Don’t be so quick to jump to a conclusion.” Wen Xiuzhen seemed to have anticipated this reaction. She raised a hand slightly in a soft but firm gesture to interrupt. Her tone remained peaceful, yet it carried a power that seemed to see through people. “I believe that after reading this script, you two might… have some different feelings.”

Her gaze no longer rested solely on Li Ting but turned to Si Xiaoxiao, who was leaning close to Li Ting. Deep in her eyes, there was an indescribable light—a mix of scrutiny and expectation.

“Please, both of you, take a careful look together.”

Li Ting pressed her lips together, a subtle sign of her inner displeasure and struggle.

She glanced sideways at Si Xiaoxiao. The young girl was looking up at her, her beautiful eyes filled with pure curiosity about the booklet and a sense of reliance on Li Ting’s reaction. This gaze acted like a gentle shackle; the harsh refusal at the tip of Li Ting’s tongue eventually dissolved into a nearly inaudible sigh.

She sat back down beside Si Xiaoxiao and placed the script on the lap between them. With a complex, heavy heart, she flipped open the title page.

Soul Pursuit—four large black characters entered her sight, carrying a cold and inquisitive aura.

The story began on an afternoon: Eighteen-year-old Jiang Zi, on a bright and sunny day, accidentally reunited on a bustling street with an older girl who had been her childhood playmate but was now somewhat of a stranger.

The joy of a long-awaited reunion dissolved the distance created by time. The two chatted happily as if they had endless things to say. As night fell, at the older girl’s enthusiastic invitation, Jiang Zi naturally stayed over at her high-end apartment in the city center.

That night, they perhaps shared stories of their lives or reminisced about childhood memories. The air was thick with a warm, nostalgic atmosphere.

However, fate’s cruel twists always strike at the most unsuspecting moments. The following morning, as Jiang Zi struggled to wake from a pounding hangover headache, she dazedly pushed open the frosted glass door of the bathroom. There, she was met with a sight that froze her blood instantly: her childhood “sister,” dressed in pajamas, lay in a pool of blood, her expression eerily serene and her life long since extinguished.

Panic, like countless ice-cold needles, pierced through Jiang Zi’s every nerve.

Yet, even more desperate than the presence of the corpse was the state of the scene—it was a near-perfect “Locked Room Murder.”

Every door and window in the apartment was securely locked from the inside. There were no signs of forced entry or tampering. The night before, only she and the older girl had been in the apartment. All the evidence formed an invisible, cold net, precisely framing her as the sole suspect.

Even more bizarrely, surveillance footage had captured “her” going out to buy the murder weapon. It was, for all intents and purposes, an ironclad case of murder.

To make matters worse, Jiang Zi had indeed drunk heavily the night before due to the excitement of their reunion. This resulted in a severe memory blackout during the critical time window, leaving her with nothing but blurry, fragmented shards of light and sound—completely insufficient to reconstruct a chain of memories to prove her innocence.

She even began to doubt herself, wondering if she truly was the killer.

The Supernatural Breakthrough

While being strictly interrogated by the police and sinking into a hopeless abyss, Jiang Zi accidentally touched the knife left at the crime scene. Suddenly, vivid but brief memory fragments flashed uncontrollably through her mind.

To her shock, these fragments were from the first-person perspective of her childhood sister—her final experiences, sights, sounds, and the violent surge of emotions she felt before her death!

To seize her one chance at survival, Jiang Zi forced herself to endure these foreign memories as they crashed into her consciousness like a tide. It was an agonizing process, like dancing on the edge of a blade. However, through these fragments seen through the eyes of the deceased, she keenly spotted several inconsistencies and subtle anomalies that both she and the police had initially overlooked.

Relying on these “messages from the dead,” Jiang Zi used her wit and courage to peel back the layers of the mystery. Not only did she successfully turn the tide and clear her name, but she also assisted the lead officer—who had been skeptical but held a firm sense of justice—in uncovering the cruel truth behind this “impossible” crime, a truth filled with human struggle and the mockery of fate.

The Irony of the Truth

The truth was far more ironic and heartbreaking than the surface suggested.

It turned out that the person who had premeditated a murder was none other than the “victim”—Jiang Zi’s seemingly frail and charming childhood sister.

She had meticulously planned everything. The innocent, naive Jiang Zi was merely a pawn used to create a perfect alibi—a tool living within a lie.

The sister’s original plan was to use Jiang Zi’s arrival as cover. After Jiang Zi fell into a drunken stupor, the sister disguised herself as Jiang Zi, slipped out of the apartment to buy the weapon, and carried out her long-planned murder. She intended to return undetected, weaving an unbreakable alibi for herself.

However, man proposes, but God disposes. The plan suffered a fatal deviation. During a violent struggle with her target, although she succeeded in her kill, she sustained a mortal wound herself.

Enduring excruciating pain and immense fear, she stumbled back to the apartment she thought was a safe haven. Ultimately, she collapsed on the familiar, warm bathroom tiles due to blood loss and exhaustion, taking her secrets, her hatred, and her plan to the grave with her.

A Web of Deception

The core trick of the case lay in the clever identity swap and the shocking reversal between victim and killer. The scriptwriting was seasoned and layered, with a narrative pace that tightened and relaxed perfectly. It first pushed the reader (and Jiang Zi) into a corner with impossible elements and overwhelming evidence, creating a suffocating atmosphere of despair.

Then, at the critical moment, it used the “Memory Flashback” as a fantastical breakthrough, methodically unraveling the mystery with rigorous logic to achieve a convincing and stunning reversal. The flow was natural, and the suspense and emotional rendering were exquisite, making it impossible to put down once started.

Both Si Xiaoxiao and Li Ting were instantly absorbed. After the case seemed settled, the ending dropped a final hook: while Jiang Zi was sorting through her sister’s belongings, she discovered unexplained details. It seemed someone else had been behind the scenes, guiding her sister toward the act of murder…

Indeed, nothing was over. Her sister was actually just one link in a much larger “Exchange Killing” scheme. She had committed murder as part of a plan designed by someone else—a chain involving multiple people. She was merely the first domino to fall in a massive performance of assassination.

The script provided by Wen Xiuzhen ended abruptly at this point of infinite suspense and imagination, like a symphony stopping at its highest crescendo, leaving behind an endless echo of speculation that made one itch for more.

Seeing both women close the script almost simultaneously, their faces reflecting a lingering aftertaste and eyes filled with the shock and contemplation of the story, a flicker of satisfied realization flashed in Wen Xiuzhen’s eyes.

She leaned forward slightly, placing her folded hands elegantly on the polished desk. In a leading yet seemingly gentle and harmless tone, she asked:

“It seems you’ve both finished. I wonder, what are your initial thoughts and feelings regarding this… as of yet, incomplete story?”

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