Forced to Act out a Strange Script with a Rival - Chapter 75

Si Xiaoxiao felt her head spinning. It felt as though she had been asleep for a very long time, and more importantly, she felt as if she had “skipped an episode” in the story of her life.

She began to piece back her memories.

For the purpose of testing Li Ting, they had gotten into an argument. It was much like their countless previous confrontations, yet it carried a subtle, different weight—and that was what triggered the system. The script activated this time was… The Spring of the Tentacle Monster.

The moment she entered this script’s world, before she could even take in her surroundings, a heart-wrenching, agonizing pain exploded from her abdomen.

Si Xiaoxiao let out a muffled groan and looked down. She saw a strangely shaped dagger—seemingly polished from some kind of ghastly white bone—deeply embedded in her body.

Warm blood gushed from the wound, rapidly staining her unfamiliar clothes a deep crimson.

The excruciating pain caused her to lose nearly all strength, but she forced herself to look around. The room was empty; only the flickering, dim yellow lamplight cast her shadow onto the mottled walls, twisting and swaying. The doors and windows were locked tightly from the inside, the bolts completely intact.

How could this be? If there’s no one else here…

Which means… the person who stabbed her was herself?!

Clutching the bleeding wound, she stumbled as she tried to stand. Blood continued to seep through her fingers, dripping onto the cold, rough stone floor.

Did I get the ‘psycho’ role in this script again? Is that why I stabbed myself??

As the blood continued to ooze out and drip onto the floor, she lowered her head. In the dim light, her eyes fixed on the ground, and a sudden chill surged from her spine to the top of her head, making her scalp tingle.

Across the entire floor of the room, a massive, eerie, and complex runic array had been drawn with some kind of dark brown liquid that hadn’t yet fully dried!

The pattern was twisted and evil, saturated with an ominous intent; every line and symbol radiated a heart-pounding madness.

And the liquid used to draw the array… appeared to be the very blood she was currently shedding!!

What kind of cult ritual is this?!!!

It was confirmed. She was playing a psychopath again in this episode.

Si Xiaoxiao couldn’t afford to study the hair-raisingly evil ritual in the room any longer; her survival instinct overrode everything else.

She pressed down hard on her wound, enduring the agonizing pain that nearly made her black out and the dizziness brought on by blood loss. She staggered toward the door.

The door was deadbolted from the inside. With trembling hands, it took a great deal of effort to pull back the heavy wooden bolt.

The moment she pushed the door open, a sea breeze carrying a salty, fishy scent rushed in. However, the sight that met her eyes caused her already cold heart to sink completely.

The system really spent a high budget on this one…

It was an endless, ink-black, churning ocean!

She seemed to be on the edge of a desolate, isolated island in the middle of the sea. Beneath her feet were jagged reefs; behind her was the stone hut with the evil array. Aside from that, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing.

Extreme blood loss had pushed Si Xiaoxiao to her limit.

Her vision began to blur, her ears rang, and her brain felt heavy and clouded.

Thus, she immediately realized she absolutely could not stay there and wait for death!

Clutching her wound and relying on a powerful will to live, she struggled forward along the coastline, step by painful step, hoping to find signs of life or rescue.

But she walked for a long, long time—so long that her legs felt like lead, so long that her consciousness repeatedly drifted between pain and weakness.

Within her field of vision, there was nothing but the monotonous repetition of waves, reefs, and the occasional sea bird passing by with a shrill cry. She didn’t encounter a single soul; the silence and loneliness were like invisible giant hands tightening around her throat.

I’m not going to die here, am I…

Si Xiaoxiao felt her mind becoming more and more chaotic. The world before her eyes kept swaying and spinning.

What terrified her even more was that a bizarre transformation seemed to be occurring inside her body…

An indescribable aching and itching sensation, as if her bones and muscles were being reorganized, began to spread from the wound… but she didn’t dare stop to think about it. She could only rely on instinct, dragging her increasingly heavy body forward, further and further…

The surroundings seemed to twist and change in her blurred vision—sometimes a rugged coast, sometimes a dark forest… but what remained constant was that she met no one. Only a deathly silence enveloped her.

Si Xiaoxiao felt as if she had fallen into some kind of strange loop.

Even though her body was exhausted to the extreme and every cell was screaming to give up, her spirit, amidst the absolute agony and loneliness, sharpened into a bizarre, near-lucid state—like a “terminal lucidity.”

Random little mental scenarios began to play in her mind.

She saw someone browsing books in a bookstore with her; she saw them jogging side-by-side on a track; she saw them lying head-to-head in a tent waiting for the sunrise…

But who was that person? And why was she seeing these things?

Finally, what appeared in her memory was a house with a pointed roof.

It appeared to be a church, shrouded in an ominous, lead-gray mist. It looked so out of place, yet it possessed a fatal attraction.

As if bewitched and lured by something invisible, Si Xiaoxiao’s vacant eyes focused on that spire. Her body, no longer under her control, moved one hobbling step at a time toward that eerie church.

Ultimately, like a sleepwalker, she stumbled into the empty, cold church, which reeked of a mixture of heavy incense and rotting seaweed.

Her gaze was firmly drawn to a massive platform at the front of the church, constructed from ghastly white reef stones.

And atop that platform, there sat… a crystal coffin?

The coffin was not made of wood, but of a semi-transparent, pearlescent material that flowed with a faint, demonic glow.

Si Xiaoxiao staggered closer. Through the semi-transparent lid, she saw her. Inside the coffin, lying atop layers of deep purple sea anemones that were so vividly colored they seemed cursed, was a woman with a face identical to her own.

Who is this person? Why does she look exactly like me? And who am I? Why…

A series of ultimate, profound questions occupied Si Xiaoxiao’s mind.

She was no longer capable of thinking.

Then, the last of her strength drained from her body. Si Xiaoxiao’s vision went black, and she lost consciousness entirely, collapsing onto the cold floor.

In the final split second before she fainted, she vaguely heard the cold, heartless voice of the system, which seemed to carry a hint of pity:

[Congratulations to the host for successfully completing the sacrifice ritual and achieving form transformation.]

And then, she fell into a long, dark, yet strangely “lucid” slumber.

She could not feel her body, yet she seemed able to “see” it.

She saw her “husk” lying on the ground begin to mutate. She saw countless deep purple, slimy tentacles burst through the wound and the skin, growing frantically.

They twisted and coiled, enveloping the eerie crystal coffin like the greediest of predators. They began to devour and fuse with the coffin, the sea anemones, and everything of that “other self” inside… devouring, plundering, becoming one…

An ineffable sense of spiritual fulfillment and immense power gradually emerged. Like the finest poisoned wine, it slowly and completely replaced the original physical pain and discomfort.

The pain vanished, replaced by a cold, massive, non-human sense of fullness.

She had seemingly become a monster.

A walking corpse-like, terrifying existence devoid of the ability to think, acting only on instinct and certain deep-seated directives.

Then, a distant and blurry voice, yet one carrying unquestionable power, was seared into the deepest reaches of her chaotic consciousness like an engraving.

To protect that person—even if it means giving up everything—

The voice echoed repeatedly, like a final command.

But… that person… who is it?

The person most important to her, the one so vital that she would turn into a monster and lose her self just to protect them… who was it…

The memory was shrouded in thick fog. The name, the face, were on the tip of her tongue, yet they were always separated by an impenetrable veil.

Later, a man wearing a dark robe with a blurred face appeared in the church.

He was astonished by the abnormal change in the sacrifice, seemingly sensing that some unplanned, special power had contaminated his ritual.

But the arrogant and greedy “He” didn’t care much. Instead, from this mutated sacrifice, He sensed a rare opportunity that could allow Him to go a step further and become even more powerful!

Thus, He suppressed His doubts and began to recite the lengthy, sinister sacrificial eulogy that had been repeated hundreds of times. His voice was hollow, like an echo from the deep sea.

He did not know that at this moment, the sacrifice—carrying a remnant of “love and determination” that transcended form—had also turned into nourishment for the Evil God. However, into this nourishment, a variable from the deep sea had been mixed, one that even He could not fully control.

The ritual was completed, and power flooded into the Evil God’s body.

Only soon after, He became enraged, because at this “grand” sacrificial ball of His, an uninvited guest had appeared.

The subtle yet strong pull of bloodline instantly made Him realize the purpose of this guest’s arrival.

If you came for your beloved, then die for your beloved!

It was merely one more high-quality sacrificial lamb delivered to His door.

He would use her to compensate for any potential losses caused by the deviation in the ritual, and perhaps even reap extra rewards.

Confident, He used His newly acquired power, controlling those contaminated tentacles—which were now part of the monster—to capture the “blood relative” who dared to intrude.

To His surprise, that seemingly fragile human sacrifice erupted with astonishing willpower and mobility, breaking free time and again, and finally jumping through a window into the sea to escape.

Vanishing into the waves along with her was that peculiar deep-sea power derived from the contaminated sacrifice.

That was a domain He could not easily reach or control…

In the end, He had underestimated the power a human could explode with in a moment of despair, surpassing their own limits, and… that protective obsession buried deep within the monster’s instincts that could not be completely erased, even by the loss of memory.

And at the very moment that human sacrifice leapt into the icy seawater, deep within the chaotic consciousness of the massive monster, a faint yet incredibly stubborn light suddenly flared in a forcibly suppressed corner—

Si Xiaoxiao finally… found the person she was looking for.

The one that voice repeatedly mentioned…

The one she would protect even if she turned into a monster and sank into darkness—

It was Li Ting.

It was the Li Ting that Si Xiaoxiao loved the most.

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