The Demon Lord is My Dark Moonlight [Transmigration Novel] - Chapter 10

With that interruption from the lead, Gu Jinli was no longer in the mood for humming. She finished up quickly, changed into the clothes Shen Chigui had brought, and pushed the door open to the main room.

“Big Sister, come here.”

Sitting at the only table in the room, Shen Chigui pointed to a spread of exquisite dishes and smiled. “I had them prepare dinner. Come and try it.”

“…”

After a long, exhausting day, Gu Jinli was indeed famished. She didn’t refuse, sitting down with her long, wet hair still dripping.

“Big Sister’s hair isn’t dry yet!”

Standing up of her own accord, Shen Chigui came around behind Gu Jinli and pinched the water-heavy ends of her hair. “Let me dry it for you.”

“Oh, whatever you want.”

Settling into her seat, Gu Jinli picked up her chopsticks in a good mood and took a large bite of food. Finally, a real meal. After a week of being buried in dirt, dying and resurrecting repeatedly, she had almost forgotten what actual food tasted like.

“Is it good, Big Sister?”

Watching Gu Jinli stuff her face one mouthful after another, Shen Chigui could see the girl’s puffed-out cheeks and the soft, fine down on her skin.

So cute~

Shen Chigui couldn’t resist reaching out and poking one of those cheeks.

“—Pfft!”

Poked without warning while chewing, Gu Jinli nearly sprayed her food across the table.

“What are you doing?!” She quickly covered her mouth and forced the food down.

“Sorry, Big Sister,” Shen Chigui said, blinking innocently. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“…”

Gu Jinli glared at her, speechless, and yanked her hair back.

Huh. It’s dry.

Her fingers brushed against her hair and found no trace of dampness. Even the back of her head was perfectly dry. She paused, then offered a strained thank you. “It’s dry. Thanks. Now sit down and eat.”

“No need to be so polite, Big Sister.”

Sitting down cheerfully by Gu Jinli’s side, Shen Chigui picked up her chopsticks and said with a smile, “Speaking of which, I always feel like Big Sister knows me very well, even though we only just met.”

Munch munch munch. Gu Jinli glanced at her but said nothing. She knew the lead was finally losing her patience. What a terrible time for an interrogation, right in the middle of dinner.

“It was thanks to you that the Young Mistress suddenly thought of me today, wasn’t it? It seems Big Sister is quite familiar with her as well~”

Shen Chigui toyed with the vegetables on her plate, resting her chin on her hand. Her tone was light as she asked, “Can you tell me why, Big Sister?”

There’s truly no peace even during a meal. Such a direct probe was exactly the lead’s style. Gu Jinli knew that if she didn’t provide a satisfactory answer, the lead wouldn’t hesitate to strike.

“I don’t mind telling you.”

Placing her chopsticks down, Gu Jinli didn’t beat around the bush. She stared coldly at the lead and spoke bluntly. “The fact is, I know you all because I am your Creator.”

“If that’s hard to understand, just think of me as the God you hear of in legends—the Creator God.”

Creator.

Creator God?

This was the first time she had heard an answer so radically different from the other Task-takers. How refreshing!

Shen Chigui’s brow twitched as she stared at the woman. Then, she dropped a sudden question.

“What is your name, Big Sister?”

Gu Jinli: “…”

After all this time, she still doesn’t know my name. Thinking back, they really hadn’t communicated properly; it was always one of them framing the other. Gu Jinli only knew the lead’s name because of her “God’s-eye view.”

“Gu Jinli,” she answered after a moment of thought.

Gu Jinli…

Jin-Li.

Her originally nonchalant gaze suddenly froze. As the words left Gu Jinli’s lips, Shen Chigui’s expression turned chilling. She remembered things—things she had heard from the mouths of previous Task-takers.

*****

“You’re the female lead from Jinmanli’s pen!”

“This book is called ‘The Venerable Woman,’ and the author is Jinmanli.”

“Jinmanli ruined me! How could she write a monster like you!”

“Jinmanli…”

*****

The testimonies of those Task-takers had been unified as if they were rehearsed. They all said that her world was just a book and she was just a character. Her identity, name, personality, and history were just a few lines of text assigned by an author named Jinmanli.

She was the heroine created by Jinmanli, a sequence of words whose past and future were already decided.

How could that be possible? When one or two people said it, she didn’t believe them. When five or six said it, she began to doubt. By the time many had said it, she could no longer ignore it.

She had gradually accepted the fact. She was shocked, she was horrified, and then she had completely let go.

The world is fake? Then let’s see it burn. Everyone is just text? Then they can all die. Shen Chigui had sworn to tear a hole in the sky to see if any of it was real.

And now.

The person named Jinmanli (Jin Li) was sitting right in front of her, speaking with such a self-righteous tone that it made her blood boil.

Everyone said this was her Creator…

Creator…

God…

Thank you for descending to my world.

“What are you doing?!”

The lead had snapped. That was Gu Jinli’s first thought as her neck was suddenly constricted by the lead’s Ghost Qi. The suffocating pain made her vision swim. Everything had been fine a moment ago; only a name had been spoken, and the girl had gone feral.

Even as the creator of Shen Chigui, Gu Jinli couldn’t fathom what the lead was thinking now. This madness was utterly without warning.

“Gu. Jin. Li.”

Such a similar name, and a self-proclaimed Creator… this must be Jinmanli herself.

How wonderful.

The world had actually sent her Creator into her grasp. She actually had the honor of meeting her God in this way.

Yes. A God indeed.

The high-and-mighty Creator, whose few lines of text had ultimately become Shen Chigui.

How very interesting.

“Gu Jinli, did you ever imagine that one day, you’d be held in my hand like an ant for me to crush?”

To think that such a person was the one who created her.

This Creator was so fragile, as if a single squeeze would end her life. This role reversal—this feeling of absolute control—fascinated Shen Chigui. She stared intently at Gu Jinli, searching her face for terror or some other sign of breaking.

She was disappointed.

“I truly didn’t expect it.”

Gu Jinli paused, enduring the agonizing constriction of her throat. She forced the words out through gritted teeth.

“That you would be so utterly irrational when you lose it.”

In her original design, the protagonist Shen Chigui was cruel and extreme, yes, but she was also elegant and detached. Her “madness” was born of her experiences, her dissatisfaction with the world, and her thirst for power. On her path to the summit, she killed gods and demons alike—utilizing everyone and stopping at nothing.

In the end, she succeeded, unifying the Human, Ghost, Monster, and Demon realms to stand at the absolute peak. That was the conclusion of the book and Shen Chigui’s most defining charm: if she wanted something, she took it. Her life was devoid of compromise or weakness.

But now, having seen her with her own eyes in this world, Gu Jinli felt something entirely different.

The person before her was her, yet not her. They were similar, but distinct. This version of the character seemed possessed by a bottomless well of resentment and spite, making her feel dangerously alien. The Shen Chigui from her pen, even if reborn, shouldn’t have been like this.

“Is that so?”

—Snap.

With a crisp sound of breaking bone, Gu Jinli felt a sharp pain in her neck, followed immediately by a massive, familiar crimson warning across her vision.

[You have died.]

******

That night, Gu Jinli lost count of how many times she died.

The lead’s fury came without reason, and her methods grew more extreme with every resurrection. If not for the System’s pain-blocker and her own broken “cheat” ability, she definitely wouldn’t have survived to see the morning sun.

“Big Sister really can’t die~”

The state of the room was now horrific. Bloodstains—some dried, some fresh, some splattered, some pooled—covered the floor. It was a scene straight out of a nightmare.

Gu Jinli was currently pinned to the floorboards. Her clothes were tattered and soaked in blood, hanging off her in rags. Every tear in the fabric served as a medal of honor, attesting to the sheer brutality of the torment she had endured.

“It’s so miraculous. You’re clearly just a human. How are you more troublesome than a Ghost Cultivator? Speaking of those Ghost Cultivator fellows…”

The person sitting on top of her continued to mutter nonsensical things, but Gu Jinli, lying on the floor, was simmering with rage. She was incredibly grateful she had fought for that pain-blocker; otherwise, she would have certainly gone insane by now.

Even though Shen Chigui was still small, her mastery over Ghost Qi was exquisite, more than making up for her physical limitations. After being toyed with all night, Gu Jinli was beyond livid.

This unfilial daughter!!

Look at what she’s done!!

“Shen Chigui! You’d better pray I stay this weak forever!”

Gu Jinli glared at the girl sitting on her, though she no longer had the strength to struggle. She was essentially a fish on a carving board. She was so angry that if looks could kill, Shen Chigui would have been sliced into a thousand pieces by now.

“Is Big Sister feeling resentful? Understandable… you probably never imagined being treated this way by me, right?”

Shen Chigui might not have known the heart of a “Creator,” but she knew the hearts of Task-takers. To be humiliated by a mere fictional character they considered “beneath” them was the ultimate disgrace. It was laughable, really—these invaders always arrived with such an air of superiority and condescending charity. As if their presence and their “conquest” were a supreme honor for her.

“Get off!”

Gu Jinli, having had her thoughts struck a little too close to home, flared up in embarrassment and rage. She struggled to sit up, lunged forward to grab Shen Chigui’s arm, and bit down hard.

Take that!

Her white teeth looked ready to tear a chunk of flesh away. Taking advantage of the lead’s momentary shock, Gu Jinli grabbed a nearby wooden stool and swung it with all her might. The furniture in the City Lord’s Manor was solid hardwood; it hurt like hell to get hit by it. After a night of being tormented, Gu Jinli was finally getting her revenge.

“Gu Jinli!”

Caught off guard by the stool, Shen Chigui quickly snapped back to reality. But before she could react, several more dark shadows blurred past her eyes as she was struck again and again.

Gu Jinli swung the stool so fast it left afterimages, aiming every blow squarely at Shen Chigui’s head. Though her strength wasn’t immense, the current Shen Chigui hadn’t yet tempered her body into the powerhouse it would become; she was just a nine-year-old child. No matter how strong her Ghost Qi was, she couldn’t shield her entire body at once.

Consequently, Shen Chigui’s head was cracked open by the stool, and her body didn’t escape the bruising either.

“Gu Jinli!”

Blood streamed down her forehead and cheeks, some of it even seeping into her mouth. In a fit of rage, Shen Chigui lunged forward to seize the stool, glaring at her. “You actually hit me?! You—”

“Damn right I hit you! I’m beating the hell out of you!”

When the lead charged, Gu Jinli hesitated for a split second. A night of being killed repeatedly had left her with a bit of a psychological shadow. But then, seeing that the lead was so angry she had forgotten to use her Ghost Qi, Gu Jinli lost all fear and let loose.

For a while, the two of them rolled around on the floor in a messy brawl, each as disheveled as the other. Because Shen Chigui wasn’t using her powers, Gu Jinli—whose body was several years older—held the upper hand. She landed several cheap shots, finally getting a bit of petty payback.

—Creak!

The sky outside had begun to brighten. They had spent the entire night fighting. The servants sent by Nangong Jinyao to fetch them opened the door, only to be met with a scene of utter carnage. Blood was sprayed everywhere, and the metallic stench was overwhelming. It looked like a gruesome murder scene.

“AH!”

“Help! Murder!”

The servants were terrified and ran out screaming. It wasn’t long before Nangong Jinyao received the news and came storming over, whip in hand.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Standing at the threshold, Nangong Jinyao looked at the blood-soaked interior and didn’t even want to step inside. “Are you both still alive? Hey!”

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