The Demon Lord is My Dark Moonlight [Transmigration Novel] - Chapter 2

“Thirteen of them…”

“Still short by two. Should we send them over first?”

“It’s getting harder to snatch people lately. I’ll just pull this batch over now!”

Muffled whispers drifted into her ears. Gu Jinli’s mind was a chaotic mess, her thoughts refusing to coalesce; she felt like she was drifting aimlessly at sea.

Where am I being sent…

Feeling as though she were being lifted onto a carriage, she tried to force her heavy eyelids open, only to find the task nearly impossible in her delirious state.

Am I being sold?

Whatever.

At worst, I’ll just reload my save.

Clinging to that safety net, Gu Jinli quickly gave up her struggle and drifted back into a comfortable sleep.

By the time she fully regained consciousness, she was sprawled on the ground. Her limbs felt like jelly—she couldn’t tell if she’d been drugged or if this body was simply on the verge of starvation.

“Ugh…”

Her stomach gave an involuntary, painful spasm. Gu Jinli pressed her hand against it and struggled to push herself upright.

A constant, pungent stench of rot and sourness assaulted her nose. Holding her breath, she took in her surroundings.

She appeared to be locked inside a massive black iron cage. The exterior was draped in dark cloth, but since the fabric was of poor quality, faint slivers of light filtered through. She used this dim glow to gauge the situation inside.

Besides herself, there were about a dozen people crammed in the cage—adults, children, and even a few odd-looking members of the Demon and Monster races.

By now, the effects of the drug had worn off, and people were waking up. Some stayed silent, warily sizing up their environment, while others began to wail or scream in a rage.

“Where are we… Father, Mother…”

“Damn it! How dare they lock me up!”

“Who did this?! Which bastard set me up!”

“You bitch, you must have done something!”

As more people woke, the complaints and arguments grew louder.

The humans were relatively restrained, mostly sticking to verbal abuse, but the Demons and Monsters weren’t so civil. They either grabbed those next to them for interrogation or threw themselves frantically against the bars. The more timid ones simply transformed into their bestial states, curled into balls, and leaked a steady stream of icy miasma.

In this tiny patch of earth within the cage, one could witness a microcosm of every living thing, each reacting to their plight in their own way.

“Shut up! Keep it down!”

The commotion inside the cage caught the attention of the guards outside. They walked over and rapped hard on the iron bars through the cloth, cursing impatiently. “You lot are already halfway in the grave! You’d better cherish the little time you have left to live! Once you enter the City Lord’s Hunting Circle, every single one of you trash is going to die!”

What?

The City Lord’s Hunting Circle?

Gu Jinli’s brow furrowed. She knew exactly what that was.

It was a staple pastime in Gu City. Anyone with a modicum of power would cordon off a space in their manor to pit bloodthirsty magical beasts against captives for entertainment.

True to the city’s name, the people here never tired of slaughter and “cultivating the Gu.”

The City Lord’s Hunting Circle was essentially the ultimate Gu jar. A monthly free-for-all massacre that served to filter out the five strongest survivors to serve as the City Lord’s direct henchmen.

In this part of the plot—the “Entering the City Lord’s Manor” arc—the female lead, who had yet to awaken her bloodline, was thrown into this very circle. She managed to survive only by being incredibly tenacious and laying low until the end.

Because her strength seemed negligible, she was eventually handed over to the City Lord’s daughter, Nangong Jinyao, to serve as a lowly servant. It wasn’t until a year later that she found a chance to sneak into a secret realm, awaken her bloodline, and finally start her path of carnage.

So, right now…

Knowing that the lead was already in the manor meant she would definitely be part of this “hunt.”

In other words, if all went well, she would be seeing the future Demon Venerable very soon.

Hiss…

Gu Jinli couldn’t help but break out in goosebumps. She pulled up the System panel, obsessively checking her mission and her “cheats.”

She was currently a mess of nerves and dread, flavored with a tiny, death-defying spark of excitement.

After all, this was a character from her own pen. Even knowing how dangerous and volatile the lead was, she couldn’t stop the surge of curiosity and a strange sense of kinship.

This was her creation! The person who had once acted as a vessel for her frustrations and longings—practically an avatar of her own soul…

The only question was: when she finally met the lead, should she call her “sister,” “daughter,” or just scream “help”?

*****

I’m back.

That was the first thought that flashed through Shen Chigui’s mind as she opened her eyes and stared at the all-too-familiar ceiling beams.

How many times had it been now?

She had lost count.

Ever since she was besieged and killed in her first life, she had been trapped in a cycle of returning to “the past,” only to encounter a string of strange individuals with ulterior motives.

These people—strangers she had never met before—clung to her like leeches. Every time the cycle reset, a new face appeared.

In the beginning, Shen Chigui would only return to a point three or five years before her death. But as those bizarre people—who called themselves “Task-takers”—died miserable deaths at her hands, the “rewind” point pushed further and further back.

And now, she had returned to the very moment she first entered the City Lord’s Manor.

Shen Chigui remembered this year well. She was only nine years old, and her bloodline power hadn’t even awakened yet.

Are they really that afraid of me?

Shen Chigui let out a soft, cold laugh.

To be honest, after so many repeated “rebirths,” her original ambitions of “unifying the world” or “exacting bloody vengeance” had long since mutated. Now, her only focus was finding those Task-takers and subjecting them to every conceivable humiliation until they broke. She wanted to hear them weep and wail as they confessed everything: their missions, their world, and… her “Creator.”

Yes.

As the protagonist of this book, Shen Chigui had fully awakened through the System’s repeated save-scumming.

She had seen through the identities of those Task-takers long ago. Her approach had shifted from simple slaughter to meticulous interrogation and torture. She found pleasure in their agony, using the information she gleaned from their shattered minds to piece together the truth of her reality.

Her world was a book. She was its heroine.

Those Task-takers were people who had read her “biography.” They arrived with an air of superiority, looking down on her with an arrogant belief that they could keep her within their grasp.

It was thanks to that very arrogance that Shen Chigui could pick them out of a crowd with unerring precision.

Look at that.

How fascinating.

Her entire world was a sham. Even she was just a “female lead” crudely molded by some unknown entity. Two hollow words—”female lead”—were enough to negate her entire existence.

Such a total denial of reality would be enough to make any normal person collapse.

But Shen Chigui was not normal.

She didn’t care about the existential implications, nor did she fall into the tedious trap of wondering, Who am I? Do I truly exist?

To be alive was to be alive; to be dead was to be dead. Whether it was “real” or “fake” was irrelevant.

Shen Chigui was simply curious about the origin of these Task-takers.

What kind of entity possessed the power to repeatedly drop these people from another “real” world into her own? What was Its goal? Who was It? Could It be captured? Could It be killed?

Was this “Entity” her long-lost “Creator”? Or was It something even her Creator knew nothing about?

Unfortunately, the Entity’s power was formidable. No matter what she did, the Task-takers were physically unable to speak of It. Even soul-searching techniques yielded no trace of Its existence.

All she could do was wait. Wait until she had slaughtered every last Task-taker. Wait until her timeline had been rewound so far there was nowhere left to go. What would the Entity do then?

“What kind of surprise do you have for me this time?”

She covered her eyes with one hand, masking the manic gleam within them. Right now, Shen Chigui only cared about one thing.

This time’s Task-taker…

Where would she be?

They would surely cross paths soon.

I truly hope this one… is a bit more durable.

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