Transmigrated into the Villainous Scummy Alpha in a Talent Show Novel - Chapter 75

Yet, the future version of Jiang Ming, whom she trusted so deeply, was currently overwhelmed with troubles.

The twenty-five-year-old mature woman wore frameless glasses. In this era of advanced technology where a simple chip implant could correct nearsightedness, Jiang Ming didn’t need such burdens. But she preferred the feeling of having a layer of cover in front of her eyes, as if it could shield her emotions.

All her feelings were hidden behind the reflective, transparent lenses.

Her slender fingers glided across the screen, now checking a planet labeled “Talent Show,” then glancing at another named “Past,” which had split due to diverging timelines.

Her delicate brows furrowed slightly. The cool detachment of her youth had mellowed into calm composure over time. Though inwardly anxious, Jiang Ming only showed a faint trace of irritation on the surface, as if everything was under control.

But in reality, it wasn’t.

After all these years, she still couldn’t quite grasp Lin Qi, her childhood friend who had joined the Cosmic Guard and then drifted out of touch. The two families only gathered during the New Year, and the girl she had once admired now seemed even more spirited and confident.

Already taller than her by half a head, Lin Qi now stood even more imposing, her sharp features exuding a fierce, untamed energy. Time had done nothing to dull the bold defiance of her high school days. After joining the Guard, all that restless vigor had found an outlet, Lin Qi had risen through the ranks with remarkable achievements, becoming a squad leader at a young age. At this rate, she might even make captain someday.

But their interactions had dwindled. The girl who used to clash with her in high school had grown more restrained, only smiling and saying, “Long time no see,” across the dinner table.

Lost in memories, Jiang Ming rubbed her aching temples. A chime sounded from the lab door. Unease prickled at her as she pulled up the surveillance feed on the control panel. From the overhead view, a black-haired woman stood outside, appearing docile and well-mannered, her nose bridge high and straight, her police uniform crisp and dignified.

Instinctively adjusting her glasses, Jiang Ming waited for the agitation in her eyes to fade before pressing the door release.

“Class President, long time no see.”

It had been half a year since their last meeting. Lin Qi looked no different from before, save for the sharper glint in her eyes, like she was here to demand answers.

Turning away, Jiang Ming casually shut down her computer, smoothing the white lab coat draped over her shoulders with feigned calm. She lifted her head with a faint smile. “Squad Leader Lin, what brings you here?”

“Nothing much. Just that while inspecting the parallel universes today, I suddenly found traces of my own soul scattered at the edge of spacetime. After some digging, it turns out someone swapped the souls of my counterparts across two worlds, without my knowledge.”

“Oh? Is that so?”

Lin Qi casually took a seat in the chair beside Jiang Ming. The smart chair should have auto-adjusted its height, yet she found it perfectly suited to her frame. Frowning slightly, she glanced at the woman who seemed utterly unperturbed.

And so, two pairs of eyes, each concealing their own motives, met through the transparent lenses.

Lin Qi was the first to laugh, her tone light and teasing. “Come to think of it, it’s a bit odd. Why would you have two chairs in your office when you’re the only one here?”

“Afraid of loneliness. Is that not allowed?”

“Of course it is.”

Feigning curiosity, Lin Qi glanced at the blackened computer screen. The spot where her elbow had rested earlier happened to be right next to a row of switches. Undoing one of the buttons on her police uniform, she asked, “Captain, can I take a look at your computer? I’ve been observing those distorted planets in the temporal streams. Could you show me the perspective from your Astral Bureau?”

The clothing in their world was quite advanced, capable of regulating temperature and offering strong UV protection. With the button undone, the exposed skin appeared fair and luminous. Jiang Ming averted her gaze, her voice turning cold. “This is confidential information from the Astral Bureau, Squad Leader Lin. You can’t see it.”

“Not even with how close we are?”

Her heartbeat suddenly accelerated. Jiang Ming lowered her lashes, which trembled like butterfly wings, and struggled to steady her voice. “Squad Leader Lin, I don’t believe we’re that close.”

A mischievous smile curled at Lin Qi’s lips as she leaned in slightly, her peach-blossom eyes lingering on Jiang Ming’s faintly reddened earlobes. Her low chuckle carried a seductive tone. “We grew up together, how is that not close enough?”

“Lin Qi! What exactly are you trying to do?”

Finally, anger and embarrassment overtook Jiang Ming. Feeling her cheeks about to flush, she quickly adjusted the temperature of her shirt to cool herself down. Once the heat subsided, she lifted her frosty gaze. “Squad Leader Lin, are you here just to tease me?”

Completely unfazed by Jiang Ming’s icy demeanor after all, she had endured it for three years in high school, Lin Qi wasn’t scared in the slightest. If anything, she found it familiar and even amusing. Shifting her elbow slightly, she “accidentally” pressed the power button. Her smile gradually turned cold. “Captain, I just don’t understand why you hate me so much.”

The embedded computer screen on the desk flickered to life, projecting the two planets Jiang Ming had been examining earlier. Lin Qi recognized them immediately, they were the very worlds involved in the soul-swapping incident she had been secretly investigating.

“Jiang Ming, we haven’t been in touch much since high school, have we? So why does your research involve making my soul scatter to the winds? What’s the point?”

Her sharp features grew even more severe as she crossed her arms, the police insignia on her shoulder glinting faintly.

With the computer screen now exposed, there wasn’t much left to explain. But had Lin Qi misunderstood something? What did she mean by “making her soul scatter”?

“Lin Qi, I admit I was the one who swapped your souls between the two worlds without permission. But my intention was never to make one version of you vanish. I just wanted to see if fate could be changed.”

“What do you mean?”

“My research topic.”

Adjusting her glasses again, Jiang Ming clicked open a planet labeled “Talent Show,” her voice softening. “You know about the arranged marriage between me and Song En since childhood. But what you don’t know is that I don’t like her. So I searched through three thousand parallel worlds and finally found this one the world where Song En and I are destined to be together.”

“Okay, but what does that have to do with me?”

Though Lin Qi’s indifferent attitude stung, Jiang Ming kept her emotions in check behind the barrier of her glasses. She zoomed in on the world, revealing a pale figure lying on a hospital bed and an exhausted person slumped beside it.

“I swapped the souls of you from another world with the you in this world to see if fate could truly be torn apart. And the result proves it can the you in this world and I fell in love.”

Masking her shock with a raised brow, Lin Qi cleared her throat and glanced at the two figures on the screen. The scene was indeed heartwarming, something she had never imagined herself with Jiang Ming?

“Ahem, I don’t get it. Why me? You and I have no connection at all, right? How could you even think we’d end up together?”

Seeing her bewildered expression and the sudden flood of questions clearly, she had never once considered being with her, Jiang Ming laughed, a tinge of sorrow in her voice. She shrugged nonchalantly. “I just picked someone at random. If even you could fall for me after being swapped, then anyone would do, wouldn’t they?”

Was that really the reason?

Suppressing an inexplicable flicker of joy, Lin Qi’s expression cooled again. “But if it was just a soul swap, why did the me from one world end up completely annihilated?”

“Because you never paid attention in class.”

Her tone carried an unexpected hint of intimacy, as if Jiang Ming had reclaimed some of the familiarity they once shared in high school. She reopened the planet labeled “Past” and zoomed in. The contrast was stark a studious young girl and the little pig fast asleep beside her.

“Though she’s the you from another world, she’s quite similar to you.”

“Isn’t that just the past version of me? How is it another world?”

“You must have noticed the anomaly today and reported it to the Astral Bureau, so the soul swap should have ended immediately. But.”

Here, her slender finger pointed at the sleeping figure’s head. “But when this soul was being extracted, its original body had already died. It couldn’t return, causing a temporal disruption that sent it into your past self’s body. Meanwhile, your past self’s soul is now lying in a hospital bed.”

“I don’t understand. Shouldn’t there be three versions of my soul?”

“Exactly. During the first soul swap, when the soul in this sleeping body was exchanged with the Lin Qi from the idol world her original body had already died. So, the soul from the idol world’s you simply vanished.”

Frowning, Lin Qi, never the best student to begin with felt exhaustion creeping in from all the back-and-forth explanations. “So, was this caused by your careless mistake?”

“No. I did it on purpose.”

“Huh? Did I do something to you?”

“The Lin Qi from the idol world was a monster bullying teammates, forcing herself on others. Why shouldn’t I make her soul scatter?”

“Oh… Well, in that case, she deserved it.”

Always upright and now a squad leader in the security force, Lin Qi’s hatred for evil ran deep. Her initial accusatory tone faded as she bit her lower lip. “Then, how do we swap these two souls back?”

Hearing this, Jiang Ming looked up with a bright smile. “What, not blaming me anymore?”

“Ahem, I wasn’t blaming you. I was just upset. You and I grew up together, yet you let another version of me get annihilated.”

“Well, I haven’t even mentioned this yet that version of you forced herself on me. Or rather, the me from that world.”

“Wha ? I, I’m sorry.”

With great effort, Jiang Ming managed to suppress her laughter once more. She tapped Lin Qi’s forehead lightly and said, “It wasn’t your fault. Why are you apologizing?”

“It was just instinctive, I guess. Back in high school, I must’ve said ‘sorry’ to you, our class president, countless times.”

“Oh, so you do remember? Just a moment ago, you were so fierce, looking like you wanted to devour me whole.”

“I’m sorry, I was wrong. I should’ve investigated properly before coming.”

The atmosphere grew warm and tender for a moment. The person dressed in a crisp police uniform grinned foolishly, completely devoid of the sharp, commanding presence of “Captain Lin.” Meanwhile, Jiang Ming, wearing a white shirt paired with a matching coat, buttoned meticulously to the top, was the epitome of cool detachment and professionalism in the eyes of outsiders, the ever-distant “Professor Jiang.” Yet now, her fox-like eyes curved into crescents, soft and brimming with years of unspoken affection, a tenderness she only concealed beneath layers of pretense when Lin Qi glanced her way.

But the sudden beeping of the hospital monitor shattered the rare tranquility. Jiang Ming’s delicate brows furrowed as she said, “This isn’t good. We need to send both souls back to where they belong immediately. The rejection reaction has already started.”

“How do we send them back?”

“Come with me to the Astral Bureau.”

The World of the Talent Show.

On the hospital bed, the frail figure finally opened her eyes. The sudden glare of bright light made Lin Qi squint in confusion. Hadn’t she just been sleeping in class?

She was practically developing PTSD from all this back-and-forth body-hopping. Looking down, she saw a familiar pink-haired head resting beside the bed it was the Jiang Ming she knew.

Relief washed over her, and though she smiled, her peach-blossom eyes, curved like crescent moons, glistened with unshed tears. Lin Qi reached out and gently stroked the soft strands of hair. Despite her calm words, she had been terrified, what if she hadn’t been able to come back?

After all, to the one pulling the strings, she was just a weak soul to be tossed around at will. One moment, she was sent to a new world; the next, she could be yanked back.

Her power wasn’t just insignificant it was nonexistent.

If the puppeteer decided to make her disappear, Lin Qi thought bitterly, what could she do besides rage helplessly?

A teardrop fell onto the stark white hospital blanket, shattering into fragments. In the scattered droplets, Lin Qi seemed to see her own reddened eyes and the pain of utter powerlessness.

“Mmm…”

Her stifled sobs eventually roused Jiang Ming, who had always been a light sleeper. Startled, as if jerked from a nightmare, Jiang Ming trembled before instinctively surging forward to embrace Lin Qi the moment she saw her forced smile.

Her voice was thick with tears. “Where did you go? You scared me to death…”

The arms around her were tight, almost suffocating, but Lin Qi had no desire to pull away. Instead, she held Jiang Ming close, as if clutching a long-lost treasure. For once, her voice cracked with vulnerability. “I, I don’t know where I was. It felt like another world.”

“Will you leave again?”

Lin Qi wanted to answer with absolute certainty “No.” But the moment she opened her mouth, hesitation crept in. Could she really promise she wouldn’t disappear again?

This wasn’t something she could control. And resistance was futile.

The crying in her arms suddenly grew louder, the embrace around her shoulders tightening even more. Jiang Ming was trembling from her sobs, her head nestled against the crook of her neck, nuzzling as if reluctant to let go. In the darkness, her long, fan-like lashes were wet with large teardrops.

“Can’t you just lie to me?”

A sharp pang of pain spread through her chest. Lin Qi held her tighter, her eyes downcast, but all she could see was the pink hair, slightly curled, probably from last night’s stage performance so different from the innocent ponytailed girl she had seen in the previous world.

Still unable to make sense of what was happening, she softened her voice. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave again.”