The thousand-petaled plum blossoms drifted down like a rain of blood.
In a red robe, Gong Yu walked over to the woman, flames seeming to flicker around her. She reached out, lifting the woman who had collapsed on the desk, gently wiping away the blood at her lips.
Gong Yu then carried the woman back to her room, covering her with a blanket and speaking softly, "Sleep, Changqin. When you wake up, not only will you forget everything that happened today, but you will also forget about Gu Baiyi."
"You don't need to do anything; I'll do it all for you."
Before Ji Rong could even think about why Gong Yu was doing this, the next moment, she was back in her sea of consciousness.
The falling plum petals were still vivid in her mind.
Ji Rong opened her eyes and noticed that the three water columns in her consciousness were gone.
Only one water column remained, with the final memory ball floating above it.
Ji Rong thought, if the original owner hadn't poisoned Gu Baiyi but was instead poisoned by Gong Yu, that would make sense.
Gong Yu was skilled in talismans and medicine, so it was certainly within her abilities to hide poison in an invisible form.
But what was Gong Yu's motive?
Did she want to kill Gu Baiyi simply because she was of the Heavenly Demon lineage?
Ji Rong had a feeling that the heroine might be connected to the legend of the five swords.
Perhaps Gu Baiyi had something that could help Mei He, which was why Mei He had picked her up.
After watching the original owner's two memories, Ji Rong was filled with even more questions. She could no longer brush it off as "because the plot was designed that way."
So, she reached out and grabbed the memory ball, speaking to the system: "I'll take the last one too."
[Converting for player...]
[Congratulations, player! Conversion successful. You will be moved to another dimension.]
The third memory ball shattered in Ji Rong's hands, turning to powder and swirling into the water column's vortex.
The scene was blurry, and Ji Rong's soul hovered in the air. She could vaguely see that there were many people standing in the Judgment Hall.
Looking through the hazy image, she guessed this memory was likely from the sect's trial day.
As expected, though the image was unclear, the voice coming from the hall was unmistakably clear: "Inner disciple Gu Baiyi harmed her fellow disciples. Her crimes are unforgivable. Her cultivation will be abolished, and she will be expelled from the inner sect…"
Ji Rong listened to the voice and thought, based on the game's plot, this person should be Ye Yizhou. As the chief elder of the disciplinary department, he would be the one reading out the judgment.
Then, she heard Shen Mingyun speak to the original owner: "Disciple Ji, since you've been wronged, you'll be the one to carry out the sentence."
In the blurred scene, Ji Rong could just make out Shen Mingyun handing the Judgment Hall's token to the original owner.
The original owner sat in her seat, watching Gu Baiyi, who was shackled in chains.
She frowned but didn't reach out to take the token.
Only now did the image become clear.
At this moment, Ji Rong floated above, clearly seeing Gu Baiyi's bloodied ankles, and her arms and hands covered in lash marks.
Gu Baiyi wore a bloodstained prison uniform, standing in the center of the hall, gazing at the original owner. She moved her lips, as if wanting to say something, but in the end, she said nothing.
The woman looked at Gu Baiyi with indifference and thought:
"Who is she?"
"Why are they saying she poisoned me?"
Ji Rong looked at the original owner's furrowed brows and fell silent.
Immediately, the cold, mechanical voice rang out.
It lacked warmth, and Ji Rong instantly recognized it wasn't her pathetic system.
[Please complete the "Abolish Cultivation" task.]
The woman's eyebrows remained furrowed, and she asked, "If I don't remember this event, why do I need to abolish her cultivation?"
The mechanical voice didn't respond to her question but instead issued a warning.
[Please complete the task promptly.]
[You must finish within one minute, or the system will take emergency measures.]
The woman stubbornly asked, "Why should I?"
"Why should I listen to you?"
However, the original owner's system was cold-hearted.
[Time's up.]
[The system will force you to complete the task.]
In an instant, the woman's brows gradually relaxed, and her expression became indifferent.
She nodded slightly, reaching out to take the token from Shen Mingyun.
Unlike her usual detached indifference, the woman's demeanor now exuded an icy coldness that seemed to come from her very bones.
She looked down at Gu Baiyi from above, her gaze filled with the same arrogance one might have toward a servant who had no choice but to obey.
Perhaps it wasn't arrogance, but a kind of haughty indifference that saw nothing as worth noticing.
Just as Ji Rong was fixated on the woman, the woman suddenly looked away from Gu Baiyi and lifted her gaze toward the place where Ji Rong's soul was floating.
Though Ji Rong knew she was inside a memory ball, and the original owner's system couldn't see her, she clearly felt that, in that fleeting moment, the woman had looked directly at her.
The woman's lips curled into an enigmatic smile.
It was like looking into the deep, poisonous eyes of a serpent, and Ji Rong felt a chill run down her spine. She was certain the original owner's system had seen her.
But in the next moment, the woman looked away, drew her Qinghe Sword, and coldly regarded Gu Baiyi, still bound in chains.
Gu Baiyi stared blankly at the woman walking toward her. Just like that day, she wanted to smile at the woman.
But she felt so dirty, and her senior sister's clothes were so clean.
Gu Baiyi didn't know if her senior sister would abolish her cultivation. She only knew that her senior sister had believed someone else but not her.
Of course, with the evidence as clear as day, she didn't blame her senior sister.
But when the silver sword pierced her dantian, the pain was unbearable.
She couldn't manage a smile for the woman, and with weak knees, she collapsed onto the hall floor.
Gu Baiyi propped herself up with one hand against the floor tiles, trying to rise, but her dantian was destroyed. In the end, she couldn't summon the strength and collapsed again.
Her body curled into a ball, and at the peak of her pain, she saw the woman's shoes.
They were white, embroidered with a thousand-petal plum design, now stained with her blood, making them look slightly dirty.
The disciples standing by, even though they barely knew Gu Baiyi, couldn't bear to watch and covered their eyes.
The woman, drawing out her silver sword, looked down at Gu Baiyi, curled up in a pool of blood, her expression unchanged.
When Shen Mingyun announced the execution was over, Ye Yizhou furrowed his brow and called for the medical disciples, instructing them to treat Gu Baiyi's injuries.
At some point, Ji Rong's soul had drifted down from the air, standing by Gu Baiyi's side.
She silently gazed at the figure on the floor.
For a long time, she couldn't speak.
The blood blurred Gu Baiyi's vision; she felt pain all over. She saw the medical disciples' lips moving, as if speaking to her, but she couldn't understand why they would try to save her when they clearly wanted to turn her into a cripple.
Thinking of this, Gu Baiyi felt a deep sense of grievance, and tears welled up in her eyes.
As she cried, she felt embarrassed and tried to wipe away her tears, but with her dantian shattered, she lacked the strength. Her hand, weakly raised, fell back into the blood.
Ji Rong, seeing the blood everywhere, stood helplessly by Gu Baiyi, not knowing what to do.
Then, she squatted down, trembling as she reached out, trying to wipe away Gu Baiyi's tears.
"Don't cry, don't cry. You're the heroine, how can you cry? It'll stop hurting soon."
But Ji Rong watched in helpless frustration as her finger passed through Gu Baiyi's face, unable to touch the tear.
The few drops of water, mixed with blood, fell into Gu Baiyi's hair.
Ji Rong reached for Gu Baiyi's face, but couldn't touch it. Trying to wipe her tears didn't work either.
So, she withdrew her hand and wiped her face. She looked at her hand, covered in tears.
"Damn it."
Ji Rong was so angry she couldn't hold back. "Why the hell can I wipe my own tears but not the heroine's?"
[Dear player, this is just the original owner's memory, so you have no control. You can't change what has already happened.]
"Then why could I go back in time and meet Gong Yu?" Ji Rong retorted.
[Because you changed an unmade choice, not the choices already made by the original owner.]
Fuming, Ji Rong was about to curse the useless system when, on the other side, the woman, holding the blood-soaked sword, shook her head and said, "It's fate, this is the will of heaven. How can you defy it?"
The medical disciples around Gu Baiyi looked at the woman with her cold words and felt she was heartless.
Others thought the woman's words were directed at Gu Baiyi, but Ji Rong knew that the woman had been looking directly at the place where her soul was hovering.
The woman, dressed in a blood-stained gown, had a faint smile on her face. Her lips moved silently, saying:
"I, see, you."
Upon hearing this, Ji Rong wiped her tears, stood up, and without fear, met the woman's gaze. "I'm not afraid of you."
"Who the hell are you? What kind of crappy system is this, and what foolish heaven's will? I don't fear you."
"You want to control me? Go to hell."
Her words were far from polite, but they didn't provoke the woman.
The woman simply smiled at her, turned, picked up the blood-soaked sword, and stepped through the crowd, slowly walking out of the Court of Judgment.
A mechanical voice sounded.
[Ding! Item use has ended.]
[The player is about to return to their original plane.]
Dust flew up in the great hall.
Ji Rong watched as the woman, wearing those blood-stained shoes, gradually faded into the distance.
…
Yanhui Pavilion was still snowing.
Ji Rong came back to her senses and stared blankly at the wine cup in her hand.
She took a deep breath.
"Damn it. What hidden item? Not only did it cost achievement points, but it also ruined my CP."
"Fine, the CP collapsed, but my new CP got ruined too."
"Not just once, but twice."
"Once from the original owner, and the second time... by me, a year ago."
"Damn, this is just ridiculous."
Just as Ji Rong was about to lose herself in her anger, a call suddenly broke her thoughts.
The voice was clear, like Liu Ningxue's.
And what Liu Ningxue called out made Ji Rong almost drop her wine glass.
"Senior Sister! Senior Sister, where are you?"
"Elder Gong is looking for you!"