Substitute Alpha Gets Confessed to by Her Ex’s Aunt on a Survival Variety Show – Chapter 178
by Little PandaHongdu Lovers
Tell me when you get the final reward
Two people sat in the dressing room.
“Why didn’t you come find me? There was a phone number on the registration form.” Whenever Liu Yinxi thought about how isolated and helpless she’d been when she first transmigrated into this book, it made her sick to her stomach. If she’d known back then that a teammate had crossed over with her, she would’ve had one more thing to hold on to.
Since what they were discussing was highly confidential, both of them kept their voices down to the faintest whisper.
Han Shuang heard Liu Yinxi’s question, and a look of utter helplessness surfaced on her face. “Captain Liu, do you have a system?”
Liu Yinxi pulled up her system. “I do. A reading System. Can you see it?”
Han Shuang stared at the empty air where Liu was pointing for a moment, shook her head, then swiped at the space in front of herself. “Can you see my system interface?”
Liu Yinxi saw nothing but air. “No.”
Though they had both crossed over from the same world into the same book, their respective transmigration systems couldn’t interact with each other.
Once she’d confirmed that Liu Yinxi had a system, Han Shuang explained. “I didn’t reach out to you because after I realized you might have crossed into this book too, my system placed restrictions on me. It warned me that I couldn’t acknowledge you, or else I’d interfere with the main storyline’s rewriting and cause this transmigrated world to collapse—we’d both be finished. So I never dared to contact you. I could only try to help you from inside the production crew, like fighting for your compensation and getting rescue called in as fast as possible. I didn’t even dare attend your awards ceremony—I was afraid you’d recognize me.”
Got it. Similar to that mandatory rescue mission for Luo Ling.
Liu Yinxi’s heart lurched. “Then is acknowledging me now going to destroy the world?”
Please no—she’d worked so hard to push the main storyline rewrite to 92%, and she and Nan Huaixu had finally entered a relationship. This world absolutely couldn’t collapse.
Han Shuang didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Captain Liu, you’re still the same with your dark humor. How could I joke with my life? When I saw you just now, my system notified me that the restrictions had been lifted and told me I could acknowledge you.”
Liu Yinxi’s mood wasn’t quite so rosy, though. “The system deliberately let us acknowledge each other? Based on my understanding of the system, it has no altruistic tendencies. Ninety-nine percent chance it’s cooking up something big.”
Han Shuang spread her hands. “Maybe. But either way, we can only follow the system’s arrangements. After all, we’re people who’ve already died once.”
Liu Yinxi blamed herself endlessly. “It’s my fault. I relied too much on weather forecasts and didn’t pay enough attention to real-time phenological signs. That’s what caused such a terrible mistake.”
Han Shuang comforted her. “Don’t say that, Captain. That storm was too bizarre—even meteorological experts couldn’t have predicted it. Stop taking the blame on yourself.”
Liu Yinxi had a question. “Han Shuang, on the day we were climbing the peak, you stayed behind at the lower camp because you weren’t feeling well. You were some distance from where the storm hit. Did the rescue team not reach you?”
Han Shuang lowered her gaze, her eyes hollow. “They did. I was taken to a hospital, but I slowly lost consciousness. When I woke up again, I was in the world of the book.”
Liu Yinxi fell silent.
Death was undoubtedly too heavy a topic.
After a moment, Liu Yinxi asked Han Shuang, “Did you find anyone else? You and I both transmigrated—Wang Kou, Gao Miao, and the others might have come through too.”
Han Shuang replied, “I haven’t found anyone. But I don’t think they transmigrated. Based on the commonality that you and I both kept our names and appearances after crossing over, I spent the last few months pulling strings to investigate everyone who shared a name with someone on our team. No matches. I figure there’s a prerequisite for transmigrating into this book—if you didn’t trigger it, you don’t cross over.”
“What kind of prerequisite?”
“Captain Liu, do you remember the train we took when we went to Tibet?”
“I remember. We happened to be sitting together.”
“Right. You were reading this book on your phone, complaining about it the whole time, and you kept dragging me into it too. I ended up reading a few chapters along with you.”
Liu Yinxi raised her eyes, her expression thoughtful. “So you have to have read this book.”
Han Shuang continued, “There’s something else you might not remember. The first time you told me to read this novel, I’d just finished a chapter when the train entered a tunnel. The signal dropped out, and the lights in our entire carriage went out. They came back on after about a minute.”
“Oh, now that you mention it, I remember. That did happen.”
“The train attendant said she’d never seen an entire carriage’s lights go out all at once, and that train had only been in service recently—the lights shouldn’t have failed. Wang Kou even joked at the time, ‘What if it’s a bad omen? Maybe we should turn back.'”
“…”
“…”
No one could have imagined that it truly became a terrible omen in the end.
The entire expedition team—none survived.
Han Shuang spoke softly, her words heavy with the weariness of time. “Captain Liu, at this point there’s no use worrying about science. I think that tunnel was the link between two worlds. I looked up the train records for that day in this world—same date, same time, a similar highland route, same train number. Passengers online reported that the carriage lights went out when they passed through the tunnel. Exactly the same as what we experienced.”
Liu Yinxi pressed a hand to her forehead. “In other words, when someone is aware of a medium that contains a parallel world—this book, for instance—and they happen to be in a place that exists in both worlds, where the same event occurs at the same time and location, it can form an overlap point between the two worlds. Anyone who passes through that overlap point forms a link with a soul in the parallel world. When the soul on one side is critically injured and dies, growing weak, it gets drawn to the other end of the link.”
Han Shuang snapped her fingers. “That’s exactly what I was going to say. As expected of Captain Liu—quick mind, clear logic.”
As for where the original souls of the characters in the book world went, that remained unknown.
According to the original novel’s script, the original host couldn’t survive past the opening either, so naturally her soul’s time was up and her body became vacant. Perhaps that was why, when Liu Yinxi died in the original world, she was able to form a link with the character in the book.
And the overlap point between worlds, the soul-to-soul link, presented itself to the transmigrator in the form of a “system.”
It was the rules. It was truth. It was the mechanism that maintained the balance between both worlds.
Liu Yinxi sighed with endless emotion. What was done was done—she would live well from here on.
She glanced at the wall clock. They’d been talking for nearly twenty minutes, and the wine stain treatment should be about done.
Liu Yinxi stood up. “Let’s exchange WeChat and phone numbers first. We can talk more when we have time. I’ve been out too long—I need to get back.”
Han Shuang walked over to the vanity to touch up her makeup. She looked at Liu Yinxi through the mirror and suddenly blurted out, “No wonder so many Omegas couldn’t win you over back then—your standards are that high. You went and fell for a wealthy film star. But Nan Huaixu really is wonderful. Beautiful, smart, treats you well.”
Liu Yinxi nearly choked on her own spit.
She turned her head with a strange expression. “That—many? Han Shuang, are you messing with me?”
Han Shuang dabbed on powder to touch up her makeup. “Mmhm, I’m messing with you. We’re not in the old world anymore, so it doesn’t matter what I say. Take Vice-Captain Qiu—she was by your side for ten years, and you didn’t give her an inch. You drove her off in the end, and then you went around asking everyone why.”
“…” Liu Yinxi had already reached the door, but she turned back. “You all think I was being heartless? I had no idea what was going on. Qiu Miaoyi wouldn’t say anything straight to my face, I didn’t have time to guess, and I wasn’t interested in her anyway.”
Han Shuang’s gaze went distant. “True. It’s no use if everyone else knows you like someone—you have to let that person know. Too bad I’ll never get the chance to go back and confess to Wang Kou.”
She looked at Liu Yinxi, a smile in her eyes. “Captain Liu, was it Nan Huaixu who confessed to you?”
Liu Yinxi was about to say yes, but then she remembered that Nan Huaixu was a public figure. Even with Han Shuang, she couldn’t reveal something that was between her and Nan Huaixu alone. “Han Shuang, I don’t remember you being this gossipy before.”
Han Shuang laughed. “My bad, Captain.”
She paused, as if remembering something important, and turned serious. “Captain Liu, have you completed your system’s main quest? Do you know what the system’s final reward is?”
“I haven’t finished the main quest yet. Progress is at 92%. You?”
Han Shuang looked somewhat worried. “I’m already at 99%. Coming to Nan Lingxuan’s dinner this time was a task the system gave me—completing it will earn me the final reward. I want to get it right away, but I’m also full of dread about the unknown.”
Liu Yinxi didn’t understand. “Why be afraid? The reward has to be something good, right?”
Han Shuang said, “It’s like beating a game, the curtain falling on a performance, a dream ending—you don’t know what comes next. Maybe it’s just my personality. Always borrowing trouble.”
Liu Yinxi counseled her. “Whatever happens, we’re alive now. What problem can’t we solve? Cherish life and enjoy the sunshine.”
Han Shuang thought about it, then nodded with a smile. “You’re right.”
She waved her hand. “Alright, you were worried about being gone too long, right? Hurry back.”
Liu Yinxi gave her one last instruction. “Han Shuang, when you get the final reward, you have to tell me. I want to know what it is.”
“Okay, don’t worry.”
“Got it, Planner Han. Please look after me on the work front from now on.”
Liu Yinxi patted her shoulder with a smile and walked out of the dressing room.
Back at the private suite, peals of laughter spilled out from inside. Nan Lingxuan was drinking with the heads of the promotional broadcasting department.
Liu Yinxi sat back down beside Nan Huaixu. Nan Huaixu pushed a small bowl toward her—lobster meat and shark fin—alongside a glass of chilled red wine.
Nan Huaixu asked quietly, “Is your outfit okay? Do you need to change?”
Liu Yinxi looked down at her collar. Dark fabric didn’t show stains easily to begin with, and after the emergency rescue with cleaning spray, it was even less noticeable. Unless someone got right up close and studied it, there was no problem.
She replied softly, “It’s fine. No need to change.”
Nan Huaixu gave a small nod and pointed at the bowl. Liu Yinxi polished off its contents in one go.
The dinner was a lively affair, and a fruitful one at that.
On the way home, Nan Huaixu kept excitedly telling Liu Yinxi about her new company’s plans.
“I already have an idea for our first film.”
“I only just found out that the person pressuring me these past two years wasn’t Nan Lingxuan—it was Mami. She’s been using me to compete for the Nan family’s assets since I was little, and it only got worse.”
“Thank goodness jiejie helped make the connection. We secured investments and a lot of networking resources today. Honestly, if Mami’s influence had kept crushing me, the film probably would’ve gotten blocked in censorship review even if I managed to make it.”
They got out of the car into the villa’s underground garage.
Nan Huaixu wrapped her arms around Liu Yinxi’s neck, pressing herself softly against her. Her breath carried the sweet, wine-like fragrance of honeyed flowers, and with flushed cheeks, she kissed Liu Yinxi’s lips. “Xixi, I’m so happy today. Tell me—you’ll love me for the rest of your life, and you’ll always be by my side, right?”
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