Volume 1: Little Alpaca
I am on your side!
After Luo Mingyuan was defeated in the competition, Yi Qiu had been in a state of dazed staring.
You Yan continued to watch for a while with a lack of interest. Seemingly finding it boring, she suddenly stood up, casually rubbed Yi Qiu’s little head, and indicated that she was preparing to leave.
Yi Qiu came back to her senses and hurriedly chased after You Yan, asking with her head tilted up: “Master isn’t watching anymore?”
“Boring…” You Yan said, lowering her gaze to glance at Yi Qiu. “Hasn’t the boy you’re most interested in already finished competing?”
Yi Qiu was momentarily stunned, and her four little legs couldn’t help but freeze for a few seconds. By the time she came to her senses, You Yan had already walked far away and wasn’t waiting for her at all.
After a brief silence, Yi Qiu let out a heavy breath. Mentally preparing herself to be spoken to passive-aggressively1 by You Yan, she bounded forward with large strides and opened her mouth with a habitual denial: “I’m not interested in him!”
As it turned out, You Yan, who on normal days would even manage where the little alpaca’s eyeballs were looking, seemed to have had a personality change today. She didn’t say anything more at all, only giving a faint “oh.”
“Eh?” Yi Qiu suddenly felt a bit unused to it. She chased beside You Yan and began to explain, “I just feel that I was the one who suggested signing him up. It was just a whim. Seeing him being ridiculed like that today, I felt a little regretful…”
“So?” You Yan asked back lightly.
“So, so…” Yi Qiu was choked up on the spot.
As an ACGN fan2 who often chatted with people online, she really disliked the words “so what?”
If this were anyone else, she would have thrown a tantrum.
But the person before her was a woman she could never be fierce with, no matter what.
She immediately looked up at the sun and changed the subject in the most blunt way possible: “The weather is nice today!”
You Yan let out a light laugh and said nothing more, just continuing to walk forward unhurriedly, with no clear destination in mind.
Yi Qiu pouted and followed guiltily.
She knew that her little scheme3 could not be hidden from You Yan’s fiery eyes and golden pupils4. If she could, she wouldn’t want to always be telling lies that were obviously absurd, trying to fool someone who already understood.
Fortunately, You Yan had never pushed her too hard. On many occasions and for many things, if she didn’t want to say, she just had to play dumb a little, and You Yan would stop mentioning it, letting it all pass easily.
Yi Qiu thought that this might be a kind of indulgence brought about by the increase in favorability. This indulgence made her feel both apprehensive and moved.
She didn’t know how long this indulgence would last, only that she couldn’t help but be a little presumptuous along with it.
As for whether You Yan was holding a grudge in a roundabout way behind her back, Yi Qiu was unwilling to think too much about it, nor did she dare to, for fear of scaring herself to death.
Today at Xianlu Sect, everywhere was exceptionally quiet except for the Trial Stage.
You Yan had no intention of returning to the guest house. She walked aimlessly on this deserted mountain peak, with a little alpaca following her every step by her side.
The little alpaca’s head was drooping. Since You Yan wasn’t talking to her, she let her own thoughts run wild at the side. But after thinking about so many things over and over, she still couldn’t reach a conclusion.
She knew that she had received a fake script and had long lost the advantage of being able to “predict the future.”
She had also always known that everything that happened in this world, everyone’s personality, and the motives for their actions were all more logical than in the original novel.
But she just couldn’t help but hope, hope that the protagonist could give the author a little face, at least follow the original plot at the key nodes, just to give a lifeline to this unlucky alpaca, right?
However, the reality was a large-scale face-slapping scene.
Everything was like a wild horse that has broken free of its reins5, breaking free from the author’s grasp.
The system wanted her to push the main plot forward according to the original’s direction, but with things having progressed to this point, she really didn’t know how she was supposed to change any of it.
However, after a bout of wild thinking, she finally calmed down from her frustration.
The fact that the system didn’t obliterate her on the spot meant the mission was not considered a failure. Before the timeline for that node officially passed, she still had a chance.
It was just that following the original’s line of thought was definitely not going to work. She had to find another way, to seek other methods of advancing the plot.
Speaking of which, thinking back carefully now, even if the author hadn’t written a bad ending, when she was reading the novel back then, she had cursed the two protagonists of this story in her heart more than once.
Cursing them for not being honest with each other, and even more for not trusting each other. Cursing one for being extremely paranoid and the other for gritting their teeth and enduring. Things that could be clarified in a few sentences, yet the misunderstanding grew bigger and bigger, until in the end, neither was willing to open their heart.
In addition to that, she was also angry at every node that forced the male and female leads towards their descent into darkness, angry that too many characters in the story would stop at nothing to harm the protagonist, each of them living like a tool person whose only purpose was to advance the plot.
But all this anger disappeared after she came to this world.
Everything Yi Qiu saw finally no longer made her so angry. It even made her believe more and more that this was a real world that existed independently of the novel.
Jiang Yuyao did not stand up to speak for Luo Mingyuan in front of everyone as she did in the novel. Therefore, she did not cause everyone to mock Luo Mingyuan for needing to be protected by a woman.
And He Xiuzhu, who had thoroughly enraged Luo Mingyuan in the original novel, did not actually humiliate Luo Mingyuan severely due to the prejudice in his heart, but instead gave this junior brother sufficient respect and recognition.
Perhaps it was also because of this that Luo Mingyuan didn’t need to be obsessed with the outcome of a single competition, and was able to stand up straight, protecting his bottom line of “wanting to be a person” with dignity.
Perhaps, among the thousands of possible changes to the plot, this was the best outcome for Luo Mingyuan.
Did this also mean that in the subsequent plot, Luo Mingyuan would no longer give up on himself so easily and allow himself to fall into boundless darkness?
That being said, the premise of everything was that she could reach that death node.
Now that the original path was blocked, what other path was there to take?
Yi Qiu looked up at You Yan thoughtfully.
You Yan seemed to have noticed her gaze and suddenly looked down at her.
Yi Qiu opened her mouth slightly, originally wanting to say something, but saw You Yan turn her gaze to the distant setting sun and evening clouds.
It was only at this moment that Yi Qiu suddenly realized that the bright sun, which had been hanging high all day, had gradually sunk behind the mountains.
She lowered her head and saw her and You Yan’s shadows, stretched very, very long by the afterglow of the setting sun, so long it was as if by walking together like this, they could walk through a whole life, for a long, long time.
The moment this thought emerged in her mind, Yi Qiu couldn’t help but be startled by herself.
And just then, You Yan suddenly lowered her gaze and asked: “When do you plan to leave?”
Leave? Leave here, and go back to the Demon Realm…
But she couldn’t leave yet. If she left now, wouldn’t she just have to find a place to wait to be obliterated by the system?
After a moment of hesitation, Yi Qiu braced herself and said: “When to leave, and where to go, hasn’t it always been for Master to decide?”
She thought, You Yan probably wouldn’t really leave just like this, right?
Even if she wasn’t interested in the male lead, weren’t the female lead and female number two still here? There were so many immortals who had fallen to the mortal realm, there must be one who was interesting enough for the great villain, right?
As it turned out, no.
You Yan: “Then let’s make it today.”
Hearing this, Yi Qiu instantly panicked.
She abruptly looked up at You Yan, as if trying to find an excuse for herself to stay, but unexpectedly ran straight into You Yan’s smiling-yet-not-smiling eyes.
Yi Qiu: “…”
The bird woman seemed to be teasing her again.
In front of the bird woman, she was always in a state of being completely suppressed.
“As expected, you don’t want to leave.” You Yan said, squatting down and holding the little alpaca’s fluffy head in both hands. “What, exactly, is your purpose?”
“I, I…” Yi Qiu suddenly felt her heart leap into her throat, stuck there, unable to get a single word out.
After a brief stammer, You Yan’s cold fingers slowly moved down to the little alpaca’s neck. With a slight exertion of force from her ten fingers, she scared it into trembling all over, and it couldn’t help but shut its eyes tightly.
In that instant, Yi Qiu couldn’t help but think, could this be the so-called system obliteration?
Perhaps, it was precisely because she had not completed the prerequisite mission for the key node that she had triggered this plot-mandated death.
Her neck was about to be broken, right?
She didn’t know how painful it would be to have her neck snapped, but whether it hurt or not, it would all be over in an instant, right?
But she really didn’t want to die like this, especially at You Yan’s hands…
The favorability was only eighty points away. She had thought that to You Yan, she was already very special, special enough not to be casually slaughtered.
But thinking about it carefully, this specialness only originated from a piece of data, and she couldn’t help but feel very sad.
After all this time, only she had developed real feelings, regarding You Yan as such an important friend. How pathetic, how lamentable…
As the little alpaca thought, the corners of her tightly shut eyes couldn’t help but become moist, but the expected death did not arrive.
You Yan released the little alpaca’s neck. Her index finger gently caressed the fluff by the little one’s eyes, which was damp with tears. Her movements were very gentle.
Yi Qiu timidly opened her eyes.
You Yan actually didn’t kill her…
Did the system suddenly change its mind?
At that moment, Yi Qiu saw You Yan looking at her, not a trace of anger in her gaze, and she stared in a daze for a moment.
【The system has not judged the host’s mission as a failure and will not obliterate the host’s existence for the time being.】
“…” So it was just her overthinking, a false alarm.
“The question from just now, you don’t have to answer it.”
“Ah…” Yi Qiu’s eyes were filled with bewilderment and panic. She wanted to explain, but didn’t know how.
“I will only ask you one thing, answer honestly.” You Yan stared at Yi Qiu and said in a deep voice, “Were you sent by the Heavenly Realm?”
“No! Absolutely not!” Yi Qiu hurriedly denied. “I, I dare to swear a poisonous oath6!”
This was the first time she had answered You Yan’s question so righteously.
That dusk, You Yan looked at her for a long time, and finally blinked with a smile, stood up, and said: “Let’s go back…”
“Go, go back where…” The little alpaca’s voice couldn’t help but tremble.
The next second, she felt as if she had turned into a gust of wind, and everything around her became a blur.
When her vision cleared again, she had been thrown into that familiar guest house, but You Yan was still standing straight at the door, as if she might leave at any moment.
“You Yan!” Yi Qiu stood up and ran to You Yan’s leg, her eyes filled with unconcealable bewilderment and worry.
“I’m going to find something to eat.”
After You Yan spoke, she smiled and rubbed Yi Qiu’s head. She turned as if to leave, but her ankle was encircled by Yi Qiu’s front leg.
The little alpaca lay by You Yan’s feet, her head tilted up, her gaze unusually firm.
“I am on your side!”
Hearing this, You Yan’s eyebrows curved in a smile: “I believe you.”
“Really?!” Yi Qiu couldn’t help but be overjoyed. “I knew you would definitely…”
You Yan extended a finger and gently interrupted Yi Qiu’s words.
She said: “I will believe it, until the day your little life kicks the bucket.”
Yi Qiu: “…”
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