After Transmigrating into a Book, I Was Bent by the Villainess (GL) - Chapter 8

Xia Chuci: “System, what’s going on? We obviously rolled down in the same spot, so why is it taking so long to find Su Yiming?”

System: [Pay 25 Reader Enjoyment Level to unlock Simple Mode. Does the host wish to purchase it? Friendly reminder: The host currently only has 25 Reader Enjoyment Level.]

Xia Chuci felt like she was about to spit up a mouthful of old bl00d: “Does this Simple Mode only have the navigation function? The plot hasn’t gotten simpler at all! You should just rename it ‘Map Navigation’.”

System: [You get what you pay for.]

Xia Chuci took a few deep breaths, quoting Miss Guo’s timeless wisdom to admonish herself: The world is so beautiful, yet I’m so irritable. This is not good, not good.

Poverty makes a hero helpless. Poverty makes people industrious and hardworking.

Just as she was mentally preparing herself to embark on the arduous journey of finding the major villain, a series of heavenly sounds suddenly rang in her ears from the system:

[Congratulations to the host for completing the Beginner Mission and being promoted to a VIP user! The OOC function is deactivated, and Reader Enjoyment Level +1000. From now on, the host has complete control over the heroine “Xia Chuci” account. Keep up the good work, dear!]

[Villain Hatred Value increased. Character Correlation +100]

[Obtained Advanced Item “Signal Flare.” Protagonist Power +50]

[Shaped Protagonist’s Multi-faceted Image, Reader Enjoyment Level +200. Current total Reader Enjoyment Level: 1225]

What kind of miraculous operation is this? A golden rainstorm right at the start! It’s making her dizzy! Happiness came too suddenly!

It must be that the team leader and his backup had arrived and captured the group of bandits based on the location of the flare she fired. That’s some impressive efficiency.

Instantly transforming from a pauper to a nouveau riche, Xia Chuci waved her hand grandly, full of spirit: “System, give me Simple Mode. I’m rich!”

With the map navigation—ah, no, Simple Mode—it didn’t take long before she found Su Yiming lying motionless.

Xia Chuci’s heart skipped a beat. The major villain better not have died just like that!

She quickly reached out to check her breathing. Fortunately, her breathing was steady and strong. There was no immediate danger to her life.

Xia Chuci breathed a sigh of relief. She gently called her name twice but didn’t dare to move her body easily, fearing secondary injury.

Su Yiming whimpered twice, slowly opened her eyes, and immediately reached out to push away the face full of concern.

Xia Chuci hadn’t anticipated this reaction. Caught off guard, she was pushed and tumbled backward, falling heavily. Fortunately, she didn’t hit her head, or it would have been a great loss.

However, she could understand. After all, earlier on the mountain, she had turned against her and revealed a hypocritical and ugly side that everyone despised and wanted to kill.

Who, upon opening their eyes and seeing the person they utterly detested, could resist slapping them? Su Yiming merely pushed her down, which was already incredibly merciful.

Xia Chuci stood up, dusted off her butt, and said aggrievedly, “Why did you push me?”

Su Yiming didn’t want to talk to her and tried to stand up and leave.

Unexpectedly, before she could take a step, she plopped down where she was.

A sharp pain shot up her leg. Su Yiming gritted her teeth, not crying out in pain. She must have twisted her ankle when she rolled down the mountain.

Xia Chuci quickly noticed her injured plight and secretly mused: Heh heh, let’s see where you can run off to now.

She immediately rushed over, her face full of concern, and asked, “What’s wrong? Where are you hurt? Let me see.” As soon as she finished speaking, she began feeling around her, completely disregarding the other person’s consent.

In the commotion, Su Yiming took some effort to finally grab the hands that were wandering over her body and yelled resentfully, “What are you doing? Get lost!”

Tsk tsk, throwing a temper, aren’t we?

Xia Chuci forced out two lines of clear tears and choked, “I’m sorry. You can be angry at me, but don’t take it out on your own body. Your injury can’t be delayed. Come, let me see. Where did you get hurt?”

Su Yiming wasn’t fooled and shouted, “Get out! I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“Listen to my explanation. Everything I said before was just to deceive Jiao Shini so I could find a chance to get away.”

Su Yiming was unmoved. Xia Chuci redoubled her efforts: “Although you practice Taekwondo, you can only protect yourself at best. I am utterly defenseless and would definitely drag you down, so we couldn’t go head-to-head. We had to use wits.”

Su Yiming’s tightly-drawn face finally eased a little, but she still didn’t entirely believe Xia Chuci’s nonsense.

Sigh, once bitten by a snake, one fears a rope for ten years. What could she do? She could only continue to bamboozle her.

Xia Chuci sincerely said, “Everything I said is true. Think about it, if I really wanted to harm you, and genuinely didn’t care about you at all, why would I risk my life jumping down to find you?”

Su Yiming finally looked her straight in the eye, with a probing expression.

Xia Chuci immediately became spirited, her eyes firm, and she applied another strong dose: “Believe it or not, I swear that if anything happens to you, I won’t be able to live either.”

Heaven knows, this one sentence is truly the absolute truth!

If the major villain dies before she turns evil, this novel will be scrapped, and she, as the heroine, will also be dead.

Xia Chuci’s oath-like words struck heavily at her heart, unleashing a massive shockwave that overwhelmed her mind.

Su Yiming couldn’t fully recover for a long time. Her tongue was stiff, and she stammered, “Am I… really… that important to you?”

Xia Chuci spoke without any reservation, firmly stating, “Of course. In this world, neither of us can do without the other.”

At that moment, Su Yiming suddenly felt her heart stop. Her mind was a chaos, with only the phrase “neither of us can do without the other” echoing clearly.

A strange emotion was on the verge of bursting forth. Her heart quickened, and the subsequent flutter was something she would never forget.

So, she was that important in her heart!

She was completely unaware that a simple phrase she accidentally uttered had led Su Yiming to a huge misunderstanding…

Xia Chuci saw her eyes welling up with tears of emotion and mused: She was just pitted against and nearly died a little while ago, and now she’s pacified with a few words. The un-blackened major villain is too easy to fool.

Her phone had no signal, so she couldn’t contact the outside world. With the system, finding the way back to the camp was not a worry. The worry was Su Yiming’s injured foot, which made walking impossible.

Xia Chuci turned her back to her, squatted down, and looked back, saying, “Come on up. I’ll carry you.”

Su Yiming was taken aback, then shook her head, refusing, “No need. You can’t carry me.”

Xia Chuci insisted, “How do you know if you don’t try? Come on.”

Su Yiming still didn’t move, looking at her stubbornly.

Heh! This little girl is really stubborn. Xia Chuci explained, “Don’t underestimate me. I started picking firewood in the mountains before I was ten, carrying a basketful at a time. Hurry up. We don’t know if there are snakes here. We can’t stay too long.”

Su Yiming had to compromise. She climbed onto her small shoulders and back, worried about crushing her, and instructed, “If you feel tired, put me down. Don’t push yourself, okay?”

Xia Chuci nodded, picked her up, and walked in the direction indicated by the system.

Xia Chuci complained about the system charging 25 Enjoyment Level every time she used “Simple Mode”:

“System, charging by the usage count for navigation—you’re making a killing! I’m a returning customer, and a VIP user, too. Can’t you give a discount or something?”

System: [Exclusive store. No negotiation. No discounts.]

Xia Chuci: “This is coercive selling! What’s the number for the Consumer Protection Association?”

System: [……]

The system played dead. Xia Chuci had no choice but to keep going, walking and climbing with difficulty.

She felt like she had been walking for a century, but according to the system’s timer, only about twenty minutes had passed. This mountain path was despairingly long.

Her stumbling footsteps betrayed her embarrassing state of physical exhaustion. Su Yiming thoughtfully gave the struggling Miss Xia an excuse to stop: “Let’s rest for a bit. I’m tired.”

Xia Chuci placed her on a large rock. Ignoring her own arms scraped by weeds and branches, she first checked the injured person’s condition. Because she had fallen earlier, the person on her back had also tumbled, and she wasn’t sure if there was any secondary injury.

Su Yiming comforted her, “I’m fine. The mountain path here is too difficult to walk, and it’s so dark that we can’t see the road clearly. Carrying me, you might not even make it out by dawn. I actually have an idea.”

“What idea?”

“You go out first, and I’ll wait here for you to bring people back to rescue me.”

“No way. How can I leave you here alone? It’s too dangerous.”

Xia Chuci refused her suggestion without a second thought.

No matter how much Su Yiming tried to persuade her, she wouldn’t budge. Later, she even turned her back, pouting, and refused to speak.

Su Yiming truly couldn’t do anything about her and had to abandon the idea. This wasn’t some deep mountain forest. When dawn broke, the company’s people would naturally find them.

Since they decided to rest where they were and wait for rescue, they couldn’t just sit there without talking. In the end, Su Yiming was the one to break the ice: “Are you sleepy? You sleep first, and I’ll keep watch.”

Xia Chuci looked up at the starless night sky and said, “I’m not sleepy, and there’s no bed here, so I can’t sleep. How about you, are you tired?”

Su Yiming lay on the large rock, her head resting on her arms, and said, “I can’t sleep either. It’s a long night. How about we chat? Hmm… Let’s talk about you. I don’t know anything about you.”

Yay? Is it already time for the heart-to-heart talk?

Xia Chuci lay down next to her and said, “I was abandoned at birth. My grandmother found me when she was gathering firewood in the mountains. After my grandmother passed away, I was adopted by my current foster parents.”

Su Yiming asked with concern, “Were they good to you?”

Xia Chuci replied calmly, “Not exactly good, but I grew up safe and sound, so no matter what, I still have to thank them for the kindness of raising me.”

How could the life of an adopted daughter be easy? She must have suffered a lot over the years.

Su Yiming had already conjured a melodrama of child abuse in her mind. Thinking back to the times she’d heard some classmates secretly mock Xia Chuci for being poor and shabby, her heart ached.

She asked curiously, “Have you ever thought about finding your biological parents?”

Xia Chuci thought that the original host probably did, but for her, she would rather never find them, because all the tragedies in this novel began with the plot twist of revealing the true and false heiresses.

Once her true identity was revealed, Su Yiming would turn evil, the male and female leads would get together legitimately, and other supporting characters would be dragged into the ensuing drama. In the end, no one would be spared except for the male and female leads.

She dearly wished time could just stop, allowing her to simply eat, drink, and play around every day. Moreover, she had now attached herself to a rich patron like Su Yiming. Her life would naturally be good from now on. Why seek trouble?

But the tragedy was that her fate was not hers to control. The development of the plot was already predestined, and she couldn’t change it.

Xia Chuci sighed, “Let fate decide. Thinking too much about this won’t help.”

Su Yiming thought she was pretending not to care because she felt hopeless, so she comforted her, “Until you find your biological parents, I will be with you. We are good friends now, aren’t we?”

Xia Chuci spoke without thinking, blurting out, “If I find them, will you leave me?”

Su Yiming was stunned. A strong sense of protectiveness welled up in her chest.

Those hopeful eyes, unknowingly, captivated her senses. She murmured, “No, I won’t.”

After a moment of silence, Su Yiming solemnly said, “As long as you don’t chase me away, I will never leave you.”

…

The atmosphere suddenly became strange and awkward. Xia Chuci blinked confusedly, wondering: What’s with this sworn tone? Do good friends also need to make solemn vows?

Suddenly, the system prompted: [Su Yiming’s Favorability increased. Reader Enjoyment Level +100. Current Enjoyment Level: 1275]

Huh???

The villain’s favorability towards the heroine increasing makes readers happy?

Xia Chuci expressed: I don’t understand your world!

Never mind. Bonus points are a good thing. It seemed she had found a prosperous path to wealth.

Cling to the thigh and boost favorability—the eternal strategy!

Xia Chuci was thrilled with her full harvest.

Su Yiming further expressed her loyalty: “In the future, if anyone bullies you, just tell me, and I will protect you.”

Ah~ What a reliable thigh! At this moment, she felt like she was flying with happiness. The little person in her heart was dancing in circles.