She Was Sentenced to Life Imprisonment [Unlimited] - Chapter 55

Chapter 55: Rose Manor (20)

◎I Was Wrong◎

The biting cold wind, when it swept across the face, made the skin hurt.

The vast expanse of roses was like a surging sea of bl00d, like an abyss, about to drag people into it.

A crimson figure walked unsteadily, no longer noble and elegant. Her high heels stepped on rose stems that she once treasured, and the howling cold wind made her tall figure appear lonely and sorrowful.

She remembered. She had died, at the hands of that group of self-righteous people.

“Corey.” She spoke, her throat bitter and her heart in agony.

“Run, I don’t like perfume anymore, I don’t want perfume!”

Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her face, dripping onto the withered rose she clutched tightly in her hand.

Corey met her eyes, which were on the verge of collapse. Her heart ached, and sadness filled her gaze. She extended a hand to touch her, an action so normal that it was now done with extreme care.

“Henrietta, I love you, so I pleaded with Him to bring you back to my side… Don’t you understand?” Corey’s hand clutched her heart, which was throbbing with pain, but her face was tender.

Henrietta suddenly fell to the ground, her eyes reflecting the brilliant sea of flowers, but they were hollow and numb. She shook her head blankly at Corey, her voice trembling with a heart-wrenching sob.

“No, you’re doing this by trading your life for one day of mine. I won’t be happy, you know that.”

Only when her memories returned did she realize that her being alive was harming the other person. This rose garden was the price the other person paid to keep her alive.

Her hand, covered by a velvet glove, covered her face. She sobbed softly, then spoke again in broken sentences.

“Corey, if only you admitted I was sick, you could leave the manor, leave this place, and live a good life, couldn’t you? I’m just a sick person. They said I was sick, so can’t you just pretend I am?!”

Her words were incoherent, yet every single one was filled with the hope that Corey could live.

Corey knelt down with a pained expression and held her wrist. She was as careful as if she were touching a precious treasure. Hearing Henrietta’s sigh, she said gently,

“Henrietta, how could I leave you? You can try to drive me away, but I don’t want you to debase yourself like this.”

Henrietta lowered her hand, looking at the gentle person in front of her. The tears, however, were unstoppable, blurring the figure before her, but she knew that the other person would always be with her, even in death.

An invisible force descended in the air. As Henrietta’s emotions fluctuated intensely, the roses twisted, slithering out like snakes, wriggling on the ground in a dense, nauseating mass.

Henrietta’s hand caressed the face before her, with a look of longing, nostalgia, and sadness. She said,

“Corey, I was wrong…”

I was wrong to be born this way, I was wrong for implicating you, and I was even more wrong to let my death become your nightmare…

Everything was wrong.

Her repentance was something even the devil wouldn’t listen to.

Corey opened her mouth but found that an invisible force was stopping her.

She couldn’t speak, and could only watch as the person in front of her slowly collapsed, went mad, and joined her in death.

Just then, a clear and indifferent voice arrived, like a trickling stream, bringing a sudden realization.

“Miss Henrietta, I can answer your question now. I don’t think you were wrong.”

As she spoke, the invisible force’s immense pressure suddenly descended, but it was no match for the pressure exerted by the long blade in her hand.

It was trying to stop her; it wanted Henrietta to go mad.

Upon hearing this, Henrietta’s sobs stopped. She looked in the direction of the voice. The person was backlit, her face indistinct. As she drew closer, they finally saw that it was the sickly girl.

Her pale hair glowed in the moonlight. Though her delicate, pale face was indifferent, her eyes shone like stars. Looking at them, they held a certain, inexplicable determination.

She was very much like the deity that had been summoned years ago. The only difference from that deity’s icy indifference was an added touch of gentle emotion.

Perhaps because she had never heard anyone say she wasn’t wrong, Henrietta’s voice trembled again. Hope ignited in her eyes, and the rampant, bizarre roses around her quieted down.

“Then my illness…”

Jiang Nan handed the object in her hand to Henrietta, speaking calmly but with certainty.

“Miss Henrietta, you’re not sick. The world is.”

Hearing her reply, Henrietta’s eyes showed relief. A smile slowly crept onto her lips as she murmured to herself,

“I knew it, I just knew it…”

The object in her hand flashed with a silver light. She saw the rings she had customized for them.

Then, her gaze suddenly darted to Corey. With a beautiful face devoid of color, her smile was as bright as it had been when they first met. She said,

“Corey, let’s go to hell together.”

Since they were destined to fail, why not go to hell and entangle with each other there?

Corey was visibly stunned for a moment, but after she recovered, she smiled knowingly and said,

“It’s my honor.”

【Warning! Players are forbidden from interfering with the boss! Kill the boss immediately!】

Wrongful alarm bells rang all around, and the system’s cold, mechanical voice echoed throughout the entire instance.

The power forcibly injected into this world made the roses, which had quieted down, become rampant and terrifying again, even though Henrietta had calmed down.

The second floor of the castle suddenly exploded. Roses climbing the walls instantly surrounded the explosion site, and the castle was completely entangled in roses, as if desperately trying to prevent something from getting out.

Seeing this, Jiang Nan’s eyes narrowed slightly. She knew that her stance had made the main god in charge of this instance panic, and it was intervening forcefully.

She remembered something and immediately asked,

“What did Gabriel ask us to dig up from behind the castle?”

“My corpse.” Henrietta answered calmly, as if she wasn’t talking about herself.

Corey continued to explain her words for her, looking at the castle with a smile and a lingering gaze.

“Henrietta and this place live and die together.”

Her demise also represents the demise of this place—it’s the ending this place has decided for her.

“I see.” Jiang Nan said.

She pondered for a moment, then asked the last question she wanted an answer to.

“Who is Thanatos?”

She hadn’t expected the voice of that mad woman, which had only appeared once before, to surface in this instance.

Perhaps not expecting Jiang Nan to ask this question, both of them were taken aback. In the end, Corey was the first to react. The emotion in her eyes turned heavy, as if she was remembering something. She said,

“I only know that He is a red-haired, purple-eyed deity. He is the embodiment of death.”

Red hair soaked in bl00d, purple eyes that looked on the world with indifference.

When Henrietta died, she had summoned the deity and begged Him to return Henrietta’s soul.

But the deity’s appearance was a taboo. Even though she looked closely, she only saw a pair of purple pupils without joy or sorrow, and hair like a blazing sun or like bl00d. When He appeared, He was devoid of emotional waves, as if He treated all things in the world with indifferent coldness.

But she distinctly remembered that Thanatos had smiled at that moment, an unrestrained, arrogant, and terrifying murderous intent.

Hearing Corey’s words, Jiang Nan fell into thought. A figure flashed through her mind—that of Luo Ning.

But she quickly dismissed the idea, or rather, was forced to because of insufficient evidence.

Speaking of this, something flashed through Henrietta’s mind. She frowned and spoke seriously, with a hint of a warning for Jiang Nan.

“I’m extremely sensitive to scent. The person beside you has the aura of death on her.”

Her words were a veiled warning to Jiang Nan, but Jiang Nan, who was preoccupied, interpreted them differently.

“I know. She’s not human.”

Henrietta looked at her deeply, then sighed and said,

“Jiang Nan, as a fellow traveler, I must warn you. She has no emotions. Don’t try to invest feelings in her.”

“I have already bestowed health upon you. Kill us, and we will send you out.”

That rose was her blessing, and also her means of manipulation.

“You won’t die.” Jiang Nan said calmly, but with an unquestionable firmness.

“We won’t die, we’ll just continue to enter the cycle of the world, repeating endlessly.” Corey reached out and clasped the hand of the person beside her tightly.

“Its arrival made me forcibly remember, and it wants me to go mad and kill you in advance. At the same time, we realized that we cannot resist it, and we cannot, for our own selfish desires, let you complete an impossible mission. This would violate its rules.”

“I think our death can give you freedom, and it will be a worthy death.”

They spoke calmly, their gazes directed toward the castle wrapped in roses. Something was about to break out from within.

They couldn’t resist the descent of that terrifying force, which made them realize that having Jiang Nan do this was no different from sending her to her death.

Therefore, they could only choose to give up.

A hint of an unreadable emotion flashed in Jiang Nan’s eyes as she looked at them. She spoke with extreme firmness.

“What I said was, you won’t die. Please rest assured, I don’t like contemptible people.”

As if they hadn’t understood Jiang Nan’s words, they looked confused and asked,

“Why?”

In their eyes, they couldn’t get a victory over Gabriel; there was only endless failure, just like the punishment this world was giving them.

That’s why they assumed that only their deaths could allow Jiang Nan and the others to leave.

Jiang Nan didn’t have time to explain. At that moment, Yan Xin and the others ran out, having heard the explosion on the second floor, and found Jiang Nan.

“Why are you here? A bunch of vultures suddenly appeared inside and bit off the roses.” Yan Xin, out of breath after rushing out, frowned as she asked and warned her.

Henrietta and Corey had already disappeared from the area, leaving only Jiang Nan standing alone.

Jiang Nan didn’t answer her question, instead frowning in thought.

Without Henrietta and Corey’s suppression, those mutant vultures with their exchanged souls began to attack under Gabriel’s control.

“Is Henrietta not here?” Lin Jia looked around, then asked Jiang Nan.

Jiang Nan shook her head, not intending to reveal Henrietta and the others’ whereabouts.

“What did you all hear?” Jiang Nan’s gaze swept over them as she asked softly.

They fell silent. Yang Yi quickly came out with a laugh, changing the subject.

“Nothing much. Just wanted to know if we still need to make perfume.”

Jiang Nan’s eyes narrowed slightly. She could see that everyone had different expressions and were lying.

Why would they lie about finding Henrietta? Jiang Nan thought of a possibility.

The system, seeing that Henrietta had no chance of winning against Gabriel, issued a command to the other players to help Gabriel kill Henrietta the moment Gabriel came out of the secret room.

For this, Jiang Nan couldn’t stop others’ actions. They wanted to leave the instance, and there was nothing wrong with that.

Jiang Nan walked past them, heading toward the back of the castle to find Luo Ning.

“Where are you going?” Yan Xin was a bit displeased with her attitude and shouted at her back.

The surrounding wind was too loud, and they didn’t hear Jiang Nan’s reply, which made Yan Xin even more upset. She said,

“She must know where Henrietta went.”

When the second floor exploded, a man appeared, and they also received a task from the system.

But since they all heard the task, why did Jiang Nan seem unwilling to go with them?