In the car, Xue Ji was deeply confused and quickly tried to explain what had happened earlier with Ling Xiaoxiao.
But her parents didn’t want to hear any of it. No matter how much she explained, their resolve didn’t waver.
Her father, while keeping his eyes on the road, said, “Even if all this nonsense about your past lives is true, how could being with someone so obsessive not be harmful to you?”
“Xiao Ji, do you honestly feel happy spending time with someone like that?” her mother followed up.
“I… I…” Xue Ji was left speechless.
There had been harm—so much so that Ling Xiaoxiao had nearly killed her. If her parents ever found out about that, the scene back there wouldn’t have ended so calmly.
‘To be honest, I can’t say I’ve been happy during this time with Ling Xiaoxiao either.’
Xue Ji thought back. From the moment she took Ling Xiaoxiao in, her life had been invaded without consent. It was hard to call it happiness—except, maybe, for the part where Ling Xiaoxiao kept forcing snacks into her mouth.
“Anyway, since both of us have retired, we’ve saved up enough to support ourselves from now on. Xiao Ji, you’ll come with us to Yun City to live.”
Xue Ji’s father had already planned out their family’s future. They had missed too much of her childhood, and now they wanted to make up for all those lost years.
The fact that Xue Ji had turned into a girl only made their guilt heavier. They couldn’t let her face things alone anymore. And they certainly couldn’t let someone like Ling Xiaoxiao—someone with such questionable intentions—meddle in her life.
“We were never around when you were little, and we couldn’t even be by your side when you went through this change. You must have felt so much pressure, right?”
Xue Ji was gently pulled into her mother’s arms. As a child, her parents were rarely there; as she grew older, the distance only widened. Being wrapped in such tenderness now felt unfamiliar to her.
The fear she had been suppressing finally released itself in her mother’s embrace. Becoming a girl was nothing like the idealized versions shown in novels and comics.
She had to adapt to her transformed body, endure emotional instability, and resist the internal conflict of self-identity. To forget everything she didn’t want to face, she threw herself recklessly into special forces missions.
Over the past few months, aside from occasionally returning to school, she took on high-risk missions one after another. Sometimes she didn’t even remember what missions she had completed; Ling Xiaoxiao collected her rewards for her.
“Xiao Ji, I want to ask you something, and you have to be honest.” Her mother gently ruffled the white-haired girl’s head with immense tenderness.
“Mm,” Xue Ji replied, her voice trembling uncontrollably.
“Have you had your period?”
Seeing Xue Ji’s blank, uncomprehending expression, her mother whispered further into her ear.
Only then did Xue Ji realize—there seemed to be a gap in her memory.
“I… I think I have?” Her expression twisted with pain. The forgotten pain, the flashes of red, slowly resurfaced.
“I forgot…”
And then, she remembered. The missing days in her memory came flooding back. Along with those memories, an overwhelming nausea hit her, making her gag.
When tears blurred her vision, two fragments emerged.
“Just be yourself.”
The young woman in the ru skirt had said that to her the first time they met, with an expression full of worry.
“There’s no need to be afraid. You are you.” That unfamiliar voice in the secret realm’s lake—it seemed like it was worried about her.
Her condition was far more severe than she had realized. As a sage, her instinct had been to bury these dissonant memories.
But there had also been another force pushing her to forget.
“What… did Ling Xiaoxiao do to me?” Xue Ji shuddered, her voice growing urgent. “And what did you see?”
Seeing her daughter in clear distress, Xue Ji’s mother quickly rubbed her back, trying to soothe her.
“This is what Commander Ye from the special forces unit sent us,” her father said with a long sigh, handing her a communicator. “He told us to make sure you saw it yourself. We’ve only seen a small part of what he sent.”
Xue Ji opened the terminal, her fingers trembling as she tapped the video file.
A facial recognition interface appeared. After verification, she saw herself aboard the Canglong—her first meeting with Commander Ye.
“Please do me a favor,” said Xue Ji in the video, saying words she now had no memory of uttering.
“I’ll try,” Commander Ye replied, locking the conference room.
“Please monitor my room. And then… make me forget that I asked you for this favor.”
“What are you afraid of?” Commander Ye’s expression turned serious.
“Ling Xiaoxiao.”
Hearing that name, Commander Ye’s face shifted dramatically. He gestured for her to stop speaking.
“It’s fine. Our voices are being shielded.”
“How do you want me to help?”
“Record the moments when Ling Xiaoxiao and I are together. I feel like she’s dangerous to me. At the very least, I need a third-party perspective—so I don’t lose myself.”
…
The first video ended, followed by a personal note from Commander Ye.
“Xue Ji, I’m honestly worried about your mental state lately. Your contact with Ling Xiaoxiao is really affecting you negatively. I’ll make sure to separate you two in future mission assignments.”
The second video was dated three days after the subjugation of the Calamity Beast Warlord.
In the video, Xue Ji walked out of the bathroom like a zombie, bloodstains on her lower body painfully vivid. Ling Xiaoxiao burst into the room, whispering into her ear while forming hand seals.
Ling Xiaoxiao in this state was clearly different from normal—it was as if she had become someone else entirely.
It gave Xue Ji the same feeling as when the Demon God’s curse had manifested in her past life. The madness in her eyes was indistinguishable.
Ling Xiaoxiao touched the dazed Xue Ji, and that mania seemed contagious—slowly surfacing in Xue Ji’s own gaze.
But just as the madness began to emerge, it was swiftly replaced by a chilling calm.
Xue Ji formed a different set of seals, summoning the cold energy from within her body to counter the Vermilion Fire within Ling Xiaoxiao. Using two purifying forces, she suppressed the frenzy.
This happened every month. And every time, Ling Xiaoxiao deliberately blurred Xue Ji’s perception of time to align with her fragmented memory.
It even shocked Xue Ji to learn that her two best friends, Shen Dai and Zhao Cheng, were now dating.
At the end, another personal message from Commander Ye appeared.
“Xue Ji, your fate and Ling Xiaoxiao’s are too deeply intertwined. If one of you falls into madness, the other will likely follow. That’s why I’m temporarily separating you two—and this was also Ling Xiaoxiao’s suggestion.”
‘This is so painful.’
“Sister Ji… you really are a terrible person.”
‘I know. Xiao Ji, I know…’ In the depths of the conscious space, the young woman in the ru skirt smiled bitterly, tears streaming endlessly down her face.