It was the complete memory of the “Lin family’s young miss” played by Chen Yu.
In the dim side room, the Lin young miss was pinned dead to the floor by several military officers.
The Yu family’s old master stood in the shadows, his expression unreadable.
“Miss Lin, blame only that you were born into the wrong family, and read some books you shouldn’t have. The Fu family is deeply colluding with the warlords, holding heavy troops. The Fu family’s young miss will soon enter our house. If she learns that my son keeps a woman of ‘wrong thinking,’ our entire Yu household will be buried with you! This cup of poison—consider it the Yu family’s failing toward you.”
No, she didn’t want to die!
She still had a letter to send out. She had to deliver that letter carrying intelligence to Lin Feng.
That letter held all the evidence of the Fu family’s collusion and dealings with the warlords. The Lin young miss and the Yu young master had painstakingly gathered it over many days. She had to hand it to Lin Feng.
To drive these parasites out of here.
To…
The last of the memory: the Lin young miss, staring dead at the figures departing outside the door, crawling toward the bookshelf.
That evidence—gathered with all her heart and blood, not yet sent out—she stuffed into the book New Youth.
The shared memory ended.
Yu Huaiting painfully closed his eyes and rubbed his swollen temples.
Even knowing it was an instance setting, he was still disturbed by the Yu young master’s guilt of watching his beloved die miserably, powerless to save her.
“I don’t understand—how did you know there was still a final mission?”
Yu Huaiting opened his eyes and looked at Fu Songcheng curiously. He’d always been too lazy to reason through instances—this was the first time he was curious to hear how Fu Songcheng had known this information.
Having received the Lin young miss’s final memory, Fu Songcheng slowly opened his eyes.
He had not collapsed in a pool of blood, nor did he have any gunshot wounds.
He sat perfectly well in the redwood grand chair, a cup of long-cold tea in his hand.
“From the moment we entered this instance, the system has been deliberately misleading us. Faction confrontation—two pairs of lovers slaughtering each other.”
He turned, looking at Yu Huaiting with burning eyes. “But a truly fair faction confrontation should be like the Avalon instance—even if the identities aren’t equal, there’s a mechanism to compensate.”
“In this instance, the gap between our identities is far too great. They are a fallen family’s young master and a spirit; we are a newlywed couple joined by a family alliance, with vast wealth and power.”
Yu Huaiting pressed his lips together. He genuinely had never thought about this.
“Do you remember when we ate with Old Master Yu and the Old Madam the day before yesterday?”
Yu Huaiting nodded.
Fu Songcheng took a sip of the cold black tea. “As a newlywed bride of a sheltered household, the Old Master and Old Madam’s attitude was far too amiable. Not like warmth—more like fawning. I later asked the servants and learned that the Fu family’s background was anything but ordinary.”
Following Fu Songcheng’s reasoning, Yu Huaiting finally caught on.
“So the side room woman’s death—the Fu young miss did it?”
“Most likely.”
Fu Songcheng affirmed. “A young miss raised in a sheltered household, of noble birth—if her future husband kept a woman at home, and that woman even read those so-called ‘progressive books,’ a family as great as the Fu family couldn’t simply ignore it.”
“And she perhaps only needed to express a stance, and someone would willingly wield the blade for her.”
Fu Songcheng pointed at himself, looking at Yu Huaiting with a hint of teasing. “In the instance, the ‘Yu family’s young madam’ I play is the true culprit who drove Chen Yu to death—the instance’s boss, standing opposite all of you.”
Yu Huaiting frowned. He wanted to retract his earlier comment that this instance was heaven.
Trash instance.
“So I’m on the same side as that dead ghost?”
Hearing him refer to Chen Yu so bluntly, Fu Songcheng actually found it a little endearing. “If we really rank by relationships, you and he are a pair—and I’m the evil fiancée who forcibly tore you two apart.”
“Then what about Lin Feng?” Yu Huaiting pressed. “The Lin family’s young master seems to never have appeared in the story at all. The story’s incomplete.”
“I’m not sure either.”
Here Fu Songcheng’s tone shifted from certainty and pride to some hesitation. “The Lin young master—if he truly cared about his sister, why would he agree to let her live nameless and unacknowledged in the house of a man about to be married? And this whole matter was done with extreme secrecy—outsiders knew nothing.”
“If for him, his sister’s chastity, status, even her life weren’t that important, and he’d deliberately engineer the red-white collision to clash with the Yu residence—then he must be after something from the Yu residence.”
Fu Songcheng couldn’t guess what the Lin young master ultimately wanted, so he personally constructed an illusion to guide Lin Feng into the Yu residence, letting them come find it themselves.
“So impressive, Brother Fu.”
Yu Huaiting finally caught up with Fu Songcheng’s reasoning. Maintaining the illusion formation, he couldn’t help but smirk.
Fu Songcheng had spent a whole night studying those feng shui books, then wasted no small breath coaxing Yu Huaiting into drawing this extremely draining “Dream Illusion Formation.”
Together they’d assembled the final piece of the story’s puzzle—what Lin Feng wanted was that letter.
“Damn right.”
Fu Songcheng accepted Yu Huaiting’s praise without courtesy, feeling a little childish himself, yet unable to hold back a smile.
“I started setting up the chessboard the moment I met Chen Yu. Without a binding talisman, it wouldn’t have been easy to drag those two into our illusion.”
Yu Huaiting recalled the scene in the illusion—himself controlled by Chen Yu, shooting Fu Songcheng dead, then being forced by Lin Feng to take his own life—and felt a lingering chill.
“In the illusion, even I thought I was being controlled and really killed you.”
Fu Songcheng didn’t interrupt Yu Huaiting’s maintenance of the formation, giving him a reassuring look. “When they thought they’d used the rules to kill the two of us, their guard would drop, and they’d rule out the suspicion that this was our assault illusion.”
“Then, step by step, lead them to that side room in the Yu residence.”
Even the brass lock on the side room door, broken by him and Yu Huaiting, Fu Songcheng had restored within the illusion.
“When Lin Feng, in the illusion, picks the lock with a wire, pushes open the door, and touches the moldy books—”
Fu Songcheng deliberately left a gap for the puppy to fill in.
“It’s equivalent to triggering the story fragment that belongs to us in reality.”
Yu Huaiting picked up his thread, the very picture of a good student.
“Exactly.” Fu Songcheng’s smile deepened. “They thought they’d triggered the final stage and were about to welcome victory. But it was only a tool I used to unlock the door.”
“The story fragment never belonged to them, trapped in the illusion—it belonged to us, manipulating everything from behind the scenes.”
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