[Vol. 1] Chapter 12 - Laughably Low Cap
Finally mustering a meager strength, Mingyuan circulated her qi into her personal storage space, hidden from Xiaolan's view. She handed Xiaolan a separate waterskin. "Drink. You look pale."
Xiaolan took it with a grateful nod, her fingers brushing Mingyuan's. A jolt went through Mingyuan at the touch, its sheer normalcy striking her. The Xiaolan she knew would have snatched it.
As Xiaolan drank, Mingyuan's eyes didn't leave her throat. She watched the swallow, the way her lashes fluttered shut. Too unguarded, she thought.
"Remember the plum blossom trees by the eastern wall?" Mingyuan asked softly, watching her face. "They're in bloom."
Xiaolan lowered the skin, a faint, absent smile on her lips. "Sounds pretty." No flicker of recognition. No memory of the day they'd fought beneath those very branches, petals staining their torn robes.
Mingyuan nodded slowly, taking the waterskin back. Her fingers tightened around it. "Yes," she said, her voice perfectly even. "Very pretty."
She turned away, the suspicion in her heart hardening from a whisper to stone. But she didn't let it show. "I'll take the first watch tonight."
"Sure," Xiaolan said, seemingly unguarded as she laid down. "Wake me if you want to switch." But in her hand was a sharp stone she had picked up for safety. Only a fool would entrust their life to a madwoman.
Mingyuan saw it. Her gaze had never strayed from Xiaolan's hands, her own posture carefully arranged to keep them both in view.
At least the instinct for survival, the act of grabbing the nearest weapon, was unchanged.
Her attentive demeanor toward Xiaolan wasn't from care, and her suggestion to form an alliance was merely an excuse. A pretext to investigate Lin Xiaolan's motivation and intentions.
Mingyuan's apricot eyes narrowed at the sleeping form in the gloom. She rose and stepped into the fog without a sound.
The 'water' in the waterskin had a single purpose: to force the drinker into a day-long slumber.
She would not make this simple. She would peel back every borrowed layer until she found what truly hid beneath, and make it regret ever crossing her path.
Silence settled. Chen Mingyuan had gone.
—COUGH.
Xiaolan coughed the 'water' onto the ground. She had never trusted the shaky alliance from the start. Even so, what little she'd absorbed had left her weakened.
"A drug," she noted. She had taken precautions, never confident in her own acting in the first place—because the character 'Lin Xiaolan' was never mentioned in the game itself.
Plus, ever since the system had provided those soaring, off-the-charts emotional fluctuations from Chen Mingyuan… she'd had her own suspicions.
[Current charge points: 276]
She'd also discovered something else: the charge points provided by Chen Mingyuan seemed to have a fixed maximum of 20. If too many overwhelming fluctuations happened, those 20 points simply merged together.
It seemed like an unnecessary detail at the time, but she'd believed it was important.
And it had proven to be.
Ding!
A red dot appeared beside the (?) next to Charge Points. Aside from the known information, something new had been added:
Fated Characters – Characters are categorized into known roles, such as Main Character and Supporting Character. Supporting Characters provide a maximum cap of 20 points…???
It was clearly incomplete, cut off by trailing ellipses. But it was enough. The emotional intensity doesn't matter because no matter how angry Chen Mingyuan could be, the maximum ceiling is the same +20.
It could never be higher than 20, only less. That massive +100 she'd seen earlier hadn't been a single surge, it was just five separate +20 notifications combined into one.
That changed everything. Her entire survival strategy of farming Mingyuan's rage had a hard, laughably low cap. It meant the terrifying +100 from the honey trap was just the system bundling notifications.
She needed a new source. A Main Character, preferably. She mentally reviewed a list of figures from the otome game.
Qing Yao was the default female lead. Feng Yue was the Empress, a final boss. Their points would be limitless, but approaching them was suicide.
Plus, she didn't even know what timeline she was in. How far before the main plot? And… what if she herself was one of the female leads destined to fight for the male leads' attention?
She shuddered. There wasn't only one female lead, this otome game allowed you to choose from different character types to play. It was just that Qing Yao was the default.
The thought of being part of a harem or fighting another woman for a man was enough to send Xiaolan to an early grave from shame alone.
Then, she remembered something important. She looked down at her wrist, where the talisman glowed with her pitiful point total.
The same number she'd once hated for marking her as a target. 5 points. The exact amount Bai Yu had given her at the very start, before the trials.
Should she hunt some beasts to at least try and catch up to the others? Her thoughts were cut short by a sound that didn't belong to the mist.
Not the drip of water, nor the shuffle of a Yao beast. This was the crisp, arrogant crunch of a boot deliberately stepping on a dry twig, announcing a presence.
"Well, if it isn't… Xiao—lan." It was Lin Zheng, drawing out the 'Xiao' on purpose. Xiao meant 'short' or 'little,' he was essentially calling her "Little Lan."
He took another step, his lackeys fanning out behind him. "You and that Chen bitch made a fool of me. Of all of us. Did you think we'd forget?"
He drew his sword, the rasp of metal loud in the silent fog. "Your points will make a nice consolation prize. And maybe…" His smile turned cruel. "Maybe we'll find your beloved Mingyuan and return the favor."
Xiaolan slowly rose to her feet, her legs trembling but her voice steady. She met Lin Zheng's gaze and did the only thing she knew that worked.
She grinned. It was a wild, reckless, Xiaolan grin.
"Wow, you're still hung up on that?" she said, her tone dripping with mock pity. "All that alpha posturing, and you got your feelings hurt by a little theater? No wonder Mingyuan would rather fake a romance with me than give you the time of day."
His face darkened instantly. "You—!"
"Did the thought keep you up?" Xiaolan pressed, taking a shaky step forward, leaning into the taunt. "The great Lin Zheng, upstaged by a farce? Bet it stings more than that burn on your arm."
"Shut your mouth!" Lin Zheng roared, lunging.
Xiaolan didn't try to block the sword. She threw herself sideways, toward the denser fog. The blade grazed her sleeve, and a system lockout flashed in her vision
[...disabled for 1 minute.]—but she was already moving.
"Get her!"
She ran with the desperate, stumbling sprint of a modern woman fueled by adrenaline and spite. She led them on a frantic chase through the skeletal trees, the cold, draining aura of the mist sapping at their strength as much as hers.
Her plan was simple: survive the minute. Let the environment wear them down. And pray.
She dodged behind a thick trunk as a talisman exploded against it, showering her with splinters. A searing pain lanced across her cheek. She didn't stop.
Every breath turned ragged, the cold mist felt like needles in the lungs. With every step, muscles stretched beyond what they were used to.
The body was athletic—great, even—but with a modern homebody's soul, it was excruciatingly painful.
Forty-five seconds.
A lackey caught her by the hair, yanking her back. She drove her elbow into his gut, felt his grip loosen, and scrambled free, leaving a few strands behind.
Thirty seconds.
Lin Zheng was faster. He cut her off, his sword point level with her heart. "I've got you!" he panted, triumph in his eyes.
Xiaolan's back was against a spirit-sapping tree. The cold was leaching into her bones; her qi felt thin. The cooldown timer in her mind's eye glowed: [0:15].
She had no clever taunt left. Just defiance.
She spat blood on the ground between them. "You first."
He thrust.
And a sleek, silver arrow sprouted from his sword hand.
He screamed, the blade falling from nerveless fingers. Before the sound faded, two more arrows thwipped out of the fog, pinning the lackeys' robes to the trees behind them, holding them fast without serious injury.
A figure strode from the mist, the same heroic silhouette from before, but the mask was gone.
Feng Yue looked bored.
She didn't glance at the incapacitated bodies. Her crimson eyes were fixed on Xiaolan, who was slumped against the tree, breathing in ragged gasps.
"You're making a habit of needing rescue," Feng Yue observed, her voice a lazy drawl. "You're becoming predictable."