Chapter 402: The Face in the Mirror
[Ding! Detected destined heroine Xu Ruoxue's favorability +15, plundering +45,000 destiny value!]
[Ding! Detected destined heroine Xu Ruoxue's total favorability 83, extra plundering +300,000 destiny value!]
"Ruoshui Wife, don't feel guilty!" Shen Anyu suppressed his laughter, his voice a low, magnetic rumble against the silk pillows. He shook his head slightly and spoke to the woman nestled beside him—the woman currently inhabiting Xu Ruoshui's body. "As a man, I'll handle these matters. Don't worry about them. With me here, you and your family will live a worry-free life forever. I will handle Ruoxue's matters well."
The system notifications and Shen Anyu's warm, possessive tone snapped Xu Ruoxue out of her dazed shock. Her mind, still reeling from the impossible situation, latched onto his words with frantic urgency.
"Shen Anyu, I'm not Sister Ruoshui, I'm Xu Ruoxue!" she blurted out, her voice cracking. The cool, collected demeanor she usually wore was shattered into a million pieces. "You, you, you… you've mistaken me for someone else!"
A tidal wave of anxiety and shame washed over her. Her face, which now belonged to her gentle older sister, burned with a furious blush that spread down her neck and across her chest. She clutched the sheets to her chin, her knuckles white.
"Shen Anyu, I really am Xu Ruoxue, not my sister!" she insisted, her voice growing louder with desperation. "If you don't believe me, turn on the lights! Turn on the lights and see!"
'See what?' a terrified part of her brain screamed. 'See the evidence of my mistake? See the face of the woman you betrayed?'
"Alright, alright, let's turn on the lights and see." Shen Anyu's tone was impossibly doting, a gentle balm on her frayed nerves that only made her feel worse. A soft Click! echoed in the room as the bedside lamp flooded their space with a warm, golden glow. He casually reached for a nearby ornate makeup mirror, its silver frame cool to the touch, and angled it towards her.
"Ruoshui Wife, look," he murmured, his voice laced with an almost teasing tenderness. "This is you, isn't it? How could I possibly be mistaken?"
Xu Ruoxue's apricot eyes flew wide. Her lips parted in a silent, horrified gasp. She stared, dumbfounded and incredulous, at the reflection in the mirror.
It wasn't her face.
The woman staring back was gentle Xu Ruoshui. Her features were soft where Xu Ruoxue's were sharp, her aura serene where Xu Ruoxue's was vibrant and icy. And there it was, the final, damning proof: a small, delicate tear mole just below her right eye.
Her own mole was on the left.
The world seemed to tilt and spin. Cold dread, sharp and piercing, shot through her veins, making her dizzy. Her vision blurred at the edges. Was she dreaming before, or was she dreaming now? A nightmare nested within another nightmare? How could this be? How could she wake up from a night of passion and confusion only to find herself trapped inside her own sister's body?
Ding-a-ling!
Ding-a-ling!
The urgent, shrill ringtone of a phone cut through the suffocating silence. It was a lifeline and a death sentence all at once.
"Ruoshui Wife, your phone." Shen Anyu's voice was as calm as ever. He effortlessly picked up Xu Ruoshui's phone from the nightstand. "Your sister Xu Ruoxue is calling."
He handed the device to her. Xu Ruoxue took it with a trembling hand, her fingers clumsy and numb. Her gaze fell upon the caller ID, and her heart hammered against her ribs. The name displayed on the screen was her own: "Xu Ruoxue."
A jolt, like an electric shock, shot through her entire body. The impossible, horrifying truth solidified in her mind. She wasn't going insane. This was real.
With a choked cry, she scrambled out of the bed, the silk sheets pooling around her ankles. She dashed towards the ensuite bathroom, her bare feet slapping against the cold marble floor. Just as she was about to slam the door shut, she seemed to remember something. She paused, her gaze complex and filled with a maelstrom of emotions—fear, shame, and a desperate plea.
She parted her red lips, her voice barely a whisper. "Shen… Shen Anyu, don't eavesdrop. You absolutely cannot eavesdrop!"
"Alright, alright," Shen Anyu nodded with a disarmingly sincere smile, propping himself up against the headboard. He looked utterly compliant, the very picture of a doting partner. "I definitely won't eavesdrop."
His gentle and indulgent gaze made Xu Ruoxue tremble. Biting her lip so hard she tasted blood, she finally closed the heavy bathroom door, plunging herself into the sterile silence of the smaller room.
'Hehe, I, Shen Anyu, always keep my word,' he thought, a devilish smirk playing on his lips as the door clicked shut. 'I definitely won't eavesdrop on you. But using a nanometer monitoring robot to get a front-row seat and read your lips… that's a completely different matter, isn't it?'
Like a demon skilled at exploiting the loopholes in any rule, he leaned back comfortably against the plush pillows. With a mere thought, he activated the imperceptible surveillance system, a swarm of microscopic machines that projected a perfect, high-definition image of both sides of the conversation directly into his field of vision.
On the other side, in the neighboring villa, Xu Ruoshui was experiencing her own brand of panic. She had woken up in an unfamiliar room, her head throbbing. A glance in the mirror had revealed not her own gentle features, but the sharper, cooler, and undeniably striking face of her younger sister, Xu Ruoxue. For a moment, she was utterly bewildered, her brilliant mind struggling to process the impossible.
However, Xu Ruoshui was not just a pretty face. As the CEO of the Shanghai Xu Family's Landscape Corporation and the respected eldest daughter of the family, her composure was forged in the fires of boardrooms and high-stakes negotiations. She took a deep, steadying breath, forcing the initial wave of panic to recede. Logic took over. Her soul was in Xu Ruoxue's body. It stood to reason, then, that her sister's soul was very likely in her own.
The 'why' was a mystery for later. With so few clues, she could only act on her deduction. Her first move was to call her own phone, a simple test to confirm her theory.
The phone rang for a long time before it was answered. When a shaky voice finally came through, Xu Ruoshui kept her own tone patient and gentle.
"Ruoxue, is that you?"
Even though her own heart was a frantic drum against her ribs, she knew she had to be the strong one. As the older sister, she couldn't afford to panic. The girl on the other end of the line was undoubtedly far more fragile right now. Her voice, spoken through Xu Ruoxue's vocal cords, was imbued with a deep, calming warmth.
"Xu Ruoshui, it's me, it's me!" Xu Ruoxue's voice on the other end was choked with tears. Hearing her sister's steady, familiar tone was the final straw that broke her fragile composure. "How did this happen? How could this possibly happen?"
She almost broke down completely. She was the head of the Blood Skull Mercenary Group's intelligence hall. She had faced assassins and stared down death. But nothing, nothing, could have prepared her for this. To wake up in her sister's body, after… after what had happened with Shen Anyu. With her future brother-in-law. The guilt was a physical weight, threatening to crush her. An ordinary girl would have already collapsed into hysterics.
"Ruoxue, don't be afraid. Just stay exactly where you are," Xu Ruoshui said, her voice a powerful anchor in the storm. "I'm coming to find you right now. Don't worry, with me here, everything will be fine. I'll find a way to fix this!"
Her gentle words carried an obvious strength. Listening to her sister's unwavering reassurance, Xu Ruoxue's inner storm of panic and despair gradually began to subside.
Xu Ruoshui didn't hang up. She kept the line open, murmuring comforting words as she moved. She quickly tidied her clothes, grabbed Xu Ruoxue's handbag from a nearby chair, and checked its contents—wallet, keys, bank cards. Then, she walked out of the bedroom.
"Oh?" Her eyes widened in surprise as she stepped outside the villa and took in the surroundings. "Ruoxue, you're also in the Tangquan No. 1 district in Shanghai? And right next door to me?"
She was intimately familiar with the landscaping, the perfectly manicured gardens and ornate fountains. After all, her own company had designed and installed it. And the villa directly adjacent to this one… that was her own.
'Wasn't Ruoxue studying abroad?' she wondered. 'Why is she back? And living in the villa next to mine without telling me anything?'
But those questions were secondary. Trivial, even, compared to the cataclysmic reality of them swapping souls. Pushing the unanswered questions to the back of her mind, Xu Ruoshui strode forward, her borrowed long legs eating up the distance to her own villa next door.
"Ruoxue, I'm coming over now."
The words sent a fresh wave of sheer, unadulterated terror through Xu Ruoxue.
She was utterly, hopelessly flustered.
Because inside her sister Xu Ruoshui's villa, lying casually in the master bedroom, was the one person her sister absolutely could not see right now: Shen Anyu.
Xu Ruoxue couldn't even begin to imagine the fallout. What would happen when her sister walked in and saw him there?
Would she break up with the deeply affectionate and seemingly kind Shen Anyu?
Would she sever all ties with her, her own sister, forever?
Before she could form a coherent thought, she heard it. The soft Beep-beep-boop! of the password lock on the villa's main door, followed by the heavy Thump! of the door swinging open. Then, the sound began.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
The sharp tapping of high heels on the polished marble floor of the foyer echoed up the stairs.
Each crisp sound felt like the tolling of a death knell, counting down the final seconds of her life.
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