It wasn't pain. It was an amputation—cold, clinical, and exact. A surgeon of pure light had reached inside her, found the humming, vital thing at her core, and plucked it out.
For a moment, she was nothing. A speck of awareness in a starless void.
Then, the sterile world rushed back. A pearlescent glow. Smooth, curved walls. Air with no temperature, no scent. She stood in her own body again—the familiar, slender frame of Su Ruan, clad in a simple grey jumpsuit. The wedding dress, the weight of the ring, the scent of him… all stripped away like a costume after the final curtain.
Yet the ghost remained. A phantom limb of the soul. Her real heart, in her real chest, beat a hollow, echoing rhythm.
[System Notification: Mission 'Fated CEO's Pampered Wife' concluded. Host consciousness reintegration complete. Returning to Primary Transit Station.]
The same neutral voice. Once an omnipresent guide, woven into the narrative. Now, it was a boarding announcement in an empty terminal, underscoring her solitude.
A screen shimmered into existence, data bleeding cool blue light.
[Mission Evaluation Processing…]
[World Stability: S+]
[Integration as 'Lin Wan': 99.7% synchronization. No paradoxes. Natural cause of death maintained. Worldline integrity: preserved.]
[Target Emotional Fulfillment: SSS]
[Target 'Jiang Chen': maximum recorded attachment, security, happiness. Deviation from tragic fate: 100%. Residual emotional resonance: Extreme.]
[Host Performance: SSS]
[Optimal parameter utilization. Strategic deployment of 'vulnerability' and 'authenticity' tropes. Minimal intervention required.]
[Overall Rating: SSS — 'Deific' Tier]
The triple-S glowed. A cold, analytical part of her noted the pinnacle achievement with grim satisfaction. This was what every Transmigrator coveted. The rewards would be legendary.
The rest of her felt sick.
[Calculating Rewards…]
[Base Points for S-Rank Completion: 50,000]
[SSS-Tier Multiplier: x10]
[Final Points Awarded: 500,000]
Half a million. An abstract fortune. She could buy legends. Secure a paradise. She could…
[Unique Skill Unlocked: 'Dreamwalk' (入梦)]
[Description: May project stabilized consciousness into the subconscious/dream state of a designated individual with whom a profound karmic or emotional bond exists (established in prior mission world). Duration/clarity dependent on host's mental fortitude and bond strength. Warning: Psychological feedback risks. The dreamscape is not a controlled narrative.]
Not a tool. An invitation. A backdoor.
Jiang Chen's face flashed behind her eyes—not the CEO, but the man who'd whispered his fears into her hair, who laughed with his whole body. What did his subconscious look like now? Still full of her? Or fracturing, trying to reconcile a love that had vanished without a trace?
[Additional Reward: Memory Crystallization (Selective)]
[Preserve one non-narrative, emotionally significant memory in perfect sensory detail, immune to post-mission fade.]
The offer was a knife-twist. Keep a piece of him. A perfect, frozen moment. To hold it would sharpen the loss. To refuse it felt like a second betrayal.
"Store it." Her voice was sandpaper. "Designation: 'Jiang Chen, Unobserved.'"
The memory surfaced: him watching her sleep, thinking himself unseen, his expression utterly unguarded, soft with a wonder he'd never show in daylight. She let the system seal it away—a cool, hard gem in a corner of her mind.
The points flooded her account, the digital chime a distant, mocking carillon. The Transit Station pulsed, acknowledging her new status. She was rich. Powerful. Empty.
She walked, footsteps silent on the featureless floor. The system store scrolled past—enhancements, bodies, treasures, lifetimes—all a meaningless blur. The 500,000 points were just numbers. They couldn't touch the chill in her bones.
The 'Dreamwalk' icon glowed in her mental interface, a pulsating, seductive blue. A terrible idea. Unprofessional. Risky. A violation of the clean break.
But he was there. Somewhere, the man whose happiness had been her metric was living with a ghost in his heart. And she had the key.
"Standard procedure for a Mission Target after extraction?" The words felt like gravel in her throat.
[System Response: Mission world continues on stabilized trajectory. Target memories remain intact, integrated as lived experience. Host 'absence' rationalized by world logic—in this case, natural death. Emotional fallout contained within narrative parameters.]
Natural death. Jiang Chen was a widower. Mourning Lin Wan. Staring at the cold side of a bed.
The composure she'd worn like armor shattered. A dry, wrenching sob escaped. She slid down the smooth, unyielding wall, knees drawn to her chest. Hot, silent tears scoured her cheeks. She cried for him. For the fabricated love that had become terrifyingly real. For the life that was both a lie and the most truthful thing she'd ever known. She cried for herself—a professional liar gutted by genuine grief.
For a long time, there was only the shudder of her shoulders and the immense, humming quiet of the station.
Slowly, the storm passed. Numb, clear-eyed exhaustion remained. She stood. The grey jumpsuit was pristine. Her reflection on the wall was pale, composed. The crisis was compartmentalized. She was Su Ruan again, the Transmigrator with an SSS rating.
Yet, the icon still pulsed. Temptation. Possibility. A very, very bad idea.
She needed a purge. A new mission. Immediately. Something brutal, sterile, complex—anything to lose herself in. She scoured the board, eyes cold, selecting a high-difficulty A-rank in a post-apocalyptic survival world. Ashes of Dawn. Raw emotions: fear, desperation, the will to live. No romance. No gentle CEO. No whispered confessions. Perfect.
[Mission 'Ashes of Dawn' confirmed. Host preparation initiated. Transit in 10… 9…]
The countdown began. Then—a tug. Faint, undeniable. A silken thread attached to her sternum, pulled from a vast, impossible distance. Feedback, not through the system, but through the unactivated skill. Through the bond rated 'Extreme'.
[…3… 2… 1…]
The station dissolved—not into the chaotic vortex of a jump.
It melted into darkness. Warm, tangible, familiar darkness. Sandalwood and rain. The soft pile of a specific carpet under her bare feet. The distant hum of a city thirty-two floors below.
Her eyes adjusted.
She was not in a wasteland.
She was in Jiang Chen's penthouse bedroom. Their bedroom. Moonlight streamed through the windows, painting silver lines across the rumpled sheets of the king-sized bed. His closet door ajar. A single blue silk tie slung over a chair, catching the light.
Impossible. A violation of every protocol.
A figure detached from the shadows by the window. He moved with a predatory silence she'd never seen in him before. This wasn't the smitten Jiang Chen. This was the wolf of the boardroom, his focus now a crackling, palpable force.
He crossed the room in three strides. Before she could breathe, his palms slammed into the wall on either side of her head, trapping her in place with a soft, definitive thud.
He leaned in, his body caging hers. Moonlight caught his eyes.
They held no grief. No confusion. No soft love.
They blazed with a dark, possessive, terrifying clarity.
His voice was a low, visceral rasp that seared through her bones.
"Found you."