After I Failed to Reform the Female Lead of a Tragic Novel - Chapter 2

Clearly, her heartfelt words had not worked at all. Xie Yu looked as if she had seen a ghost, struggling to get up and leave.

“Pardon me.” Gong Dongling formed an immobilizing spell with her fingers, pinning Xie Yu to the bed so she could not move. “Once I finish changing your dressing, I’ll return justice to you.”

And so, Xie Yu could only watch helplessly as Gong Dongling took medicinal powder and bandages from her storage ring, leaned over onto the bed, her peach-blossom eyes curving into crescents as she reached her pale, slender fingers toward Xie Yu’s collar.

Her cool fingertips accidentally brushed against Xie Yu’s feverish neck, leaving a patch of crimson in their wake.

Seeing Xie Yu turn her head away and close her eyes to hide her panic, Gong Dongling found it rather amusing. “What? Is this your first time having someone undress you? You’re so shy, you’re making me feel like some lecher bullying an innocent young woman.”

“You!…” At those words, red clouds instantly rose over Xie Yu’s cheeks. She gritted her teeth, her face full of both embarrassment and anger.

Gong Dongling untied Xie Yu’s sash, then slipped the fabric from her shoulders.

Beneath it were wounds wrapped in bandages, many of them seeping with blood, like specks of red plum blossoms scattered across snow.

Gong Dongling stopped teasing Xie Yu and focused on unwrapping the blood-soaked bandages, sprinkling on fresh medicinal powder, and winding new gauze around the wounds.

Back then, she had always been the one being cared for in the hospital. She never expected that now, she would be able to use the nursing methods she had picked up by watching others on someone else. Perhaps this was the meaning of being given a new life.

As she thought this, a faint smile spread across Gong Dongling’s lips.

Once Xie Yu was settled, she wanted to do all the things she had never been able to do in her previous life.

At some point, Xie Yu had opened her eyes. Her body remained stiff, and she only felt that the sensation of Gong Dongling’s skin brushing against hers as she changed the dressing was… strange.

She quietly lifted her gaze, only to happen to catch the very instant her senior sister smiled. Something in her heart seemed to stir.

But before that tiny feeling could even sprout, it was crushed back down by her loathing for Gong Dongling. Xie Yu’s eyes instantly turned cold.

She’s just putting on an act. It wasn’t as if Xie Yu had never believed this senior sister’s hypocritical mask before. And what had it gotten her? Nothing but a sincere heart trampled underfoot.

A voice seemed to scream in the depths of her heart. Weren’t all people the same? No one loved her…

Xie Yu lowered her eyes, and they seemed to grow even darker, like a mass of ink that could not be dissolved, countless emotions surging beneath the surface.

Just then, a gentle voice suddenly interrupted her wild thoughts.

“Does it hurt? The medical cultivator who gave me this medicine said that although the powder works well, it feels awful when applied.”

Xie Yu pressed her lips together. After a long while, she finally said in a muffled voice, “I’m not afraid of pain.”

No one had ever asked Xie Yu if it hurt.

She had been born with dulled senses, so even her perception of pain was unclear. No matter how badly she was injured after going out to train, she only had to bury her head and sleep for a few days. When she woke up, she would always recover. Someone had once said that her life was cheap. In that sense, she really was as tenacious as wild grass.

Aside from those hideous whip marks, Xie Yu’s body was also covered in many crisscrossing scars of different depths.

Gong Dongling’s eyes darkened when she saw them, but she asked nothing.

Every scar was nothing more than a memory of Xie Yu’s suffering or humiliation. There was no need to poke at her wounds again.

The strange silence continued until Gong Dongling finished dressing Xie Yu properly and released the restriction on her.

Xie Yu was no longer as agitated as before. She silently stood from the bed and lowered her head, frowning at the bow the woman had carefully tied around her waist.

She disliked it a little.

Perhaps because her strength had not yet recovered, her body swayed. With her back to Gong Dongling, she finally spoke, her voice particularly awkward. “I won’t thank you for any of this! And I don’t need you to return any justice to me either. Don’t cling to me again in the future. I don’t want to see you.”

Gong Dongling’s smile did not fade. “I’ll listen to A-Yu.”

Only after watching Xie Yu limp out the door from afar did Gong Dongling lower her gaze to the small bottle in her palm. The bottle was clearly made of white porcelain, yet it glowed faintly with a reddish light.

Some red powder spilled from the mouth of the bottle. The instant it touched her fingertip, it actually burned her hand, sending several wisps of green smoke curling upward.

“So this is the thing?” she murmured to herself.

Inside Daofa Zhenren’s hall, quite a few people had already gathered. Most of them were stewards and disciples from the Law Hall.

A few days ago, the Law Hall had sentenced Xie Yu to the confinement room for poisoning a fellow disciple, saying she had to reflect for forty-nine full days. Yet only four days had passed before someone let her out. Naturally, they had come to demand an explanation.

Daofa Zhenren sat high in the main seat, his expression rather unpleasant. His brows were drawn tightly together, as if he were thinking about something.

“Disciple Gong Dongling requests an audience.”

Her voice was not loud, but to the cultivators present, whose senses were all sharp and clear, it was like a thunderclap. In an instant, it drew everyone’s attention.

Gong Dongling had been summoned by Xu Ruozhen’s message talisman. This was within her expectations. After all, she had made such a major change to the original plot. It would be impossible for there to be no reaction at all.

She walked into the hall, but her gaze stopped on a long-haired, delicate-looking young man standing below Zhenren’s seat. The young man was beautiful in a soft yet bewitching way, with phoenix eyes, a pointed chin, and pale skin. In particular, the deep red beauty mark between his brows looked like a cluster of demonic fire burning there.

This young man was named Ji Yuran. He was the transformed form of a demonic lotus enshrined on Buzhou Mountain.

The demonic lotus had originally been a Buddhist golden lotus, but after being stolen by the ancient Demon Emperor Chi You, it had become tainted with demonic energy. After returning to the righteous path, it had to cultivate for a thousand years in the spiritual spring of Buzhou Mountain and undergo a tribulation before it could cleanse the filth from its body and return to paradise.

Probably only Gong Dongling knew that Ji Yuran’s tribulation was a love tribulation, and the target of this torturous romance was none other than Xie Yu.

That was right. Ji Yuran was the famous male lead of this book, an old-school lunatic who expressed his love for the female lead by tormenting her heart and body.

Half of the melodramatic angst in this substitute novel came from Ji Yuran’s sudden bouts of insanity and his constant wavering between the white moonlight and the substitute.

At the time of this sect competition incident, Ji Yuran still held only contempt and disdain toward Xie Yu, treating her like a plaything. He had not yet developed those deep, torturous feelings for her, so of course he would not help Xie Yu.

But according to the plot, he would appear when Xie Yu was on the brink of life and death and save her.

Yes. Even if Gong Dongling had not gone to save Xie Yu, the power of the plot and the halo of the male and female leads would eventually have pushed them together, turning this near-death accident into a bond between them.

The reason Gong Dongling had stolen the male lead’s role was because, after looking at the entire story, she deeply understood Ji Yuran’s essence as a deranged scumbag. It would be a miracle if Xie Yu did not blacken while following him.

To save the female lead, the first step was to destroy this scumbag’s status as male lead and help Xie Yu escape that cesspit.

Of course, Ji Yuran had no idea that his status had already begun plummeting from this very moment. Right now, he was staring at Gong Dongling with great interest, guessing how she would deal with Xie Yu.

“So Zhenren’s disciple has such grand airs, does she? Making all of us wait like this!” An elderly man with a head of white hair glared, his beard bristling as he spoke in a sarcastic tone.

The old man was the Second Elder of the Law Hall. On ordinary days, he put on the most airs and was deeply disliked by the disciples of Buzhou Mountain.

Being targeted so openly the moment she arrived, Gong Dongling remained perfectly courteous and spoke with a pleasant expression. “Elder Yu, please calm your anger. Dongling arrived late and made everyone wait. That was indeed improper of me, and I’ve embarrassed myself before you all. However, there was a reason for my delay this time. I ask that Elder Yu not blame me.”

She displayed the object she had been holding all along before everyone.

It was a small bottle, with what seemed to be a layer of faint firelight floating over its surface.

It was precisely the thing Gong Dongling had taken out after Xie Yu left earlier.

“It’s heat poison!” Someone recognized it and cried out in shock.

Xie Yu had been convicted of poisoning a fellow disciple precisely because heat poison had been found on her sword.

Ordinarily, heat poison was not an especially powerful poison. However, it mutually generated and countered cold energy, making it highly targeted. It was precisely the collision between this heat poison and the cold energy inside Gong Dongling’s body that caused Gong Dongling’s old illness to flare up, making her collapse on the spot.

Because Xie Yu had no way to explain where the heat poison on her sword had come from, she could not defend herself and could only be locked in the confinement room.

But Gong Dongling knew the truth all too clearly. Back at the competition, the original owner had been unable to defeat her junior sister, whose cultivation was lower than her own. Afraid of being outshone, she had used this desperate tactic that harmed the enemy at great cost to herself.

And so, Xie Yu was beaten brutally, locked in confinement, and saddled with the vile reputation of having poisoned a fellow disciple.

The original owner, meanwhile, had reaped what she sowed. She had underestimated how vicious the heat poison truly was and was burned to death by it, allowing Gong Dongling, the transmigrator, to take over her body.

“Where did you get this heat poison?” the elder asked. A suspicion formed in his heart. Could it be that she had poisoned herself?

Xu Ruozhen recalled the casual sentence Gong Dongling had left behind yesterday, and his brows furrowed even more tightly.

Gong Dongling was a “work” he had painstakingly cultivated. If she were to destroy her own future like this, Xu Ruozhen absolutely did not want to see it happen. He secretly formed a silencing spell in his palm, waiting to seal her mouth the moment she exposed herself.

The cultivators present all wore different expressions, but every one of them pricked up their ears, paying close attention to what Gong Dongling would say next.

“This poison was…” She deliberately paused, keeping them in suspense for a moment before continuing, “I obtained it from demon core dealers. They told me that fire ghosts carry this poison inside their bodies.”

Fire ghosts were low-level demonic beasts that plagued the mortal world. Although they were relatively weak, they were numerous, and outer sect disciples with lower cultivation often had to eliminate them when they went out to train.

No one had expected her to take such a sudden turn. They were all stunned.

It was still the elder who had first reprimanded Gong Dongling who stroked his beard and asked, “You mean Xie Yu once bought poison from the dealers?”

“Elder, please allow me to explain slowly.

“Fire ghosts reproduce and survive by splitting from their original body. The very first fire ghost, which we commonly call the fire ghost mother, carries heat poison in its demon core. As it happens, the last time Junior Sister Xie Yu went out to train, she went to the mortal realm to eliminate fire ghosts. In that case, it is not difficult to explain why heat poison remained on her sword.

“Because very few people know that fire ghosts carry this kind of poison, and because no one knows which one is the fire ghost mother, naturally, she would not have known where the poison on her sword came from either.

“From this, it seems that Junior Sister was indeed wrongly accused.”

Gong Dongling’s voice was soft yet powerful, neither hurried nor slow, making her words especially convincing.

After hearing this, Xu Ruozhen’s expression eased somewhat. Just now, he had almost truly thought Gong Dongling was going to destroy herself along with everyone else. He had not only been afraid that the thing he had personally cultivated would be ruined for nothing, but also that certain secrets related to him would be exposed…

The elder representing the Law Hall now looked pale one moment and flushed the next. He knew they had made a wrong judgment this time, but he could not bring himself to admit it.

Gong Dongling saw his embarrassment and did not make things difficult for him.

“If I had not trusted Junior Sister’s character, I would not have gone through ancient texts and sought proof. Besides, heat poison is not a deadly poison to begin with. If anyone is to blame, it can only be the cold energy in my own body, which created this misunderstanding. Not only did I implicate Junior Sister, I also troubled the elders and fellow disciples of the Law Hall over this matter. Another day, I will personally visit the Law Hall to apologize.”

These words were pleasant to hear, and the people from the Law Hall no longer felt as if they had been openly slapped in the face.

Only then did the elder nod in satisfaction, taking the step she had offered him. “It was all merely a misunderstanding. There is no need for an apology. However, your junior sister was whipped for no reason because of this illness of yours. You must take good care of her.”

“Dongling will remember.”

But before her words had even fully fallen, a lazy voice came from the side.

“In the end, this is merely your speculation. How can you prove that Xie Yu really killed the fire ghost mother during that training trip? Fire ghost mothers are so rare that only one appears among a hundred thousand fire ghosts. How could it just so happen to die under Xie Yu’s sword?”