I Snatched the Male Lead’s "Cool Novel" Script - Chapter 17

Yan Yu deliberately took the long way around and entered the side room through the side door, all so the person inside would not hear any movement and explode again.

After entering and closing the door, she pulled over a stool, took out the pharmacopoeia she had hidden in her sleeve earlier, and stuffed it onto the top shelf of the bookcase.

This bookcase had been moved over by Yin Beiqing to serve as a temporary study. There were quite a few books on it. Earlier, the maidservants had wanted to move them away and clear them out, but Yan Yu had kept them.

The books on the shelf had been divided into sections according to category, then arranged neatly from smallest to largest. Even the bent covers had been slowly smoothed and pressed flat before being placed back in. This was a little habit of hers. Seeing a neat, orderly bookshelf always improved her mood.

“I’m going into the Soul Domain for a while. You two keep watch here for me. If anyone comes looking, just say I’m tired and resting.” Yan Yu took off her shoes and lay down on the bed.

“All right.” Although Lujia did not know what Yan Yu was going to do, it had always listened to whatever its master instructed.

Yan Yu entered the Soul Domain because Yin Beiqing’s earlier words had made her realize something was wrong.

When the Soul Domain first awakened, too many things had piled together, and she had not had time to investigate carefully. Now that she thought about it closely, the Soul Domain Guo Lu had in the book was indeed a little more special than other people’s. He had a piece of special soil. No matter what fruit was planted in it, it would quickly bloom and bear fruit, and the quality would far surpass those grown with careful care in ordinary soil. Medicinal herbs grown from this special soil could be used to make high-quality pills.

But that was all. Aside from that, there was nothing else.

Yan Yu’s was different. That mysterious “slime” little house was something beyond her understanding.

It stood there without seeming out of place, yet for no reason at all, it had helped her many times.

For example, where exactly had that pharmacopoeia come from? It was absolutely not some hand-copied booklet, because every page had traces of the author’s handwritten notes and revisions. The first page of the table of contents even had a handwritten signature.

If it had been copied by hand, then the contents of the pharmacopoeia would certainly have been the priority, with time saved on transcription and organization. There would have been no need to copy even those messy revisions, which would be considered flaws.

Then there was only one possibility.

It was the original.

While thinking, Yan Yu walked around the outside of the house. Just as she reached the above conclusion, her footsteps happened to stop behind the house.

On the wall was a long string of golden characters. When her fingers touched them, they felt uneven, as if someone had carved them stroke by stroke with a knife.

When Yan Yu saw this line of writing, she felt as though she were being pulled by an invisible force. Her lips opened and closed unconsciously as she read along.

It was written in Polai. Yan Yu could understand every word, but she could not comprehend the meaning. This passage seemed to have randomly selected a few words and pieced them together without any pattern.

The instant she finished reading the final word, the entire Soul Domain suddenly shook violently. Sensing something, she raised her head and looked into the distance. It was as though a pair of giant hands had directly lifted away an entire layer of land. In the blink of an eye, the scene before her changed completely.

Everything that entered her sight was white. The sky was white, the ground was white. Her feet seemed to be stepping on a layer of invisible glass. Every step forward caused a tile beneath her to light up.

All around her was boundless emptiness, and that house had vanished into thin air.

The state a Soul Domain presented was a projection of the body owner’s subconscious. Some people’s Soul Domains were deep forests filled with danger. Some people’s Soul Domains were vast blue seas. Most people’s Soul Domains were peaceful and soothing homes, acting as shelters for their hearts.

When Yan Yu had just transmigrated here, her state of mind had still been unable to separate from her previous world, so the house had looked exactly like her home in the real world. That was because it was the place that gave her the strongest sense of belonging and familiarity.

But now, it was gone.

At the end of the glowing glass tiles beneath her feet, Yan Yu narrowed her eyes but still could not see clearly. She took two steps forward, then suddenly remembered that this was her Soul Domain. There was no need for her to tire herself out.

With a slight movement of her mind, she instantly teleported to the end.

It was a tree.

A towering tree.

Every leaf on its branches glowed with golden light. The branches and leaves were so dense they resembled an exploding mushroom cloud. Only a trunk thick and sturdy enough could support such weight.

Around the tree were the Soul-Gathering Grass and Lotus Bead Flowers she had planted earlier. Outside the tree was a dome-shaped glass cover. There was no door. Yan Yu walked over and pressed her palm against it, wanting to test whether there was some mechanism. In the end, as soon as she stretched out her hand, it passed straight through.

She froze for a moment, then walked toward the tree. After only two steps, she tripped over a tree root that had extended from who knew where and fell to the ground. Her soft palms pressed into the loose soil, and the packet of seeds Yin Beiqing had given her, which she had been carrying in her arms, spilled out as well.

Several amber grass seeds rolled into the dirt. Before Yan Yu could reach out and pick them up, the soil seemed to come alive. With a rush, it opened a large hole and swallowed the seeds.

Yan Yu’s hand froze in midair as she watched in stunned silence. The great tree that had “eaten” a few of her precious seeds now began shaking. Its leaves rustled loudly. As it shook, a golden leaf fell with a clang, landing right beside the back of Yan Yu’s hand.

While Yan Yu was hesitating over whether to pick it up, one of the tree’s branches stretched out, scooped up the golden leaf, and directly delivered it before her.

This “feeding” feeling was extremely familiar to Yan Yu.

She tactfully accepted it. Lowering her head, she saw a line of small characters on the golden leaf.

When the sun rises in the west, the demon blade descends into the world. The goddess shall wield the blade and destroy the nightmare demon.

…

For several days in a row, Yan Yu did not see Jiwu. According to the information Guipan had gathered, because of that artificial mountain, Jiwu had been punished by Yin Beiqing and sent outside to carry out a mission. They did get some peace and quiet because of it.

Although Yan Yu’s room was only separated from Yin Beiqing’s by a single wall, the other party did not use this opportunity to casually invade her private space. Or rather, Yin Beiqing did not even return to her own room much.

She was nowhere to be seen all day long. Often, even the maidservants could not find where she was. Because she did not need sleep, she would frequently open the door and leave at three or four in the morning. The sound was not loud, but because of this body’s constitution, Yan Yu often woke up in the middle of the night drenched in cold sweat. Occasionally, she would happen to hear Yin Beiqing entering or leaving.

That day, it rained the whole day, and the wind was strong at night too. But the damp smell inside the room made Yan Yu unable to bear it, so the window was still opened a small crack.

After her soul power increased, her five senses were much sharper than before. Sometimes, she could even hear the quiet conversations of maidservants passing by.

“Tonight is a blue moon.” Two people carrying lanterns walked side by side past Yan Yu’s door.

Langdie Valley had people patrolling twenty-four hours a day. They were all second-class maidservants or above, grouped in pairs so they could look after each other in any situation.

“What’s special about a blue moon?” she heard another maidservant ask back.

In any case, the rain was making it impossible for her to sleep. She might as well listen to a story. Yan Yu turned onto her side, pillowed her head on her arm, and pricked up her ears to pay attention to the voices outside.

“Legend says that every blue moon is the day when evil spirits collectively appear and hunt for food. During this period, their soul power is at its strongest. Do you remember the last market case? An A-rank evil spirit killed seven people. The whole street was covered in blood.”

“Really? I’m getting goosebumps…”

The two of them gradually walked away as they spoke back and forth, but Yan Yu was left completely awake by their words.

Rain, blue moon, early morning after midnight—these specific conditions felt especially familiar.

She remembered that the original book had a similar description. But where was it?

The door of some unknown room creaked, as if it had been blown open by the wind. Very soon, it quietly closed again.

The sound of rain gradually grew louder, disturbing Yan Yu’s last trace of sleepiness. But she finally remembered!

The scene from the day young Yin Beiqing had been hunted down was exactly the same as today. It had also been deep night. It had also been pouring rain. And because she had personally witnessed the old servant die while blocking the blade for her, Yin Beiqing awakened Jiwu’s soul power.

The original book had said that that night was a small shadow Yin Beiqing had always hidden in her heart. Until she grew up, whenever there was a rainy night with a blue moon, she would uncontrollably “sleepwalk.”

Connecting this with Yin Beiqing’s recent abnormal behavior at night…

Thinking of this, Yan Yu immediately became fully alert. She lifted the quilt and sat up, then lightly knocked on the small door separating their two rooms.

“Yin Beiqing, are you there?”

No one answered.

Yan Yu hesitated for a moment, but still gathered her courage and pushed the door open. There was no one on the bed. The room still had a faint fragrance from incense, as if it had not been extinguished long ago.

In other words, she had not gone far.

Yan Yu hurriedly grabbed an oil-paper umbrella and ran toward the back mountain.

Yin Beiqing’s old home had also had a back mountain like this. Before anything happened, she had often gone up the mountain to pick medicinal herbs for fun. The mountain roads were complicated, but she had been extremely familiar with them. That was why, on the night she was hunted down, she had also instinctively led the old servant up the mountain.

If she truly was “sleepwalking,” then the place she was most likely to go was the back mountain.

The road beneath her feet was wet, slippery, and muddy. Even walking steadily was difficult, let alone running. But Yan Yu was worried that if no one watched Yin Beiqing, she would do something crazy again. Even after falling and getting mud and rainwater all over her pants, she did not slow down.

“Yin Beiqing, are you here?”

The rain patted against the umbrella, striking with such force that it seemed about to pierce through the oil paper. Yan Yu wiped the rainwater splashed onto her face and narrowed her eyes, making out a corner of white cloth near a thicket in the distance.

She ran over and picked it up. This expensive fabric and the dense silver-thread stitching—there should only be one person in Langdie Valley who could afford to wear it.

Yin Beiqing was indeed here.

The weeds here grew thickly. Yan Yu had to crouch down and push them aside with her hands in order to clearly see the direction of the footprints.

Yan Yu followed this broken trail of footprints forward and finally found that white figure.

Her body was stiff as she slowly circled around a tree without stopping, murmuring something under her breath.

Earlier, it was said that Yin Beiqing did this because of sleepwalking, but that was not actually the case. She was not asleep. She was conscious, only she had lost her reason and fallen into a certain obsession. Unless someone outside woke her, or the necessary conditions causing this obsession disappeared, she would not regain independent thought.

Yan Yu walked over and kept a safe distance from her, tentatively calling out, “Yin Beiqing?”

She ignored her.

Yan Yu remembered that Yin Beiqing’s family always called her by her nickname, so she tried calling, “Qing’er?”

The person who had been circling the tree nonstop finally reacted. She looked toward Yan Yu’s direction. Her head tilted slightly, and her eyes were blank, but she still opened her mouth and answered.

“Mm?”

“It’s raining, Qing’er.”

“Right.” Yin Beiqing nodded once, then nodded heavily again. “It’s raining… It’s raining… It’s raining!”

She suddenly began to panic, her entire body trembling. She stared wide-eyed at a point in the empty air. “They’re here. They’re here to kill me!”

“No, no one is going to kill you.” Yan Yu walked over.

Yin Beiqing could not listen at all. She grabbed Yan Yu’s hand and ran. “Run.”

“No one is going to kill us!” Yan Yu steadied herself and pulled her back. “Can you hear me?”

Yin Beiqing’s mouth was still repeating fragmented murmurs Yan Yu could not understand. She began gnawing her fingernails. Kacha, kacha. Even when she bit them until they bled, she did not stop.

“Yin Beiqing!” Yan Yu held Yin Beiqing’s face with both hands and forced her to look at her. “Look at me.”

The umbrella had been lost while they were running earlier. The rain grew heavier and heavier, beating against their faces, icy to the bone. But Yan Yu still tried hard to hold her eyes open and convey her gaze.

“You… who are you?” Those eyes that were always sharp were now full of confusion.

Yan Yu almost forgot that once stripped of that armor of sharp thorns, Yin Beiqing was originally only an ordinary girl. What she lacked most at this moment was a sense of safety.

“I am Yan Yu.” She stared tightly into Yin Beiqing’s eyes and said word by word, “Only I am real. Everything else is an illusion. Remember, you only need to believe me.”

“Believe you…”

“Yes, believe me.” Yan Yu leaned Yin Beiqing’s head against her shoulder and gently patted her back. “It’s all fake. If I say it’s fake, then it’s fake.”

“If it’s true that I transmigrated into this book for a reason,” Yan Yu thought, “then that reason must be Yin Beiqing, the female lead who made her empathize the most.”

“Fake?” Yin Beiqing, buried in the hollow of her neck, chewed over those two words. Suddenly, she frowned in resistance, raised her hand, and grabbed Yan Yu’s willow-thin neck. “You’re lying! You’re lying! You’re the fake one!”

“I… won’t… lie to you.” Yan Yu was choked until she could barely breathe, but she still gritted her teeth and said what she wanted to say. “I am the goddess. The goddess does not lie. As long as I’m here, I absolutely won’t let anyone hurt you.”

“Goddess.” Yin Beiqing repeated her words, and color slowly returned to her blank eyes.

Right. The goddess.

Once the goddess appeared, she, the thousand-year calamity, would be saved.

“Are you okay?”

“I…” Yin Beiqing’s gaze gradually focused on her face, and her memories connected again. She shook her head and woke up.

Yin Beiqing knew about this problem of hers, so when she saw the surrounding environment, she was not surprised. She even had a feeling of as expected.

She raised her hand and rubbed her throbbing temple, then looked at Yan Yu, who was soaked through, and her brows furrowed even more tightly. “Why are you here?”

“…”

Yin Beiqing tilted her head and saw the umbrella dropped on the ground nearby. With a hook of her finger, she retrieved it through the air and held it over Yan Yu’s head.

“Are you very confident in your own body?”

Yan Yu thought she was caring about her and was just about to say thank you when this person added another strange, sarcastic sentence.

“If you catch a chill again, it’ll still waste my medicine.”

“Don’t worry. If I catch a chill, I absolutely won’t take a single mouthful of your medicine.” Yan Yu was almost angered into laughter, but there was nothing she could do about this person.

Yin Beiqing noticed her shivering and snapped her fingers, using spiritual arts to dry Yan Yu’s clothes. “Go back.”

I was already planning to leave without you saying it!

Yan Yu raised her hand to take the umbrella, but Yin Beiqing lifted it away. “If a short person holds the umbrella, neither person will be comfortable.”

Your spiritual arts are so powerful. Even if you don’t hold an umbrella, you won’t get wet, right?

Unfortunately, Yan Yu did not dare say that sentence aloud.

“Walk forward. What are you looking at me for?” Yin Beiqing signaled with her eyes. “Next time, don’t run to the back mountain for no reason. Do you know this place—”

Yan Yu, who had been lowering her head to watch the condition of the road under her feet, heard the voice beside her suddenly stop and raised her head curiously. “What about this place?”

Following Yin Beiqing’s gaze, she looked ahead. In the ink-dark night, at some unknown point, a green-eyed “creature” had barged in.

The fur on its body was very sparse, with patches of skin exposed here and there. Inside its open mouth were two rows of snow-white teeth. Saliva dripped from its tongue onto the grass as it panted lowly. From its appearance, it looked somewhat like a hunting dog several sizes larger.

Yan Yu quickly identified how this creature differed from ordinary animals or Beast Souls. It seemed… to be an evil spirit.

“Evil spirit” referred to people and beasts who, during the process of cultivating spiritual arts, suffered backlash from soul power and lost their reason.

Creatures that had turned into evil spirits would be surrounded by a cloud of black energy. This black energy was called miasma. The heavier the miasma, the higher the degree and rank of the evil spirit’s corruption.

The miasma on high-rank evil spirits could make ordinary people lose their minds after just a few breaths. In mild cases, they would go mad. In severe cases, they would harm themselves.

However, the miasma around the one before them was not heavy. It only had a shallow layer around it, making it seem as though it had turned into an evil spirit not long ago.

Something was wrong.

Yan Yu suddenly thought, if that were true, then why did Yin Beiqing now have such a solemn expression?

Sure enough, once this suspicion emerged, everything began moving toward the answer.

The evil spirit before them barked lowly. Just when one might think it was about to rush over and bite someone, its glowing green eyes suddenly lost focus, and its body collapsed softly to one side.

But if one listened carefully, one could hear something inside its body making a strange sound.

Shala, shala, shala…

It was like thousands of ants crawling over one’s skull. The sound made a person’s entire body go numb.

Suddenly, a centipede as thick as an arm shot out of its body with a whoosh. In midair, it arrogantly twisted and waved its thick, long body. Its countless legs made goosebumps rise all over one’s body.

At the same time, a nauseating stench spread outward at a terrifying speed.

It was miasma with a concentration far higher than normal.

A mask still carrying body warmth was placed over Yan Yu’s face, covering her mouth and nose.

Yan Yu instinctively raised her head to search for Yin Beiqing’s gaze, but Yin Beiqing covered her eyes and blocked her vision.

“Close your eyes. Open them only when I tell you to.”

Author’s Note:

Sister Yin’s warm-up exercise begins.