The Villain Is Soft and Clingy [Transmigration into a Book] - Chapter 6

Xia Zhitao thought of her careless, reckless younger brother back in the modern world, and the look she gave her little junior sister became a little more benevolent.

“I’m your senior sister. How could I not care about you?” She reached out, intending to take her little junior sister’s hand. “Come with me. I’ll take you to collect some books.”

Who knew that although Zhang Lan, who was usually so clingy with her, obediently nodded, she unusually avoided her this time. She hid her hand behind her back, furtive and evasive.

What was going on?

Xia Zhitao frowned, stepped forward, and caught Zhang Lan’s wrist without allowing any argument. “Let me see.”

She did not use much strength. Her five fingers lightly circled that slender wrist, her fingertips brushing over soft skin and touching a faint warmth.

Zhang Lan dawdled for a while, but in the end, she still brought her hand out from behind her back. Xia Zhitao pulled it over and took one look, instantly understanding.

Those fair, tender fingers were covered densely in tiny cracks, with dots of blood seeping through.

And in the center of her left palm, there was an even more hideous wound. It slashed down tyrannically from between her fingers, cutting through all the lines of her palm.

She should have thought of it earlier. Her little junior sister could not use spiritual power, and that rope was rough to begin with. Climbing all the way up from the bottom of the mountain, her hands must have been scraped raw long ago.

“Don’t move. I’ll heal you.” Xia Zhitao silently recited an incantation, spiritual energy gathering in her hand. Just as she was about to cover Zhang Lan’s palm with it, the other girl withdrew her hand.

“Senior Sister, Master said my constitution is special, and I can’t receive spiritual power.” Zhang Lan said this with a sweet, ingratiating face. “Do you have any mortal herbs or something like that? I can just put some on casually.”

Xia Zhitao understood. “Come back with me, then.”

As it happened, she really did have quite a few medicinal powders, ointments, bandages, and other tools for treating injuries in her little wooden hut. They seemed to be things she had brought up the mountain a very long time ago. If Zhang Lan had not mentioned it, she herself would have nearly forgotten they existed.

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In terms of personality, Xia Zhitao was actually a rather mild-tempered person. In modern terms, she was slow to warm up.

Apart from work, her attitude toward life could be described as extremely laid-back. Since she was already there, she made peace with it. Living together with her younger brother, her days had passed quite steadily.

Even after unexpectedly transmigrating, her mindset remained the same. She did not fight or compete. She only wanted to take her time and live her own little life at a leisurely pace.

Even though she knew the direction of the plot, her influence in this world was tiny. There were very few things she could do, let alone something like changing the course of the story.

She knew very clearly that this was nothing more than a novel, and she herself was only one of countless readers. Even if she relied on the blessing of the plot god to snatch away the protagonist’s opportunities and steal the villain’s spotlight, so what?

No matter how overwhelming your power was, no matter how completely you covered the sky with one hand, you were still only living inside a novel. To people outside the dimension, it was just something entertaining to read. There really was no meaning in it.

So her principle was—

Don’t die.

That’s right. Xia Zhitao did not know why she had transmigrated, and her memories before transmigrating were also blurry and impossible to recall, but her goal was extremely clear:

Just live one day at a time.

When the villain went insane and wanted to destroy the world, and the protagonist stood righteous and awe-inspiring in order to stop her, Xia Zhitao would be caught in the middle. As long as she could keep her little life, that was enough.

This was a novel, and since it was a novel, it naturally had its protagonist. The protagonist was blessed with great fortune and supported by the will of heaven. As cannon fodder who had never even been mentioned in the book, how could Xia Zhitao possibly struggle against that?

After transmigrating, she had no grand ambitions either. She only wanted to pass her days peacefully and slowly search for a way back to the modern world.

—However, this calm, detached mindset changed slightly after her little junior sister appeared.

It was like a free and unrestrained fallen leaf suddenly having the tip of its leaf hooked by a thin string. It became somewhat unable to act as it wished, restrained at every turn, yet it also could not bear to let go and allow that slender string to fall to the ground.

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The two left Yubai Peak and returned to Xia Zhitao’s little hut.

For some reason, the two half-dead flowers Xia Zhitao had planted by the door out of boredom suddenly perked up the moment they saw Zhang Lan.

The two little flowers shook their stems with all their might. Where was their previous dying appearance? They were full of energy, wishing they could stick themselves onto Zhang Lan.

Zhang Lan directly ignored those two “little fangirls” and obediently followed Xia Zhitao into the room.

Xia Zhitao pressed her little junior sister into a chair, then turned and brought over all kinds of ointments. She gently took the other girl’s hand. “It might hurt a little.”

Zhang Lan blinked. “I’m not afraid.”

Xia Zhitao chose the best box and unscrewed the lid. A faint scent of herbs and plants slowly drifted out, lingering at the tip of her nose.

She rubbed a little ointment onto her fingertip, then held Zhang Lan’s palm, lowered her head slightly, and gently covered the wound with her fingertip.

The wounds were not deep, but there were many of them. They were all tiny scrapes caused by friction, dotted with blood, and against her soft, fair skin, they looked especially frightening.

Xia Zhitao carefully finished applying ointment for her, then pulled over a length of gauze. Looking at the other girl’s small hand, she suddenly fell into worry.

Oh no. How was this gauze supposed to be tied again?

Xia Zhitao had not studied medicine. In the modern world, for minor bumps and scrapes, sticking on a Band-Aid was enough. But after coming to this world, she still had to wrap gauze. This was far too difficult for her.

After wrapping and rewrapping it several times, Xia Zhitao looked at that tragic little hand, which she had wrapped into something like a white rice dumpling, and silently turned her head away.

I’m sorry, Junior Sister! I already did my best!

Fortunately, Zhang Lan did not seem to have any intention of blaming her. She even looked delighted. “Thank you, Senior Sister. Senior Sister, you’re so good. You wrapped it so beautifully!”

You’re calling this white, chubby, rice-dumpling-like bandage beautiful?

Xia Zhitao covered her face and did not want to speak. She gave a pretentious cough and pushed Zhang Lan toward the door. “All right, all right. Hurry and go back.”

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After Zhang Lan left, another dozen or so days passed without seeing her again. Xia Zhitao could not even catch sight of a single strand of the other girl’s hair.

Master Qin Zhi was different from Xia Zhitao’s own grandmaster. She did not allow seniors to visit that group of new disciples, so Xia Zhitao had no choice but to wait outside dryly for news.

She wondered how that child’s trials were going.

Xia Zhitao stayed inside her little hut, staring blankly at the scenery outside.

Her goal was to survive in the book. Although it was a little shameful, the method of surviving seemed to have only one option left: cling to a powerful thigh.

Although the author, Banana Peel-jun, had shamefully abandoned the story after getting into a relationship and caused the novel to have a terrible unfinished ending, according to the first law of novels, the protagonist who possessed an undying golden body was definitely the safest person.

As long as Xia Zhitao could cling to the protagonist’s thigh, her chances of surviving until the novel’s ending would rise by a whole level.

From nameless cannon fodder, she could become famous cannon fodder, and perhaps even level up into the protagonist’s “loyal little follower.” Even if she accidentally received her boxed lunch and died in battle, perhaps she could be resurrected because of the protagonist’s pity?

Thinking about it that way, it was truly far too pitiful.

Xia Zhitao silently sighed and began seriously rethinking her plans for the future.

Her little junior sister was reckless and careless, tripping over flat ground one moment and scraping her hand the next. Xia Zhitao had to keep a closer eye on her.

After she hugged the protagonist’s thigh, she would see whether the great protagonist had any intention of also protecting her junior sister. That way, after Xia Zhitao left, her little junior sister would still have someone looking after her.

…However, judging by the current plot, the great protagonist still had not appeared at all.

As Xia Zhitao pondered, she pulled out that little reddish booklet from the drawer, planning to look at the current progress of the plot again.

Who knew that at that moment, someone heavily slapped the door.

Whatever she feared came true. Xia Zhitao turned her head, and sure enough, a woman with a lovely face but an arrogant expression kicked open the door without waiting for her reply and strode inside without any explanation.

She looked around the little wooden hut once, then her gaze landed on Xia Zhitao. She gave a disdainful “hmph” and said, “Xia Zhitao, it’s your turn to go down the mountain this time.”

Although the Yashan Sect was indeed the number one great sect of the Central Plains, its supplies still needed to be replenished regularly. After all, most disciples had yet to reach the stage of inedia. This kind of thankless chore naturally could not be done by Grandmaster, so it became the disciples’ task instead.

Xia Zhitao resigned herself to her fate and stood up. “Thank you for the reminder. I’ll go right away.”

That person’s name was Du Yinyin. She was a disciple from the same batch as Xia Zhitao. It seemed that because Xia Zhitao had suppressed her again and again during the entry trials, Du Yinyin had always been hostile toward her.

…We’re both cannon fodder. What’s there to squeeze each other over?

Xia Zhitao sighed inwardly and did not want to cause trouble. In any case, she was only going down the mountain to buy some things, and she could even stroll around the streets on the way. Who knew how nice that would be?

She directly ignored Du Yinyin, who kept glaring at her, went to the main hall to collect some silver, then left Yashan and headed to the nearby market.

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Compared with Yashan, that cold and deserted place where one could not see a single person for ten li, the market below the mountain was much livelier.

As far as the eye could see, there were pleasure houses and painted pavilions everywhere, embroidered doors and pearl curtains, and shops open for business and shouting their wares as far as the eye could see.

Xia Zhitao was in quite a good mood as she wandered around the market. In any case, sunset was still a long way off, and she was spending public funds rather than her own money, so naturally, she was happy and relaxed.

She looked around and noticed that an eatery in the middle of the street was extraordinarily lively. From time to time, a few cries of praise rang out.

“Well said!”

“That is indeed true!”

“Wonderful! Wonderful!”

Curious, she also squeezed her way inside.

Only when she got closer did she realize that someone was storytelling.

The storyteller held a folding fan, shaking his head as he described the turmoil of the jianghu in great detail. A group of burly men surrounded him, listening with rapt attention and occasionally offering their own comments.

Xia Zhitao joined in the fun too. She found a table and sat down, ordered a pot of green tea, and listened along for a while.

The storyteller was talking about grudges and feuds in the jianghu, speaking in a vivid and colorful manner. Xia Zhitao listened halfway through and roughly understood that he was talking about the cruel deeds of some great demon who committed every evil imaginable, burning, killing, looting, and pillaging.

That demon was quite impressive. She had committed a full set of every bad deed there was. She captured eighty-year-old men to warm her bed, threw three-year-old children off to scrub the floors, and when it came to matters of the bedroom, she did not avoid either meat or fish. She could do it anytime and anywhere, so thirsty it was outrageous.

Thinking about it carefully, it really was heavy taste.

As Xia Zhitao listened, she took a sip of tea with a sigh. Before she could even swallow, the storyteller added another sentence.

“This is merely the tip of the iceberg. The sinful deeds of that demon Zhang Kuang likely could not be fully told even in three days and three nights!”

“Pfft—”

Xia Zhitao could not hold it in. She sprayed out the entire mouthful of tea.