The moment the golden light dispersed, Yun Shu felt as though she had turned into a handful of sand, scattered by the wind.
Suddenly, an electronic chime sounded in her mind.
【Ding! Male lead Shen Jue’s Favorability +100. Romance mission complete. Host Yun Shu, final rating: SSS.】
【Settling rewards...】
【Reward 1: A second chance at life.】
【Reward 2: One billion in cash.】
Yun Shu snapped her eyes open.
A snow-white ceiling.
She was lying on a soft bed beneath a blue-and-white striped blanket, a bouquet of lilies resting on the nightstand beside her.
“I’m back...” she murmured softly.
“You’re awake?”
A gentle female voice came from the doorway.
A woman in her thirties walked in, wearing a white lab coat and carrying a cup of warm water.
Handing the cup to Yun Shu, she pulled up a nearby chair and sat down. “How are you feeling?”
Yun Shu recognized her.
Dr. Zhou, a psychological counseling specialist specially hired by the police force, tasked specifically with treating psychological trauma among narcotics officers.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Dr. Zhou, I want to return to the police force tomorrow. Could you help me with the paperwork, please?”
Dr. Zhou’s brow furrowed tightly. “Yun Shu, you are showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. You need to rest.”
Yun Shu fell silent for a few seconds.
It seemed she had been reborn back to the time of her very first narcotics mission. In her past life, she had indeed suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder at this point, leaving her unable to hold a gun steady for two whole years.
“Thank you, Dr. Zhou, but I’m really fine.” She pulled back the blanket and got out of bed.
Dr. Zhou couldn't stop her at all and said helplessly, “Remember to come in tomorrow for counseling...”
Before she could even finish her sentence, Yun Shu had already stepped out of the clinic room.
Standing by the roadside outside the police station, a long-lost sight unfolded before Yun Shu’s eyes, filling her entire field of view.
Towering skyscrapers, their glass curtain walls glittering in the sunlight.
Heavy traffic flowed past amidst the clamor of the crowd.
Delivery couriers whizzed past her, buses pulled to a halt before the stop, and people shouted loudly into their smartphones.
“I really am back in modern times...”
She stood there, looking up for a long time.
It wasn’t until a young man in a police uniform passed by and called out, “Senior Sister Yun!” that she snapped back to reality.
“Yeah,” she answered, then turned and walked away.
The Martyrs’ Cemetery lay on a hillside in the northern suburbs, lined with rows of pines and cypresses, its stone steps stretching upward tier by tier.
Yun Shu bought two bouquets of white chrysanthemums.
First, she walked up to the tombstone on the far left.
In the photograph, the man wore the uniform of the peacekeeping forces, his eyes crinkling into gentle crescents as he smiled.
“Brother, I’m back.”
Yun Shu squatted down and laid the flowers before the tombstone.
Looking at the smiling face in the photo, she said, “Let me tell you something interesting. A while ago, I transmigrated into a novel about warring hegemonies and even bound a Dress-Up System...”
Without realizing it, she grew a little tired from talking.
So, she simply sat down in front of the tombstone and continued talking to the man in the photograph.
“Brother, if you were still here, you’d definitely drag me aside to ask a million questions, and I wouldn’t even know how to answer you.” Reaching out to touch the photo, she murmured, “It’s actually nice like this, too. You can only listen to the things I want to tell you.”
With that, she rose, took a few steps to the right, and stopped before the adjacent tombstone.
The woman in the photo wore a police uniform, her expression aloof without the slightest curve to her lips. Placed next to the warmly smiling photo on the left, they hardly looked like siblings at all.
“Second Sister.”
Laying the other bouquet of white chrysanthemums before the tombstone, Yun Shu said, “I won’t make small talk with you; you never liked listening to it anyway.”
Looking at that stern, unsmiling face, she continued, “Actually, I’ve always wanted to ask you: did you dislike me?”
Naturally, the tombstone gave no answer.
“Never mind.” She shrugged. “A quiet person like you treated words like gold when you were alive. Now that you’re dead, I bet you’re just an aloof ghost who ignores people.”
The year Yun Shu entered elementary school, her second sister had been adopted out to their maternal uncle's family. Afterward, Yun Shu rarely saw her—barely once or twice a year.
In her memory, Second Sister was a very cold person who seldom smiled and spoke even less. Whenever Yun Shu talked to her, Second Sister was always lost in thought about something else, never listening attentively.
By the time Yun Shu skipped grades and entered college, rushing home excitedly with her acceptance letter, she only heard from her parents that Second Sister had gone missing while pursuing a criminal, with an overwhelming likelihood that she had fallen in the line of duty.
Yun Shu stayed at the cemetery until the sun began to set in the west.
As she headed down the mountain, she looked back once more.
The two tombstones stood side by side.
It felt as if her brother and sister would watch over her back forever.
Yun Shu returned home.
As soon as she walked up the stairs, the aroma of home-cooked food wafted toward her.
As the door opened, her mother’s voice called out from the kitchen: “Shushu, you’re back? Hurry, wash your hands and let’s eat.”
Her father stood beside the dining table, setting out chopsticks.
He looked up at Yun Shu, his lips parting as if to ask something, but her mother poked her head out of the kitchen and shot him a glare, leaving him no choice but to swallow his words.
“I made your favorite braised ribs today.”
Carrying out a dish, her mother placed a rib into Yun Shu’s bowl. “Eat more, you’ve gotten so thin.”
Sitting in her familiar chair, Yun Shu looked at the rib in her bowl, then at her anxious parents.
Under their watchful eyes, she picked up her chopsticks and took a bite of the rib. The taste was identical to her memories.
“Dad, Mom,” she said, suddenly putting down her chopsticks. “I’m going to the Golden Triangle on an undercover narcotics mission.”
Silence descended over the table.
Her father’s hand froze mid-air with his chopsticks.
Beneath the table, her mother’s hands clenched tight, then slowly unclenched.
Both of them were retired police officers; her father was a veteran detective from the criminal investigation brigade, and her mother was a household registration officer from the local police station.
They understood all too well what those words meant.
After a long silence.
“When are you leaving?” her father asked in a hoarse voice.
“Tomorrow.”
Her mother turned her head away, her shoulders trembling faintly. Her father reached over to pat her back, then looked back at Yun Shu, thousands of words held within his gaze, only to distill into a single sentence.
“Keep yourself safe.”
“I will,” Yun Shu nodded.
The next day, Yun Shu stepped out of the house with a pack on her back.
Her mother stood by the doorway, tears brimming in her eyes. “Shushu, Mom will save some ribs for you. You can eat them when you get back.”
“Okay.”
Without looking back, Yun Shu strode down the stairs and got into the vehicle sent specifically to pick her up, heading toward a private hospital.
In her previous life, before going undercover for the narcotics mission in the Golden Triangle, she had undergone plastic surgery at this very hospital.
In this life, the surgery took a long time as well.
When she awakened from the anesthesia, her throat ached slightly and bandages were wrapped around her body. The doctor informed her that the vocal cord adjustments and minor body sculpting had been a complete success, with a recovery period of about two weeks.
Two weeks later, Yun Shu stood before a mirror.
In the reflection, her appearance had completely transformed.
Clean, sharp black short hair revealed a clearly defined jawline. Her originally soft facial contours had been adjusted into angular handsomeness; her brow ridges were slightly raised, giving her deeper eye sockets and a straighter nose bridge, while her skin, somewhat pale from surgery and medication, accentuated eyes as pitch-black as ink.
An aloof, ethereal temperament made her unforgettable at first glance.
She was already 176 centimeters tall to begin with; with shoe lifts and surgical contouring giving her broad shoulders and a narrow waist, nobody could ever tell she was a woman disguised as a male Buddhist master.
Yun Shu opened her mouth to test her voice.
Deep, clear, and carrying a faint rasp, it was entirely the voice of a young man.
Turning her head, she gazed out the window at the blue sky and white clouds. “Li Qinghe, this time I won’t let you be blown to pieces.”
Three days later, Yun Shu arrived in the Golden Triangle.
The Mekong River ran muddy and yellow, dense jungles on both banks blotting out the sky, the humid air evoking an instinctive physical revulsion.
She stood by a dilapidated dock.
All around her rose a din of voices—some speaking Burmese, some speaking Thai, and others conversing in local dialects she could not decipher.
People in all manner of attire bustled to and fro.
There was no order here; money alone dictated the rules.
And her target this time was a major drug lord who revered Buddhism. She was going to tear out his criminal empire by the roots.
【Ding! Congratulations, you have bound the Dress-Up System.】
【Host, I finally found you!】
The little fox’s voice rang in Yun Shu’s mind.
Her eyes lit up. “Tongzi, is that you?”
“Host, it’s me, it’s me!” The little fox materialized before Yun Shu, diving into her embrace just like before.
Yun Shu petted the little fox’s head. “I thought that after using the Great God to mend the heavens, you would disappear too.”
“I was supposed to disappear, but you completed the romance mission. Moreover, the moment you mended the heavens, you finally believed that you were a true Divine Lady, bringing that novel world’s reality rating to one hundred percent. That’s why I transformed into a spirit fox!”
“Later on, Shen Yu and the others built temples for you everywhere, proclaiming far and wide your deeds of mending the heavens like Lady Nüwa and sacrificing yourself for the Dao. As your spirit beast, I received a vast amount of faith too!”
At this point, the little fox furrowed its brow. “The only trouble is that the Great God also absorbed the energy from your completed mission and regained its self-awareness. Unable to stay in that world, it had no choice but to shed its shell and flee to the modern era.”
“Host, the Great God hates you to the bone! It might already be plotting some wicked scheme to get revenge on you!”
Yun Shu hadn’t anticipated this outcome. “So through a twist of fate, the Great God was brought to modern times after all.”
“Whatever.”
“Blessings aren’t curses, and curses cannot be avoided.”
Picking up the little fox, she walked away from the dock.
If she could kill the Great God once, she could kill it a second time.
Right now, she was going to claim her First-Class Merit.
【The End】
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