Chai Xiaomi turned her head, but before she could speak, she heard him murmur again in a low voice, "You're not happy either."
"Mimi, are you hiding some unspeakable secret?"
Wu Li stared at her, his voice laced with a bone-chilling coldness, like the eerie gloom of the Ghost Festival when the gates of the underworld swing open and spirits roam the streets. It wasn't anger—it was a restrained interrogation, like he was afraid to hear the answer but had to ask anyway.
Chai Xiaomi was silent for a moment.
At some point, his hand had crept around her waist, gripping it tightly.
With just one arm, he could encircle her entire waist.
Then, with a sudden pull, she couldn't help but fall into his embrace.
Chai Xiaomi lay against Wu Li's chest, listening to the steady, powerful heartbeat, each thud echoing against her own heart.
Feeling her clothes tighten, she looked down and realized that her skirt hem had somehow been tied to his clothes again.
As if he was afraid she would secretly run away.
But she...
It seemed like it was time for her to go home.
According to the original plot, everything that followed was already written:
Song Hu, panicked by the urgency of war, indulged in immortality pills, which backfired, sapped his strength, and soon caused his sudden death.
Song Yueyao's victory over the barbarians brought her great renown; the people of Liangya Prefecture turned to her in loyalty and hailed her as their empress.
And after Jiang Zhiyu's repeated insistence, Jiang Runchuan finally relented and allowed him to control his own marriage.
Thus, the two kingdoms united, and together they fought to conquer the central plains and pacify the world.
That was the happy ending for the hero and heroine—but not for her and Wu Li.
Bound by the system's restrictions, she couldn't tell him her true identity or where she came from.
Nor could she tell him how much she missed home.
She loved him.
But her love was split into many parts—besides him, there were family and friends.
He, however, had only her.
Even as this thought pained her for his sake,
in a distant, alternate dimension, there were people she cared about and people who cared for her...
Her dad was even more addicted to short videos than she was, following a bunch of health accounts with names she could barely pronounce. She had to regularly unfollow them, delete the apps, and make up excuses like "that account got shut down."
Her mom was trendy and loved to dress up, but her dad's taste was practically nonexistent. Her mom often said she was lucky to have a daughter as a girl friend; otherwise, she wouldn't even have a shopping buddy.
Oh, right, before she was transported into the book, after her plane landed in Guizhou for a trip, her grandma had called her.
"Dear," her grandma's voice came through the phone, soft with that distinctive sweet Jiangnan lilt, "the loquats in the yard are ripe—so sweet! When are you coming back from your trip to pick them?"
That loquat tree was planted the year she was born. Her grandpa liked to joke, saying they'd see who grew taller—Mimi or the tree.
She lost, of course. She'd lost before she even turned two.
When she was five, she thought long and hard and decided the competition was unfair; that tree was cheating. So, during her grandpa's nap, she snuck her little sand shovel and headed off to loosen the tree's roots—or more accurately, to dig it up.
When her grandpa woke up and couldn't find her, he finally caught the mud-covered little bundle under the tree.
As the tree grew taller over the years, she grew up too, and stopped competing with it.
Every year at the end of May, her grandpa would set up a ladder to pick the loquats, her grandma held the basket below to catch them, and she stood nearby, steadying the ladder, looking up and waiting for the biggest one.
One time, grandpa almost slipped and fell.
From that year on, she ordered the two elders to simply hold the basket below, while she took charge of climbing the ladder.
This year, the loquats should be ripe again.
But the person who used to pick them wasn't there.
And then there was her best friend, Qiuqiu.
Qiuqiu was always laughing and joking in public, but only she knew her deepest secret. Qiuqiu's stepfather always found excuses to enter her room, and her mother often worked night shifts. On many late nights, Qiuqiu escaped from home and turned to her house as her only haven.
If she wasn't there anymore, where could Qiuqiu hide?
Chai Xiaomi's heart ached as these thoughts welled up like a tidal wave. Her throat tightened with countless worries and consolations.
But when the words reached her lips, not a single one came out.
Suddenly, from below the rooftop came urgent, chaotic hoofbeats.
Breaking the stagnant atmosphere between them.
A riderless horse, covered in blood, stopped in front of Song Yueyao.
Chai Xiaomi's face changed drastically. Having observed things carefully these past days, she remembered clearly—this horse belonged to Vice General Xiao, because it had a white tuft on its tail.
But hadn't Sister Yao sent him outside the city on patrol? With a thousand iron cavalry? How could only one horse come back?
The same question weighed on Song Yueyao's mind.
Song Yueyao circled the horse a few times and asked the soldiers, "Where did this horse gallop back into the city from?"
"Reporting to the commander: from the northwest, the same direction the barbarians retreated earlier."
Something was suspicious. The original story had no such scene.
Chai Xiaomi craned her neck to look, but stepped on a broken tile, slipped abruptly, and fell off the building.
This might have been the first time in Wu Li's life he questioned his own foolishness. He could have leaped down in time to save her, but before he could spring, he remembered that their hems were still tied together.
In an instant, they became a pair of lovesick mandarin ducks, plummeting together.
Thankfully, just before hitting the ground, he spun with her in his arms, taking the blow against his back, shielding her completely unscathed above him.
The surrounding soldiers reacted quickly, encircling them with spears at the ready.
Song Yueyao instinctively drew her crescent blade, but when she saw the two lying on the ground, she froze, stunned. "Xiaomi? Wu Li? What are you two doing here?"
She waved her hand and ordered her subordinates in a low voice, "Stand down."
She stepped forward without asking any unnecessary questions, then immediately launched into a tirade. "That's reckless! Who told you to come along? This is a battlefield—do you have any idea how dangerous it is?!"
"Xiaomi, this was your idea, wasn't it?!"
It was the first time Song Yueyao had spoken to her with such a tone. Chai Xiaomi pouted. "Sister Yao, I..."
She had guessed that Song Yueyao would be angry if she knew they had followed, which was why they had stayed hidden all along.
Song Yueyao's eyes blazed like fire, but her eyes were rimmed with red. The crescent blade spun in her hand, and she pointed its handle at Chai Xiaomi. "Go back to where you came from! Don't follow me!"
"Hey,"
Wu Li had already stood up with her in his arms. Seeing the knife handle pressed against Chai Xiaomi's forehead, his eyes turned icy cold. His fingers brushed over the handle and gently pushed it aside.
The handle then aimed toward the horse.
"Are you blind?" His tone was flat and cold, his arm tightening around the person in his embrace. "There's a letter tied to the reins, and this horse is nearly dead from exhaustion. Can't you see it came back to deliver something? If you can't use your eyes, you can donate them to someone who needs them."
Catching Chai Xiaomi's meek, apologetic expression, as if she'd done something wrong, Wu Li's temper flared even more.
He didn't even dare to speak a harsh word to his own wife—when did it become Song Yueyao's turn to scold her?
Only when he felt a soft hand gently tug at his arm did he finally rein in his temper.
Alerted by Wu Li, Song Yueyao noticed that the inside of the reins held a thin bamboo tube, stained with blood. Its color blended into the horse's mane, so she hadn't spotted it earlier.
She was inwardly startled by Wu Li's sharp eyes—he had caught it in a single glance.
Ignoring his barbed remarks, Song Yueyao stepped forward quickly and pulled the letter from the tube.
It was a blood letter, the handwriting hurried but the strokes pressing deep into the paper.
Seeing Song Yueyao's face turn suddenly pale, Chai Xiaomi quickly untied the knot Wu Li had made and ran over to ask, "Sister Yao, I'm sorry, don't be angry. We only followed because we were worried about you. Has something happened?"
Wasn't the battle over? Had something gone wrong again?
Fierce as Song Yueyao had been just moments before, her heart softened when she saw the concern in Xiaomi's eyes. Trying to steady herself—partly to shield Xiaomi from fear, partly to keep the troops' morale intact—she took a deep breath and forced her voice to sound steady: "The thousand iron cavalry led by Vice General Xiao, including him, have all fallen to the beasts. This was his final message sent back before the end—"
The moment these words left her mouth, the soldiers around them all changed expressions.
But Song Yueyao's next words left everyone frozen in place:
"The barbarians never retreated. They're heading toward Deer City."
She lifted her gaze and slowly swept her eyes across everyone present—the shock, the unease, the disbelief—all reflected in their faces.
"This time, it's not just cavalry and infantry. Thousands of beast monsters are advancing with them."
As her voice died away, the silence around them was filled only with the mournful sound of the wind.
Chai Xiaomi's pupils trembled. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
"This isn't right, this isn't right!"
"Youtiao, what's going on? Wasn't the original story supposed to end after this battle?"
Under her urgent questioning, Youtiao was silent for a moment.
Then, slowly, it uttered four words: "Butterfly effect."
...What?
"Host, according to the original plot, after the village massacre, the High Priest and Wu Li were supposed to have a showdown. The High Priest was to die by Wu Li's hand, and Wu Li himself would be consumed by his own poison and killing aura. But now, the story has reached its final chapter, and both characters, who should have perished, are still alive."
Youtiao's voice deepened: "The system's preliminary assessment is that the plot is heading in an uncontrollable direction."
