As soon as Jiang Yan finished speaking, Shen Huanhuan realized that this method was indeed viable.
Because in Huaguo, there had never been a psychic or rune capable of seeing the ultimate future. All abilities related to precognition only glimpsed the most probable outcome based on the current choices.
In other words, all the precognitive abilities in Huaguo at present could only deduce, not actually travel across time to witness the real future.
Thus, what Shen Huanhuan saw was not a predetermined fact.
Rather, it was a hypothetical branching ending that would unfold three minutes later if Jiang Yan truly acted as described.
What she saw was the Heavenly Dao’s simulated result.
The Heavenly Dao stood above all else, fully aware of the operation patterns of every energy field. When Shen Huanhuan began her precognition, the rune in her right eye would be given multiple specific conditions. The Heavenly Dao would then deduce the most likely outcome and display the simulated scene before Shen Huanhuan’s eyes.
Only when Jiang Yan actually followed through according to those specified conditions would this branch of the future become the main reality.
“I’ll first check where Xiao Congye is,” Jiang Yan said.
She got up and opened the door, peering outside. At that moment, Xiao Congye was assigning the servants to serve the dishes—a dazzling array of food, both savory and aromatic, carried out from the kitchen in generous portions: both vegetables and meat, each plate abundant.
A disciple spotted Xiao Congye, bowed respectfully, then asked,
“Second Master, why such a lavish meal today? Are we expecting guests?”
Xiao Congye slanted her phoenix eyes at him, her tone unpleasant. “What guests? The headmaster’s picked up another little piece of trash. Now all you little trash have company.”
The disciple, a bald youth, laughed awkwardly and scratched his head, leaving red marks on his shiny scalp.
Xiao Congye looked away in distaste—little trash upon little trash, a whole flock of trash—the theater was becoming a garbage dump. Hardly any among them could truly hold the stage. Their singing was lacking, yet they all wore silly grins; even cursing them didn’t feel satisfying.
After making her rounds and seeing the last dishes nearly served, she turned to head upstairs and change clothes.
Jiang Yan witnessed this, then quickly turned back, signaling to Shen Huanhuan to begin. Shen Huanhuan hesitated for a moment but did not refute Jiang Yan’s plan, and silently began to recite her incantation.
Pingping glanced at Shen Huanhuan, tugged Jiang Yan’s sleeve, signaling she wanted to speak.
Jiang Yan bent down, and Pingping pressed her lips to Jiang Yan’s ear, whispering, “Don’t you think this is a bit too risky?”
“What’s wrong?” Jiang Yan asked.
“You’re putting your life in Shen Huanhuan’s hands. What if she lies to you, for instance, claiming someone’s alive when they’re dead?”
Pingping said, “I’ve heard people mention, some spirit guides will make deals with a few members of a team. Sometimes, you can’t fully trust your own teammates. You’d better make a backup plan.”
Jiang Yan smiled.
“No matter.”
She gently pushed Pingping’s head aside. “I won’t doubt my teammates. I trust her now, and I’ll trust you later too.”
Pingping huffed, “You’d better not screw this up.”
Half a minute later, Shen Huanhuan’s eyes snapped open. Her expression was terrified, but quickly shifted to worry and confusion.
She murmured, “Alive… she’s alive…”
“It’s just that I saw Sister Jiang Yan holding her own head. The scene was blurry, like she was dead, but in the end, she was alive.”
Jiang Yan: “…”
She fell silent for a moment, then nodded, “As long as I’m alive. I’m heading out.”
Shen Huanhuan was still shaken by the vision just now and tried to stop Jiang Yan, but Jiang Yan, though facing away, seemed to anticipate her movement, turning her head. “Go back and sit down.”
Shen Huanhuan pressed her lips together.
Jiang Yan strode straight out the door. As a newcomer, a vagrant on her first day at the theater, after so much hardship, she would surely cherish this opportunity all the more. No matter how rebellious her character, at this moment, she would restrain herself, avoiding offending anyone—especially Xiao Congye, who seemed to dislike them the most.
And Xiao Congye cared deeply for hierarchy; when she saw Xi Jueyun, she was the only one who bowed with respect. Earlier, when the bald apprentice saw her, he bowed respectfully, too.
This was obviously one of the rules Xiao Congye had set for herself and others.
At this time, Xiao Congye had already reached the second-floor landing, a shadowy nook where a half-meter-tall Buddha statue stood—the very same golden Buddha the group had seen in that blank expanse, though this was a shrunken version, lacking its overpowering aura.
As Jiang Yan neared the statue, mentally primed herself, and, a trace of scrutiny in her gaze, sized up Xiao Congye from above as she walked forward to meet her.
Xiao Congye caught sight of Jiang Yan from the corner of her eye. She’d intended to ignore her, but the staircase was narrow; if no one yielded, they’d have to squeeze past each other.
Jiang Yan, however, made no attempt to step aside. Her clothing swayed dramatically, and she seemed about to collide into Xiao Congye at any moment.
Xiao Congye frowned in disgust.
She raised her head to meet Jiang Yan’s gaze, her voice cold: “What are you doing?”
Jiang Yan curled her lips, just about to retort, when a sudden “ding” echoed in her ear.
Quiz initiated.
Jiang Yan swiftly looked up, reading the several lines of black text before her:
[As the most pampered youngest daughter in your family, you’ve lived a privileged sixteen years. Who could have foreseen the great drought that followed? Your family, the richest merchants in the village, lost everything when foreign soldiers stormed your storeroom, taking all the grain, looting every bit of gold and silver. Your father, unable to bear the disgrace, hanged himself.
Now penniless, you set out. The village where the theater is located is far from your old home. After thirteen days of walking, you alone survived to reach Lingren Village, and entered the theater.
On your first day, Manager Xi arranged a sumptuous lunch for you all. On your way downstairs, you ran into Xiao Congye head-on on the staircase.
Staring at Xiao Congye’s look of disgust, you plan to—
1. Stare right back, even more disdainful. You always dressed and carried yourself better than her—how dare she look down on you?
2. Politely step aside and bow to her. After all, you are no longer the merchant’s daughter but a servant in the theater.
3. Fling yourself into her arms and begin bawling, slyly wiping your nose on her sleeve. She really reminds you of your eldest sister—so fierce, so charming when she’s angry.]
Jiang Yan read the details of “Option 3” and, for once, paused in rare silence.
According to the persona she’d just hammered into her head, she should be “Option 1.”
If she only considered the backstory, she’d pick “Option 2.”
But spirit guides love the unexpected, so the correct answer ought to be “Option 3.”
Jiang Yan: “…”
Without hesitation, she picked “Option 1.”
As soon as she confirmed, she saw herself move.
Facing Xiao Congye’s increasingly hostile stare, she stopped in front of her and said softly, “What are you so proud of?”
“You want me to make way? Even lowborn servants still outrank street-singers and jesters, don’t they?”
For a second, Xiao Congye went pale, then quickly flushed as anger blazed in her eyes. “Ungrateful thing!”
Without thinking, she raised her hand, viciously slapping toward Jiang Yan’s face.
Jiang Yan had never been treated this way before, but with her body under system control, she was completely immobile, only able to feel the wind of the palm—she squeezed her eyes shut by instinct.
But the expected pain never came.
Confused, Jiang Yan opened her eyes to find Xiao Congye gone. Hesitantly, she looked down—Xiao Congye had suddenly shrunk, and all she could see was a fuzzy mass of dark hair.
But soon she lost even sight of the hair: instead, she saw the ceiling’s patterns, the smiling Buddha, and finally the gleaming floor that could reflect a person’s face.
The floor was spotless and smooth—any sort of ball would roll easily here.
Even a human head.
Jiang Yan stared at her own head rolling like a ball across the floor, finally understanding why she hadn’t felt any pain earlier.
Because at the instant Xiao Congye’s palm landed, her head had been slapped right off.
“Gulu, gulu—”
Her head tumbled unceasingly across the floor, rolling toward the turn of the staircase, then began bumping down the stairs.
“Thud.”
A single step down.
“Thud, thud, thud, thud.”
Four more steps.
“Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud—”
Her head bounced down the staircase, and with every single bump, fresh streams of blood spurted from her neck like a musical fountain. Jiang Yan’s world spun madly in her vision—this stairway felt far too long, the descent never-ending. She even began to hallucinate, certain she could hear many echoing “thud, thud, thud” sounds.
Many heads tumbling.
At a certain step, Jiang Yan suddenly felt jostled. Strenuously rolling her eyeballs to the corners, she saw—high above—her own headless body, standing opposite Xiao Congye, drenched head to toe in blood.
Perhaps because it lacked a head, that thing stretched its neck longer and longer, like a water hose swinging back and forth, groping all over the stairs.
At that moment, countless heads with Jiang Yan’s face rolled down the staircase.
After several seconds, the flesh-colored, worm-like neck coiled around one head, cradled it like a treasure, and tried to reattach it to the spurting stump. But soon realizing something was wrong, the thing furiously wrenched the head off and tossed it aside.
Jiang Yan instinctively felt the worm-necked thing should find her own head.
But now she was powerless.
The neck’s length was limited. When it reached some ten meters, it stopped growing, yet Jiang Yan had rolled beyond its range.
As she started to feel feverish, sweat beading on her brow, she suddenly sensed herself being hoisted up.
She looked up.
Somehow, she was now hanging upside down from the second-floor railing, limbs twisted like an octopus, gripping the rails. At last, that long neck found its way to its matching head. With a guttural chuckle, the thing enthusiastically restored the head onto its own body.
In the last instant before she regained control, the last image Jiang Yan saw was a floor packed with her own faces.
They were all looking up at her.
…
When Jiang Yan finally regained control, the timer had reset to five full minutes.
Only now, “Option 1” had turned from black to blood-dripping red—a sign of error and misfortune.
So picking the wrong answer didn’t kill her, but instead brought punishment, after which she could reselect.
This time, Jiang Yan didn’t torture herself. She chose “Option 3” directly.
Guided by the system, she stared at Xiao Congye for a few seconds; Xiao Congye’s expression was growing darker and darker, about to lay down the rules and order her aside, when suddenly Jiang Yan, eyes drooping in aggrievedness, muttered,
“You haven’t scolded me in so long.”
Xiao Congye: ?
Jiang Yan felt herself darken inwardly, but could only watch as her own face grew increasingly pitiful, before she flung herself into Xiao Congye’s arms and sobbed loudly, clutching her sleeve with a death-grip.
“Scold me! I’m not even making way for you; why won’t you scold me!” she heard herself shout.
Jiang Yan: “…”
Xiao Congye was silent for a long moment, then asked, just as Jiang Yan was thinking—
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Yes, yes, exactly that tone. Just like my big sister.”
Jiang Yan watched herself break into tears of joy, crying her heart out, rambling about how afraid she used to be of her older sister, how her sister stuffed the last piece of bread in her mouth. Worried Xiao Congye might mind, she discreetly wiped her nose on the other’s sleeve.
Xiao Congye noticed, her gaze sharp as knives.
She tried to wrench her sleeve away, but the girl wouldn’t let go for anything.
After a brief stalemate, Xiao Congye finally lost her patience. She yanked her sleeve free. “Enough! I know your sister’s dead!”
“This afternoon, wash these clothes for me—and hang them out to dry in the sun, yourself, holding them up until they’re bone-dry!”
Jiang Yan, under system’s control, nodded earnestly.
Xiao Congye took a long breath and strode away.
It was at this moment Jiang Yan finally regained control. She steadied her swaying head, wiped the tears off her face expressionlessly, and turned to leave. But before she could step away, that familiar chime rang in her ears again.
“Ding~”
Jiang Yan: “.”
She slowly looked up, and once more, words drifted before her eyes.
[What luck! Not only have you met Xiao Congye, who is so much like your big sister, but you’ve also won the right to wash her clothes. You can’t help but want to throw yourself at her again.
But seeing the disgust on Xiao Congye’s face, you give up.
Before leaving, you decide to—
1. Roll your eyes at Xiao Congye.
2. Express your affection for her.]
A forced give-away question.
Without expression, Jiang Yan selected “Option 2,” then watched as her lips curled into a sweet smile.
“Thank you all for taking me in. I’ll work hard, I promise!”
And then, standing on tiptoe and lowering her voice, “I’ll wash all your clothes. I like you best, more than anyone, in the whole village!”
When she regained control again, Jiang Yan kept her fake smile firmly on her face until Xiao Congye, after cursing her one more time, vanished from sight.
Jiang Yan turned with chilling indifference and headed back.
When she reached the room, she was just about to open the door when she saw it was ajar. Pingping poked her head out stealthily, and right after came Shen Xiaoxiao’s twisted expression.
Jiang Yan closed her eyes.
Pingping: “Pfft.”
Shen Xiaoxiao: “Pfft.”