CHAPTER 65 – Awake… But Not in Her World
Xiao Xi opened her eyes slowly.
Her head throbbed with an intense, localized pain.
She was lying on a floor, but it was cold, smooth, and featureless.
It wasn't a hospital.
It wasn't the safehouse.
It wasn't the filming set.
The room was vast, white, and empty, seemingly boundless.
When she sat up shakily, she saw it—
A massive, transparent screen, floating in the center of the void.
It displayed constant, scrolling code, violently glitching reality fragments, and, most horrifyingly, a seamless loop of her original death scene from the novel.
Her breath hitched in her chest.
She wasn't in the world anymore.
She was in the System's core.
A voice echoed behind her, solid and terrifyingly close.
"You don't belong in that story, little anomaly," the hacker said, walking forward through rippling digital static.
"But in here? In my domain?"
He smiled, a dark, triumphant curve of the lips.
"I can erase you completely, without the world fighting back."
Xiao Xi stood shakily, forcing strength back into her limbs.
Her System flickered beside her like a small, broken orb, its light dim and desperate.
[Host… run… I cannot fight him here. This is his root level.]
Her chest tightened.
Gu wasn't here.
She was completely alone—at the core of the System that wanted her gone.
The hacker raised a hand.
With a simple thought, the surrounding white code twisted and solidified into a long, gleaming digital blade.
"Goodbye, anomaly.
Your story is terminated."
Xiao Xi braced herself, closing her eyes for the inevitable erasure—
just as the entire digital world shook violently, the massive code screen cracking, and fissures of brilliant white-hot light ripping through the static void.
A familiar voice, amplified by code and fury, thundered through the collapsing system:
"XIAO XI! HOLD ON— I'M COMING FOR YOU!"
Gu Yanzhou—was physically breaking into the System's core.
His voice was the sound of defiant code intrusion.