CHAPTER 82 – The Shadow Returns
Later that day, feeling the urgent need to understand the source of the instability, Xiao Xi met Shen Yichen and Ling Qiuyue at a quiet, neutral café to discuss the potential anomalies created by the massive rewrite.
Gu insisted on coming along, his hand firmly holding hers.
She didn't object; she needed the physical anchor.
When they stepped inside, Shen immediately frowned, his gaze sharp.
"Something's wrong with the feel of this place," he murmured.
"The residual narrative pressure is spiking."
At the far corner of the café sat a woman with long black hair, wearing a vibrant red dress.
She was beautiful and elegant.
But her entire body kept flickering violently. Like she wasn't fully… there.
Her shape was constantly struggling to maintain its form.
Xiao Xi's blood ran cold, recognizing the same digital instability Gu had just experienced.
Ling whispered, her voice tight with unease. "She's glitching like a deleted character trying to load into an incompatible system…"
As they watched, the woman slowly raised her head.
Her eyes locked onto Xiao Xi with terrifying, immediate focus.
And she smiled.
A slow, haunting, unnatural smile that stretched too wide, a composite of joy and profound resentment.
Xiao Xi grabbed Gu's arm fiercely.
"Do you feel that? The cold?"
Gu's voice dropped, his body already pulling taut, prepared for a fight.
"She's not human.
She's raw, corrupted memory."
The woman suddenly stood, her movements jerky and inhumanly fast.
"Xiao Xi…" she rasped, her voice distorted, echoing with multiple voices speaking at once.
The entire café immediately blurred.
The customers froze mid-sip, mid-conversation—perfectly still.
The lights flickered violently.
Code bled through the air like thin, glowing strings of red and green static, visible only to those who had seen behind the curtain of reality.
Shen Yichen cursed under his breath. "She's pulling the local reality into her corruption field."
The woman took one deliberate step forward—
and the floor beneath her foot cracked, not into physical debris, but into digital pixels.
"Give… it… back…"
Xiao Xi's heart pounded, trying to understand the demand.
"Give WHAT back?!"
The woman pointed a flickering, translucent finger directly at Xiao Xi's chest.
"Give… my… fate… back."
And the local reality of the café shattered around them into a violent, white-noise void.