SWNOVELXO Chapter 3: Hostile Takeover (3/3)
The bag was yanked from her head, and Hong Ye's vision swam back into focus. She was slumped in a chair, her body stiff and aching, in her father's opulent office. The room, usually a bastion of his controlled power, was now filled with a palpable sense of chaos. Her father was pacing erratically, his face a mask of panic, his eyes wide and darting towards the door. The distant sound of gunfire had intensified, punctuated by the shouts of heavily armed special forces operatives, clearly clearing every floor of the building as they approached. It was clear, even in her disoriented state, that they were coming for him. He was not in control of this situation anymore, he was a cornered rat, and he knew it.
Her father's gaze fell on her, his face contorted with a mixture of anger and fear, but it was clear that the most prevalent emotion he was feeling was panic. He was no longer in control, and his empire was being ripped from his hands. He was so pathetically broken, so weak, that he had to resort to all of this to keep his power. This was not the powerful man she had always known, this was a coward hiding behind thugs and guns. She was ashamed that she had ever been related to this vile creature.
"Unfilial daughter," he spat, his voice laced with a mixture of desperation and rage, the words barely a whisper against the growing cacophony of gunfire. His hand moved, almost clumsily, to his gun, the small revolver trembling in his grip.
"Well," Hong Ye retorted, her voice laced with cold fury, a final act of rebellion against her father, "I certainly didn't want to see your pile of shit face again? Did you think I would want to be filial to-"
Her words were cut short by the sudden burst of gunfire, not from outside, but from her own father's weapon. Five shots barked out, the bullets tearing into her stomach, each impact a searing blast of pain that sent shockwaves through her body. It was a point blank execution, and she knew that it was over. Her plan, her life, her future, all of it was going to be ripped away from her.
The sixth shot never left his gun.
The office door splintered inwards, the special forces team bursting into the room, their weapons raised, and a single bullet tore through her father's skull, his brains splattering across the wall like a grotesque work of art, like the vile creature he was. He had been a monster in life, and he was a monster in death.
The team moved quickly, efficiently. Ignoring her father's corpse, they rushed to her side, their faces grim, their movements precise. They tried to stem the bleeding, applying pressure to her wounds, but the damage was too severe. She was dying, and she knew it. It was all over, and her plan had been completely useless. They had won.
But as her vision faded, as the pain consumed her, she felt a flicker of satisfaction, a quiet pride in the fact that she had, at the very least, ruined him. He was gone, and with him, all of his power. And now, as her heart stuttered to a halt, a series of strange, almost mechanical words appeared in her mind, a glitch in the system, something completely beyond her understanding:
[System initializing 1%... Error! Life simulation system cannot activate in a 0 chi world. Activating emergency dimensional shunt.]
A second message, a separate entity, appeared in her mind:
[Life Seeking System Initializing....]
And then, she knew no more.
Hong Ye awoke, or at least, it felt like she opened her eyes for the first time in many years, a sensation akin to a long, dreamless sleep finally coming to an end. It wasn't a sudden awakening, but rather a gradual return to consciousness, a slow and deliberate unfurling of her senses. The world around her was not as she remembered it, it felt wrong, like a broken image of something that she had once loved, a world that she had been ripped away from.
She examined the world around her, and it was not a single image, but a kaleidoscope of fractured realities, a surreal scene where one layer seemed to peel apart from another, like the delicate petals of a dying flower. It was an experience unlike any she had ever had before, a complete sensory overload that was both terrifying and fascinating. There was an intricate layer of reality, a vision of opulent, almost anachronistic splendor, a scene ripped from the pages of ancient China, transported to a place that was both familiar and alien. It felt like a dream from her past, a dream that had somehow become real.
She found herself in what seemed to be an elaborate teahouse, a place where silk banners swayed gently in an unseen breeze, where intricate wooden carvings adorned every surface, where waitresses flitted about in vibrant, traditional clothing, their movements a graceful, almost choreographed dance. Everything about this place was perfect, too perfect, and it was that feeling that set her teeth on edge, this was not her home, this was a trap, and she was walking willingly into the jaws of death. She had always been wary of places that were "too good to be true".
And yet, overlaid on this seemingly perfect scene, was another layer, a more ethereal, translucent reality, a world of ghosts where everything felt like it was made of smoke and dreams. She saw herself, or at least a version of herself, as a spectral figure, the form she had taken in death, dressed in tattered rags, the fabric hanging loosely on her ghostly form. This side of the world was not beautiful, it was a vision of despair, it was the truth of where she was, and yet, the illusion was so much more tempting. It was like a siren's call, and she knew, that it would drag in the unaware, that it would pull them to their deaths.
She moved her hand, and in the first layer, she saw smooth, well-cared for skin, the familiar hands of the living, of the world she had left behind. But then, she moved her spectral hand, and she saw her transparent form, a ghost in a ghostly world, a wisp of energy drifting in the breeze, and she understood, deep down in her core, that that was the real her, the side of her that she had been trying to ignore. It was confusing, disorienting, and terrifying, and she knew that this was not where she was meant to be.
The layers shifted, one over the other, like the pages of a book, making it difficult for her to focus on a single point, making it impossible to tell what was real and what was not. It was as if she was looking through a broken piece of glass, and she felt as if her soul itself was shattering. This new reality was like a twisted, distorted mirror, and it did not sit right with her, because it was like seeing herself reflected in a pool of lies, she knew that she had to get out of here as soon as possible.
At the center of the teahouse, four figures sat at an ornately carved table. They were impossibly beautiful, their skin flawless, their robes impeccably tailored, and the fawning waitresses were clearly under their spell. In the overlay, her ghostly self smiled at them, a wide, almost manic grin that made her feel as if she was a puppet being controlled by someone else. It felt so very, very wrong, and yet, it also felt right, like the correct action to take, like she was meant to be doing it.
It was this jarring disconnect, this subtle unease, this underlying feeling of wrongness, that finally made Hong Ye understand. The ghostly version of herself, the one in rags, that was the real her, the core of her being stripped bare, while the other layer was an illusion, a fabrication built to lure in unsuspecting individuals, to make them lower their guard. The teahouse, the beautiful waitresses, the charming figures, it was all a clever trap, a carefully constructed deception designed to draw others to their deaths. This was a farm, and she was one of the farmers, an unwilling participant in a system she wanted no part of.
A grim sense of recognition settled upon her, a chilling realization that sent a shiver of dread down her ghostly spine. It all felt so familiar, so incredibly wrong, like stepping into a nightmare. The layered reality, the medieval architecture, the spectral figures, it was like stepping into one of her grandmother's old stories, the ones that would make her have nightmares when she was younger, and yet, here she was, living it. Was she even on Earth anymore? The question, the doubt, it lingered in her mind like a persistent itch that she could not scratch, and the longer she pondered, the more certain she became that she was not in her old world anymore. This was something else.
It was the infamous "Town of Hungry Ghosts," a cursed place in the stories that her grandma had always warned her about. A place where the Jiangshi, the hopping corpses, and other undead would lure in unsuspecting individuals, adventurers and merchants alike, and where the town would slowly devour their life force, trapping them within its borders, adding them to the ranks of its ghostly servants and thralls. And it suddenly clicked, this wasn't a prison, it was a farm. She wasn't supposed to be trapped by the town, she was supposed to be part of the system that did the trapping, the ones that lure in the foolish souls. But this was all a mistake, this was not supposed to be how this was supposed to work, she was supposed to have been reincarnated, she knew that, so why was she here?
[Life Seeking System Initialized!]