SWNOVELXO Chapter 22
Chapter 22, Second Update + Half Update (1.5 Landmine Bonus)
After comforting her sobbing roommate, it was nearly midnight. Li Li went to bed and, after classes the next day, headed to the library to check the forum.
[My eyes were swollen this morning]
1L Original Poster
Because I cried all night :)
2L
I get it, my tears are worthless, waaah
3L
My Li, my ahoge cool guy, my battle-damaged beauty, why, why!
I love battle damage, but not actual death in battle!!!
4L
Cry, Little Corgi cries, I cry, we all cry hahaha!
5L
Artist, please, I beg for some fanart, I want to see HE fan content, I want to see the three of them buying a house in Floating City and living together!
6L
Waaah, I’m crying so loud!
7L
What are you all talking about? Didn’t Extreme Black and White skip an update last night XD
8L
The poster above is crazy, I’m crazy too.
…
[Yesterday I was laughing about Extreme Black and White going full shonen, today Extreme Black and White taught me what Peace and Love means]
1L Original Poster
I got wrecked.
Which shonen manga stabs its popular side character like this!
2L Original Poster
Extreme Black, Extreme Black and White, great, just great.
3L OP
Did you know how I spent last night? I opened my eyes to "let's be family," and closed them to "your family isn't me."
4L OP
Ahhh, in my dream, it was still Tang crying, saying, "You don't want me either?"
5L OP
Extreme Black and White, murder, you're committing murder!
6L
Another one gone mad, carry them away.
7L OP
This isn't the royal road, this is a damn knife to the death!!!!!
...
[Yesterday, I just drew a One Big Happy Family doujin picture]
1L OP dog head rose
[picture.jpg]
I was too hasty.
2L
Wuwuwu, the artist is a god!
3L
This is the real story, I declare this is the content of Extreme Black and White!
4L
Thank you, artist, for healing my heart!
Are today's shonen battle manga about youths throwing their heads and spilling their blood, wuwu!
...
[When will Heige die? :) ]
1L OP
No way, no way, there can't really be people who like this murderous villain, right?
Wouldn't it be better for him to die early and rid the people of harm? :)
2L
An A-rank bigshot is someone you can just kill? Looks like a mid-stage villain, still a long way from being taken down.
3L
The one above is killjoy, don't you power-scaling fans have any morals?
4L
Extreme Black and White is a shonen manga, people dying is normal.
Didn't you react like this when the boss was thought to be dead?
Because of his face?
If you only have a face but no strength, what's there to cry about when you get killed?
5L
What kind of killjoys are 4L and 2L, and I wish your A-rank bigshot gets killed by a high-rank soon, since they deserve to die without strength.
6L
Check-in, has Heige died today?
...
[Heige is so cool, is this okay to say?]
1L OP
My gosh, that leisurely strolling vibe hit me hard, "You can only surpass me and defeat me if you're stronger than me," "You can't even survive under my hand right now," so cool!
This is how a villain should be!
2L
Yes, yes, yes! Villain fans are ecstatic!
3L
Agree with OP, Heige really laughed his way into my heart!
I want to be Heige's dog! Step on me, step on me!
4L
Half-face mask, last time it was sunglasses, right? I love Heige bigshot's wardrobe so much.
5L
Good-looking people look good in anything!
6L
His words may be a bit extreme, but they’re not wrong.
For ordinary people, especially in the worldview of Extreme Black and White, if you're not strong, you'll get hurt.
7L
Sober-in-the-world Heige bigshot, is that how it is, haha.
8L
When I saw Heige humming a song after killing that A-rank blue-haired guy, I knew this man was my type.
A strong person is just that carefree!
...
There were many meaningless venting posts on the forum, so Li Li skipped them and went straight to the posts she was interested in.
[Analysis post, Heige's ability analysis]
1L OP
Those people are crazy, let's analyze ours.
2L
Squatting, I thought about Heige's ability effects all night and still can't figure it out.
3L
Ignore those character fans, OP, hurry up and analyze!
...
12L OP
I carefully examined the death states of those two ability users.
[manga screenshot.jpg]
It's obvious the ice belonged to this blue-haired A-rank ability user, so his companion was killed by him, and he killed himself too.
Have to say, Heige is impressive, killing a same-rank ability user so easily.
13L
Right, this is what I couldn't figure out. Did this ability user suddenly take some drug to kill his companion and then himself?
14L
Feels like a ghost story.
...
38L OP
Then Li's death state was being buried in stones, and Little Corgi witnessed an earthquake and sudden heavy rain.
An A-rank ability with that range shouldn’t be surprising, and Heige was the only one present who could do something like that.
Unless Li was high-rank, but how could that be, hahaha.
39L
Is OP rebelling because of annoyance?
40L
Looks like it.
...
82L OP
This part in the fight between Heige and Little Corgi is very interesting.
[suddenly appearing knife.jpg]
Notice, the knife in Heige's hand actually looks a lot like the one Little Corgi mimicked.
[Yiming's arm.jpg]
During the fight, Little Corgi's arm disappeared.
[Heige looking down at the fainted Yiming.jpg]
At this moment, Little Corgi's hand reappeared.
If it’s not an art mistake, then there’s something very interesting here.
83L
OP, finish your thought! Don’t stop here! Can you type faster?!
...
172L OP
So either Little Corgi’s hand was gone and then came back, or it never disappeared in the first place.
I lean toward the latter; the hand’s disappearance was a trick, and that ability user couldn’t have killed his companion and himself while fully aware.
Based on my deduction, Heige bigshot is likely an illusionist.
...
Seeing this, Li Li was somewhat surprised because she had indeed considered disguising her ability like this.
The true effect of her ability should not be exposed if possible, especially with a high-rank watching her closely.
This seemed quite feasible. Li Li nodded.
She continued reading, and among a pile of "Li," "trio," and "Heige," she saw the lone boss.
[The boss didn’t die? Heige didn’t kill him?]
The lone boss, still carrying Heige’s big name, fully showed how tragic an outdated character could be.
Li Li made up her mind to constantly follow the manga and forums, planning to find ways to stay close to Yiming whenever her popularity began to wane.
After all, villains were like that—impossible to kill and always entangled with the protagonist.
While scrolling, she came across another post from the same OP who had previously speculated that Li was a test subject.
[Analysis, is Li a plunderer or a test subject!]
1L OP
Hahahaha, look at the update! Li clearly has multiple abilities!
From how the manga portrays him now, Li is definitely a good person.
Even when he made Tang cry, he remembered to give candy to cheer them up, and he’s certified as a kind person by Little Corgi.
Look at what he said when he wanted to stay behind—obviously, he didn’t want Yiming and Tang to feel sad. What a great guy!
So how could he possibly plunder abilities willingly!
It must be ability research! It must be human experimentation!
2L
Too many words, didn’t read. Just from the title, OP is spouting nonsense.
3L
Even if it’s human experimentation, they wouldn’t expand on it, right? The guy’s already dead.
4L
If he’s dead, it’s even less likely to be human experimentation.
There’s no way to lead into later plotlines, so what’s the point of adding this setting?
...
Like the previous post, the OP once again battled the crowd and suffered a crushing defeat.
But Li Li looked at this post and thought for a moment.
She hadn’t actually fleshed out the background for "Li" or "Heige" at all.
A well-rounded character would definitely have a backstory, but for now, she only had the extremely vague "once had a family."
This time, leaving Yiming was partly due to external pressure but also because she wanted to find opportunities to enrich her character’s persona.
Although Qing Yu Chen and Yue Lan had pinned a scapegoat label on her, for herself, she was indeed more inclined toward the Former Ability Guild among the major factions.
Li Li had already planned it out.
That night, she would go to the manga world, shake off Yu Xiao, and head to Four-Way City.
She needed to figure out the relationship between the Former Ability Guild and the Ability Guild, investigate content not yet updated in the manga, and do her homework to build her character’s backstory.
The Branch Leader of Four-Way City’s Ability Guild had just died, and the power transition and shifts in faction dynamics would surely throw the place into chaos for a while.
For her, the more chaotic, the better.
With this in mind, that evening, she climbed into bed early, lying there waiting for midnight to arrive.
...
[Update data, total popularity value: 11263.]
[Congratulations on reaching 10,000 popularity points.]
[Preparing for traversal.]
[Passage opened. Wishing you to become a high-popularity character and bring new vitality to the manga.]
...
When Li Li opened her eyes again, she saw her bed curtain.
The one in her dorm, the one she picked herself—highly blackout and adorned with shimmering star flecks.
She heard her roommate’s alarm and the roommate’s groggy mumble upon waking: “Saturday, keep sleeping...”
After a moment of silence, Li Li slowly asked, “...I didn’t go?”
Could the system update have gone wrong?!
But the system refuted her guess: [You did indeed go to the manga world.]
Li Li: “Did I lose my memory or something?”
Otherwise, why did it feel like she had just slept until morning?
...
“Is this it?”
A youth with red hair, dressed in an extremely expensive white suit, scanned the ruins before him with golden eyes.
He had a refined and striking face—not the flamboyant beauty of Hua Yizhi, nor the aloof, ethereal aura of Qing Yu Chen, but something in between, like a meticulously cultivated, exquisite flower, beautiful and haughty.
It was the collapsed ruins of Qing Tong’s stronghold.
Beside him, four men in white uniforms stood with heads bowed.
One of them said, “The itinerary Branch Leader Yue had prepared for that day was indeed here.”
Their white uniforms were very similar to Yue Lan’s but seemed to lack something, not quite as high-nd.
“A forty-something A-rank, just casually getting lost,” the red-haired youth snorted, arrogantly saying, “This is a disgrace to the Yue clan.”
Clearly, he was an aristocrat.
“Please, Mr. An, help us find the Branch Leader’s whereabouts,” the man continued.
The red-haired youth didn’t even glance at them, as if afraid that low-ranks and commoners would taint his eyes: “Step back.”
After the uniformed men retreated so far they were barely visible, the red-haired youth faced the ruins alone and suddenly raised his hand.
As if embracing something, his golden pupils narrowed slightly.
“Ability, Necromantic Prelude,” he said softly.
Instantly, golden light radiated from his body in all directions, enveloping the ruins and spreading even farther.
It was like a sudden golden dome, covering everything in the space: flowers, grass, trees, ruins, and the souls of those who had died a day earlier.
Golden particles formed humanoid shapes, and the floating, illusory souls flickered like a glitching television, appearing and vanishing.
“It’s been too long,” the red-haired youth said.
His gaze passed over the blurry figures of black-robed men, and with a wave of his hand, he dispersed these obstructing souls, precisely leaving two behind.
Yue Lan and, a hundred meters away, Qing Yu Chen.
“Who killed you?” he asked.
Perhaps as he said, too much time had passed, so the two souls, formed of golden particles, spoke like broken radios, vague and stuttering.
“...Eyes...deceived...killed me...was myself,” Yue Lan.
“Concept...concept...” Qing Yu Chen.
The red-haired youth was somewhat displeased.
He waved his hand again, sealing Yue Lan’s soul into a small red bottle, then turned his golden eyes to Qing Yu Chen.
Souls linger at their place of death until their energy dissipates completely.
The moment those golden eyes locked onto Qing Yu Chen’s soul, it showed a pained expression, its form collapsing as its remaining energy vanished entirely.
While the red-haired youth gazed at the direction where the golden particles dissipated, it was as if he saw some other scene.
After a while, he slowly said: “Heige.”
...
Ever since that day when I slept until dawn, the next day Li Li didn’t go to the manga world.
On the night when the update was about to happen, she finally managed to enter the manga world.
When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t in the state of holding onto Yu Xiao’s sleeve from that day, but lying on a bed.
“You’re awake.” The blond youth said, pulling a stool to sit by the bed, “You must be hiding from someone, right? I brought you here to stay for two days, didn’t go out.”
The air carried a fishy smell.
Li Li frowned slightly, and through the gaps in the wooden wall, she saw the distant beach and sea.
This was indeed a remote place in Jiao Huang, rarely visited by people.
She didn’t know how Yu Xiao found it.
But this character’s luck always fluctuated between extremely good and extremely bad.
He could even get lost just following Yiming, so nothing he did was surprising.
Li Li had once seen a video of a seal in the sea gnawing on a flipping fish, and that huge fish neither dodged nor fled, letting the seal eat it.
Yu Xiao was just such a marvelous iron fool.
“Two days?” Li Li felt she understood.
She had been unconscious here for two days, which was why she didn’t know she had come to the manga world.
“Right, your injuries were particularly severe.” Yu Xiao blinked his red eyes and said, “But I couldn’t do anything about internal organ issues, so I just bandaged you up simply.”
Li Li touched her left eye, where a white bandage wrapped around it, along with her neck.
Her left elbow to palm was also bandaged, though she didn’t know what the point of that was.
She felt she couldn’t have too high expectations of Yu Xiao, but after sleeping for two days, her body felt much better than before.
Li Li sat up, pulled back the blanket, and let her feet touch the ground.
“You’d better not move too much right now...” Yu Xiao leaned over, but before he finished, he met Li Li’s right eye and saw the deep black within.
“You’re dreaming.” Li Li said.
She looked into Yu Xiao’s eyes and activated her ability.
Turning lies into reality—that was her power.
“You saved a passerby in your dream, but you don’t remember what he looked like.” Li Li said, “You just slept for two days.”
She watched as Yu Xiao’s expression gradually turned blank, and he slowly closed his eyes, falling into sleep.
Li Li tidied up the bed, then moved Yu Xiao onto it.
After everything was in order, she left the small house.
Joking, stay and meet Little Corgi?
She’d find a chance to repay this favor later.
That day, the dark clouds had long dissipated, and the sunlight was just right.
The waves crashed against the shore, the fishy smell mingling in the air, lingering at her nose.
Li Li looked up, squinting slightly, glanced at the blazing sun overhead, then turned to the sea horizon.
The lord of Jiao Huang was beneath the sea, perhaps sleeping, perhaps roaming.
A sense of being in another world hit her again.
Li Li closed her eyes briefly, then sighed: “Covering my eye and neck is so uncomfortable.”
Illusory Reality activated again, as she tried to turn her more severe injuries into falsehood.
The next second, nothing on her body changed at all.
Her ability didn’t work.
Against herself, her ability’s success rate was only 5%.
As long as she believed she was injured, the injury wouldn’t heal.
Li Li touched her waist and abdomen, her mind echoing with the white-haired high-rank ability user from that day and the crushing pressure that could shatter space.
She would try her best to forget.
Finally, she removed the bandages and put the half-mask back over her left eye.
Now, she needed to head to Four-Way City as planned.
But on the way, before she had even left the suburban boundary Yu Xiao had found for her, she saw a familiar face.
Boss Hua Yizhi, the once highly popular side character who had faded from the forums, appeared before her.
This time, Hua Yizhi wore a very formal Tang suit, without his pipe, his enchanting face bearing a serious expression.
Behind him followed some people.
Li Li looked closely and remembered she had seen them.
They were the men from the breakfast stall who told her the lord of Jiao Huang would kill troublesome high-rank users.
What were they doing? Li Li’s lips curled into a smile, but inwardly, she began calculating whether to run first or act tough and then run if a fight broke out.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t fight now, just that it would be troublesome.
Both at C-rank ability levels, with unknown specifics, she only knew Hua Yizhi was a domain-type.
If Hua Yizhi unleashed his domain directly, she might not have a chance for verbal induction, and within the domain, she’d be very passive.
At the moment, she had no system shop or props, relying solely on her ability.
She stared at Hua Yizhi, smiling faintly, but inwardly heightened her vigilance.
If a fight really broke out, she had to escape Hua Yizhi’s domain range immediately!
But in the instant her thoughts surged, she saw Hua Yizhi move.
He led everyone to kneel on one knee before her.
Decisively, with fluid movements, after kneeling, this C-rank ability user respectfully lowered his head, gazing at the ground before him.
“Jiao Huang agent of the Tide Organization, we earnestly request you to become our leader.” Hua Yizhi said.
At this, the respected Li Li slowly produced two question marks.
What was this about?