Little Pink Starfish

Watching Yuan’s silhouette turn and walk away, Xiao Xi once again felt a wave of panic in her heart. Sometimes, when someone is just too badass for too long, it becomes a kind of habit. For people like that, it’s hard to even imagine what they’d be like if they weren’t that way.

Yuan was exactly that kind of person. Even when he stood still, the aura around him was unforgettable. From his very first appearance, he gave off a powerful presence—once even regarded as the “power ceiling” of Yao Ji.

Readers had long gotten used to Yuan’s presence. He was the legendary badass traitor, someone they could pull out at any moment to curse a few times, then watch as he swaggered around the manga pages like a king.

And now, out of nowhere, a small patch of blood bloomed on the screen like a plum blossom—making people unreasonably uneasy.

“Is he… sick or something?” Xiao Xi stared at the manga. “It actually looks pretty serious…”

She felt weird looking at the image in front of her. Something felt off, like it didn’t sit right with her. It just didn’t match her expectations—like something that had always been stable was starting to shift.

“When did Yuan get sick? How long has it been?” Xiao Xi started flipping back through earlier issues.

She flipped through about twenty chapters, trying to find a scene that might reveal when Yuan got sick, or how serious it was. But she couldn’t find a single clue.

At the very least, in recent issues, Yuan hadn’t shown a single sign of illness. If he was truly sick, then he had hidden it flawlessly. No one could tell.

That made Xiao Xi think maybe she was overthinking it. Maybe Yuan wasn’t sick—maybe he was just injured, and maybe the blood came from drinking someone’s blood and not having swallowed it completely.

That’s what she convinced herself. She kept flipping through the pages, but then—suddenly—a thought smashed into her mind.

—What if, just what if, this wasn’t blood from drinking, or from a fresh wound, but rather from old internal injuries flaring up again…? Then how bad must those injuries be? How much had Yuan endured?

Xiao Xi, who prided herself on being a “villain slayer,” suddenly felt an unexplainable pang of bitterness.

She checked the comments section. Before, she had thought she was the only one feeling this weird emotional knot—but after reading the comments, she realized she wasn’t alone. Most readers felt exactly the same.

Everyone was posting about the strange, bittersweet feeling gnawing at them—like a little cat scratching their hearts.

【I just don’t get it… I used to hate Yuan. He felt like a total shit-stirrer. But these last few chapters? It’s starting to seem like he had his reasons.】
【Something about this just makes me a little sad… I can’t describe the feeling.】
【Why did Yuan use his blood to mark that person? What was that about?】
【I have a theory… What if Yuan didn’t actually die? What if he did something behind the scenes? Isn’t it weird? Faning said recently that pressure’s been building up like crazy, right? Normally, if a major figure in the Mask Organization like Yuan died, shouldn’t the group be in chaos? Why did it get stronger after he died?】

One comment stood out—the last one. Though there was no official confirmation, it made a strange kind of sense.

Since that scene was pulled from someone else’s memory, its timeline was uncertain. The most likely case was that it had happened long ago. The person’s subconscious retained it, but perhaps their conscious memory had been erased—so they forgot.

So what did the blood signify?

…

If you asked Yuan Yuanyuan herself, the truth really wasn’t that complicated. That “long ago” moment in the memory?

It was actually about ten minutes ago.

Yuan Yuanyuan nearly faceplanted while reading that panel. Of all memories Faning could’ve searched, he had to pick one from ten minutes ago?! Could his fancy new soul-searching spell be any less reliable? She seriously considered finding Faning and kindly but firmly advising him to just ditch his modified version and stick to the original.

Back then, when Faning charged in, Yuan Yuanyuan had gone in too—worried he might die in battle. She had left a mark on that demon, but it was simply to remind herself not to kill him yet—he still had some use.

Yuan thought using blood as a marker was the easiest, given how messy battlefields got—it’d be hard to tell blood apart. But then Faning had to barge in and totally expose her. She was so done.

That look on her face when he spotted it? Yeah, it was the classic “I knew it” expression. Commenters immediately started going off about whether she had some secret plan.

Truth be told, Yuan Yuanyuan had done a lot of shady things—but this wasn’t one of them. Still, surprisingly, the incident did help tamp down the Mask Organization’s activity a bit.

The theory in the comments actually inspired her to consider a new strategy. But it didn’t end there—like wildfire, speculation spread across the net.

By the time Yuan Yuanyuan checked the manga again, she found the entire fandom was playing detective—picking apart her every action.

Things she had done long ago were being dug up and reinterpreted in ways that even she hadn’t imagined. She’d once said a couple of completely throwaway lines in the manga, and now people were analyzing them like they contained secret messages.

Yuan swore on her own character—at least 80-90% of what they “uncovered” was nonsense. The manga hadn’t fully revealed the backstory yet, so speculation wasn’t completely out of control, but occasionally someone would nail something completely by accident, which left her feeling oddly complicated.

There were things even Yuan had forgotten—memories only triggered when she read the comments. Like those two times she’d encountered Faning long ago… she had let him off the hook. But no one had believed it back then, so everyone just laughed it off as a throwaway joke.

Now that joke was being brought back. People even went looking for the user who’d first mentioned it, praying in the comments under their post like it was some sacred scripture.

In the Monday issue, the plot picked up right where it had left off. After Faning read the demon’s memory, he suddenly had a breakthrough.

He started using his enhanced soul-searching spell to probe other people’s memories. The spell’s strongest feature was that it could uncover things even the original person had forgotten—as long as there was a “connection” to the relevant event.

Last time, that connection was Yuan’s blood.

Now, Faning carefully picked a new subject: someone who had had close contact with Yuan in the past.

The top candidate? A high-ranking member of the Mask Organization. Conveniently, they had just killed one and brought his body back.

Faning looked over the corpse, then took out his spell charm and pressed it to the man’s forehead.

…

Yuan Yuanyuan, reading the manga, froze.

Wait—when the hell did this guy die?

He was one of the first people she’d met from the Mask Organization—an old-timer. She remembered him joking around, calling people “old man” just like everyone else. Now he was suddenly dead, and besides being stunned, Yuan also felt a wave of inexplicable… shame?

Oh, shit… it’s THIS guy… That meant Faning might dig up some really embarrassing stuff. Back then, she’d been in a slump, low energy, but super into her undercover role. Thinking about it now, the odds of something cringe-worthy turning up were… pretty high.

Yuan tried to reassure herself: it’s fine, it’s fine. Faning’s soul-searching spell is garbage—it only pulls up memories from the last ten minutes. At most, he’ll find out what that guy had for lunch. No big deal.

She comforted herself with this thought… but didn’t consider the possibility that Ji Qiu might be the one pulling the strings behind the scenes. Was Faning’s spell really that useless? Not necessarily. He was a recognized prodigy, after all.

Trying to suppress her rising panic, Yuan watched as the screen showed the memory being pulled. It began in familiar darkness—the standard look of the soul-search spell taking effect.

Then the image shifted: Yuan was sitting quietly on a stone bed, head down. He looked peaceful. His torso was wrapped in bandages, blood seeping through.

That was just a few minutes ago—when she was recovering from her injuries.

Yuan sighed in relief. But the calm, serious expression drawn on her face as Yuan made her feel super embarrassed. She wasn’t good at looking serious. She preferred a more casual, boisterous style to lighten the mood.

In appearance, Yuan and Yuan Yuanyuan looked very different. Sometimes when reading the manga, she’d stare at the panels thinking: “Is that me? …No way, right? …But it really is me?”

She was getting used to it. Yuan, due to his “design,” was inherently more serious. And since she used a different face when appearing as Yuan, it didn’t bother her much. Yuan’s face was quite handsome—he looked good doing anything.

Still, that shameful feeling was hard to talk about… Yuan Yuanyuan didn’t know why, but reading the manga made her blush. She kept telling herself: It’s for survival. Nothing to be done.

She flipped the page—and immediately choked on her tea.

【“Why’s he been motionless for so long?” a voice murmured from the dark. It seemed to be the memory owner’s voice.】
【“Dunno. He barely said a word since he came in. Just like the rumors said.” said another. The two seemed to be chatting.】
【“Heh… this old man, huh.” said the memory owner.】

…

Yuan Yuanyuan slammed her teacup on the table in fury.

STOP. BRINGING. UP. THE OLD MAN JOKE!