Chapter 457: Chang Xia (4)

Quick Transmigration: Saving The Crazy Villainess

Chang Xia (4)

Soon, the car disappeared from his vision. The place behind him was still as busy, and it seemed like the closer it was to midnight, the livelier the night market would be. Standing alone under the streetlamp, the man whose expression turned solemn appeared a sharp contrast to the scenery behind him.

"See you soon." He said, even though nobody could hear him.

Chang Xia once again reminded him to call her before going to bed. The problem was that he had no plan to sleep tonight. In fact, he would be busy in the following days, so there would be no opportunity to meet.

Would she be angry? Would she then stop their current setup?

Jiang Li was sure she was not really an air-headed girl. The way she acted an hour ago made it clear that she knew his real identity all along. This meant that she was probably aware of the troubles in his family.

Jiang Li did not go home. He boarded a train and headed towards the east district. Since the trip would take about half an hour, he took out his phone and began playing random mobile games. However, having just returned from a sci-fi world, not even the best mobile RPG game could keep his interest, so he simply closed the app and went to his browser again. To not be bored, he let some random music play in the background. This time, the subject of his research was not his family or anybody related to his uncle's family.

Why did the Chang family create a fake when the real one is still alive?

The information the system gave confirmed a few things. There was another girl named Chang Xia in the Chang family. Three months from now, the world would descend into a zombie apocalypse. That calamity, unsurprisingly, had something to do with the Chang family's real eldest daughter.

'Interesting.'

This world's plot was a really messy one. There was one female lead and three male leads. His cousin Jiang Yun was even one of them. As for Jiang Li, if this world was a novel, then he was merely one of those many characters who never made an appearance but were mentioned in passing.

However, in the future, the wealth Jiang Yun got from Jiang Li's family would fund the base that the female lead established.

In the apocalyptic world, wealth means food and resources.

Jiang family was not really the richest in the city. But Jiang Yun was very prepared when the end of the world arrived. Nobody could say where he got so many resources to keep an entire city afloat for more than a year. But everyone only knew that Jiang corporation only fell in his hand a few days before that fateful day and that most companies under the Jiangs were involved in electronics and entertainment businesses.

Jiang Li tried to recall what his cousin looked like. Before his family got betrayed, Jiang Yun was like a brother to him. The latter had a good temperament and gave off the impression that he would never do anything dishonest in his life.

However, looks could be deceiving. The seemingly honest cousin was a calculating man. Even when the end of the world arrived, he never suffered a loss.

Now it all made sense why. It turned out it was because Jiang Yun was one of the male leads.

Before Chang Xia knocked on his door this morning, the system specially warned him. "None of the main characters here are ordinary."

Xiao Chunhua, the female lead, was a transmigrator from another modern world. The woman Jiang Li saw in the images was a beautiful and charismatic female leader. She seldom smiled, which made her appear cold and unfeeling.

The three male leads had extraordinary powers and were from other timelines.

Jiang Yun, if Jiang Li's suspicion was correct, was from the future. That was how he managed to prepare various resources beforehand. Through some unknown means, he came back from the past. He knew what to do since he already witnessed once how more than half of the world's population turned into zombies in just a day. Jiang Li's family became a sacrifice to allow Jiang Yun to obtain a substantial wealth that would enable him to go forth with his plans.

The two other reincarnators were from ancient times and were generals of rival nations. Due to frequent encounters on opposing sides of the battlefield, the relationship between them could not even be described as 'not good'. At the sight of each other, their hands would automatically pull out their weapons. In this timeline though, these two were once again from rivaling factions, but somehow came into an agreement in order to stay with Xiao Chunhua.

'One is a high-ranking officer of the army. The other, a mafia boss' right-hand man.'

'Sometimes it doesn't make sense, but let's just say love has a weird power to lower IQ, pride, and moral values.'

Jiang Li's train of thoughts halted at the same time the robotic female voice echoed. He joined the long line of people getting off the train.

After buying himself a bottle of water from a hawker, he walked for half an hour to arrive at a seemingly abandoned hotel.

"Looking at it from the outside, this hotel indeed looks creepy."

The building looked so old. No lights could be seen from inside, not even from the parking lot in front of the entrance. The lack of human presence nearby made it apparent that it had long gone out of business. Nobody had been using the place for nearly a decade, so all residents in the area thought it was already home to evil spirits or crooks. But was it really the case?

Twenty minutes later, Jiang Li stared at the weird patterns on the wall. He was already inside the hotel.

Jiang Li entered the place without even bothering to turn on his phone's flashlight, only doing so when he arrived in a spacious room in the basement where he had to inspect some inscriptions.

Rumors of the hotel being haunted began three years ago. People living nearby allegedly heard weird ghostly voices coming from this place every night. Sometimes the voice belonged to a crying woman. Sometimes, to a laughing child. Those who tried to investigate met unfortunate accidents. Efforts to purify evil entities here proved futile since nothing changed. Gradually, people just avoided getting near, and even if it was daytime, they would avoid looking in the hotel's direction to not attract bad luck or unclean beings.

However, who was Jiang Li? How could he be misled by these rumors? He was a former ghost king! Despite not being one right now, his knowledge and experience of the supernatural remained. Of course, he knew at a glance what was happening here.

The rumors were false. This was no den of evil spirits and there was not a single ghost around. Actually, ghosts would avoid this building since it had traces of auras that ghosts hated - the police. It was also close to the place inhabited by people who would even dare to experiment on evil spirits.

"Host, this hotel is just one of the many buildings that act as entrances to that laboratory. The villainess' research group got permission to continue their experiments and they want it to be as secretive as possible, so they chose a location surrounded by buildings like this. But the government knows the risk, so the research team is still being heavily monitored."

The system finally spoke after a day of silence. Jiang Li quietly listened.

Soon footsteps rang from the hallway. Hushed voices followed not long after.

Jiang Li could hear them clearly despite the distance. Unfortunately, he could not understand them since they spoke in an unfamiliar language.

But people actually came to this hotel at this hour? Or was he discovered?

Jiang Li pondered for a moment before deciding there was no need to hide. After pressing the power button, he put his phone in his pocket. Then used his meager spiritual power to command some tiny insects. It did not take long for the footsteps to go away.

The next minute, he busied himself capturing photos of the various symbols on the ground and on the walls as he found them interesting.

He spoke in a low voice. "When I transmigrated into a divorced producer, I remember that Na Yu's incarnation used to read her scripts to me, asking my opinions on what to revise. She was a producer and scriptwriter. She's not fond of sci-fi and horror but she would not shy away from those genres when asked by her fans."

It was rare for Jiang Li to converse normally with the system so the latter listened attentively.

"I remember that some fiction works she used as references when writing zombie apocalypse scripts have scientists and doctors creating medicines for a loved one's incurable disease. Most of the time, it's cancer. Unfortunately, their finished product would turn into an infectious virus somehow, or some sort of biological weapon instead of a miraculous cure."

Jiang Li scrolled through the pictures he had just taken. He made sure none of the captures were blurry before he continued talking. "System, I triple-checked my memory. However, nothing pointed at Chang Xia's reason for creating that thing."

The child spirit imprisoned in the void answered, "Host, I'm sorry. I don't know. The human brain and heart are too complicated for me to understand."

The man could not help but shrug. He also did not know.

The real Chang Xia, the villainess, ended an era with her creation. What prompted her to do that? She even arranged a fake to stand in her place while she worked in the background. It made him wonder if the girl purposely intended for her project to create monsters or do harm to humanity. The thought crossed his mind because if her goal was for the betterment of the society, there would not have been any need to be so secretive about her experiments.

As he was without a clue, Jiang Li understood that he could only investigate. Since Jiang Yun was one of the protagonists, he knew the best way to take revenge was naturally to make the apocalypse not descend again, and to realize this goal, the villainess was the key.