Peach-Orange! – Chapter 295 – The Other Side of the World

The moment they returned home, Chi Xiaocheng seized the opportunity while Su Tao was showering to take her phone and retreat into her room.

Connecting it to her somewhat battered secondhand laptop, she quickly detected something unusual.

Su Tao’s phone had been hacked!

Chi Xiaocheng’s first instinct was to open Su Tao’s photo gallery.

Then she let out a long sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness Tao-Tao doesn’t have any weird selfies in here.”

Otherwise, she would’ve spent every last bit of her emotional points to uproot the hacker and their entire organization.

Su Tao’s phone barely had any selfies of herself, and the few that existed were just pictures of her and Chi Xiaocheng together.

Chi Xiaocheng first purged all malicious content from Su Tao’s phone, then attempted to trace the hacker’s digital trail.

But her intermediate hacking skills weren’t as formidable as her intermediate acting.

She couldn’t track them down. The best she could do was protect herself.

After spending time fortifying Su Tao’s phone with multiple security layers, Chi Xiaocheng finally calmed down enough to think.

Su Tao’s phone had been monitored, and then that car had appeared. Without her Alert skill, in that heavy rain, most people wouldn’t have double-checked the license plate against the ride-hailing app’s details.

The car had been waiting conspicuously, the only one in the area. In the rush to escape the rain and get home, overlooking that detail could’ve been disastrous. Once inside, escaping wouldn’t have been easy.

Sure, she could darken, but that wouldn’t save her from poison or other underhanded methods.

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So the question was, who was targeting Tao-Tao?

Or were they using Tao-Tao to target her?

Chi Xiaocheng first asked her system internally, “System, Lin Fangya was killed by that Special Envoy Qiu. I shouldn’t be on the World Will’s radar, right?”

The system hesitated.

[Host, you were the direct cause. No matter how you look at the chain of events, since you interfered, the blame falls on you.]

[Originally, your fake death allowed you to slip under the World Will’s notice. Now, your character weight is increasing, though not as drastically as before. This incident… I suspect the target was still Su Tao.]

Chi Xiaocheng lightly nodded while rubbing her chin. “She’s the female lead, so it makes sense she’d get dragged into weird situations. And she’d probably overcome them anyway?”

If this were the original novel, absolutely.

But now, with her as a wildcard….

Like that assassination attempt.

If she hadn’t used her system-granted skills to push Su Tao out of the way, that bullet would’ve killed the female lead.

But the system’s meaning was different.

[No. What I mean is, Su Tao’s character weight as the female lead has decreased.]

“Wait, wasn’t she the only female lead in the novel? Why would it decrease?”

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Su Tao should’ve had the highest weight in this world.

[Your logic is sound, but in the mid-to-late stages, Su Tao was just a nominal protagonist, not the author’s most central character.]

[And right now… does she even resemble the confident female lead she used to be?]

[Her halo remained, but because of you, host, she’s gradually lost her original self-assurance.]

She had become insecure. Obsessive.

Like an immortal who fell from the heavens, tainted by mortal dust.

Chi Xiaocheng fell silent for a moment. “So… is Tao-Tao’s decreased character weight good or bad? What are the consequences?”

[Both.]

[At 100% character weight, unless she died of old age, she was effectively ‘invincible.’ She couldn’t die unless she chose to.]

[Even the worst outcome would just leave her in a vegetative state.]

[The downside of decreased weight is that she no longer has the World Will’s protection. Things won’t coincidentally work out in her favor anymore, and she can die from accidents.]

[The upside is that she can break free from the World Will’s control, reducing its influence over her.]

[Like in the original plot before you transmigrated, the World Will dictated everything. Even if Su Tao cared about you, after your high school fight, no matter how much she wanted to apologize, the World Will forced her down the original storyline.]

[Her subconscious leaned toward the male leads.]

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“So after I arrived, Tao-Tao reconnecting with me happened because the World Will couldn’t fully control her anymore?”

[Correct. Imagine a pot of soup with a rat dropping mixed in. Without dumping the whole pot, the focus shifts to fishing out that contaminant instead of perfecting the soup.]

[Su Tao is gradually deviating from her original ‘perfect white moonlight’ persona, gaining more flaws.]

[Thus, her character weight decreases, granting her more autonomy and freeing her from the World Will’s grip.]

After listening to the system’s explanation, Chi Xiaocheng gave a small nod.

Then she asked, “Can you quantify character weight for me?”

[Sorry, host. I can only speculate. Even the stats from your Status Glasses are approximations based on character conditions, not 100% accurate.]

“Then just make up some numbers for reference!”

[…]

[Calculating…]

[Major Characters: Host (15%), Su Tao (95%), Chu Lingfeng (80%), Dongfang Yang (70%), Si Chen (55%), Xiao Ming (40%)]

[Minor Characters: Second Young Master Ye (60%), Chi Song (35%), Long (10%), Fang Ning (5%), Liu Guijia (4%), Huang Limei (4%), Chen Qian (1%), Xiao Wei (0%)]

[Data inferred based on original and current plotlines. For reference only.]

“What’s with the disclaimer? We’re way past that.”

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After a brief complaint, Chi Xiaocheng focused on the numbers.

Her own 15% made sense since she’d indirectly killed a World Will-favored character.

But the huge gaps between the male leads’ weights puzzled her, especially Chu Lingfeng (the “Miracle Doctor”) being higher than Dongfang Yang.

[The current timeline corresponds to Chu Lingfeng’s ‘Miracle Doctor Arc’ in the novel. His plot relevance is at its peak, heavily influenced by the World Will’s push. Dongfang Yang’s weight was never that high in the original.]

Nodding at the explanation, Chi Xiaocheng understood Si Chen and Xiao Ming (the “Dragon King”) having lower weights since their arcs hadn’t started yet.

If Ye Liang hadn’t died, his weight would’ve been around 90-95%.

But Second Young Master Ye’s 60% surprised her. Did he inherit Lin Fangya and Ye Liang’s assets after their deaths?

Chi Song’s 35% also felt high. And—

“Why does Ningning have 5%? In the original, she didn’t even have a name. She was just one of Liu Guijia’s lackeys in the early plot.”

[She interfered in the host and Su Tao’s relationship. Anyone affecting the female lead’s storyline gains weight.]

[Higher weight means greater visibility to the World Will. Without strong willpower, they become susceptible to its control.]

The system’s final words sent a chill down Chi Xiaocheng’s spine.

It felt like countless eyes were watching her from the shadows.

For the first time, she viscerally understood that this world was being manipulated by an unseen hand.