Rules of the Strange: I Became a God in a Bizarre World Through Taoist Arts

"Yes! We'll execute this immediately!"

Qin Shi and Li Hua (History Bro) accepted the mission. Seeing Guan Shanyue deep in thought, they silently turned and left the command room.

The vast space was now filled only with countless screens glowing with a bluish-green light, and Guan Shanyue sitting within one of them.

On those screens were real-time images from both inside and outside the ghost stories—Shen Xingzhuo's figure holding a knife, scrolling text in the bullet comments, and the red sun that was about to set.

The fireflies illuminated Guan Shanyue's clear and bright eyes.

Her gaze pierced the sky and landed on Shen Xingzhuo, but unlike her usual gentle gaze, it appeared unusually deep.

But what she was thinking, no one knew.

……

In ghost stories.

Shen Xingzhuo wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

The bloodstains that had been splattered on her face instantly turned into wisps of smoke and dissipated into the air.

The layers of ashes beneath her feet reminded her of an extremely cruel idiom—

Crush his bones and scatter his ashes!

Her teeth clenched, and in that moment of confusion, the eerie voice clung to her like a ghost.

[Shen Xingzhuo of Tianxia Kingdom, you have killed 12 people. Do you have any thoughts to share now?]

Shen Xingzhuo froze, then lowered her head.

[Hahahaha, this is the first time I've ever seen a Taoist priest fall into the path of killing!]

The ghost story's laughter exploded in my ears, filled with undisguised smugness.

We're old friends, so I won't make things difficult for you. If you can reconstruct 80% of the past story, I'll consider your plot progress to be 50%, how about that?

Shen Xingzhuo's lowered eyes flickered.

"Is this what you call not making things difficult?"

She moved her dry lips and said, word by word, "The final answer to the question of love is Pei Jinxiu herself."

"And everything she did for her sister and Pei Yin is the evidence."

"She has a very high self-esteem, which is why she couldn't stand her sister's desperate attempts to kill herself over a poor scholar. She felt contempt for her sister but dared not look directly at her."

Such people are often also the ones who love themselves the most.

【…】

【Wait, you've gone off-topic, haven't you? Who asked you?】

The ghost story let out a soft gasp of disbelief.

Shen Xingzhuo raised her head, her face showing none of the annoyance that Guai Tan had expected.

"I've been keeping track of the time. You deliberately asked other questions just to make me delay the 'Love in Splendor' project, didn't you?"

As she spoke, she smiled.

"But now, your methods of forcibly turning things into monsters have failed." She paused, then asked, "Pei Jinxiu's favorability rating is full. When will you distribute the rewards for tasks related to her?"

Shen Xingzhuo was certain that if she didn't ask this question now, the ghost story would most likely cause trouble in the past and future timelines.

The ghost story paused for a few seconds before saying, somewhat exasperated:

[Wait until you meet the real Pei Jinxiu!]

Shen Xingzhu nodded, then brought the topic back to the question from before the ghost story.

"Pei Jinyu, the eldest daughter of the Pei family, met Liu Jin, whom she believed to be her true love, on a cruise ship."

"But what she didn't know at first was that all of this was a long-planned scheme by Liu Jin—"

He received guidance from a master and acquired the Phoenix Incense. First, he abandoned his family and career, devoting himself to becoming a crony of the Pei household; later, he planned to use the Phoenix Incense's power to directly replace Pei Jinyu.

She paused briefly, then continued, "However, the way things turned out in the future is not entirely Liu Jin's fault."