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After saying that, she pressed her lips together and turned her head. Her pitch-black eyes brimmed with malice, murder plain in them.

The one held at swordpoint was slumped against the corner wall, clearly fresh from a beating. His right cheek was swollen high, and both his clothes and hair were a mess.

He seemed to be in terrible pain. A few hoarse gasps rasped from his throat, their tails trembling without end.

Three people shared the disciple dormitory. The other two really did gang up on Pei Ji.

She knew one of them, Nie Zhi, liked to wear white. So the one holding the sword had to be the other minor villain, Shen Anqiao. As for the miserable fellow in the corner—

The male lead could actually look this wretched.

So.

Ning Ning thought, as a proper vicious supporting female character, what should she say now?

"Be sure to let me join your group activity?"

"Let go of the male lead. I'll take over?"

She'd more or less gotten used to her character, so when all three turned to look at her, she didn't panic. Instead, she raised an eyebrow with feigned composure and smiled. "Why'd you stop? Keep going."

That look, like she was staring at garbage. That lofty tone.

Full marks!

Ning Ning had entered the sect in the same year as them, and she was Elder Tianxian's personal disciple, too. Nie Zhi recognized her at once. "You're Elder Tianxian's..."

How strange. Why did he look so terrified, as if a hungry wolf were chasing him?

Was it because he'd been caught bullying a fellow disciple and couldn't save face?

The sword-wielding Shen Anqiao, meanwhile, looked perfectly calm. He knitted his brows and glanced at her, his eyes full of malice. "What are you doing here?"

So arrogant, so cold. He looked every bit the head of the local delinquents.

He was actually quite handsome, with striking features and a straight nose. He just looked frighteningly fierce.

Ning Ning met his gaze and pointed at the male lead on the ground. "I came to see him."

She noticed the brief flicker of surprise in his eyes, then strode lightly forward and stopped beside the male lead.

The face rumored to be breathtakingly beautiful had been beaten black and blue, its original features unrecognizable. She sighed inwardly, then thought hard:

What had Ning Ning said in the original story?

"Well, you sure got beaten badly."

"You know perfectly well why I'm here. Take a good look at yourself. You're an Outer Sect Disciple, yet you actually dared to provoke me?"

"We belong to the same Xuanxu faction, and yet you've done something so shameful to a fellow disciple. If we weren't from the same sect, I'd kill you here and now for your treachery."

"Come clean. What tricks did you pull?"

The original Ning Ning hadn't believed an Outer Sect Disciple could defeat her, and naturally assumed Pei Ji had resorted to underhanded methods, cheating to gain the strength to fight her.

Ning Ning only picked out the least hurtful lines, leaving out "useless trash," "bastard," and all the inexplicable obscenities. She didn't want to dirty her mouth.

She recited her lines in one breath. When she finished, she remembered to give a very in-character cold snort, lifting her porcelain-white chin slightly as she glanced at Shen Anqiao beside her, dressed in black. "Your turn."

Ning Ning's trash talk was just for fun. If they were talking real viciousness, this villainous-looking guy was the one to watch.

But perhaps she'd acted too convincingly.

Before the black-clad youth could even part his lips, the male lead lying in the corner let out a soul-rending wail. Tears rolled out of the tiny slits between his swollen eyelids. "It's... it's all my fault! Please spare me!"

Ning Ning slowly typed out a question mark.

Wait.

Male lead, what are you doing? The book said you "never once begged for mercy, even after three days and three nights of being burned by the fires of purgatory"! How could you burst into tears after she'd only scolded you a little?

Was she really that scary?

Ning Ning was baffled by his reaction. Then he continued to sob, "I'll confess everything. Please don't tell the elders! I stole Pei Ji's sword, so he had to use a piece of scrap metal for the sect competition... It was all my fault. Please spare me!"

Pei Ji's sword.

He stole it?

This person wasn't Pei Ji???

Ning Ning finally understood what it meant for ten thousand horses of mud and grass to thunder through your mind. She was so horrified she could barely breathe.

If the one who'd been beaten wasn't the male lead, then...

She managed to hold on to an awkward yet polite smile, turned her head, and took a close look at the black-clad youth with the sword.

His sharply defined profile was a beautiful, cold white. Bathed in the blood-red afterglow of the setting sun, he looked like flawless white jade soaked in blood, all the more cold and cruel for it.

Her gaze fell upon a pair of beautiful phoenix eyes, their outer corners slanting upward. His dark pupils brimmed with shadow, like a frigid pool with no bottom.

Just below the outer corner of his right eye was a deep red teardrop mole, mentioned countless times in the novel and belonging to none other than the male lead, Pei Ji...

Ning Ning: Heart. Attack.

Heavens, they were out to get her.

She might, perhaps, possibly have gotten the wrong person.

The one on the ground was the minor villain, Shen Anqiao.

No wonder Nie Zhi had looked so terrified when she pushed the door open. He wasn't afraid of her. He was afraid of Pei Ji, who had suddenly fought back with his sword, looking like a demon from hell.

So what was going on here?

The male lead had finally stopped hiding his strength and killed the fellow disciples who'd tried to bully him on the spot. He was even acting like a villain, pointing his sword at someone's throat.

Was this really something a male lead and a vicious supporting female character were supposed to do?

Seeing her expression change, Nie Zhi stood to one side, trembling with fear.

He and Shen Anqiao had been jealous of Pei Ji for standing out in the sect competition. Convinced that the boy had used underhanded tricks, they'd cornered him in the disciple dormitory and bullied him as usual.

They hadn't expected Pei Ji to fight back halfway through—and knock Shen Anqiao to the ground in an instant.