The Comeback of the Cannon-Fodder Supporting Actress

Chapter 1588: Chapter 1543: Salted Fish Turns the Tables 14

Chi Hezi just wanted to hurry up and send Anning away, but before Anning could be sent off, Xiao Yuan came out of seclusion again.

He rushed over the moment he came out.

Chi Hezi could tell at a glance that Xiao Yuan’s cultivation had risen again.

"You..."

Chi Hezi pointed at Xiao Yuan, genuinely not knowing what he should say.

First Anning formed Nascent Soul, and then Xiao Yuan had only just formed Nascent Soul not long ago and had already advanced to the Divine Separation Stage.

"Master, I don’t even know what’s going on. I was just cultivating and it advanced to Divine Separation Stage on its own."

Xiao Yuan said to Chi Hezi with a helpless look.

Chi Hezi was eaten up with sour envy.

But there was nothing he could do.

He pointed at Anning. "Your junior sister is in the same situation as you."

Xiao Yuan glanced at Anning. "Congratulations, Ningning."

Anning cupped her fists as well. "Congratulations, Senior Brother."

"Alright, the two of you, hurry back to wherever you came from. Don’t stand here being an eyesore. Just seeing you now gives me a headache."

Chi Hezi waved his hand, telling Anning and Xiao Yuan to get going.

Anning and Xiao Yuan left the back mountain of Cangyan Peak and found a deserted peak where they sat together to whisper.

"I’ve noticed the Heavenly Dao of this world is a bit off."

Xiao Yuan said to Anning.

Anning nodded as well. "If it were normal, that kind of Task System wouldn’t be able to come in at all."

"Could it be the Main God causing trouble?"

Xiao Yuan asked Anning.

Anning shook her head. "It shouldn’t be. He hasn’t recovered that fast, and that Task System doesn’t feel like something he made. It seems like it was made by another power entirely. As for the specifics, I haven’t figured them out yet."

Xiao Yuan looked at Anning. "I keep feeling there’s some existence behind the Main God, and the Main God himself is being directed by that power."

Anning had the same feeling.

She was just about to say something to Xiao Yuan when, all of a sudden, An Xin spoke up.

"Ningning, Ningning, I’ve discovered a loophole."

"What?"

An Xin said urgently, "This world is desperately trying to upgrade, and another, more advanced world wants to merge with this one. The collision of the two worlds is tearing space-time apart. Through the rips in space-time, we can return to those worlds you’ve been to."

When Anning heard that, she was overjoyed. "How long can the space-time rifts last?"

An Xin calculated. "It shouldn’t be long, at most about a year. But I’ve left markers over there, so even if the rifts close, we should still be able to find them."

"That’s good."

Anning stood up and said to Xiao Yuan, "We’ll have to make this quick."

"Mm."

Xiao Yuan nodded.

Meanwhile, Gai Ling had been diligently cultivating, hoping to become a dark horse at the sect-wide competition. But after sleeping a single night, she woke up to find the system gone.

She kept calling out, but the system didn’t respond to her at all, and Gai Ling completely panicked.

Originally Anning and Xiao Yuan had planned to play with Gai Ling slowly. Anning wanted all of Gai Ling’s missions to fail, utterly crushing her confidence so she’d develop a Heart Demon and never advance in her cultivation again.

But now time waited for no one, so Anning could only join forces with Xiao Yuan and spend quite a bit of effort to extract the system.

Anning had An Xin absorb the system’s power, and An Xin’s strength recovered by about half. Her system vault was also partially restored, and many treasures Anning had previously stored, along with many goodies An Xin had scavenged from various Planes, could now be retrieved.

After taking the system and absorbing it, Anning and Xiao Yuan no longer paid any attention to Gai Ling.

Gai Ling had lost the system and been hit a few times. Her initial grand ambitions when she first entered the Cang Mountain Sect were already gone, and given that her talent was never that good to begin with, she wouldn’t be able to go far on the path of cultivation in this lifetime.

After that, Anning and Xiao Yuan cultivated hard. After roughly a year, the two of them were about to ascend.

The entire Cang Mountain Sect had long since become numb to their cultivation speed. Now that the two were ascending, everyone simply felt it was par for the course.

That day, many people gathered at the back mountain of Cang Mountain Sect.

Besides the sect elders and the Sect Leader of Cang Mountain Sect, there were also elders and Sect Leaders from all the Great Sects.

They had all come to watch Anning and Xiao Yuan undergo tribulation and ascend.

The Ascension Tribulation had eighty-one strikes of tribulation lightning, plus the Heart Demon Tribulation. Only by passing them could one ascend and become an immortal; fail, and one’s soul would be scattered, with no chance of survival.

Anning and Xiao Yuan had long been prepared.

After the eighty-one strikes of tribulation lightning, the two were almost completely fine, and then came the Heart Demon Tribulation.

Their Soul Power was strong, their minds firm, and on top of that, they had experienced so many worlds yet always conducted themselves uprightly, never doing anything that weighed on their conscience, so naturally they didn’t have much in the way of Heart Demons.

Thus, the way they passed these tribulations was practically like playing around, opening the eyes of all the Great Sects.

Once the Heart Demon Tribulation passed, multicolored clouds filled the sky, and Anning and Xiao Yuan ascended in broad daylight just like that.

However, the two of them did not ascend to the Immortal Realm. While the people of Cang Mountain Sect all thought that after the two ascended, they went to the Immortal Realm, in reality, they went through the space-time rift marked by An Xin into another time-space.

After passing through the chaotic currents of space-time, the moment Anning entered that time-space, she felt an incredibly familiar sensation.

Her current strength wasn’t all that powerful yet; forcing her way through the space-time turbulence had already left her with no energy to search for a more suitable time-space, so she could only plunge headfirst into the small Plane closest to her.

As Anning went in, she could feel that Xiao Yuan had entered along with her.

When Anning woke again, it was in the middle of the night.

She opened her eyes and sensed her surroundings, and when she detected no danger, she began to feel out this world.

Soon, Anning smiled.

Drifting into a random world, it actually turned out to be one she’d experienced before.

In this world, Anning had once existed, but her existence was controlled by the Main God. Like a puppet, she played the vicious supporting female character the plot required, was despised by the male lead, and ended up with a miserable death.

While she was controlled and forced step by step toward destruction, Anning had countless times fantasized that if she ever gained her freedom, what she would do. In any case, she definitely wouldn’t keep being a tool, nor would she devote herself to helping the male lead. She would absolutely leave early to live her own life. Whatever tragic, entangled love story the male and female leads had was none of her business; the two of them could tangle as they pleased—Anning just wanted a peaceful life.

This time, Anning could finally correct the line of fate. She thought, she must make up for the regrets of that life.

In that life Anning had experienced, she was called Yun Anning. She and the male lead Rong Junhao grew up together as childhood friends. When they went to university, the two got engaged, planning to marry after graduation once Rong Junhao inherited the family business.

But in the year Rong Junhao graduated from university, he and Father Rong and Anning’s father, Yun Xuewen, went out of town to negotiate a contract. On the way, they had a car accident. Father Rong and Yun Xuewen both shielded Rong Junhao with their bodies; the two died on the spot, and although Rong Junhao survived, he was severely injured. By the time he was rushed to the hospital, he was still unconscious, and was later declared a vegetable.

Mrs. Rong, Ms. Li, and Yun Mu, Ms. Xu, were at that time overwhelmed by grief and couldn’t cope at all. The two families’ companies, Rong Junhao’s subsequent treatment, and all kinds of matters were all pressing down on Anning’s shoulders alone.

Anning was only a twenty‑one, twenty‑two‑year‑old girl at the time, pampered since childhood, having never gone through anything like this.

But both mothers were bedridden from grief, and Rong Junhao was in that condition. With both families relying solely on her, she had no choice but to swallow her sorrow and handle their affairs.

First she held funerals for both fathers, then arranged Rong Junhao’s treatment, and then took over management of the two families’ businesses.

Ms. Li was a full-time Madam. Ever since marrying into the Rong Family she’d never been involved in corporate management. She was fine with arranging flowers and shopping, but asking her to manage a company was out of the question.

Ms. Xu was pretty much the same. Neither mother could be relied on, and Anning couldn’t watch the Rong Family and Mrs. Yun’s companies go leaderless and be swallowed up by others. She could only brace herself, studying all sorts of corporate management, and in a bare year, forcibly took over the two companies, then spent another two years fully seizing control of the Rong Family and Mrs. Yun’s businesses.

During that period, Anning’s life was truly terrible.

She slept only three or four hours a day, and had to study daily. She had endless meetings to attend, had to fight mental battles with the old guard in the companies, and had a mountain of documents to read with all kinds of decisions waiting for her.

At the beginning she really was running around like a headless chicken.

It was only because her learning ability was strong enough and her will firm enough that she survived it.

Because she had to manage two massive enterprises, she had no time at all to take care of Rong Junhao. Ms. Li brought Rong Junhao back to the Rong Family and hired professional medical staff to look after him.

And the one specifically taking care of Rong Junhao was the female lead, Ning Ruoxi.