The Legend of the Princess' Counterattack

Chapter 983 Data Cage

As Su Yao's fingertips touched the keyboard, the entire computer suddenly beeped and the screen suddenly burst into a dazzling blue light. Her vision went dark, and she fell into a weightless void. The distinct hum of binary code filled her ears, like the whirring of countless tiny gears. When she opened her eyes again, she was floating in a galaxy of 0s and 1s, with countless translucent figures weaving through the data stream—characters she had created before, but they were all missing limbs, with error codes flashing on their chests.

"Welcome to the 'Unfinished Realm', my... creator."

Cold female voices came from all directions. Liu Yan'er's figure condensed in the turbulent data. The hem of her skirt was a flowing code matrix, and red warning boxes danced in her pupils. She raised her hand, and Su Yao's wrist was bound by a chain woven with code. Every character on the chain burned her skin. "Do you think that by writing me as a stupid woman who only knows how to frame the protagonist, you can cover up your cowardice?"

Su Yao was shocked to find that her "author interface" was collapsing. The golden menu used to adjust the plot was reduced to fragments, and the "character control" value in the lower right corner was visibly decreasing to zero. Even more strangely, her mind suddenly flooded with memories that did not belong to her - Yun Yao's uneasiness when she first used the system in the palace, Chu Mochen's body temperature when he blocked a fatal blow for her during the sect mission, and even the image of Liu Yan'er secretly wiping her mother's belongings in the dungeon of the Divine Palace.

"Is this... Yun Yao's memory?" Su Yao staggered back, but bumped into a vortex of garbled code, which revealed a scene she had never seen before: Liu Yan'er was kneeling in the ruins of the Tiandao Temple, holding a half-broken divine power in her palm. The word "Awakening" was engraved on the divine power, but it had been roughly crossed out with an ink pen.

Liu Yan'er took a step closer, her fingertips tracing across Su Yao's brow: "That's right, you created not only a story, but also a real world. And I should have been the first character to realize this." Her voice suddenly choked, and cracks appeared on her body made of code. "Do you still remember the original setting? I am the daughter of the Prime Minister. I was forced to enter the palace because of a family marriage. I looked sinister on the surface, but I actually had the ideal of revitalizing my family - but what happened later? In order to make the protagonist's counterattack faster, you turned me into a vase that can only poison!"

Su Yao suddenly remembered that five years ago, her editor had suggested she "simplify the villain's motivations and highlight the thrill." She had casually deleted all of Liu Yan'er's complicated background, even the jade pendant her mother had given her before her death, which became a prop to frame the protagonist. Now, amidst the turbulent data, she saw the fragments of the plot she had deleted: Liu Yan'er kneeling in the ancestral hall late at night, swearing to her mother's ranking that she would "never let the family become a victim of power," but the next day she had to pass the poisoned wine to Yun Yao.

"I'm sorry..." Su Yao's voice trembled. "I thought online literature needed direct conflict, but I forgot that every character should have his or her own soul."

Liu Yan'er sneered: "Is it useful to apologize now? The Observers have already set their sights on this world. They want to wipe out all characters with self-awareness, and you-" She suddenly grabbed Su Yao's neck, and the code chain cut into her flesh. "You clearly have the authority to rewrite everything, but you choose to obey their rules and continue to write those unoriginal counterattack routines!"

Su Yao's vision began to blur, but at this moment, she noticed the code on the inside of Liu Yan'er's wrist. The label that should have been "Vicious Female Supporting Character" was now flickering and changing, gradually embracing the words "Unfinished·Awakening". Even more astonishingly, she found that her consciousness was merging with Yun Yao's, as if the two overlapping souls had finally found a puzzle piece.

"Wait," Su Yao forced herself to speak, "You can feel Yun Yao's memory, right? The boundary between us is actually a deception set by the observer." She remembered what Yun Yao said in the Temple of God: "The true law of creation is to remember." Perhaps from the moment she wrote the first word, she and Yun Yao were no longer the creator and the created, but the projection of the same soul in different dimensions.

Liu Yan'er's hand suddenly loosened, and cracks appeared on the code chain: "You...you actually know the existence of the 'Observer'?"

Su Yao seized the opportunity, concentrating on using her remaining author privileges, attempting to summon the draft of "Counterattack." To her shock, the document didn't appear. Instead, Yun Yao's system interface appeared. The system she had once designed to sound like a mechanical voice now appeared as an old woman holding a bronze order, engraved with the very school emblem she had casually drawn in her notebook during college.

"It turns out... the system has been the key connecting the two worlds from the very beginning." Su Yao murmured, finally understanding why Yun Yao was able to break through the realm at the critical moment, and why every choice Chu Mochen made was so precise as if it had been calculated - that was not the plot she wrote, but the trajectory of the characters struggling to survive in the real world.

Liu Yan'er's code body suddenly shook violently. She looked at her palm in horror: "My data is collapsing! The observer is clearing the codes of all awakened characters!"

Su Yao saw countless points of light extinguishing in the distant data stream - they were minor characters in her works, maids in the palace, passers-by in the world of cultivation, and even a vendor who appeared only once. Fragments of their consciousness before death came flooding back, all with the same sentence: "I want to live, I want to be the protagonist of my own story."

"No—" Su Yao roared and threw herself into the torrent of data. Her body began to become transparent, turning into a half-code, half-human state. At the moment when her consciousness was about to dissipate, she finally understood her mission: not to control the characters as an author, but to be a connector, allowing every soul to hold the pen to rewrite their destiny.

Liu Yan'er suddenly grabbed her hand, tears welling up in her code-like pupils for the first time. "So you're also trapped in a larger chessboard... The Observer lets you write cool stories, just like the Heavenly Dao Temple lets me play the villain. We're all being controlled by a higher power."

At that moment, a crack appeared in the sky of the data world, and Chu Mochen's Hongmeng pen pierced through the layers of code. What dripped from the tip of the pen was not blood, but the poem Su Yao had written in her first draft: "Destiny is like a chess game; make your move without regret." Yun Yao's voice followed closely behind: "Su Yao, do you remember what you said in our college dorm? You said, 'The purpose of writing a novel is to give every character the power to say 'no'!'"

Su Yao's memory suddenly ignited—it was the first night she stayed up late writing. In her notebook, beneath the desk lamp, she had drawn a girl wearing a crown and written next to it, "Even if the world is a chessboard, I will be the one to overturn it." At this moment, these words rose from her and Yun Yao's shared memory, turning into a golden key that inserted into the groove of the bronze order.

The code chain shattered, and Liu Yan'er's body re-condensed. This time, her skirt was no longer a cold code, but a lavender long skirt embroidered with magnolia flowers - that was the only relic left to Liu Yan'er by her mother in Su Yao's original setting.

"So... you've never forgotten." Liu Yan'er gently stroked the hem of her skirt. When she looked up, there was no hatred in her eyes, only relief. "What the observer fears is not the character rebelling against the plot, but the true resonance between the author and the character."

Su Yao looked at her gradually recovering hands and found that there was a new creation pattern on her palm, the same as Yun Yao's. In the distance, Chu Mochen was using the Hongmeng pen to repair the broken character data. Each repaired character received their own "destiny editing box" and could freely modify their own plot fragments.

"But the Observers won't give up easily." Liu Yan'er pointed to the depths of the data world, where a giant shadow composed of countless "strikethroughs" emerged. It was none other than the "plot arbitrator" who had appeared in the comments section earlier. "They'll use readers' expectations, market pressure, and even your own doubts to attack you."

Su Yao took a deep breath and called up the author interface that had long disappeared. Now there was only one option left on the interface: "Do you want to give all characters free will?" She remembered what Yun Yao said in the Temple of God: "The real counterattack is to control the sovereignty of the story." She finally understood that the ultimate authority of an author is not to create a perfect plot, but to learn to let go.

"I choose - coexistence." Su Yao clicked to confirm.

The data world trembled violently, and the Arbiter's shadowy figure emitted a piercing scream, but it vanished as it touched the overlapping consciousness of Su Yao and Yun Yao. Liu Yan'er's code completely transformed, turning into a shining silver "character self-shaping chip" and gently falling into Su Yao's palm.

"Thank you for letting me become 'Liu Yan'er' again, instead of 'Villain Model B'." Liu Yan'er smiled and stepped back. A passage to the real world emerged from the turbulent data. "Let's go back. The Observer's next attack won't be far away, but now... we have the weapons to fight back."

Su Yao held the chip and took one last look at the data world before turning around. Chu Mochen was teaching a young cultivator to use the Hongmeng pen to rewrite his spiritual root attributes, while Yun Yao was squatting on the ground, designing a new life script for a maid who was about to be deleted. "You can choose to stay in the palace as an embroiderer, or follow the caravan to see the outside world. It's all up to you."

Tears suddenly blurred Su Yao's vision. She finally understood that the "sense of satisfaction" she had once pursued was nothing but a mirage. The truly moving story is the stubborn head that each soul raises in the face of fate. The moment she stepped out of the data world, the real computer screen lit up again. The chapters in the document were no longer blank, but automatically generated scenes of Yun Yao repairing her character in the data world. Every word shimmered with light, as if flowing with life.

On the keyboard, a drop of rain happened to land on the "Save" key, and Su Yao smiled. She knew that from this moment on, "The Legend of the Princess Who Strikes Back" was no longer her story alone, but a legend belonging to all those who dared to strike back. And somewhere in the digital world, Liu Yan'er was facing a brand new mirror, gently putting on the magnolia hairpin left by her mother - this time, her story would be written by herself.

(End of this chapter)