The Reverse Scale Contract: The Witch's Revenge "Fishpond"

Lin Shuang stared at the unfamiliar-yet-familiar face in the mirror, blood beading where her nails dug into her palms. The rose-engraved bronze frame dug into her ribs—this sixteen-year-old body was too thin, thin enough to phantom-ache where a harpoon had pierced her heart in another life. "Host emotional flux exceeds threshold." The mechanical voice stabbed her eardrums as stardust exploded across her vision. Memories surged: seven hooded figures on storm-lashed cliffs, ice shards plunging into her dantian. That sapphire pendant gleaming beneath the leader's fallen hood— "Don't you dare control me!" She bit her tongue until copper flooded her mouth. The mirror suddenly reflected golden barriers encircling floating arena platforms. Cheers from the testing grounds pierced her ears like ice shards. Lady Frost's glacial blade arrived before the taunt: "Can’t even cast a Starlight Curse, Witch Reborn?" Silver hair brushed her bleeding palm as muffled laughter rippled through stands draped with Mage Council sashes. "Highland Princess' icicles." Lin flicked blood onto the other's crystal-embroidered collar. "Melt nicely to pickle that tongue." Heat bloomed in her palm—thunderfire sigils glowed beneath her skin, ancient cultivation patterns these fools couldn't recognize. Purple lightning cracked across the highest podium. Luo Yang descended floating steps, his starfall-embroidered robes making her temples throb. The trident that had split her spiritual core bore the same hexagram now gleaming on his staff. "Miss Lin's elemental control..." The instructor's honeyed voice dripped over her bloodied sleeve, "...appears unstable?" She ground her molars. That saccharine scrutiny had tricked her into trusting backstabbers in her past life. Blood mist erupted from her wrist. Gasps filled the arena as she seized Frost's blade and slammed it down—the ice spell dissolved into tepid water. "Enjoying the show, Professor Luo?" She licked crimson from her lips. "Why not—" Putrid wind choked her as Han Fei's talons closed around her throat. A teacup clinked in the Council envoy's booth. The brown-nosing teaching assistant pressed his wand to her heart: "Heard you found an Ancient Beast Contract?" Red light pierced her pupils. Turtle shell fracturing echoed in her spiritual sea as system warnings blazed: [Scale Contract Activated - Memory Fragment x1 Consumed "Xuanwu." Her whisper fogged Han Fei's widening eyes. Tortoise patterns spread beneath their feet. Councilman John Wren's silver watchchain rattled against railings. Han Fei's shield cracked as the Black Tortoise's phantom emerged, its roar shaking reality itself. Through whirling debris, Lin saw Luo Yang crush his staff's gem—stardust coalescing into an Eastern nine-palace grid. Why did the Starfall heir wield Penglai divination tools? The tortoise phantom shattered magic barriers. A childhood lullaby faded with her mother's comb-warm memory, leaving only clarity: the hexagram tattoo beneath Han Fei's robes matched her murderers'. Shield fragments rained like broken crystal. Lin clawed into the fading Xuanwu imprint as Han Fei crashed ten meters away, his hexagram tattoo split into six b****y petals—identical to the cliffside pebbles she'd counted while dying. "Mother said tortoise patterns ward evil." She recalled five-year-old self watching divination cracks form on ancient shell. The scent of blood overwhelmed her—mother's ice-blossom death wound superimposing with Han Fei's cerulean bleeding. Councilman Wren's teaspoon chimed against gilt china. His pinprick pupils locked onto the serpent birthmark pulsing at her wrist with Xuanwu's rhythm. "Careful now." Luo Yang's chuckle grazed her ear. She hadn't noticed her sweat-drenched collar until his staff blocked Han Fei's blindspot strike. "Professor's hands..." She snatched back her peachwood hairpin, grazing his thumb, "...swifter than Poseidon's trident." His laugh vibrated against her shoulder as she stumbled. Golden light seared her palm—mother's deathbed protection sigil burning in sync with a spatial rift now warping the arena's east side. "Neglected maintenance, it seems." Luo Yang's staff tapped the barrier, stardust reshaping into f*******n Eastern arrays. Lin's gut twisted seeing the tortoiseshell compass slip from his sleeve. The Xuanwu phantom's dying roar accompanied the system's cold notification: [Memory Fragment x1 Destroyed - Childhood Hotspring Memory Permanently Lost]. Pretending to dust her shoulders, she wiped nosebleed and caught azure shards tumbling from Han Fei's broken amulet—that same killer's pendant glow. "Victor: Lin Shuang." The judge's tremulous announcement drowned in spatial tear expansion. Wren's reversing pocketwatch yanked her wand toward the rift. Golden light revealed half a dragonscale as she deciphered the envoy's lips shaping Ancient Eastern: "Scale Contract." "Darling looks paler than snow-toad venom." Frost materialized beside her, offered handkerchief melting upon contact. Lin smirked at the other's frost-crest sleeve. "Why does milady's ice stink of brine?" The coliseum collapsed. In the explosion of Luo Yang's starlight and her own talisman glare, the girl let herself fall into the professor's arms, b****y pin-pointing his heart: "Professor reeks... of rotting mackerel." Moonlight bleached the peachwood pin on her dormitory bed. The twin-lotus carving now matched Luo Yang's shattered gem. Mist coalesced on the wall mirror, showing not reflection but drifting azure scales. As wand-light swept the glass, the corridor outside crackled with forming ice. Chapter 2: The Frozen Flower's Treacherous TideThe sound of crystallizing ice crept along the doorframe as Lin Shuang drove her peachwood pin into the mirror's c***k. Azure scales churned behind the glass, their movement halting when wand-light pierced the fog—only for indigo lantern glow to seep through carvings on the door. "Council archives' restricted section smells of honey-preserved plums." Lady Frost leaned against the frame, her frost-silk skirt scattering moonlit shards. "How curious... Han Fei borrowed the very day Councilman Wren's pocketwatch chain got lodged in shelf crevices." Lin flicked the new jade pendant at Frost's waist with her wand tip. "Milady didn't happen to nibble f*******n plums too?" Before Frost could retort, window frost spiderwebbed with cracks as Han Fei's dark robes—reeking of archival parchment—burst into the room. "Lovely ladies," Han Fei pressed a scale-etched dagger to Frost's throat while contract fragments fluttered to Lin's feet, "care to wager whether Eastern lightning tribulation or Western holy judgment comes first when witch-system shards fuse with cultivator souls?" Lin stomped on honey-stained parchment edges. "Advise Young Master Han to divine his ancestral graves first—see if they're worthy of being Xuanwu's chamberpot." Before her talisman could solidify, Su Wuyai's sword aura split the north window, pine-ink fragrance mingling with flying splinters. Lin noted fresh cinnabar stains on the instructor's white robes—blood from her earlier wound on the arena. "Moonfrost Reflection!" Frost spun toward the mirror, her ice-prism refracting moonlight into seven silver needles. Blood blossomed on Han Fei's shoulder, splattering contract fragments that now wriggled toward Lin's wand like living things. She spat blood-tinged essence: "Xuanwu's Abyssal Descent!" Golden light erupted as tortoise-serpent phantoms devoured parchment. Memory-shard agony plunged her vision into darkness, last glimpse being preserved plum pits in Han Fei's sleeve—identical to Frost's morning snack with matching frost-silk ribbons. Three seconds into blackness, her wand vibrated autonomously. She heard Frost's prisms shattering, Su Wuyai's sword qi slicing her sleeve, something scaly coiling up her ankles. Vision returned to find Han Fei vanished, leaving glowing contract runes on ice-streaked floors. "Cultivator's sword aura shouldn't reek of mermaid tears." Lin pried open Su Wuyai's sleeve with her broken twin-lotus pin. "Fishing in Eastern seas last night, Professor?" He dislodged the pin yet cushioned her stumble with gentle sword winds. "At third watch, I detected frost-bond spells in the library." Bloodied contract fragments nailed to the wall now oozed cerulean liquid evaporating into Wren's pocketwatch patterns. Lin traced new scale patterns on her wand, smirking toward the window: "Peeping costs spirit stones, Councilman Wren." She pressed bleeding palm to glass, watching blood resonate with silver chains. Honey dripped from frost-silk ribbons as frozen footsteps echoed down corridors. Blood-crystals bloomed on glass as Wren's pocketwatch squeezed through cracks. Scale patterns now crawled up Lin's collarbones. "Tsk, wounded roses need tending." His violet-hued healing magic oozed black sludge upon contact. Draconic roar from her wand shattered stained glass. Lin flung poisoned blood at Wren's rose-embroidered cuff: "Change your perfume—rotten swamps and mermaid tears might choke Xuanwu himself." "This isn't playtime, fledglings." Golden holy light poured from the atrium as Lin's wand pressed against Wren's throat. Luo Yang stepped through radiance, his moonlit robes smeared with bioluminescent moss. Picking up half a frost-silk ribbon, he brushed cracked plum pits: "Young Master Han even used Love-Thread Gu. Professor Su's Profound Gate token must be irresistible." "Don't trust him!" Frost seized Lin's bleeding wrist. "The holy light contains—" Her warning vanished into spatial tears as Su Wuyai's blacksteel token emerged, its broken twin-lotus edges perfectly matching Lin's wand fractures. "Grab it!" Su Wuyai's ink-scented voice pierced their minds. Lin's wand suddenly reversed direction, scale phantoms stabbing toward Luo Yang's heart. Holy barriers shattered like crystal. Through backlash agony, she glimpsed dark-gold runes swimming in Luo Yang's pupils—identical to dragon taboos seen in last night's system fragments. Wren's pocketwatch exploded into stardust: "Game upgrade time." He licked dragon-scale cuts as gear projections gnawed at spatial rifts. Lin's wand autonomously drew half a talisman. Broken contract runes climbed Su Wuyai's sword aura onto the blacksteel token, warping testing grounds into vibrating harp-string tension. "Three... two..." Luo Yang seized Lin's nape, holy chains coiling around her scaled ankles. His breath warmed her bleeding ear: "Guess what happens when system meets..." Cataclysm drowned his words. As dome defenses crumbled, Lin saw Frost's frost-silk skirt disintegrating into butterfly swarms. Su Wuyai's sword aura carried a memory fragment into the abyss. Residual dragon scales carved b****y lotus marks on her palm—perfect match to the blacksteel token. Luo Yang's holy barrier disintegrated into golden sand, his smile colder than moonlight. When first temporal currents grazed her bloodied collarbones, she heard system monotony blended with someone's heartbeat—[Scale Contract Forced Activation: Memory Carrier Damage 37%]