Chapter 41: Transforming into an Idol 12

"You're awake. If you're awake, take your medicine, and I'll change your bandages in a moment," Mu Yin said as she walked in, placing the pills and a glass of water in his hands.

"Ah, thank you," Lihuan replied, taking the medicine with the water. He didn't ask what kind of pills they were, considering that all of Mu Yin's medicines came in the form of small round pellets.

After he took the medicine, Mu Yin helped him change his dressings. Instead of leaving afterward, she pulled up a chair, adopting the posture of someone with serious questions to ask. Lihuan frowned slightly, but said nothing, seemingly tacitly allowing her inquiry.

"Spill it. What's going on? How did you end up in this state, nearly getting yourself killed?" Mu Yin showed not a shred of embarrassment about prying into someone else's privacy.

"It's nothing. I just ran into some heretical people," Lihuan said nonchalantly.

"Heretical? I don't buy that," Mu Yin retorted, unconvinced. While "Heretics" was indeed the name of the dark faction of empowered individuals in this world—and virtually all malicious ability-wielders joined this organization—her intuition told her this wasn't the whole truth.

She was determined to get to the bottom of it. Her intuition also whispered that the information hidden within this matter was crucial to her, and her only real priority was dealing with the plot. Perhaps this constantly eccentric Lihuan was the key to cracking her current mission. As for why she found him eccentric? That went all the way back to their school days. The theme of that year's variety show was disco. For some unknown reason, the disco ball hanging from the stage had suddenly detached and fallen.

The students below had been frozen in terror, completely forgetting to dodge. Moreover, with disco being the theme, the main dance floor was packed with people. It was right at that critical moment that Lihuan had made his move. He transformed, using wind manipulation to catch the heavy mirror ball and hurl it away to an empty area.

That disco ball was massive and weighed quite a bit, yet Lihuan had easily lifted and thrown it using the wind, showing that his combat capability was far from weak. So why would someone with such abilities choose to become an ordinary idol?

Aside from transformations with unusable negative side effects, costume-change systems could be considered the most trash-tier among useful transformations; if it weren't for the entertainment industry, costume-change abilities would be entirely useless.

Combat-type abilities were the most popular in this world, and everyone wished they were combat-types, including the original owner of this body. Yet this man, who clearly possessed formidable combat talent, had deliberately run off to an idol academy. No matter how you looked at it, that was rather bizarre.

At the time, she had found it strange, and she always felt his behavior was somewhat off. Unfortunately, she had never found the right opportunity to ask—until now, when she finally cornered him.

"I'm telling the truth," Lihuan said, remaining unhurried under Mu Yin's intense gaze and sticking to his original answer.

"Do you know the secret about how everyone in this world can transform?" Mu Yin stared at him for a long time. Seeing that he showed no reaction at all, she finally began to probe, and sure enough, she caught a contraction in his pupils, though he quickly composed himself.

"What nonsense are you talking about?" Lihuan maintained his calm facade, acting as if he didn't understand what Mu Yin was getting at.

"I discovered it a while ago. Transformation energy is a very peculiar entity; it is completely incompatible with our bodies and cannot be retained or absorbed by us. Although residues are left behind, they cause no physical changes, which is practically impossible. Generally speaking, whenever any energy passes through the body, it leaves traces and has either positive or negative effects on the physical form. But this energy does not. Yet the residue left in the body can produce pseudo-superpower effects—like the most worthless costume-changes, or the elements you guys can control.

"However, such abilities have a time limit. Once the residual energy in the body from the transformation is exhausted, the transformation is undone. The reason this happens is because this energy doesn't belong to our world, which is why it's incompatible. Furthermore, it suppresses the native energy of our world. The consequence of this is that the native energy is dwindling day by day; plants and animals are going extinct one after another due to insufficient energy, and eventually, humanity will perish as well."

Mu Yin wasn't just trying to scare people; this was the result of her investigation. Starting thirty years ago, the rate of extinction for flora and fauna in this world had accelerated significantly, with dozens of species dying out every year because the ambient spiritual energy was being suppressed and could no longer nourish plants.

This foreign energy was also extremely exclusionary. If the energy from physical training weren't absorbed directly by the body, she probably wouldn't have been able to strengthen her physical form at all. In fact, there *were* negative side effects to this alien energy. Because of its overbearing and exclusionary nature, people's ability to absorb energy from food decreased during the period when transformation energy remained in their bodies.

While great for dieting, this was likely bad news for certain people—combat personnel, for instance. Since combat already consumed vast amounts of energy, having poor energy absorption explained why virtually all combat-type individuals had short lifespans, even if they didn't die in battle, rarely living past fifty.

"How do you know all this?" Lihuan asked, looking at Mu Yin with scrutinizing eyes, though devoid of hostility.

"I stumbled upon it," Mu Yin shrugged. "Like I said, now it's your turn to talk."

"How can you be so sure I know anything?" Lihuan countered.

"You're just too weird. Alright, stop trying to change the subject. I want to know what you know, so I can figure out a way to resolve this." Mu Yin suddenly thought of a simple way to clear the plotline: just take away the object that generated this variant energy.

If she did that, the male lead Xie Yun would lose his transformation ability. His family background was actually quite ordinary; despite his striking appearance, he was hardly cut out to be a male lead on his own. In a female-targeted romance novel, a male lead needed either power, wealth, or strength in addition to good looks. Stripped of his strength, Xie Yun naturally couldn't remain the male lead.

Even if Luo Qing climbed to the pinnacle of the entertainment industry, she would be left without a perfect romance. Under such circumstances, could the plot possibly continue? Even if they swapped the male lead—since it was a romance centered on the heroine, and she was the most important element—changing the male lead wasn't out of the question.

And when that time came, she could upload the photos she had taken earlier to the internet. A woman who immediately dumped her boyfriend the moment he lost his power? Heh, that would be more than enough to have the entire internet turn against the heroine. After all, aside from his abilities, Xie Yun's face was still quite pleasant to look at.

Mmm, she felt increasingly that this decision was brilliant—much simpler than her backup plan of pushing some random guy to the top of the entertainment industry.

Thus, she locked her gaze onto Lihuan with a look of distinct warning, signaling him not to try changing the subject and brushing her off again. Perhaps what Mu Yin had said earlier finally struck a chord; after a brief silence, Lihuan finally began to speak.