“I can’t wait to see that black-haired little bitch crying her eyes out!”
“Hey, if we keep torturing her like this, and Annabell finds out, won’t we be in trouble?”
“Ha! Are you kidding me? If Miss cared about that trash, why didn’t she spare a single glance toward the basement during today’s martial arts field session? She’s just venting on us, which is only fair!”
“Makes sense! Miss vents on us, and we vent on that trash!”
“Hehehehe… So should we sprinkle more Heart-Eroding Powder later?”
“No problem! Who told her to have a face just like Miss’s, yet be so utterly lowborn?”
In the dim dungeon corridor of the castle, three NPCs wrapped head to toe in bandages were hiding in a dead corner, excitedly discussing their specific plans to torment Xue Lei in a little while.
For these people, after being humiliated time and again, with the third princess suffering a grievance for nothing, their first instinct was to run to the dungeon and find psychological compensation.
Over time, this became the twisted compensation mechanism of their warped personalities.
“So, you want to bully my little sister?”
A female voice colder than zero degrees rang out behind them without warning.
Just as the three minor villains were drooling over their fantasies, the hairs on the back of their necks all stood up at once.
The subzero killing intent instantly coated the surrounding walls with a layer of white frost. Three steps away, a head of silver hair floated on its own in the dim magical lamplight.
“B-B-Big Sister?!”
Turning around, they saw Annabell standing right behind them, having appeared at some unknown moment.
“H-How could you stoop to visit this filthy dungeon?”
The three of them were so terrified their legs were cramping as they stammered and backed away.
Annabell didn’t say a word, just stared at them with those cold, dead-fish eyes.
She had been listening to those disgusting remarks in full, high-definition live feed the entire time.
Sure, she had already read the original book and knew how rotten these NPCs were, but facing such pure, unadulterated perverts who treated lives as jokes in person would make even the most patient person’s fists clench!
Nightmares? Bone-Eating Corrosion Powder?!
Annabell had been doting on this cheap little sister just to survive under the White Queen. And these extras dared to think about poisoning her?
Annabell didn’t bother with words and acted directly.
She didn’t even raise her staff. Her fair jade-like hand slapped through the air, and her wild mana directly materialized into an Ice Hammer over three meters long, smashing down like she was swatting a fly!
“Gwah—!”
The three young masters didn’t even have time to cast protective magic before they were sent flying thirty meters, skidding across the ground, carving three “human-shaped grooves” into the hard obsidian corridor.
At minimum, three ribs each were broken. Blood mixed with organ fragments sprayed everywhere, leaving them half dead.
If Annabell hadn’t held back, that single slap would have left nothing but red pixelated splatters on the wall.
Facing death itself, a fierce will to survive finally brought the three back to their senses.
“Mercy! Big Sister, have mercy!”
“Help! Elder! She’s trying to murder her own kin!”
“We really didn’t do anything! We were just bragging! We just wanted to have a little fun with her! That’s all!”
In their twisted logic, bullying Xue Lei wasn’t murder. At most, it was tormenting a dispensable cat or dog.
“Just a little fun?”
Annabell heard that cheap word and laughed in fury, the corners of her mouth curling into a signature villainous smile—one that was gentle yet utterly cruel.
“I like that. I love playing. Since you want to play, your big sister will play with you all night long. What do you all think?”
Snap—she clicked her fingers.
Three ice thorns the size of fingernails drifted from her fingertips and landed precisely on the backs of the three men’s hands.
The seemingly tiny ice thorns, the moment they touched skin, burrowed into their flesh like living creatures!
“Aaaaaah—!!!”
Heart-rending screams instantly pierced through the corridor!
These ice thorns were something Annabell had learned from a wuxia novel in her past life, called the Life-Death Talisman. Anyone hit by it would suffer unbearable agony.
“It hurts! I feel something crawling inside my body!”
“No good! I can’t melt these ice thorns at all!”
“I’m dying! Help! The ice thorn is drilling into my bones!”
The three rolled around on the floor in absolute madness.
The level of pain was roughly equivalent to giving birth while simultaneously undergoing a root canal without anesthesia.
Annabell’s expression was completely blank, enjoying this visual feast as comfortably as someone watching a movie with popcorn.
Aren’t they fond of torturing people? Now that it’s happening to them, why are they crying and screaming like frightened hens? This generation of villains really has poor mental fortitude.
Just as the three scumbags were about to be killed by the ice, the Training Elder, who had arrived late, stormed into the corridor in a rage.
“Show mercy, Miss! Stop torturing them!”
The Training Elder could only steel himself and plead under Annabell’s murderous gaze:
“Miss! The Family Code forbids this: sparring is allowed, but harming kin to death is absolutely not! The trial is coming soon. If someone truly dies, it won’t look good for the Grand Duke! Please, show mercy!”
“Elder, if you don’t save us, she’s going to kill us for personal revenge!”
The three lying on the ground wailed as if they had seen their long-lost father.
“Relax, old man. We’re just playing some fun little games.”
Annabell’s bright eyes flickered as she casually made up nonsense. “Right, everyone?”
The overwhelming mana pressure instantly soaked the Elder’s back in sweat.
***
A moment later, she shrugged indifferently:
“Fine, for the Elder’s sake, I’ve always been a law-abiding good big sister. The death penalty can be waived.”
She waved her hand and dispelled the magic.
The three wretches, tortured within an inch of their lives, just breathed a sigh of relief and broke into smiles of surviving a calamity.
“But the living penalty is unavoidable.”
The next second, Annabell pointed her staff.
Three invisible Ice Cones shot out like armor-piercing rounds, piercing clean through their lower abdomens with pinpoint accuracy.
The three who had just been screaming for mommy and daddy rolled their eyes back and passed out.
They wouldn’t die, but their magic circuits had been completely destroyed.
Lifelong cripples. Being a cripple in the Trandy Family was sometimes a hundred times worse than having your ashes scattered to the wind!
“Alright, work done. You can send them for treatment now.”
Annabell didn’t even look at the three piles of unrecyclable trash on the ground as she turned and walked away gracefully, throwing a mental victory peace sign along the way.
Meanwhile, the lady-in-waiting in the hall had thrown the materials back out as if they were toilet paper.
The Elder went to the Grand Duke that very night and wrote a ten-thousand-word essay of complaints.
This battle threw the entire Trandi Castle into an uproar.
The Grand Duke didn’t want to read a single punctuation mark about such a trivial matter as his precious daughter crippling a few useless branch family members.
Not only did this fail to cool things down, it actually pushed the infamous name of “The Cold-Blooded Tyrant Annabell” to new heights!
Now, servants of the Trandy Family would kowtow three times just walking across a floor where silver hair had fallen.
Annabell’s villainous, bad-woman persona had never been more rock solid!
Everything was under control, except for her little sister, who was slowly darkening…