Naruto: Escape From Konoha - Chapter 196: 192: Kumo’s Conspiracy

“Shameless Xia Ping, not only did you steal my martial arts manual and medicinal pills, you even took my fiancée! We’re not finished!”

As the head disciple of the number one sect in the world, Luo Jianqing had a brilliant reputation. He was the most respected senior brother of his junior brothers and sisters: the last disciple of the cultivation world’s number one cultivator, Luo Jianqing greatly respected his master’s teachings, not crossing his limits by even half a step.

Every novel has a slag character, the one who decides to abandon the protagonist at his lowest, most helpless point, either because he can’t stand the poor guy’s circumstances or for other reasons. But after the protagonist wins his way in life again, they’re the ones who beg with broken sobs to be taken back.

Still, water once spilled can’t be recovered again.

Yet the unlucky Shen Jiayan has been bound to a Water Recovery* System to do just that.

*water recovery – comes from an idiom that means “spilled water can’t be recovered” (English equivalent: there’s no use crying over spilt milk).

- Description from Novelupdates

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.