Clever Protagonist

This book is written for a female audience!!!

[A male lead who’s an aloof gentleman on the outside and a running commentary on the inside x a gorgeous, deadpan heroine who’s secretly a walking comedy act]

Other people transmigrate into novels as vicious supporting women or beautiful cannon fodder. Shi Liaoliao becomes the male lead’s personal valet.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen the young master smile this happily.”

“This is the first time the young master has brought a woman home.”

“I’ve never seen the young master care this much about a woman.”

Once the male lead meets the heroine, all she has to do is deliver these three lines that shook the romance world, and her mission will be complete.

Until Shi Liaoliao discovers that the heroine she’s spent years waiting for is… herself.

.

Lu Yanzhou has never paid any attention to his mute, NPC-like little valet. Then, one day, a woman with an innocent facade comes to visit and shoves the valet.

The valet sits back on her heels on the floor, her expression unreadable, her eyes as still as an ancient well.

Lu Yanzhou nods inwardly, admiring that calm composure.

Until a voice suddenly rings out in his head the very next second.

[Fuck you. All I did was refuse to let you in last time! You’re even smaller-minded than Lu Yanzhou’s dick!]

Lu Yanzhou: “……..”

Don’t listen, little Lu. That’s a hate comment.

After ten years in fandom, I transmigrated into a cultivation world as the female side character everyone hated.

“I order you to apologize to Junior Sister,” Senior Brother said.

“Before I apologize, there’s something you should know.

Junior Sister ships our founding matriarch with her partner.

She even called them a match made in heaven—a talented man and a beautiful woman.”

Senior Brother immediately rounded on her.

“You tasteless fool!

How is that freeloading pill-brewer good enough for our matriarch?”

I handed him a pile of miniature portraits of the matriarch and other merch, then clasped his hand.

“Exactly!

Our queen shines alone!

When will that pill-brewer learn to stand on his own?”

My fellow stan burst into tears and hugged me tight.

Then he stuffed a heap of magical artifacts and spirit stones into my arms.

The system was stunned.

“Host, do you realize you just got everything the heroine spent six months working for?”

I took a cigarette from the system inventory and lit it.

“A rival this weak?

I can take her out in one hit.”

Seven years after my elder sister married into the marquis’s household, she died in childbirth, leaving two children behind.

The year after her death, the household sent a matron to propose a marriage.

She urged my father’s principal wife: “Your eldest girl died so young, leaving those two little ones motherless.

Your second daughter was born to a concubine.

You’ve gone to the trouble of raising her all these years—why not make her his second wife?

You’d save yourself a dowry, and she could help bring up your grandchildren.”

My heart sank.

Then the woman who had always treated me so coolly flung a cup of tea in her face.

“You’ve killed one of my girls, and now you want the other?

Go fuck yourself!”

Bai Nianqiu transmigrates into a Mary Sue novel as its vicious supporting character. To stay alive, she casts herself as a pitiful girl suffering from unrequited love for the villain.

Neither the eighteen-year-old Yu Qi nor his twenty-six-year-old self could ever have imagined that one day, he would fall so completely for someone that desire would make a slave of him.

As a teenager, the aloof, sensitive Yu Qi catches her chin in his hand. Right in front of her fiance, the novel’s male lead, he says, with a casualness that leaves no room for argument, “Kiss me.”

And once he regains the memories of his darker self: “Jealous? What’s that? Love me or die. Your choice.”

Bai Nianqiu: Not even death can keep us apart.

The first thing I did after being reborn was hurry back from the country estate to my father’s residence.

A young woman was kneeling inside.

Gloom shadowed her eyes; she was small and frail, her clothes patched over patches.

She was the daughter my father had conceived in a single night’s dalliance years ago.

In my previous life, she had married the tyrant in my place.

After winning his favor, she poisoned our entire family.

I spent twelve years as a ghost.

At first, I hated her bitterly.

Once I pieced together the truth, I could only pity her.

“Father, Mother.

I’ll marry him.”

I helped my younger half sister to her feet.

“His Majesty asked for me by name.

There’s no reason someone else should suffer in my place.

I’ll go.”

By the time Mother found me and brought me back to the palace, I was a farm girl.

My every gesture betrayed my lack of breeding.

People laughed at me.

She already had a brood of children, each precious as gold and jade.

She could scarcely be bothered to glance at me, while the girl who had taken my place was the darling of her heart.

Later, Mother went from empress to sovereign.

She simply sent me to a bitterly cold fief and left me to fend for myself.

After several years of frontier winds, just as my heart was giving up hope, an imperial edict arrived.

Mother commanded me to return to the palace and fulfill my duties as a loyal subject and a dutiful daughter.

But I already knew she was merely short of a princess to marry off for peace.

My subordinate was so excited that he sprayed spittle as he spoke.

“My lady, this summons gives us every right to return.

We will never have a better chance.”

For the first time, I did not tell him to be quiet.

I fled to Linjiang with my five-year-old sister.

We were close to starving when we met the kindhearted Steward Zhou.

“My mistress has been bedridden for a long time,” he told me.

“She wishes to adopt a daughter, someone to ease the loneliness of having no children.”

“Both your birth charts are compatible with hers.

One of you can be the young lady, but the other must be a maid.”

“Well, child?

Which will you choose?”

In my last life, I sold myself and sacrificed my dignity to keep my mother and younger sister alive.

Once my sister grew up, she despised me for it.

“If you hadn’t been involved with Master Su, how could such a wonderful marriage have fallen through?

Young Master Su liked me so much.

He was going to marry me.”

She had forgotten that Master Su was my first patron.

That night, I had swallowed my shame and gone to him only to pay for a doctor when she was burning with fever.

I, too, had a childhood sweetheart who had promised to marry me.

Later, Mother helped my sister poison me.

I died in agony in our own home.

Their tears fell on my face.

“The rest of us have to live.

We had no choice.”

When I was given another life, I woke on the very day of my sister’s fever.

Before my mother died, she left me a pair of love-gu.

She wanted me to use them on the young General Li when he returned to the capital in triumph.

He was the husband she had chosen for me after painstaking consideration.

And so I spent three years trailing after Li Wujin.

The cold, stern young general held me beneath the moon and said he would ask the emperor to grant us a marriage.

The next day, a eunuch arrived at our house with imperial decrees.

One was for me.

One was for my elder sister, the legitimate daughter.

She would soon marry Li Wujin.

I was promised to his deputy.

To raise the bride price for my brother, my parents sold me to a system.

I would be sent into a historical romance novel.

Complete its mission, and I would receive 300,000 yuan.

The good news was that the system offered me a special ability.

The bad news was that it was called “Guaranteed to Bear Sons.”

When I frowned, the system spoke.

[Host, the ability I’ve given you is exceptionally useful in ancient times.]

Only after I arrived did I learn that the novel was called The Leased Wife.

Its heroine was hired out to wealthy households to bear them sons, one after another.

The silver she earned paid for her husband’s examinations and official career.

In the end, he rose to prominence, and she emerged triumphant, an officially titled lady.

The system told me: [There are only two mandatory conditions for completing the mission—] [First: retain your status as a leased wife and give birth to three sons.]

[Second: help your husband become an official of the first rank.]

[Fail either condition, and you will be erased.]

[You have no more than ten years in this world, Host.

Good luck.]

I listened, my eyes darkening.

“Nothing else matters?”

The system was in a hurry to collect its next host.

[Correct.

Nothing else matters.]

I gave a cold laugh.

An idea was taking root.

If I wanted to return to the modern world, I had no choice but to complete the mission.

But if I had to swallow my disgust and do these things, I would not suffer the humiliation for nothing.

I would use it to climb into power and destroy this vile practice of wife leasing.

Even if it was only a fictional institution in a novel.

It was feudal, twisted, and brutal, built on women’s blood and tears.

It should never have existed.