Clever Protagonist

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.

I got up in the middle of the night to wipe the condensation off the window—and suddenly saw comments floating before my eyes: [Why’s the sleeping wife awake?

The male lead’s downstairs in the garden, coaxing our sweet girl!]

[Please don’t catch them!

I’m waiting for him to get some right under his wife’s nose!]

[The sleeping wife mustn’t wake up!]

Without changing my expression, I breathed on the window to fog it up again, then turned and lay down.

Mustn’t wake up?

I’d never truly been asleep.

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.”

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!”

I was an emperor.

Now I have become another emperor.

But this one has made a miserable job of it.

The crown princess is sleeping with the imperial tutor in the Eastern Palace.

My daughter is imprisoned and humiliated in her own residence by her husband.

Even my favorite niece has been judged by the country-bred heir to the Marquis of Xuanyang: “Fit only for a concubine, never a wife.”

Well.

You are all remarkably brave.

How about we find out how sharp my executioner’s blade is?

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.

My husband brought home his “true love” and insisted on taking her as a concubine.

Tears of emotion filled my eyes as I clasped his true love’s hand and refused to let go.

“How could I possibly let you settle for being a concubine?

You can have my place as his lawful wife!

“Why don’t we make it a one-stop affair today—divorce for me, wedding for you!”

There was no time to waste.

The imperial decree ordering the confiscation of the family estate was already on its way!

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.”

While the other players are still grinding away in the tutorial village, Zhou Ming has already landed himself a god-tier NPC girlfriend!

Xie Chengze transmigrates into a novel about a powerful minister, becoming its vicious villain – the Second Prince, a man who murders his own brothers, treats human life as worthless, and ultimately dies when the powerful minister Shen Yuan drives a sword through his heart.

To escape that fate, Xie Chengze resolves to keep his head down and stay far away from the struggle for the throne. Whenever matters of state come up, he has only three answers: “Dunno. Ask the Crown Prince!” “Dunno. Ask Shen Yuan!” and “Dunno. Ask the Eldest Prince!”

Yet the looks Shen Yuan and the princes give him only grow more dangerous – and in every possible sense of the word.

–

After killing Xie Chengze with a single thrust of his sword, Shen Yuan opens his eyes to find himself ten years in the past.

In his previous life, the Second Prince flouted the law, brought ruin upon the country and misery upon its people, and threw the imperial court into chaos for nearly a decade. This time, Shen Yuan intends to uproot his faction as early as possible and restore peace and order to the realm.

Instead, he watches the once-vicious man devote himself to the common people, transform a wilderness into a land of abundance with his own hands, and usher in an age of peace and prosperity.

He has endless tenderness for the world – yet before Shen Yuan alone, he refuses to bow his head or bend his back.