Clever Protagonist

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

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.

In the dead of night, only after I let out a satisfied sigh did Wei Che gently roll off me.

He had been putting in so much effort lately that I figured he was probably about to leave me.

With a faint sigh, I turned over and went to sleep.

After all, everyone knew it.

I was the most useless kind of lovesick fool.

When the sky wanted to rain and a man wanted to leave, what could I possibly do about it?

Beg him bitterly? Threaten suicide and make a scene?

That was what a real lovesick fool would do.

But I was a fake.

A long time ago, I had already understood one simple truth-

Everyone despised a lovesick fool.

Pretending to be one, however, was the advanced strategy.

My family has one enormous, very public secret.

Ever since she was born, my mother has been bound to a system: the Beauty System.

Apparently, if she ever drops out of the top three on the Beauty Ranking of the Four Seas and Eight Realms, she will die.

At first, neither of my parents was remotely worried.

With Mother’s looks, holding her place for another few hundred thousand years would be no trouble at all.

But sometimes the unexpected arrives without the slightest warning.

When my parents joyfully welcomed their first child, a floating Beauty Ranking of the Four Seas and Eight Realms appeared out of thin air beside the bed.

And there, in first place, was my eldest brother, whose name had only just been decided: Zhou Yi.

My parents were a little bewildered, but didn’t think much of it.

Until they had their second child.

My parents and big brother once again greeted the new baby with delight.

Once again, the ranking appeared in midair.

First place changed hands again.

It now belonged to my elder sister, Zhou Er.

That was when Father panicked.

He moved out of their bedroom that very night.

For several years afterward, he didn’t dare set so much as one foot inside after sunset.

Every evening, they would hold hands in the corridor, gazing at each other as they lingered over their farewell.

Then my brother and sister would each take one of them by the hand and escort them to their separate rooms, with my parents looking back every few steps.

They pined so badly their eyes practically glowed green, but at least Mother’s life was safe.

My mother was mad for her entire life.

Before she died, she left me a vast fortune and a note.

The note read: Survival Rules for a Tragic Romance.

One: Never pick up a man by the roadside, especially one who has lost his memory.

If you have already picked him up, sever all ties with him at once.

Ignore this rule at your own peril.

Two: Remember that human beings possess an organ called a mouth.

Besides eating, a mouth can also be used to speak.

When someone misunderstands you, use your mouth to explain the truth in a timely manner.

Three: There are many ways to repay a debt of gratitude.

They do not include forcing your savior into marriage, then deliberately neglecting, suppressing, and abusing her.

If any of the above occurs, flee immediately.

My mother was exquisitely beautiful.

But during the years my father studied abroad, another man kept her in his power and abused her.

On the day Father returned, he stumbled upon what was happening.

I thought he would be horrified.

Furious.

Instead, he merely closed the bedroom door.

And heartlessly shut my mother inside with her humiliation and her tears.

Chun Tang and I were both senior maids in Grand Madam’s household.

Chun Tang was dazzling and seductive, while I was delicate and mild.

When we turned fifteen, Grand Madam decided that one of us would become a bedchamber maid to her eldest grandson, Pei Yi.

Chun Tang volunteered for the position.

I was promised instead to Steward Jiang of the Pei household.

Everything should have gone smoothly.

But just before the arrangements were to be finalized, Chun Tang ran away.

The day before she fled, I heard her muttering strange things to empty air.

“Once I’m gone, Grand Madam will probably give Xia Zhi to Pei Yi.”

“That girl is dull-faced and deathly boring.”

“Put the two of us side by side, and Pei Yi is bound to remember how much better I was!”

“People treasure what they can’t have.”

“When I come back, he’ll crawl through hell trying to win me over.”

“Once he promises to make me his lawful wife, my mission will be complete!”

Song Yayue has spent fifteen years trapped behind a talisman-enforced silence, so no one suspects that the supposedly mute, illiterate bride is a born chatterbox.

On her wedding night, she catches her husband in bed with the Crown Princess—and nearly exposes herself to the blind Crown Prince who guides her through the dark.

But He Zhiyu is no more blind than Yayue is mute, and the two betrayed spouses strike a bargain: she will become his eyes and ears, and he will keep her alive.

As an adulterous affair unravels into a royal conspiracy, Yayue discovers that the deadliest weapon in the palace may be the voice she has been forbidden to use.

After a brilliant student leaps to his death during the high school entrance examination, Officer Zhong closes the case as a tragic suicide.

One month later, his own son vanishes, and every clue points to the dead boy’s father—a gifted mathematician and convicted rapist.

A strange number sequence becomes the key to a staged kidnapping, a buried miscarriage of justice, and a dying son’s final attempt to turn his father’s greatest weakness into armor.

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?”