Female Protagonist

[Infinite Stream + Thriller Suspense Puzzle-Solving + Strong Female Lead + Teamwork + Plot]

[Ding~ Welcome, Player, to the Survival Inn. Please strive to clear Instances and earn your Room Fee~ We offer various room types such as Dormitory, Guesthouse, and Hotel, and there’s a Supreme Luxury VIP Club waiting for you to unlock~]

A sinister, bloody Courtyard
A campus shrouded in death
A murderous painting that brings disaster with a single glance
A village teeming with eerie mysteries…

An Aloof Capricorn leads the team, a Yandere Princess holds the stage, an Adorkable Scholar solves the puzzles, and a Uniformed Uncle helps you clear Instances with brute force!

[Warning: Romance develops later in the story. See details in the text]

The day my interview results came out, I came across a post: “How lethal can a white moonlight really be?”

The top-voted answer had only been posted a little while ago.

“I’ll tell my own story. He had a crush on me in high school, and we ran into each other a few days ago while I was job hunting.”

“Even if I’m not as capable as the others, he’ll still make me the one-in-ten-thousand choice.”

Attached was a graduation photo of them at eighteen.

The girl wore a white dress, her slim back quiet and well-behaved.

The boy had his head turned, looking at her intently, his profile clean and… familiar.

My phone trembled faintly. It was the message rejecting me after the interview.

Only then did I understand. She was Xie Qingyue’s white moonlight-and what she had killed was my future.

I would rather be a tree waiting for spring than a bird that turns back.

I could allow my feelings to fall apart completely.

But my future, my freedom, my life-none of them could afford the slightest mistake.

I was never smart, but the neighbor’s son was a once-in-a-century genius.

I spent day after day hunched over my desk doing practice problems before I finally got into a Project 985 university. He skipped class and dated the prettiest girl in school, yet the top universities fought over him.

I practically lived in the library, studying from morning to night, only to miss out on a guaranteed graduate school spot by one rank. He flipped through his books right before the exam and easily took first place in the entire department.

Whenever my parents scolded me, they would twist my ear and say, “Look at Little Lin! You’re both human, so how are you so much stupider than him?”

…

I spent the first half of my life living in his shadow. The moment I graduated, I couldn’t wait to leave home and run away from it all.

For three whole years, no matter how hysterical my parents got over the phone, I never went back.

On New Year’s Eve of the fourth year, I was carrying shopping bags back to my rented apartment when I saw him at the door.

His thin frame leaned against the wall, and he asked softly,

“Why won’t you go home?”

I didn’t answer.

The light in his eyes dimmed. Then he said, “Come back. Your parents miss you so much… and so do I.”

The Emperor’s beloved Noble Consort, his one true love, was dead.

His one true love?

It was almost laughable.

And yet, the rumor had spread throughout all of Dayan.

The day I decided to divorce Pei Qingshu was an ordinary one.

Only the night before, he had promised that he would send Miss Liu away the next day, then celebrate my birthday properly with me.

It finally seemed as though our life was about to get better.

Delighted, I rose early, opened my dressing case, and carefully drew my brows while looking into a copper basin.

Then I dug an old pomegranate-red skirt out from the bottom of the camphorwood chest.

After seven years of marriage, I did not own a single decent piece of jewelry.

Seeing my bare ears, I pinched off a balsam blossom and tucked it behind my bun.

On my way out to buy vegetables, I ran into Chunxiang’s mother, who caught my arm with a teasing smile.

“I saw Master Pei buy two hairpins the other day—one gold, one jade. Let me see which one you’re wearing.”

Then she noticed the balsam flower in my hair and froze.

Meng Fanyu carried himself with effortless distinction.

I thought that even if we eventually broke up, having him as my first love would leave me with no regrets.

So I pursued him with everything I had.

Eventually, I won him over, and he laid down three rules: we would date, never marry, and break up when we graduated.

For three years, we loved each other with abandon.

On graduation day, I was the one who ended it, but he went back on our agreement.

Our conversation fell apart, and Meng Fanyu lowered his proud head with a bitter laugh.

He told me I had better pray we never met again.

From then on, I did everything I could to avoid him.

But with the slightest turn of fate, the world can become very small, and two people who once belonged to each other are bound to meet again.

He Qiong was hailed as the strongest Demon King the demon realm had seen in a thousand years, and every demon expected him to lead them in an assault on the Nine Heavens.

Unfortunately, before that grand ambition could be realized, a beautiful young phoenix lured him into the Celestial Emperor’s ambush and his soul was destroyed.

I fought desperately to seize one fragment of his soul, then hid across the mortal realm like a hunted dog and nourished him with my heart’s blood for five hundred years until I finally brought him back.

Surely hardship revealed true devotion, and after everything I had sacrificed to save him, He Qiong would finally understand who truly loved him and who deserved to stand at his side.

I thought his return would begin a tale of the Demon King bathing the Nine Heavens in blood, but instead it became a tortured romance between him and the Goddess of the Nine Heavens-the little phoenix who had stabbed him in the back a thousand years ago killed herself for love afterward, and the moment he learned the truth, he forgave every betrayal.

Fine, they could keep their tragic, undying love; I knew when I had lost, and I wanted no part of it.

But the love belonged to them while the suffering belonged to me, because just before I left, He Qiong held the phoenix’s last soul fragment and said, “Du Nan, your heart’s blood brought me back after five hundred years, so you can bring her back too, can’t you?”

Jiang Yu broke up with me again.

This time, I planned to do what I did when he first dumped me at eighteen-go clear my head by the river.

But the wind off the water was freezing, so I decided to just head back. On the way home, I passed a barbecue stall. I thought I’d be like my twenty-year-old self, too heartbroken to swallow a single bite.

Instead, I found that the owner’s grilling skills were actually top-notch.

When I finally made it home, I intended to write him one of those long, pleading essays for a reconciliation, just like I did when we went through our routine breakups at twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four.

But then my boss told me I had to go on a business trip. After nearly a month of being busy, I was practically entering a second honeymoon phase with my career in a neighboring city.

Jiang Yu finally couldn’t hold out any longer and called me. “Why haven’t you come to apologize yet?” Only then did I realize I’d forgotten something. Going through a breakup when you’re a little older is truly a hassle.

I could only ask him tentatively: “I’m so sorry, really. I’ve been so busy lately that I forgot to write the essay.” “How about… we just stay broken up?”

To please his mistress, my father secretly switched Mother’s newborn daughter with hers.

He meant for his mistress’s daughter to take my place as the legitimate young lady of the family and grow up surrounded by wealth and privilege.

Behind Mother’s back, the mistress mocked her.

“A country woman like her will spend her whole life laboring only to hand the fruits to someone else.”

Even Father thought Mother ignorant and easy to deceive.

But Mother was merely uneducated, not witless.

Neither of them knew that a fire broke out in the rear courtyard on the day Mother gave birth—and that she switched me straight back.

Even as he faced death, Father could not understand how a country woman like Mother had brought about his ruin.

Mom brought home the dead crabs our neighbor had thrown away and cooked them with the live ones.

“One for your big sister, one for your little brother, and one for your little sister.

See how fair Mommy is?”

But my little sister spat out her first mouthful of crab roe.

“Mom, I think this crab smells bad…”

Mom slammed down her bowl in a rage.

“Why would yours be the only bad one?

Don’t waste food.

Finish it!”

That night, my sister got food poisoning.

But Mom insisted on making our neighbor pay the medical bills, delaying treatment until my sister died.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on that same evening.

I immediately switched my sister’s crab with Mom’s.

“Hers is much too big.

We should give it to Mom!”

Then I shelled the dead crab in my own bowl and handed it to my brother.

“You’re still growing, Xingxing.

Have mine!”