All Novel

After seven years together and more than seven hundred breakups, my ex wanted us to drink a potion that would make us forget each other.

Worried it might taste bitter, he took the first sip.

Then he looked at me as though we had never met—and decided he wanted me all over again.

When he poured away my glass, he had no idea what I had put in it.

Or so I thought.

[A brother-obsessed System top + mystery + male/male romance + a horror-game NPC + two powerful leads + wish fulfillment + the Fourth Calamity]

Your newly bonded System tells you that you’re actually cannon fodder in a melodramatic romance novel. Your opening act is to humiliate the campus beauty and beat up the man she’s cheating with: the classic setup for an overpowered hero’s rise.

But when he coaches you through your lines, he’s so embarrassed that he stammers and stalls. His tone turns peculiar, yet he still mischievously coaxes you along.

[Ge, repeat after me. Thirty years on one bank of the river, thirty on the other. Never look down on… um…]

And you, Zhao Xiuming, can only ask, “Huh?”

You know there’s more to the System than he lets on, even if he insists he’s an adorable Cuddling System, a warm, nurturing system.

But at school, you encounter a campus beauty carrying a ghost fetus.

At the hospital, her lover rises from the dead as an alien creature, muttering, “Bro, you smell so good.”

In your rented room, you share a bed with a blood-drenched young boy pretending to be a girl.

At your part-time job, the killer in the shop can’t get enough of you. And when you enter an isolated-island horror story, you finally discover who you are…

You, Zhao Xiuming, are certain the Horror System is keeping you captive as his pet. He even plays puppy in front of you on purpose. [Woof.]

Then you realize you aren’t normal either. You stop fearing the System and praise him. “Good boy, Little Darling.”

Before you read: Don’t approach this as a conventional story about a player clearing instances. The protagonist is an anomaly NPC, through and through. Read it as a mystery.

Players from different horror games enter the protagonist’s world, creating all kinds of instances. The “Fourth Calamity” tag is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the havoc players wreak on a world’s native inhabitants.

I was the Noble Consort.

An assassin struck at a palace banquet, and the Empress took a sword for me.

The Emperor was stunned.

“I’m right here!

Why are you saving her?”

The Empress collapsed into my arms, blood spilling from the corner of her mouth.

“Her crying is unbearable.

I don’t want to deal with her nonsense.”

But I’d trained in martial arts since I was little.

I could look after myself.

The crying was just to win favor.

Well, this was a mess…

Maybe I should ask Dad’s five hundred thousand soldiers what to do?

My elder sister lost her reputation just before her marriage was to be arranged.

Somehow, the jade pendant she wore next to her skin had ended up in a wastrel’s hands.

He brought all seven of his concubines to our door, with gongs and drums, to ask for her hand.

Her good name was ruined.

The marriage intended for her, into a marquis’s household, fell to me instead.

But after we married, my husband suspected I had been behind it.

He would humiliate me in our bedchamber to avenge her.

Pei Zheng pitied my sister so much that he defied all propriety and insisted on marrying her as a second wife of equal standing.

Then I was given another life.

Once again, I got hold of my sister’s jade pendant.

And I had not changed a bit.

Under cover of darkness, I slipped it into the drunken wastrel’s hand.

To gain the protection of a powerful family, I tried every trick I knew on a distant cousin whose connection to me was tenuous at best.

My impeccably aloof cousin merely said, “Have some self-respect.”

Later, when I decided to set my sights elsewhere, he regretted it.

Cui Zheyu pinned me against a wall and kissed me, his dark eyes unreadable.

“You think you can stir up my feelings and then run?

Too late.”

The system told me I could only go home by becoming the male lead’s girlfriend.

After five years of groveling, his affection score was still stuck at fifty.

So I asked him one more time—and pushed him off a rooftop when he said no.

Every death resets the world.

Every loop takes us farther into the past.

If winning his heart will not set me free, perhaps killing him will.

When the apocalypse came, I struggled to stay alive.

Then the zombie king ate a hopeless romantic’s brain—and fell hopelessly in love with me.

Every day, I opened my door to find him offering me fresh food, eager to please.

Until he read a book called The Rules of a Shady Merchant.

Then the food came with a price.

“One sausage for a hug.

One bag of bread for a kiss.”

“What about hot pot?”

I asked nervously.

The zombie king chuckled and beckoned me closer.

“That costs a little more.

Come here, and I’ll explain it to you.

Slowly.”

My beautiful, wealthy roommate and Beijing’s golden boy had a love life that was one long melodrama.

To make him jealous, she crooked a finger and stole the childhood friend I’d known for over ten years.

The golden boy came to find me.

“I’ll give you a hundred.

Get that mediocre childhood friend of yours away from her.”

Every novel I’d read about bringing an arrogant man to heel flashed through my mind.

I flicked my hair in what I hoped was a seductive gesture and said, “Give me two hundred.

Then pretend to be my dog and drive her crazy.”

“I guarantee she’ll never dare bring up breaking up with you again.”

He looked stunned.

“Two hundred?

Are you robbing me?”

I was stunned too.

“You can’t spare two hundred yuan?”

Suddenly, he went quiet.

I was a very bad merman.

I used my song to lure in a blind human.

He was an honest sort.

I wasn’t.

Once I tired of him, I threw him away.

I was about to lure in someone else when a wave knocked me senseless.

An enormous tail coiled around me, and someone laughed darkly.

“Darling, of all places, why did you have to run into the sea?”

“Didn’t I tell you it would be dangerous?”

He pressed a hand to my hot belly.

“If it weren’t for our jiaoren baby, I’d never have found you.”

Wait.

Our what baby?

A scandal spread through the household about Xue Rao, our family’s adopted daughter, and my eldest brother.

She had him so thoroughly bewitched that for days he neglected his younger siblings.

My second brother was furious and went to confront her.

Before long, he too was constantly visiting her waterside pavilion, with no thought for anyone else.

I decided to see this scheming creature for myself.

Gauze curtains veiled the pavilion, and laughter filled my ears.

Xue Rao greeted me with a smile.

“Why, Third Miss.

Which brother have you come to see?”