All Novel

A girl came to Drunken Fragrance Pavilion and insisted on becoming a prostitute.

She went on about the romance and glamour of Shanghai’s ten-mile foreign concession, saying this was such a romantic era.

Then let her have a good look at what romance meant in this man-eating age.

The Chang’e in Yu Hebai’s painting came to life.

She descended gracefully into the mortal world, and Yu Hebai worshipped her as a Goddess.

So completely that he forgot all about his engagement to me.

Clutching the marriage contract, I went to the Yu family estate to demand an explanation from Yu Hebai.

But the moment I stepped through the gates of the Yu family courtyard, I couldn’t help shaking my head.

My first thought was: What kind of Chang’e is this supposed to be?

My second thought was: She was nowhere near the woman who had stayed at my house last night.

Second Young Master Xie was a notorious wastrel.

I lived under the Xie Family’s roof and bent over backward to please him, yet he looked down on me all the same.

He thought I was trying to climb my way up by clinging to him, and sneered at me.

“With looks like hers, I wouldn’t take her even as a concubine.”

Then his mother took him by the arm and told him to call me sister-in-law.

“This son of mine is the only one I still worry about. Thank goodness I have you to help me look after him.”

That night, he climbed over the wall and pinned me into a corner, asking in a coaxing voice, “If I become your concubine instead… will you take me?”

My name is Zhou Jiu, and I’m a professional haunted-house test sleeper.

Tonight, the company assigned me a new job: the old house where my entire family burned to death fifteen years ago.

But that house had long since been reduced to a barren wasteland.

I returned with a black-and-white photograph of the fire scene.

In the shadows of that photo, a person who looked exactly like me was already waiting at the door.

The villain was rich, but depressed.

I was poor, and worse, I was the heroine of an angst novel.

My parents were destined to die, leaving me and my grandmother to depend on each other.

Then, when Grandma fell seriously ill, I would have no choice but to grovel at the male lead’s feet.

He would torment me physically and emotionally, lock me up, make me miscarry, and in the end, I would die in despair.

Only then would he be filled with regret.

I figured all of it came down to being broke, so I decided to throw my lot in with the villain.

I found the villain quietly slitting his wrists and, fighting off the dizziness from low blood sugar, tried to talk him down.

“I’m not here to stop you. I just wanted to discuss whether you could maybe die a little later.”

“You don’t want your assets to go to your dad’s illegitimate son, do you? Are you really okay with them inheriting your money, buying yachts and private jets, and traveling the world?”

“All you have to do is hold on for a few more years. Then you’ll found your own company, become the new darling of the tech industry, and multiply your wealth more than tenfold.”

“I’ll help you take a shortcut. When the time comes, give me a cut, and I’ll help you get rid of Xie Xun.”

The villain’s eyes lit up, but he still looked disdainful.

“You?”

“Be grateful. Besides me, who else is on your side? Your dad? Your mom?”

That stabbed the villain right where it hurt.

Because he was an orphan with both parents still alive.

[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.

My sister-in-law is the famed Rouge Tiger of Linan.

With a powdered face and thunderous methods, she keeps my brother so obedient he doesn’t dare take a concubine.

All the men of Linan laugh at him for being henpecked.

One day, my brother brought home a shy young woman named Yaoniang.

With a trembling voice, he stood protectively in front of her and said to my sister-in-law:

“Yaoniang and I have already been intimate. Whether you approve or not, I will make her my concubine today.”

My sister-in-law did not pick up the rolling pin again.

She only smiled and said, “Very well – I’ll let you have her.”

“Madam, I’m planning to take a concubine.”

When Duan Qing said that, I was ironing the ceremonial robes he would wear to the palace tomorrow.

At his words, I nearly knocked over the iron brazier full of burning charcoal.

He sat there with one leg crossed over the other and went on as if it had nothing to do with me. “I’m bringing Miss Zhou into the household. A noblewoman from the former dynasty. You’ve met her.”

“Back when I followed the Emperor to fight for this empire, I lived with my head tied to my belt. Now that I’ve been made a duke, what’s wrong with taking the legitimate daughter of a marquis’s household as a concubine?”

“Old Han’s family are illiterate peasants, and even he married a girl from an earl’s household as his second wife!”

I looked at the utter entitlement on his face.

Then I took a deep breath. What was meant to come had come at last.

At thirty-eight, after spending half my life enduring hardship with him, it was time I enjoyed some peace and comfort.

And so, in the year I turned thirty-nine,

I decided to become a happy widow and savor the good life.

My older sister was about to be married when a serial rapist attacked her.

In a single night, her reputation was destroyed and her engagement broken off.

Father fell ill with rage; Mother cried herself blind.

And the rapist?

He became the personal guard of a princess from a marquis’s household.

The gentle, kindhearted princess said, “Ah Qing isn’t bad at heart.

He only made a mistake because he briefly lost his way.”

Later, I killed the child she had struggled so hard to conceive.

My sister, now a prince’s wife, took her hand and said gently, “My little sister isn’t bad at heart.

It was only an accident that led her to do something wrong.”

But the princess’s face twisted with hatred, her eyes venomous.

All her former gentleness and kindness were gone.

A new neighbor moved in next door-a man who radiated a wild, untamed energy from head to toe.

He always came home late at night.

On the rare occasions I ran into him in the elevator, he was quiet and withdrawn, looking nothing like a decent guy.

Until one night, without the slightest warning, the water in my apartment cut off.

Halfway through my shower, I stood there in silence for a long moment before wrapping myself in a bathrobe and knocking on my neighbor’s door.

“Bro, can I borrow your bathroom?”