Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When I vomited that mouthful of blood, my maid Xiaocui screamed in fright.

“Miss, what’s happening to you? I’ll go fetch a physician at once!”

Xiaohua hurried over at the sound, her brows knitted with worry as she gave instructions.

“Go through the secluded south gate. Don’t draw attention. The mistress has never liked Miss. If she finds out, who knows how she’ll make things difficult and drag things out?”

I lowered the handkerchief I’d used to wipe the corner of my mouth and sighed.

“No need for either of you to go. This illness of mine is strange. There is no medicine in this world that can cure it.”

“I’ll think of something myself. You two go back to your work.”

After they left, I collapsed listlessly onto the couch.

I had transmigrated into this world five years ago.

At first, I had been quite satisfied with this identity.

After all, in my original world, I had been born into misery, and after entering society, I had been reduced to a plaything for all sorts of powerful elites.

Now, as an idle young lady in a marquis manor, I might be neglected, but I had enough to eat and warm clothes to wear. That was already more than enough for me.

But after I came of age, my Smut-Novel Physique awakened.

I often felt unbearably hot, aching to be filled by something.

The more I couldn’t have it, the more painful it became.

Cramps, vomiting blood, fainting. They were practically everyday occurrences.

I realized that if I didn’t get a man soon,

I would die very quickly.

But the vast and prestigious Ningyang Marquis Manor had an extremely strict household code.

As an unfavored adopted daughter, I could not leave the manor easily.

Was I supposed to just find some random manservant in the household and make do?

The faces of one mediocre man after another flashed through my mind, and I tugged sadly at the corner of my mouth.

A Smut-Novel Female Lead was still a Female Lead, at least!

Why were my options this terrible?

Just as I was wallowing in grief, floating comments suddenly appeared before my eyes.

[Ahhh, we’re finally at the part where the Male Lead gets hit with the Passion Flower Poison. Too bad the Female Lead hasn’t appeared yet, so the bedchamber maid Female Supporting Character can only detoxify him.]

[Sorry, I can’t accept an impure Male Lead. I’m out.]

[The author arranged it this way on purpose. The Female Supporting Character may be a bedchamber maid, but she grew up by the Male Lead’s side, and later she’ll become a tool for the Female Lead and Male Lead’s tangled love-hate relationship. That’s what makes it exciting!]

[…I’m just going to skip straight to when the Female Lead appears before I start reading.]

…

I mulled over the comments carefully.

Then I realized the Male Lead they were talking about was my aloof, distant, yet noble and upright eldest brother, Shen Yanci.

As for the so-called Female Lead, second female lead, nth female lead, and so on, none of them had anything to do with me.

In other words, in this book, I was just a Background Character A whose name wasn’t even worth mentioning!

Shen Yanci.

I silently repeated the name in my heart.

The legitimate eldest son of Ningyang Marquis Manor, and the youngest third-place scholar in the current dynasty.

Peerlessly refined, noble beyond compare, upright as wind and clear as moon, the man who appeared in the spring dreams of every young lady in the capital.

He was also my older brother in name.

Our most recent interaction had been at the Mid-Autumn family banquet. He passed by my table and gave me a faint nod. That counted as acknowledging me.

Just that one look.

And I had savored it for days.

Not because I had fallen for him.

Only because it had been far too long since I’d had any contact with a man…

My brother’s abstinent, devastatingly beautiful face surfaced in my mind.

All at once, I felt that heat in my chest surge up again.

That night, I pulled on a gauzy face veil and passed through the flower corridor.

After making a wide detour around the matrons and servant girls sweeping the grounds,

I climbed in through a window and slipped straight into Shen Yanci’s inner chamber.