Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I regret it. I really do.

I was just an utterly ordinary corporate drone who wanted to unwind after work by reading some brainless webnovel trash. The plot I was looking forward to was “Dating a Prince,” not “Working as a Security Guard in Ancient Times.”

This was my eighth day working security at Prince Lin’s Mansion.

If there was anything worth celebrating, it was that I had already been promoted to captain of the security team.

The other security guards-no, the other mansion guards-had refused to accept it at first. After all, they were all the finest scions of military families, and only the cream of the crop were selected to serve as a prince’s guards. So every night, they would ask me to spar.

Each of them had their own special moves. Every technique you had ever seen in a wuxia novel? They knew it.

As for me, I had no techniques whatsoever. I simply relied on the peerless divine strength the author had written into my character. Whenever they lunged at me, I threw them out. Then threw them out again.

Three days later, I had thrown the lot of them into submission.

“Sister Shuang, your mini wontons.”

Black Eagle, the First Expert of the Imperial Palace and the esteemed commander of the mansion guards, had personally gone out to buy me a late-night snack. He handed it to me and even remembered my extra request for more seaweed and no dried shrimp.

The mini wontons were stuffed with shrimp and fish paste, so fresh they made you want to bite your own tongue off. They were made the traditional way, without a single speck of MSG-but as I ate them absentmindedly, my mind was on something else entirely.

Countless films and TV shows had taught us that if a transmigrator wanted to return to the modern world, they had to complete the plot of the book. In other words, they had to make sure the male and female leads ended up together.

Because I refused to stab anyone, Chu Ziye was still going about his life as a prince, while Liu Xiaoman was still cooking in the back kitchen-the two of them did not even know each other!

I had to matchmake them. I absolutely had to matchmake them!

I sighed silently. I was living “My Life as a Security Guard in Ancient Times,” yet worrying over “My Career as a Matchmaker in Ancient Times.”

The thing was, bringing Chu Ziye and Liu Xiaoman together was extremely difficult.

After all, the gap in their status was right there. Under normal circumstances, it was very hard for a prince to fall in love with a kitchen maid. That was precisely why the author had designed such a dramatic event: an assassin attacking, the female lead taking a sword for him, and thus the threads of their fates becoming intertwined.

The problem was that I, the unlucky assassin, got dizzy at the sight of blood. I simply could not do it.

But-what was needed was only an assassin. That assassin did not necessarily have to be me, right?

As long as I found another assassin and staged a little “beauty saves the hero” scenario, the female lead could get connected to the male lead again. Everything would return to the proper track, and the plot could proceed however it was supposed to proceed.

I was actually able to reason through such a high-difficulty logic problem. Honestly, I was impressed by my own cleverness.

Finding another assassin would not be hard either. I stayed peacefully in Prince Lin’s Mansion and continued serving as captain of the security team. Every day, I simply arranged about half an hour of alone time for myself. Sure enough, half a month later, on a dark and windy night, a figure appeared before me.

“Frost Woman, the master summons you.”

I smiled, threw on an outer robe, and rose. Like a true assassin certain of victory, I leaped into the moonlit night.

I followed the visitor all the way forward. After the time it took to burn a stick of incense, a towering palace stood before me.

Fengyi Palace. This was the Empress’s residence.

My eyes narrowed slightly, and a smile appeared on my face.

This was my plan. As an assassin, I had to have an employer behind me. Since Chu Ziye stubbornly remained alive, that employer would definitely come to contact me.

And since the employer could find me, they could definitely find other assassins too. I had no connections in the ancient world, so I could use this employer’s network to carry out my grand plan of bringing the male and female leads together.

Thus, when the gold-and-red gauze curtains were drawn aside and the Empress slowly walked up to me, I knelt on one knee and put on an expression of unbearable shame. “Frost Woman is useless. There are too many experts within Prince Lin’s Mansion. I cannot subdue them all by myself, so I could only remain in the mansion for the time being and wait for an opportunity. If…”

The Empress clenched the bracelet on her arm. Her ten crimson-painted nails were red as blood, betraying just how urgently she wanted Chu Ziye dead. “If what? Frost Woman, I have already given you a deposit of ten thousand taels. You asked for twelve thousand taels, and I agreed to that as well. If you dare make another outrageous demand, I can just as easily feed your corpse to the fish in the koi pond.”

Her words were vicious, but I was not particularly afraid. Only three thoughts ran through my mind.

One: you do realize you’re the villain, right? Who takes a villain’s threats seriously?

Two: I was expensive and disobedient, yet she still paid me. That meant she truly could not find anyone better than me. Supply and demand were in balance. Her Majesty the Empress, who clearly did not understand the principles of economics, had just exposed her intense demand for a rare commodity like me.

Three: there was no third point. I was just used to forcing reports into three bullet points because of my corporate-drone habits.

Those three thoughts flashed rapidly through my head. I lowered my gaze and said meticulously, “The twelve thousand taels remain unchanged. Frost Woman only needs one more thing.”

“What thing?”

“Something very simple. An assistant.”