[Host matching…]
[Game Name: Love Heir]
[Match successful! Welcome, Host He Xingluo. I am System 077. Nice to meet you!]
“Where am I?” Frowning under the attack of the mechanical voice, He Xingluo slowly opened his eyes, struggling to recover from the intense pain he had felt just before his sudden death. “A hearse? It drives pretty smoothly.”
He Xingluo looked out the car window, greeted by an entirely unfamiliar city streetscape. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of a luxury car whose brand he did not recognize. Shifting his gaze back inside, he saw a cybernetic screen tilting its head and acting cute toward him.
The pain that had seemed to permeate every fiber of his being gradually faded away, and He Xingluo finally understood his situation. “If I click agree and complete the task, I can be resurrected?”
“Yes, Host! There are no other side effects!”
“I am already dead anyway, what else is there to lose?” He Xingluo clicked agree swiftly and decisively, then asked politely, “May I sleep for a little while now, then?”
The driver beside him answered with a mixture of shock and hesitation, “You can?”
He Xingluo turned to look at the driver, realizing the man was a middle-aged person wearing a uniform and white gloves. He had actually mistaken the man for a hearse driver earlier.
So, with a hint of apology and hesitation, he said, “Then, thank you?”
Following his line of sight, the little system 077 jumped and reminded him, “Host! Once you press confirm, anything you say out loud will be heard! You can talk to me inside your mind!”
He Xingluo felt so awkward.
The little system asked very thoughtfully, “Does the Host wish to start understanding the game world? Where would you like to begin?”
Inside his mind, He Xingluo replied, “The game settings and my new identity?”
The system immediately began diligently supplementing background knowledge for He Xingluo. The cybernetic screen loaded the plot, and the story hidden behind the world line began to unfold, displaying lines of text on the screen.
He Xingluo read them line by line, studying word by word. Knowing oneself and the enemy is the only way to know when you can slack off; living beings always need to catch their breath, and even a donkey from a production brigade needs to rest!
A few minutes later, He Xingluo had a general understanding of the storyline.
The small world he had transmigrated into this time was a romance simulation game. The wealthy male lead, Lu Zhanbei, was one of the four selectable male leads, a top-tier wealthy heir who would eventually become a terrifying titan in the business world.
However, in dating simulation games, everyone understands that the male lead is merely a dating tool character; everything exists solely for the protagonist player and for the player’s gaming experience.
The main protagonist is named Wen Tian. His entire family struggles right at the poverty line, and he has relied on his mother and younger brother since childhood. Although from a humble background, he is kind-hearted, well-mannered, and possesses a personality that is poor yet neither humble nor cowardly.
What is even more rare is that he excels academically, was admitted to P University—the best university—and already secured an internship at a major tech company during his sophomore year. He is an object of great envy among his peers, and his impoverished family seems to have left no negative impact on him.
Unfortunately, that is not reality.
Wen Tian’s younger brother is hospitalized year-round, with treatment expenses relying entirely on his mother’s odd jobs and Wen Tian’s work-study programs. If his condition remains stable, everything is manageable, but the moment a relapse occurs, things become severely strained.
At this time, Wen Tian is only a nineteen-year-old youth. Apart from extending his working hours, he has no other options. Even though he sacrifices all his time outside of studying and sleeping, it is still a drop in the bucket when facing exorbitant medical bills.
To sum up Wen Tian’s nineteen-year-old life in one sentence: a gambling father, a weak mother, a sick brother, and a shattered self.
Sadly, troubles have no end. What troubles Wen Tian even more is that he is also very good-looking, to the extent of being pursued by a wealthy second-generation classmate—who happens to be Lu Zhanbei’s cousin.
From then on, the three of them star in an absurd and breathtaking romance drama. To prevent his cousin from being deceived by the ill-intentioned Wen Tian, Lu Zhanbei even risks breaking the rules himself by personally entering into a fake couple contract with Wen Tian.
As long as you all have fun playing your games.
Seeing this, He Xingluo stopped reading. The little system bounced on He Xingluo’s shoulder with lingering eagerness: “Why are you not reading anymore?”
Naturally, it was to avoid spoilers; watching a cheesy romance story up close in the future would be much more thrilling. He Xingluo did not explain this, but instead asked, “So who am I? Am I one of these three in this cheesy story?”
The system’s cybernetic electronic voice actually sounded somewhat guilty: “No, you are He Xingluo, the butler of the wealthy male lead Lu Zhanbei.”
If he understood correctly, he was that exact person who would say the following when the game player achieves a successful romance route:
“You are the first man the young master has ever brought home.”
“It has been a long time since I have seen the young master this happy.”
The legendary wealthy family butler!
The little system confirmed his guess as the cybernetic screen reloaded to display a brand-new page describing the unbreakable bond between He Xingluo and the young master.
The game has fixed plot settings. Every day before the young master wakes up, the butler is required to affectionately call out at his bedside:
“Young master, it is time for you to wake up.”
That being the case, he was undoubtedly the butler personally appointed by the young master, the most important line of code in the game source. He Xingluo showed a weary yet clear smile: “Without me, would the young master spend the rest of his life in bed?”
The little system fell silent, while He Xingluo remained full of doubts: “Does the wealthy young master not have enough money to buy an alarm clock?”
The system’s CPU burned for quite a while before replying, “I do not know. I can only query the main storyline plot and the plot related to NPC Butler He.”
Well, then you are a little bit useless.
He Xingluo had no choice but to settle for second best, deciding to first understand today’s plot: the initial banquet meeting. As the name implies, it is the plot where the two male leads first meet at a banquet; it is the starting point of romance and the beginning of the romance security guard’s employment!
The cybernetic screen began to scroll again:
After the new semester starts, Wen Tian has to reduce his working hours to tend to his studies, causing his income to shrink drastically.
Lu Zhitao, whom he has not seen all vacation, makes a comeback, running into him everywhere on campus and severely disrupting his studies.
Wen Tian finds this endlessly annoying and cannot find peace even in the library.
Yet Lu Zhitao knows his weakness—almost no one in the school does not know that Wen Tian is a scholarship student who relies on work-study.
Lu Zhitao offers Wen Tian a job that requires only a few hours of work yet pays a remuneration that tempts Wen Tian.
He only needs to act as a waiter at an upscale banquet, and he will receive one thousand yuan upon its conclusion.
Perhaps one thousand yuan is nothing to some people, but to Wen Tian, it covers half a month of his brother’s medical expenses.
Wen Tian certainly does not want to get entangled with Lu Zhitao and invite trouble, but he truly has no way to easily refuse.
He has no capital for independent choice.
What Wen Tian does not know, however, is that this banquet is actually the birthday banquet of Lu Zhitao’s grandfather, as well as a part of Lu Zhitao’s relentless pursuit of him. Wen Tian simply intends to fulfill his part-time job conscientiously.
He never expected that Lu Zhitao would publicly reject an arranged family marriage and confess his feelings to him.
How flashy.
He Xingluo glanced through the plot introduction ten lines at a time, his heart filled with anger toward Lu Zhitao’s reckless behavior. You refuse a family marriage, you are noble, you are great—why drag an innocent person into it?
He Xingluo told the system to quickly put away the cybernetic screen; he could not bear to look at this plot anymore. He was angry, so let the system guess!
The little system tilted its head in confusion, seemingly failing to understand why He Xingluo was so angry. In truth, He Xingluo himself did not quite understand either; it was probably because, although he was already an adult, he still hated seeing other people’s hard work go unrewarded.
Wen Tian just wanted to live a normal life and keep his younger brother alive. But with Lu Zhitao causing such a scene, how many more hardships would Wen Tian face? Fate seemed particularly fond of targeting ordinary people who had no means of fighting back; it felt somewhat bullying.
The system fell silent and gently reminded him, “Host, you seem to be over-empathizing! This is just a game! Besides, the role of this segment in the overall main storyline is to facilitate the meeting between Wen Tian and Lu Zhanbei!”
He Xingluo flipped the screen back over to look for his own plot.
He searched, and searched again.
None.
Still none.
He Xingluo had a small head and big questions.
He Xingluo raised the ultimate soul question once again: “So am I here today working just to applaud this marvelous romance and act as an invisible background prop?”
That would be worse than just sleeping!
Besides, having to witness Lu Zhitao’s idiotic actions with his own eyes—what was the point? Was it to get himself angered to death sooner so he could achieve transcendence earlier?
The system guessed, “Perhaps it is simply because Lu Zhanbei is in the car, and you are his butler?”
Hearing this, He Xingluo turned around with great curiosity to look at the back seat, wanting to see what kind of stunning appearance the wealthy male lead in this game possessed.
However,
This luxury car had a partition, and his eldest young master was behind the partition, completely out of sight!
After a prolonged silence, He Xingluo remarked, “The young master is quite shy.”
His host certainly knew how to find a graceful way out.
A few minutes later.
The stretched Lincoln motorcade stopped in front of the Lu family old residence, which also meant the game plot officially began.
He Xingluo, the wealthy family butler, was forced onto the job, dragging his feet like a dead fish as he got out of the car. His entire person exuded an aesthetic of struggling for survival between a faint sense of death and a heavy intent to kill.
His mind was in a daze for a split second.
Why on earth did he have to keep working even after dying? Wouldn’t his death have been in vain then?