Bao Taozi opened her eyes and found herself waking up in a bed.
Something was wrong, very wrong. She had clearly been on her couch just now, munching potato chips and writing a scathing review.
“That female lead Liu Bingxin is truly disgusting! She sacrificed so many people just to fulfill her romance with the male lead! Even that golden finger of hers was snatched from her own younger sister, Bao Tao! How does someone with such twisted values deserve to be the female lead? And that male lead, Long Ying, is just as hard to stomach!”
It wasn’t because the cannon fodder’s name was just one character off from her own that she hated the female lead, definitely not.
Chips finished, review posted, Bao Taozi was happily getting ready to find the next apocalypse novel to read when she suddenly felt dizzy.
Then she lost consciousness.
Right before blacking out, Bao Taozi thought: damn it, were those chips expired…
When she woke again, she was in a bed. She sat up and looked around, a pink bedroom, pink gauze curtains, pink bedsheets, and a pink computer…
Bao Taozi felt like her eyes were about to go blind.
She rummaged around and found a phone. She unlocked it to see a message notification, the sender labeled “Lawyer Qi,” which read: Ms. Bao Xiushui’s estate has now been fully distributed. Per the will, aside from the Volkswagen that Mr. Liu Zhengwei bought for her twelve years ago, everything else now belongs to you, Miss Bao.
Hahaha, of course Bao Taozi remembered this, Bao Xiushui’s will had left only a car to the female lead’s father, and back then she’d thought it was so satisfying, since in the novel his face had turned green with fury!
Wait… wait a second!
What did this mean? Why was the phone belonging to Bao Tao, the cannon-fodder female supporting character, in her own hands?
Had she… transmigrated into the novel!?
Bao Taozi dropped the phone, buried her head in the pillow, and forced herself to calm down, starting to recall the plot.
The female lead of this world, Liu Bingxin, was this body’s half-sister by a different mother, well, “sister,” though in truth they were less than two months apart in age. Liu Bingxin was the illegitimate daughter of her father and his mistress, Li Ping. Just last week, the original body’s mother, Bao Xiushui, died in a car accident. Bao Tao’s maternal family was very wealthy, back then, Liu Zhengwei had married into the Bao family, then cheated during the marriage with his childhood sweetheart Li Ping, who gave birth to the female lead, Liu Bingxin!
Ten minutes later, she let out a long cry and leapt up from the bed.
“Since I’m here, might as well make the best of it! I, Bao Taozi, know the script, I’m going to save the world!”
Recalling the timeline, this was the second week after the original Bao Tao’s mother had died, before the female lead snatched the jade pendant from the original body. That pendant was still with her right now! If she didn’t bond with it now, was she just going to wait for the female lead to come steal it later?
Bao Taozi turned the house upside down and finally found the jade pendant in a drawer of the desk.
According to the novel, the female lead had snatched the pendant and planned to trade it for supplies. Back then, the apocalypse had just begun, and money and gold still had value. On the way, she ran into a zombie, and while fleeing, a branch scratched her hand. While hiding under a table, blood trickled down her palm and stained the pendant, that was what activated the pendant’s space and spirit spring.
Bao Taozi scurried happily to the kitchen, grabbed a needle, grimaced, and pricked her thumb, letting a drop of blood fall onto the pendant.
A flash of white light passed before her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was standing in a vast, boundless expanse of land. Beyond it was white fog, the only area she could see clearly was a two-hundred-square-meter space with a spring of flowing water, this must be the female lead’s ultimate cheat item from the novel, the spirit spring water. With this spring water, the female lead had saved countless people, all of whom became her admirers or followers.
According to the novel, this space had started out as just an empty plot of land, nothing in it, just a storage space. As for what it looked like after leveling up, Bao Taozi didn’t know, because the original female lead had lived comfortably just off the spirit spring water and stockpiled supplies, spending her days enjoying life and falling in love, never in a hurry to level anything up.
She wasn’t in a hurry, but Bao Taozi was! She looked around and found a sign at the border, which read: Unlocking this plot requires 10 Level-1 crystal cores.
I see! If this plot had one, the other plots should have signs too.
She walked around for a bit and came to the adjacent plot. Sure enough, the sign read: Unlocking this plot requires 10 Level-2 crystal cores.
Now she understood! She didn’t believe this space’s function was merely storage and the spirit spring, it seemed she’d only find out once she unlocked more plots.
With a thought, Bao Taozi left the space, grabbed her bag and phone, packed up, and headed out.
Ever since her mother died, Bao Tao had moved into the house her mother had left her, to avoid being disgusted by the rest of the family.
She took out her phone to check, the inheritance had already arrived: a cosmetics company, two apartments and two villas, 30 million in cash, and two sedans plus one van.
That was plenty, more than enough. In her past life, she’d never seen this much money.
The company and the apartments would all need to be sold off for cash, she’d keep one villa to live in. That villa was in the main city district, conveniently close to her father’s house. But Bao Taozi had no intention of living there, too unlucky.
An idea struck her, a way to disgust the female lead’s father.
She found the number for Lawyer Qi Heng and arranged to meet him at the café downstairs from his law firm.
When Bao Taozi arrived, Lawyer Qi was already waiting, dressed in a crisp suit, sitting up straight, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, the picture of refinement.
She remembered that in the novel, Lawyer Qi also met a bad end. After the apocalypse began, worried about Bao Tao, he’d tried to go pick her up to live together. On the way, he ran into the male lead Long Ying, who had already formed a team to gather supplies. Qi Heng knew Long Ying, they lived in the same neighborhood. Long Ying said he could escort Qi Heng there, but wanted supplies in exchange. Qi Heng thought it over and decided Bao Tao mattered more, so he agreed to give him a crate of water and a crate of dry rations.
Little did he know, Long Ying, seeing him agree so readily, assumed he must have a lot more supplies. Along the way, he schemed and shoved Qi Heng into a horde of zombies. When Long Ying later went to Qi Heng’s home, he found only a single crate of water and a crate of bread.
Thinking of this, Bao Taozi sighed inwardly, a good man, but too naive, too stubbornly loyal. But given that he’d once traded all his supplies just to come find the original body, Bao Taozi decided that this time, she would make sure Lawyer Qi lived in comfort with her. With her god’s-eye view of the plot, Bao Taozi also knew the reason he’d always been so good to the original body, Qi Heng had been sponsored through school by Bao Tao’s mother, and was deeply grateful to her, so she knew he was someone she could trust.
She sat down across from Qi Heng, glanced around to make sure no one was nearby, shook his hand, and said, “Uncle Qi, I asked you here today because there’s something very important.”
Qi Heng nodded and sat up even straighter. “Go ahead, Taotao.”
“I need your help selling off the properties in my name, sell them all cheap, it’s fine, including the one my father lives in. Just keep the villa in Biyuan. I also need you to help sell the company, but I want to sell it to my father, so he ends up without a single cent left in his hands. I think he wants that company very badly. As for the cars, I only want the van.”
Qi Heng frowned, puzzled. “But all of that was left to you by your mother. Taotao, are you in some kind of trouble that needs money urgently? You can tell Uncle Qi, I’ll give you whatever you need.”
“No, Uncle Qi, that’s not it. And it’s not just me who needs to sell, you need to sell your law firm and your house too,” Bao Taozi said seriously.
Qi Heng shot to his feet, then sat back down beside her, and said in a low voice, “Taotao, did you get yourself into some kind of trouble, something even I can’t fix?”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Did he really think she’d committed some crime and needed to flee to Southeast Asia?