1
“Mianmian!” A voice called out beside Jiang Mian. She tried to open her eyes to see who was shouting so frantically, but her eyelids were too heavy, her mind was in a haze, and she couldn’t gather her thoughts for a moment.
Then, she felt someone pick her up, and an angry roar exploded above her head: “Get a helicopter here immediately!”
“President Han, this is the city center. A helicopter can’t get through.”
The voice bellowed back: “Then get Mianmian to the hospital as fast as you can!”
“Mianmian, don’t fall asleep. Daddy’s here. Open your eyes and look at Daddy.” Han Xu carried Jiang Mian downstairs. His voice left her feeling dazed again.
Daddy?
What?
Just then, a sharp pain shot from her wrist. The pain gradually cleared her muddled thoughts. She slowly opened her eyes and met a handsome face.
“Mianmian.” Han Xu was overjoyed. He carefully settled Jiang Mian into the back seat of the car and urged the driver, “I need to be at the nearest hospital in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir.” The driver stepped on the gas, and the car roared off.
“Mianmian, look at me. Look at Daddy.” Seeing Jiang Mian’s vacant stare, Han Xu’s face grew even more grim. With one hand, he supported Jiang Mian’s left wrist, which was wrapped in white silk, where a startling trace of crimson was seeping through.
Jiang Mian followed his gaze to her left wrist, then blinked after a moment.
Han Xu covered her eyes with his other hand. “Don’t look. We’ll be at the hospital soon. Daddy’s here. Nothing’s going to happen.”
He paused, then added, “I didn’t know you liked that Gu fellow so much. Just get better, and Daddy will give you whatever you want.”
Jiang Mian stared blankly at the man before her. He was about forty, or perhaps younger, dressed in a sharp suit with an air of refined nobility. Spotting bloodstains on his pristine white shirt collar stood out jarringly.
In that moment of daze, Jiang Mian suddenly received a flood of information transmitted to her from this dimension. She couldn’t help but close her eyes. When she opened them again, her vacant gaze had regained clarity, and a flicker of shock darted deep within her eyes.
Her shattered soul had somehow reconstituted itself and transmigrated into a book!
In her life two lives ago, Jiang Mian was a carp spirit, whose ultimate goal was to take human form. Just as she was about to succeed, the water vat she lived in shattered, and she died of thirst before her grand ambition could be realized.
When she woke up, she found herself in a world of cultivation, which thrilled her. Having transmigrated into human form in one stroke and being a renowned prodigy of her sect, she changed her goal to achieving immortality through Dao and devoted herself to cultivation.
However, just as she reached the Mahayana stage and was about to ascend to the immortal realm, the boundary wall was breached by foreign demons. Powerful demons attacked. To protect her sect, she killed several of their demon kings in succession, ultimately exhausting her spiritual power and perishing as her soul scattered completely.
Then she opened her eyes and ended up here.
Jiang Mian: “…”
She supposed she should be glad. She had lucked into another life, and that was a good thing.
She took a few seconds to organize the flood of information in her mind. She hadn’t transmigrated into the protagonist of this book, but into a supporting female character who shared her name.
After sorting it out, she was shocked. This supporting character actually had four fathers, and each one of them was incredibly influential.
In the book, Jiang Mian was spoiled rotten by her four fathers, which made her willful and overbearing. She wanted everyone to revolve around her.
Then she fell for the male lead, who came from a poor background but was exceptionally handsome. Unfortunately, the male lead already had a beloved female lead, his first love. Unable to win him over, she constantly picked fights with the female lead and used her billionaire tyrant father’s influence to force the male lead to marry her.
The original character kept stirring up trouble for the male and female leads. The book’s author, probably for the sake of dramatic satisfaction, quickly had Jiang Mian’s four fathers killed off one after another.
Without her fathers’ protection, the original character ended up disabled. The male lead had her thrown into a nursing home, where she suffered terribly. After escaping onto the streets, she saw the male and female leads’ happy wedding on an electronic screen and died of rage.
Jiang Mian: “…”
The original author really was the biological mother of the male and female leads.
As for the pain in her wrist, according to the book’s plot, the original character had fallen for the male lead, Gu Qiwen, at first sight. She wanted him to be her boyfriend, but he rejected her.
Later, learning that he liked the female lead, Guan Xin, she went to cause trouble for Guan Xin. The male lead happened to witness this and mocked her.
The original character declared that she would make this untouchable flower kneel at her feet. So, she called her billionaire tyrant father—the man holding her right now, Han Xu, the head of the Han Group—hoping to use his power to force Gu Qiwen to submit to her.
Han Xu doted on his daughter and thought nothing of a poor boy like Gu Qiwen, so he naturally refused.
In a fit of rage, the original character tried to threaten her billionaire tyrant father by slitting her wrists. But she accidentally went too far and actually succeeded in cutting them.
Afterward, the billionaire tyrant father gave in and used his power to force Gu Qiwen to get engaged to the original character. This led to the original character’s tragic end as the vicious supporting female character and marked the beginning of her four fathers being killed off one by one.
Jiang Mian: “…”
She wanted to curse the original character a bit, but remembering that she had now transmigrated into her, cursing her would be cursing herself. So, she swallowed the urge.
Noticing Jiang Mian staring intently at him, Han Xu’s eyes darkened. He turned to the driver and asked, “Are we at the hospital yet?”
“Almost there!” Sweat kept beading on the driver’s forehead.
“I’m fine.” Jiang Mian finally managed to squeeze out a voice from her throat. The man before her was filled with worry and urgency, radiating a deep, loving affection for his daughter.
In her life two lives ago, Jiang Mian was a carp spirit that had been raised in a fish tank and never succeeded in taking human form. In her previous life, she was a genius cultivator in her sect, with a single ice spiritual root. She had reached the Mahayana stage in just fifty years of cultivation, which meant she didn’t have much experience interacting with people.
Faced with Han Xu’s worry and anxiety, Jiang Mian felt not only an inexplicable awkwardness but also a sense of guilt.
Even though the original character was troublesome, the four fathers’ love for her was real. Now that the kernel inside the shell had been replaced by her—in the terminology of the cultivation world, what she had done was a form of soul possession, usurping someone else’s identity.
That being the case—
“I’m sorry.” Jiang Mian raised her uninjured hand and awkwardly grabbed the corner of Han Xu’s suit jacket.
She wanted to tell Han Xu that she hadn’t meant to usurp his daughter’s identity, but this body was truly too frail. As soon as she finished speaking, her vision went black, and her consciousness faded into darkness.
When she woke up again, everything before her was white. Jiang Mian moved her hand, and a cold, utterly emotionless voice sounded in her ear: “Since you’re awake, stop pretending.”
“You don’t need to waste your schemes. No matter how rich your family is, I will never accept you, because even looking at you one more time disgusts me. If you have any shred of feminine decency left, please stop pestering me from now on.” The voice continued, “And, I am not someone you can toy with as you please.”
Jiang Mian: “???”
“Pretending you don’t recognize me? Trying a new act?” The voice dripped with sarcasm. “Too bad your acting is atrocious. It’s nauseating.”
Jiang Mian finally got a clear look at the speaker. In the cultivation world, beautiful people were everywhere. The person before her, placed in that world, was merely average. Truth be told, he wasn’t even as handsome as her billionaire tyrant father.
No one other than the book’s male lead, Gu Qiwen, would speak to her so venomously.
—In the original book, one of Gu Qiwen’s defining traits was his sharp, venomous tongue.
And there was indeed a scene like this in the plot: after the billionaire tyrant father’s daughter slit her wrists, he had his bodyguards drag Gu Qiwen from school to the hospital. Then the male lead mocked the original character in her hospital room. The billionaire tyrant father overheard, flew into a rage, and ordered his bodyguards to beat him. The original character, heartbroken, ignored her own injuries and jumped out of bed to stop her father.
In the chaos, the male lead stormed off, and the original character’s wounds were torn open, eventually leaving scars.
Jiang Mian blinked her eyes. “Do you know what happened to the last person who dared speak to me like that?”
Gu Qiwen’s eyes held undisguised disgust. “Other than relying on your family’s power, what else can you do? You’re nothing but a maggot born in a pile of corruption.”
Jiang Mian: “…”
It had truly been a long time since anyone had dared speak to her like that. In the cultivation world, because of her high-level cultivation, people would show her respect and awe just upon hearing her name.
Although she had a relatively gentle temperament, since he was cursing her right to her face, it wouldn’t be right not to fight back a little, would it?
Besides, judging by the current stage of the plot, the original character hadn’t even started causing trouble yet. Gu Qiwen’s words weren’t just venomous—they were outright malicious.
“What kind of creature are you, to dare speak to my daughter in that tone?” A cold voice sounded from the doorway. Han Xu stood at the entrance with two tall, sturdy bodyguards. His gaze at Gu Qiwen was as if he were looking at a dead thing.
Gu Qiwen curled his lip disdainfully and said coldly, “Did I say something wrong?”
“Dad.” Jiang Mian called out to Han Xu. The latter shuddered and looked at her with shock.
Ever since Jiang Mian had entered her rebellious phase, she had grown increasingly overbearing, calling all four of her fathers by their full names.
It had been a long time since Han Xu had heard her call him “Dad.” Now he could really show off to the other three!
“It hurts so much.” Jiang Mian said, her eyes reddening. She clutched her chest with her uninjured hand, putting on a pitiful expression.
—When Jiang Mian had first transmigrated into the cultivation world, she had been terrified of being discovered as a different soul and having her spirit scattered. She had been careful and played the part for a long time.
Her acting skills weren’t perfect, but at least they were far better than those of the original character, who had just recently been admitted to a film academy.
Sure enough, the moment her precious daughter’s eyes reddened and she looked so aggrieved, the joy Han Xu had felt at being called “Dad” vanished. He made a gesture and said calmly, “Just don’t cripple him.”
The two bodyguards walked toward Gu Qiwen. He knew some martial arts, but compared to professional bodyguards, he was far outmatched.
“Dad, I’m scared.” Jiang Mian shrank under the covers, trembling.
“Mianmian, don’t be afraid.” Han Xu gently patted Jiang Mian’s back over the blanket and ordered without turning his head, “Take him out.”
The room fell quiet. From the corridor outside, the occasional muffled groan of Gu Qiwen could be heard—Han Xu had transferred Jiang Mian to his own private hospital, where no one would dare object to the big boss’s bodyguards beating someone up.
Han Xu asked Jiang Mian anxiously, “Tell Dad if anything feels wrong.”
Jiang Mian said, “I’m feeling much better.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Han Xu continued, “That Gu kid really isn’t a good one. Mianmian, if he’s hurting you like this now, he’ll hurt you even more in the future. Listen to Dad’s advice. If you want to date, Dad will find you someone gentle and caring, alright?”
“Or, if that doesn’t work,” Han Xu took out his phone and pulled up a set of photos. “These are all male models from Paradise on Earth. Take a look—who do you like? Dad will get you whichever one you want.”
Jiang Mian: “…”
Jiang Mian: “….”
Jiang Mian: “……”
This was the first time she had encountered a biological father who offered to keep male concubines—no, wait, to procure gigolos for his own daughter.
**