The midsummer cicadas chirped themselves hoarse. The dilapidated room was bathed in the afterglow of dusk, with dust motes drifting heavily in the fading light.
Yin Zhen sat slumped in her wheelchair. Her skin was pale, her long hair hung in a tangled mess, and her jawline was so thin it was practically just bone. When a breeze occasionally lifted her hair, it revealed a young but hollow face. Her eyes were sunk deep in shadows, so dark they seemed devoid of all light.
She looked up toward the window—not at the setting sun, but at a specific, floating point in the air. There, a countdown timer hovered.
[01:45:23]
Time flowed silently as the numbers steadily ticked down.
This countdown had suddenly appeared three days ago; today was its final day.
She had searched online for information and found a few people mentioning the exact same phenomenon in a Guan City local forum. The replies were flooded with all sorts of speculation—doomsday warnings, a countdown to the end of one’s life... Some were excited, others terrified, but the vast majority of onlookers simply didn’t believe it, assuming it was just internet trolls treating it as performance art.
Only a tiny minority claimed to see the countdown, and it was seemingly exclusive to Guan City. Those few threads quickly vanished into the internet void, and soon, no one brought it up again.
Yin Zhen hadn’t posted any comments herself; she had only clicked on those threads out of curiosity after stumbling upon them. These past few days, she had gone about her life as usual, doing whatever she needed to do. After all, she was just a twenty-year-old disabled girl with zero savings.
A car accident half a year ago had taken her mother—the only family she completely depended on—left her paralyzed from the waist down, and thoroughly shattered her life. After such a devastating upheaval, she changed her name from Yin Zhen, meaning "treasure," to a different Yin Zhen—this new "Zhen" representing a legendary bird with highly poisonous feathers.
[01:30:00]
Forcing herself to look away, Yin Zhen suddenly noticed that the neglected cactus on the balcony had bloomed with a small yellow flower, radiating a beautiful glow in the setting sun. She leaned forward and reached out to gently stroke the tenacious little flower, a faint smile slowly touching the corners of her lips.
A moment later, her smile vanished. She crushed the flower fiercely in the palm of her hand.
"Growing thorns is enough. You don’t need to bloom!"
Expressionless, Yin Zhen wheeled herself into the living room to do her rehabilitation exercises. Using the handrails along the wall, she forced her stiff, numb legs to stand up over and over again, only to fall down pathetically each time.
The doctor had told her that if she underwent treatment at a professional medical facility, there was still hope she could walk again. Otherwise, she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. But... she didn’t have the money.
Falling heavily to the floor once more, Yin Zhen was drenched in sweat. She panted heavily, pounding the ground in painful, helpless frustration.
Her phone rang. Catching her breath, she answered it, and her lawyer’s voice came through the speaker.
"Ms. Yin, I still want to advise you to accept their offer. You know the perpetrator is the heir to Tiansheng Group, and he has already provided a psychiatric evaluation proving he was mentally unstable at the time. Even if you insist on pursuing charges, he won’t get the death penalty.
"Accept their compensation, sign the letter of forgiveness, and go abroad to find a good medical facility. You can start a completely new life. There’s no need to offend Tiansheng Group and ruin the rest of your life. If they’re pushed into a corner, I’m afraid... they might just make you disappear."
A cold sneer escaped Yin Zhen’s throat as the events of that day played on a continuous loop in her mind.
She and her mother had been standing on the side of the road waiting for the green light when that lunatic drove straight into them without any warning. He had accelerated the whole way without a shred of hesitation. If her mother hadn’t reacted quickly and shoved her out of the way, she wouldn’t have survived either!
She would never forget the sight of her mother lying in a pool of blood, reaching out to her with all her might, desperately trying to say something, only for a mouthful of blood to well up instead.
They didn’t even know that maniac. He had simply used innocent pedestrians to vent his anger just because he was arguing with his girlfriend in the car!
"The day my mom died, the rest of my life was already ruined."
The other end of the line fell silent for a moment.
"I’m sorry, Ms. Yin. I can no longer take your case. I’ll have my assistant contact you later. Lately, you should... be careful."
Yin Zhen lay flat on her back on the floor. That glaring countdown was still ticking away in the air.
[00:43:56]
If doomsday was truly coming, she begged God to give her one more chance—a chance to end that lunatic with her own hands!
Dragging herself back up, Yin Zhen suddenly realized there was no food left in the house. She opened her phone to order delivery, sighing helplessly at her four-digit bank balance.
[00:10:45]
The doorbell rang abruptly, making Yin Zhen’s heart skip a beat.
"Hello! I’ve left your delivery by the door. Enjoy your meal!"
The delivery driver’s voice came through the door. His footsteps, followed by the chime of the elevator, quickly faded away.
Remembering her lawyer’s final warning, Yin Zhen waited a full five or six minutes. Only after making sure the hallway was completely quiet, devoid of any voices or footsteps, did she carefully unlatch the security chain and pull the door open.
Locking the brakes on her wheelchair, she leaned forward, stretching down as far as she could, though her stiff lower body severely restricted her reach.
Just then, a hand suddenly grabbed the edge of the door.
Yin Zhen had absolutely no time to react!
A fat man reeking of alcohol crashed into the door. Brute force violently overturned the security door along with her fragile wheelchair.
THUD!
Yin Zhen slammed heavily onto the ground. The back of her head cracked against the floor, sending stars dancing across her vision.
The door was swiftly slammed shut, cutting off the last sliver of light from the outside world. The fat man blocked the entryway, his bloodshot, drunken eyes fixed on her.
"Fuck! I’ve been squatting in the hallway all day, and you finally decided to open the door!"
Cursing and burping from the alcohol, he quickly marched inside.
Yin Zhen’s blood ran cold. She tried to prop herself up, but her paralyzed lower half meant that, at this moment, she couldn’t even perform the most basic dodge!
"Voice assistant, call the police!" Yin Zhen shouted urgently toward her phone, which had fallen a short distance away, while simultaneously trying to grab the fat man’s legs to stall him.
DING-DONG. The phone screen automatically lit up and began to dial.
The fat man’s eyes widened in panic. He kicked Yin Zhen away, lunged forward in a single stride to cancel the emergency call, and smashed the phone viciously against the ground.
"Still trying to call the cops? Let me tell you, no one can save you today. Blame yourself for doing things the hard way—you brought this on yourself!"
Even though the fat man spoke vaguely, as if settling a personal grudge, Yin Zhen instantly realized that he was a hitman sent by Tiansheng Group. She reached desperately for the seat cushion of her overturned wheelchair; she kept a knife stashed underneath it.
Taking slow steps toward her, the fat man sneered, "I’m dying of terminal cancer anyway. Dragging a pretty little girl like you down to hell with me makes it all worth it. Once we’re down there, we can be lovers in the afterlife!"
He lunged at her with a sinister grin, and Yin Zhen threw a punch with every ounce of strength she had left.
"Get lost!"
Her fist connected solidly with his face. Capitalizing on the moment he turned his head in pain, Yin Zhen dragged herself frantically toward the door.
"Fire! Fire!"
Shouting for help was useless. Only by shouting about a fire, threatening everyone’s property and lives, could she alarm the entire building.
"Fuck!"
The fat man was thoroughly enraged. With a low growl, he caught up to her in a few strides, grabbed her by the hair, and violently hauled her up from the floor. Putting the full weight of his shoulder behind it, he brought his heavy, meaty hand down in a vicious slap.
SLAP!!!
The world instantly went silent.
A high-pitched ringing consumed Yin Zhen’s hearing, and the world spun wildly before her eyes. The fiery, agonizing pain in her cheek nearly made her black out, and a thick, rusty taste flooded her mouth. All her strength to fight back was completely drained away in that instant.
She collapsed heavily back onto the floor. Reflexive tears mixed with the blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. Her vision went dark, and her consciousness began to slip.
The fat man’s foul-smelling face loomed large in front of her. His rough hands clamped brutally around her throat, bearing down with his entire body weight.
"Die! Just be a good girl and die!"
Yin Zhen struggled, her hands still frantically pawing at the floor, searching for anything she could use to fight back.
In this life-or-death moment, the countdown ticked down to its absolute end.
[00:00:00]
Suddenly, the fat man’s hands around her throat froze, along with his grotesque expression. The noisy chirping of the cicadas came to an abrupt halt.
[Countdown ended. Time in this world is frozen.]
[Invasion Game is about to begin...]
[Player Yin Zhen, originally named Yin Zhen, a cannon fodder pawn with a total appearance of 1,233 words in "Sweet Substitute Wife of Billionaire President."]
[The car crash half a year ago, your mother’s death, your paralyzed legs, and your impending ’disappearance’ are all predetermined plot points. Their purpose was to highlight the madness and cruelty of the book’s villain, Sheng Yehan, accumulate reader hatred for the sake of the plot, and serve as the crucial clue for the female lead, Nan Jiamu, to ultimately bring the villain to justice.]
[The only time your name is mentioned in the book is during the grand finale, right before the villain is escorted to the execution ground. The female lead shouts: "Sheng Yehan, do you know what her name was? Her name was Yin Zhen—Zhen as in treasure!"]
[Your efforts, your unyielding spirit, your goodness—all of it was cultivated solely for this cruel shattering at this moment. This is the entire meaning of your existence.]
[All your pain and death are nothing but stepping stones to advance the plot.]
[Now, please choose carefully. Will you accept your predetermined ending and be annihilated in the dust of the plot? Or will you step into the game, tear through the paper pages, and seize a chance to rewrite your own destiny?]