A vast river of stars stretched across the heavens. Starlight washed over the lake’s surface, scattering into flickering points that leapt and shimmered, like meteors vanishing in a blink. Fu Xinghe opened her eyes and glanced at the ceiling, then jolted awake.
The light was dim, but Fu Xinghe’s night vision was excellent. At a glance, she could tell this was a thatched roof, not the suspended ceiling of her home. Her fingers curled at her side and brushed against slightly damp earthen ground. Fu Xinghe stiffened instantly.
She was the manager of a five-star hotel in the capital. Her work was so demanding that she collapsed into bed every night and rarely dreamed.
Her fingertips brushed the texture of her sleeves and the disheveled black hair spread around her. Acting on instinct, Fu Xinghe tugged at it, and a sharp pulling pain shot through her scalp.
Long hair reaching her waist, and not a wig,She did not have hair this long. This was not her body.
Fu Xinghe immediately recalled something from before she fell asleep. A newly hired front desk clerk at the hotel had sent her a link. Thinking it was work-related, she clicked it, only to find it was an ancient romance novel, extremely melodramatic. In the first chapter, a cannon-fodder female supporting character died.
The front desk clerk had been venting to her best friend about how a cannon-fodder female supporting character shared the same name as her boss. When she tried to share it, she clicked the wrong avatar and accidentally sent it to the manager herself.
The front desk clerk apologized to Fu Xinghe in a panic, sounding as if she were about to cry, swearing that she had only stumbled upon the book by chance and that she was not the author.
Fu Xinghe had just scolded that careless front desk clerk earlier that day. She understood a subordinate’s urge to complain, so she laughed it off and even comforted the young woman.
She casually flipped through a few pages. The character who shared her name came from a prominent family. Her father was the Grand Preceptor of the dynasty, personally appointed Chief Grand Secretary by the Late Emperor. The entire family was upright and principled, with only the female supporting character standing apart.
Her father was at odds with the New Emperor and had no intention of sending her into the palace, but the female supporting character admired the emperor. Ignoring her family’s interests, she drugged him when he fell into trouble outside the capital, intending to spend a night together and then ascend to the position of empress.
The emperor was a tyrant with a mercurial temperament who hated being plotted against above all else. The female supporting character was strangled to death on the charge of “attempting to assassinate the emperor,” and her father was implicated as well, stripped of office and had his family property confiscated. The once-mighty Fu family collapsed overnight.
The female supporting character was nothing more than a tool used to shape the image of the tyrant. Seeing the author dismiss the same-named character in just a few sentences, Fu Xinghe lost interest and closed the page.
According to the usual tropes, this ruthless tyrant would later fall deeply in love with the female lead. The female supporting character existed solely to highlight how special the tyrant’s feelings were toward the female lead.
Fu Xinghe turned off the lights and went to sleep. She did not even see who the female lead was. She had to be at work in five hours and had no time to care about a novel.
But now, a dull ache throbbed at the back of Fu Xinghe’s neck. Beside her ear came the increasingly heavy breathing of another person. Everything overlapped uncannily with the scenes from the novel, as if she were dreaming.
The painting remained separated by a distance of three meters. The man was forcibly suppressing his lust with internal energy, showing no intention of taking advantage of the situation.
From the looks of it, the original body had already succeeded in administering the drug. When she attempted to seduce him, the tyrant knocked her unconscious with a single chop to the neck.
The problem was that she was awake now.Fu Xinghe fell into a dilemma. If she moved, she feared the tyrant would discover she was not dead and come over to finish the job, strangling her. Just imagining it made her breathing tighten.
If she did not move, once the tyrant regained his clarity, he would settle accounts with both her and her father. Fu Xinghe hated herself for not flipping a few more pages to see how the tyrant handled things afterward. The Fu family in the book was portrayed positively, and she did not want to implicate them.
“Bang—” After a loud crash, dust filled the air. Fu Xinghe watched as the tyrant, like a trapped beast, slammed a palm down and shattered the table in a fit of rage.
The next moment, the man shifted his footing and seemed to turn toward her. Even from three meters away, she could feel the crushing pressure, as if he would come over and kill someone in the next second.
The drug was potent.Her neck still hurts. Using the sound of splintering wood as cover, Fu Xinghe silently rolled toward the door.
One meter left. Half a meter. Fu Xinghe successfully pressed herself against the threshold, ready to seize an opportunity and vault over it in one burst.
Pretending to be a corpse, she kept an eye on the tyrant’s movements. Her pupils shrank when she saw a patterned snake slither in through the thatched window. It had a slender body and a triangular head, lethally venomous.
Startled awake in the throes of death, Fu Xinghe almost sprang up. The snake’s tail hooked onto the window ledge, inching toward the tyrant’s wrist. The man was consumed by his frenzy and showed no sign of guarding against it.
Something felt off to Fu Xinghe.
Lying prone on the ground, her line of sight was low. Following the hem of the tyrant’s robes upward, she finally noticed that his eyes were injured and wrapped in white gauze.
“There’s a venomous snake by your left wrist!” Clamping down on her altered voice, Fu Xinghe warned him urgently. Meng Dongting swiftly withdrew his wrist and stepped back, then shoved the shattered table forward.
The snake was pierced in the tail by sharp splinters of wood and fell to the ground. Startled, it fled toward the door. Fu Xinghe, blocking the doorway.
She was afraid of snakes, terrified of them. Panicking, she leapt to her feet. Afraid that if she fled outside the snake would chase her with the wind, she instead ran back into the room.
Sure enough, the snake seemed to hold a grudge against her and hesitated before turning around.
“Ah—!” Fu Xinghe yelped and jumped in place, reflexively hiding behind the man. Compared to a cold-blooded snake, the tyrant was at least human. “It’s four meters straight ahead ” Her head spun. How many chi was four meters?
While she racked her brain converting units, Meng Dongting kicked a piece of wood. It shot out like a blade, unstoppable as it split bamboo. Whether the snake was four meters or a few chi away, it was severed in two in an instant.
The room fell silent. Before Fu Xinghe could relax, she realized the situation was even more troublesome than the venomous snake.
What kind of courage had she just had, to call for help from a tyrant who was ready to snap her neck at any moment?
Was she lacking a proper beating from feudal society? Worse still, with their contact, the drug’s effects surged to their peak. In an instant, Fu Xinghe could almost feel his heat. Even through layers of fabric, it was tangible, arrogant and ferocious as it invaded her senses.
Veins bulged at Meng Dongting’s temples. The fire in his chest burned hotter, swinging back and forth between restrained killing and brutal killing.
“Hero!” Fu Xinghe did not dare admit that she knew he was the emperor and hastily put a flattering title on him.
Meng Dongting’s voice was icy. “Hero? You mean me?” There was a certain type of person who liked to reveal their identity before killing someone, to let them die knowing the truth.
Telling you who he was meant one thing. You were about to die. Fu Xinghe did not want to end up like the snake. She said carefully, “Are you talking? I’m deaf.”
The disabled should care for one another. The tyrant could not see right now. As long as she did not use her real voice, even face to face later, he would not recognize her. The original body was a minister’s daughter and was very likely to cross paths with the emperor again. She had to guard against that.
Provided she could escape today. Hearing her strange, mocking tone, Meng Dongting felt she was ridiculing his blindness and wanted to strangle her.
Before he could do so, perhaps because they were too close and the original body had also used an aphrodisiac on herself, a blaze ignited along his back. Meng Dongting’s eyes instantly reddened. He must have lost his mind to think that this woman looked more pleasing than before.
He really was blind. Fu Xinghe was thrown onto the heated bed. She was flustered and dared not argue. Changing her tone and speaking in short sentences was manageable. If the conversation dragged on, she would surely reveal her real voice.
Fu Xinghe held her breath and minimized her presence. The man before her had formidable self-control and refused to yield to bodily instinct, otherwise things would have turned explosive long ago.
An emperor should have some sense of caution. In the wilderness, a strange woman drugged him who knew whether the drug or the woman was the real trap.
As Fu Xinghe thought this, she felt a scorching breath wash over her. The grip on her wrist was ruthless, as if he wanted her eliminated at all costs.
Her survival instinct surged. Playing dead no longer worked. She struggled desperately, but it was like an ant trying to shake a tree.
Suddenly, a hand reached to the back of her neck and tightened. Fu Xinghe’s hair stood on end and her spine went cold, while the body pressing down on her burned like an approaching blaze.
“The drug you used?” Meng Dongting asked hoarsely, as if confirming something. Staring at the tyrant’s impeccably sculpted brow ridge, Fu Xinghe replied weakly, “Maybe not. You hit me so hard that I lost my memory.”
Meng Dongting said, “Then how do you know it was me who struck you?” Fu Xinghe answered, “Actually, I really am deaf.”
She felt that this line of reasoning was becoming more and more dangerous, as if something were off. Her right cheek was pinched hard. She did not need a mirror to know it had reddened.
As she felt his fingers tighten at the back of her neck, her consciousness began to sink. She thought that when she met the King of Hell, she would definitely cry injustice.
She finally understood what was wrong. The tyrant seemed to be confirming, through those few exchanges, how repulsed he felt toward her, like a germaphobe repeatedly checking whether a suddenly appearing chair was contaminated and whether it was tolerable.
When she woke again, Fu Xinghe felt light all over. She was neither dead nor did it feel like “afterward.” Delighted, she thought she had merely had a nightmare, but the smile froze on her lips as soon as she opened her eyes.
The tyrant was sleeping beside her. The air was filled with a scent that every adult understood. Fu Xinghe’s expression changed. She held her breath and checked again. She truly felt none of the discomfort one would expect after being violated.
She glanced at the tyrant again. He had done that, but she had not been on the receiving end of it. What did that mean?
Possibly that he could not perform, or that he finished too quickly and could not wait, and needed treatment.
Fu Xinghe analyzed the situation with rigorous logic. She hastily fastened the clothes that had been undone halfway. Before the tyrant woke, she lifted her skirts and ran.
She leapt over the snake’s corpse in long strides. Her vision suddenly blurred. Fu Xinghe blinked and saw a number floating above the snake’s head.88
Below the number was a skull icon, similar to a hazardous chemicals warning sign. Puzzled, Fu Xinghe did not slow her escape. If the tyrant woke up, or if his men arrived, she would be finished.
A tattered fishing net hung outside the thatched hut. It was clearly an abandoned fisherman’s shelter. Fu Xinghe ran toward the mountain. When she passed a cluster of blood-red mushrooms, the same warning icon appeared again, floating above them with 78 written on it.
Fu Xinghe froze. What was this supposed to be? A transmigration perk? A newbie starter pack? A poison detection system to keep her from eating something toxic and killing herself?
She was just an ordinary cannon fodder. This kind of skill should have been given to someone fighting bloody palace intrigue. After all, television dramas were full of saffron and poison.
She would much rather have gold fall from the sky so she could pack up and flee at top speed. The mountain was not tall. After crossing it, Fu Xinghe followed the river. Exhausted and dizzy, she finally saw signs of habitation.
She touched the ornaments in her hair. During last night’s intense struggle, most of them had fallen off. Only one earring and one bracelet remained.
Fu Xinghe knocked on a door and asked a middle-aged woman politely, “Excuse me, which direction is the capital?”
The woman yawned. “Go straight along this small path. It connects to an official road. Head north and you’ll reach the capital. About one hour.”
Embarrassed, Fu Xinghe said, “Could I trade this earring and bracelet with you for some food?”
At a glance, the woman could tell Fu Xinghe was a family member of some official in the capital, though she did not know how she had ended up here. The jade bracelet was clear, vivid green, and of excellent quality, so she readily agreed.
Fu Xinghe raised her hand to touch the earring, hesitated, and removed only the bracelet. “Sorry, the earring is very important to me. Would just the bracelet be all right?” The woman looked regretfully at Fu Xinghe’s ruby earring. “That will do.”
After eating her fill, Fu Xinghe continued on her way. When she reached a river, she did not hesitate. She removed the single remaining earring and threw it away.
The other one might have been left with the tyrant. Was she supposed to keep this one as a token for future recognition? Thinking of the tyrant’s grip when he strangled people, Fu Xinghe clicked her tongue. Not giving it to the woman was also to avoid implicating her.
With this piece of evidence discarded, heaven and earth might know, but the tyrant would not. Watching the earring sink to the riverbed under the current, Fu Xinghe sincerely prayed that the tyrant would lose his memory.