The red light of the intensive care unit flickered.
Cui Mingyao sat in the cold chair, dressed in a sharp suit and tie, with a high-end watch on his left wrist reflecting a brilliant glow.
His impeccably ironed suit trousers accentuated a pair of long legs, and he wore spotless, shiny leather shoes. His dark blue suit displayed the maturity of a successful man, and his watch, worth six hundred million, was studded with diamonds.
He lacked nothing: polished leather shoes, a perfect tie, and expensive cologne. Even his hairstyle was fixed with hair gel into the slicked-back look characteristic of a ruthless top.
Jiang Zhengze had been in emergency care for an hour.
He didn’t know how that group of scumbags had treated him to cause such brutal abuse.
Cui Mingyao’s brows were tightly locked. He took a deep breath, stood up feeling uneasy, and paced back and forth in front of the emergency room entrance.
“O…”
“Stop being OOC,” Cui Mingyao said. “Does your Ruthless Top System not treat Jiang Zhengze like a human? He’s already in the ICU, and you still want me to pay attention to my image, specifically taking time to go back and change my clothes and style my hair!”
“A ruthless top must maintain a perfect image at all times. His hair cannot be messy, and his facial expression cannot collapse.” 007 paused and muttered, “I was only kindly reminding you. Besides, you have already had 300 points deducted. If all your points are deducted, you will be completely dead.”
Cui Mingyao couldn’t reason with it, so he turned his back.
“Hmm. Host, don’t be too worried. Jiang Zhengze is the protagonist; he won’t die.” 007 said. “Besides, acting as a ruthless top is very simple. Just follow those 2,000 rules. Just like when you pushed the door open and beat up Jin Chengbin just now, you acted very well.”
Although he went a bit too hard and had 20 points deducted.
But it was very consistent with Cui Mingyao’s volatile temper.
“No,” Cui Mingyao sighed and shook his head. “I didn’t want to hit anyone just now.”
“Hmm?” 007’s eyes widened.
Cui Mingyao closed his eyes and sat back down in the chair.
“I only wanted to push them away at the time; I didn’t want to use force.” Cui Mingyao raised his hands and squeezed his fists. At this moment, the control of his body belonged entirely to him.
“Perhaps the original owner’s consciousness still remains in the body, and I felt a burst of anger that didn’t belong to me.” Cui Mingyao lowered his hands. “It was only for an instant, and I couldn’t feel it ever again afterward.”
“What? Is there actually such a thing?” 007 was surprised. “That shouldn’t be.”
Could it be a lapse in their work? But the current plot was taking place exactly in the latest chapter of the manga, and Cui Mingyao’s consciousness had already left the body; otherwise, the host would not have transmigrated over.
Cui Mingyao rubbed his chin and pondered for a while, then opened his phone.
His phone and the control panel in his mind could connect to each other, so he didn’t need to communicate with 007 by staring blankly or pretending to sleep, which was convenient and fitting for the identity of a ruthless top.
He clicked on his backpack and found the original The Dodder Flower manga that 007 had just sent him.
As a young, otaku university student of the new era, he was familiar with the ACG trio: anime, manga, and games, but he mostly watched male-oriented leveling-up power fantasies and Japanese manga. This was his first time coming into contact with Korean manhwa.
Accustomed to black-and-white art styles, compact layouts, and dense blocks of text, The Dodder Flower truly caught his eye.
The layout was clean, the font was appropriate, and the vivid color contrast and delicate, realistic art style grabbed his attention immediately.
Cui Mingyao scanned the table of contents roughly; all the titles were written from Jiang Zhengze’s perspective. The entire manga was permeated with a dark, realistic, cold sense of suffocation.
He steadied his mind, sat up straight, and clicked on the first chapter with seriousness and focus.
007 had already told him the general plot, which could be briefly summarized as the tragic history of a 19-year-old debtor being persecuted by men.
Cui Mingyao couldn’t help but be curious: who was actually reading a manga that was so torturous to the body and mind, suffocating from beginning to end? Where was the appeal?
Admittedly, the art style was impeccable; the body proportions and panoramic compositions crushed eighty percent of the Japanese manga he had seen.
Even the patterns on the clothes showed great ingenuity.
“Hey! You have so many thoughts after only two pages. Are you reading a manga or appraising treasures?” 007 said, ruining the mood. “Let me state in advance that I think it’s necessary for you to supplement your knowledge about the ABO world.”
Just like earlier, facing Jiang Zhengze’s pheromones, Cui Mingyao was clearly affected, but his train of thought was too straight, and he didn’t realize what was happening at all.
He was emitting pheromones to pressure Jiang Zhengze, forcibly suppressing a body that had just been marked by another alpha.
That was why Jiang Zhengze couldn’t hold on and fainted.
Cui Mingyao didn’t feel anything himself; his body was just making the most intuitive reaction.
Watching the dazed expression on this silly boy’s face, 007 felt both angry and amused.
How did they end up finding this completely inexperienced, straight man to save this manga?
What for? Because he was handsome? Or because they shared the same name?
“Ah!” Cui Mingyao flipped through a few pages and suddenly shouted. “0… 007, this… this…”
He covered his phone screen with one hand, his ears turning red, the heat spreading to his cheeks, and he stammered: “This… this scale is so huge! How can this be? How can there be a manga that drives the plot so fast from the very beginning?”
Having just understood the basic settings of Korean manhwa and being dizzy from the six genders of the ABO world, the moment Cui Mingyao clicked on the first chapter, he was met with a few erotic scenes. The scale was so large, and the intensity was so high.
He was so scared he closed his eyes. Once he closed his eyes, technical terms like pheromones, inhibitors, heat periods, and susceptibility periods circled around in his simple, straight-man brain. As soon as he opened his eyes, he saw the passionate struggle between two men.
“Hahahaha, you are still too inexperienced. If Korean manhwa nowadays doesn’t start with something explosive, how can they keep people?” 007 laughed. “Go flip through the rankings; almost 90% of 19+ Korean manhwa have high-energy openings.”
“This…” Cui Mingyao was dumbfounded. Was this the scale of 19+? The 19… wait, no, Chinese manga doesn’t have 19+.
In manga, kissing is censored; in novels, you can’t describe anything below the neck. Accustomed to clean and thin content, he couldn’t accept such an advanced art form for a while.
Cui Mingyao flipped down a few more pages, and his collapsing worldview was shattered into pieces.
No, the physical difference between this ruthless top and Jiang Zhengze is so huge. That thermos is almost the size of the other person’s arm; won’t he really get hurt?
“Also, why are they all glow sticks?” Cui Mingyao complained. “It looks so weird!”
“How so?” 007’s tone was light. “Compared to other countries, the holy light in Korean manhwa is the most atmospheric in the world of censorship. Japanese manga uses black lines that try to cover things up, making it look like a criminal suspect. Chinese manga uses colorful flowers that destroy the picture and don’t match the plot. Japanese anime uses mosaics, which look just like their mature action films, even more indecent.”
Cui Mingyao pulled at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t want to learn about the different ways countries censor their manga.
“Ho ho, host, you’re quite knowledgeable! Do you want to see the uncensored pure version?” 007’s tone was lascivious. “I recommend the Taiwan version of the manga; I guarantee you will be satisfied!”
“No.” Cui Mingyao waved his hand in refusal and gave a helpless, wry smile. “If possible, I want to watch the censored version.”
The censored version where all the scenes of men fighting are harmonized, leaving only the plot.
“Aiyoo, truly, one doesn’t know when one is well off.” 007 said. “If you delete the car scenes, the total plot wouldn’t even add up to ten chapters.”
Is this some kind of Haitang novel?
“…” Cui Mingyao sighed and rubbed his tired brow.
He still had to keep reading. Let’s just treat it as an ordinary pornographic comic.