Chapter Text
It was a normal day for Jiang Cheng. The same rush in the station, the same faces, the same old cases that had been shelved—closed not because justice was served, but because evidence had gone missing or politics had interfered. High-profile cases were always worse, spiraling into chaos until someone higher up cut the strings.
Not that he was tired of it. This was his life now, chaos and all.
He bid goodbye to his colleagues and slipped on his headphones, letting his favorite song drown out the day. Music had become his ritual—a thin line between him and the weight of his work. Tonight, though, the routine was about to shatter.
The city lights of Beijing faded behind him, swallowed by the night as his SUV hummed along the highway. Cool air poured in from the half-cracked window, easing the stiffness in his shoulders. For once, the road home seemed like a quiet reprieve.
Then the radio hissed.
“Unit 14, urgent intel. Female victim, early twenties, abducted near a club in Chaoyang. Kidnappers moving northeast—last tracked toward the Miyun mountain road. Possible hostage inside. Nearest available?”
Jiang Cheng’s grip on the wheel tightened. His fatigue evaporated.
“This is Jiang Cheng,” he answered, voice firm. “I’m twenty minutes out. Send the plate.”
“White van, plate ending 3728. Three suspects. The victim’s phone is still inside. Backup delayed—you’re closest.”
His jaw clenched. A routine night drive was gone. With a sharp turn, he cut across two lanes, engine roaring toward the northern expressway.
The city glow thinned as he climbed into the hills, headlights carving through dark stretches of forest. Guardrails flickered silver against the bends, each shadow between the trees alive with possibility.
Less than five kilometers ahead—the white van.
He pressed harder. He could already picture it: a young woman terrified, shoved into the back, three men thinking the mountains would swallow them whole.
“Not tonight,” he muttered.
The van appeared at last, weaving too fast for the narrow road. His lights caught the pale outline of a hand slamming against the back window.
Adrenaline surged. He pushed the SUV harder, trying to edge close, but the sharp bends betrayed him. Tires screamed against the asphalt as he took another curve. Then—
A sudden burst of blinding light.
His vision seared white. The next instant, a metallic screech ripped through the night. The SUV jolted, lifted—air roared against his face, harsher and colder than he ever imagined.
Gravity seized him. The vehicle twisted, weightless, before plunging into darkness.
The radio sputtered and cracked, sparks like fireflies in hell.
Jiang Cheng’s breath came shallow, almost bitter with irony.
“Is this how I die? Ridiculously… like this?”
The night swallowed him whole.
❄❄❄❄
Slowly, Jiang Cheng clawed his way back to consciousness. His head pounded, each heartbeat echoing like a drum inside his skull.
Is this… the afterlife?
But no—this was too sharp, too vivid. The air was cool and fragrant, carrying the soft sweetness of lotus blossoms. Somewhere outside, birds chirped, their notes bright and delicate.
He blinked, confused. Where was the acrid stench of gasoline? The twisted metal crushing his body? No hospital noise, no monitors beeping, no honks or shouting from the streets outside.
Instead, a curtain swayed gently in the breeze. An open window let in sunlight—no glass, just wooden frames.
“Wait a minute…” His voice rasped, the sound startling in the silence. “What the hell is this?”
The room around him was nothing like Beijing. Polished wood beams stretched overhead, rich and dark, their grain gleaming in the light. The floor beneath him was smooth, lacquered, spotless. Every surface bore the kind of craftsmanship he’d only seen in museums or…
Ancient dramas.
He sat up too quickly, dizziness pulling at his vision. Rubbing his eyes, he tried again, but the details didn’t blur away. The room was exactly what it seemed—solid, precise, flawless.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered. “Either I hit my head too hard, or I’ve woken up on some historical drama set.”
But the air, the scent, the texture of the wood under his fingers—none of it felt fake.
It was all real. Too real.
Jiang Cheng swallowed. His pulse quickened.
“What kind of sick joke is this?” Jiang Cheng muttered, scanning the carved beams above him. Everything screamed wrong—too polished, too ancient, too deliberate.
“Such a great observation, host. You truly deserve your reputation as a detective. I’m impressed.”
His head snapped up. The voice was crisp, mechanical, but with a mocking edge.
“What the fuck? Who’s there?” His eyes darted across the room. Corners, window, doorway—empty. No shadows moving, no sign of anyone. Just silence.
Then it came again, colder this time:
“System activation complete. I am the system, host.”
Jiang Cheng felt his temples throb. “The system? What the hell is that supposed to mean? And where the hell am I?” His voice sharpened, edged with exhaustion and anger.
The reply was unnervingly calm, detached.
“I am an interface. A presence. Bound to you.”
“Bound to me?” Jiang Cheng scoffed. “I don’t remember signing up for this lunacy. Drop the act and tell me what’s going on. Who put me here? Is this a setup?”
No answer came immediately. Only the sound of the breeze rustling the curtain, carrying the faint scent of lotuses inside.
Finally, the system spoke again, tone flat as stone:
“This is not a dream. This is not a prank. You are alive. The rest, you will understand in time.”
Jiang Cheng let out a harsh laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Alive, huh? Funny, because the last thing I remember is my car flipping off a mountain road. So unless you’re telling me they’ve started building Ming-dynasty hospitals in Beijing, I’m not buying it.”
Silence.
He swore under his breath. Every second felt like a trap tightening around him. He hated puzzles where the pieces were hidden, hated being toyed with.
“You’d better start giving me answers soon,” he muttered into the still air. “Because if this is some twisted trick, I will find the cracks.”
The system did not answer.
Only the quiet sound of birdsong filled the wooden chamber, as if the voice had never existed at all.
Jiang Cheng sat in silence, the faint scent of lotuses clinging stubbornly to the air. His head throbbed, and his thoughts spun like loose wheels on a speeding car. First the accident, then this strange wooden room, and now a voice in his head calling itself a “system.”
It was absurd. Too absurd. He tried to piece it together, tried to make sense of what was happening.
And then, like a slow-moving wave, recognition hit him.
The architecture. The carved beams. The old-style bedding. Even the subtle little details—the embroidery on the curtains, the way the furniture was arranged—it all seemed familiar.
“Wait…” he muttered. “Why does this look so… copied from somewhere?”
His mind scrambled through half-forgotten memories. Long nights when he’d been too tired to sleep after work. Days when he’d wanted to switch off from endless piles of case files. That one time, bored out of his skull, he had picked up an online novel just to pass the time. A long, sprawling webnovel about cultivators, swords, ghosts, and messy politics.
Mo Dao Zu Shi.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.
The thought hit him like a slap.
“No… no way.” He rubbed his temples, half-laughing, half-panicking. “There’s no way I’m in that novel. That’s ridiculous.”
But the room, the style, even the faint accents of sound outside—it wasn’t just similar. It was exact. He had read descriptions of this setting before.
His stomach sank.
If he was right, this wasn’t just some random historical setting. It was the Lotus Pier. The Yunmeng Jiang Sect’s main household.
His heart pounded in his ears.
He shoved himself off the bed and stumbled to the window. Outside stretched shimmering lotus lakes under the sunlight, wooden walkways curving across the water, disciples in purple robes moving in the distance. The sight was breathtaking, serene, and unmistakable.
“This… this is insane.” His voice trembled. “This is the Yunmeng Jiang Sect.”
The system’s voice finally returned, flat and calm. “Correction: you are not merely in Yunmeng Jiang. You are Jiang Cheng. Current age: fifteen.”
Jiang Cheng froze. “What?”
He turned to the mirror on the far wall, dread creeping up his spine. The reflection staring back at him was not the tired detective he’d seen for years—the messy hair, the faint stubble, the eyes weighed down by late nights.
Instead, the mirror showed a sharp-eyed boy, young and full of restless energy, dressed in finely made robes with the Jiang sect insignia embroidered proudly on the sleeves. His face was unmistakable—one he knew far too well from the novel’s fanarts and descriptions.
He staggered back. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Of all people, he had woken up not as the genius Wei Wuxian, not as the noble Lan Wangji, not even as some random extra he could safely ignore.
He was Jiang Wanyin—Jiang Cheng.
The infamous temperamental younger brother.
The one readers complained about, mocked, or outright hated. The “less important” one, always standing in Wei Wuxian’s shadow. The one destined for bitterness, resentment, and loneliness.
“This… this is the worst possible lottery,” he muttered, his voice breaking between disbelief and hysterical laughter. “I transmigrated into a novel, and I get him? The angriest, least-liked character?”
Memories of scenes he had read before crowded his head—Jiang Cheng yelling, Jiang Cheng scowling, Jiang Cheng being humiliated, losing everything, hated by half the fandom.
“Fantastic,” he groaned. “I don’t even get to be the protagonist. I’m the side character everyone loves to hate.”
His legs gave out, and he sat heavily on the edge of the bed, staring at his hands—slimmer now, younger, unscarred.
If this were real, then he was fifteen years old again. A young master of Yunmeng Jiang, still before the tragedies that would come. Still, before the sect fell.
But knowing what was written in the novel meant he also knew what lay ahead.
His chest tightened.
Lotus Pier is burning. Parents gone. The golden core destroyed. The endless cycle of anger, blame, and loss. His own future twisted into resentment until nothing remained but bitterness.
Jiang Cheng pressed a hand to his forehead. “No, no, no. This can’t be real.”
Yet it was too vivid to be a dream. Every smell, every sound, the weight of the robes on his shoulders—it was all too solid.
The system’s voice broke the silence again.
“Host integration complete. Identity confirmed: Jiang Cheng, heir of Yunmeng Jiang. You may continue as you see fit.”
“As I see fit?” Jiang Cheng snapped. “You drop me in the middle of a cursed novel, stick me into the body of the most tragic supporting character, and now you tell me I can just ‘continue as I see fit’?”
The system did not answer.
Jiang Cheng dragged in a shaky breath. “Great. Just great. Out of boredom, I read a novel. Out of boredom, I die in a car crash. And now I wake up inside the same novel as its most miserable character.”
He laughed bitterly, the sound hollow.
“If fate has a sense of humor, it’s a damn cruel one.”
The birds outside chirped cheerfully, mocking his misery.
Jiang Cheng groaned and stumbled toward the mirror. His reflection blinked back at him: a slender boy with delicate features, skin too smooth, hair silky and flawless. He squinted, leaning closer.
“…No way.”
He tugged at his robes, pulling them aside to check. What he saw only made his jaw drop. A narrow waist, slim figure, and a frame that looked one step away from fragile.
“What the hell is this?!” His voice pitched higher than he wanted. “Why do I look like some pampered young lady instead of a man? Where are my hard-earned abs? My body? My muscles?!”
“Correction,” the system’s cold voice cut in, “you are a fifteen-year-old young master. This body is normal for your age and upbringing.”
Jiang Cheng whipped his head around. “Normal? Normal?! I spent fifteen years sweating through training, and you dump me into a body that looks like it’s never lifted more than a brush?! This is not normal!”
Unmoved, the system replied, “Muscle definition: none. Stamina: average. Combat readiness: zero.”
Jiang Cheng threw his hands up. “Oh, thanks. Really helpful analysis. I couldn’t tell that myself while staring at this pitiful stick-figure body!”
He flexed his arm, expecting at least a hint of strength. Instead, he saw a skinny limb, more fit for holding scrolls than cuffing criminals.
“This is humiliating,” he muttered. “I used to chase down suspects for kilometers in the rain, fight men twice my size, and now—now I look like a stiff breeze could knock me over.”
The system answered smoothly, “Estimated probability of collapse in strong wind: twelve percent.”
Jiang Cheng slapped his forehead. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“I have no emotions,” the system replied tonelessly. “Observation: host appears distressed. Suggestion: adapt.”
“Adapt?” Jiang Cheng barked out a bitter laugh. “I trained my whole life. Fifteen years of discipline, drills, combat lessons—all gone overnight. And now I’m stuck as the most hated side character in this cursed novel!”
The system was silent for a beat, then responded, “Statement confirmed. You are currently Jiang Cheng: temperamental, unpopular, and disliked by readers.”
Jiang Cheng’s eye twitched. “Oh, don’t remind me! As if I didn’t already know, I pulled the short straw!”
The mirror reflected his scowl, delicate features scrunching into something that looked more petulant than intimidating. He groaned.
“This isn’t a young master,” he muttered. “This is a young mistress. How the hell am I supposed to carry myself with dignity like this?”
The system replied simply, “Recommendation: lower expectations.”
Jiang Cheng buried his face in his hands. “Fantastic. Just fantastic.”
Outside, the birds chirped louder, bright and carefree, as if the heavens themselves were laughing at him.
“Truly,” Jiang Cheng said bitterly, glaring at the ceiling, “if fate has a sense of humor, it’s enjoying the joke far too much.”
The birdsong swelled, a cheerful chorus.
“Mockery detected,” the system observed.
“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng snapped.