A Cannon-Fodder Omega’s Self-Saving Guide - Chapter 1

The afterglow of sunset slowly poured in through the window. The shadow of a potted plant fell across the pale wallpaper dyed red by the light, like an ink-wash silhouette, carrying a faint ancient charm.

This was a spacious bedroom. Although the decor was simple and elegant, the genuine leather furniture gleaming faintly made no effort to hide the bedroom owner’s privileged circumstances. On the bed, the woman’s slender, pale hand clutched tightly at her collar, and a thin layer of cold sweat seeped out across her forehead.

The dream just now had been long, strange, and full of twists and turns. It was as if, within one short dream, she had watched her entire life unfold.

At present, she was the only daughter of the Xia Consortium. Her net worth was in the billions, and she was engaged to Lin Langruo, a top-tier Alpha praised as the Light of the Empire. Under the envy of the world, the two held a grand, much-anticipated wedding. Although the car accident she had suffered before had severely damaged her gland, preventing her from becoming a complete Omega, Lin Langruo had stayed by her side the entire time, taking care of her without ever abandoning her. She kept seeking doctors and medicine for her, and though there had never been much effect, Lin Langruo’s efforts were seen by everyone. For a time, their union was blessed and praised by countless people.

But once that gorgeous surface was torn open, all of it was merely packaging Lin Langruo had created to conceal her scheme. After marriage, Lin Langruo constantly hinted that she could not fulfill the duties of an Omega, that she was defective, and that in this world, only Lin Langruo herself would not care about her flaws. These suggestions nearly reached the level of brainwashing. In order to compensate Lin Langruo, Xia Weichen gave almost all the assets under her name to her. This became the foundation of her tragic life.

After transferring the property under her name to Lin Langruo, Lin Langruo gradually revealed her true nature. She found a way to kill Xia Weichen’s parents when they returned to the country to visit her, then pushed Xia Weichen off a high building and disguised it as suicide. Lin Langruo’s acting skills were excellent. In front of outsiders, she always appeared deeply devoted to Xia Weichen. Although Lin Langruo was the person who benefited the most from the deaths of the Xia couple and Xia Weichen, very few rumors suspected that she was the real murderer. Not only that, Lin Langruo even gained a wave of public sympathy by mourning Xia Weichen, her deceased wife.

Xia Weichen saw it all clearly. On the first anniversary of her death, Lin Langruo had just expressed her grief to the public and earned countless tears, only to turn around and indulge in pleasure with her private lovers. Xia Weichen’s death had become like a joke—pitiful and cruel.

Even more pitiful was the fact that the car accident that had damaged Xia Weichen’s gland had been arranged by Lin Langruo herself. It was not that Xia Weichen had no chance of recovering, either. Rather, the doctors around her all belonged to Lin Langruo’s side, and the medicine they gave her was the true culprit behind her lingering condition.

The dream ended there. After waking up, Xia Weichen forcibly endured the palpitations in her chest and reached toward the glass of water beside the blue-and-white porcelain vase on the bedside table. The afterglow spilled across her face, coating her porcelain-white skin with a faint bloodlike hue.

Thinking of the slow-acting poison Lin Langruo had given her in the dream, her hand trembled slightly. She avoided the glass of water, but bumped into the blue-and-white porcelain vase instead. The vase had been placed too close to the edge of the bedside table, and it immediately fell to the ground.

The sound of porcelain shattering was sharp and penetrating. Very soon, the doorway to her room was crowded with servants who had rushed over after hearing the noise.

“Miss, what happened? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Miss, if you need anything, just press the bell and call us over. President Lin instructed us that you don’t need to do anything yourself here.”

“Miss…”

Xia Weichen felt that the group of people surrounding her was very noisy. She stared fixedly at the fragments lying in a puddle of water, and at the single white flower among those fragments.

The flower bud had only just bloomed, revealing the faintest touch of pink, but its entire stem had already snapped along with the shattered vase. It would never be able to bloom again.

“Ding~ Connection successful. Welcome to the launch of the ‘Even Cannon Fodder Must Defy Fate and Change Their Destiny’ mission. Your exclusive System Little X is at your service.”

Immediately after, a small golden ball appeared out of thin air before her eyes. The voice had come from inside that golden ball.

Xia Weichen stared at the golden ball, raised her hand, and poked it, somewhat suspecting that it was her hallucination.

The golden ball flew around in all directions, dodging her finger.

“Stop poking, stop poking, Host!” the golden ball pleaded. “Shouldn’t Host be thinking about what to do next?”

“Everything I saw in the dream… was it all true?” Xia Weichen asked.

“It was all true.” The golden ball trembled desperately, as if afraid she would not believe it, using that movement in place of nodding. “If Host doesn’t believe me, the murderer who will soon kill Host is about to come over. She will make Host take sleeping pills. After Host takes the sleeping pills and falls asleep, she will call over Host’s attending physician. Once Host listens to them, you’ll understand.”

Before Xia Weichen could ask in detail, the sound of high heels broke through the servants’ clamor. The servants seemed to become even more flustered, each calling out quietly, “President Lin,” as if afraid of some impending disaster.

“Chenchen, are you feeling unwell again?” The newcomer’s gaze first fell upon the shattered porcelain vase and the withered flower, then moved to Xia Weichen’s face. “Or did someone make you angry?”

The newcomer was very beautiful. Her wavy long hair fell over her shoulders, and her red lips were like raging flames, especially sensual. She possessed an entirely aggressive sort of beauty. Along with her arrival came a faint lily fragrance.

Xia Weichen’s heart trembled slightly.

She remembered very clearly that after the car accident, she had lost the ability to perceive pheromones. Lin Langruo then had someone create a perfume extremely similar to her own pheromones. Lin Langruo’s reason had been that perhaps the same scent could stimulate her recovery and allow her to experience the feelings other Omegas had.

Only, when she first smelled this fragrance, it had indeed produced a physical reaction in her body. But as time passed, that reaction became fainter and fainter. For a moment, an unpleasant guess formed in Xia Weichen’s heart.

“Langruo?” Xia Weichen sat up straight and glanced at the golden ball floating beside her.

Don’t you need to hide? she asked inwardly.

The golden ball swayed a few times, its tone very proud. “Only Host can see me. Other people can’t.”

Xia Weichen felt reassured. She gazed at Lin Langruo as she usually did. If not for the dream just now, she almost would have been unable to believe that the Lin Langruo who treated her so thoughtfully and gently harbored the ambition to swallow up the entire Xia family.

In her memory, she had never imagined that Lin Langruo would have such thoughts. She and Lin Langruo had known each other for a long time. Lin Langruo was the child of one of the Xia family’s business partners and had been fostered in the Xia household. The Xia family’s nurturing of Lin Langruo had been beyond reproach. Her ability to earn the title of “Light of the Empire” as an Alpha was inseparable from the Xia family’s dedicated cultivation. Precisely because Lin Langruo had been raised by their side since childhood and they knew her background so well, and because the Xia couple liked Lin Langruo’s attentiveness and sensibility, they had felt at ease entrusting their only daughter, Xia Weichen, to her.

“Have you taken your medicine today?” Lin Langruo reached out to support her as usual, then took out the medicine bottle she carried with her and poured out one pill. “Chenchen has to be good. If you don’t take your medicine properly, how will your illness get better?”

Xia Weichen had often heard Lin Langruo say such things. Even when she had sometimes already taken her medicine, Lin Langruo would still remind her to take it. In the past, Xia Weichen had only thought this was Lin Langruo’s concern for her. But after the dream just now and the sudden appearance of the golden ball before her eyes, she could not help wondering whether every pill Lin Langruo handed her contained the slow-acting poison meant to harm her.

Even so, she still pretended as if she knew nothing. She accepted the medicine Lin Langruo handed her, but did not take it. Instead, she asked Lin Langruo to pour her a glass of water. The moment Lin Langruo turned around, Xia Weichen quickly hid the pill in her sleeve.

When Lin Langruo returned to Xia Weichen’s bedroom, she saw that her Omega fiancée had already fallen into a deep sleep. A trace of a smile appeared at the corner of her lips, but the warmth in her eyes withdrew, leaving them exceptionally cold and piercing.

“President Lin, I brought what you asked me to get.” In the study, a person dressed like a doctor in a white coat stood in front of Lin Langruo and carefully handed a small bottle to her. “The higher-ups have been strict lately. This stuff isn’t easy to get.”

Lin Langruo understood the implication at once. “Don’t worry. If you work for me, I won’t treat you unfairly.”

The doctor relaxed and smiled. “President Lin really can be ruthless. You can even bring yourself to harm the little childhood sweetheart who grew up with you.”

Lin Langruo’s gaze darkened. The doctor knew they had said too much and hurriedly waved a hand, changing the topic.

“Although this medicine isn’t highly toxic, you still have to pay attention to the dosage when using it. If you add too much, then even with President Lin’s vast influence, I’m afraid there won’t be much that can be done. Xia Weichen merely trusts President Lin, but President Lin can’t really treat Xia Weichen like a fool.”

In other words, although it was only a mild slow-acting poison, if the dosage was too large, it would still be discovered.

“But compared to us, how is she any different from a fool?”

Lin Langruo smiled and smoothly wrapped an arm around the doctor’s waist. The doctor also half-resisted and half-yielded as they turned sideways, just happening to expose the back of their neck to Lin Langruo.

“Having to face a cripple like her every day is upsetting. How could the current her compare to even one ten-thousandth of you? Once I obtain the Xia family’s businesses, you won’t have to suffer this kind of sneaking around while following me anymore.”

Inside the study, the two flirted intimately. Neither of them noticed that outside the door, in the shadows, Xia Weichen’s hand was clenched tightly, so tightly that the slightly raised blue veins beneath her pale skin could be seen clearly.

“Does Host believe me now?” The golden ball buzzed and bounced. “I wouldn’t lie to Host.”

Xia Weichen’s gaze darkened. Her tone was unexpectedly calm. “I just can’t understand why she would do this.”

She had seen it with her own eyes. She had no choice but to believe it.

The fiancée who had been by her side day and night was being intimate with another Omega right in front of her, and was even plotting to murder her. Yet when Xia Weichen saw all this, her first reaction was not anger, but an extraordinary calm.

The system thought its host had been angered silly and hurriedly swayed in front of Xia Weichen. “Host, are you all right? It isn’t worth getting angry over a scumbag Alpha like this!”

“I’m fine.” Xia Weichen did not want to keep watching this filthy dog Alpha-and-Omega pair dirty her eyes. She turned and went back to her room. Her footsteps were very light, and she made no sound at all when she walked. This was the etiquette the Xia family had required of her since childhood, and here, it happened to come in handy. “I feel like I should divorce this Alpha.”