I Snatched the Male Lead’s "Cool Novel" Script - Chapter 1

Yan Yu died.

The last novel she read before her death was a badly unfinished male-oriented stallion harem novel.

The story was set in a completely fictional otherworldly continent. Every person was born with their own Beast Soul. Those who passed the Beast Arts grading exam were respectfully called Beast Arts Masters. Beast Arts Masters were divided into four ranks: Special, A, B, and C. Their status was higher than ordinary civilians.

Because women in this world lived nearly three times longer than men, a social order of female superiority and male inferiority naturally developed. It was common for one woman to have multiple husbands.

The original novel’s main power-fantasy appeal came from this setting. The male lead transmigrated into a world where women were superior and men were inferior, then opened up a huge harem. Even though he was a useless good-for-nothing who had failed the Beast Arts grading exam for ten years, he leveled up all the way, slapped faces, gained wealth, gained power, and won the hearts of the people.

Unfortunately, Yan Yu just had to transmigrate into this book.

Even more unfortunately, when the male lead transmigrated, he came with a system cheat. She transmigrated too, but picked up the script of a sickly cannon fodder character.

And right now, this cannon-fodder supporting female character, in order to save the male lead, was standing in front of the female lead’s home. She had raised her thin little arm, an arm that probably even struggled to hold a pen, and was loudly informing the tall, sturdy guards in front of her that she was here to assassinate the female lead and take her head.

If she had transmigrated just a few minutes earlier, Yan Yu still could have stopped herself from courting death like this. But now, it was already too late.

The guards, who had originally ignored her, walked over after hearing those words. Without another word, one of them grabbed her by the collar with one hand and lifted her up, weighing her in the air. The posture looked even more effortless than subduing a naughty kindergarten child.

Clang—

A dagger with a rusted blade fell to the ground.

The female guard sneered and kicked it away with her foot.

“If I say I was only joking just now, would you believe me?” Yan Yu asked quietly.

The guard laughed again. Without wasting more words, she tied Yan Yu’s hands, took out a round object from her waist, and drew a symbol on it with her finger. A stone door opened in response. She raised her hand and threw the already tightly bound Yan Yu inside.

The light behind the stone door was too dim. Yan Yu tried hard to widen her eyes, but she still could not see anything clearly. She tentatively took a few steps forward, but suddenly, a hand reached out from behind her, grabbed her by the neck, and forced her body down with a burst of strength.

The tip of her nose caught a scent mixed with soap pod and mint. Yan Yu remembered that the original novel had written about this before. In Langdie Valley, where the female lead lived, all maidservants were required to use bathing paste with this same fragrance.

So right now, she was a prisoner who had just been handed over from the gate guards to a managing maidservant. She had no idea how this maidservant walked, but there had not been the slightest sound.

Yan Yu maintained the posture of having both hands tied behind her back as the maidservant pressed her forward. The pain from her twisted arms and her heavily struck abdomen made it impossible for her to straighten up. Her throat was filled with a thick taste of iron, as if the moment she loosened her teeth even slightly, she would turn her head and spit out a mouthful of blood.

“Stop trying anything funny,” the maidservant warned her.

The female lead, Yin Beiqing, did not like others seeing her face. Because of that, all the maidservants in Langdie Valley wore white silk scarves over their eyes, whether they were sleeping, eating, or walking.

They all wore white dresses, walked barefoot, and made no sound at all when they moved. They were like ghosts appearing in the dark night.

But even the lowest-ranking maidservants in Langdie Valley were powerful people who had passed the B-rank Beast Arts Master test. In the army, they could at least become captains of ten-person squads. Even if each of them looked plain and unimpressive, their strength absolutely could not be underestimated.

So, the original owner’s act of rushing in alone to save someone was, to some extent, lacking in consideration. She might not even be able to defeat a C-rank Beast Arts Master, yet she dared to come to the heavily guarded Langdie Valley to assassinate Yin Beiqing.

With only a few steps’ worth of thinking time, Yan Yu was carried by the maidservant to a wide, open area.

Unlike the stone path outside, the floor here was covered with a thick layer of snow-white carpet. The room was filled with fragrant incense. Farther ahead, up a set of steps, a woman in red was lazily leaning against a floral-patterned beast-skin seat.

The woman wore a black iron mask over her face, blocking half of it. Only a straight, delicate nose and thin, vivid-red lips could be seen. Her eyelids were lightly lowered, and she was boredly fanning herself with a bone fan.

A white python as thick as what one person could encircle with both arms was coiled upright at her right side. Its emerald-green vertical pupils were cold and sinister, and it was hissing as it flicked its tongue. Its body carried the same terrifying aura as its master, one that made people tremble with fear.

Yan Yu only swept her eyes over it briefly before moving her gaze away. Her heartbeat immediately began to lose control, and her hands unconsciously clenched the hem of her clothes. It was as if even the air around this woman carried a bloody smell that could make one’s legs go weak.

“How insolent!” The maidservant behind her pressed down on Yan Yu’s neck and forced her head lower. “Who gave you the courage to look at the Valley Master!”

Although their eyes were covered, that did not mean they could not “see” anything.

Mature Beast Arts Masters were skilled at using soul power to detect the shape, size, and even temperature of surrounding objects. Moreover, Langdie Valley’s maidservants had received training early on, so they used it much more skillfully than ordinary people. Not even the slightest movement could escape them.

With that press, Yan Yu could no longer hold back the blood in her mouth. After a few suppressed coughs, dots of blood immediately splattered across the snow-white carpet, glaringly out of place.

Almost the instant she coughed up blood, Yan Yu panicked.

Yin Beiqing had a strange personality and all kinds of inexplicable habits. The most important one was that she could not tolerate even the slightest bit of filth in her sight. That was why all the maidservants in Langdie Valley wore white dresses, and why they had to bathe for half an hour before serving her up close. Yin Beiqing herself was the same. Every time she returned after killing someone, she could soak in the bath for an entire day to wash herself clean.

Yan Yu herself was a doctor, so she usually paid great attention to hygiene as well. Although she was not as exaggerated as Yin Beiqing, she could understand her feelings.

For a person like this, seeing someone spit blood onto her carpet—how frantic she must feel inside could be guessed even with one’s toes.

Shing—

Seeing this scene, the dozen or so maidservants present drew their swords at the same time, pointed them at Yan Yu, and surrounded her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Yan Yu caught the reflection of those long swords, and her breathing stopped.

The current her was only an ant that Yin Beiqing could crush to death with a casual stomp. And based on Yin Beiqing’s personality of killing gods if she met gods and killing Buddhas if she met Buddhas, even if the original owner was a direct descendant of a military family closely related to the empress, Yin Beiqing would definitely take her head without the slightest hesitation.

After all, she was the woman known as the “Living Yama.”

Thinking of this, Yan Yu could not help secretly complaining about the original owner’s love-addled brain. For a scumbag like the male lead, she had actually been willing to sacrifice her life and wade into this muddy water.

Yan Yu rarely got angry in daily life, but mentioning this book made her furious.

Letting the male lead open cheats, clear maps, and collect a harem—this was basically the formula used by ninety percent of similar novels. But what disgusted Yan Yu the most about the original book was its objectification of female characters and its crude, blatant fantasies.

The male lead treated the supporting female characters, and even the female lead, as stepping stones on his path to leveling up. Once he used them, he threw them away. Several supporting female characters gave him their entire hearts, yet in the end, without exception, they were all betrayed by him. Some died, some were crippled, and even when the male lead hugged the female lead with the “highest cost-performance ratio” and reached his happy ending, they still had to “sensibly” offer their blessings.

Without a doubt, the male lead and the author had enjoyed themselves. But as a reader, Yan Yu had nearly been disgusted enough to vomit.

His childhood sweetheart had her entire family executed because of him, and in order to save him, she was killed by the female lead and fed to the wolves. The princess of the Jin Kingdom stole her national treasure and gave it to him as a gift, only to be demoted to a commoner afterward and die in a foreign land. An enemy kingdom’s general took a slash of spiritual arts for him and had half her abilities crippled, yet she was still willing to wash her hands and make soup for him.

Even the female lead, who was decisive in killing and had explosive combat power, had her Beast Soul Pearl stolen by the male lead, her cultivation method snatched away, and her master taken from her. Then, after he took advantage of her with a dose of aphrodisiac, she was forcibly made to be with him.

The person Yan Yu had transmigrated into was that very childhood sweetheart whose entire family had been executed. According to the timeline, her family members had already become souls under the blade. As for herself, Yan Yu estimated that she was not far from the route of “being killed by the female lead and fed to the wolves.”

The swords had not stabbed into her body yet, which meant the maidservants were still waiting for Yin Beiqing’s order.

The reclining Yin Beiqing did not fly into a rage as Yan Yu had expected. She opened her eyes, and her beautiful gaze lazily swept over Yan Yu’s pretty face, which had gone pale with fright. There was not the slightest ripple in her heart.

Fear, trembling, despair—she had seen far too much of them. Not only did she find them boring, she had long since grown tired of them.

“Kill her. Feed her to the wolves.” Her tone was careless, as if she were giving orders about the most ordinary little matter. But it scared Yan Yu so badly that all the hair on her body stood on end.

A drop of cold sweat fell from her forehead, once again staining the milky-white carpet. Her hands, tied behind her back, had already begun trembling uncontrollably.

Yan Yu knew she was afraid. Even so, she gritted her teeth, endured the pain, and straightened her back. Her determined gaze met Yin Beiqing’s directly.

“If you kill me, you will definitely regret it.”

After she said that, the surrounding air seemed to thin. Even the wind that had been constantly blowing at the maidservants’ skirts seemed to tactfully stop.

No one moved. No one spoke.

Only Yin Beiqing’s eyes, so sharp they seemed about to pierce Yan Yu’s entire body, told her that Yin Beiqing had indeed heard those words—and had taken them to heart.

Yin Beiqing finally deigned to sit up. Her long hair swept over her shoulders and fell behind her, its smooth shine like a cascading waterfall.

She raised her right hand and propped it against the side of her forehead. As she made these movements, her gaze remained tightly fixed on the frail figure below, who looked as though a gust of wind could blow her away. It was as if she wanted to tear Yan Yu apart on the spot.

She had originally thought this sickly woman would cry and beg for mercy. She had not expected her to actually have the courage to say such words.

“Are you threatening me?” Her voice was low, but it was clearly a pleasant female voice.

Question: In front of Yin Beiqing, what could make you die faster than provoking her?

Answer: Threatening her.

Of course Yan Yu knew this, so she had only the time of one sentence to save herself.

“In the rightful year of Guangliu, a divine woman shall descend. She shall know astronomy above and geography below; she shall foretell fortune and disaster for a thousand years and unravel mysteries from ten thousand years past. The divine woman’s sacred hands shall cure all illnesses, revive dead ashes, and return the departed to life.”

This passage came from a prophecy in an ancient book. The words above were the original record. Among the common people, the more widely circulated version was the one translated into plain language.

The year 6000 of Guangliu was this very year. A divine woman would appear, knowing everything and capable of anything. She could predict fortune and disaster a thousand years into the future and solve mysteries from ten thousand years ago. Most importantly, “she” possessed a pair of divine hands that could heal all illnesses and even turn the dead into the living.

Yin Beiqing suffered from a terrible illness and had searched bitterly for this woman for a long time without finding any clues. So when she suddenly heard Yan Yu recite the original ancient text, which had never been circulated before, she truly hesitated. The maidservants, sensing her change in mood, lowered the swords in their hands as well.

Yan Yu quietly let out a breath of relief.

She felt as though she was walking on a tightrope. If she said one wrong word or gave one extra glance, she could lose her life at any moment.

In the original novel, this so-called divine woman had never been found. However, in the early part of the story, the male lead had used the title to deceive the female lead and steal away her Beast Soul Pearl. After that, it seemed even the author had forgotten such a person existed, and she was never mentioned again.

So Yan Yu felt that even if she impersonated this “divine woman” who had never shown her face, she would not be exposed.

It was true that the male lead had a system cheat, but she was not completely empty-handed either.

Thanks to the inheritance of her highly intelligent parents, Yan Yu had possessed a photographic memory ever since she was young. No matter how complicated or thick a book was, she could remember it after reading it only once.

In other words, the plot of the original novel was now firmly engraved in her mind. She knew every step the male lead would take. She could even recite the names and measurements of minor background characters without missing a single word.

She could always be one step ahead of the male lead.

Since Yin Beiqing wanted to find a divine woman who could predict the future and tell fortunes, what was wrong with volunteering herself?

Author’s Note:

Auspicious start to the new novel! Little red packets will drop in the comment section for the first three chapters. The update time is still 18:00 every day. There will be another chapter this afternoon.