Chapter 1: I Woke Up in the Villain's Death Scene
When Shen Che opened his eyes, Lin Nanyue was already raising her hand.
He leaned back on instinct, and her slap missed him by less than an inch.
The private room fell silent.
Music from the banquet hall drifted in through the half-open door. A birthday cake sat on the table with two candles still burning. Several rich heirs and socialites stared at Shen Che with the tense excitement of people who had just watched a disaster swerve at the last second.
Shen Che looked at the woman standing in front of him, and a flood of memory hit him hard enough to make his temples ache.
Lin Nanyue.
One of the female leads in the original novel.
Also one of the people most likely to send him to an early grave.
He had transmigrated into a hit urban webnovel and landed in the body of Shen Che, a rich young master villain whose main role in life was to offend the wrong people, challenge the male lead at the wrong time, and lose everything in a way readers would find deeply satisfying.
He knew this scene too well.
At Lin Nanyue's birthday banquet, villain Shen Che drank too much, cornered her in a private room, made a disgusting confession, grabbed her wrist, got slapped, and still refused to stop. Witnesses saw everything. News spread overnight. Lin Nanyue's disgust rose another level. Then the male lead arrived and used the whole thing as his first clean chance to crush Shen Che in public.
A classic cannon-fodder chapter.
And he had landed in the middle of it.
Shen Che forced himself to look around.
Three young masters at the table. Two women from Lin Nanyue's circle. A hotel manager just outside the door, pretending not to listen. The setup was complete. If he said one wrong thing now, his social death would be locked in before midnight.
Then a cold mechanical voice rang out in his head.
[Villain Survival System activated.]
[Host confirmed: Shen Che.]
[Current world type: Urban romance / male lead counterattack / multi-heroine routes.]
[Core mission: survive until the ending.]
Shen Che almost laughed from sheer relief.
Fine. He was in the villain's body. Fine. He had landed in a death scene. At least the heavens had remembered to include the standard equipment.
"Shen Che."
Lin Nanyue's voice was low and cold. "Have you lost your mind?"
In the original plot, this was where he was supposed to double down, say something shameless, and make the whole room hate him a little more.
Shen Che had no intention of cooperating.
He stepped back at once and said, "Sorry. I drank too much and acted like an idiot. I'm leaving now."
The room became even quieter.
One of the young masters nearly dropped his glass.
Everyone here knew Shen Che. The old version of him was handsome, rich, thick-skinned, and stupidly persistent. If Lin Nanyue looked at him coldly, he treated it as encouragement. If she told him to get lost, he would ask how far.
The current Shen Che had a much simpler plan.
Stay alive first. Worry about everything else later.
He turned and headed for the door.
He had only taken two steps when the system alarm sounded again.
[Warning: major plot deviation detected.]
[Original villain behavior interrupted.]
[Lin Nanyue route has begun to shift.]
[Current deviation rate: 12%.]
[Reward issued: Observation Eye x1.]
Shen Che almost stopped walking.
Twelve percent?
He had only apologized and retreated.
Was the original plot really this fragile?
"Stop."
Lin Nanyue spoke again.
Shen Che stopped with his hand half-raised toward the doorknob.
He turned back and immediately saw that something had changed in her expression. She was still angry, but anger was no longer the only thing there. She was looking at him as if she had found a flaw in a contract and had not yet decided whether to be annoyed or interested.
That was bad.
Very bad.
Shen Che managed a polite smile. "Miss Lin, is there anything else?"
The wording was respectful. The tone was careful. Coming from him, it sounded almost absurd.
The people in the room exchanged looks.
Lin Nanyue stared at him for a moment. "What did you just say?"
Shen Che paused. "Which part?"
"Before that."
A bad feeling rose in his chest.
Before that, he had been thinking about the original plot, the witnesses in the room, and how Lin Nanyue was one of the female leads most qualified to bury him.
He used the system reward on instinct.
[Observation Eye activated.]
[Target: Lin Nanyue.]
[Current status: angry / suspicious / mentally unsettled.]
[Cause: target has heard fragments of host's inner thoughts.]
Shen Che went still.
For a second, he genuinely wanted to sit down on the carpet and give up.
This opening was insane.
He had transmigrated into a villain, landed in a death scene, and the first heroine could hear his thoughts. If this was the system helping him, he was afraid to imagine what sabotage looked like.
Lin Nanyue narrowed her eyes.
"Female lead," she said. "Original plot. Bury you."
The room was so quiet that each phrase landed clearly, and confused enough that nobody dared interrupt. One of the women at the table frowned. Another glanced between the two of them, clearly trying to decide whether this was some private argument with stranger-than-usual wording.
Shen Che kept his expression steady. "Miss Lin, I think you misunderstood."
Lin Nanyue took one step toward him.
The sound of her heel on the floor was soft, but the room seemed to tighten with it.
"You called this a scene," she said. "You also thought about a script."
Shen Che wanted to explain that there was a system, a transmigration accident, and an entire plot structure built around making him suffer for reader entertainment, but he doubted that would help.
So he picked the only option he had left.
"I was drunk," he said. "People think strange things when they drink."
Lin Nanyue looked at him for another second. "And female lead?"
"A compliment," Shen Che said without hesitation.
Someone at the table sucked in a breath.
Shen Che ignored it. This was not the time to care what the audience thought.
Then the system popped up again.
[Alert: heroine route instability increasing.]
[Original route: disgust -> indifference -> political marriage arc.]
[Current route: disgust -> suspicion -> active observation.]
[Deviation rate: 21%.]
Shen Che's head started to ache.
In the original novel, Lin Nanyue had never cared enough about him to waste real attention on him. He had only been a nuisance she planned to remove later. The moment that changed, the situation became much more dangerous.
A heroine paying attention to a cannon-fodder villain was not a good sign.
It was the start of trouble.
Lin Nanyue looked at everyone else and said, "Everyone out."
Nobody moved at first.
One of her friends asked, "Nanyue, do you want us to stay?"
"No."
Her eyes never left Shen Che. "Leave."
That settled it.
In less than ten seconds, the private room was empty except for the two of them.
The door closed, and the atmosphere changed immediately.
Shen Che's heartbeat sped up.
Being alone with Lin Nanyue at this stage of the story was not a romantic opportunity. It was usually the point where the next layer of damage began.
She set down her wine glass and walked toward him.
At close range, she looked even more unreasonable than the novel had described. Her makeup was light. Her features were sharp and clean. Her expression was controlled to the point of cruelty.
When Shen Che had still been a reader, he had found this type of heroine very enjoyable as long as she was destroying somebody else.
Now that he was the somebody else, he had revised that opinion.
Lin Nanyue stopped in front of him.
"How much do you know?" she asked.
Shen Che's heart sank.
Anger would have been easier to handle. Anger was direct. Curiosity was worse, because curiosity led to questions, and questions led to answers he could not afford to give.
"I don't understand what you mean," he said.
Lin Nanyue watched him for a long moment, then smiled.
It was faint and almost lazy, and it was much more dangerous than the slap she had missed earlier.
"Then I'll ask differently," she said. "If I'm a female lead, who is the male lead?"
Shen Che's mind went blank.
At the same time, the system screamed in his head.
[Emergency alert.]
[Key plot node approaching ahead of schedule.]
[Original male lead, Gu Lin, has arrived outside the private room.]
[Current scene status: double-line collision.]
[Please choose immediately.]
[Option 1: Return to original villain route. Provoke male lead. Reward: Plot Protection +5. Risk: severe long-term mortality.]
[Option 2: Continue deviation. Avoid open conflict. Reward: Survival Points +10. Risk: unknown heroine-route mutation.]
[Option 3: Extreme operation. Use the current misunderstanding to drag the male lead into an off-script scenario. Reward: bonus based on shock value. Risk: ???]
The doorknob moved.
Lin Nanyue heard it too, but she did not turn around. Her eyes stayed on Shen Che, waiting.
That was when he understood the real problem.
The male lead was dangerous because the plot favored him.
The heroines going off-script were worse.
The plot he remembered was the only real advantage he had in this world. If that kept breaking, then every future death flag would arrive in a form he could no longer predict.
A man's voice came from outside the door.
"Miss Lin? Are you all right?"
Gu Lin had arrived.
The male lead was on time.
The heroine was off-script.
And Shen Che, who only wanted to survive, suddenly had to decide whether opening this door would save him or kill him faster.