Luo Shang had no idea that Shen Changqing’s mentality was on the verge of collapse right now.
He was still idly flipping through the script, staring face-to-face with Su Mingyao in the garden.
Su Mingyao wanted to break the silence. “You…”
“Shh—” Luo Shang motioned for him to be quiet.
He thought for a moment. He definitely couldn’t mention anything about following the plot to Su Mingyao, and he was too lazy to come up with a good excuse. So he simply said, “Second Brother, hold off on talking. Let’s listen to nature for a bit.”
Goddamn “listen to nature.” Su Mingyao nearly lost his composure.
I know you’re just waiting for Shen Changqing to come eavesdrop… So why hasn’t Changqing shown up yet?
He remembered that Shen Changqing wasn’t the type to get lost easily, and the garden’s layout wasn’t all that complicated anyway.
[System, where the hell is he? Why hasn’t he gotten here yet? Second Brother and I have been staring at each other for minutes now with nothing to say. It’s getting awkward.] Luo Shang prodded the system.
Yeah, yeah, it really is awkward. I’m under a ton of pressure too. Su Mingyao thought to himself.
It felt exactly like sharing a room with a hundred-thousand-ton bomb. The only difference was that the bomb might not destroy the world—but Luo Shang absolutely could.
[Uh, give it a moment. Looks like the “Ghost-Hitting-Wall” effect I set earlier lasted too long. Now that I’ve released him, his sense of direction is all messed up.] The system promptly admitted its mistake.
[Should take about two more minutes. I’ll send him an info prompt to guide him here.]
The system’s info prompt wasn’t a direct message in Shen Changqing’s mind telling him which way to go. Instead, it was disguised as a sudden burst of inspiration.
Shen Changqing thought he’d had a flash of genius about how to escape, but in reality, it was all thanks to the system’s subtle nudge.
Hearing that, Su Mingyao thought, Good thing it wasn’t me stuck in that Ghost-Hitting-Wall.
[Alright, here he comes! Target’s about to reach the designated spot.]
Luo Shang looked up at Su Mingyao.
Su Mingyao perked up as well, quietly recalling the exact words he’d spoken back in the day.
This scene had to go perfectly on the first try. He couldn’t give Su Shang any opening to destroy the world!
That was Su Mingyao’s standard for himself.
He just hoped Shen Changqing would play along sensibly and stay hidden in the back, listening quietly.
~~~
After pushing through cluster after cluster of bushes, Shen Changqing drew on his outdoors knowledge to figure out the cardinal directions. He finally emerged from a patch thick with rosebushes and heard voices conversing in the distance.
People? Finally!
His first instinct was to head over and say hello.
He desperately needed to see another soul right now!
[Target has passed the designated spot! He’s coming right toward you!] The system blared a series of alerts.
[What the hell?] Luo Shang frowned. [Doesn’t he love eavesdropping? I even gave him the perfect vantage point, and he still won’t take the hint?]
[Maybe getting lost in the garden messed with his sense of space and time. His head’s not in the right place anymore. Seeing you two has him all excited—he just wants out of this damn garden alive. Eavesdropping’s the last thing on his mind.]
The system explained.
[What a pain.] Luo Shang huffed inwardly.
[I just want to run the plot in peace. Why can’t anyone stick to their old patterns?]
[Would you like to restart the world?] the system asked.
Su Mingyao nearly burst into tears at those words.
[Forget it. He’s already this close. Just pin him in place and make him listen to the whole thing.] Luo Shang said.
Su Mingyao: Impressive.
Out of consideration for their bond from his previous life, he felt a twinge of concern for Shen Changqing’s mental state.
Getting trapped in the Ghost-Hitting-Wall for so long, finally breaking free only to spot two people and rush over excitedly—only to get frozen on the spot and forced to eavesdrop on the entire exchange…
It was pretty rough, sure. But not as rough as what I’ve been through, Su Mingyao thought coldly.
He’d been tempered a thousand times over by the world’s destruction. His mom scrambling back from a plane caught in a thunderstorm? Small potatoes. Shen Changqing trying to approach but getting stuck? Even smaller.
If you really want to talk torture without mortal peril, come take a stroll through the Void with me. Then you’d know what real agony feels like!
Pin him in place? Run the plot? What does that even mean? What is he talking about?
The closer Shen Changqing got, the stranger the snippets of conversation became.
That voice—it sounded just like his fiancé, Su Shang.
He could even see Su Shang’s face now. Su Shang was sitting in his wheelchair, his back to Shen Changqing as he looked up at the man opposite him—a stranger, as far as Shen Changqing could tell.
That must be Su Mingyao, he thought.
Su Mingyao was just Shen Changqing’s type: tall and straight-backed like bamboo, with a gentle, refined air. Way more appealing than Su Shang. Compared to his fiancé, Shen Changqing took an immediate liking to Su Mingyao.
And that pleasant mood lasted right up until he was about ten meters away.
In the instant following Luo Shang’s heart voice, Shen Changqing realized he could no longer move.
His foot hovered a few centimeters above the floor, but no matter how desperately he strained or struggled, not a single muscle in his body would respond. His posture was locked rigid like a sculpture—as if he were a tiny insect trapped forever in a globe of amber, utterly immobile.
What… what’s happening? He forced himself to stay calm and tried to speak, but no sound emerged from his throat. It felt choked off by some invisible force.
Only his breathing continued unabated.
[Alright, now the plot begins. Action!]
An eerie voice, sounding just like Su Shang’s, declared.
With that, the two of them launched into their conversation.
Shen Changqing had no interest in listening.
Every fiber of his being was focused on breaking free—trying to sway side to side, to make a noise, to twitch even a finger.
He had become a statue with a mind, standing silently in place.
Notice me! Come on, notice me! You two, stop talking over each other and look! Save me! Please, save me!
When every effort proved futile, Shen Changqing’s mind shattered once more. The joy he’d felt at seeing other people curdled into raw terror.
Am I doomed to stay like this forever? A conscious prisoner in my own body for the rest of my life? I’d rather die!
Even his inner turmoil couldn’t budge his flesh. Now, Shen Changqing couldn’t even cry.
Calm down. Think it through. There has to be a way. Anomaly… Didn’t I hear something about “hold him in place” earlier?
A body-binding spell? Doesn’t this feel exactly like the demons in Journey to the West, frozen stiff by Sun Wukong’s command?
That voice—it has to be what’s done this to me. And the ghost-hitting-wall from before… that was probably its work too? Su Shang… Su Shang?!
But could Su Shang really pull this off? Shen Changqing’s thoughts spun in chaos, and despite himself, he began tuning in to their dialogue.
Luo Shang recited his lines straight from the script, delivering the original storyline word-for-word without a hint of improvisation.
It wasn’t acting so much as rote memorization. In any drama class, the teacher would have torn him apart for it.
Unfortunately for him, his audience wasn’t a drama instructor but Su Mingyao—who had already resolved not to deviate from whatever the other wanted.
No matter how wooden Luo Shang’s performance, no matter how blatantly he zoned out, Su Mingyao played along with utter sincerity!
Su Mingyao even saw the distraction as a blessing. At least it meant Luo Shang wouldn’t zero in on him and spot the cold sweat soaking through his shirt from sheer nervous strain.
“…If Mother’s home, it’s best to get up early. She doesn’t like seeing us laze in bed…”
[What a pain. If there’s nothing going on, just let me sleep. What’s the point of dragging myself up? Nothing important ever happens anyway.] Luo Shang inwardly critiqued the line.
No worries, Su Mingyao thought. Rest assured, Mother won’t be waking you for that ever again.
Out loud, he picked up seamlessly: “Got it. I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Little Shang.”
Shen Changqing, frozen in place behind them, had listened long enough to piece it together.
He was certain now: that bizarre voice from the start had been Su Shang’s heart voice.
Which meant Su Shang was responsible for his current helpless paralysis!
How the hell had Su Shang done it? He couldn’t possibly be human!
“By blood, I’m not Mother’s biological son. But I hope we can be as close as real brothers.” Luo Shang pressed on with his recitation.
[Blood ties don’t dictate loyalty. Different species can forge unbreakable brotherhoods, while full siblings slaughter each other all too often.]
A few faces flickered through Luo Shang’s mind, drawing a quiet sigh from within.
“I’ll treat you like my own little brother,” Su Mingyao replied, dredging up lines from his past life as best he could.
Neither Luo Shang nor Su Mingyao truly focused on the words being exchanged. Luo Shang fixated on his progress bar, while Su Mingyao probed for hidden meanings—scrutinizing every micro-expression and straining to recall his old script for the scene.
Only Shen Changqing, stuck rigid nearby, reeled from the content itself: !
Su Shang… wasn’t born to the Su family?!
It figured!
The Su Family parents were both human. How else could they produce a freak like Su Shang, brimming with unnatural powers?
Shen Changqing concluded outright that Su Shang wasn’t human.
~~~
The exchange didn’t drag on—barely twenty minutes, all told.
Luo Shang departed in satisfaction, leaving Su Mingyao rooted to the spot in heavy silence for a long while.
That was the original script’s beat. In it, Su Mingyao was meant to feel a pang of sorrow, adrift as the family’s outsider.
But right now, the elation surging through Su Mingyao’s heart as he stood in place was indescribable—he had passed the test! Acting opposite Su Shang hadn’t been difficult at all. He just had to follow the script from his previous life!
He lingered there for a few minutes, mimicking the sigh he’d let out back then and squeezing out two tears. It had taken him a good, hard pinch to himself to make them flow—who could say if it was the pain or the sheer relief of dodging disaster that did it.
After taking several deep breaths to steady himself, Su Mingyao turned his gaze toward where Shen Changqing was hiding.
The bushes concealed his figure, but a close look would still reveal the man’s outline.
Why hasn’t he left yet? Su Shang already departed, Su Mingyao thought to himself.
If I’d been pinned in place that long, I’d have bolted the instant the hold broke. I sure as hell wouldn’t still be hanging around… So…
No way… No way did Su Shang forget to release the fixation, did he? The possibility suddenly flashed through his mind.
Hiss.
~~~
Luo Shang wheeled himself farther away.
He’d been staring at the progress bar during their little performance, but it hadn’t budged. Luo Shang had figured it would update once the act wrapped up, yet it was still stuck at 5%. That irritated him.
[There might be a delay,] the System said.
[The full plot includes Shen Changqing’s follow-up actions. Just wait a bit longer.]
[I’ll wait for now. If it doesn’t move, we’ll talk,] Luo Shang replied, closing the interface.
He didn’t think there was anything wrong with what he’d done.
All the characters had been present, all the lines delivered. The plot point should count as cleared.
The next one was set for a few hours later, at the Recognition Banquet.
Ever since his discharge from the hospital, Su Shang had been preparing his strike against Su Mingyao. He’d hired someone to dig up photos of Su Mingyao’s childhood back in the countryside, planning to project them right behind him the moment Li Qingshu introduced the boy. The goal: let everyone see Su Mingyao squirm in embarrassment.
At the same time, from his seat in the audience, he’d steer the crowd’s opinion—paint Su Mingyao as some uncouth, uneducated hick fresh from the sticks who’d only gotten a thin veneer of polish after joining the Su family. He couldn’t hold a candle to Su Shang, who’d grown up in the household proper, and he sure wasn’t in the same league as the rest of them.
But thanks to their garden chat being overheard by Shen Changqing, the man had gotten suspicious. Call it the world’s favoritism toward the protagonist if you like, but Shen Changqing quickly dug up proof that Su Shang shared no blood with Su Tiancheng and Li Qingshu.
Just as Su Shang projected those embarrassing rural photos and started mocking him, Shen Changqing seized control of the backend, cut the feed, and threw up the no-blood-relation certificate instead.
Suddenly, everyone at the banquet knew Su Shang wasn’t biological. The Recognition Banquet took a sharp nosedive. Li Qingshu and Su Tiancheng had no choice but to explain to the guests that Su Shang was indeed adopted.
In the eyes of those elite families, Su Shang had lost his status as the Su family’s trueborn heir—a massive blow.
The very crowd that had been jeering Su Mingyao turned on Su Shang, ripping into him: he had no right to the Su name, who knew where he really came from—hell, he might not even be a step up from Su Mingyao.
Su Shang had trembled with rage, forced to fake a collapse and slip away from the gossip. That faint was the whole reason Luo Shang had wanted the wheelchair—it was fake, sure, but the fury and his fragile post-illness state had played a part too.
From that moment on, his identity publicly exposed, Su Shang came to loathe Su Mingyao with every fiber of his being.
[The me in this plot comes off pretty innocent…] Luo Shang mused as he reviewed it.
[Just some harmless old photos to make him look silly, a couple jabs about his country roots.]
Like the brutal trash talk between kids in a scrap—harsh words, but no real sting.
[But Shen Changqing went nuclear, splashing my no-blood-relation proof everywhere so all of B City’s high society knew I wasn’t a true Su. Forced Mom and Dad to admit it on the spot…]
[It’s clear he had it in for me from the start. Didn’t want our families’ marriage alliance.]
Shen Changqing’s move was excessive, ripping the lid off a secret the Sus wanted buried. It was a blatant slap to the Su family’s face.
Sure, it’d come back to bite him once they investigated, earning the Su family’s enmity. But at heart, he was handing the Shen family an out—a reason to scrap the alliance or swap partners.
After all, the Shens had offered a marriage tie based on a biological child. The Sus had agreed initially because Su Shang was blood-related, a safe bet.
Now that the candidate was a fraud, they had every excuse to raise hell.
And Su Shang’s stunt with the embarrassing photos? That had been exposed too, of course.
Li Qingshu and Su Tiancheng’s impression of him grew even worse. Su Shang’s repeated targeting of Su Mingyao had also eroded their more than twenty years of familial bonds. This prompted them to start seriously considering the Shen Family’s suggestion to cancel his engagement with Shen Changqing.
Thus, the next plot point was the fiancé swap.
In that danmei novel, it was written that Shen Changqing wanted to stand up for Su Mingyao. He felt Su Mingyao was too pitiful after being bullied by Su Shang, so he directly switched the projection and ruthlessly screwed over Su Shang.
The readers all thought it was super sweet how the gong protected his shou.
However, Su Shang could tell that the real reason Shen Changqing did this wasn’t to avenge Su Mingyao at all. He simply wanted to use the opportunity to dissolve his engagement with Su Shang.
The excuse of standing up for Su Mingyao only came later, after Shen Changqing was discovered by the Su Family couple and they came knocking on his door—it was just a verbal justification.
At that time, Shen Changqing’s feelings toward Su Mingyao were mere curiosity, the budding spark of love but not love itself.
Of course, his actions also served as a gesture of goodwill toward Su Mingyao. If Shen Changqing wanted to change his engagement partner, the one who came after Su Shang would be Su Mingyao.
It was the combination of all these factors that led to Shen Changqing making his move that time.
“Love, huh…” Luo Shang closed the page with a sigh.
In the plot, the person Su Shang kept targeting was Su Mingyao. But in reality, the one who actually struck against him from behind the scenes was Shen Changqing in most cases.
Shen Changqing was only screwing him over for Su Mingyao’s sake, so in the plot, Su Shang dumped all his resentment onto Su Mingyao and completely ignored the true culprit, Shen Changqing.
Luo Shang felt that the vicious male side character’s approach in the plot was dead wrong.
He shouldn’t have fixated solely on framing Su Mingyao—he ought to have taken the chance to deal with Shen Changqing while he was at it.
