A candle flickered on the corner of the table, its yellow light swaying and illuminating a small area around it. Tall shadows rippled across the stone walls like waves on water.
An Luo wasn’t used to such dim lighting. After all, electric lights had been invented long before he was born.
Fortunately, the country he belonged to was the one with the most advanced infrastructure in the world—bar none.
Thus, he had been surrounded by bright lights from childhood to adulthood.
Candles had long ceased to be a daily necessity and had become mere props in stories.
Just a few minutes ago, An Luo had still been on a bright, clean subway.
The faint candlelight fell on the open Witchcraft Book, with a letter placed beside it.
He picked up the letter and held it near the candle. Through his inherited memories, he learned that this was written by the original host, Lan Lian. The main point was simple: money.
The original host had discovered that the protagonist had survived an extremely dangerous mission and was filled with rage. He planned to demand more money to bribe the old apprentice and continue plotting against the protagonist.
The letter paper was thick, adorned with flower-like watermarks—special stationery reserved for nobles.
Twisting, serpentine letters crawled across it, the handwriting elegant, reminiscent of English cursive script.
As he read line by line, scenes from the original host’s past bullying and humiliation of the protagonist flashed in An Luo’s mind, along with the direct sabotage after entering the Wizard Tower.
It was basically the standard operation for brainless cannon fodder.
Yet the Lan Lian who should have met his tragic fate tomorrow noon had somehow fallen under a curse ahead of schedule and died inexplicably that very night.
When An Luo wrote it, he had only considered how satisfying the protagonist’s face-slapping revenge would be afterward. He hadn’t given a thought to Lan Lian’s survival—cannon fodder were meant to die by the protagonist’s hand, after all. The harsher the bullying, the more miserable the death, the greater the satisfaction it provided.
When An Luo transmigrated, all the old and new grudges had piled up together.
If he didn’t do something quickly, he would be done for by noon tomorrow!
What should he do?
In the face of imminent death, how could he escape from the protagonist’s clutches?
Know thy son better than thy father—An Luo sadly realized there seemed to be no way to dodge this deadly tribulation.
Apologize? Useless. Meieruita believed in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Strike first and fight him head-on?
Heh, An Luo had given Meieruita the protagonist halo. How could a mere cannon fodder win? He might end up dying even more miserably.
Moreover, An Luo’s current overall strength was far inferior to even the original cannon fodder’s!
Even if he wanted to fight, he absolutely couldn’t win.
He couldn’t beat him, and hugging the protagonist’s thigh was out of the question. It looked like death was inevitable?
Driven by his survival instinct, An Luo forced himself to calm down and tried to find a way out.
He casually grabbed the quill from the ink bottle and scribbled on a blank sheet of paper, trying to organize his chaotic thoughts with writing.
First…
Although An Luo had mastered the writing system of this world through the original host’s memories, he instinctively used his native language—Chinese.
But he immediately ran into a problem:
Why couldn’t he write these characters?
As An Luo wrote, he felt enormous resistance, as if the rules of this world forbade him from putting the characters on paper.
His wrist felt gripped tightly, making it hard to move.
What was going on?
An Luo switched to the wizard world’s script, and the flowing letters came out smoothly and effortlessly.
He switched back to Chinese, and the massive resistance returned immediately, preventing him from completing even a single character.
Ink bloomed into a large black blot on the paper. An Luo frowned at it, then suddenly had a flash of insight.
He remembered a setting from his novel.
In the wizard world, there was something called runes.
Witchcraft runes had many uses. Not only could they release power when triggered, but if a wizard engraved advanced runes into their soul, they would gain tremendous benefits.
Low-level runes were patterns like hexagrams, while the highest-level Ancient Runes were Chinese characters.
This was how An Luo had written it:
“Outlined with extremely refined lines that capture the essence of things, each Ancient Rune is the crystallization of countless wisdoms, refined through endless iterations into the most perfect, most concise form. Possessing unimaginable vast power!”
Was there anything wrong with describing Chinese characters that way?
At the same time, there was another setting:
“These profound runes are difficult to replicate using carriers. The best way to transmit them is through soul comprehension.”
That was the source of the resistance.
…A made-up setting had become reality. An Luo’s mood was complicated.
But at the same time, he grew excited.
Difficult didn’t mean impossible. If he pushed hard and managed to write a few characters, his self-preservation ability would skyrocket!
An Luo steeled his resolve and began painstakingly writing on the paper.
He chose the simple “fire” character with few strokes, but even so, it was incredibly hard.
By the time the final stroke fell, he was drenched in sweat, his right hand aching as if he’d held a dumbbell for half an hour.
But it was all worth it!
The “fire” character, utterly ordinary in An Luo’s memories, now seemed profoundly mysterious. Faintly, he could sense illusory flames blazing within it.
Overall, it radiated a warm glow, emanating cozy heat.
An Luo could feel the immense power it contained. In his setting, as long as it was driven by magic power—even the tiniest amount—it could amplify that power thousands of times through leverage.
Excellent. So, what about magic power?
The original host was a Wizard Apprentice who had just started not long ago and had none at all.
Magic power was directly tied to mental power, but reaching the talent threshold for becoming a Wizard Apprentice didn’t mean you’d naturally have magic power.
You still needed to meditate, and on average, it took about two months to successfully convert the free energy in the air into magic power.
An Luo: “…”
Better to be practical. First, figure out how to escape the protagonist’s grasp.
An Luo wiped his sweat and began organizing his thoughts using the wizard world’s script.
The Supreme Wizard was An Luo’s first novel, one he valued highly. He’d written a fairly detailed character bio for the protagonist, Meieruita.
The protagonist was cold-blooded and profit-driven, but why?
There had to be a reason.
An Luo had given Meieruita a miserable childhood. Before becoming a wizard, Meieruita struggled in the Lower Layer, living day-to-day without security, barely eating, and frequently beaten and cursed. This forged his core drive: insecurity.
The weak would be bullied or even killed. To survive, he had to grow stronger. Strength and profit were the only eternal foundations.
The all-villain dark background had early on stripped him of the luxury of “kindness.”
Through his struggles in the wizard world, the protagonist grew ever colder and more rational.
He trusted no one, driven by insecurity into a pathological pursuit of knowledge.
To chase higher knowledge and power, he didn’t mind paying any price—his own or others’.
Everyone was a tool to him, even himself. As long as he didn’t die and stayed rational, nothing else mattered.
Insecurity propelled Meieruita forward. Anything threatening him, he would eliminate by any means. He had to keep growing stronger. Only by becoming the sole peak existence would the primal anxiety of survival ease.
Thus, the protagonist would never accept An Luo’s surrender.
In his eyes, the original host Lan Lian had harmed him and posed a massive threat to his survival. No amount of overtures could erase that—only eliminating the threat would make him safer.
Who knew if Lan Lian’s friendliness was genuine or a ploy to lurk and strike fatally later?
The protagonist wouldn’t gamble on it.
When writing, An Luo had thought the protagonist was cool like that, but now, that very characterization completely blocked his path to survival.
No matter how he looked at it, he was doomed!
An Luo thought with broken-jar resignation: What if I just tell him this world is a novel I wrote, he’s the protagonist I created… Wait!
That might actually work!
Of course, An Luo wasn’t naive enough to think revealing his author identity and convincing the protagonist would make him spare him.
That was impossible!
With Meieruita’s personality, learning An Luo was the author would probably make him want to kill him even more.
The reason was simple.
This world is a novel you wrote, and I’m the protagonist from your pen?
That means you know everything about me, including my most fatal weaknesses, right?
In that case, you’re better off dead to avoid threatening me.
The author’s identity wasn’t a protective charm—it was equally dangerous.
But An Luo had to do it. He needed to distance himself from the original host who had harmed the protagonist.
The original Lan Lian had already become a must-eliminate threat through his actions—like sabotaging the protagonist—but An Luo the author hadn’t caused any real harm yet. There was room to negotiate.
The current protagonist was still somewhat green and weak. If An Luo offered sufficient benefits, self-interest would make him suppress his urge to kill the threat for now, play along until he’d squeezed out all the value, then kill him.
Meieruita would still harbor killing intent, but at least An Luo wouldn’t drop dead on the spot.
He’d finally found a path to survival.
An Luo breathed a sigh of relief and began listing out his plan and steps.
As the author, he knew best: appeals to warmth and affection were useless on the protagonist. He had to use the right approach.
As An Luo wrote, he suddenly recalled a comment from early in The Supreme Wizard‘s serialization.
A piercingly sharp comment.
A reader had incisively pointed out that An Luo mistook black, dark, and cruel for profundity, and his all-villain setup lacked supporting arguments:
“Especially in the wizard world you set up, where knowledge inheritance is key—knowledge needs sharing to develop and transmission to endure. If it’s really as you depict, with every wizard hoarding knowledge like a treasure, all villains without a single good one, constantly scheming harm, then knowledge would regress generation by generation, wizards growing weaker until they all become mortals.”
An Luo: “…”
Lies don’t hurt; truth is the sharp blade.
He was absolutely right!
An Luo had been deeply shaken back then, hastily revising the outline with a patch: setting the protagonist’s world as a resource point controlled by a powerful wizard, where the all-villain infighting was induced by that wizard. Other worlds were also survival-of-the-fittest and dark-leaning but relatively normal overall.
He’d barely patched it up.
Thinking back now, that reader had true wisdom!
Without that comment, probably all worlds would have been dark-style. Thanks to him, there were at least some relatively normal places now.
A benefactor!
An Luo felt hope surge.
If he could survive tomorrow’s crisis and slip away from the protagonist, then find a chance to go to a more normal world—even if he couldn’t find a way home—he could at least live a relatively peaceful life.
Yes, that’s the plan!
