Chapter 1: Back in the Country

Flight KL8972 was scheduled to touch down at Cloud Port International Airport at seven in the evening. The plane taxied to a smooth halt, without so much as a bump.

A flight attendant crouched beside the seat and gently roused the passenger bundled up in his blanket. With impeccable service and methodical poise, she briefed him on the local weather and humidity.

A hand with clearly defined knuckles lifted the edge of the blanket. The passenger murmured a soft acknowledgment, then raised his face from the soft woolen folds and offered her a polite smile.

In the cabin’s gentle lighting, his slightly drooping forelocks half-concealed the faint mole beneath his left eye, veiling an indescribable luster within his ink-black pupils.

The instant their gazes met, it felt like stepping onto a frozen river sheathed in thin ice.

She had seen this face countless times on the silver screen. Now it loomed life-size before her, and even her ironclad professionalism couldn’t stop a slight hesitation.

Only after a moment did she regain her composure and deliver her final line with earnest sincerity.

“Welcome back to Shenlan, Mr. Fu.”

Her crisp voice rang pleasantly in his ears, but Fu Yanzong betrayed no reaction. Propping his cheek on one hand, he turned his head with idle curiosity and glanced out the window at the city lights blazing through the night.

The metal fuselage sliced through the twilight, the streaks of light beyond the porthole scattering like crumpled gold foil as they unfurled languidly along the runway of Cloud Port International Airport.

…

The studio’s arranged car had already pulled onto the apron for pickup. Fu Yanzong ducked inside, leaving the cluster of curious stares in his wake.

The new assistant, who had been waiting in the car since early that morning, handed him a brand-new phone with some nervousness. Fu Yanzong’s original domestic SIM card was already slotted inside.

At the same time, the assistant offered a cautious self-introduction. “Hello, Brother Fu. I’m your new assistant, Sun Jiayang. Feel free to call me Xiao Sun. Brother Cheng should’ve mentioned me to you.”

Fu Yanzong lounged lazily against the seatback, nodding as he unlocked the phone’s screen.

No sooner had he opened his social media app than a tidal wave of thousands of messages came crashing in. Fu Yanzong cleared them all with a single tap without so much as glancing at them. Then, unhurriedly, he opened the app store and downloaded a few of his favorite mobile games.

The assistant shifted uncomfortably at the sight of his employer’s actions and the sluggishly crawling download bars on the screen. He spoke up first. “Brother Fu, sorry—I forgot to prepare those in advance…”

“Don’t be so tense.” Fu Yanzong lifted his gaze, the corner of his eye curving in a faint, approachable arc. “That’s not in your job description. I’m not going to eat you.”

Everyone in this world was a little looks-obsessed, and the subtle curve of the mole beneath Fu Yanzong’s eye was especially captivating. The fresh-faced college grad of an assistant scratched his head with an embarrassed grin, promptly banishing all those tabloid tales of Fu Yanzong’s “capricious and vicious” reputation to the back of his mind.

Fu Yanzong had left Shenlan for Berlin three years ago to film, holing up almost exclusively on set without his agent or assistant in tow. He had rarely appeared in public during that time.

As for whether those years had changed him—or what he had become—no one knew.

Xiao Sun lowered his hand and watched as Fu Yanzong idly selected a match-3 mini-game. His pale fingertips danced across the screen, swiftly clearing heaps of blocks amid a flurry of satisfying pops, until an exuberant “Unbelievable!” chimed triumphantly.

At that moment, Fu Yanzong asked offhandedly, “Where’s Ji Cheng?”

Xiao Sun hurried to explain. “Brother Cheng told me to apologize on his behalf. He’s got a ton of artists under his wing these past few years, and things have been slammed lately—he just couldn’t swing it. But he’ll definitely make it to the welcome banquet on time later…”

He hadn’t finished speaking when the car lurched to an abrupt halt, wrenching a sharp yelp from him. The black Maybach splashed through puddles on the airport overpass before screeching to a stop.

The candy block Fu Yanzong had been lining up for clearance got bumped by mistake, leaving a big crying face on the screen alongside a forlorn “SAD.”

He arched an eyebrow faintly.

“Road’s blocked up ahead,” the driver explained, lowering his window. In an instant, the clammy early-spring night breeze swept in, laced with piercing screams.

At the tail end of the endless snarl of traffic, the terminal exit resembled a kicked beehive. Countless blue light sticks flickered erratically through the darkness. Someone had even clambered onto a concrete barrier, waving a sign that screamed “Tang Tang” in massive, eye-searing letters.

Security personnel blew whistles nonstop to hold back the fans surging toward the lanes, but to little effect—one of them nearly clipped the Maybach’s front end.

Xiao Sun let out an awed tsk. “This is way over the top… Hope nothing goes wrong.”

Everyone in the industry knew that celebrity pickups and drop-offs were handled with utmost discretion. Top-tier teams signed confidentiality agreements with the airport’s VIP services department, making it nearly impossible for regular fans to track the full itinerary. Only obsessive stalkers willing to break the law resorted to ambushes like this.

Fu Yanzong’s schedule today had been cloaked in total secrecy from start to finish.

Chaotic scenes like this usually stemmed from teams deliberately leaking itineraries for hype—to land a few “candid airport shots” on the trending lists. Most stars in the biz pulled this stunt, and for Fu Yanzong, it was par for the course.

“Take the T3 detour,” Fu Yanzong instructed. His gaze lingered for a beat on that glaring blue “Tang Tang” sign—it felt oddly familiar.

Xiao Sun had sharp instincts and volunteered the info before Fu Yanzong could ask. “That’s probably Su Tang’s fanbase. Teacher Su’s one of the artists Brother Cheng signed over the last couple years, but Dongyu poached him not long ago—forked over a massive penalty fee for it.”

Seeing no sign from Fu Yanzong to hold back, Xiao Sun pressed on. “He came up through a talent show and is pivoting to acting now. He’s playing the male lead opposite you in Hidden Face…”

Even an idiot could tell this Su Tang was no ordinary upstart.

A total newbie snagged by Ji Cheng right out of the gate, then poached by Dongyu—and landing a role opposite Fu Yanzong without a scrap of acting experience to his name?

No one would buy that he didn’t have serious backing.

From Xiao Sun’s vantage, Fu Yanzong offered no verdict on this rundown of the “new hotshot.” Instead, he promptly returned his attention to the match-3 game, listlessly whiling away the interminable drive.

Only Fu Yanzong could see it: the “SAD” from his accidental tap was forcibly scrubbed away by a blob of unidentified glowing light, replaced with a beaming smiley face.

His fingertip stilled, but he made no dramatic fuss over the virus-like intrusion.

Slowly, a line of text materialized beneath the smiley.

“Hello, Host! Nice to see you again. The Spacetime Administration Auxiliary Self-Rescue System is here to serve you!”

“Warm reminder: You have now returned to the heartthrob storyline’s main track. Your first encounter with the protagonist’s love interest is imminent. Please review the original novel text provided by the system again to prevent any uncontrolled developments—”

The window hummed smoothly upward, muffling the fresh roar from the terminal and sharpening the focus on the tiny light orb that had materialized out of thin air on Fu Yanzong’s phone screen.

Spacetime Administration Auxiliary Self-Rescue System…

Fu Yanzong narrowed his eyes, flicking his gaze across the screen.

In truth, the so-called self-rescue system had first appeared at his side back in Berlin. It had tried dozens of infiltration methods, persistently hammering home its explanation, over and over—

Fu Yanzong was merely a supporting character in an entertainment-world novel about a heartthrob who won over everyone after a contract marriage.

More precisely, one of the cannon-fodder suitors vying for him.

All the works that had earned him fan adulation, all the trophies gleaming on his shelf—they were nothing but set dressing to prop up the protagonist’s love interest, fodder for petty jealousies and cutthroat rivalries with the other suitors.

The system had materialized because it detected some uncontrollable—and irreversible—shift in this world derived from a novel.

According to the Spacetime Administration’s calculations, letting the plot barrel onward unchanged carried a 99 percent chance of total world collapse.

To avert disaster, it had bound itself to Fu Yanzong, the character with the highest plot relevance, in hopes he could rewrite the story’s course.

But that rewrite had to be exquisitely precise. Push too hard, and the heartthrob protagonist—tethered to the world’s core will—might unleash chaos on everything.

Fu Yanzong, of course, didn’t swallow such a tall tale wholesale.

Yet the system had pulled off feats that defied reason and common sense.

Which was why he hadn’t yet shipped the light orb off to a lab for disassembly.

On the surface, he’d played along with the “host” designation, all breezy acceptance. In secret, though, he’d plumbed the system’s depths.

He discovered it knew zilch about his actual past, and its plot data was riddled with gaping holes.

The one reliable piece was its projections for the key players’ arcs.

Whether it was his agent Ji Cheng’s relentless wheedling to lure him back for the role, or the gridlock at the airport… it all lined up perfectly with the original novel text the system had provided.

How to put it?

It was a little nauseating.

This whole setup of being shoehorned into the role of a “cannon-fodder suitor.”

Fu Yanzong’s eyelid fluttered ever so slightly. Then, composure restored, he powered through the restarted match-3 game to victory before leisurely pulling up the novel excerpt the system had transmitted.

—

All eyes in the room converged on Su Tang, that pretty little dimwit. He stood there soft and adorably dazed, his cheeks faintly flushed like a lost fawn in the woods or a lily bowed by morning dew. The poor thing stood blankly and delicately in the center of the cocktail party, passively enduring the crowd’s devouring gazes.

Fu Yanzong, who should have been the star of the welcome reception, had his spotlight stolen away. Yet he wasn’t angry at all. Instead, he smiled faintly, a mix of two parts wild defiance and one part roguish charm, as he murmured to himself, “Su Tang, huh? Interesting.”

…

Talk about a total bombshell right out of the gate.

The Self-Rescue System’s plot summaries had at least been distilled into normal text before. Now it wasn’t even bothering to act.

Fu Yanzong’s index finger, which had been casually resting on the edge of his phone, suddenly pressed down hard. His knuckles turned deathly pale with barely restrained tension.

The Self-Rescue System, frozen on the phone screen, gave a little shudder. It had a distinctly bad feeling about this.

A moment later, Fu Yanzong tapped the page-turn button with an expressionless face. In his mind, he asked the system quite calmly, “No name-censoring feature?”

It felt weirdly like his name appearing in that passage had tainted him with some eldritch abomination.

“…Sorry.”

The system’s response was utterly guilty. “I’m just an auxiliary system. Aside from explaining the plot, I don’t have any other functions. I’m not from the same production line as those cheat-code models.”

“…”

Pretending not to notice the blatant disdain in Fu Yanzong’s eyes, the Self-Rescue System continued, “There are plenty of details in the original novel text. It’s better if you read them yourself, Host.”

“You can skip this descriptive bit. The key part comes later: the crowd-favorite Su Tang drinks some spiked booze and stumbles, dazed, toward Song Linyu’s room—right when you spot him.”

(Note: Yu means Fish)

“At that point, you’ve already taken a bit of a liking to Su Tang. Plus, he’s your mortal enemy Song Linyu’s rival, so fueled by the alcohol, you scoop him up by the waist and drag him straight into your own room…”

Fu Yanzong’s lips curved in a smirk at that, his expression somewhere between amusement and mockery as he drawled sarcastically, “Not only blind, but a complete idiot too.”

The system’s electronic voice glitched for a split second. Realizing he was roasting the “him” from the book, it hurriedly explained, “That’s exactly why we need to help you change the plot, Host.”

“Anyway, Song Linyu can be considered the last-minute stock-buying top in the novel—a ruthless, unhinged psycho shrouded in darkness. He’d do anything for Su Tang. Host, you absolutely must be careful around him!”

With that, the Self-Rescue System’s nonstop nagging finally fell silent. The Maybach eased to a stop in front of their destination, suddenly exposed amid the surging crowd.

A moment later, Fu Yanzong switched off his phone. Heaven knew what crossed his mind, but a breathy chuckle escaped him—warm and languid, yet edged with steel.

“Dead rival, huh… Yeah, I’ll definitely have to be very, very careful.”

Camera flashes blazed outside the window, streaking across the tinted glass like shooting stars in broad daylight. Someone bent down to pull open the car door. It was his manager, Ji Cheng, holding the doorframe steady with impeccable courtesy and a perfectly measured smile.

“Welcome back, Yanzong. We’ve all missed you.”

Brother Fu: ……