No sooner had they thought of Chu Xuzhou than he appeared.
In the suffocating silence, a man materialized without a sound, drawing every gaze in the room to him.
Yin Bujie let out a scoff. “I knew there was at least one more.”
Yin Le and Qiao Qingli had both been “asleep,” which meant they’d been active somewhere else.
“And what are you to him?” Yin Bujie asked. He’d already played the roles of father and big brother—what else was missing in this bastard’s game of house?
Chu Xuzhou replied, “His boyfriend.”
“?”
Yin Bujie leaped down from the wall as Qiao Qingshuang turned around. They spoke in unison. “What?”
Bai Chen suddenly felt the pressure on him lighten considerably. He looked toward Chu Xuzhou, who drew in a shallow breath before repeating clearly and firmly, “I’m his boyfriend.”
Many years later, the book transmigrators from Mad Flower Blood Moon would still refuse to dwell on that moment of utter darkness.
Black clouds churned over Everbright Street, pressing down on the thinning air. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ground, racing outward as black miasma seeped from them in a frantic rush. Screams and roars clawed their way upward from the depths, and the earth itself trembled violently.
The Strangeness King lunged first at Chu Xuzhou, only to be thrown off course by a headbutt from the Little Devil King who had suddenly opened his eyes in Chu Xuzhou’s arms.
Xiao Li woke next and toddled over to Qiao Qingshuang, wrapping his arms around him as tears streamed down his cheeks. “Brother, brother,” he mumbled through sobs.
Qiao Qingshuang bellowed questions at the Living Dead even as he swung his sword, severing the heads of a cluster of Evil Anomalies that had crawled out from one of the fissures.
More and more Evil Anomalies emerged. Growing irritated, Qiao Qingshuang slashed directly at the source—Yin Bujie.
The Living Dead darted between them, pulling Qiao Qingshuang back one moment and shoving Yin Bujie away the next.
Everbright Street cracked and heaved in the escalating chaos, the shockwaves rippling farther and farther out. Man and anomaly alike barricaded themselves indoors, too terrified to emerge—everyone except one. When the fissures snaked toward the hospital and tendrils of black miasma drifted in that direction, the boy’s irises slowly bleached to white as he stroked the cat’s head. He swallowed hard.
Before long, a white-eyed boy clutching a little cat appeared on the fringes of the brawl.
His pure white pupils fixed on the fray, and slender strands of white fur drifted from them like ethereal threads.
The book transmigrators stared in silence.
It was the very picture of doomsday.
Fine, let it all end in death. Let the world crumble.
The instigator of it all was perched atop Yin Le, one foot planted on the back of an Evil Anomaly. He stared blankly at the apocalyptic scene unfolding before him.
“Stop fighting,” he said. His body began to grow, silver-white hair unfurling in the wind as his eyelashes extended backward, traced in delicate frost.
The impossibly long silver tresses coiled around the scattering white fur like dandelion seeds. A long leg snapped back, slamming into Yin Bujie’s head. A hand landed expertly on the nape of Qiao Qingshuang’s neck, and Jiang Yuanmu crumpled unconscious for the second time.
When those bare red-white feet touched down, the cracks beneath them sealed shut in an instant, as if the gates of hell had slammed closed. The Evil Anomalies that hadn’t fully emerged were sheared in half.
The silver-white hair settled to the ground, and the world fell silent at last.
Bai Chen half-crouched on the ground, gasping for breath as he looked up at Chu Xuzhou. Sweat streaked Chu Xuzhou’s face amid the disheveled mess, but he managed a smile. “Not bad. Better than I expected. The fight burned off some of that pent-up anger and resentment in their bodies.”
Those reassuring words made Bai Chen’s heart skip, then ease. With practiced ease, he reached into his pocket and pulled out three sacks in different colors.
Chu Xuzhou stared. “…”
Bai Chen turned to Su Xuan and An Yu, who hadn’t yet recovered, his hand already dipping toward his pocket again.
“No, no, we’re good—we don’t need any,” Su Xuan said hastily, dragging An Yu back toward the car. “We’ll follow along nicely.”
Jiang Yuanmu, Qiao Qingshuang, and Yin Bujie were hauled off to Bai Chen’s villa just outside Film City.
Bai Chen stayed in the production team’s hotel during crunch times on set, but those places were cramped. This villa, by contrast, sprawled generously amid lush flower gardens. A broad pond teemed with colorful fish flicking their ornate tails in lazy swims—a private retreat for Bai Chen’s downtime.
The villa felt far less spacious now. The fish had stopped their graceful dances.
A Nuan still dozed in the boy’s arms, his paws hooked tightly into the boy’s collar. Qiao Qingli sat close to Qiao Qingshuang, the tear tracks at the corners of his eyes lingering even in sleep. Yin Le had ceased pestering the Strangeness King and stood quietly by his side, eyes closed.
The vast living room lay hushed, devoid even of breathing.
Bai Chen sat in the center, with only Chu Xuzhou positioned close beside him.
“Let me introduce myself,” he said obediently. “I’m the stray cat A Nuan. I’m Qiao Qingli. I’m Yin Le. My name is Bai Chen.”
He added, “That’s all.”
The three others ignored him—some in silence, others with icy glares or stony resolve. They might as well have been carved from rock, utterly unyielding.
Chu Xuzhou broke the tension. “So, who are you, really?”
It was a leading question, one that mirrored the doubt he’d harbored all along.
Liu Mo, stationed just outside the door, perked up his ears, listening with rapt attention.
These heavyweights had been whisked away from Everbright Street too swiftly for the other book transmigrators to keep pace. Team Four’s sole teleporter had singled out Liu Mo as the most suitable tail and sent him here. Now, he was the only invisible transmigrator on the premises—the sole conduit for relaying this pivotal intelligence outward.
Through him, thousands of observers tuned in.
And they heard an answer no one could have anticipated.
“I’m a novel.”
Bai Chen kept his head bowed, pausing for several seconds before uttering those words. Once they spilled out, the rest followed in a natural torrent.
“At first, I didn’t even know I was a novel. There was a long period of chaos for me. Once I gained a sliver of self-awareness, I felt trapped in an endless void—pitch-black, lightless, empty, confined in suffocating darkness.
“I instinctively craved to be seen, to earn affection through those gazes. But there was nothing. In that lightless prison, I began to fade, drifting toward oblivion.
“Much later, I realized I was a novel. A novel exists to be read, but no one read me. So I hurtled toward death, and my novel world decayed alongside me.”
As the novel world died, its pillar characters crumbled: some collapsed inwardly, others perished outright, and many simply departed. Even the interdimensional wanderers who’d been drawn here centuries ago began to leave one by one. Everyone else in the world followed, dying off in droves.
Bai Chen could sense it all—helpless to intervene.
Their breakdowns, deaths, and exits only hastened the world’s final plunge into lifelessness.
Bewildered and hopeless, Bai Chen faced his end, sinking back into the dark.
But then he sensed a faint glimmer of “light.” Someone was watching. He slipped toward death again, only to glimpse another spark…
He gathered those meager “lights.” Eventually, a brighter one appeared, enough for him to barely manifest an avatar.
By then, the world’s death progress bar teetered at its endgame, a hopeless chill pervading everything. Bai Chen dragged his frail body to cower in a trash bin, watching the boy Jiang Yuanmu collapse into the snow, on the brink of death.
He knew the boy. All the negative energy he’d generated, the stinging pricks from those “lights”—the boy had absorbed them all.
Summoning every ounce of strength, Bai Chen raced to him and clutched at the boy’s fading warmth, letting out a mournful cry.
“Don’t die.”
“Don’t die.”
None of us have to die.
The boy survived—and loved him fiercely. Bai Chen realized it belatedly: in that love, his weakness ebbed away. He no longer needed those “lights” to cling to life.
Nurtured by the boy’s love, vitality bloomed within him day by day. He poured equal effort into restoring the boy’s health. Every night, watching the boy eat filled him with joy.
When he amassed enough energy to shapeshift again, he crept cautiously to the foot of Frost Mountain.
He knew who lived there: embodiments of the beauty he’d collected, pillars bound to him by shared fate.
Disheveled and ignorant back then, he’d ended up a battered little brother with scrambled wits.
All he could do was cling. “Brother, don’t abandon me.”
“Brother, we stay together forever.”
Don’t be lonely anymore, brother. Don’t be sad.
Toward the Strangeness King Yin Bujie, he felt equal parts rage and guilt. While imprisoned in darkness, he’d felt Yin Bujie abandon him for another world.
When Yin Bujie leaped into the abyss, Bai Chen lunged forward and grabbed his sleeve. Don’t go.
Then kicked him the rest of the way down. Fine, go then.
He brawled with Yin Bujie daily, occasionally sticking to him. He made Yin Bujie write love journals as proof, forging binding contracts.
He aimed to become a star—not just beloved by these pillars, but by the entire world.
With their love, even without the “lights,” he’d brim with vitality and power.
Love him.
Love this world.
And the world would live again.
As for the interdimensional arrival Chu Xuzhou, Bai Chen had initially seen him as little more than an ATM—with zero qualms about the withdrawals. He’d crashed there for over three centuries without paying rent.
One day, he discovered Chu Xuzhou’s love was absorbable, distinct from the rest: infused with “light”-like energy that perfectly supplemented his innate craving.
And so, Chu Xuzhou graduated beyond mere cash dispenser.
Chu Xuzhou loved staring at him. He loved being watched.
Chu Xuzhou brimmed with curiosity toward him. He loved being explored.
Chu Xuzhou tended to him with meticulous patience and care. It softened Bai Chen’s heart, stirring a twinge of grievance. Then he’d coax Chu Xuzhou into doing more, orbiting him endlessly, always at hand.
That way, he wouldn’t leave.
Bai Chen was greedy, yes—he wanted everyone’s love. But all he truly desired was for them to love him.
Once Bai Chen finished, every gaze in the living room fixed on him—shock, dawning realization, tremors of emotion chasing away the lingering ice and stone.
Liu Mo had forgotten to message the System Group. Through him, thousands of observers and engineers from the Book Transmigration Bureau watched in stunned silence.
“I’m a novel,” Bai Chen reiterated. “This world is a novel world. People from your realm call me Mad Flower Blood Moon.”
He explained why he’d knocked them out. “My energy is recovering—maybe not up to your level yet—but this is a novel world. I’m the world’s consciousness made manifest. Here, I’m invincible.”
“Because I’m the world’s consciousness, I can become the blood-related little brother to my brother or the heir to Father’s bloodline as his son.”
“I’m the incarnation of the world’s consciousness—that’s why you all accepted and adored me so seamlessly.” Bai Chen blinked his damp eyes and smiled with unwavering conviction. “I knew it deep down: you’ve always held love for me in your hearts, even if you’ve contemplated mutual destruction.”
