Chapter 1

Once, countless little worlds had glittered like stars, each one radiating its own brilliant light. Now, no one knew when it had begun, but black mist had seeped into those worlds, swallowing them one by one. Their lights dimmed until they were barely visible. At the heart of it all, a god in flowing white robes sat upon the throne of the divine temple. A white jade crown rested atop his head, but his brows were tightly drawn together, pain marring his otherwise flawless features. The dense black mist moved like a sinister serpent, silently infiltrating this realm. The god sat with his eyes closed upon the divine throne. The black mist gathered all its strength and launched a fatal strike. But before it could reach him, a dark figure suddenly appeared between them. The god's golden eyes flew open. And what he saw was the shattered soul of his beloved. Suppressing the overwhelming urge to drag his enemy into death with him, the God Lord endured his grievous wounds and used what little power remained to force the black mist into submission. Then, without wasting another moment, he activated a forbidden technique, locking onto the scattered fragments of his lover's soul and tracing their locations across the countless little worlds. And then— Enduring unimaginable agony, he tore his own soul apart as well. Countless specks of white light scattered through the darkness, following the fragments of his beloved's soul into those distant worlds... ــــــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ ❤︎ Yuncheng, Xia Country, had long been famous for the dense forests surrounding it and its breathtaking natural scenery. It was no exaggeration to say that every step revealed another beautiful view, with mountains and rivers seemingly lifted straight from a painting. On the outskirts of Yuncheng, a tour bus was making its way down a tree-lined country road. Cameras and livestreaming equipment had been set up inside the bus, while a veteran entertainment host sat toward the front. The host glanced at the rapidly growing number of viewers in the livestream and smiled at the camera. "Welcome, everyone! We're currently on our way to the filming location for Pastoral Life. We'll be arriving soon." ــــــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ ❤︎ 【Aaaaaah! Tiantian is here! Tiantian, I love you!】 【Mengmeng's new song is amazing too! Sending Mengmeng lots of love~】 ــــــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ ❤︎ Popular singer Cheng Zimeng and Meng Letian, the center of the nation's hottest boy group, were both seated in front of the cameras, enthusiastically greeting their fans. Seeing that the atmosphere was lively, the host took the opportunity to turn his phone around and give the viewers a panoramic look at the bus. And that was how the man sitting silently in the very back row ended up on camera. Unlike everyone else, whose excitement was running high, the man sat with his arms crossed over his chest, his head tilted slightly to one side. Only the sharp, well-defined profile of his face was visible. His features were almost sculpted, and he was staring absently out the window at the passing scenery. ــــــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ ❤︎ 【Whoa, who's that handsome guy in the back? I can't really see his face from that angle.】 【Handsome guy? That's Jing Shan, the pathetic simp. Ugh! He's even followed our baby onto a variety show. That's disgusting!】 【A gay predator who harasses people and tries to exploit the unspoken rules of the industry actually got invited? Is the production team insane?!】 【There's no hard evidence at all! I believe in Jing's character. He must have been framed!】 【Framed my ass. Jing Shan, get the hell out of the entertainment industry!】 ــــــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ ❤︎ The comments quickly descended into chaos. The occasional viewer who tried to defend Jing Shan was immediately drowned out by a flood of insults. Seeing what was happening, the host hurriedly redirected everyone's attention toward the other guests. He rushed through the remaining promotional lines for the show, and once he'd finished his job, he immediately shut down the livestream. The moment the broadcast ended, the bus fell silent. It continued steadily down the road. No one noticed the streak of white light that flashed across the sky. Everyone went back to doing their own thing, and all the warmth and familiarity they'd displayed for the cameras disappeared as well. Cheng Zimeng held an unopened bottle of mineral water in his hand. He turned around to look at the man in the back, hesitated, then quietly asked, "Brother Jing, would you like some water? I've got an extra bottle." Before he could answer, however, Meng Letian, sitting across from him, spoke in a sarcastic tone. "Do Jing really need you worrying about him? He's here because of Xu-xu. Save your energy." There was no mistaking the mockery in the young man's voice. "Meng Letian, you—" Cheng Zimeng was visibly annoyed. Then the corner of his eye caught sight of Jing Shan in the back row. His eyes were already closed, his expression completely unresponsive. A trace of pity crossed his face. Who could have imagined that a respected, award-winning actor who had once been surrounded by admirers would become the most hated man in the entertainment industry in the span of a single month? Cheng Zimeng had been a fan of Jing Shan's. Although he'd never had the chance to work with him before, he knew that the entertainment industry was full of truth mixed with lies. Still, he found it impossible to believe that his idol was the kind of scumbag who would harass people or try to force others into sleeping with him. With so many people around, however, he ultimately said nothing more. Seeing that Jing Shan had closed his eyes to rest, Meng Letian suddenly stood up from the front and walked into the aisle. Crossing his arms, he provoked him again. "Some people do so many disgusting things and still have the nerve to show their faces in public. If you ask me, garbage like that should just—" He didn't get to finish. The man opposite him suddenly opened his eyes. A flash of dark red passed through Jing Shan's eyes. Noticing someone standing directly in front of him, he frowned and looked up. Meng Letian was startled by the sharpness of his gaze. The rest of his sentence caught in his throat. He instinctively took a step backward— —and tripped over the seat behind him. He crashed straight onto the floor. The staff nearby hurried over in a panic to help him up. Jing Shan remained expressionless as he watched the scene unfold. But beneath the calm exterior, his fists slowly clenched. He was doing everything he could to withstand the violent pain surging through his mind. Countless pieces of information were pouring into his consciousness. Fortunately, it didn't last long. When everything finally settled, Jing Shan felt as though he'd just awakened from an extraordinarily long dream. He had somehow watched the entirety of his life over the past twenty-odd years from the perspective of an omniscient observer. And as even more information surfaced, he discovered something else. There was a book in his mind. Its title—and its plot—were both spectacularly cliché. The Young Master's Substitute Lover. It was the story of Shen Tianzong, eldest son of the wealthy Shen family. One day, while watching a talent competition, Shen Tianzong spotted Bai Xiaoxu, whose appearance was remarkably similar to his lost first love. So he took Bai Xiaoxu as his kept lover and made him serve as a substitute for the man he truly loved. After that came every conceivable misunderstanding and emotional catastrophe. You love me, but I don't love you. You love him, but he loves me. I don't believe you! I don't believe you! One stomach-churning, teeth-aching melodramatic twist after another. Countless cannon-fodder characters were sacrificed along the way, but eventually the two leads realized that they were each other's one true love and settled down together in blissful happiness. And Jing Shan? He was the devoted second male lead who was willing to sacrifice everything for the protagonist. Jing Shan had no idea whether he'd actually traveled into another world or whether he'd always been a soul from some unknown place who had suddenly awakened inside this body. He had no memories of transmigrating. Yet whenever he recalled his life before this moment, he felt an intense sense of disconnection. If he had to put it into words, Jing Shan felt as though he had been a character in a novel, dragged along by the plot—and had suddenly awakened. But when he thought about all the idiotic things he'd apparently done according to those memories, he firmly decided that the person who had done them absolutely could not have been him! Besides, the fact that he had the entire plot in his head proved it. He had definitely transmigrated! He'd just... apparently lost his memory in the process. In the original story, the former Jing Shan had accidentally rescued Bai Xiaoxu from a drugging incident at a drinking party and personally taken him to the hospital. That was how the two had met. Afterward, the original Jing Shan had gradually been drawn in by the clean, innocent aura surrounding Bai Xiaoxu and what the story described as his indomitable spirit. Step by step, he fell hopelessly in love. Then he began pursuing him. Eventually, he even died while trying to rescue the protagonist from a kidnapping. Jing Shan found this section of the plot utterly baffling. First of all, the original Jing Shan had always been devoted to his career and had shown very little interest in romance. Otherwise, why would he have remained single until now? And then there was Bai Xiaoxu's decision to become someone's kept lover. How exactly was that supposed to demonstrate an indomitable spirit? He talked a good game, constantly insisting that he wanted to rely on his own hard work. Yet whenever the original Jing Shan offered him resources or gave him gifts, he accepted every single one of them without the slightest hesitation. What a performance. Say a few pretty words, then act as though every benefit he'd received had been forced upon him against his will. Jing Shan couldn't help thinking— Why didn't good fortune like that ever happen to him? Why had no one ever forced him to accept money, resources, and endless kindness? Not that Jing Shan was jealous. Absolutely not. His expression remained perfectly impassive, while the complaints in his mind came one after another. The main problem was that Bai Xiaoxu's manipulative skills were just too amateurish. Jing Shan recalled the young man's face. He was, at best, fairly good-looking, and he was constantly putting on that delicate, pitiful expression while subtly hinting that he wanted this or that. Ugh. The original owner's taste was terrible. If it were him, he would never fall for someone like that. The person he liked was— Was… Was… Who? Something flashed through Jing Shan's mind. It disappeared so quickly that he couldn't catch it. In any case, from Jing Shan's perspective, the original owner's behavior after meeting Bai Xiaoxu could only be explained in one of two ways. Either someone had put a curse on him. Or the protagonists really did possess some kind of ‘protagonist halo’ that had collectively lowered everyone's IQ. It seemed as though every supporting character in this novel suffered the same fate. Anyone who appeared often enough was inevitably affected by the two protagonists. If they were lucky, they became nothing more than a foil. Maybe they lost their careers. Maybe they went abroad and disappeared from the story. If they were unlucky— Like the second male lead, for example— they died. The two protagonists got to fall madly in love while everyone around them was left picking up the pieces. Weren't these two basically a pair of walking calamities? The more Jing Shan read through the plot, the more sinister the whole thing seemed. Fortunately, he wasn't the original Jing Shan. For the sake of staying alive, he decided that the safest course of action was to keep as far away from those two protagonists as possible. At this point in the story, the original Jing Shan had already been falsely accused and smeared all over the internet. His reputation had plummeted. And the mastermind behind it all was, naturally, the male lead, Shen Tianzong. As the domineering heir to a wealthy family, Shen Tianzong obviously couldn't tolerate his little songbird getting too close to anyone else. So the completely innocent Jing Shan, who knew nothing about the relationship between the two men, became the target of his anger. Starlight Entertainment was owned by the Shen family and wielded considerable influence within the industry. Once Shen Tianzong gave the word, most respectable film and television productions no longer dared to cast Jing Shan. They were afraid of offending the Shen family. As a result, Jing Shan currently had no work at all. But none of this bothered the newly awakened Jing Shan very much. He didn't care what other people thought of him, and acting wasn't particularly interesting to him anyway. The original Jing Shan wasn't a spendthrift. He also had excellent judgment when it came to investments. Over the years, he'd invested in quite a few businesses and accumulated a considerable fortune. No one knew that the newly established Jing Group, a rising name in the business world, was actually his company. As long as he didn't later sacrifice himself brainlessly for the protagonist, he could live perfectly well even if he left the entertainment industry altogether. Jing Shan adapted to his circumstances remarkably quickly. After thinking through his current situation, he slowly let out a breath. Meng Letian, apparently feeling humiliated by what had just happened, had finally quieted down. An eerie silence settled over the bus. With nothing else to do, Jing Shan casually opened the email app on his phone. He remembered that there were still quite a few contracts and proposals from the company waiting for his approval. He flipped through the documents. And then he realized—he could handle all of them effortlessly. These tasks came to him almost instinctively. He processed them far faster than the original Jing Shan ever had, and his analysis was considerably more thorough. So before he transmigrated, he must have been a pretty damn capable person! Even if he didn't act anymore, he could simply switch careers and enter the business world. Why be an actor? He was going to be a domineering CEO instead!