Chapter 1: I Can’t Film Your Scenes (1)

Yao Lan adjusted her sunglasses, folded her arms, and leaned back in her chair, crossing her right leg over her left. Behind the dark lenses, her gaze held a faint trace of irritation.

Someone beside her muttered, “All that attitude just to ride the subway.”

Yao Lan glanced over. “I just had double-eyelid surgery. I’m still recovering.”

The stranger clearly hadn’t expected her to respond. He froze for a couple of seconds. Yao Lan tilted her head and gave him a warm smile.

“Sorry… I… Could I get your contact information? Maybe I could buy you dinner to make it up to you.” His voice stumbled, and a suspicious flush crept across his face.

“No need.” Yao Lan glanced at the subway’s station display, picked up the oil-paper umbrella beside her, and stepped off the train. Behind her sunglasses, her irritation had given way to something colder.

This was a new quest she’d taken on: the Main God Quest. It sounded impressive enough. The Main God had put out a call for applicants, but the application page didn’t explain what the quest involved. Still, with a reward of so many Points on offer, Yao Lan had submitted a ten-thousand-character essay explaining why she deserved the job.

Sure enough, the Main God had been touched by her sincerity and assigned her the quest.

The Main God had two daughters. One of them, Ji Ruanqing, had run into trouble during a recent quest, and her Soul Fragments had shattered and scattered across the small worlds.

Yao Lan’s job was to gather up every last Soul Fragment. The fragments had already merged with the AI in this world, which had lost itself and forgotten where it came from. As for how to get the fragments out… No one had ever done it before, so there was no telling.

As expected, the Main God’s Points weren’t easy to earn.

To be fair, if the reward hadn’t been eight figures, and if she hadn’t been short on Points for the snow-covered mountain she wanted to buy, she would have abandoned the quest already.

In this world, Yao Lan was a director, and Ji Ruanqing was a screenwriter. The body Yao Lan inhabited had been given her own name and appearance.

The two were partners, hoping to make films that could reach the big screen. So far, though, they’d completed nothing beyond a few student short films and their graduation project. Their work had won all sorts of awards. Maybe none carried the prestige of the major film festivals, but for college students, they were doing quite well.

Their future had once looked bright. In her senior year, Ji Ruanqing wrote a film script, and they had nearly secured a deal with a production company. But before they could sign, she offended a rich heir. Just like that, the road to the entertainment industry was closed to them.

Now they made a living writing scripts for short videos. That door had stayed open, presumably to humiliate them: these two “geniuses,” whose ambitions had always been sky-high, were left making disposable snack-sized entertainment. It was a crushing blow. They’d graduated two years ago.

This world was relatively open-ended. There were no other quests, only the Soul Fragments. Yao Lan skimmed the general plot summary and narrowed her eyes.

At least she could pinpoint where the Soul Fragments were. Otherwise, she’d need at least ten digits’ worth of Points to make this worthwhile.

One other thing bothered her: the Main God Quest’s warning wasn’t specific to this world.

[Because of the missing Soul Fragments, the target may be emotionally unstable.]

Yao Lan stepped out of the subway station and opened her oil-paper umbrella. The canopy faded from white to transparent around its edges, and two red lotuses seemed to float at its center. Look closely, and the flowers were actually moving.

The umbrella didn’t look like much protection from the sun, but not a single ray slipped beneath it. It was pleasantly cool, too.

Of course, to anyone else, it was just an ordinary oil-paper umbrella.

Yao Lan threaded her way through the crowd and eventually entered an aging apartment complex. Its security gate was little more than decoration. Delivery riders tore around the grounds, their electric bikes going so fast they looked ready to take flight.

She picked up two packages from the parcel station and went home. She and Ji Ruanqing lived together now. Living with the target of her quest certainly made things convenient.

As soon as Yao Lan opened the front door, she spotted Ji Ruanqing leaning against the sofa. Two empty milk-tea cups sat on the table.

“I got you one, but you weren’t back, so I drank it for you.” Ji Ruanqing glanced at Yao Lan, then looked back at her phone. Her fingers hadn’t stopped moving once.

The game blared from her phone. [You have been slain]

Ji Ruanqing sighed.

Yao Lan studied her. Ji Ruanqing had inherited the best of both her mothers’ genes and was gorgeous, but she clearly had no interest in doing anything with her appearance. A messy little bun stuck up on her head, and her hair was dyed a soft pink that made her small, palm-sized face look even paler. She wore a pair of plain pajamas that couldn’t have cost more than thirty yuan.

“Keep it down.”

“Oh.” Ji Ruanqing answered as [You have been slain] sounded from her phone again. While waiting to respawn, she felt around on the coffee table until she found her earbuds and put them in.

Yao Lan turned and went into her room, then locked the door.

“You really don’t like her,” Koukou said with certainty.

Koukou was Yao Lan’s system. It hadn’t always been called Koukou. Its original name was the thoroughly unremarkable System No. 222. Then, one time during a quest, Yao Lan received a novel that was nothing but little square boxes. After that, the system officially became Koukou.

Yao Lan wiped down her oil-paper umbrella and slid it into its sleeve. “I don’t like looking after kids.”

“She’s twenty-three. That hardly makes her a kid.”

“How could she not be, to me?” Yao Lan couldn’t even remember how old she was anymore.

She opened her computer and searched online for information about herself and Ji Ruanqing. Almost everything she found dated back two years.

Yao Lan tapped her fingers on the desk, then looked up the person they’d offended.

His name was Lin Xi, the youngest son of the wealthy Lin Family. Two years ago, Lin Xi had pursued Ji Ruanqing and been rejected. In a fit of rage, he’d tried to force a kiss on her in public. Ji Ruanqing slapped him and kicked him in the groin. She’d hit him so hard she nearly crippled him on the spot, earning the Lin Family’s enmity. The original AI in Yao Lan’s body had been dragged into the mess as collateral damage.

Honestly, Yao Lan had been stunned when she learned that was how the feud began.

She browsed through the search results. Lin Xi had made it into the entertainment industry and become a director. His third film was due in theaters next month. The first two had scored 2.4 and 2.6.

Yao Lan had meant to look into them, but those ratings killed her interest instantly. She might be immortal, but she still didn’t want to waste her life. She had to hand it to the Lin Family, though. They really had money to burn, tossing Lin Xi hundreds of millions at a time to play with.

“Is there no protagonist in this world?” Yao Lan asked.

“This world just finished a plotline recently. A new protagonist hasn’t emerged yet.”

“Oh.” Yao Lan was a little disappointed. If there were a protagonist, she could borrow their Halo to deal with a villainous supporting character like him.

This was the first quest she’d ever taken with absolutely no idea what to do.

Yao Lan spun her pen at a dizzying speed. Someone knocked on the door and tried the handle. She tossed the pen onto the desk.

Well, she was here now. She’d just have to see it through.

Ji Ruanqing couldn’t get in, but she’d already started shouting from the other side of the door. “Why’d you lock it? Yao Lan, keeping secrets from me now? Am I not your favorite friend anymore?”

Yao Lan: “…”

***

[T/N regarding “Koukou”]: The name Koukou is an inside joke about internet censorship in Chinese web novels. The Chinese character 口 (pinyin: kǒu) literally looks like a small square box (□). On Chinese novel sites (like Jinjiang), the automated filter replaces any censored or sensitive text with square blocks or strings of “口口”. Since the novel Yao Lan received was completely censored and covered in these boxes, she jokingly nicknamed her system “Koukou”.