“Mm…”
A muffled groan from a young woman echoed faintly in her ears, as if she were enduring some unbearable pain yet couldn’t fully suppress the soft sounds slipping from her lips. Anyone hearing it would think she was in agony.
The room was filled with the sweet scent of white peaches. Ye Chengxing, still groggy and not fully conscious, snapped her eyes open on instinct as a doctor when she heard that pained noise.
But as soon as her eyes opened, she nearly squeezed them shut again in shock before she could even make sense of the scene before her.
Ye Chengxing took a deep breath. Her first thought was that she must be dreaming.
Otherwise, how could she—fresh from performing surgery on a patient moments ago—be seeing something like this?
A stunningly beautiful young woman lay on the bed, her brows slightly furrowed.
Her long hair cascaded around her, and she wore only a thin garment made of gossamer fabric. The nearly transparent material half-concealed her most private areas while leaving vast expanses of snowy white skin exposed. Under the bright lights, it gleamed with a lustrous sheen.
The atmosphere was thick with unintended intimacy.
Just one glance, and the image burned itself into Ye Chengxing’s mind, impossible to shake.
Perhaps she’d stared too long in stunned silence, because the girl on the bed trembled her lashes and opened her eyes.
She really was breathtakingly beautiful.
Her eyes were unparalleled, outshining everything around them. Long, delicate lashes framed amber irises that shimmered like rippling water, making them all the more clear and enchanting.
But right now, those gorgeous eyes were clouded with disorientation, filled only with humiliated fury and helpless despair.
Ye Chengxing shuddered under the weight of the emotions in that gaze.
“A Cheng, how do you like your birthday gift?” At that moment, a teasing voice sounded in her ear, laced with an ambiguous lilt. “I know you just differentiated this year, so I prepared something special for you.”
Ye Chengxing turned toward the voice and only then noticed, a beat too late, that someone else stood beside her.
It was a stranger—she’d never seen the woman before. Yet the stranger acted as if they were old acquaintances, reaching out to pat her shoulder with easy familiarity. “Dazed already, huh? This omega is top-tier, you know—years of drugs and conditioning went into her. She might be resisting now, but give it a little time, and I guarantee you’ll never forget this night…”
Her head still spun a bit. Ye Chengxing frowned slightly. Though she had no idea what was going on, one thing was clear: this wasn’t a dream.
If it was, it felt far too real.
In the few seconds it took her to process, the voice by her ear grew increasingly explicit. Ye Chengxing endured it for a moment before grasping the situation. Ignoring another wave of dizziness, she cut in sharply, “You’re forcing her into this!”
She figured she’d stumbled onto some criminal operation. She reached for her phone to call the police, punching in the emergency number on the screen. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t hit the call button.
Staring at the unfamiliar phone in her hand, Ye Chengxing froze. Was she doing something wrong, or was something blocking her? Either way, the call wouldn’t go through.
Her outburst caught the woman beside her off guard. The stranger blinked, then leaned in close with sudden realization. “Haven’t you had enough of that script? Though yeah, their faces when they find out the truth are always priceless. Time to wrap things up, right?”
Ye Chengxing had no interest in bantering with the “criminal.” She just wanted to report her and get her arrested. But the woman misinterpreted her expression, winking conspiratorially. “Don’t worry, I’ll head out now. Won’t cramp your style at all.”
…She was trying to flee?
Ye Chengxing instinctively reached out to stop her, but another dizzy spell made her grab at empty air. Then a strange electronic chime rang in her ears—
【Ding-dong. Current identity binding successful.】
With that sound, the dizziness seemed to lift considerably.
Ye Chengxing pressed her brow. She glanced at her phone screen. Before the electronic voice could speak again, she addressed it in her mind: “Did you stop me from making that call?”
It sounded like a question, but she already knew the answer.
The electronic voice paused, apparently surprised by her perceptiveness, before replying: 【Yes… Hello, Host. The situation was urgent earlier. Allow me to give you my belated introduction. I am System 001, your accompanying system for this mission. The block was only to ensure you made your decision with a clear head. Nothing more.】
Ye Chengxing listened without responding.
The electronic voice continued: 【You’ve died. Overwork from back-to-back surgeries. You might not have realized it yet.】
Truth be told, Ye Chengxing had suspected as much since waking up. One second she’d been in surgery; the next, here. Nothing added up. This sudden electronic voice confirmed her hunch.
After a pause, she asked, “So this is the afterlife?”
The system quickly refuted her: 【No, no, no. This isn’t the afterlife, but it is another world. Think of it as a mission. We detected your exceptionally high merit value from your previous life. Complete the tasks to gather enough energy, and you can revive and return to your original world.】
Gather enough energy to revive… Dead and reborn?
No, that wasn’t the point. Did this mission involve the person on the bed? Completing it might let her save her.
Having sorted her thoughts, Ye Chengxing responded swiftly: “Got it. Tell me the mission.”
With her affirmative reply, the system perked up, instantly transmitting memories and plot details into her mind. It also directed her gaze back to the bed.
【Host, the omega on the bed is Li Jia, the major villain from the later stages of this story. The plot hasn’t begun yet. You have two mission options: one, destroy her completely before she can destroy the world; or two, heal, redeem, and reform her so she no longer harbors thoughts of world destruction. Both yield the same energy reward.】
The sudden influx of text into her mind felt strange. Ye Chengxing sorted through the plot as she walked to the bedside.
This was a novel set in an ABO world, where traditional male and female genders were joined by Alpha, Beta, and Omega distinctions.
Every story had its indispensable blackening villain, and this one was no exception.
The villain, Li Jia, had endured a wretched life of hardship from childhood. Orphaned and abused in the orphanage, the director beat her mercilessly and forced her to beg on the streets.
That hellish existence dragged on until one day, in the streets, she unexpectedly entered her differentiation period and caught the eye of a talent scout. The woman kindly asked if she’d like to come along, promising to make her a star.
Li Jia agreed.
After over a decade of inhuman suffering, she finally had full meals and a place to sleep.
She was just fifteen, brimming with hope for her new life. She trained and studied relentlessly, grateful to her agent and company for pulling her from the darkness and providing food, clothing, and shelter. She vowed to repay them.
Her agent said her body bore lasting damage from years of orphanage abuse, so every day—rain or shine, for three straight years—she brewed medicine by hand. Li Jia was deeply touched and drank it without question.
The entertainment industry was cutthroat, but Li Jia had remarkable talent. Her role in a minor web drama showcased her brilliance, and her social media followers exploded.
During filming, she turned eighteen.
Her agent smiled and said it was time to repay them.
They took her to a banquet. There, all her beautiful dreams shattered like worthless glass shards.
She realized she’d never escaped the mire. What she’d thought was salvation was just a plunge from one abyss into another.
The medicine wasn’t for healing—it was an aphrodisiac, finally taking full effect on her adulthood.
The banquet teemed with people, their words dripping with innuendo. Her agent yanked her hair, forcing a smile. “Li Jia, didn’t you want to repay us? Why act up now that it’s time?”
She became a commodity, a toy, pimped out by the very agent she’d thanked endlessly.
That set the stage for the villain’s tragic blackening. And the role Ye Chengxing now inhabited was none other than the vicious cannon fodder Alpha who accelerated it all.
In the original plot, the body’s most extravagant birthday gift was Li Jia herself.
The night she “unwrapped” her gift crushed Li Jia’s soul.
No one treated her as human. They abused her relentlessly.
…
As soon as Ye Chengxing began reviewing the plot, it unfolded in her mind as rapid-fire scenes, like a montage.
Endless despair and agony filled every frame.
The final image showed Li Jia slaughtering her tormentors, standing atop a skyscraper rigged with bombs. Crowds pounded on the glass below, calling her inhuman, a monster. Countless voices begged her to remember the good times and not go mad.
Li Jia just smiled. She spoke only once: “No one in this world ever treated me with kindness. Why should I return the favor?”
Yet those words came from a woman who halted the detonation plan because a little girl handed her a lollipop.
The child, barely more than a toddler who didn’t even grasp death, clumsily shoved the candy into her hand. “Big sister, have some candy. Don’t be sad.”
She took it and called off the plan.
But even as she plummeted from the tower, she never tasted that sweetness.
…
Once finished, the plot reverted to text.
Ye Chengxing drew a deep breath, her heart aching dully.
She looked at the omega on the bed.
This future destroyer of the novel’s world—Villain Li Jia—was just a pitiful young thing now, dressed as a gift and delivered to the bed. Her snowy waist, barely covered by gossamer, trembled uncontrollably from the drug’s effects. Despair filled her beautiful eyes as she gazed up.
Unbidden, the system’s words echoed in Ye Chengxing’s mind—
The plot hadn’t started yet. Destroy her utterly, or heal and save her?
Ye Chengxing curled her fingertips. By the time she came back to her senses, she had already drawn the trembling Omega into her embrace.
“I choose the second task,” she said to the System in her mind.
—She had decided to heal her.
