Su Yu stood before the magnificent gates of the Marshal’s Manor, listening impassively as 123 droned on about the world’s plot and her assigned mission.
[This is an underdeveloped interstellar world. In the twenty-second year of Planet Beiguo, the interstellar pirate Mo Feng was ambushed and killed by an explosion aboard an interstellar train. Mo Feng’s only son, Mo Chengyuan, merely twenty years old, stepped up in the crisis to shoulder the heavy burden.]
[In the twenty-seventh year of Planet Beiguo, Mo Chengyuan established the Beiguo Government and assumed the post of Marshal, commanding all military forces under its banner.]
[Host, your role is Su Yu, the rural planet wife of the Male Lead, Mo Chengyuan. Su Yu’s father, Su Tingzhi, and Mo Chengyuan’s mother were maternal cousins. When choosing a wife, virtue takes precedence. The Su family was a lineage steeped in literary tradition, and with Mo Feng’s consent, Mo’s mother arranged a childhood betrothal between Su Yu and Mo Chengyuan.]
[Back then, Mo Feng had yet to make his fortune. Once Mo Chengyuan came of age, he and Su Yu married on the rural planet. Mo Chengyuan resisted the marriage with every fiber of his being. The very next day after the wedding, he took his money and bolted to Planet Meishe to attend a military academy, abandoning Su Yu entirely on that backwater planet.]
[In the spring of the twenty-eighth year of Planet Beiguo, Su Yu boarded a starship from the rural planet to seek refuge with Mo Chengyuan, only to be met with cold indifference. As it turned out, Mo Chengyuan already held another woman in his heart—his White Moonlight.]
[The moment Su Yu arrived, Mo Chengyuan demanded a divorce. Su Yu was a traditional woman; her father, Su Tingzhi, would never allow a repudiated daughter back into his household. Egged on by a scheming servant, Su Yu went to the school to confront Mo Chengyuan’s White Moonlight, pleading with her not to let Mo Chengyuan divorce her. As fate would have it, Mo Chengyuan arrived just in time to witness the scene. Humiliated before the woman he loved, he flew into an indignant rage and dragged Su Yu off to finalize the divorce on the spot.]
[Left penniless after the divorce, Su Yu had no means of survival in the city. Returning home was out of the question—Su Tingzhi would see her only as a disgrace. Driven to an utter dead end, she threw herself into the Quan River in despair, her life cut short at twenty-five.]
[The Host’s mission is to prevent Mo Chengyuan and his White Moonlight from ending up together.]
Su Yu narrowed her eyes. “Does it matter whether we divorce or not?”
[The mission didn’t specify, so it probably doesn’t matter~]
Su Yu stepped toward the vermilion lacquered gates. The sentries raised their bayonets to block her, glaring fiercely. “Halt! Who goes there?”
One could hardly blame them for their hostility. Su Yu was full-figured, and her tall stature gave her fullness a rather brawny edge. She was clad in the indigo padded cotton clothes typical of a rural planet, her hair bundled in a matching kerchief, a dusty cloth pack slung over her back. Her attire was shabby enough to pale beside the lowliest maid in the Marshal’s Manor.
Lacking innate emotion from birth, Su Yu was incapable of anger. She cast a cool, detached glance at the bellowing soldier. “I am Mo Chengyuan’s wife from the rural planet,” she stated plainly. “I’ve come to discuss our divorce.”
The two sentries exchanged looks, both breaking into mocking sneers. “Listen here, lady! We’ve followed the Marshal through life and death for four years, and we’ve never heard of him having a wife on some backwater planet. Have you lost your mind and come to pull a scam at the Marshal’s Manor, or are you trying to assassinate him?! Clear off right now, or we’ll throw you in a cell!”
Su Yu had not expected her proactive attempt to seek Mo Chengyuan out for a divorce to hit a wall so quickly. How on earth did the original Su Yu ever manage to meet him?
She lowered her head in thought for a moment, then spoke: “My name is Su Yu. Ten years ago, Mo Chengyuan and I were wed on Planet Xinxue. Old Madam Mo was my father’s cousin. I will be staying at an inn nearby for the next few days.” With that, she turned and walked away.
Seeing that she had rattled off the exact time and place of the wedding, one sentry began to feel uneasy. “Do you think she really could be the Marshal’s wife? We’ve only been with him for four years, and they were married ten years ago.”
The other guard felt equally unsettled. “Adjutant Xue has been with the Marshal the longest—they grew up together. We’d better ask him. He’ll definitely know.”
At noon, Mo Chengyuan returned to the manor, riding a magnificent steed straight into the courtyard. Xue Yanzhen rode close behind him. Glancing down, Xue caught the unusual expressions on the sentries’ faces, looking as though they had something urgent to report.
Xue Yanzhen dismounted smoothly and tossed the reins to an orderly behind him.
“What happened today? Come inside and speak.” Xue Yanzhen stepped into the guardhouse, and the two sentries scurried in behind him.
The darker-skinned sentry bowed respectfully. “Adjutant Xue, a woman in her twenties came to the manor this morning claiming to be the Marshal’s wife from a rural planet. Having served the Marshal for four years without ever hearing of such a thing, we refused her entry.”
As he listened, the memory of that absurd wedding from ten years ago surfaced in Xue Yanzhen’s mind. “Did she give her name or say where she came from?”
“Her name is Su Yu, from Planet Xinxue.”
Xue Yanzhen nodded. “Do you know where she went after leaving?”
“She said she would be staying at an inn nearby for a few days.”
“I see.” Xue Yanzhen rose to his feet. “I will report this to the Marshal. Keep quiet about this for now.”
The sentries voiced their assent and stepped outside. Standing before the imposing manor gates, they couldn’t help but exchange bewildered glances. Judging by Adjutant Xue’s reaction, that woman named Su Yu truly was the Marshal’s country wife.
Unfamiliar with the city streets, Su Yu searched three thoroughfares before finally locating a reasonably priced inn.
She had only twenty silver dollars in her pocket, and the inn cost one dollar a night. If Mo Chengyuan failed to send someone for her, she would be destitute within twenty days.
“123, what can I do to earn money?” First and foremost, she had to survive in this city.
123 piped up: [Host, you are an academic prodigy! You speak eight languages, command mathematics, physics, and chemistry, and your published poetry and prose collections have been translated into English to become bestsellers across Europe! You were even named one of the world’s most successful women by the United Nations! You could make a fortune doing literally anything!]
Su Yu slipped off her cloth shoes and lay back on the bed. “Except right now, I am merely a woman from a rural planet who journeyed to Planet Beiguo in search of her husband.”
123: [What does that matter? We can progress step by step! First, write a few poems and submit them to a newspaper to see how they land. Then write essays, do translation work, synthesize pharmaceuticals… Just thinking about it is exhilarating!]
“That defies all logic,” Su Yu remarked. “Wouldn’t anyone be suspicious?”
Though the original Su Yu hailed from a scholarly household, her family staunchly adhered to the belief that a woman’s virtue lies in her lack of talent, and daughters were never permitted to read.
123 whined: [Host, why are you so rigid? Virtual worlds are extraordinarily forgiving! The absolute last thing anyone cares about is breaking character! Besides, isn’t it bizarre enough that this interstellar world is so backward? Starships exist, yet people still get around in motor cars! Even your original world wasn’t this primitive! System 223 told me its host started doing business right after finishing elementary school and became that world’s wealthiest tycoon by age ten, and not a single soul suspected a thing! So, dearest Host, as long as you complete the mission, it doesn’t matter how badly your persona shatters! Be bold! I believe in you!]
Su Yu rejected the idea without a second thought. “No.” That would be far too simple, and thoroughly uninteresting.
123 sniveled: [A plain woman rising to the pinnacle of life is so inspiring! Why don’t you want to, Host? Sob, sob…]
“I came here to experience emotions I never felt in the real world,” Su Yu said. “123, I’ve suddenly changed my mind. I’m not divorcing Mo Chengyuan.”
