Chapter 1
“Host 234908 is in position,” Yan Dapeng said.
His mental sea was dark and silent.
No one answered.
Yan Dapeng began to doubt his ears and raised his voice. “Host 234908 is in position!”
Still, no one answered.
...Damn.
He stared, dumbfounded.
Where was his system??
*
As a battle-hardened Host in the plot team, Yan Dapeng’s daily task was to travel between plot worlds and steer storylines back on track whenever they went off the rails, fell apart, or ended for no apparent reason.
This time, he’d been assigned a role in an old-school, angst-ridden ABO reverse-harem novel called The Holy Son’s Passion: the original story’s biggest villain, the mad tyrant Nero.
...As a straight man, he was still pretty reluctant to play a character in a BL novel.
But the tyrant role was simply too tempting. It had always been a favorite in the plot team. After all, compared to playing pathetic cannon fodder who had to cling to the protagonist just to survive, playing a villainous tyrant was a hell of a lot more fun. Hosts could tear off the mask of civility, do whatever they wanted, and carouse to their heart’s content until the very end.
“System, I’ve already filed a complaint against you.”
Even after filing his complaint, Yan Dapeng still couldn’t get the system to show up, so he had no choice but to reread the original story for his assignment.
The protagonist of The Holy Son’s Passion was the Empire’s Holy Son, Sheng Luofeisi. He possessed all the traits common to the protagonists of ABO all-bottom reverse-harem novels: astonishing beauty and a sacred aura. He was the Empire’s untouchable flower on a high peak.
From birth, he had lived in the temple in the Delphi star system, receiving the strictest religious education. He was taught that he must never harbor selfish desires and should pray for the people of the Empire with the purest body and mind.
Sheng Luofeisi listened to the teachings and diligently fulfilled his holy duties.
But that didn’t stop the ministers beneath his robes from wanting nothing more than to pin him to the altar and have their way with him.
So, early in the story, the most outstanding of those ministers successfully made their way through the temple’s many layers of security, seducing the naive and ignorant Holy Son and leading him step by step into the abyss of desire...
As he read, Yan Dapeng slapped himself in the face to keep his mind clear amid all the bayonet♂-fighting scenes filling the pages.
There were four of the original story’s most popular male leads.
The commander of Tyrant Nero’s wolf cavalry, the God of War and marshal of the Galactic Empire, the top ace of its strongest legion, and the handsome Chancellor of the Empire. Every one of them was a major figure, and for some reason, they all lost the ability to walk whenever they saw the Holy Son.
The most controversial villain in the early part of The Holy Son’s Passion, meanwhile, was the secular ruler of this Empire, the Emperor of the Galactic Empire—
Nero Augustus Kaexisi.
Nero’s entire family had been slaughtered when he was young, and his legs had been crippled while he was fleeing. As a result, his personality in the original story was deeply unlikable. He was sinister and eccentric, with an overpowering need for control. His suspicious nature even convinced him that the Holy Son was no ordinary person and would one day bring disaster upon the Empire.
This strange obsession reached its peak after Nero differentiated into an Alpha. He used every cruel method at his disposal to torment and coerce the Holy Son, imprisoning and interrogating the clergy who accompanied him. By the middle of the story, he had become such a hated villain that readers were collectively spamming negative comments to demand his early exit.
“Damn, he’s disabled too?”
Yan Dapeng rubbed his eyes hard. Once he’d confirmed that Nero really was a disabled emperor in the original story, his vision went black.
When the plot team put up the tyrant role, Yan Dapeng had been too busy scrambling to claim the assignment to bother checking the original character’s profile.
A mad, disabled tyrant? That was bound to make the whole experience—and the fun—far worse!
But he was already inside Nero’s mental sea. There was no way out now. Even if he’d been thrown into the deep end, he still had to finish playing the role.
Fortunately, after carefully reading the original story word for word, Yan Dapeng discovered that Nero probably hadn’t engaged in bayonet♂ combat with the Holy Son... A huge weight lifted from his heart.
Because of the overwhelming criticism, Nero’s character exited the story midway through.
In the middle of the original story, the Empire suffered a massive insectoid invasion. The Empire was completely unprepared, and Nero was going through the manic phase of Alpha differentiation. The insectoids and space pirates ravaged and divided up the Empire.
Afterward, the Empire collapsed completely, and humanity entered the darkest and most turbulent era in its history.
Nero had inherited mental illness from his family, and the trauma of war made his condition even worse. He didn’t just torment the Holy Son; he massacred his subjects, set fire to the temple, and committed every imaginable atrocity.
In the end, the four male leads could take no more. They joined forces to send Nero to the guillotine, ending his short and miserable life.
“Wait. Does that mean I’ll turn into a lunatic after I differentiate, too? If I’m already crazy, how am I supposed to enjoy being a tyrant?”
Yan Dapeng pondered.
After finishing his review of the original story, he looked all around.
The mental sea was pitch-black and desolate, with only a faint light glowing in its depths.
Yan Dapeng paddled with his arms and legs, swimming toward the source of the light.
In the darkest, most desolate depths of the mental sea, someone was asleep, curled up with his knees hugged to his chest.
A head of beautiful, almost pure-white silver hair drifted slowly through the pitch-black waves, like a faint wash of moonlight.
The moment Yan Dapeng saw that silver hair, he knew who it was.
The original character for this mission: the soul of the notorious mad tyrant, Nero Augustus Kaexisi.
He swam closer and got a better look. This tyrant, despised by countless people, seemed quite young.
He looked only seventeen or eighteen.
The silver-haired boy slept with his eyes closed. His skin was luminous and snow-white, save for the pinkness at his knees and elbows.
Even his eyelashes were silver-white, resting quietly over his eyelids. He looked innocent and well-behaved.
A sickly flush tinged his cheeks, white as fresh snow. The original was probably in a period of serious illness and weakness; otherwise, a Host wouldn’t normally get the chance to enter the original character’s mental sea.
If not for the terrible scars around his ankles, the boy looked just like a marble statue from ancient Greek mythology, lovingly sculpted by the god of love.
“Damn, not bad. Looks like my blind pick turned out to be a real treasure.”
Yan Dapeng grabbed the other boy’s soft, fine silver hair.
Once he got a good look at the face, half his resentment toward that lousy system for showing up late disappeared.
“Interesting. With a face like this, even being crippled is worth it.”
Since the Host needed to use the original character’s body, there could only be one soul in it.
Though he didn’t know why this barely living soul hadn’t dissipated when he entered...
But as Yan Dapeng knew himself, he was a sufficiently seasoned Host.
“All right, sorry about this. You were going to get beheaded in the end anyway...”
Yan Dapeng muttered under his breath, but his hands didn’t hesitate in the slightest.
He grabbed the boy with both hands and clamped them hard around his neck!
As the boy was strangled, his sleeping head slowly tipped back. A trace of repressed pain appeared between his brows.
He began to gasp, his long silver-white lashes trembling violently. But his eyes stayed shut, as if he were struggling through a nightmare.
Then, in the very next instant.
Several enormous, invisible tentacles suddenly burst out from the depths of the dark mental sea!
After all his years on missions, Yan Dapeng had never encountered anything like this.
Completely caught off guard, he was struck by a white tentacle and flung far away, tumbling through the water.
He looked back in horror, only to find that the eerie tentacles had vanished.
Meanwhile, the original character’s sleeping soul slowly opened its eyes, rolling its neck as it did.
“You...”
Yan Dapeng froze.
On that face, like an angel carved from stone, was a pair of crimson eyes like pigeon-blood rubies.
Those red eyes utterly transformed the boy’s aura. He no longer had anything in common with so-called “innocence and fragility.”
[...Who gave you the nerve—]
The other’s voice was soft and unhurried, still carrying the immaturity of a boy.
Yet it seemed to burrow through every pore into Yan Dapeng’s brain, pounding directly against his auditory nerves.
[...to challenge me?]
[...to challenge a Kaexisi, the Supreme Emperor of the Galactic Empire?]
As Nero’s “voice” faded, the once pitch-black mental sea around them gradually turned a gloomy shade of red.
Yan Dapeng’s hair stood on end!
He tried to open his mouth and call to the system for help, but the next second, he saw his limbs and abdomen bursting apart under the pressure of the mental sea.
It wasn’t the mental sea turning red. It was his blood—
That was right.
He suddenly remembered a detail from the original story.
The Kaexisi imperial family Nero belonged to seemed to have ruled the Galactic Empire for nine hundred years thanks to their ferocious combat ability—or, in other words, their overwhelming, SS-rank mental power...
“...System...fuck!! Help me!! System—sys...”
Yan Dapeng didn’t manage to get out a third cry.
The powerful mental force pouring incessantly from Nero, like a towering wall, tore Yan Dapeng’s soul completely to shreds.
The mental sea fell silent once more.
Nero floated in the mental sea, gazing at the spot where the intruder had vanished.
He tilted his head as he massaged his neck, his red eyes narrowing slightly.
[...System?]