The Cannon-Fodder Villainess Turns the Tables

Shen Yueyao was twenty-four, a graduate of the Foreign Languages Department at Hujiang University. Her father, Shen Jingting, was a well-known industrialist in the city.

But none of that was what truly made Yueyao’s heart skip a beat. What nearly froze the blood in her veins was another, clearer and colder memory: she had transmigrated into a spy novel she had read just days ago. She had become a minor female character with the same name as her own, a disposable character who was killed off before the end of the third chapter. And she had only read a dozen or so chapters!

The novel, titled Edge of the Dark Night, tells the story of the male lead, Lu Zheng, who goes undercover on the occupied island city of Shanghai and battles the enemy. In the book, Shen Yueyao is Lu Zheng’s nominal fiancée.

“Fiancée” is putting it generously. Their fathers had only made a verbal agreement between the Shen and Lu families.

Then Lu Zheng returned to Shanghai as a member of the Special Agents’ Investigation Office. Out of regard for their old friendship, and with a touch of opportunism, Shen Jingting brought up the marriage again. Lu Zheng neither agreed nor objected, which was taken as consent.

In the original novel, Shen Yueyao falls for her powerful fiancé without knowing his true identity. She is innocent and timid, but that relationship draws her into a vortex of hidden currents. During an operation, she accidentally discovers Lu Zheng meeting with his comrades. The enemy catches on, and to keep his identity secret and protect the entire operation, Lu Zheng has no choice but to make her “disappear.”

The book barely mentions what happens to her. Her fate is dismissed in a single line: “Miss Shen died in an accident. The Lu family deeply regrets her passing.”