[Transmigrate into a book + dark, unhinged characters + adversarial dynamics + a slightly female-centric story + later love rivalry and a harem showdown + political intrigue + not a power fantasy]
After transmigrating into her own book as a cannon-fodder character who dies early, Pei Lezhi can only curse her luck.
A death countdown hangs over her head, her fiance is hunting her, and danger lurks at every turn in the plot.
In desperation, she grabs the leg of Xie Jin, the most noble and spotless second male lead in the whole book.
“Your Highness, help me!”
She weeps pitifully, certain her act is flawless, and thinks, Once I'm through this, I'll dump this “honest man.”
But she overlooks one thing.
The Xie Jin standing before her is no longer the gentle, refined gentleman she wrote.
He lowers his eyes to the carefully faked “kiss marks” and rubs them away with a firm fingertip, revealing the fair skin beneath.
He chuckles, his voice low and dangerous. “Second Miss Pei, try to make it look more convincing next time.”
Only when she's thrown into a dark torture chamber and faces a room full of instruments of torture does she realize that Xie Jin is the greatest danger of all.
At some point, the character she favored most has become completely corrupted.
To stay alive, she has no choice but to bargain with the tiger and become the most special piece on his chessboard.
But he doesn't know that Pei Lezhi is bound to a plot-correction System and sabotages every task she is given.
He wants to go west, so she goes east. He wants to kill someone, so she saves them. Whatever the task, she accepts it, then botches it, bungles it, and keeps messing things up until everything is ruined.
But she doesn't know that, under Xie Jin's growing control and unwavering gaze, his original intentions have long since changed.
He doesn't want her life. What he wants is for her to belong to him, completely and utterly.
Really good!