When I woke up, I was strapped to a hospital bed in a psychiatric hospital.
The “patient” in the next bed was laughing maniacally. “Hahahaha! I am the Supreme Venerable of the Nine Heavens!”
A book titled The Peerless Martial God: Pride Above the Vast Sky floated over his head. Current page: Laugh loudly three times.
In the hallway, a man was pinning a nurse against the wall. The script above his head read The CEO’s Substitute Lover, with a forced line: “Woman, you’re playing with fire.”
Outside the window, a girl was running through the rain. The script above her head read The CEO’s Substitute Bride, with a mandatory plot point: Cry for eight hours every day.
They all thought they were crazy. Only I could see... that they were transmigrators held hostage by clichéd scripts.
And me? A former internet content moderator who reviewed thousands of garbage tropes every day, I’d long since developed “narrative immunity.” Not only could I see the scripts, I could... tear them apart.
I used public health regulations to interrupt the CEO’s wall pin, and the words “A true strongman doesn’t need to prove he’s weak” to wake the overpowered hero. To the tragic heroine running in the rain, I said, “Rain is just rain. You have the right to choose not to run.”
Everyone in this sanatorium was being forced to play a role.
And I was going to go crazy right along with them,
overwriting those damn scripts with even more absurd logic.
Until we discovered that the director had a script, too. Even the Heavenly Dao’s core had tears. And behind the so-called System lay an even greater truth.
This wasn’t one person’s awakening. It was a new beginning for us all.
