You transmigrate into the beastworld matriarchal novel you wrote, becoming the cannon-fodder female leader whom all eight of your beast husbands would love to tear apart. System alert: everyone’s corruption level is between 85 and 95. Your survival rate is 12 percent. A soul-contract bond ties your lives together. They can’t kill you with their own hands, but they’ll never save you either.
You bring them hot soup, open the cellar door, and ask, “Does it hurt?” They assume it’s the prelude to another kind of torment, until Xue Tuan climbs in through the window and places the jade pendant you painstakingly repaired beside your pillow. Until Ye Li touches your palm with his nose on the night of the full moon, and his wolf form, sealed for five years, doesn’t lose control for the first time.
Then you discover that Shen Jingbing, the heroine of the original novel, was behind every tragedy. Thirteen years ago, she gave the original owner a book called The Art of Raising Spirits Through Cruelty. Thirteen years later, she planted a poisonous seal inside your beast husbands. The faster they recover their full strength, the closer you are to death.
You confess everything in the snow and unfold the original owner’s final letter. “After the contract is broken, whether you leave or stay is up to you.” Ye Li is the last to nod. “If you lied to me, you’ll be buried with me.” Eight drops of heart’s blood merge, and the contract bond breaks.
The System displays a message: Affection maxed out. One hundred million deposited. You can go home now. Countdown: sixty seconds. You look at the eight men waiting by the campfire for you to come back and add more wood, and suddenly you don’t know which button to press.
