Master, Your Affection-Building Act Looks So Fake

[Two male leads + cultivation + System + love triangle + obsessive love + groveling chase]

Shen Zhirang “awakened.”

He discovered that he was bound to the “Protagonist Protection System,” with the mission of protecting the protagonist and eliminating the villain.

His obedient tea-pouring disciple, Gu Jieqing, was gentle and considerate, gifted beyond compare, and a textbook protagonist.

Raise his affection! He had to raise his affection!

He gave him candied hawthorns, accompanied him down the mountain, and took blows meant for him. His words said, “It’s for the mission,” but his smile shone brighter than the sun.

Gu Jieqing accepted everything obediently. “Thank you, Master.”

Shen Zhirang was delighted: the protagonist’s affection went up by one, then another, and another!

He didn’t notice Gu Jieqing hiding the candy wrappers in his sleeve, retracing the paths they had walked side by side three times, or engraving the warmth of the moment he had fallen into Shen Zhirang’s arms while shielding him from a blade into his very bones.

He noticed even less that Xie Xianshuang, the senior disciple he had forgotten, was quietly treasuring the things Shen Zhirang had casually given him, all alone.

Until one day, the System warned him: [The protagonist’s aura has been detected on “Xie Xianshuang.”]

Shen Zhirang froze. Xie Xianshuang? Gu Jieqing’s sworn enemy, the senior disciple he couldn’t even remember taking in?

He hurried to make amends, but didn’t see Gu Jieqing crush a teacup in the shadows, his smile twisted. “Master... I’ve already left the villain’s path.”

Only later did Shen Zhirang learn there was no System. He was merely a program written by the Heavenly Dao, and Gu Jieqing was the sole obstacle on Xie Xianshuang’s road to greatness.

Worse still, he now had to personally push the young man who had once tried so hard to draw close to him back into the abyss.