Saving the Villainess

Blurb 1

When Shen Yun transmigrates into this angst-filled novel, the System gives her a mission: save Gu Qingqing, the villainess, and help her let go of her obsession and get back on the right track. Otherwise, the world will collapse completely because of how far the villainess has fallen into darkness.

Who is Gu Qingqing? The illegitimate daughter of the Gu family. Her birth mother died young, and at five she was thrown into a basement and made to eat with the dogs. At twelve, her stepmother branded the character for "slut" into her back with a cigarette. At twenty-one, her family used her as a bargaining chip in a marriage alliance, offering her to a sixty-year-old man. She smiled and agreed, then set up the Gu family and had them all sent to prison, before personally committing her stepmother to a psychiatric hospital. With extraordinary intelligence and ruthless methods, she is a madwoman who terrifies the business world. Yet she falls hopelessly in love and willingly enters a third-rate angst novel as the villainess. In the end, she is used, sent to prison, and dies by suicide behind bars.

When Shen Yun arrives, the story has just begun. Gu Qingqing is eighteen, newly kicked out by the Gu family, and living in a leaky rental in the inner city. She is so thin she's little more than skin and bones. Shen Yun pushes open the door and sees her crouched on the floor, eating instant noodles, her arms covered in old and new scars.

Shen Yun spends two whole years slowly pulling her out of the abyss.

She teaches her to love, teaches her to let go of her hatred, and watches her become gentle and normal, no longer so obsessive.

On the day the System announces that the mission is complete, Shen Yun decides to tell her the truth. "Qingqing, you're all better. I have to go."

Gu Qingqing smiles. She pulls Shen Yun into her arms and slips a ring onto her ring finger. Her voice is as soft as a whisper, but her eyes are filled with long-suppressed madness.

"Big sister. You taught me how to be a person, how to let go of my hatred, how to live like a normal person."

"You cured me. And now you want to leave?"

Her fingers tighten around Shen Yun's wrist, drawing her into her embrace inch by inch. Her lips brush Shen Yun's ear, her breath burning hot. "Big sister, do you want to watch me go mad?"

Blurb 2

Shen Yun always thought she had saved Gu Qingqing quietly, without fanfare.

On the day the System announced that the mission was complete, Shen Yun felt relieved, with a little inexplicable sadness mixed in. She stood on the corner, took one last look at the lit window of Gu Qingqing's apartment, and turned to leave.

The System's alarm blared.

The shrill beeping nearly split her eardrums. Red warning text flashed wildly: Warning! The worldline is collapsing! The target's corruption value has exceeded its limit! The world is about to collapse!

Shen Yun spun around.

Dark clouds surged in from the horizon like spilled ink, swallowing the sky above the city inch by inch. The gale whipped up leaves and dust from the ground. Pedestrians fled in panic along the entire street, while Gu Qingqing stood beneath the heavy shadow, watching her with a smile as tears fell one by one.

"Big sister," her voice was torn apart by the wind. "Can you really bear to abandon me?"

She spread her arms. Behind her, dark clouds churned; beneath her feet, the earth cracked. The whole world collapsed behind her into an apocalyptic scene.

"What use is there in keeping me in a world without you?"

Only then did Shen Yun understand: Gu Qingqing had known everything from the beginning.

She had let Shen Yun approach, let her show kindness, and let her slowly drag her out of hell.

She had never been the one being saved. She had simply... let herself be tamed.

Theme: Love is the one thing that, once taught, can never be taken back.