We Villains Don't Need to Fit In

[Unconventional Little Flower Demon x Heavenly Dao's Benevolent Guardian]

Yao Yao has always known she is the least important, most “out of place” dandelion in the forest.

She can't hear the barbs hidden in people's words, can't catch the ball of a meaningful glance, always seems clumsy at everything, and always makes people laugh when she speaks.

Little branches poke her in the back during class; the spiritual fruits handed out to her are always the smallest and sourest; whenever she asks a confused question, faint laughter is sure to follow. Even when she works up the courage to fight back, all she gets is: “Try to fit in a little. Don't be so petty.”

Yao Yao thinks perhaps the world is simply supposed to be this way, shrouded in an unshakable, fine-grained gloom.

Until one day, she “found” an exceptionally elegant and peerless immortal.

*

Guan Zhi is the one who wields the Heavenly Dao. He is gentle and refined, and has every contingency planned for.

On this journey, he encounters the ancient evil said to be capable of overturning the Three Realms: the Bone-Shattering Lotus.

He means to teach her the words of the sages and guide her toward goodness. But then...

She gets poisoned by eating a toxic mushroom and blames her poor constitution;

when people mock her, she thinks they're right, and that she really is an idiot;

even when he casually tells her, “You are gifted and clever,” she anxiously corrects him: “I'm not clever. You must have mistaken me for someone else.”

She even thinks the ancient power bursting out of her is proof that she's clumsy.

Watching her curl up in a corner, truly believing herself to be a weak dandelion that grew crooked, Guan Zhi suddenly understands:

The most dangerous thing is not the power she was born with,

but this “safe” forest that cannot make room for a soul made different by its “strength.”

Malice is a fog born of mediocrity, but there are always fools

who think that if the fog draws no blood, it doesn't exist.

So he tears up his original lesson plan on “becoming good”

and begins teaching her the second lesson:

“When they say, ‘It's nothing, be magnanimous,’ ask, ‘Why should I?’”

“When they say, ‘You're overthinking it. I didn't,’ ask, ‘What did I do too much of?’”

“When they say, ‘It's for your own good, don't ask,’ ask, ‘Is it really?’”

“Now, your teacher will show you how to gracefully make every unfair rule...”

“rewrite itself.”

[Reading Guide]

A healing, sweet little story about how one “different” child gracefully remakes her world.

The Heavenly Dao's teacher teaches a little flower

how to see through loopholes in the rules and build a world of her own with her own hands,

and, when necessary, how to do it with effortless elegance

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Theme: Embrace yourself