She Just Doesn't Love Me

Xu Lin is argumentative and stubborn as a mule.

She went toe to toe with a crowd in the comments under a sweet romance novel, picking a fight with the devoted fans of the scheming, unhinged second male lead.

"What era are we living in? Who still likes locking people up in a lawless dungeon?"

"Don't recommend him to me. The more you do, the more I'll hate him."

"You think I have no love in my life and take it out on a fictional character? Sorry, I earn over ten thousand a day. Hope you run into a psycho in real life."

Then she woke up the next day inside that very romance novel, as a little princess who was destined to die young.

She had a livestream System, and her task was to save the second male lead after he turned evil. She could go home as soon as the comments were satisfied.

At this point, the second male lead was still a beautiful, tragic boy.

She fought hard to save him, then tried to set him on the right path and turn him into a sunny young man.

She taught him to read and write, hired people to teach him martial arts, and cooked for him herself. The comments grew more and more favorable, and her return points shot up.

But one day, he stubbornly refused to eat and bit her, insisting he had to go back and take revenge. She coldly set down her bowl and said, "Eat it or don't."

The comments immediately went wild.

"Why are you being so mean? His eyes are already red!"

"Don't think wearing a pretty face makes you a real princess..."

Xu Lin smiled.

She kept completing her tasks, but from that day on, she never smiled at the boy again.

Later, the boy grew into a wise and virtuous minister, gentle as jade. In silence, he gazed up at her and asked her to marry him.

Xu Lin idly toyed with a flower, then smiled cruelly at the sky. "Sorry. I just happened to save a dog. I'd have to be dead before I'd fall in love with my own dog."

The boy went mad, but she didn't die.

Because the task was unfinished.

Xu Lin played the frail little princess, coughing up blood day after day, but never completed another task.

The boy went mad for her, cut out his heart to make medicine, killed every quack in the land, and even plotted treason, because the tyrant was the likeliest ingredient for the cure.

The comments cursed her to death and back.

In the end, they couldn't win against her stubbornness, and began begging her every day instead:

Love him. Just love him.

On the day she was dying, Xu Lin looked at the boy's pale, icy face and pleading tears.

She touched her utterly unmoved heart and, for once, smiled as she told him the truth.

"I only like upright, sunny young men. I'm sorry, but I really can't love someone like you."

The boy was struck as if by lightning.

Xu Lin woke from a long dream.

The novel in her hands was still being serialized.

The new dynasty's tyrant held the former dynasty's princess's corpse every day, raving like a madman for three years.

When foreign invaders seized their chance to attack, he came to his senses. He donned armor and fought at the front, unified the four kingdoms, then encouraged open debate and somehow became a great ruler for the ages.

The one thing people criticized him for was setting himself on fire in the former dynasty's little princess's abandoned palace. As he died, he murmured,

"I kept up the act for so long. Why haven't you turned back to me?"

Theme: Self-respect and independence