How Can a Cross-Dressing Villain Be Friends with the Protagonist?

One.

Lin Yuan transmigrates into a power-struggle novel and becomes the story's vicious villain.

In the original, Lin Yuan is born into a prince's manor. His cruel legitimate mother cannot abide the illegitimate children, so his unloved concubine mother disguises him as a girl. From childhood, he lives worse than the servants and is someone everyone in the manor can bully. His heart grows deeply twisted.

The male lead is the classic beautiful, powerful, and tragic type. After both his parents die in battle, Lin Yuan's father, who cares greatly about his reputation, adopts him as an orphan. He takes him in but does not raise him, leaving him in a miserable and precarious existence.

Seeing someone even more lowly than himself, the original Lin Yuan vents all his resentment on the male lead, successfully becoming the person the male lead hates most and setting him firmly on the path of rising to power and taking revenge.

After rising to power, the male lead repays Lin Yuan's kindness from their youth by having him mutilated into a human-pig, tormenting him every day until he takes his last breath.

Two.

Lin Yuan is born into this world and, after awakening his memories, trembles with fear and tells the System, "I'm not doing it!"

He's a clear-eyed, clever college student from the modern era. How could he possibly do something so vicious and disgusting?

Of course, the main reason is: he's afraid of dying!

The Villain Task System arrives late and warns Lin Yuan that if he does not complete the villain tasks, he'll die. Right. Now. Immediately.

But if he completes the tasks successfully, the System will go offline and reward him with a resurrection armor set as compensation.

Lin Yuan grits his teeth. "Fine!"

Three.

The frail, pitiful male lead is dumped at the prince's manor, and Lin Yuan's legitimate older brother beats him until his head is covered in blood that very night.

The System beeps with a prompt: Hurry up and kick him while he's down.

Lin Yuan grabs a simple embroidered skirt, rushes into the shabby courtyard where the male lead lives, and presses medicine hard against his wounds.

Then he threatens, "I hope it hurts like hell!"

The System: "..."

Someone kicks over the male lead's bowl of food. The System issues a task: "Hurry up and humiliate him! Make him lick the food off the ground like a dog!"

Lin Yuan hurriedly pulls out steamed buns wrapped in oiled paper and hurls them at the male lead. "Watch me throw meat buns to a dog! Pick them up and eat, dog!"

The male lead's charcoal is withheld in winter, so Lin Yuan sends him inferior charcoal.

"Hmph, I'll smoke him to death with the fumes!"

The male lead has no money to spend, so Lin Yuan throws silver at him, cracking his head open and making blood run freely.

Lin Yuan: "Oh no, oh no! He's dead!"

The male lead: "..."

The System: "..."

Half a year later, after finally seeing the pitiful male lead off, Lin Yuan tearfully accepts the resurrection armor from the System as compensation and sends the useless System offline.

The System wails, "You'll get what's coming to you for exploiting loopholes in the System! What if he doesn't become determined to take revenge? It'll all be over!"

Lin Yuan smiles faintly, not caring in the least.

Does it matter whether the male lead takes revenge? What matters is making sure he doesn't hate Lin Yuan!

But Lin Yuan's wish does not come true.

After the male lead takes power, he comes looking for him anyway. He no longer wants to kill him, but... he wants to marry him.

Staring at the wild geese presented as betrothal gifts before him, Lin Yuan's vision swims.

Oh, male lead, my male lead, I'm not only a villain, I'm also a man who dresses as a woman!

To keep the male lead from discovering that he's a man and angrily dismembering him as in the original plot, Lin Yuan chooses to fake his death and disappear.

The male lead: Fine. The only person I care about is gone, so now I can go mad.

Character types:

A clever schemer bent on faking his death, a sickly beauty in women's clothes who pants after taking three steps

An ambitious man who's ruthless and merciless to outsiders, but cunning, gentle, and gloomy with those close to him in the early chapters; an attack who goes completely mad with love and repeatedly smashes into walls in the later chapters

Reading guide:

Sweet romance (probably)

Goofy comedy (probably)

Cross-dressing (definitely)

The rest of the recipe remains to be confirmed.

Theme: Keep your purity despite emerging from the mire, and remain untainted after being cleansed by clear waters.