Doesn’t Anyone Feel Sorry for Senior Brother?

The entire novel is complete, including all bonus chapters.

My next book will be "After My Devoted Dog from a Past Life Found Me". The blurb is at the very bottom.

Zhong Yinyue transmigrated into a book: an angsty cultivation novel he had been following. He became a minor sect elder with no real role in the story.

In the book, the protagonist is gravely injured by the antagonist late in the plot.

To save him, his senior disciple brother, Shen Changxue, steps forward without hesitation. He braves countless dangers and risks his life to enter a secret realm and retrieve a spirit herb.

But on his way back to the sect, Shen Changxue runs into the antagonist. He is beaten half to death, and his core is nearly destroyed.

He makes it back to the sect, barely clinging to life. Even though he could still be saved, his sect forcibly gouges out his immortal bones and uses them as the formation's core, sacrificing him to a blood array that saves the protagonist. Shen Changxue is skinned alive and dies.

When Shen Changxue struggles and refuses to become the formation's core, the others even accuse him: “Why don't you care about your junior brother?”

Zhong Yinyue, reading the book: ?

When the protagonist wakes up, he even thinks Shen Changxue was simply doing what he ought to.

Zhong Yinyue: ????

Zhong Yinyue spits up three liters of blood: What a bunch of ungrateful bastards! What kind of messed-up novel is this? Why does nobody care about his senior brother!?

When Zhong Yinyue wakes up, he has become the bottom-ranking elder in the protagonist's sect.

He rushes out immediately, finds Shen Changxue, and grabs hold of him.

Clutching him, Zhong Yinyue cries, “Brother! Listen to me! I've transmigrated into a book! This sect is full of ungrateful bastards! You have to go, run for your life! They'll get you killed! Get as far away from here as you can!”

Shen Changxue: “Oh?”

×

Shen Changxue doesn't leave.

Panicking for him and feeling sorry for him, Zhong Yinyue finds a way to transfer him from the protagonist's master's care into his own sect.

Then, little by little, Zhong Yinyue realizes something is wrong.

All the unfair, miserable plotlines that should have fallen on Shen Changxue suddenly land on the protagonist and his former master instead.

And Shen Changxue's smile at him grows more and more unsettling.

Until Shen Changxue snaps an Immortal-Locking Eternal Bond Curse onto Zhong Yinyue's wrist.

“Master,” Shen Changxue pleads, “please lock your disciple up.”

At last, the horrified Zhong Yinyue understands.

Shen Changxue knew all along that he was in a book.

He was reborn.

He was sweet on the outside, dark within.

"After My Devoted Dog from a Past Life Found Me"

Yu Zhut'ing had been dreaming since childhood.

The dreams came and went for over a decade, until at last they formed a complete story.

He dreamed of a kingdom called Ming from long, long ago, and of its crown prince. One day, after a neighboring kingdom suddenly invaded and killed the emperor, the prince was captured and taken as a hostage, thrown into a dungeon, and tortured.

As the prince lay on the brink of death, a general returned from the northern frontier. He broke into the enemy camp alone and managed to pull the crown prince out of the heavily guarded dungeon.

The general took him into the mountains, dressed his wounds, gathered herbs for him, and made him porridge. He wanted to live there in seclusion with the prince, away from the world, so at least they could both live out their lives in peace.

But the enemy kingdom coveted the great general's strength and captured the prince again. They pinned him to the city wall with a knife to his throat, using him to force the general to work for them.

They promised that if the general helped them conquer his former kingdom, they would return the prince to him.

But the prince died in the enemy kingdom's dungeon just a few days later.

The general knew nothing of it when he died.

Yu Zhut'ing never found out what the general was doing at the time, or what happened to him afterward, because the dreams followed the crown prince's perspective from beginning to end.

Later, because Yu Zhut'ing had been sickly and unlucky since childhood, a fortune-teller even said he had a ghost-eaten fate. With no other choice, his mother bought him a Buddhist amulet and told him never to take it off, no matter what happened.

But one rainy night, as Yu Zhut'ing walked along a dark road, the amulet shattered.

Then every streetlight burst with a series of sharp pops. In the darkness, a horrifying ghost appeared, covered in blood and surrounded by will-o'-the-wisps.

Yu Zhut'ing was about to black out when the ghost spoke:

“Your Highness.”

“I've been looking for you for a long time.”

Core theme: Let go of the urge to save others, and live for yourself.