Villain by Design, Tormenting Eight [GB]

As Lang Yizhi lay dying, she heard several voices:

"You're the rich young master's devoted lapdog. To curry favor with him, you bully a rising young star, making him sensitive and fragile and causing him to develop a mental illness."

"You're the CEO's black moonlight. You once abandoned him for someone else, and after you meet again, you twist the facts, slander him, and humiliate him until his reputation is in ruins."

"You're the pure and innocent school belle's foil. When the campus heartthrob falls on hard times, you take advantage of him to indulge your shameful sadistic urges."

"You're a gold-digging con artist. You use every trick in the book to get close to a big shot, and when you fail to seduce him, you make a compromising video of him and blackmail him."

Was this the voice of judgment deciding whether her soul would go to Heaven or Hell?

She tried to communicate with it using her thoughts: No, I never did any of those things. I'm not a lapdog or a black moonlight...

The voice in her mind stubbornly insisted: You are!

Lang Yizhi: I'm not.

You are! I'm not. You are! I'm not. You are! I'm not...

After a long back-and-forth, the voice in her head began to cry, and a fluffy little ball popped out. "Waaah, you are! You can be! Just do all those things, and I'll give you more life points!"

Then a flash of white light swept by. Lang Yizhi discovered that the fluffball was called a System, and the world she lived in was nothing more than a novel written by someone else.

A melodramatic mash-up of several novels, at that.

The villains in all the novels had gone on strike. To keep the plots on track, the System bound her.

System: Just go torment them, and I promise you'll wake up right away, without a scar, healthy and long-lived, and able to go home!

Lang Yizhi: ...All right, I can be.

After leaving the hospital, she followed the System's instructions and approached the male leads, trying her hardest to keep things balanced and make sure all four storylines progressed evenly, doling out misery to every male lead fairly.

After barely managing to meet the mission requirements, the real young master now grits his teeth and trembles whenever he sees her, the CEO blushes with disgust if she even touches his hand, the campus heartthrob gives her a murderous look in the middle of the night, and the big shot has people ready to teach her a lesson...

Great. All she had to do now was wait for the male leads to take their revenge on the villain and rise to the top. Then she could make a perfect exit, get unbound from the System, and enjoy a healthy life.

But an error in the space-time continuum brought male leads from other novel worlds into the mix.

System: If you have the ability, you can do more. Go torment those guys too while you're at it.

At that moment, four male leads who were insisting she take responsibility for them blocked her way. She held the hand of a frightened little husband from a matriarchal world with her left hand and gripped a snarling beastman with her right. She kept an eye on the Immortal Venerable, who was mistaken for a lunatic as he shouted for heavenly lightning, and tried not to crush the monster egg rolling around beneath her feet.

Lang Yizhi had had enough. "Do you think I have a spare hand for that?!"

#If you need tormenting, line up and take your turn!#

■ Content warnings

1. A master of keeping things balanced who plans to torment every male lead but ends up with them all clinging to her instead. Everyone except the male leads has a one-sided crush.

2. The female lead hasn't actually done anything very bad. GB, female top, 1v1 ending, happy ending.

3. The leads aren't perfect people. If you can't stand them, run.

Blurb written on November 8, 2023

Theme: Stay calm, we can win