The Supporting Female Lead Doesn’t Want to Be a Tragic Beauty

Yun Xi had unrivaled talent and was admired by all. At sixteen, she became the greatest sword cultivator alive.

At the end of that same year, humans and demons went to war, suffering terrible losses on both sides. Everyone hoped she would drive back the enemy with a single sword and bring peace to the world, but she vanished without a trace.

Ten years later, Yun Xi escaped captivity and returned to the world, her body ravaged by illness. Everything had changed, and she discovered that she was the ill-fated female supporting character in a book.

Her disappearance had been arranged so the spotlight could fall on the heroine, who would appear out of nowhere to seal the Demon Lord and end the war, outshining even the strongest cultivators of the righteous path.

Later, the glory meant for Yun Xi would be stolen. Her preordained tragic beauty-and-strength character arc called for a noble person to fall from grace, her proud, aloof spirit to be broken by force.

As for her teachers and friends dying and the two races being dragged into war, those were all part of the author's plan to escape the book by first becoming an all-powerful god.

The Demon Lord, who had just broken through his seal, pointed at the clues and plans Yun Xi had recorded and asked, "Once you've had your revenge, then what?"

Yun Xi shook the droplets of blood from her sword and looked again at the words "all-powerful."

Then she added one more small goal:

I'll become a god.

-Male Lead's POV-

"I was trapped in the Star River Realm for ten years, and I only figured out one thing."

"All those times I said I would make the human race's greatest sword cultivator my defeated underling someday, it wasn't to boost morale. I was thinking of you, looking for an excuse to say your name openly in front of my ministers and all the people."

[Reader's Guide]

1. The heroine is clear-headed and resilient, everyone's beloved ideal, and at the very top of the power scale from the start. The male lead appears late. He's a cool guy, but a lovesick one.

2. The inspiration came from a question that occurred to me while developing a tragic beauty-and-strength character: You gave your protagonist a wonderful background, character, and talent. You let her win every battle and rise to the top, only to make her fall just as she comes closest to a bright future. Have you ever considered that the greatest constraint a character born from your writing wants to break free from is you?

[Coming Soon in My Author's Column: The Connection]

Blurb:

A passenger train derails, throwing Zhu Xiao into the post-apocalyptic world five hundred years in the future.

Supplies are scarce, monsters run rampant, and the decline of technology has left humanity without the protection of firearms. The survival zones are gradually turning into desolate, eerie realms, overrun by monsters.

As someone who isn't tainted by the atmosphere of these eerie realms, Zhu Xiao soon receives a notice:

She is to be locked in a laboratory and give everything she has to research, ensuring the continuation of her rare genetic line.

Zhu Xiao: ...Give me my money back!!!

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As the crisis worsens, civilian ability users are also called upon to defend their homes.

A temporary squad is sent into an eerie realm to rescue civilians trapped there.

At first, no one has any faith in this team of low-ranking ability users. Their captain, Zhu Xiao, only has an ordinary healing ability, and people mock her as the cleanest, tastiest food in a monster's eyes.

Later, civilians returning to the main city are interviewed, and speak with excitement: "The truth is, this team was completely underestimated. Each of them can take on ten people! Oh, and Zhu Xiao can take on twenty!"

"What's more, Zhu Xiao's healing ability brought that eerie realm back to life. It actually grew grass!"

Behind the cameras, Zhu Xiao slaps the notice she received earlier onto the table in front of the people in charge.

"Who wrote this? Come out and face me."

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As Zhu Xiao reveals her brilliance, the post-apocalyptic crisis takes a turn. Several classified files are gradually disclosed.

Only then do people learn that the train was a response to the post-apocalyptic world sending more than a thousand pleas for help to the past along different timelines.

And Zhu Xiao...

"I'm the only successful operator after more than a thousand experiments in the Connection Plan."

"Codename: Zero."

"I'm both the apocalypse's end and your only dawn."

Theme: Never compromise.