Jiang Tongjing is a new employee at a transmigration-into-a-book agency.
His first assignment is to save the overpowered male lead whose character has gone off the rails in a certain web novel.
Because his beginner permissions are locked, he can only take the role of the male lead's fellow disciple and cannon-fodder villain.
Since the mission is particularly difficult, the Main System gives him 100 chances.
Jiang Tongjing manages to fail 99 times.
He never beats himself up over it, naturally blaming all his failures on his villain-rehabilitation System.
The System gets angry.
So, on his final chance to transmigrate into the book, Jiang Tongjing opens his portable System, and everything goes black.
He sees that his System has now been replaced with nine characters: "Archrivals Must Fall in Love System"!
The System says flatly, "The next plot point is [Hold the battered, overpowered male lead and tend to his wounds through your tears]. Host, complete it promptly."
Jiang Tongjing: "..." Is that really something a web novel could come up with?!
Fortunately, he uses his information advantage along the way. He ignores the System's instructions but still manages to complete every plot point. In the end, he and the overpowered male lead become sworn brothers with a purely platonic relationship. After the male lead becomes a Sword Venerable and proves his Dao, Jiang Tongjing fakes his death and hides in the System's barrier, living off the land.
Who could have guessed that one day the male lead would show up with a pile of betrothal gifts, shatter the barrier with a single sword strike, and drag him across dimensions?
In the middle of their argument, they accidentally bind the System to the male lead, too.
And the male lead learns the whole truth.
The overpowered male lead: "So you're the villain and I'm the protagonist... We're archrivals?"
Jiang Tongjing nods frantically. "Exactly, exactly! So archrivals can't be together!"
The male lead gives a cold laugh, pins down the System, overrides its permissions, and issues a new mission himself:
"The next plot point is [Dual cultivate with the overpowered male lead for three days]. Host, complete it promptly."
"Whether we're archrivals or cultivation partners is for me to decide.
"But it seems you can't tell the difference."
Jiang Tongjing: "..."
The male lead seems to have gone even more off the rails.
Theme: Don't run from reality
