After the Villain Coaxed Me

New advance release: My Pitiful Male Consort, the Vile God's Husband. Please add it to your reading list!

[Blurb]

High school student Song Zide accidentally transmigrates into a cultivation-and-leveling novel about a destined hero.

With no power or connections, he confidently believes that, since he knows the plot, he can trample the destined hero underfoot.

But he fails the imperial exams twice.

With barely enough travel money left, and pockets emptier than his face, he has no choice but to set aside his pride as someone who transmigrated into a book. He makes a living selling calligraphy and paintings outside a tavern every day, sneering at the rich young men who come to drink and cursing them as cannon fodder from the book.

There's also one person he's got his eye on.

Xie Zhijin is his complete opposite. They took the exams in the same year. Xie comes from a wealthy family, has passed the imperial examinations with flying colors, and is handsome and talented. Matchmakers crowd his door, and even the rich young men rush to curry favor with him. Next to him, Song Zide looks utterly down and out. It makes his teeth ache with envy.

But Song Zide has also found Xie Zhijin's weakness.

His title of top scorer was obtained through favoritism and cheating.

With this secret in hand, Song Zide looks forward even more to everyone seeing Xie Zhijin for who he really is.

One time, Xie Zhijin gets drunk, and Song Zide finally has a chance to approach him. Smugly, he whispers, "I know your secret."

He expects to see panic and fear on Xie Zhijin's face, a face that usually remains calm even when Mount Tai collapses before him.

He doesn't notice Xie Zhijin's gaze, dark and viscous as ink, fixed on his face and never moving away.

*

Song Zide's threat seems to work.

Xie Zhijin curries favor with him both openly and in secret, treating him like an honored guest and even inviting him to a brothel to broaden his horizons.

Wine, women, and song, music ringing through the night... None of it has anything to do with him. He becomes the song, pinned down and made to cry out all night.

*

The next day, someone opens the door to the private room.

Fine silk sets off Song Zide's snow-white skin, dotted all over with kiss marks and bite marks. Xie Zhijin is neatly dressed and utterly composed. "Song, is consorting with prostitutes in public not a violation of your private virtue?"

Song Zide is too terrified to argue.

Xie Zhijin leans closer, his fingertips stroking the kiss marks. Looking at Song Zide, scared out of his wits, the corner of his mouth curls into a rare smile.

"Behave yourself, and I won't spread the word."

*

Only later does Song Zide learn that Xie Zhijin, courtesy name Zhijin and given name Lingshi, is the greatest villain in the book he transmigrated into.

#Transmigrated into a book, but it's almost like he didn't#

#Help, I transmigrated into a book but forgot to bring my brain and provoked the villain. What do I do?#

[Poor, bookish young fool with an air of smug maturity, the bottom × benevolent-looking, hypocritical big villain, the top]

*Imperfect characters.

My Pitiful Male Consort, the Vile God's Husband

Shen Yizhi, the young son of the Chief Minister's family, was born intellectually disabled. By the age of fourteen, he had the mind of a three-year-old and could barely manage sums under ten by counting on his fingers.

His mother died young, his brothers bullied him, and he lived in the servants' quarters for years. His father ignored him and even married him off, though he was a man.

He was married to the most feared man in the land, the least favored prince, Xie Mingzheng.

They said he could crush an enemy's head with one hand, and that the mere mention of his title could stop a child from crying at night.

His half-brother mocked him. "I hear Prince You hates the sound of crying. Don't get yourself killed by him on your very first day there."

Shen Yizhi whimpered in fright. "Zhizhi doesn't want to..."

*

Xie Mingzheng had won great military victories for Great Sheng, but after being ambushed, both his legs were crippled. He was made Prince You and granted a fief, a public honor that was a private demotion.

On the day the decree arrived, Xie Mingzheng sat in a wooden chair, his eyes cold and lifeless. Without changing expression, he accepted all these "rewards."

He hadn't expected the very end of the decree to include a little male consort.

It didn't matter. It was just one more humiliation.

If he behaved, they'd leave each other alone. If he didn't, Xie Mingzheng would simply kill him.

*

On their wedding day, Shen Yizhi was carried in through a side door.

The little male consort looked as if he had never eaten his fill. He was small and thin, nearly swallowed by his oversized wedding robe.

When Xie Mingzheng approached, he awkwardly tucked his feet in.

When Xie Mingzheng came closer, Shen Yizhi trembled, and the honeyed fruit clutched in his palm, slick with sweat, dropped to the floor.

"Zhizhi didn't mean to make the floor dirty. Zhizhi was just hungry..." Shen Yizhi couldn't stop himself from crying. He knelt to pick it up. "I'm sorry."

The imagined beating never came.

A moment later, a handkerchief was placed in Shen Yizhi's sticky palm.

The man sighed. "Wipe it up."

*

Everyone in the capital said that Prince You and his male consort were a perfect match: a fool with a cripple.

Years passed after they left for the fief, with no news of them. They must have been one a cripple who had given up after losing his legs, the other already dead at his hands.

Then, later on...

On the day snow fell in the capital, the Emperor fell gravely ill, and Prince You marched back to the capital under the pretext of purging the court of evil ministers.

After several years in his fief, he had grown even more ruthless. Everyone at court was terrified, bowing their heads and hardly daring to breathe.

The Prince You rumored to have given up had long since gotten back on his feet.

And the male consort rumored to have died long ago was holding a snowball in his hands, being carried against his will as Xie Mingzheng walked up to the Shen family.

"Zhizhi, be good. You can play again in a bit." Prince You lifted his hand. "Now, tell me who you want dead."

[Bonus Scene]

Not long after Shen Yizhi's brain condition was cured, he understood that his marriage to Xie Mingzheng had merely been the late Emperor's way of humiliating Xie Mingzheng. He decided to divorce him.

Somehow, Xie Mingzheng found out.

That night, Xie Mingzheng held him as he laid the divorce papers on top of him and made him cry and scream as he read them all night.

The next day, Shen Yizhi was still trembling when Xie Mingzheng held him again.

Shen Yizhi hurriedly said, "No more. Zhizhi won't divorce you. Zhizhi will never divorce you for the rest of his life."

The Vile God finally smiled. "Good."

Theme: Things must rot from within before worms appear; people must first humiliate themselves before others humiliate them