[Blurb]
Jiang Yuting was born from a horror story.
In the story, he was a mud monster hated by everyone, with only a beautiful, alluring face, skin like jade, and a frail, innocent manner.
That was, until he was bound to the Cannon Fodder Stepping Stone System, which required him to give his life for others.
The white-haired boy looked troubled, his thick lashes trembling. "Do I really have to do this?"
He really was disliked everywhere he went.
But no one knew...
A monster made of mud, no matter how beautiful and harmless it looks, is rotten inside when cut open.
1. The gloomy painter who is jealous of his older brother in a suspense novel
His twin brother, Jiang Xueyan, was gentle and kind, the family's treasured darling and the whole school's heartthrob. But because of his frail health and organ failure, he was often unconscious in the hospital and came close to death several times.
They had the same face, and were both painters, yet Jiang Yuting was inferior to him in every way.
Everyone pressured Jiang Yuting to donate his organs to his brother, saying that he, not his brother, was the one who deserved to die.
Cannon fodder Jiang Yuting cried as he agreed.
But then he pushed Jiang Xueyan's wheelchair and sent him tumbling off a cliff in the dark.
His smile was pure and innocent. "You've had enough, haven't you, big brother? It's my turn now."
When he returned, he took Jiang Xueyan's identity and became the beloved treasure of the whole world. Even the paintings he sketched casually sold for astronomical prices.
[But his brother, who was supposed to be dead, seemed to have become a ghost. He haunted him every day, saying he was bad, but not bad enough to be any good.]
[He even taught him how to make his own corpse disappear without a trace.]
2. The C-class useless Guide in a Sentinel-Guide novel
As contaminants multiply, more and more Sentinels suffer mental breakdowns and lose control of their emotions. The world longs for the birth of high-level Guides, the only people capable of soothing the maddened Sentinels.
Pei Can, Jiang Yuting's childhood friend who grew up with him and entered White Tower as an intern, awakened as an S-class Guide. Jiang Yuting, who had been just as eagerly anticipated, turned out to be a useless C-class.
Their talents were worlds apart, and their futures were visibly separated by an enormous gulf.
On the eve of reporting their rankings, Jiang Yuting tricked Pei Can into an underground room where no daylight reached, then shut him in a cage as he stared in confusion.
"Starting today, I'm the S-class Guide."
He blinked, his eyes brimming with malice. "You'll help me, won't you?"
He stole the genius's ability, donned the crown of a savior, and became the saint whom the entire White Tower worshipped.
[But the true genius locked in the basement watched him with a strange expression, enticing him with the prospect of a sexual transaction.]
["Spend tonight with me, and I'll willingly stay here forever, your secret canary in a gilded cage."]
Reader's Notes:
1. A wicked beauty, not human, and truly made of mud.
2. No morals, completely selfish. Two villains fall in love.
3. The first world has no blood relation between them; there's more to it.
Theme: Bad deeds will be punished; be a good person.