Novels always have minor characters who, for all sorts of reasons, become incredibly popular. When they die, readers can't help but grieve for them.
Just as these novels are about to form small worlds, the System plunges in, carrying the readers' hopes with it, and tries to change the popular characters' fates before anything happens.
[Arc One] How did I go from being the father-in-law of a protagonist who breaks off an engagement, to becoming the protagonist's wife?
You are the head of a minor cultivation clan. You have a spoiled, willful daughter, who was betrothed as a child to the eldest son of another clan.
Your daughter is extraordinarily talented, while the young master's family has fallen on hard times. Without your knowledge, your daughter takes her servants to the young man's home and forcefully breaks off the engagement in front of a crowd.
But this is a good-for-nothing's rise-to-power, face-slapping novel.
So thirty years later, your whole family is crushed by the male lead's triumphant rise: “Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river. Never look down on a poor young man.” Watching your clan fall, you develop a heart demon and die beneath tribulation lightning.
After learning of the future from the System, you decide to change your daughter's and your clan's fate. But the engagement has already been broken off. What can you do? You can only try to make it up to the male lead, who is still a nobody.
Yet thirty years later, the male lead, now the overlord of the cultivation world, still comes knocking and brings up the broken engagement.
You beg him to spare your daughter and your clan, and say that if he has any grievances, you are willing to bear them all yourself.
“Gladly,” the male lead says with a smile, gripping your chin. “Since Uncle has such a generous heart, then marry me in your daughter's place.”
[Arc Two] The aloof eunuch of nine thousand years at the side of a foolish emperor becomes the new emperor's empress.
You are the chief eunuch at the emperor's side, revered as the Eunuch of Nine Thousand Years. You are also the greatest expert in the palace, with no equal in the land.
You are unwaveringly loyal to the emperor, and have caused no end of trouble for the novel's male lead, who will one day usurp the throne.
Yet you become a laughingstock in the book. You die for the damned emperor without ever learning that he was the one who slaughtered all thirty-seven members of your family.
People of the martial world mock the young master of the Mei family, a martial arts clan leader's family, for entering the palace and becoming a eunuch. The male lead pities you for spending your whole life ignorant that your enemy had deceived you.
With the System's help, before anything happens, you learn the truth about how the damned emperor deceived you.
You secretly side with the male lead and avenge your family's murder with your own hands. When the snow clears and the sky turns bright, you are resolved to die and join your family, but the male lead holds you in trembling arms.
“Ji'er, stay,” he says. “Stay, and be my empress.”
Theme: Live optimistically and change your fate.
