After living comfortably for more than a decade, Jiang Jin fell in love with writing melodramatic novels.
Secret heirs and impostors, heroines or male leads running off while pregnant, exes chasing their former partners to the crematorium, and all sorts of dead-person melodramas…the plots were outrageous, the characters were brainless, and her readers sent her plenty of “kind regards.”
Then karma came calling.
A speeding truck, a drowsy driver, a guardrail long overdue for repairs, and a cliff with no cell service… The driver dies on the spot, leaving her father in a coma, her mother paralyzed, her sister blind, and her family in ruins.
The police call it an accident. Everyone else says she’s unlucky.
Jiang Jin doesn’t know anything else, but the middle-aged driver was single, had no family or friends, and only had ten thousand yuan in savings.
So even with the compensation, all her savings, and every cent she’s earned from writing, she can’t afford the millions her parents will need for their ongoing treatment!!!
To make matters worse, her parents and sister begin to look less and less human by the day.
Her comatose father can’t stop grinning. Her paralyzed mother starts dancing strangely in the middle of the night, and her blind sister spends every day trying to dig the eyes out of various animals and put them in her own eye sockets.
One night, they almost slurp her up like a roast chicken.
Jiang Jin is about to go mad from this surreal reality.
Then someone who looks like an insurance salesman comes to see her.
“Want to know how to get your family back to normal? Want to learn the truth about this world? Join us, and all of it will be yours.”
It sounds ridiculous, but Jiang Jin has no other options. With nothing to lose, she agrees to the person’s terms.
“Good. Now, let me introduce your customers: the ‘stories’ of this world.
For example, the truck covered in eyes that hit you at the accident scene a year ago. There’s also the apartment building that loves throwing people off, the restaurant that always burns its customers to death, the computer that likes to slurp people up…
Their plots are all incomplete right now, but if you can write a story that satisfies them, you can reverse every ending and restore your family to normal.”
“Can I write melodramatic novels, too?” She seems to only know how to write those.
“Of course. A story only has three requirements:
First, the protagonist must be in the right.
Second, the plot must make sense.
Third, it must satisfy the ‘readers.’
Everything else is up to you. Simple, right? Good luck.”
Content warnings:
Mystery with mild horror.
Power-progression story, strong heroine, and a crowd of admirers.
A fictional fantasy setting; the worldbuilding serves the plot.
Theme: Possibility
