After the Tortured Protagonist Faked His Death, They All Went Mad

Also known as: [When He Ran Into His Wife Who Had Faked His Death, He Was Being Forced by Someone Else] [Do You Need a Number to Get into the Regretful Ex's Crematorium?]

A frequently injured, flirtatious, beautiful, powerful, tragic bottom x eight split-up tops who turn dark and obsessive, pursue him at any cost, and compete for him

"Yes, I love you." Shen Mian plays all kinds of universally hated characters: stand-ins, bankrupt young masters...

He follows melodramatic plots, suffering wounds to both body and heart until his mission targets fall in love with him.

They begin to regret it, feel heartbroken, and try to make amends.

They keep asking if Shen Mian still loves them.

Yet Shen Mian looks at them tenderly and lovingly, while his thoughts are ice-cold: "System, pick the most tragic way for me to die."

System: "There aren't many unused methods left."

Forget whether the mission targets have PTSD; the System itself is about to break down just looking at its screen covered in mosaics.

Shen Mian: "Then pick one where I die right in front of them."

·

In Mission One, he is the real young master who stole the fake young master's fiance, a notorious villainous adopted son.

In reality, he's a pitiful, beautiful genius, relentlessly pursued and humiliated by everyone.

The rich playboys take turns chasing him in their cars to scare him, yet come to blows over who gets to watch him.

His roommate's surveillance, the swimming pool water submerging him to the top of his head...

He's frail, innocent, and pitiful. Nobody cares whether he's done anything wrong.

They just want an excuse to gang up on him and make him fall apart.

·

Years after Shen Mian's death, his mission targets keep his belongings with them day and night.

They search everywhere for renowned masters who might bring him into their dreams, but find no one.

After a wedding ceremony with Shen Mian's tombstone, one of them goes mad and hides his bones at home.

The bedroom is locked layer after layer, its walls covered with Shen Mian's paintings. On the bridal bed lies a cold skeleton.

·

Until one day, a mission target runs into a couple playing a game of chase: one runs, the other pursues.

The person held in someone else's arms looks exactly like Shen Mian.

His wife is even more beautiful than before!

He wants to approach, but several equally crazed-looking people stop him.

Their faces bear a certain uncanny resemblance to one another.

·

Letters, diaries, videotapes, gifts...

The same voice, the same handwriting.

Shen Mian at different ages, with different lives and experiences.

Have the widowers left behind gathered together to join forces?

·

Shen Mian is shocked as he clutches the huge amount of "despair points" he has earned: Why are all the mission targets in the same world?

System: "It's gone from bad to worse. The logout option is disabled."

Seeing Shen Mian pinned down by everyone, the System quietly shuts down. There are only eight of them. Host, you're on your own.

·

"Get lost!" Shen Mian holds his head.

Mission target: "I'm not leaving. Why did you only slap xx and not me? Did you forget he once misunderstood you? If you forgave him, can't you forgive me too?"

"Smack." The mission target leaves, satisfied.

·

Who is whose stand-in? Everyone frantically investigates their rivals.

What they uncover makes them furious, so they fight each other, then play the victim and hold everyone else back from winning Shen Mian back.

·

The regretful exes' crematoriums all burn to ashes. Not one escapes.

Plotline 2

A resilient little white flower stand-in x an infatuated CEO who can't have his white moonlight

The white moonlight is about to return from abroad. The CEO tells his lover they're breaking up. "We met at a bar. Just dump him." ...

3. A loveless, disposable pawn in an arranged marriage who falls in love after marriage x an aloof young master whose birth charts match his and who suffers from a sleeping disorder

"You're just a tool I use to cure my illness. How could you foolishly think I'd love you..."

4. A sickly artist seized by force x a powerful old-money tycoon who can turn the world upside down

"Art is just useless decoration, and you're nothing but a toy for people to play with..."

5. A spoiled young master reduced to poverty x a malicious former rival who kicks him when he's down

6. A childhood friend with a people-pleasing personality who is bullied x a two-faced, hypocritical childhood friend dazzled by a newcomer

7. A powerful, kind-hearted man who built himself up from nothing x an ungrateful junior student who takes his sponsorship while acting all high and mighty

8. A deaf, pitiful abandoned kitten x a carefree playboy who deceives him in body and heart and knows nothing of love

9. Main world: A brilliant, secretly ruthless research magnate who has faked his death x a desperate, gloomy widower who tries to die for love and becomes a madly clingy ghost-dog (his avoidant attachment style transforms into clingy-ghost mode)

The stories may not be written in order. The main world has a happy ending.

Reader's guide:

1. A cathartic story with plenty of angst, first tormenting the bottom, then the top, with all the melodrama you could want.

2. The bottom knows all the harm he suffers is coming, and has everything under control!

3. The regretful-ex crematorium and the battle royale will both burn to ashes, in every sense!

4. The tops are all intensely devoted to the bottom, who has a bit of a universally-loved quality.

5. The pacing will pick up later.

Pre-order: Next up, an xianxia story where everyone ends up at the regretful-ex crematorium! [After the Beloved Dies for Me]

Blurb: (Only later did I learn that he hated me to the bone.) · Third-person narration

Everyone had long forgotten that I was once a brilliant young genius, renowned far and wide.

That year, I went with my sect to wipe out demons and monsters and keep the three realms at peace.

When I left, I rescued a human infant from the demon palace.

That was where all the malice began.

·

My master withdrew from the world, and I took on the task of raising my junior disciple.

His talent was mediocre, but I could find all the rare treasures needed to pave an easy path to immortality for him.

But on one training expedition, I was injured protecting him, and could never wield a sword again.

So he turned to other senior disciples and sought their protection.

I didn't blame him.

·

Rumors spread through the immortal sects.

They said the heirs to all the great clans, and countless others, had fallen for him.

He was truly beloved by everyone, the one all longed for and competed to win over.

At the time, I punished the disciples who spread such nonsense, but they shoved me into an ancient battlefield out of malice.

·

He saved me.

His life for mine.

As he died, he said that with everyone else, he had only shared fleeting reflections, but with me, his feelings were true.

Once again, I became famous throughout the three realms, and his admirers wanted nothing more than to tear me apart and devour my flesh.

·

Until I was offered up to the demon palace, as if with everyone's tacit approval. On the throne sat a familiar face.

When my mermaid gauze was taken off, revealing the wounds beneath that would never heal, he smiled just as he had before.

"Senior Brother, it's still not enough."

·

Later, the person on the throne tried every way to mend that man's shattered spiritual roots and meridians.

The people of the three realms also remembered the young prodigy.

But behind thin gauze curtains, that man stood completely naked, his voice clear and firm: "I never loved you. How could we ever have been in love?"

The king, long unable to tell love from hate, knelt on the ground, eyes blazing with fury...

The book after next: [The Unimportant Junior Disciple Accidentally Takes a Pregnancy Pill] Give Senior Brother a Baby

Core theme: Cherish every day spent in love, and treasure the people who love you.