After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

My first romance novel?

Inside the carriage, Lu Zhiyuan tilted her head, thinking for a long time before finally remembering what the first novel she had ever read was. Ye Bai had left the training camp earlier than her and had brought a novel with him on his mission. She couldn't remember the title, only parts of the content… content?

Lu Zhiyuan's eyes suddenly lit up.

Ayu's experience is the content of that novel, except that the transmigration part was not in the original work.

The original owner's father was a down-on-his-luck scholar who pawned his only cotton coat to pay for his tuition. The original owner's mother was returning from shopping when she happened to pass by the pawnshop and bumped into her father.

In the dead of winter, with light snow falling, a handsome but thinly dressed scholar immediately caught the eye of the original owner's mother. Especially striking was his polite manner; even after being knocked to the ground, he didn't bother picking up his money but instead asked if she was alright.

The original owner's mother's heart was thus lost.

Initially, the original owner's father was unwilling to become a son-in-law in the Zhou family. It wasn't until his mother passed away from illness and the Qin family couldn't afford the funeral expenses that he had no choice but to compromise on the cost.

The Zhou family treated the original owner's father well. Although he was a son-in-law, they did not publicize it extensively, nor did they force him to live in the Zhou family's old house. Instead, they provided them with another house to live in.

The original owner's father possessed a scholar's arrogance; though he married into the family, he didn't want to be gossiped about. After marrying the original owner's mother, he rarely went out, which, ironically, allowed him to thoroughly study the classics. The Zhou family had been merchants for generations and never imagined getting involved with the government. Their son-in-law loved reading and wanted to take the imperial examinations, so the Zhou family supported him. They didn't expect him to achieve top honors in all three levels of the examinations, but simply thought that studying was always a good thing.

The original owner's father was quite talented, and he even passed the imperial examinations with top honors. However, he was inflexible and stubborn, and was assigned by the Ministry of Personnel to serve as a county magistrate in a remote area.

To outsiders, this was a difficult task; to the original owner's father, it was an opportunity.

The Zhou family was wealthy, and they could fill any gaps in their wealth. In just six months, they achieved numerous political accomplishments. When the news reached the emperor's ears, the emperor ordered the Ministry of Personnel to promote him. However, the Ministry of Personnel secretly complied but secretly disobeyed, and simply transferred him to a slightly wealthier place as a county magistrate.

The officials in the Ministry of Personnel were thinking: "In a place like this, you can't possibly produce any achievements, can you? Without achievements, how can the Emperor praise you? If the Emperor is furious, he can just dismiss you from your post."

It is indeed difficult to achieve political success in a prosperous place. However, the original owner's father had the female lead's halo to protect him. Although he had no political achievements, he also did not make any mistakes. On the contrary, he won the hearts and minds of the people because of his hard work.

In the original owner's home, because her father was going to take up an official post in a remote area, her love-struck mother left her behind and had her grow up with her maternal grandmother. Her grandmother doted on her and never spoke ill of her parents in front of her. Even though they rarely came back to see her, her grandmother would tell her that it was because her father was busy with official duties and couldn't leave easily. Her mother had to take care of her father and couldn't come back to see her either, so she was told to write letters to her parents whenever she missed them.

To avoid disappointing her parents, she studied everything she could and tried her best to excel. Finally, her parents returned, accompanied by her younger sister, A-Ruo. In the original story, A-Yu wasn't so clear-headed; driven by her longing for her parents' love, she treated her sister very well. However, a scheming woman is a scheming woman; not only was she ungrateful, but she also took advantage of A-Yu's kindness to frame her in various ways.

The original owner's parents were led by the nose by their scheming adopted daughter, tormenting her time and time again. It wasn't until the original owner was forced into a substitute marriage that she finally lost all hope in her parents.

Romance novels always need some twists and turns.

After the original owner of this body was married into the Ye family in place of her husband, she was met with misunderstanding from her husband, mistreatment from her second wife, and the covetousness of her brother-in-law. Fortunately, she had no expectations of the Ye family and dealt with each situation as it arose. First, she resolved her husband's misunderstanding, and then she used her second wife's schemes to make her suffer the consequences. As for her brother-in-law, he harassed the princess in the street and ended up being exiled to the border.

Although the original owner and her husband didn't fall in love at first sight, their relationship could be considered a marriage of convenience that blossomed into love, and they proved their true feelings through hardship. At the end of the novel, they had a daughter.

The original text didn't mention their daughter's name; it was only mentioned because the original owner's surname was Ye, the same as Ye Bai's, that Lu Zhiyuan jokingly mentioned it. If she were the original owner, she would never be as spineless as her. She would sever all ties with her parents the very first day they brought A'Ruo home. A substitute marriage was still necessary, after all, the male lead belonged to the female lead, and he wasn't hopelessly stupid.

She also said that if she were to marry in place of the original owner, she would not be as slow and indecisive as the original owner, but would instead take swift and decisive action to reform the Ye family.

Ye Bai didn't say anything, but affectionately patted her head.

She said she gave the daughter in the novel a name, and that the ending of the novel was not perfect enough, saying that the heroine had worked so hard for so long and should go out and see the world.

The memory abruptly ended, and Lu Zhiyuan gasped as she looked at the clues left behind by Ayu.

Only she and Ye Bai knew about the novel. Could it be that Ye Bai designed this program, embedding their past, the novels she had read, and the things she wanted to achieve in the novels into this program?

In this world, there are different Ye Bai and Lu Zhiyuan, each experiencing, under different identities, the stories she longed to experience but never had the chance to. Because the novel only depicts a certain stage of life, once the story concludes, the characters will awaken, and those awakened will be erased by the system.

Ayu is not the first, nor will she be the last.

I closed my eyes, and images of Resident Evil flashed through my mind.

That was a movie she and Ye Bai watched together. When the female lead in the movie discovered that there were many clones of herself, Ye Bai sighed, "If only I had so many of you. That way I could protect the real you and let them do those dangerous missions for you."

Assassins who emerge from the training camp are all madmen; she is, and so is Ye Bai, only their madness differs in degree and direction. Ye Bai is not only a programming expert but also a gaming genius.

If this weren't a book, but a game, and she and Ayu were merely pieces of code within that game, what would Ye Bai's purpose be? Was it to fulfill a childhood wish and surprise her? Or was she already dead, and Ye Bai wanted to use this method to make her exist forever?

My head was throbbing. All sorts of guesses and ideas were swirling in my mind, finally settling on a hand-drawn, rather blurry game character.

Ye Bai once said that if he were to make a game, he would definitely design an omnipresent NPC. This NPC would appear in various game quests under different identities, and the game would only be truly completed when the player finds him and completes the quest he issues.

He parted the curtain and said to Lu Yun, "Go to the woods and find that corpse!"

The forest was still the same forest, but the corpses inside were gone, and even the trampled trees around it had returned to their original state. No one but the system could have done it so perfectly.

He squeezed his palm tightly and said to Lu Yun and Liu Ying, who were looking at each other, "Go back to Miao Village, dig up the graves, and look at the caves."