Tangzhou.
This is a city built of steel and coal dust.
The air is forever tinged with the mingled scent of rust and coke.
At the heart of the city lies the Tangzhou Machinery and Equipment Factory.
Locals simply call it Tangji.
A saying has circulated in Tangzhou for decades:
"Half the city belongs to Tangji."
Tangji has its own dormitories, canteens, bathhouses, and residential compounds.
It even has its own schools, hospitals, and cinemas.
The factory's chimneys belch thick smoke that defines the city's skyline.
The blare of its steam whistles marks the city's pulse.
Every dawn, the long whistle sounds.
Thousands of men and women in blue work uniforms pour out from rows of gray Soviet-style apartment blocks.
They become a flood of bicycles.
All flowing toward the same destination.
Tangji.
Ji Wushuang was born in this city.
Her home was in Tangji's Compound No. 3.
A typical Soviet-style apartment building.
The hallway was long and dim.
Cluttered with household junk and honeycomb briquettes.
At mealtimes, the corridor filled with the acrid smell of cooking oil and mingled aromas of different dishes.
Ji Wushuang's father, Ji Jianguo, was a fitter at Tangji's Second Workshop.
His hands were rough, the crevices of his nails permanently stained with unscrubbable grease.
He was a martial arts fanatic.
He named his daughter "Wushuang"—meaning "peerless under heaven."
He hoped she would grow into someone extraordinary.
Little did he know she would.
Her mother was a nurse at the factory hospital.
Gentle by nature, she harbored no grand ambitions.
Having witnessed life and death daily, her greatest wish was for her husband's safety and her daughter's health.
She sometimes complained about her husband giving their daughter such a masculine name.
But over time, she grew used to it.
The Ji family wasn't wealthy, but life was stable.
The couple was loving, the neighbors harmonious.
Their days stretched ahead like the straight road outside the factory gates—
predictable from start to finish.
Ji Wushuang, however, was a poor student.
From first grade onward, her grades hovered between passing and failing.
Single-digit math scores weren't uncommon.
Half-finished essays were the norm.
Teachers had long given up on her.
As long as she didn't disrupt class, they pretended she didn't exist.
Ji Jianguo and his wife didn't push her.
"Bad grades aren't the end of the world," Ji Jianguo often said.
"My girl's strong and healthy—that's what matters."
Watching his daughter tear across the courtyard, his eyes shone with pride.
He even taught her moves he'd seen in martial arts films.
Not for fighting.
Just because she looked good doing them—powerful, like those silver-screen heroines.
Her mother was even more forgiving.
"Just grow up safe and sound," she'd say, ruffling Ji Wushuang's hair.
"Get a factory job that's not too hard, marry a decent man, and that's life."
That was Tangzhou's way.
Children of Tangji workers almost always joined the factory—
through "succession posts" or internal hiring.
The steel behemoth's final act of guardianship.
Good students might land in the technical office.
Poor ones, like her parents, would work the shop floor.
Either way, there'd be food on the table.
A life to live.
Their only demand of Ji Wushuang?
Stay safe. Stay happy.
So she enjoyed what passed for a luxurious childhood in Tangzhou.
No cram schools.
No endless homework.
Just endless hours racing through the factory grounds.
Scaling scrap heaps.
Balancing on railroad tracks.
Her physical prowess was the inverse of her academic performance.
She ran faster, jumped farther, and hit harder than anyone her age.
No boy in the compound could beat her.
She became the kid no one crossed—
a silent, formidable leader.
Next door lived the Chens.
Chen Lei's family.
His parents, like hers, were Tangji employees.
The two households were close.
They exchanged homemade buns or factory-issued fish.
The men often drank together, swapping tall tales.
Chen Lei was Ji Wushuang's classmate.
His personality was her opposite.
Taciturn. Still. A silent stone.
His grades were middling—
not stellar, but solid enough.
The kind of student teachers ignored but never worried about.
By every measure, he was the better child.
At least, that's what everyone said.
Chen Lei watched Ji Wushuang.
Had watched her since they were small.
Saw her standing in punishment corners.
Holding failing report cards under classmates' stares.
Running wild outside like some feral boy.
To him, she seemed...
out of place.
Eighth-grade PE class.
The 800-meter test.
An autumn afternoon, sunlight pooling on the track.
The rubberized surface had gone soft with heat.
Most girls groaned.
Eight hundred meters meant agony.
Ji Wushuang stood at the starting line, expressionless.
Her blue-and-white uniform hung loose.
Her hair was cropped short, boyish.
Chen Lei stood trackside with a stopwatch.
The starting pistol cracked.
Girls surged forward.
At first, they ran clustered.
After one lap, gaps appeared.
Some slowed to walks.
Others bent double, gasping.
Only Ji Wushuang held steady.
Her pace never faltered.
If anything, she accelerated.
Her breathing stayed even.
Her strides light, almost gliding.
She overtook them one by one.
By lap one, she led by half a track.
By lap two, she'd lapped the stragglers.
Chen Lei couldn't look away.
He forgot to click the stopwatch.
That sunlit figure—
not bulky but brimming with force.
Lonely yet relentless.
When she crossed the finish line, the field fell quiet.
All eyes on her.
No triumphant grin.
No exhaustion.
Just cool-down stretches,
as if she'd merely warmed up.
The PE teacher took Chen Lei's stopwatch.
Stared at the time.
Stared at Ji Wushuang.
"Freak," the teacher muttered.
Chen Lei heard.
That night, he dreamed.
Of Ji Wushuang running.
Running clear out of Tangzhou.
He ran towards a place far, far away—a place he didn’t recognize at all.
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
