When Jing Fei received a call from her boyfriend, she was playing mahjong with a group of older men and women at the senior activity center. Her long, curly black hair was tousled, her face was bare of makeup, and she had a hint of dark circles under her eyes—yet even that couldn’t hide her stunning beauty. She was like the sun in the sky, radiating brilliance even in that smoky, noisy, and chaotic environment.
Last year, a photo of her went viral and trended online: she was pictured in her pajamas, a cigarette dangling from her lips, her feet propped up in flip-flops, and her head full of plastic curlers—playing mahjong just like the landlady in a Stephen Chow movie. At first, people were amazed that she could look so stunning in such a setting; later, they recognized who she was.
As a top-tier author, she told her readers a week ago that she was just going downstairs for a meal before coming back to write, but she never returned. New, naive readers, unaware of what was going on, worried that something might have happened to their beloved author. Then, they saw her trending online, completely absorbed in mahjong. Instantly, they were struck by her beauty while also feeling resentful: What’s going on? Why? Aren’t her readers as adorable as mahjong? If you’re good at playing mahjong, why not play with your readers instead!
As a top-tier author who has remained at the forefront of the industry for the past decade, Jing Fei has written over a dozen novels and short stories, each of which has become a massive hit and garnered a massive fan base. However, she has one highly criticized flaw: she has a habit of leaving her works unfinished. Of her dozen or so books, only half have actual endings—and even those were only completed after she dragged her feet for a long time, driven by the sale of copyrights and pressure from multiple editors and staff members. The other half remains unfinished because she simply didn’t want to write them—she even refused to sell the rights to those works.
Readers have a love-hate relationship with her. They swear they’ll never read her work again, only to accidentally fall back into the trap with her next book, oscillating between grumbling demands for updates and abandoning the series altogether. Jing Fei’s editor believes the only reason she hasn’t been beaten to death by readers all these years is not just her undeniable talent, but also her face. Countless readers, stuck in the middle of a story and ready to kill her, see her face and their anger melts away—they can’t help but forgive her.
Looking like that, she’s a treasure of the world—wouldn’t it be such a waste to kill her? It’s fine if she doesn’t finish her stories; she just needs to post more selfies.
Aside from her chronic habit of leaving stories unfinished, there’s another much-criticized trait that her haters love to harp on: her seemingly casual attitude toward relationships.
As the mahjong tiles clattered back and forth, Jing Pei held her phone between her fingers and heard her boyfriend across the table ask, his voice strained with restraint, “Are you dating me just so you can write a novel?”
“Huh?” Jing Pei let out a surprised, confused sound, her voice soft and gentle, while her hands moved the mahjong tiles with crisp precision. “I thought you already knew.”
Haven’t they turned it into a meme online? Jing Pei’s boyfriends are just material for her novels. Every relationship is just like her stories—basically, they all end without a conclusion. It’s just that many people don’t know that it’s always Jing Pei who gets dumped.
“I thought I was different.”
“I’m sorry. Are you breaking up with me?”
There was a long silence on the other end, then a gritted-teeth reply: “No.”
“Then I’ll come over tonight. I want to see you.” Her voice carried a hint of laughter, soft and naturally lingering, creating the illusion of deep affection—even though she’d just spoken such cold, heartless words, leaving one completely unable to fathom what she was really thinking.
She was mysterious and alluring, yet she also made people feel incredibly insecure. Every one of her ex-boyfriends had ultimately chosen to let her go because of this agonizing feeling.
Jing Fei was the perfect girlfriend—beautiful, gentle, attentive to every detail, and witty and fun. In every relationship, she did her utmost to make her partner feel happy and fulfilled, yet ironically, this was precisely what ended up breaking their hearts. But perhaps because of this, every one of her exes continued to defend her after the breakup; no one ever had a bad word to say about her, and she became the “white moonlight” in the hearts of the men she’d dumped.
Sure enough, three months later, Jing Pei was dumped again—though the man who dumped her seemed even more heartbroken and miserable than she was.
Sighing, Jing Pei seized the moment to start a new story.
Readers flocked in, immediately placing bets on how many words she’d write before abandoning the series. Those who thought they’d grown accustomed to it—and could read with a detached, spectator’s mindset—lost their composure once again when Jing Pei vanished after dropping the line, “Wait here for me; I’m going to buy some tangerines before I write more.”
Editor: “Why won’t you finish this story? Never mind the readers’ feelings—that’s all money!”
Jing Fei: “But by the time I got to this point, the rest of the story had already played out in my head. Once I’ve enjoyed it in my mind, it loses its novelty, so I just can’t be bothered to write it out.”
The editor nearly choked on his own blood.
Even a face so stunning it could be captivating even if covered in a burlap sack couldn’t withstand the resentment of so many readers over so many years. Perhaps that was why, after her death, she had been transported into the fictional world she had created. Moreover, it seemed that because there was no conclusion—as if a rift in the fabric of space-time had failed to close—multiple worlds had fused together, turning into a chaotic mishmash.
Jing Fei sat inside a black sedan, watching the giant screen atop the skyscraper broadcast a news report warning citizens not to go out alone at night, to keep their doors and windows tightly shut at home, and to be wary of strangers knocking on their doors. She glanced at the massive cage on the horizon, a holy, hazy glow emanating from within.
Although she couldn’t see it clearly from such a distance, she knew that a six-winged angel was being held captive there by thick chains. On the streets, people with horns on their heads or tails sprouting from their spines mingled with the crowds rushing to work and school.
Even as she was shocked, she still had the presence of mind to think that dying like this seemed rather shameful—after all, it was a misfortune brought on by a romantic disaster.
Her latest boyfriend was a bit off—so handsome, yet he’d driven her off a cliff in a suicide pact. How could he bear to die just for a little romance?
Never mind, never mind. There’s no point dwelling on what’s already happened.
Humans in this world fall into two categories: those with ancestral traits and ordinary people. The existence of those with ancestral traits isn’t due to a spacetime merger caused by an unresolved ending, but rather because such a setting appeared in one of Jing Fei’s fantasy novels. In the novel’s backdrop, a great cosmic merger occurred thousands of years ago, causing all manner of creatures—some legendary, others unheard of—to appear in the human world.
Dragons, phoenixes, angels, demons, and the like. Although these timelines separated again after just a century, and the creatures from each timeline vanished from the human world, some of these beings lacked reproductive isolation from humans. Consequently, their bloodlines mixed with those of some humans, causing certain descendants to awaken these ancestral traits and undergo atavism. These humans are known as Atavists.
Some Atavistic Humans gained special powers, while others simply developed physical features distinct from those of ordinary humans.
Jing Fei found herself reincarnated as a character from one of her books named Long Jin, an Atavistic Human of the Dragon Clan. Her father was the eldest son of the prestigious Long family, yet her birth mother was a peasant woman. This story involves a rather melodramatic past.
Years ago, her father, Long Ankang, was abducted by enemies of the Long family and casually thrown into a river. Miraculously surviving, he was found and adopted by a rural couple, thus transforming the heir of a prestigious family into a country boy.
In high school, he won over the prettiest girl in school—Long Jin’s birth mother. They dated for seven years. After marrying, she took care of his parents and worked to support him through graduate school. However, once he was accepted into a prestigious university, he met a wealthy young woman. Upon discovering he was the Long family’s missing heir, she deliberately concealed the truth and launched a passionate pursuit of him.
Long Ankang quickly succumbed to her charms, cheating on his wife with the wealthy woman. Once she became pregnant, the two registered their marriage. That’s right—although he and his rural wife had held a wedding banquet, they hadn’t yet officially registered their marriage. Back then, it was common practice in the countryside to hold the banquet first and register later.
Long Ankang acted as if he had never been married, even though Long Jin’s mother was already seven months pregnant at the time.
Later, Long Ankang brought the wealthy woman back to the Long family estate. As for Long Jin and her mother, they were ruthlessly abandoned.
But they never imagined that 17 years later, they would have to rely on this very girl to restore the family’s former glory.
The Long family had a remarkable female ancestor who, during the Great Cosmic Convergence, mated with a dragon. As a result, the current members of the Long family possess dragon blood, which occasionally leads to the birth of a child exhibiting ancestral traits in a given generation. Whenever such a child appears, the family’s fortune flourishes once again.
It had been over two hundred years since a child with ancestral traits had appeared in the Long family. The family’s fortunes had been in decline for many years, and they had long since been left behind by other families, leaving them frantic with worry. Just then, they sensed something extraordinary.
A precious one has reverted to their ancestral form—the Long family’s fortune is about to return. But who could this darling be?
Ah, it’s that infant girl they abandoned without a second thought, whose mother endured unimaginable humiliation!
Jing Fei—now known as Long Jin.
She is currently sitting in the car taking her back to the Long family.
After reincarnating as Long Jin, she reflected on the hardships that lay ahead for her and realized just how cruel she had been to Long Jin. The novel in which Long Jin appears is an ensemble piece with no single protagonist. Long Jin had already died before the story began, appearing only in the memories of her half-sister, Long Ling.
Long Jin’s younger sister, Long Ling, is a villainous character. Early on, readers assume she’s a cold-faced, warm-hearted angel and root for her, but later there’s a sudden twist: it turns out her kindness was all a facade. She’s committed many dark and cruel acts, one of which is that she and her family exploited and drove the innocent Long Jin to her death—even the dragon pearl inside her body was extracted from Long Jin.
According to the Long family’s rules, a child born with ancestral traits is destined to become the head of the family. However, Long Jin’s father neglected her and her mother had already passed away. Although she was a precious dragon child with ancestral traits, it would be difficult to get these scheming adults to support her as the head of the family, standing above them. Therefore, they preferred her to be a puppet—to stay quietly within the Long family as a good-luck charm, bringing good fortune, without causing any trouble.
So, they worked through the night to devise a plan for handling and controlling Long Jin.
That plan involved the entire clan joining forces to subject this country girl to psychological manipulation.
Their scheme went off without a hitch. Although this country girl was a full-fledged dragon with ancestral traits, her limited education and narrow horizons left her awestruck by the Long family’s opulent mansion and its members—who looked like royalty—leaving her trembling with fear and at a loss. They treated her coldly, occasionally offering her a little kindness; she, like a victim of Stockholm syndrome, felt flattered by this and was moved to tears.
Few people knew that Long Ankang had been married before, so they fabricated a lie claiming her mother was a despicable mistress who had schemed to get Long Ankang to father this “bastard,” all so that the children of the wealthy family could trample her underfoot and prevent her from harboring any unwarranted resentment.
In the end, Long Jin committed suicide due to severe depression. By then, the Long family had already weathered their crisis thanks to the fortune she had brought them, and Long Ling had obtained the Dragon Pearl, transforming from an ordinary human into a half-dragon.
Oh my, the author had no heart when she wrote this. Back then, readers were furious when they saw this twist, but she found it quite amusing—she loved teasing her readers. Little did she know that one day she’d actually end up transported into this world herself.
In the driver’s seat, the chauffeur tasked with bringing Long Jin back to the Long family estate glanced at Jing Pei in the rearview mirror several times. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something about the young woman had changed since she woke up. It must be a delusion—could she really have transformed into a different person right under his nose?
The two-and-a-half-hour drive from the airport to the Long family estate was finally coming to an end; the estate was now within sight.
It had rained recently in Yunjinzhou, and the air was still damp. The Long family mansion stood in the faint mist, like a dignified, unapproachable elder. A small stream gurgled through the front yard; beneath the arched bridge, a bamboo waterwheel turned. The pine trees and peonies, freshly washed by the rain, were all lush and vibrant.
The Long family was determined to intimidate Long Jin from the very start, so they had dressed up for the occasion. The ladies wore their jewelry neatly, the gentlemen were in suits and ties, and even the children sported little bow ties and tiny crowns.
It was a scene of resplendent splendor, glittering with jewels and finery.
“It’s just a little girl who’s never seen the world—is this really necessary? We usually dress just fine,” a young girl said impatiently, kicking her pink strappy high heels.
“What does that unsophisticated country girl know? You’re wearing two-thousand-yuan slippers, but people will just think they’re from a street vendor, so you have to dress a bit more flashily. From now on, stop wearing those slippers—it’s a disgrace.” Her mother scolded.
Fine, it’s her own fault for being curious about how the Dragon Baby differs from ordinary people. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be here going through all this with them. They’re so ungrateful—once she’s done with this, she’s off to boarding school. Out of sight, out of mind.
“They’re here,” the butler announced.
They were already in the living room and didn’t go out to greet them, waiting for them to come in.
However, after waiting for quite a while, no one had come in.
“What’s going on? Why aren’t they coming in yet?” Long Ankang asked impatiently. No one answered, because the butler was also outside and hadn’t come in.
“I’ll go take a look,” said the Second Young Master of the Long family in a gentle voice.
As soon as he moved, the people behind him instinctively followed.
Although Long Ankang was the eldest son of the Long family, his experiences during his first thirty years meant he could never match his younger brother, who had grown up receiving an elite education within the Long household.
So the group walked out.
They saw the car parked at the entrance, its rear door already open, revealing the young girl sitting inside. Her skin was tanned, and the white dress she wore made her look even darker; her hair was also somewhat dry and yellowed. At that moment, she was sitting on the edge of the seat, head bowed, staring at the ground, lost in thought.
The butler and the driver were standing by the door, presumably trying to persuade her to get out of the car.
“What’s going on?” asked the Second Master of the Long family.
“Second Master, for some reason, the young lady refuses to get out of the car,” the butler replied hastily.
At that moment, Jing Fei finally raised her head. Her clear, cat-like eyes—with their upward-slanted corners—looked at the group from the Long family. They were dark, bright, and serene, showing none of the timidity or longing they had imagined.
“Xiao Jin, what’s wrong? Why won’t you get out of the car?” the Second Master of the Long family asked with a smile, though his eyes held a hidden authority that was almost overwhelming. He intended to intimidate this girl first, in private, to assert his authority within the Long family.
Jing Pei, however, merely stared at him for two seconds, then curved her eyes into a gentle smile and asked softly, “May I take your jacket?”
“What?” Everyone looked at her, utterly baffled.
“May I take your jacket?” Jing Pei asked again.
“…Of course.” Second Master Long, still puzzled, took off his suit jacket and handed it to Jing Pei, who had reached out.
It was a bespoke suit that was visibly expensive—an exclusive design, hand-sewn by a renowned tailor. Second Master Long hadn’t put it on for Jing Pei’s sake, but because he was about to attend an important banquet.
They wondered what Jing Pei intended to do with the jacket. But as soon as she took it, she casually tossed it onto the wet ground, then stuck her foot out of the car, stepped on it, and walked up the steps ahead.
It turned out she had been reluctant to get out of the car simply because the ground was too wet, and she didn’t want to step on it.