During the era of the Great Cosmic Convergence, alongside the many wondrous, terrifying creatures that appeared before human eyes, there also existed beings invisible to the naked eye. One such species was known as the Ghost Clan.

Their bodies were completely transparent, their touch cold and smooth like jelly. They were said to be creatures that lived among the clouds. Because of their biological traits, very few people truly understood this race. Even The Illustrated Compendium of Species from the Great Convergence devoted only a handful of lines to them—and every one of those lines was filled with uncertainty, using phrases like “it is said” and “possibly.”

Yet after the Great Cosmic Convergence ended, traces of the Ghost Clan’s bloodline still remained within humanity.

When the first human with Ghost Clan atavism appeared and became known to the outside world, people couldn’t help but think: humans really have no bottom line. Even transparent beings weren’t spared—someone had actually managed to romance one of them, and even produce offspring.

Because of their transparency, the Ghost Clan was an exceptionally lonely and fragile race. Once atavism awakened, the fetus would already become transparent inside the mother’s womb. That meant that no one—not even the child themselves—would ever know what they truly looked like. In infancy, if they were ever accidentally let go without clothing, the danger was extreme.

Ghost Clan atavists never formed a powerful or influential family like other atavist clans. Their laid‑back, detached nature meant their numbers were small, and they had lived in seclusion for centuries, not appearing before the public in over a hundred years. The world had long since forgotten that such a race even existed.

Naturally, people also didn’t know that Ghost Clan atavists were transparent not because of their atavist power—but because their skin itself was transparent. Just as a rabbit’s fur is inherently fluffy, this was an innate, biological trait of the species.

Which also meant no one knew that even in death, their bodies remained transparent.

Strip their skin away and wear it, and you would obtain a cloak of invisibility—just as naturally as wearing rabbit fur for warmth.

Twenty years ago, there was a young, naïve pair of Ghost Clan atavists: an older sister and her younger brother. Unlike the rest of their clan, they were curious about the outside world. They left their homeland and came to the city in search of adventure. Hungry and desperate, they wandered into an orchard, intending to steal some fruit to eat—only to frighten the elderly man guarding the place.

The old man appeared kind and gentle. The siblings apologized profusely and explained themselves. To convince him they weren’t ghosts but atavists, they even told him a great deal about the Ghost Clan. It took a long time before he finally calmed down.

“So you’re not ghosts—you’re really atavists?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Alright… alright.”

The old man was very kind. Not only did he forgive them for stealing fruit, he even prepared a meal and a room for them, inviting them to stay the night. After dinner, exhaustion weighed heavily on their eyelids. They were too tired to stay awake, and so they agreed.

What they didn’t know was that beneath the room they were staying in, a woman beaten bloody was imprisoned underground.

They knew even less that, in the dead of night, the kindly old man would reveal a face like a demon’s—knife in hand—as he crept into their room and slaughtered them one by one as they slept.

Their journey of adventure had barely begun before it ended in the cruelty of the human world.

Zhang Weiqiang killed them out of jealousy toward atavists—and simply because he wanted to kill. Later, when his fingers sank beneath their skin and turned transparent, he became ecstatic. He carefully flayed their skins, then buried the remaining flesh—now indistinguishable from ordinary human corpses—in his orchard.

He murdered two atavists and obtained two transparent skins.

Whenever he went out to abduct victims, he would wear one himself and wrap the other around his target after knocking them unconscious with an ether-soaked cloth. Thus, people could vanish into thin air—never to be found again.

Listening to Zhang Weiqiang’s ashen-faced confession, everyone ground their teeth in hatred. Such a deranged monster, blessed with such grotesque fortune—encountering two foolish atavists that allowed his evil to escalate even further.

By now, he had already removed the human-skin invisibility cloak, revealing his true appearance. Yet everyone still felt as though he were wearing another layer of human skin—as if a demon were pretending to be human.

“I often came here wearing the invisibility skin,” he said calmly, “just to see who worked at the police station, in case I accidentally ran into someone who might recognize me. That’s how I recognized you plainclothes officers the moment you entered my orchard…”

As he spoke, he thought with a shudder that it was fortunate he’d only observed from a distance back then. Had he grown arrogant and crept closer while invisible, he might have been exposed long ago.

At that moment, news came from the excavation team that had been digging through the orchard all night.

The ground beneath the orchard was filled with bones.

Nearly a hundred sets of remains had already been uncovered. An excavator could dig up several fragments of bone with almost every scoop. Most of the remains were female; a small number were male; nearly half belonged to children. Several bodies had not yet fully decomposed into skeletons.

The scene was so horrific that everyone present had reddened eyes.

The only consolation was that when they discovered the underground cellar, the girl inside was still barely alive. After being rushed to the hospital and undergoing emergency treatment through the night, she survived.

Tao Ze stood by the orchard, watching through the entire night.

The answer he had pursued for twenty years had finally surfaced.

His eyes were bloodshot. Among those countless small skeletons, he didn’t know which one was his daughter—but every single one stabbed deep into his heart.

Behind every set of bones lay families who had waited decades for an answer.

Qiu Fa held the two human-skin invisibility cloaks in his hands. Slowly, a smile spread across his face as he said to Officer Chen:

“He’s handed over to the Tribunal Division for judgment. Don’t worry—I will make sure he suffers a fate worse than death.”

In the ordinary human justice system, the worst fate awaiting this old bastard would be spending his days eating and sleeping in prison before eventually taking a bullet—almost a mercy, really. But in the atavist world, things were far less comfortable. Human rights? Once you’re no longer considered human, those don’t exist.

…

Once the case was reported, it shook the entire nation and sparked heated discussion even overseas. The killer’s methods were deliberately blurred in coverage, and the existence of the Puzzle Intelligence Agency was, of course, completely erased from public view.

When Jing Pei saw the number of bodies recovered, she let out a quiet sigh. The delicious food before her instantly lost all appeal. She ate a few perfunctory bites, then set her chopsticks down.

She had to admit—this time, her conscience really did hurt a little.

Her emotions were complicated. If she had to put it into words, it was probably a sense of reality setting in.

A writer transmigrating into the world she herself had created, observing it from a god’s-eye view—whether beautiful or ugly—and feeling pride and satisfaction in it. Most of the people she encountered were her own creations. She knew their pasts, presents, and futures, found them familiar and interesting, relaxed and at ease as she stood aside watching their stories unfold.

But Ying Qian wasn’t a character she had created. She was someone completely beyond Jing Pei’s control. Jing Pei hadn’t known she would kill, hadn’t known what her future would be—even though she ultimately still influenced the direction her life took.

Zhang Weiqiang was a character Jing Pei had created, yet he hadn’t followed the fate she wrote for him. He had lived an extra twenty years, killed dozens more people—though in the end, she still forced him back onto the path he was meant to take.

This was a world she had created, yet it was no longer entirely hers. It was real. The people she knew were only a tiny fraction of its vast population. Around her, there would inevitably appear more and more people she didn’t recognize, events she couldn’t foresee.

Jing Pei glanced again at the news broadcast about a subway monster attack in Qingniao Prefecture. It had occurred during rush hour—inside a subway packed like a can of sardines, one person suddenly transformed into a brain-eating monster. Even though atavist fighters arrived as quickly as possible, there were still significant casualties.

Beyond that, there were murder cases reported in other regions as well. Monsters like Zhang Weiqiang—demons in human form—certainly weren’t unique. Some were her creations; others were born naturally from this world.

Death and crime were happening everywhere. These weren’t abstract numbers, but real lives being lost. If Ying Qian hadn’t found her, she too would have been one of the lives extinguished in the future.

The creator had made the world, but because of her caprice and laziness, its spacetime walls had never been fully constructed—leading to mutual attraction and fusion. The world had changed, becoming more chaotic, more dangerous, more dark. And this wasn’t even the end. An even more terrifying future awaited.

Jing Pei reflected seriously, for the first time realizing that she truly shouldn’t have indulged in self-satisfaction and then abandoned her plotlines. Though she hadn’t known back then that overly popular fictional worlds could actually become real.

Her conscience stung.

But what was done was done. There was no need to dwell on it further. Doing what she could now—repairing what she could—was what mattered.

“I’m full. Please enjoy the rest of your meal.”

Jing Pei stood, took her schoolbag from the maid, and headed out.

…

At present, Jing Pei’s days at Twelve Zodiac Academy consisted of just one thing. Every moment, she was roaming her sea of consciousness in search of her dragon pearl. With no time to socialize, she was completely immersed in her inner world.

Long Ling had been wondering how Jing Pei would change the situation—how she might try to integrate into Feng Yilian’s elite circle, or at least into the class and make friends. Instead, Jing Pei seemed completely indifferent to them, equally unconcerned by the ordinary students’ cold violence against her. She went about her days cheerfully, seemingly busy nonstop, polishing off three bowls of food at every meal.

It inexplicably made Long Ling feel stifled. She had expected Jing Pei to suffer at least a little. The classmates who believed their cold treatment of Jing Pei was justified felt the same frustration.

After all, what was more painful than having your efforts ignored? Even if those efforts were meant to make someone miserable—when the other party wasn’t miserable at all, but instead treated you as nonexistent, eating and drinking well, healthy and rosy-cheeked, like you were some insignificant clown—it was you who ended up miserable.

The Atavist Division was also watching Jing Pei. They had assumed she would try something to integrate with them, but days passed without her making a single move.

Jing Pei: Sorry, I don’t have time to play with you right now.

Tang Qiaoqiao, however, seemed to harbor a grudge over the whole “Teacher Wen has a girlfriend” thing. Every day, she felt compelled to say something snide to Jing Pei.

“Hehe, looks like someone doesn’t have any friends. Eating alone, sitting alone in class—what a tragedy,” Tang Qiaoqiao crowed smugly, twirling one of her ponytails.

“What should I do?” Jing Pei asked with a smile.

“Well, if you say something I like hearing, I might help you,” Tang Qiaoqiao said, chin lifted, eyes full of implication.

“Teacher Wen likes you the most,” Jing Pei said.

Tang Qiaoqiao’s eyes brightened a little.

“He mentions you all the time,” Jing Pei added.

Tang Qiaoqiao’s eyes shone even more. She sat down across from Jing Pei, clearly ready to savor every word.

“I lied,” Jing Pei said calmly.

Tang Qiaoqiao froze.

“And Teacher Wen really does have a girlfriend,” Jing Pei continued.

Tang Qiaoqiao’s face turned green with anger. She jumped up, stammering “You—you—you!” before storming off, ponytails swinging wildly.

She actually wanted to be friends with Jing Pei, but her tsundere pride got in the way—and Jing Pei teasing her like this every time never let her fully settle.

She was furious.

Long Ling noticed this, her eyes flickering.

Tang Qiaoqiao caught her looking and shot her a glare. This glare was completely different from the ones she gave Jing Pei—her brows knit together sharply.

“What are you looking at?”

Only when Long Ling turned her gaze away did Tang Qiaoqiao roll her eyes and let it go.

Hmph. She’d let it slide for Senior Zhou Qian’s sake.

…

Every day at noon, Jing Pei went to study control of her atavist powers with Mei Yanlan. Today, she was waiting for Mei Yanlan in a café across the street from the elementary school.

She hadn’t expected to spot two familiar figures sitting quietly in a corner.

They sat close together: the man impossibly handsome, the woman delicate and pitiful, seated in a wheelchair.

They were none other than Mei Yanlan’s high school classmate—the matchmaker—and her fiancé.

At that moment, however, their hands were secretly entwined.

With an atavist’s keen hearing, Jing Pei could clearly catch their low, intimate whispers.

Not long ago, Jing Pei had gone back to reread her own novel and setting notes. Naturally, she remembered them clearly.

The woman was named Fang Bihe, the man Xiao Cheng.

Fang Bihe was an only child from a comfortably middle-class family, raised by a single mother. Xiao Cheng was the eldest son of the wealthy Xiao family.

Fang Bihe’s gaze was always full of affection, her voice soft and gentle.

“Acheng, lately she keeps making excuses not to eat lunch with us. Do you think she might’ve noticed something?”

“No,” Xiao Cheng replied.

“Did she message you?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see?”

Xiao Cheng took out his phone and let Fang Bihe scroll through his chat history with Mei Yanlan.

From the messages, it was obvious that Mei Yanlan was completely smitten with Xiao Cheng.

Even though she was a dull woman and her messages weren’t particularly interesting, she tried hard to stay in constant contact, to build intimacy—often sending him amusing news stories or jokes.

If Xiao Cheng replied with just two words, she’d get excited and send back a long string of messages. She’d even nervously asked whether he truly liked her, whether he genuinely wanted to marry her.

Hours later, Xiao Cheng would respond with a perfunctory “Mm.”

She didn’t seem to notice the indifference at all, instead sending several shy sticker emojis in response.

She looked exactly like a foolish woman who had fallen headlong into love.

Fang Bihe was extremely satisfied. As she scrolled, she imagined Mei Yanlan’s awkward, clumsy demeanor, her sense of smug superiority and disdain growing stronger by the second.

A woman who’d reached thirty without ever having a boyfriend—possibly still a virgin—how could she not fall for a man like Xiao Cheng, handsome and wealthy?

What’s more, back in school, Xiao Cheng had been a campus star. Perhaps even then, Mei Yanlan had secretly admired him like so many other girls.

She truly was the perfect target Fang Bihe had observed for so long before finally choosing—someone with no competitiveness at all, someone easy to bully and manipulate, someone who would be powerless to resist, and who would be helpless even after discovering the truth.

Fang Bihe handed the phone back to Xiao Cheng.

They locked eyes for a long moment. Then she lifted the menu to shield their faces, and they stole a kiss.

To anyone unaware of the truth, the scene would have looked romantic.

“Acheng,” Fang Bihe murmured softly after the kiss. “Promise me you’ll get her pregnant as soon as possible, okay? I can’t stand you sleeping with her too many times.”

“Alright,” Xiao Cheng said. “I’m not attracted to her anyway. Focus on your rehabilitation. I’ve waited for you all these years—I don’t mind waiting two more.”

Jing Pei propped her chin on her hand, eating cake.

The cake was sweet, paired with a cup of bitter coffee—perfect.

Their story was nothing more than a tiny side episode in one chapter of this fantasy novel.

Fang Bihe, Xiao Cheng, and Mei Yanlan had all attended Yongchang No. 1 High School together. Back then, Mei Yanlan had been just as inconspicuous as she was now, with no real interaction with the other two. In their eyes, she was little more than background scenery.

The story unfolded ten years after graduation.

Fang Bihe returned from overseas after a divorce and a car accident, finally reunited with Xiao Cheng—the “devoted second male lead” who had waited for her for ten years.

But she was divorced, paralyzed from the accident. Although her legs could potentially recover through rehabilitation, she had lost the ability to bear children.

The Xiao family firmly refused to let her marry into the family and instead forced Xiao Cheng into a political marriage.

Xiao Cheng, a hopeless romantic who could remain chaste for his unrequited love for ten years, was willing to give up his inheritance—choosing love over wealth.

Fang Bihe, however, was clear-headed.

Compared to loving this man, she loved his wealth more.

She wanted to be a young madam, not suffer hardship with him.

And how could she be sure that, after Xiao Cheng gave up everything and lived a difficult life with her, he wouldn’t regret it one day and abandon her to return?

If that happened, she’d have nothing.

Living off a man’s devotion was something only a fool would do.

So she refused—and came up with another plan.

As long as Xiao Cheng had a child with another woman first, once there was an heir, the Xiao family wouldn’t care whether she herself could bear children anymore. They would naturally stop opposing her entry into the family.

And so, after observing carefully for some time, she set her sights on Mei Yanlan.

A perfect target: an honest woman, easy to bully—trick her into the family, let her give birth, then remove the mother and keep the child.

A flawless plan.

What these ordinary humans never accounted for was that Mei Yanlan wasn’t honest at all.

Not only that—she was an atavist.

And a very special one at that.

“Ding-ling.”

The bell above the café door rang.

The “honest woman,” Mei Yanlan, walked in.

Jing Pei stood up at the same time as the adulterous pair.

“Teacher Mei.”

“Yanlan.”

The voices overlapped.

They looked at Jing Pei in surprise, not expecting to see someone else who knew Mei Yanlan here. But a moment later, they relaxed.

They were sitting so far away, speaking in low voices. There was music in the café.

She couldn’t possibly have heard their conversation.

Mei Yanlan looked at them in surprise. The moment her gaze landed on Xiao Cheng, it immediately brightened—her fondness for him obvious at a glance. Before she even spoke, a smile had already spread across her face.

“Why are you here? Didn’t I say I’ve been tutoring a student at noon lately, so I don’t have time to have lunch with you? This is that student.”

They looked at Jing Pei and all felt she seemed vaguely familiar, but none of them could place her.

The last time Jing Pei appeared publicly, she had only just come from the countryside and was wearing makeup—a dark‑skinned beauty with an exotic air. Now, without sun exposure, eating and resting well, she’d lightened considerably. She wasn’t wearing makeup either, and that hint of exoticism was gone. Naturally, it was hard to recognize her as the Long family’s heir.

Which, incidentally, proved that Mei Yanlan really had been skipping lunch with them because she was tutoring a student—not because she’d discovered something and was making excuses.

So Xiao Cheng paid Jing Pei’s bill, then opened a membership at the café for Mei Yanlan and topped it up with several thousand yuan for them to use. After that, he pushed Fang Bihe away and left.

Jing Pei and Mei Yanlan stayed in the café, watching through the floor‑to‑ceiling glass as Xiao Cheng bent down to lift Fang Bihe into the car. The driver folded up her wheelchair and stowed it in the trunk.

Jing Pei said, “They’re really affectionate.”

Mei Yanlan said, “He’s got great core strength.”

They spoke at the same time.

Jing Pei: …So the inner pervert slipped out the moment she opened her mouth.

Thinking about how their story would end, Jing Pei hummed thoughtfully.

Well—this was going to be very interesting.