Chapter 1 The Truth Revealed
Mother told me she had transmigrated from another world.
From the moment my memories began, aside from regular lessons, she strictly required me to study one particular storybook every day.
I never understood why, but I obeyed without question.
By fourteen, I could recite the entire book from memory.
On my birthday that year, Mother dismissed all the servants and personally arranged my hair.
Then she revealed that she was a book transmigrator, and the storybook described the very world I lived in.
But I was not the female protagonist—I was the vicious supporting female character who committed countless evils and met a miserable end.
She said that no matter how carefully I had been raised—kind, charitable, and gracious—as soon as the beloved female protagonist appeared, I would lose all restraint.
Jealousy would consume me. I would bully her with the family’s power and scheme against her mindlessly.
In the end, Father would personally break my limbs.
My own brother would lock me in a dog cage to fight animals for food.
And my childhood sweetheart, the cousin to whom I was betrothed, would throw me into the capital’s lowest brothel, hanging a sign for beggars to defile me.
Her words left me pale and shaken.
I, Xie Yaohua, the cherished daughter of the Chenjun Xie clan—how could I ever suffer such a fate?
“They’ve all treated me well,” I whispered.
Mother sighed deeply. “Because they haven’t met the female protagonist yet.”
Sensing my doubt, she secretly took me to a private residence in Sanli Lane.
There, I saw my father, Xie Chengzong—the upright and honorable Loyal Brave Marquis—holding a girl young enough to be his daughter, comforting her tenderly.
That was the female protagonist, Shen Wanrong.
On the carriage ride home, I buried my face in Mother’s lap, drained of strength.
“Mother, can’t you protect me?”