ATNMDT Chapter 1

“Wanwan.”

“Wanwan…”

“Wanwan, are you all right? Your face looks awful.”

The soft, delicate voice by her ear grew clearer and clearer. A gentle voice called Mu Wanwan’s name again and again, timid and hesitant, making it impossible for her to ignore.

Her skull hurt as if someone were hammering it with an awl. Something seemed to be surging wildly into her mind, and her knees—she didn’t know whether she had knocked them against a wall—hurt so badly she could hardly breathe.

“It hurts,” Mu Wanwan couldn’t help crying out. But in the next instant, she jolted awake.

Her voice shouldn’t have been this hoarse.

Mu Wanwan forced her eyes open and found herself staring straight at a pure, delicate face, like a lotus rising from water.

The girl before her had a pair of affectionate peach-blossom eyes. She wore white silk robes, her black hair bound up with a translucent jade hairpin. Her lips were naturally red, and her face carried a shy, timid air.

Behind this girl were rows of lit lamps. Under the hazy glow, Mu Wanwan could clearly see several golden ancestral tablets placed on the redwood altar.

In that instant, for some reason, the words from the little runaway-wife novel she had read before going to sleep last night appeared in her mind with terrifying clarity.

“The ancestral hall was unusual as well. Although the lamplight was warm, the room was richly decorated and filled with several golden ancestral tablets. The floor was cold and slippery. Bai Shuiyao felt chilled after only one glance, yet Mu Wanwan had to kneel there for an entire week. Although Mu Wanwan was foolish, she was still Bai Shuiyao’s young miss in name, so Bai Shuiyao still felt somewhat sorry for her.”

This vast, splendid hall.

This cold, slippery floor.

These several golden ancestral tablets.

Wasn’t this exactly the ancestral hall where the supporting female character was punished to kneel?!

Had she transmigrated into a book?

How was that possible? She had clearly been lying at home asleep! But the scene before her was so real, and the face of the person beside her was exactly the same as described in the novel.

Mu Wanwan felt dizzy. Her mind went blank for a moment, and the pain in her knees made her lose her balance. She fell back and sat on the floor.

She remembered the book that had suddenly appeared on her temporary bookshelf on a certain mysterious green website before she went to sleep last night.

During the strict crackdown period, when she discovered that the book’s title was—

“Love Grows with Time: The Disabled Tyrant’s Runaway Bride for Good Luck”—

Mu Wanwan’s eyes had wickedly lit up.

Love grows with time?

Runaway bride?

Disabled tyrant?

She clicked into the details page. There was only one tag: forceful possession and domination.

With the faint hope that maybe there would be some explicit scenes to enjoy, she opened the book. But after reading for ages, not only did she fail to get any meat, she instead saw a cannon-fodder supporting female character with the same name and surname as herself. Because this character repeatedly indulged her dowry maid—the female lead, Bai Shuiyao—in courting death, she was eventually stabbed into a pulp…

At the very beginning of the story, it was the wedding day. The two of them saw the disabled, ugly, seriously injured tyrant, who could no longer maintain a human form for long. They were scared into tears on the spot and were punished by Ao Qin, who had come to preside over his friend’s wedding, to kneel in the ancestral hall.

But because the female lead was too pitiful and beautiful, she escaped disaster. Only the foolish supporting female character was made to kneel on and off for seven days.

And now, she had unfortunately transmigrated into that cannon-fodder supporting female character who was about to be turned into meat paste.

Mu Wanwan pinched herself again and again. She closed her eyes, felt the pain, then opened them again, hoping that when she opened her eyes, she would be back in her warm bed in the twenty-first century, awakened from this nightmare.

Just because she had read an unfinished novel with touching logic and couldn’t help cursing “what the hell” after seeing the female supporting character’s miserable fate, did she have to suffer this kind of society-beating transmigration?

Although in the twenty-first century she had no car, no house, both parents dead, and could be said to have no attachments, that did not mean she was willing to transmigrate into a morally twisted smut novel and become cannon fodder!

Mu Wanwan stared blankly ahead, looking utterly dazed. Bai Shuiyao couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her.

“Wanwan, what’s wrong?”

Mu Wanwan subconsciously said, “Bai Shuiyao?”

“It’s me.” Bai Shuiyao frowned slightly, a little displeased. “Why are you suddenly calling me by my full name instead of Yaoyao?”

Mu Wanwan said dazedly, “You’re Bai Shuiyao. I’m Mu Wanwan. This is the Tyrant’s Residence.”

“Yes.” Bai Shuiyao looked at her worriedly. “Wanwan, is there something wrong with your memory? It must be because Lord Ao Qin was too harsh. Why don’t… why don’t we run away tonight?”

Her voice carried a sob.

“This place is too frightening.”

“I never want to see that tyrant again.”

Mu Wanwan silently rubbed her swollen knees. After only a moment of silence, she tried hard to straighten her legs, which were so painful from kneeling for too long that they were almost numb. After a while, she said dully, “I’m not running anymore.”

Bai Shuiyao blinked several times before she reacted.

“Hm? Wanwan, what are you saying? You don’t want to leave this place anymore?”

She seemed a little angry.

“But Wanwan, didn’t you just promise me? And look at the kind of days we’ve been living in the Tyrant’s Residence these past two days. I’m fine, I haven’t suffered much, but look at you. You were punished to kneel in the ancestral hall as soon as you married in. Your knees are all swollen…”

As she spoke, she couldn’t help crying again, her eyes turning red, as if there really were a bit of genuine feeling in it.

Mu Wanwan sneered inwardly.

Even though she had only read a little bit, that was enough for her to understand that Bai Shuiyao was not a good person at all.

Bai Shuiyao was Father Mu’s illegitimate daughter. She had been raised by his side since childhood and was publicly said to be Mu Wanwan’s maid, but in reality, she and the original owner had addressed each other like sisters at home. Bai Shuiyao was beautiful and liked to act like a youthful, innocent white lotus. She had never liked the original owner. This time, when they were punished, Bai Shuiyao had not spoken a single word in the original owner’s defence.

And…

Mu Wanwan expressionlessly glanced at the soft cushion beneath Bai Shuiyao’s knees.

If Bai Shuiyao truly cared about the original owner, she would not have monopolised a cushion that was clearly large enough for two people to kneel on.

“Wanwan, I’m doing this for your sake too.” Bai Shuiyao began sobbing. “I don’t matter. After all, I’m only a dowry maid…”

Bai Shuiyao spoke in broken sobs. In the end, she revealed a frightened expression that made people pity her.

“That tyrant looks like that, and I heard he’s disabled too. Who knows, the Tyrant’s Residence might decline completely in less than two years. Do you really not want to leave?”

Mu Wanwan looked at the tears glistening in her eyes, her heart completely unmoved.

Even if Bai Shuiyao cried herself into an Oscar statuette today, Mu Wanwan would not agree to run away with her.

According to Mu Wanwan’s shallow memory of the novel from last night, Bai Shuiyao was the female lead and had the female lead’s halo. If she ran away, nothing would happen to her. Even if she were discovered, at most Ao Qin would forcefully kiss her and that would be the end of it.

But Mu Wanwan? She would be stabbed alive into meat paste.

She still didn’t want to die.

Besides, Bai Shuiyao was urging her to run away entirely because she looked down on the disabled tyrant and did not want to spend the rest of her life in this seemingly doomed Tyrant’s Residence.

Mu Wanwan’s head hurt terribly. She had no energy to deal with her, so she only said coldly, “I said I’m not running.”

Bai Shuiyao cried for a while. Seeing that Mu Wanwan really had no intention of paying her any attention, she finally stopped sobbing, hugged her knees, and sat to one side in a daze.

For a time, the ancestral hall quietened down.

Mu Wanwan closed her eyes and sorted through the memories in her mind, calculating what she should do in the future. When she opened her eyes again, Bai Shuiyao was no longer in the ancestral hall.

Mu Wanwan searched around and discovered that she had even taken the soft cushion away with her. Looking at the tightly shut doors of the ancestral hall, Mu Wanwan couldn’t help sighing.

According to the memories from the previous few days, this was the original owner’s sixth day of kneeling in the ancestral hall. Following the original plot, tomorrow night, she and Bai Shuiyao would run away.

Fortunately, she had come early.

If she had transmigrated just a little later, wouldn’t she have had to experience the thrill of being stabbed to death on the spot?

“Madam, time is up. You may return to your room to rest.”

A slightly cold voice sounded from outside the door. It belonged to Fuliu, the maid responsible for watching her.

Although the original owner had been punished, close to midnight, she still had to return to the tyrant’s sleeping chambers and sleep with him.

Thinking of that terrifying scene in her memories, Mu Wanwan felt her palms become covered in sweat.

When she had been reading, she hadn’t felt much. An ugly and disabled tyrant—there was even something oddly exciting about it. But actually having to face such a man still made her unable to stop feeling afraid.

“Madam, hurry up,” Fuliu said impatiently, pulling open the ancestral hall doors.

Fuliu wore tender green silk robes. Although her hair was styled in a maid’s bun, a hairpin was tucked into it. Then Mu Wanwan looked at herself: a plain, somewhat dusty-looking long robe, not a single ornament in her hair. If someone said she was the maid, she would believe it!

“What are you standing there for? Move.” Fuliu glared at her in dissatisfaction.

If it weren’t for this bride brought in to ward off bad luck, she wouldn’t have been saddled with the miserable task of going to the tyrant’s sleeping chambers every midnight. Although in the past, the tyrant had been extremely handsome and outstandingly capable, now, with him looking like that, she was completely unwilling to go.

“Hmph. Don’t tell me your legs have gone useless from kneeling,” Fuliu muttered quietly, rolling her eyes at Mu Wanwan.

Mu Wanwan had suddenly transmigrated into a book and become a cannon-fodder supporting female character. Her mood was already far from sunny. Now, even a mere maid was treating her like this. She did not hold back.

“Fuliu, if I simply refuse to go to the sleeping chambers, what will happen to you?”

Fuliu choked. Clearly, she had not expected the normally cowardly Madam to say something like this. Her expression turned somewhat ugly.

Right now, His Majesty was unconscious, and the entire Tyrant’s Residence was under Lord Ao Qin’s management. Although His Majesty might die in the future and this Madam was nothing to fear, at present, Lord Ao Qin was still treating His Majesty well. If Mu Wanwan refused to go to the sleeping chambers and Fuliu failed to complete her task, she would definitely be punished.

Fuliu swallowed her anger and resumed her lowered-eyes, obedient appearance.

“Madam, I’m sorry. It was all Fuliu’s fault. Please forgive me, Madam.”

Of course Mu Wanwan knew she was only pretending, but she did not continue pressing the matter. She followed Fuliu out of the ancestral hall.

The path from the ancestral hall to the tyrant’s sleeping chambers was very long. They walked for about fifteen minutes before they arrived.

Fuliu led her into the sleeping palace. Before they even reached the room, a faint, rotten stench drifted to Mu Wanwan’s nose.

“Madam, please take good care of His Majesty.”

Fuliu stopped at the door and spoke, her voice carrying a trace of sympathy.

Thinking of the image in her memories, Mu Wanwan nodded solemnly. With trembling hands, she pushed open the door.