Chapter 1: The Encounter

It all started back in my sophomore year of college. The System popped up, swore I was the female lead, and assigned Feng Yan as my male lead. At the time, looking at the tall, effortlessly regal man with a cold aura standing at the podium, I thought to myself: My ancestors’ graves must be emitting green smoke for me to luck into a soulmate like this.

The mission was an unqualified success. Feng Yan treated me with a gentle, flawless devotion. We got married, and he spoiled me rotten—except for his suffocating possessiveness and irrational bouts of jealousy. For a long time, I genuinely believed I was the happiest woman alive.

Until last New Year’s Eve, when the terrifying, hideous truth shattered my world: I wasn’t his beloved wife. I was his live-in emergency ration.

That night, I happened to overhear a conversation between Feng Yan and a mysterious woman under the garden trellis.

“You only take a tiny sip of blood each time?” the woman teased with a low chuckle. “What are you, a honeybee?”

Feng Yan replied indifferently, “Any more and she’ll get suspicious.”

I stood frozen, staring down at my wrists—at the small red marks I had always naively assumed were love bites. Turns out, he wasn’t human. He was fattening me up, feeding off me little by little. To make matters infinitely worse, right before my eyes, the woman transformed into a massive white serpent before vanishing into thin air.

From that moment on, every single act of tenderness from Feng Yan sent a cold shiver down my spine. When he served me gourmet meals or pampered me, I knew he was just trying to improve the quality of his livestock.

On certain hazy nights, I would catch glimpses of cold, shimmering scales surfacing along his arms. Whenever he sank his teeth into my neck, a strange numbness would wash over me, sending me drifting into a stupor while he whispered against my skin:

“My love, you’re so sweet. I want to devour you whole.”

I tried running away multiple times, but it was as if Feng Yan had implanted a GPS tracker under my skin. No matter where I hid, he found me within hours. The System nonchalantly brushed it off as “foreplay between the leads.” Foreplay my ass! I was a walking snack bar!

So when the System finally re-checked its code and confirmed its blunder—promising that Feng Yan would soon forget me to pursue the true heroine—I felt like I had been granted a second life. Even with an unidentifiable little monster growing inside my belly, I was getting the hell out of here.

I chose Iceland. Snakes are cold-blooded creatures; surely he’d hate the bone-chilling cold there.

Just as I zipped up my suitcase, ready to celebrate my newfound freedom, my phone vibrated in my hand. Feng Yan’s voice drifted through the line, terrifyingly deep and dark.

“Why is there a divorce agreement on the desk? Do you love someone else? Who is he? Tell me so I can kill him.”

My blood ran cold. He wasn’t afraid of losing a wife—he was panicked about losing his long-term snack!

On the other end of the line, his voice suddenly softened into a hypocritical, tearful choke. “I’m sorry… I lost my temper. Baby, please… can we just talk?”

I looked at my suitcase, then out the window, feeling as though that giant python was slowly coiling around my throat all over again.

Only one question burned in my mind: no one knew about the divorce papers except me, my best friend Quagga, and Lawyer Chen. How in the world did Feng Yan catch the scent as fast as a bloodhound tracking raw meat?

The answer arrived a second later in a text from Lawyer Chen: [Madam, I am so sorry. The truth is… I’ve been Mr. Feng’s man all along. He just paid too much.]

I was so furious I almost converted to Buddhism on the spot just to pray for his downfall. Getting a divorce these days was harder than breaking out of Alcatraz! Driven into a corner, I blurted out the most heartless, soul-crushing lie I could think of to shut him down:

“You’re like a wild bull in bed! You have zero technique! I can’t take it anymore, and I’m leaving to find someone who actually knows what they’re doing!”

A suffocating silence fell over the line. Then, his voice came through, dripping with aggrieved innocence. “But I was being so careful… I even took courses on technique. I thought you liked it…”

“I don’t want to hear it!” I shrieked and slammed the phone shut.

My phobia of snakes was practically hardwired into my DNA. I could never erase the memory of that full-moon night, when I caught sight of Feng Yan closing the bedroom door with a long, thick black tail.

The System had sworn he was currently in the UK with the real female lead. Yet the moment I turned around, passport in hand, ready to make my break for the airport—Feng Yan was already standing right behind me.