Chapter 1: Task Failed

Before the wedding, I half-jokingly asked Zhou Heng, “What if Ning Luo crashes the ceremony and tries to take you back? Would you leave with her?”

Zhou Heng laughed and ruffled my hair. “Relax. She won’t come.”

It sounded like he was trying to reassure me, but somehow, it felt more like he was trying to reassure himself.

I couldn’t let it go. “But what if she actually shows up?”

For a split second, I saw a flicker of raw anticipation cross his eyes.

Quickly, though, he slipped back into his usual gentle tone to coax me. “Silly girl, stop overthinking.”

He knew me too well. Every time he gave me even a crumb of softness, I would immediately wave the white flag. But this time, I couldn’t just let it slide.

“Zhou Heng, I’m begging you. No matter what happens today, can we please just finish the ceremony? Please?”

Zhou Heng’s brow instantly furrowed. “Gui Vi, that’s enough. Ning Luo is married. She’s not coming to object. Can you drop it?”

I hated looking so pathetic, but I just wanted to live. I didn’t belong to this world; I was a System Tasker. My very first assignment was to conquer Zhou Heng and get him to marry me before he turned thirty.

It sounded daunting, but the rules were surprisingly lenient. The System didn’t require him to actually love me. All I needed was his signature on a marriage certificate. To fulfill this mission, the System dropped me into this world when Zhou Heng was just five years old.

Back then, he wasn’t the powerful, ruthless CEO he would eventually become. He was just the skinny, malnourished son of a housekeeper, living in a cramped basement room. To stay by his side without raising suspicion, I had the System set my identity as the daughter of another domestic worker.

So, we grew up together. We went to school together, bickered, and stumbled through the awkwardness of youth side by side.

Every morning at five, we’d sit together studying, competing to see who could get the higher score while quietly pushing each other forward. We wore cheap twenty-yuan sneakers and shared one-yuan street-vendor sausages. We were dirt poor, but we never felt beneath anyone. Back then, we were each other’s entire world.

At twenty, we both got accepted into the top university in the country. On the day our acceptance letters arrived, the sunset painted the school track in shades of brilliant crimson.

Zhou Heng took my hand, his ears flushing so red they looked ready to burst into flames. “Vivi… I’m so lucky you’re in my life.”

Back then, I thought I was the lucky one, too. My target was such a resilient, clean-cut, bright young man.

Until Ning Luo showed up.

That was when everything started spinning off the rails.

Ning Luo’s father donated a whole building to our university, seamlessly securing her a spot in our department. She was stunning, vibrant, and unapologetically wild—the kind of girl who became the center of gravity wherever she walked. She was the undisputed goddess of every guy on campus.

Except one.

Zhou Heng, the notoriously cold student council president, seemed completely immune to her charm. Naturally, that made him her next target. On her very first day, Ning Luo decided she was going to win him over.

If Zhou Heng was a glacier, Ning Luo was a wildfire—and a fiercely competitive one at that. The harder he proved to melt, the hotter she burned.

At first, Zhou Heng stood his ground. He made it clear to her multiple times that I was the one he cared about, that I was the person he intended to spend his life with. But a spoiled rich heiress like Ning Luo didn’t care about boundaries. She was like a stubborn little bull, charging headfirst day after day, month after month, until she finally battered a hole right through his defenses.

Eventually, she started brainwashing him.

“You and Gui Vi are just friends.” “You only think it’s love because you grew up together.” “Real love is spark, obsession, craving. Holding her hand probably feels no different than holding your own, right?”

It wasn’t like I never fought back. But over a decade of shared history meant every piece of chemistry between Zhou Heng and me was pure instinct. The harder we tried to prove Ning Luo wrong, the more it looked to everyone else like she was right.

And worst of all… neither Zhou Heng nor I had the courage to cross that final line.

In the end, Ning Luo was the one who snapped. During the university’s anniversary gala, she grabbed a guy who was mid-confession and kissed him right in front of the crowd.

That night, the volcano named Zhou Heng finally erupted.

I saw it with my own eyes. He pinned Ning Luo against a wall, kissing her with a desperate, wild fury, as if he wanted to devour her whole.

Ning Luo won.

And Zhou Heng and I slipped back to where we started.

Friends. A word so simple it was almost comedic.

Shortly after, Ning Luo brought Zhou Heng home to meet her family. It was the first time I saw the head of the Ning family lose his temper—and the first time I saw deep-seated insecurity shadow Zhou Heng’s eyes.

Their disapproval didn’t tear the two apart; instead, it turned their romance into a tragic, melodramatic soap opera.

Ning Luo’s father was so furious he froze her credit cards. The result? Within a month, every last bit of Zhou Heng’s savings from years of part-time jobs was wiped out. He borrowed money from me multiple times and even asked his mother for nearly twenty thousand yuan—something he had never done before. We had been financially independent on scholarships since high school.

His mother even called me in secret, asking nervously, “Is Heng in some kind of trouble?”

I could only offer a bitter laugh. “He’s starting a business, Auntie. He just needs capital.”

In truth, I knew the real reason. Ning Luo had fallen in love with a designer handbag. One single bag—worth the price of Zhou Heng’s entire youth spent pinching pennies.

When they finally broke up, it ended in a screaming match. Ning Luo couldn’t comprehend why Zhou Heng blew up over an eight-thousand-yuan pair of heels.

“I used to wear eighteen-thousand-yuan shoes!” she cried. She genuinely thought she was being economical.

Zhou Heng said nothing, his hands clenched into tight fists. But I knew the truth. He didn’t break up with her because he stopped loving her. He broke up with her because he loved her too much—so much that he felt he had no right to stand by her side.

Five years later.

The Ning family’s empire began to collapse just as Zhou Heng’s tech startup took off like a rocket. When rumors circulated that the Nings were looking for a strategic marriage alliance, Zhou Heng immediately rushed to their doorstep, offering everything he had.

Reality dealt him a brutal slap in the face. Even as a sinking ship, the Ning family was still an elite threshold he couldn’t cross.

Ultimately, Ning Luo married the second son of the prestigious Sheng family.

And Zhou Heng became the tragic loser of his own grand love story.

After Ning Luo got married, Zhou Heng became a shell of himself. By day, he sat motionless in his office, his mind millions of miles away. By night, he drowned himself in bar after bar, drinking like he was competing in a tournament to erase his own memory.

As for me? I spent my days cleaning up the mess he left at the company, and my nights acting as his designated driver, dragging him home from random corners of the city.

Whenever he was drunk, his cheeks would flush bright red. Looking at him like that, I’d be pulled back to that boy standing under the crimson sunset years ago—the boy who had held my hand and whispered with a blush, “Vivi, I’m so lucky you’re in my life.”

A wave of sour bitterness always washed over me. Maybe back then, he really did mean it. It was just a pity that the person he wanted to hold onto for the rest of his life was never me.

With only two months left before Zhou Heng’s thirtieth birthday, I completely gave up on the mission. News was breaking everywhere: Ning Luo and the Sheng family’s second son were heading for a bitter divorce. Hearing that, I knew the game was officially over.

So, I cheerfully said my goodbyes to my mother, planning to travel the world before the System wiped me out of existence.

Who would have guessed? Right while I was debating whether I’d rather die in Paris or the Maldives, Zhou Heng dropped to one knee and proposed.

I was completely stunned. He looked dead serious. The System was going crazy in my head. And I… after waiting twenty-five years, had finally gotten the proposal I needed.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy. I just didn’t know if I was happy because I was going to live, or because the man proposing was him.

Before the wedding, I asked him countless times, “Do you really want to marry me?”

Every single time, his answer was firm. “Yes.” “I’m sure.” “Of course.”

As long as Ning Luo’s name wasn’t mentioned, he answered faster than a customer service rep. But the moment her name crossed my lips, he’d go dead silent. He couldn’t even bring himself to lie just to make me feel better.

Even so, I didn’t care to dig any deeper. As long as the wedding went smoothly, as long as I completed the task and survived, that was enough.

Throughout the ceremony, my heart was lodged in my throat from sheer nerves. Zhou Heng, on the other hand, kept glancing toward the entrance, as if waiting for someone. Or more accurately… hoping for someone.

And then, right as we were about to exchange rings, Ning Luo walked in.

At that exact moment, a strange sense of relief washed over me. It felt like a condemned prisoner who had been sitting on death row all day, finally seeing the executioner raise the blade.

Ning Luo stood in the middle of the aisle, her eyes bloodshot, her voice cracking with unshed tears. “Zhou Heng… you won the bet. I got divorced. Please… don’t go through with this.”

Desperate to save my own life, I made one last attempt. I grabbed the edge of Zhou Heng’s jacket. “Zhou Heng… please. Don’t go. Did you forget what you promised me?”

I was just one step away. One step and I’d win. One step and I’d live.

But Zhou Heng unclasped my fingers anyway. Guilt was written all over his face, but his feet moved without hesitation. He walked right up to Ning Luo, then turned back to look at me.

“I’m sorry, Vivi,” he said. “Honestly, today was only because Ning Luo said she felt like damaged goods after her divorce, like she wasn’t good enough for me anymore. I was acting out of spite when I asked you to marry me. I thought… if I was a divorcee too, maybe she wouldn’t feel so insecure.”

He paused, looking at me as if expecting me to understand. “When I thought about who could help me pull this off, you were the only one I could turn to. You’re my best friend, after all.”

I stared at him—the man I had spent twenty-five years beside. Suddenly, it hit me that my defeat wasn’t unfair at all. How could anyone ever win against logic like that?

Calmly, I pulled up the System interface.

“I forfeit the mission.”

[System confirmation requested.]

“Confirmed.”

[System Task: Host Conquest—FAILED.]