Only Xiao Xu, who hadn’t left yet, responded when Wang De called out to him.

Xiao Xu turned back to look at Wang De. His lips, still split and bleeding from Jiang Nian’s earlier slap, gave him a slightly disoriented look. This self-important, harem-novel protagonist now appeared pitiful.

Xiao Xu sighed. “Don’t blame sister Jiang for hitting you. You two are naturally incompatible. And you had the nerve to look at her like that.”

“Incompatible? Is she also a protagonist?” Wang De, trying to process all the new information, thought he could handle even hearing that Jiang Nian was another protagonist.

“Of course. But she’s different from someone like you—a half-baked protagonist who just got handed the role. Jiang Nian came from the original story itself, a protagonist who earned her place through trials.”

“What kind of protagonist?” Wang De thought of Jiang Nian’s sharp, commanding aura. “A strong female lead?”

“A few years after your kind of novels, there was a trend for time-travel stories. Typical ones had female assassins, spies, or doctors traveling back in time, overthrowing dynasties, and reshaping the world order.”

Wang De: “……”

“Jiang Nian has actually been to war. She walked through seas of corpses and blood and even became an empress,” Xiao Xu explained. 

“Do you think someone like her would get along with a harem-novel male lead like you? And you wanted to make her part of your harem?”

Wang De: “…………”

“Also, don’t blame our Captain for his attitude. He was just demoted.”

Xiao Xu gestured toward a distant window behind Wang De, who turned to see signs for the Paranormal Department and the Supernatural Department.

“Our Captain used to handle the cases for those departments,” 

Xiao Xu continued, “But now he’s been reduced to this—dealing with cases like yours, where the novel invasion rate is below 5%, and the protagonist’s danger level is under 5%. This is the kind of thing that someone like me, a small fry, could handle alone. Being dragged out of bed early to personally deal with you? Of course he’s in a bad mood.”

Wang De: ???

“This “Mutual Non-Mockery Contract “does not apply to the staff, right!???”

“Good luck,” Xiao Xu said and turned to leave, only to be stopped again by Wang De. He turned back, his patience still intact.

“You said you’re a small fry,” Wang De asked cautiously. “Is that really true? You’re not secretly a protagonist or someone with special powers, right?”

“I’m just an ordinary person,” Xiao Xu replied.

“Oh, just an ordinary person.” Wang De sighed in relief. “So, not everyone here was some overpowered protagonist.”

Xiao Xu smiled, his eyes curving as two small tiger teeth peeked out. Under the bright crystal chandeliers of the registration hall, his eyes seemed to sparkle like stars. “Yep, just a passerby. You can call me Xiao Xu.”

When the staff at the Romantic Lead Department called Wang De over to complete his registration, he responded. But when he turned back, Xiao Xu was already gone.

Wang De glanced toward the window Xiao Xu had pointed to earlier. At some point, someone, or something—had appeared there to register. It wasn’t human.

It had no feet, only leaving bloody footprints on the floor. Its face was obscured by wet, stringy hair, and red liquid dripped down into its sticky black clothes.

Under the bright lights of the bustling hall, Wang De shivered. If he had only 20% faith in this organization’s claims before, now that belief had risen to 80%.

Xiao Xu had said Duan Chunshui used to frequently send people to that department.

Looking at the registration form for the Romantic Lead Department, Wang De asked the staff member, “What about Duan Chunshui? What’s his ability?”

“His ability?” The staff member slowly raised their head, adjusted their slipping glasses, and gave Wang De a kind yet enigmatic smile without answering.

Wang De’s frustration finally broke like a dam. Gripping his hair, he shouted, “What the hell is going on here?!”

---

“Three years ago, the phenomenon of novel invasions began to appear. Typically, there are two types of novel invasions. The first type involves the appearance of the protagonist from the novel. These protagonists, equipped with their protagonist’s halo and ‘golden fingers’, influence the people and environment around them, turning reality into a novel.”

“The second type is when the novel transfers the protagonist’s halo and part of their ‘golden fingers’ to a person in our real world. Through this person, the novel invades the real world, using its will to influence more and more people.”

“Wang De belongs to the second type, a half-baked protagonist who suddenly gained the halo of a novel protagonist.”

In a warm, bright meeting room upstairs in the Crisis Management Bureau for Novels, Jiang Nian poured a cup of hot water for campus beauty He Jun and pushed it toward her. 

“And you…” she said. 

“You are the first person to be influenced by the will of this novel, and the one most deeply affected.”

“Where is Wang De? What will happen to him?” He Jun clutched the water cup anxiously and asked, seemingly not hearing Jiang Nian’s words.

Jiang Nian sat upright, lightly tapping her temple with her forefinger, silently watching He Jun. 

For some inexplicable reason, He Jun felt a bit nervous under her gaze, unable to understand where the sudden sense of oppression was coming from.

The oppressive feeling dissipated as quickly as it came, leaving He Jun wondering if it had just been her imagination.

“Don’t worry,” Jiang Nian finally said.

“Nothing will happen to him. He’s at the Protagonist Re-Education Center to prevent the novel’s invasion from worsening. Once the novel lets him go, or he breaks free from it, he’ll be able to return to school.”

“Good, good, good.” He Jun nodded repeatedly, visibly relieved as she took a sip of her water.

Jiang Nian asked, “When we were at your school, our Captain, that very handsome man, asked you what you liked about Wang De. Do you remember?”

He Jun froze, her thoughts immediately drifting back to the man. She could still recall the clarity and calm he’d brought to her mind, like ripples of a clear stream.

Jiang Nian pressed, “Have you figured out the answer?”

Lost in thought, He Jun furrowed and unfurrowed her brows repeatedly.

Jiang Nian slid a sheet of paper toward her. “No rush. Take your time. Write down Wang De’s positive traits or the reasons you liked him.”

Then, she slid over an identical sheet. “And on this one, write your own qualities and standart.”

When Duan Chunshui and Zhu Zhu arrived upstairs, they found two female staff members watching the proceedings in room 07 on a screen.

“I thought sister Jiang was going to get physical just now. Didn’t expect her to be so gentle,” one staff member remarked.

“That’s because she knows He Jun is also a victim, deeply influenced by the novel’s will,” Duan Chunshui said.

In the past, Jiang Nian had despised “romantic-obsessed” characters. When she first joined, she had almost forced a high school girl, who was planning to run away with a male classmate, to endure fifty lashes.

In the harsh environment of ancient times, Jiang Nian had risen to become an empress. Her close friends had died defending the nation. Seeing modern girls obsess over men in a comfortable world made it difficult for her to restrain her fury.

Her iron-handed approach was one of the reasons the “Mutual Non-Mockery Contract Between Novels” now included a clause prohibiting protagonists from attacking one another.