She looked about three years old, wearing a pale yellow short-sleeved T-shirt and white overalls. A small grass-green bag hung across her tiny frame. She was sipping milk tea from a straw while wearing heart-shaped sunglasses.

There was no one else present who could have spoken.

Yet Wang De showed no sign of surprise. Instead, his smugness grew stronger, a fleeting glint of excitement flashing in his eyes.

“So it was true—I really am the protagonist of this world!”

“I had even awakened a special ability to hear the inner voices of others!”

“This was clearly a power that only a protagonist could possess!”

Wang De had always been so ordinary that he practically disappeared in a crowd. His parents were just regular working-class folks—not so poor that they couldn’t afford food, but not well-off enough to give him the means to pursue hobbies or broaden his horizons.

As a child, he wasn’t cute, and his personality wasn’t likable.

As he grew older, nothing about his ordinariness changed. His grades were decent but never among the top. His personality remained dull and unremarkable—neither lively nor socially adept. He didn’t become handsome, and even his height ended up a little awkward.

His family had worked hard to their limit just to get him into a basic first-tier university. But in a university where academic performance wasn’t the focus, he became even more forgettable. After a year of classes, most of his classmates didn’t even know his name.

When they talked about looks, talents, or wealth, Wang De wasn’t even remotely relevant. He fit the image of a budding otaku—unable to participate in any of it, spending all his days in his dorm room, reading novels.

Wang De’s favorite reads weren’t the novels tailored to mainstream values and female audiences today but rather the old-school male-centric fiction. In these novels, the male protagonist could brazenly recruit loyal followers and build a harem without restraint.

Having never been in a romantic relationship himself, Wang De immersed himself in such novels, living vicariously through countless protagonists, using their lives to escape the barren reality of his own.

One day, while reading until 4 a.m, he was dozing off when he heard a voice: “Do you want to become the kind of protagonist you read about in these novels?”

Who wouldn’t want that?

Wang De thought about the chosen ones, beloved by fate, whom he had watched from the sidelines in envy. He remembered the bitter humiliation of the one time he mustered the courage to confess to someone, only to be mocked in return, and how he had heard people whisper about how he walked with his head hung ever lower.

“Of course I do.”

That voice was quickly drowned in a wave of overwhelming sleepiness. When Wang De woke up the next day, he didn’t think much of it. But he never expected that everything would change after that.

As soon as he stepped out, he ran into the most famous campus belle at school, He Jun. She was the girl the boys in the dorm talked about most often late at night. Normally, Wang De wouldn’t even dare to look at her. But here she was, running right into him.

At the time, he was so flustered that he could barely think straight and was about to apologize when he saw He Jun staring blankly at him. His heart was probably racing faster than it ever had in his entire life.

Strangely enough, after that, he started running into He Jun frequently. The way she looked at him became increasingly shy and affectionate, to the point where he almost believed she was intentionally appearing in front of him.

And it wasn’t just He Jun. Other beautiful female classmates also began showing interest in him, with some even directly inviting him to their homes.

It wasn’t only the girls—other boys began treating him differently as well. More and more of them came to call him brother and act like close friends, saying they felt an instant connection with him.

Even the teachers seemed to favor him. One professor from the Economics Department went out of their way to include him in a research project in collaboration with a well-known company. This opportunity gave Wang De the chance to interact with major corporations, where he earned praise and promises from CEOs.

His life had undergone a seismic transformation after that one sentence—a sentence he wasn’t even sure he’d truly heard.

It was as if he had really become the protagonist in the kind of novels he loved to read! The sentence wasn’t just real—it had actually become true!

After coming to this conclusion and confirming its truth, Wang De was so excited that he couldn’t sleep the entire night. Multiple times, he jumped off his bed to silently scream with joy.

He was the protagonist of this world! His future life was destined to be a grand, exhilarating feel-good story!

This university was only the starting point. The beautiful women on campus were nothing compared to what awaited him. Once he graduated and entered society, his career would soar to unimaginable heights. He would have powerful businesswomen, actresses seen only on TV, and heiresses from both political and business circles!

He would establish his own business empire. The so-called “geniuses” in this school would one day only be worthy of working under him. He would have money he could never spend in a lifetime and a status that no one could touch.

The entire world would revolve around him!

How could he not be excited? How could he not be proud?

Now, having awakened the ability to hear others’ thoughts, Wang De realized he had underestimated himself. His future would be even more extraordinary than he’d imagined!

At that moment, he awakened yet another ability: The power to hear others’ inner voices. After reading so many novels, he instantly realized how useful this “golden finger^[1]金手指 – Golden finger: A trope in Chinese web fiction referring to a special power, tool, or ability that gives the protagonist an overwhelming advantage, enabling their rapid rise to … Continue reading” would be. He had underestimated his own future—his destiny would be even more terrifyingly extraordinary!

Wang De, exhilarated and smug, squinted as he gazed at the four people standing before him. They were a curious group, large and small, each with a unique style, looking both strange and striking.

The most noticeable of them was the young man standing in the middle. He seemed about the same age as Wang De and other university students but was half a head taller.

He wore a loosely knotted plain black tie that dangled like a ribbon over his crisp white shirt. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his black pants, and his demeanor was casual, even lazy. Yet, somehow, he radiated a commanding aura that made Wang De’s heart instinctively flinch.

It might be because of his extraordinarily good-looking face.

Not just good-looking in an ordinary sense, but a kind of beauty that makes you feel cool even in the scorching summer.

Wang De quickly identified his identity. In novels, there are often male side characters or antagonists who are perfect in every way, from looks to family background. 

Before the protagonist appears, he’s the idol many women admire, but once the protagonist appears, he’ll only be slapped in the face by the protagonist, becoming a stepping stone for the protagonist’s further rise in status.

There are only two outcomes for such people: Becoming a sidekick to the protagonist, or being utterly destroyed by the protagonist, falling into a downward spiral and having a miserable life, possibly even dying soon.

Wang De didn’t pay much attention to this person. Instead, he turned his gaze to the woman beside the young man, his eyes lighting up.

The woman’s black-framed glasses obscured her beauty. If you didn’t look closely, you wouldn’t notice that she was actually a very beautiful and uniquely stunning woman.

Anyway, he had never seen a woman like this—different from the delicate university girls he had encountered at school. She had a cold, sharp aura, and her concealed phoenix eyes were deep and intense.

In his harem, there should be a rose like this—sharp and thorny.

“This beautiful lady,” Wang De, forgetting his earlier anger, approached her with a confident smile.

The woman turned her gaze, and a cold, sharp light passed through her glasses as she looked at him. There was no trace of adoration in her eyes, just a hint of disdain, very faint—if he weren’t so attuned to that kind of disdain, he might not have noticed it. 

The protagonist of this time, surrounded by beautiful women, quickly became angry. “Do you know who you’re facing?”