He looked at the woman in the white dress, completely surrounded by his guards and frozen in place.
Jiang Lan let out a soft sigh and calmly sat back down in the pavilion.
Though he appeared calm, a sharp pain in his chest made him want to hiss with every breath.
After all, that last attack had been real, not a joke.
He appeared serene, but inside, he was anything but. In fact, the whole situation was a real pain in the ass.
He was Jiang Lan, a transmigrator.
Or more accurately, someone who had transmigrated into a book.
He had woken up to find himself in this world, having become the villainous cannon fodder who was destined to die a horrible death in the original plot.
Other transmigrators usually got a system or something, but he hadn't seen so much as a shadow of a Golden Finger, let alone a system.
The woman before him was Su Qinghan, the eldest daughter of the current generation of the Su Family—one of the four great families in Yu Yi City of Jiangling County, a territory within the Great Xia Dynasty's one hundred and eight counties.
She had entered the First Realm at four, broken through to the Second Realm at eight, reached the Third Realm by the time she was thirteen, and had now successfully broken through to the Fourth Realm.
Across all of Jiangling County, and even the entire Great Xia Dynasty, she was a peerless prodigy, a dazzling, heaven-gifted maiden.
Of course, she had another identity: the wife of this world's protagonist, Lin Fan.
To be more precise, this world was supposed to be the world of the *Eunuch Sword Master*.
*Eunuch Sword Master* was a xianxia fantasy novel of the "live-in son-in-law" genre. Of course, *Eunuch Sword Master* was the nickname readers had given it.
The reason it was called *Eunuch Sword Master* was that despite being hundreds of chapters in, the male protagonist was still, for all intents and purposes, a eunuch.
He hadn't so much as held hands with the many female leads, let alone touched the hems of their dresses. Thus, the protagonist, Lin Fan, was mockingly dubbed the Eunuch Sword Master.
The novel was primarily a thrilling tale about the Eternal Damnation Sword Master, a Great Power of the Sword Dao. After being betrayed by his disciple in a past life, he was forced to undergo corporeal dissolution and reincarnation. He was reborn to cultivate anew, becoming the live-in son-in-law of the Su Family—one of the four great families in Yu Yi City. From there, he embarked on a classic journey of showing off, slapping faces, annihilating his foes, and winning the hearts of beautiful women.
The only reason he remembered the main plot of *Eunuch Sword Master* was because a villainous cannon fodder in the story shared his exact name.
He was the only son of the Great Xia Dynasty's Powerful Minister—an ignorant, debauched, good-for-nothing silk-pants heir.
*Eunuch Sword Master* was a long novel, and Jiang Lan hadn't actually finished it. The later parts were so padded with filler it was ridiculous.
But he still remembered some of the early plot points.
It followed the same old tired tropes. A powerful expert is reborn, only to be looked down upon by his new family and underestimated by his mother-in-law. Even Su Qinghan, his wife in name only, despised him.
On their wedding day, Su Qinghan didn't even go through with the ceremony. She ran away from her family, leaving the protagonist to spend his wedding night alone.
Afterward, the protagonist gradually revealed his extraordinary abilities, putting all those who had looked down on him in their place.
First, he won the emperor's favor and restored order to the court. Then, he was endorsed by the Immortal Sects and went on to cleanse the world of evil.
Consequently, the Su Family was filled with endless regret, his mother-in-law was remorseful, and his little sister-in-law began to see him in a new light.
Su Qinghan, too, gradually recognized the protagonist's exceptional qualities and began to accept him.
Jiang Lan couldn't recall the other specific plot details very clearly.
But the one thing he remembered with perfect clarity was that his family, the Jiang Family, was eventually annihilated—every single member executed.
They didn't even spare the chickens. It was a truly miserable end.
As for the Powerful Minister at the heart of the government—his father—he was a man of monstrous ambition. He sowed chaos in the court, schemed to usurp the throne, and took advantage of the young Emperor Xia's age. He was the kind of man who'd point at a deer and call it a horse right in the middle of the throne room, utterly demolishing Emperor Xia's authority.
His crimes were too numerous to count.
Naturally, he met a terrible end as well.
And as a villainous cannon fodder, Jiang Lan himself couldn't escape death either.
The whole mess started, it seemed, because he had taken a liking to protagonist Lin Fan's sister-in-law—the younger sister of the woman before him, Su Qinghan—a girl named Su Qingyao. That's how he'd offended Lin Fan.
In the novel, his character was a pretty boy and nothing more—a total waste who spent his days lost in debauchery.
For some reason, he was unable to cultivate, which had twisted his personality, making him enjoy bullying others with his borrowed power.
Relying on his father's influence, he ran rampant throughout Great Xia, showing no respect even for the Royal Family and Relatives.
He'd heard from some unknown source that Su Qingyao, the second daughter of the Su Family in Yu Yi City, possessed a special Tripod Furnace Physique that could help someone embark on the path of cultivation.
And so, he had traveled thousands of miles from the Imperial Capital of Jingyang City and ordered his men to abduct Su Qingyao from her academy.
Which led to the current scene: Su Qinghan, having heard the news, rushing here to rescue her sister.
Of course, Jiang Lan, who knew the plot, was also aware that there was a hidden reason why his character had become so "irredeemably evil."
The original owner of his body was the very definition of the "beautiful, powerful, and tragic" archetype. Of course, the 'powerful' part was ancient history. Now, he was just a useless silk-pants heir who relied on his family's name to act arrogant and domineering.
In the original plot, Su Qinghan had been cultivating at the Cyan Mountain Academy in Jiangling County. Today was the day she broke through to the Fourth Realm, the Illuminating Nether Realm, catching the eye of an Elder from the Dao Cang Sword Sect who wanted to take her as an Inner Disciple.
The Dao Cang Sword Sect was one of the Four Great Sword Sects in the Great Xia Dynasty. Across the entire Nine Provinces Land, it was renowned as a formidable power with a long history and profound heritage.
The children of many dynasties and Noble Families paid exorbitant prices just for a chance to enter the sect and cultivate.
However, being familiar with the plot, Jiang Lan knew very well that the one who wanted Su Qinghan as a disciple wasn't just some ordinary Dao Cang Sword Sect Elder. It was one of the three reclusive Sword Immortals currently residing in the Great Xia Dynasty.
A true, bona fide peerless expert of the Eighth Realm.
This was another thing that was a real pain in the ass. If it were an ordinary woman, he could just act like his predecessor, kidnap her, and be done with it. Why would he even need to consider the consequences?
But a peerless expert of the Eighth Realm carried immense weight in the current Great Xia Dynasty.
"Young Master, what should we do with this woman? She's unbelievably audacious. To try and assassinate you in broad daylight... she must have a death wish."
An armored guard with a sword at his side stepped forward and asked respectfully.
The voice snapped Jiang Lan back to reality.
He clicked his tongue internally.
'In the original plot, just how powerful was the "stupidity aura" affecting my character?' he thought. 'How could a silk-pants heir who could annihilate the Su Family countless times over with a single breath be so easily cowed by a few words from Su Qinghan? And then obediently hand over Su Qingyao…'
He didn't remember the plot perfectly, but he had a vague impression of what happened.
As one of the important female supporting characters, Su Qingyao couldn't possibly be taken advantage of by a villainous cannon fodder like him.
That's why Su Qinghan's arrival was so timely—it happened at the exact moment he had no guards with him.
So, with a few simple threats, she force-fed him some random Elixir Pill—one for which only she had the antidote. She threatened that if he dared to speak a word of what happened today, he would die a horrible death, bleeding from all seven orifices as if his heart were being devoured by ten thousand ants.
The original owner of the body, terrified of death, had naturally agreed to her terms with complete subservience. He meekly handed over Su Qingyao, and it was this incident that later earned him the hatred of the protagonist, Lin Fan.
'You really couldn't use your brain when it came to this kind of plot,' Jiang Lan thought. 'The moment you did, you'd feel like the author was grabbing your IQ and grinding it into the dirt.'
'I'm the son of the most powerful official in all of Great Xia, and she's just the young mistress of some family from a remote backwater city.'
'How did she have the guts to do that? Who gave her that courage? The author?'
'Don't tell me the female lead has plot armor, too?'