To win the 100,000 prize, Yan Huirou conceived the character with extreme care. After reading the prompt from the project team, she spent two days absorbing the basic world setting, instinctively using her high school test-taking mindset to deduce the test setter’s intentions.
To design a character that would most easily evoke empathy and immediately capture the project team’s attention, a villain seemed the most suitable. After all, the female lead already appeared sufficiently “silly-sweet,” and another character embodying pure goodness and beauty would easily clash, making it harder to be chosen. Furthermore, for a villainous role, readers had lower moral expectations, making the plot easier to write with grand, sweeping developments.
Once the tone was set, Yan Huirou immediately opened a document and began to write. But as she typed the first word, she found herself at a loss for words. It felt strange, like being forced into conversation with a stranger whose name and personality she didn’t know. Every keystroke felt awkwardly unsettling.
Yan Huirou sighed, cupping her face. She got up to pour herself a cup of coffee, then sat back down. Then she thought, why am I talking to a stranger? It should clearly be a child.
At this thought, Yan Huirou’s mind suddenly cleared, and she felt much more relaxed. Yes, before she became the world-destroying villain, her origin, her starting point, should have been a blank slate. A blank slate filled with Yan Huirou’s thoughts.
And so, Jiang Xidai was born. She was conceived within the creator’s thoughts, like a mother-daughter relationship of a different kind. A mother and daughter wouldn’t be completely alike, perhaps even polar opposites, but whether through genetic continuity or environmental shaping, there would always be countless subtle connections and similarities. Like an iceberg submerged deep underwater.
Before she started writing, Yan Huirou had studied many character design techniques. Yet, when she actually began to write, it was as if she lost herself, completely immersed. After all, this small world under her pen had no towering debts, no need to endure and comfort an traumatized sister, no hostile stares from the outside world, no damp rainy seasons of losing loved ones, and no daily struggles of life’s necessities…
After a day’s work, after coaxing Yi to sleep, she could bury herself in writing. This was the rare time Yan Huirou could truly relax.
Yan Huirou wrote based on intuition… She always felt that the little villain was very well-behaved when quiet, loved sweets, and probably also liked soft foods like glutinous rice balls. She liked glittering jewels and adored brightly colored clothes. She was innocent yet sensitive, disliked crowded places, but also absolutely unwilling to be alone.
Life was too realistic; the more snobbish the people she encountered recently, the purer and more sincere she made the character under her pen. Her circumstances were too bleak, while Jiang Xidai was bright and radiant, possessing a vibrant and tenacious vitality. Yan Huirou, for money, was forced to endure silently in reality, while Jiang Xidai’s nature was untamed, rarely reining in her sharpness.
The pain she suffered in reality inevitably seeped through her pen. She remembered her mother once saying that literary works needed emotional support to move people. So, the more Yan Huirou suppressed her pain, the more three-dimensional and vibrant Jiang Xidai became, full of flesh and blood.
The scars ground out in Yan Huirou’s heart seeped blood. It was as if she dipped her brush in that blood, stroke by stroke, sketching a bleeding rose in another space. She had no idea at the time how much emotion and love, longing, solace, and even deep-seated desire she poured into Jiang Xidai. Thus, amidst a bittersweet intertwining, a new life was conceived in despair.
It was supposed to be a manuscript of a few tens of thousands of words, but by the time Yan Huirou realized it, she had already written over a hundred thousand words.
She didn’t continue writing that day, but instead reread it from the beginning, feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Due to the creator’s bias, the character didn’t feel very villainous. She seemed to exert no pressure on the female lead at all.
Yan Huirou realized she had strayed from the topic and revised it from the beginning. She added many plot elements, trying to make her descent into darkness more reasonable. However, by this point, Yan Huirou was no longer afraid of the character being out of character (OOC), because Jiang Xidai had become so fully developed that Yan Huirou knew her intimately. She knew how the character would act even with her eyes closed. Adding some plot twists simply felt natural.
But for some reason, as Yan Huirou also made her life shattered, she felt a rare sense of guilt. What she was doing was creating a character she loved, and then destroying her piece by piece, achieving the beauty of tragedy. It was like when she used to travel with her mother on the space elevator, pressing against the transparent window, watching brilliant stars collide outside the universe. Their light was most splendid at the moment of destruction. After the splendor, only scattered remnants remained.
When Yan Huirou typed the last word, the guilt still lingered, and then she surprisingly felt a sense of exhilaration. It was rare for her to have such dark thoughts. Perhaps it was because life was too bitter, and morality prevented her from venting in real society, and she tried her best not to spread negative energy to those around her. This small space had once saved her tormented soul, which had nowhere to rest, and also became her channel for release.
Without Jiang Xidai, Yan Huirou didn’t know how she would have gotten through those darkest days.
Yan Huirou closed her laptop, and the soft blue light disappeared from her face. She rubbed her tired eyes, leaned back on the sofa, and fell asleep.
It was on this day that she had a dream. In the dream, the little girl wore ancient, elegant red clothes, standing alone in the distance. All around her was a vast expanse of white, leaving only that solitary red dot. She wanted to approach, but couldn’t lift her feet.
Yan Huirou’s sleep was not deep. She jolted awake and saw it was already six in the morning. She logged on, opened her chat box with Chen Cha’an, dragged the small document, and pressed her thumb on the keyboard, hesitating to send it.
Yan Huirou thought, Should I revise it again?
But she knew deep down that creating a new character wouldn’t yield the same effect. No, it absolutely wouldn’t be as competitive. The 100,000 prize money was very important to her, even for her sister’s sake.
…And, was she perhaps being too emotional? Or had the helplessness of this period made her attached to an imaginary figure? This sounded absurd no matter how she thought about it. No matter how much she liked her, she wasn’t real, just a fictional character.
Yan Huirou gave a wry smile, feeling a little regretful in her heart, but more than that, relieved. She pressed the enter key, and the file transmitted successfully.
Half a month later, Chen Cha’an called to congratulate her. “I told you you could do it, Yan Yan, you were selected! The prize money will be transferred to your account in three business days; keep an eye out.”
Yan Huirou breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you too, or I wouldn’t have known about this opportunity.”
“No problem. Have you gathered enough for your sister’s next surgery?”
“Mmm, with this money, it should be enough.”
Yan Huirou remembered that surgery was very successful. After being discharged again, her range of motion increased significantly, and Yu Huaiyi could barely walk with a support frame. The happiest person wasn’t even Yi, but Yan Huirou. She even turned away to shed a few tears, then heard her sister ask, “Sis, how much did this cost?”
“Not too much.”
“What are you going to do from now on?”
“What?” Yan Huirou, rarely having such a harmonious conversation with her, softly replied, “I’ll find a way to raise money and cure you.”
“I mean… Mom and Dad are gone, the money’s gone, and I still can’t take care of myself; I can only rely on you. Are you going to spend your next life taking care of me? Your studies, your future, if you marry…”
“Why think so far ahead? Are you scared?” Yan Huirou gently stroked her head. “Yi, I won’t leave.”
Although the debts continued to pile up, no amount of money earned seemed to help. However, Yan Huirou never delayed Yu Huaiyi’s treatment. Money could be earned later, but she hoped her only family member would slowly get better.
But…
Yan Huirou never imagined that the first thing her sister would do, after being able to barely stand, was to use her support frame to move to the window while Yan Huirou was out. Then she opened the window and jumped.
When Yan Huirou rushed back, she only found a crookedly written note on the open window.
—Living is too tiring for me, and for you too. I don’t want to be a burden on you anymore, big sister.
Roughly two years after the accident, Yan Huirou lost her last blood relative. She had never imagined that the days she struggled upward would end so bleakly, in such a manner. Life’s drastic changes were always absurd and illogical. They even made her formerly happy days, separated by a distinct timeline, feel as distant as if they had happened in a previous life.
Yan Huirou’s beliefs rapidly crumbled after Yi’s departure. She didn’t know what meaning her life held anymore. Perhaps all her previous efforts were wrong; she should have left with her mothers long ago.
Chen Cha’an always called to check on her, on average once a day, as if afraid something might happen to her too. Yan Huirou was extremely depressed but still politely said, “I’m fine. Really, I’m okay…”
“If you really can’t stand it, why don’t you have a good cry?” Chen Cha’an said. “Oh, you look like this, it’s easy for problems to arise.”
“…Can’t cry.”
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Chen Cha’an said. “If you can’t cry, why don’t you do something to vent? Doing something mean is fine too, for example, catching all the stray cats downstairs and giving them a good slash. I like to do that when I’m feeling low, it feels really good.”
“I’m a bit… I don’t have the energy for that.” Yan Huirou silently curved her lips, but there was no smile in her eyes. The room was unlit. She lay on the sofa, having not eaten or drunk for days and nights, nor moved, yet miraculously felt neither hunger nor thirst.
Chen Cha’an was probably scratching her head on the other end of the phone. “Hmm… Oh, right, our project started trial operation, and it’s quite good. The villain character you wrote is very three-dimensional, and her integration with the world setting is also good. We’ve set her as an important supporting character; she should be a combat power ceiling, the big boss.”
Yan Huirou was startled.
Chen Cha’an continued, “What a beautiful woman! Although all novel characters are pretty, she’s something else. She just radiates light… Yan Huirou, this must be because you wrote her too wordily, as if you wanted to describe every single eyelash clearly. Haha.”
“You can see what she looks like?” Yan Huirou asked. “…Is this 3D modeling based on my description?”
“No. That’s too old-fashioned. This is an alternate world, not built from data but constrained by laws—she just looks like that.”
Chen Cha’an was pleased to see her a little more animated, and laughed, “I still have to take time every day to see what your ‘daughter’ is doing. Too bad I can’t show you, because this is an internal project.”
Yan Huirou finally smiled. “What does she do every day?”
“First runs usually don’t have strong self-awareness or wide ranges of action, but from what I see, your ‘daughter’ is just purely lazy,” Chen Cha’an complained. “She lies around in her luxurious Shasheng Sect all day, either sleeping or watching maids dance. It’s so leisurely, it makes me jealous of the rich… And she’s a bit of a love addict. Currently, she’s fallen for someone, but it seems to be unrequited love, which is really upsetting her.”
Yan Huirou said blankly, “You mean a romance plotline? I didn’t write that.”
“You don’t need to write these,” Chen Cha’an said. “They, like people, will have their own needs and choices. Sigh… Although my superior tells me a hundred times a day that these research subjects aren’t human, sometimes I really feel like there’s no difference from real people.”
After hanging up the phone, the room fell back into a quiet solitude. She had thought that no one in this world needed her anymore, and that such a close connection would never exist again.
But hearing this news, a new desire suddenly bloomed in Yan Huirou’s heart.
If she could, she wanted to see Jiang Xidai.
