Chapter 1: Transmigration into a Book?!

After the entire family read his mind, they tore apart the garbage script.

"Cancan, are you awake? You just got back from abroad, and it's the middle of winter. How did you fall into the water? This is going to be miserable."

Shen Can woke up to a woman's voice, thick with worry.

"Cancan's awake? Are you hungry? Mom will get you something to eat right away. Eat up, then take your medicine." The woman finally smiled as she watched Shen Can stir. She hurried off to fetch food.

Before Shen Can could say a word, he only saw her retreating figure. Remembering what he'd seen after falling into the water, he pressed a hand to his throbbing head.

He hadn't expected to transmigrate into a book. Yes, Shen Can wasn't originally from this world. He'd been a game designer, and after finishing another project, he'd gone skiing in the mountains to relax.

But this "relaxation" had been too thorough. An avalanche had buried him. Death, after all, was the ultimate relaxation.

He hadn't expected to open his eyes again, but when he did, it wasn't his world anymore. He'd become someone else. Though the name and appearance were the same, this was no longer his original world.

He had transmigrated in a hospital abroad. After receiving all of the original body's memories, he learned that the person he now inhabited had died in a camping accident, falling down a cliff. After recovering, he returned to his studies as planned.

He arrived as a sophomore in college and stayed there for three years until graduation and his return to China. In fact, he had felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity with this family from the moment he received the memories.

Yet he couldn't recall anything until a welcome-home party hosted by the Shen family for him. During the event, he accidentally fell into the water, and the shock triggered his memories.

Ugh, why did I have to transmigrate into a book? he thought. And why into the villain's family of all places?

This was a novel he had read in college. He remembered it was for a group project where they had to design a small game. One of the girls had recommended this book.

She suggested they create a story-driven game where players could take on the role of a character from the novel and alter events.

But the plan never materialized. After all, it was just a group project, and the idea was too ambitious for their limited time, energy, and funds.

As a game designer at the time, he had still read the entire novel. After all, as the person designing the game's quests, he needed to know the entire plot.

But since they never ended up making the game, he had long since forgotten it. He had transmigrated into the fifth child of the Shen family, though he should really call Uncle Shen and Aunt Shen his maternal uncle and aunt.

He was actually the child of Uncle Shen's younger sister, but his parents had died in an accident when he was young. Uncle Shen had then taken him in, registered him under his own household, and raised him.

Looking back, Fifth Young Master Shen must have died during his sophomore year of college. By the time the story began, the Shen family only had four young masters left.

His mind was filled with names of game characters. Since he was abroad at the time and hadn't met his brothers, the vaguely familiar names hadn't piqued his curiosity. Besides, it had been a long time since he'd read the novel.

Before falling into the water, he had been feeding the fish by the lake, with other people around. Suddenly, two men started arguing. The taller one tried to coax the shorter one into his arms, reaching out to pull him close.

The shorter man struggled. Annoyed by the commotion, he had already decided to leave. Just as he lifted his foot, the shorter man shoved the taller one away.

Wiping his tears, he ran toward him. Perhaps because he wasn't watching where he was going while crying, he bumped into him, knocking him off balance. His foot slipped on a moss-covered stone, and he tumbled backward.

As he fell, he heard a man's voice: "Shen Keke, are you sure you won't stop? You know I love you! I was forced by my mother to meet that woman today. Shen Keke, why can't you just understand me?"

"If your family wasn't so ordinary, my mother would never..."

Shen Keke cut him off, shouting through his tears, "Zhou Jingxuan, how could you?! It's not my fault my family's like this! I wish I could match your status too!"

At that moment, only one thought filled his mind: What the hell, Keke? Don't you know you just knocked someone over? Can't you at least look at the innocent victim here? Damn it, take your arguments home to settle, can't you?!

Then came the shock of falling into the water, which jolted his memory completely. He had actually transmigrated into a novel that blended every trope of wealthy family drama, melodrama, and sweet romance—a dual-male lead story where he would be the one being chased, the one running, and the one who couldn't escape no matter how hard he tried.

The protagonist top and bottom were the two men who had been arguing earlier. By now, they had been together for some time, but they faced fierce opposition from the protagonist top's mother.

She looked down on the protagonist bottom from an ordinary family. The protagonist top, forced by his mother to go on a blind date with another woman, was seen by the protagonist bottom. The two had a huge fight, but of course, they eventually reconciled.

To be honest, their reconciliation was inevitable. After all, the protagonist bottom in this book had never managed to escape City A, even when he ran away. The furthest he'd ever gotten was to the city's slums, and the protagonist top found him within two days, bringing him home for some intimate time.

During this incident, the protagonist top also discovered the protagonist bottom's connection to their family. Yes, that's right—the protagonist bottom was distantly related to them. He was the great-grandson of their grandfather's younger brother.

Why was the Shen family a wealthy dynasty, while the protagonist bottom's family remained ordinary? Because their great-grandfather had divided the family estate very early on. Everything that followed was built up by their grandfather over decades of hard work.

If the brothers had been close, the protagonist bottom might have benefited somewhat. But their grandfather's younger brother had always insisted that the great-grandfather's division of the estate had been unfair. He argued that since he had stayed by their great-grandfather's side to care for him while their grandfather had gone off to join the army early on, he should have received a larger share.

Meanwhile, his eldest brother, who was already far more capable, should have taken less. After all, the capable should consider the less capable—they were family, after all.

But why should Grandpa have to suffer? Most of his military pay had always been sent home. The two families quarreled bitterly, and after Great-Grandpa's death, they completely cut off contact.

The estrangement continued even after Grandpa's death and the death of his younger brother. The younger generation naturally had no contact with each other.

The Shen family met a tragic end: some died, others became comatose, and some simply disappeared. Shen Corporation was swallowed by the family of the Protagonist top, while Shen Keke was married into the Protagonist top's family as a dowry, bringing with him one of Shen Corporation's major unreleased projects (which hadn't yet been launched) and two plots of land worth over a hundred million yuan.

He'd seen tragedies before, but never anything so devastating. How could a family be completely destroyed like this? Not a single living soul left behind.

Though he hadn't spent much time with the Shen family, he'd spoken with them frequently during his three years abroad and received gifts from the entire family every holiday. It would have been impossible for him to stand by and do nothing.

Moreover, his brother had finally achieved a comfortable life, free from the drudgery of corporate life. Who dared disrupt that? He would never allow it.