Chapter 2: The Discarded Pearl
She never wanted to transmigrate into the novel The Biography of a Fujoshi in the Cultivation World.
As she had felt before, from the moment she read the synopsis, an intuition had haunted her—a premonition that if she were to cross over, she would end up as the cannon fodder character, Yan Tangtang.
While Yan Tangtang considered her sexual orientation to be bisexual, she had to admit that her greatest passion lay in BL (Boys' Love) novels. She read GL (Girls' Love) stories as well, but compared to her vast consumption of BL, her experience with GL was like a single drop of water in an entire ocean.
She adored gay couples. She couldn't even pinpoint exactly why. Furthermore, she harbored a deep, secret yearning to be a man—specifically, so she could be the man in a gay relationship.
It might sound a bit ridiculous. She was bi, after all; she was attracted to both men and women. Yet, the desire to be male remained her second greatest wish, right after the wish to transmigrate itself. Her third wish, naturally, was for that transmigration to lead her into a cultivation world.
The novel The Biography of a Fujoshi in the Cultivation World technically fulfilled two of her greatest desires. However, she knew instinctively that if she entered this specific story, becoming a man would be an impossibility. That was why she had dreaded this particular world. If her dissatisfaction was ninety percent due to being unable to become a man, the remaining ten percent was because the character she was destined to inhabit was truly wretched.
The role of "Yan Tangtang" in that book was horrific.
True to its title, the story followed a fujoshi whose soul transmigrated into a cultivation world. The entire narrative was told from the perspective of this female lead.
This protagonist was portrayed as an incredibly talented, sharp, and powerful woman. Even before her transmigration, she had successfully controlled one of her country's top business conglomerates. In her original life, however, her duties to the family business had forced her to bury her fujoshi heart in the deepest recesses of her soul.
But then, she transmigrated. She arrived in a cultivation world as the youngest child of a family, finally free from the burden of leading a corporate empire.
To make matters better, her new family was one of the most powerful clans in the cultivation world. Her path was paved with limitless resources and support, ensuring her cultivation would flourish without a single worry.
With such freedom, why wouldn't she fulfill the fujoshi fantasies she had suppressed in her past life? Thus, the female lead's grand ambition became clear: she would "bend" the handsome young men of this world into gay romances.
There was, however, an inescapable thread of fate connecting the female lead and the original Yan Tangtang.
It was the legendary "swapping of children."
In truth, it was Yan Tangtang who should have been the biological daughter of that powerful family. But she had been switched with the female lead at birth.
The incident occurred because the powerful family, as great as they were, had equally powerful enemies. Originally, an enemy had intended to kill the newborn child—the youngest of the clan—outright. But killing the infant would not only trigger a global hunt for the assassin but would also fail to satisfy the enemy's desire for vengeance. They wanted the family to suffer slowly.
The reason was simple: the family had five sons before finally being blessed with a daughter. Longing for a girl, the entire clan had cherished the child like a "pearl in the palm" even before she was born.
The enemy calculated that the greatest pain would come later. When the family eventually realized that the "pearl" they had pampered and raised was not their own—and that their true daughter had been struggling through a life of hardship—the shock and grief might literally break their hearts.
And so, the swap was set in motion.
After a meticulous search, the enemy found a pair of mercenaries who were expecting a child on the very same day as the noble family. Upon checking, that child was also a girl.
To those mercenaries, the pregnancy was merely an accident. They were focused solely on their cultivation and felt only annoyance at the arrival of a child. They had no intention of caring for her. A mercenary's life was brutal; finding resources for cultivation was hard enough for themselves. Moreover, they were ordinary cultivators without special innate powers, meaning they had to focus entirely on their own progression to survive. Where would they find the time for a baby?
If their child could be raised in a great family, they were more than happy to give her up. They didn't want her to endure the hardships they faced. As for what might happen to the child if the noble family ever discovered the truth, they simply chalked it up to the girl's own "luck."
As for the baby who would replace her—the noble daughter? Since she wasn't their biological child, they certainly wouldn't care for her.
The enemy reached an agreement with the mercenaries with very little effort.
However, infiltrating the noble family's manor before the birth required immense sacrifice and preparation. Despite the enemy's strength, the manor's defenses were formidable, and getting inside, even briefly, was a harrowing task.
Because the female lead transmigrated into her new body the moment she was born, it was only natural that she overheard some of the adults' conversations. She knew about the swap from the very beginning.
When the enemy broke into the manor to exchange the infants, it was impossible for the inhabitants not to notice an intruder. However, they assumed the intruder had come to harm the child; the idea of a baby being swapped never even crossed their minds.
The enemy managed to escape the manor only after sustaining severe, life-threatening injuries.
The noble family, meanwhile, rejoiced that their child was safe and sound. They noticed nothing. Newborns are often red-faced and difficult to distinguish, and since the swap happened on the night of the birth, the change wasn't obvious.
Furthermore, by a stroke of luck for the enemy, both infants possessed blue eyes.
While the differences in those eyes might have been apparent if they were compared side-by-side as they grew older, at the moment of birth, they were almost impossible to tell apart.
And so, the swap was successfully completed.
Yan Tangtang let out a long sigh and decided to observe a moment of silence for the "Yan Tangtang" of the novel.
When she had originally read these chapters, she hadn't felt much. But now that she was inhabiting Yan Tangtang's body and re-examining the story, a wave of sorrow washed over her.
In reality, this Yan Tangtang was the one who should have grown up like a little princess.
Initially, she hadn't held much of an opinion regarding the fact that the female lead knew about the swap. But upon reflection, she felt a flicker of resentment. Because the novel was written from the protagonist's perspective, it portrayed her waiting twenty-five years to reveal the truth to her family as a reasonable and even noble act. The narrative went so far as to praise the female lead's "generosity" for speaking up at all.
But one must remember: for a cultivator, twenty-five years might not be long, but twenty-five years is still twenty-five years.
That is more than enough time for two children to grow into adulthood.
While the female lead used the family's top-tier resources to rapidly ascend in rank and join a major sect, the Yan Tangtang of the novel had been reduced to a mere prostitute because of the mercenaries' exploitation.
Yan Tangtang hated to use such a term for the person she had now become, but there was no denying that in the original plot, Yan Tangtang's life had indeed spiraled down to that point.
The novel had described that descent in excruciating detail.