[Congratulations, Host, for unlocking the "Novice Poison Master" achievement!]
[Congratulations, Host, for successfully earning "Ye Luling's Gratitude"!]
[Congratulations, Host, for successfully dealing the protagonist a double blow, both physically and mentally!]
The systems took turns broadcasting excitedly inside Mu Yue's mind, with the last item of points credited by Tycoon.
[Points +250 +500 +500 mi!]
[Ahhh, Host, you're so amazing!!!]
The four systems could no longer hold back. They popped out of the system space and were bouncing all over Mu Yue's bed in wild celebration.
They had only used two random items, and in the blink of an eye, they had earned so much! Ahhh, this feels so great!
Mu Yue smiled calmly, raising her hand slightly. "Don't celebrate just yet. I have no intention of closing the book on this matter anytime soon."
"Now, I have a task for all of you."
The four fluffy little systems immediately sat in a neat row, pricking up their ears to listen to Mu Yue's instructions.
"Hack into every electronic device in their rooms, record their activities, make sure their faces are clearly in frame, and blur out everything else. We wouldn't want anything disgusting to show up and bother you or anyone else."
The four systems all signaled that they had received the order. This task was a piece of cake for them, and their core programming was already set to only capture areas above the neck of unclothed humans, so no secondary editing would even be needed.
Just as the four systems were about to set off to carry out their mission, Mu Yue added, "After you finish recording, use the phones of those three people to send the footage to everyone in their contact lists."
She supplemented, "Oh right, send the unblurred version to Ye Luling's father." That man had disgusted her so much, so she was going to give him a taste of his own disgusting medicine.
[!!!] The Villain System was this close to dropping to its knees and shouting that Mu Yue was its god.
To say a plan that would ruin people's reputations so casually and calmly — this was what a real villain was like! All those useless scumbag predecessors, all of you should come and learn from her!
As for the unblurred footage, even if it took a little extra work, the Villain System thought it was absolutely no trouble at all as long as it was what the host wanted.
It was destined to be a wildly thrilling night. Some partied hard until dawn, while others screamed in agony until the sun came up.
Daylight pierced through the darkness, the bright sun hung high in the sky, and the people in one particular room finally slowly came to.
The first thing they felt was pain — indescribable pain, as if their bodies had been run over and torn apart repeatedly. Every single breath they took made them feel like they were suffering beyond endurance.
Then Wang Jian's vision finally cleared. He looked at the messy floor, his own body covered all over with bruises and marks, and the sharp stinging pain in two intimate areas, and he screamed out — but no sound came out, not even a full syllable, because his throat was also burning and raw, so hoarse that he could not make a single audible noise.
Aaaaaahhhh!!! Wang Jian clutched his head in utter breakdown, his features twisted with rage. He looked at the other two disheveled, indecently positioned people on the other side of the room, and wanted to kill them both right then and there.
Ignoring the pain all over his body, he staggered around trying to find something, grabbed whatever he touched, and hurled it hard at the other two. But his body was completely drained, with multiple torn injuries. Just that one movement made him pale with agony, and the object never hit the two people, only landing on the carpet of the room with a dull thud.
Wang Jian was seething with rage and tried to grab something else, but the sharp pain that had just hit him was too overwhelming. He could only drop down onto the floor, gasping for huge gulps of air.
His little commotion had woken the other two people up too.
Fang Suyi's head was throbbing with splitting pain. Earlier, when Wang Jian had smashed something, it had knocked against the curtains, letting the light from outside seep through. The harsh light stung his eyes, and Fang Suyi squinted, swearing, "Who the fuck—"
The second the words left his mouth, he suddenly realized something was very wrong. His eyes flew wide open, and right after that, he caught sight of a nightmare he would never forget for as long as he lived.
"Shit! Fucking hell! Shit!" Fang Suyi burst out cursing, looking around wildly just like Wang Jian had done. He grabbed a random object nearby, ready to hurl it at the other two men, "I'm gonna kill you both!"
Maybe it was because Fang Suyi was a little younger than the other two, or maybe he was so crazed that he completely forgot about the pain wracking his body. He charged forward and started beating one of them without a second thought.
All the while, he kept muttering to himself over and over, "How could this happen... How could this happen..." His expression looked like he was completely falling apart, but unfortunately, there was no one here who cared a single bit about him.
The man getting beaten, Gao Xingwei—who was Ye Luling's fiance—woke up at that point. He was first dazed from the hits, then jolted fully awake by the searing pain. Once he processed exactly what had just happened in this room, and what had been done to his own body, he roared out loud, flipped the tables, and started tussling back with Fang Suyi.
In no time, Wang Jian, who never worked out and was as weak as a rag, ended up being the one taking the most hits out of all three of them.
He screamed nonstop, wailing that "my ass is about to split open" — that line alone shattered the last of the other two men's mental defenses. The three men were this close to bursting into hysterical tears.
On top of that, they had no strength left in their bodies, and the pain was so bad it felt like they were dying. That chaotic brawl didn't last very long at all.
But right as they caught their breath and grabbed something to cover their private areas, which were so badly worn raw and bruised they looked utterly gruesome, the door to the room was suddenly slammed open hard. A whole crowd of security guards and onlookers were gathered right outside.
The security guards were shocked to gape wide-eyed at the scene inside the room, apologizing repeatedly, "We're so sorry, so sorry, we heard a report that someone was getting beaten so we burst in without warning..."
"Oh my God..."
"Good heavens, how did they end up looking so wrecked? That looks absolutely brutal."
"Tsk tsk, someone needs to call a doctor over here, right?"
"Honey, don't look, this is too obscene!"
The three men finally couldn't take this overwhelming embarrassment and shock any longer, and they all blacked out.
When Fang Surou followed the rest of her family into the medical care room, she looked completely disbelieving, muttering over and over "How could this happen, this can't be real."
Her fiance Sucker Bro, hearing her muttering, said sarcastically, "Huh, what good thing did you and your brother get up to together this time?"
Fang Surou could tell from his tone that last night's incident was still not settled. She was just about to try to soothe him again, when she heard her parents let out a sharp scream, yelling, "What did you say? You said you were... with two men..."
And Second Brother Fang looked completely battered, like a tattered rag doll. Finally seeing his family, Fang Suyi wailed at the top of his lungs, crying his heart out. His dignity! His chastity! He got fucked by a man! And he fucked a man too! Even his mouth was... ugh!
"Whoa!" Sucker Bro's eyes went wide instantly. He was fluent in English, so he hurried over to ask the medical staff exactly what had happened. The medical staff put it in very euphemistic terms, but it was obvious exactly what had gone on the second you heard it.
Sucker Bro blurted out two "holy shit!" in a row, all his previous listlessness gone as he hurried over to gawk at the other two people. The more he watched, the more hyped he got. Whoa, this battle was way more intense than anyone could have guessed! No one would have ever thought Second Brother Fang had such a kink, hahaha!
He pulled out his phone, just about to share the hilarious tea with his buddies back in China, when he spotted a video sent to him by Second Brother Fang a few minutes prior.
The video opened to total darkness. Confused about what it was, Sucker Bro tapped to play it without a second thought. Two minutes later, his face was frozen in a total "what the actual hell" expression, and the group chat he shared with Fang Suyi and all their mutual friends had already completely blown up.
It wasn't just him who got the video. Every single person who knew Fang Suyi had received it!
Was that guy high? No way he wasn't! He partied way too hard last night, and even recorded the whole thing? And set it to send as a scheduled mass message? Oh my god! Sucker Bro clamped a hand over his mouth, scurried out of the chat to go wild over the gossip with his other friends, and even snuck back to snap a couple of candid photos of Fang Suyi right now. Within two seconds, the group chat had over 99 unread messages.
Fang Surou felt as if she had just been struck by lightning. The first thing she thought of wasn't how miserable her second brother was, but her own situation. This whole mess had been her idea in the first place. If her second brother decided to bring up old grudges against her, or told their parents the full story of what had happened, would she get kicked out of the Fang family?
She had a clear scale in her head: Fang Baiwei was no match for her, and she could bring far more value to the Fang family than Fang Baiwei ever could. But Fang Suyi was different. Fang Suyi was their parents' own biological son, doted on ever since he was little, spoiled so thoroughly he did whatever he wanted. Between a son and a daughter, the Fang family's priorities were never unclear.
She knew exactly what the Fang family were like. If the girl involved was just some ordinary nobody with no connections, they would definitely hate her for not behaving and causing their precious son to suffer so much. But Mu Yue was nothing like that. Mu Yue had the background, the wealth, and the power to crush them all under her feet. They wouldn't dare blame Mu Yue for not falling for their trick, they would only point fingers at her for coming up with the stupid idea in the first place and instigating Fang Suyi.
Fang Surou gnawed at her nails anxiously, completely at a loss for what to do.
Shift the blame to Fang Baiwei? But Fang Baiwei never even stepped onto the boat, no one would buy that! Damn it, why didn't Fang Baiwei go on that boat? If she had, this whole mess would have been so easy to fix!
Fang Baiwei was just as stunned at the moment. She had also received the eye-searing video from Fang Suyi. Shocked and immediately on guard, she wondered what Fang Suyi could possibly mean by sending her something like this. Since she had so few friends and barely any contacts, no one had told her that the video had already spread to absolutely everyone.
It didn't take long for Fang Baiwei to push the matter aside, because she had far more important things to take care of.
Over at the medical center, none of the Fang family dared tell Fang Suyi about the video. Their precious son was already in such a terrible state, they couldn't add more salt to his wounds. They were fuming inside too, furious that the boy could be so careless, but there was nothing they could do. They didn't even dare imagine how chaotic things must be back in China.
The eldest Fang son had already called them multiple times, and the entire Fang family was completely worn out from all the stress.
Of course, Fang Suyi wasn't the only one going through this nightmare. The people he had his one-night stands with were in the exact same mess too.
By the time Wang Jian got his golden finger, he had already gotten close to several female leads. Some had already had intimate relations with him, some were still in the ambiguous flirting stage, and others he had just gotten to know not long ago. But now that this video had been posted, every single one of them, no matter what their current dynamic with him was, had gotten to watch the sight of Wang Jian getting it on under another man.
It turned out every part of him had been used by others before, not just that one area. The female leads were all retching nonstop, and one abusive message after another kept flooding in for him.
Wang Jian also had a large group of male friends—some were his underlings, others were powerful connections he relied on. If Wang Jian had only been the one on top in that video, those guys might have just joked that he was open to both men and women, but no—he had been the one on the bottom! He even took part in that messy stacked group scene! Even though none of them said it out loud to his face to save him some dignity, they had all looked down on Wang Jian from the bottom of their hearts.
A guy who lies under another man, is he even a man at all?
Wang Jian was absolutely devastated, in fact, he was the most broken one out of the three guys in the video. As the protagonist of a male-targeted web novel, there were times those stories played up bromance vibes, but none of them ever went all the way into actual gay stuff! What's more, he was the lead of a classic stallion novel, so straight he might as well be a telephone pole. He simply could not wrap his head around accepting this reality.
He had never suffered such a humiliating insult in his life, and he swore he would get brutal revenge for this!
Compared to the other two, Gao Xingwei had a much better ability to mentally process what had happened, but he was still stuck with a ton of serious problems. The video was already out there, and everyone who knew him had seen it—including Ye Luling's father.
Ye Luling's dad had even gotten the custom-edited version of the clip to watch. After he finished watching it, he was seething with rage and disgust, and immediately called Gao Xingwei to tell him to wait around, because he was going to make him pay for what he'd done. Gao Xingwei didn't even have a second to mope or feel bad—he was literally hanging on for dear life, his life on the line.
Over at the medical center, some staff were gossiping over the drama, others were tending to the patients who were in agony. The only silver lining was that what the three guys had done wasn't the most outrageous thing that had ever happened on this cruise ship—they had just gotten way too wild for their own good.
And who was the happiest person on the whole ship that morning?
It had to be Mu Yue, no contest.
She slept in until she woke up naturally, pushed open her window to a view of bright blue sky stretching over the vast sea, and even got lucky enough to spot a pod of dolphins swimming by. Gazing at that gorgeous scenery while listening to the system notifications ping one after another, she felt so relaxed—absolute bliss.
Congratulations to the host for bringing down the protagonist's reputation to rock bottom for the first time!
Congratulations to the host for successfully spreading the explicit content, with the number of people who viewed it exceeding 100!
Mu Yue stared at those two censored blanks, already guessing what the blocked words were. She was used to the system's censorship by now, but she still couldn't help thinking, couldn't the system give her a way cooler title? Like the "Master of Toxins" title she got yesterday, that one sounded great.
It had gotten pretty late the night before, and Mu Yue never stayed up late normally. She'd only pulled a minor all-nighter to wrap up all the arrangements for what happened, then crashed right after, so she hadn't gotten a chance to look through all the new achievements and rewards she'd earned.
The 250 points came from the Master of Toxins achievement, which the description said rewarded her for handing out negative status props to more than five people.
Then 500 points came from the Ye Luling related opportunity, and another 500 points came from messing with the male lead.
"Physical and psychological double blow..." Mu Yue couldn't help laughing out loud. For a stallion novel protagonist, that was quite possibly the most devastating kind of blow he could ever get.
Fourteen rounds of action in one night. Mu Yue hadn't watched the video, but she could perfectly well imagine how chaotic that scene had been.
This male lead's mental fortitude is pretty weak, so he might very well end up with a lifelong trauma. It would be even better if he wound up impotent from it. Even if he recovers eventually, he definitely won't be back to normal anytime soon. Just going to the bathroom is probably going to feel like torture for him.
Mu Yue kept scrolling. Those two posts she put up this morning had already earned her points, and the one targeting the male lead even directly gave her 3000 points — the biggest single haul she had gotten since she arrived in this world.
She figured it out right away. The male lead's friend list definitely includes all his love interests. No girl could stand seeing a video like that. They might be able to put up with fighting over him with other women, even sharing him, but they would never accept sharing him with another man!
On top of that, the way Wang Jian looked in that video was so cringingly over-the-top, his entire persona and image had been completely shattered into pieces.
Even the most airheaded heroines in this harem novel would never be able to come up with a single reasonable excuse for him. Even if they decided to stay by the male lead's side, they would still feel disgusted deep down. When it comes to intimate moments, they might even start turning him down. If that happens, how could the male lead still be considered a qualified harem protagonist?
That was the core reason she got such a high score.
The last task, which had a rather unflattering title, counted as a Villain System action, and rewarded her 50 points.
Adding that to her previous remaining 149 points, Mu Yue now had a total of 4449 points. That was absolutely amazing!
She basically hit the point jackpot right there. Without wasting any more time, Mu Yue immediately settled the points for the other character card, and after paying off the remaining balance she owed, she still had 1749 points left.
She maxed out her Strength and Agility stats first, then splurged to buy 10 points of Intelligence and 5 points of Memory. Seeing that she still had plenty of points left, she went ahead and bought 9 points of Appearance as well, leaving her with 604 points. She decided not to look at the rest of the stats for now — she hadn't even had breakfast yet.
And what's the perfect show to go with her meal? The follow-up updates on the three guys.
Fang Suyi and Gao Xingwei more or less knew exactly what had led to the whole mess, but Wang Jian had no clue at all. He thought he had the worst luck imaginable. He was peacefully sleeping in his room when two random men showed up out of nowhere. They could have done their own thing, but they dragged him right into it!
And to make it worse, he ended up hooking up with both of them last night in a total daze. There was no way that was normal — he didn't even like men!
So Wang Jian called the police. His reputation was already ruined, but he was not going to let this slide. There was no way he, Wang Jian, was going to swallow this injustice and pretend nothing happened. Over his dead body!
Talk about a proper male lead move. Mu Yue almost wanted to give him a round of applause. That was exactly the spirit she was hoping for.
When the security team heard that the whole thing wasn't consensual, and that there was a possibility of drugging involved, the entire nature of the case changed completely.
Mu Yue followed the progress of the case closely, and noticed that the male lead was still the male lead after all. His persona was already in tatters, but his protagonist halo was still working. After a full investigation, the authorities did dig up some clues — not pointing back to Mu Yue, of course, but to Gao Xingwei and Fang Suyi.
One of those two had brought the drug onto the cruise ship, and the other had been the one who got their hands on the dose they used, and both of them had gotten into fights with people at the bar earlier.
Now that the real evidence was out, Wang Jian was absolutely furious. He had just made a huge sum of money the night before, so he was going to hire the best lawyer he could find and sue those two jerks into the ground.
Mu Yue watched all of this unfold, feeling utterly satisfied and perfectly delighted.
She asked the system if she could take advantage of his illness to finish him off for good.
The Villain System shook its head frantically, horrified. "No matter what sort of trash this male lead is, he's still got that protagonist halo wrapped around him. Going straight for the kill won't work at all—we'll just end up backfiring on ourselves, and we'll lose big time!"
That kind of brute-force approach is totally unadvisable. The Villain System has seen so many hosts come and go, and there were a few who actually tried to make a real go at their schemes. The very first one tried to kill the protagonist before he even grew powerful, and accidentally slipped and died. The second one used a roundabout method, setting up an inescapable dead end for the protagonist, only to end up getting trapped in their own trap.
The unluckiest one of all was that previous host—they hadn't even put their carefully laid plan into action yet, and they choked to death on a sip of water.
Who the hell do you complain to about that nonsense?
Word got around after that that doing tasks under the Villain System was not just ridiculously difficult, but had a sky-high mortality rate. All the experienced hosts refused to take the bait anymore, so only rebellious newbies ended up getting assigned here, none of whom were willing to play the part of a proper obedient villain.
As for Mu Yue, when she first thought about taking out the male lead, she had the same idea as what Cold Ming did—strip him of his position as the protagonist, and never actually planned to straight-up murder him. If she had, she probably would've gotten stuck with that terrible misfortune buff too.
Tycoon heard that, and immediately spammed Mu Yue's luck points up, yelling for all bad luck to get out of here!
Mu Yue furrowed her brows and thought it over for a moment. "So that means if I want to take him down, I still have to follow that original plan: weaken his protagonist halo first, and once that halo is completely gone, he'll be nothing special at all."
"Exactly, exactly!"
In that case... Cold Ming was in a romance novel. If the female lead didn't choose him, he naturally wouldn't be the male lead anymore. As for this Wang Jian, that womanizing guy, there were two key points that made him the protagonist: first, his golden finger, and second, the harem of female leads.
His golden finger was a bit tricky to deal with right now, but the female leads? The very first project had already been a smashing success, hadn't it?
And we even reaped a ton of extra benefits from it!
The points we earned this time also proved that snatching his lucky chances and ruining his reputation worked incredibly well.
So Mu Yue's goals were crystal clear now. First, find a way to make the male lead's golden finger stop working. Second, keep snatching his lucky opportunities and seize every chance to ruin his image in the eyes of all the important characters around him.
Right now, the original plot had almost certainly been completely messed up by her. According to the original storyline, after this trip, the male lead was supposed to head to the city where the Ye family lived to develop his romance plot with Ye Luling. Along the way, he would meet new people to humiliate and new potential female leads to add to his harem.
But now he didn't even know who Ye Luling was, so he wouldn't get invited to the Ye family at all. On top of that, his reputation had already crumbled completely among his circle of friends, so Mu Yue had no way of guessing where he would go next.
With that thought in mind, Mu Yue opened the system mall and started searching for a tracker.
One that couldn't be detected by anyone, couldn't be picked up by any machine, and had zero issues with battery life or waterproofing—
Found it. 300 points for [Tattoo Sticker] (pattern can be customized freely).
Mu Yue set the pattern to a tiny black mole. She waited until she confirmed on the monitor that Wang Jian was fast asleep, then headed over to his hospital room.
Hmph, there's no way she'd let that disgusting creep see her naked.
Wait a second... Could I do something to mess with his eyes?
The second that thought popped into her head, she cautiously dismissed it. His eyes were his biggest golden finger. Going after his eyes directly was way too dangerous.
She couldn't intentionally fixate on that idea or design a plan around it—otherwise her success rate would just end up dropping. She had to let it happen naturally, or let someone else come up with the idea and carry it out instead.
All she had to do was play her part well as the hidden Villain System.
Mu Yue made her way to the hospital room smoothly, and left just as easily. She ran into medical staff on the way, smiled and said she had walked into the wrong room, and no one suspected a thing. A nurse did mention this to Wang Jian, but he could not understand the local language. He only judged from the nurse's expression that it was no big deal, so he did not ask any further questions.
After that, the entire cruise trip was nothing but pure enjoyment for Mu Yue. The three men could barely even get out of bed during this period. Even when they got a little better, they had to move around in wheelchairs, so there was no way they could stir up any trouble even if they wanted to.
But this trip, which was so pleasant for her, was absolutely a nightmare for the Fang family.
One misfortune after another befell them. Their son's body was ruined, and now he had become extremely irritable and grumpy. He would throw things at every turn, and even lost five million on the cruise ship. What was worse, he was now facing a lawsuit, and had to find a lawyer to fight the case as soon as they got off the ship.
Their daughter also fell out with her fiance, and there were even clear signs that their engagement was about to be called off.
The Fang couple felt as if the world was crashing down on them, again and again. They blamed Sucker Bro for all this. Why did he have to buy those cruise tickets for no reason and drag them onto this cursed ship? If they had just stayed put and traveled in Country B, none of this would have ever happened!
That was exactly why he was called Sucker Bro. Look at what he had done — he had tried so hard to be nice, only to end up getting nothing but blame for it.
Mu Yue, in another fit of "kindness", had someone relay the Fang couple's words to Sucker Bro. He was so infuriated that he laughed out loud, and could only keep exclaiming that it was just wonderful.
So when Fang Baiwei finally finished handling the matter with that pervert in Country B and returned home, the very first thing she heard was the scandal of Fang Suyi's dissolute behavior on the cruise, and the news that Fang Surou was about to have her engagement broken off.
Fang Baiwei could not believe it at first. How could all this have happened in just a few short days? But when she saw the entire Fang family in total chaos, she finally let out the first genuine smile she had had since she was reborn.
Everyone around said the Fang family must have been targeted by someone who was out to get them.
Fang Baiwei did not know if what they said was true. But if it was, then that person must be a merciful god, and she was truly, deeply grateful to them.
