Chapter 9-The Manga Pariah's Guide to Self-Salvation
"It's incredible that a change of identity can bring so much affection."
Ye Zheng had guessed that readers would be more lenient with her if she changed to a male identity, but she hadn't expected the effect to be this good.
[You're a woman pretending to be a man, not a trans person. One day Zhao Mei's true identity will be exposed. You should think of a way to deal with it in advance.]
The System thought that when the time came, the drop in popularity and the controversy would be inevitable, and they could only consider how to minimize the losses. However, with the current momentum, it was much better than the original plot's development! Originally, until the middle and later stages of the manga, the character Ye Zheng only had 15,000 popularity points. Now she had 5,000 just after her first appearance!
"Besides the issue of my female identity being exposed, there's another problem I'm more curious about."
Ye Zheng closed her eyes and leaned back in the soft seat of the carriage. She didn't maintain her usual gentle expression, and her pale face looked a little cold.
"If I were to follow the original plot and use my identity as Saintess Ye Zheng to join the protagonists—"
"What do you think the Sei Curia, the royal family, and the entire upper district would do?"
The Cloud-Soaring Squad was the representative of hope for the lower district, and she was the model saintess of the upper district. At a time when relations were so tense and sensitive, she was joining the protagonists on her own accord...
The System started to stammer.
[The original plot didn't go into detail. It just said that you would occasionally show inappropriate sadness and fear in the protagonist's group. The male lead would comfort you, your relationship would heat up, and readers would scold the contrived romance and the overly dramatic female lead...]
"The creator was really stingy with the ink for my character."
[You can't say that. At least he drew your face with high precision. When you appeared, there were tons of special effects and flower petals.]
Ye Zheng's mouth twitched. "It seems that in the creator's eyes, my only value is a dignified vase."
She seemed to understand why readers in the original plot disliked her character so much. On the one hand, people's evaluations of women were always more苛刻 (a harsh and demanding critique, often unfair) in any world. On the other hand, the manga creator didn't put any effort into portraying her as a living, breathing person. Even if she was just one step away from wiping out the entire Demonic Domain, the creator would still arrange for his 'prodigal son' to forcibly take the last boss, not even willing to give her a single shot to show her efforts before the male lead's arrival.
Ye Zheng's curled lips held a hint of mockery. That was fine too; who would be wary of a beautiful vase?
Ye Zheng returned home just in time for dinner. She entered the dining room, where only her mother was seated at the gorgeously decorated dining table. She breathed a sigh of relief, sat down in her seat, and greeted her mother. Ye Di usually stayed at the Royal Academy, while her father, Ye Fanjing, as the upper district's High Judge, had a great deal of public and private matters to attend to. Ye Zheng had a strong dislike for family gatherings. If those two were present, acting would be very tiring for her.
"Zhengzheng, did you go to the lower district again today?" The elegant and beautiful woman looked at her with worry in her eyes.
Ye Zheng's cutlery paused. She turned her head and scanned the restaurant, finding no one else present. The girl nodded. "There have been a lot of casualties in the lower district recently, I..."
"Tell your mother the truth, do you have someone you—care about living in the lower district?"
Ye Zheng looked at her mother with a hint of amusement. Her mother's guess wasn't wrong; it just wasn't the kind of "caring" she imagined.
"I am the Saintess of the Sei Curia, destined to dedicate my life to the gods. Nothing you are worried about will happen."
"The An family's daughter next door is hell-bent on marrying a boy from the middle district, and she has become the laughingstock of the entire upper district. Girls your age are always a cause for concern." The middle-aged woman sighed.
"Don't worry, I only do two things when I go to the lower district."
"One is to bring relief to the people on behalf of the God of Hope. The other is... to bring flowers to my grandparents."
The elegantly dressed middle-aged woman froze. She lowered her head in a distressed manner, no longer speaking. Dinner ended in silence between the mother and daughter. It wasn't until Ye Zheng left the dining room that Shu Wan, her hands stiff, pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders, her expression complex as she stared at her daughter's retreating figure. Many years ago, she was a little girl who hadn't awakened her ability, picking up trash, doing rough work in the lower district, and having to be on guard against ill-intentioned men from a young age. She wasn't even twelve years old back then. She resented her incompetent parents and swore that if she grew up and had a daughter, she would never let her live in such a disgusting environment.
She succeeded. By virtue of her awakened S-rank talent, she gave birth to her daughter into a wealthy family that the young Shu Wan could never have imagined. Shu Wan knew her husband didn't love her; he married her only to supplement his B-rank talent genes. An S-rank talent wife gave birth to high-talent children as he wished, the Ye family had a bright future, and she had also successfully achieved a class reversal.
But why did her beautiful, high-born daughter seem no happier than the impoverished little Shu Wan at the age of 17? Shu Wan clenched her fists, her finely manicured nails digging into her palm, but she felt no pain. It was all her fault for not bringing Zhengzheng into this world with an S-rank talent. If Zhengzheng had been S-rank, she could have even married the Crown Prince and gone further than her mother... instead of being wasted in the Sei Curia for a lifetime for her father's benefit.
[Your mother is from the lower district?]
[A Cinderella story?]
Ye Zheng returned to her bedroom and fiddled with a jigsaw puzzle on her bed, answering nonchalantly. "You should know more about this manga than I do."
In this world, once a female ability user gives birth, her ability is irreversibly damaged. For example, her mother, Shu Wan, was originally an S-rank ability user, but after giving birth to two children, her talent dropped to A-rank. However, the Empire needed female ability users to procreate. The higher the talent of the female ability user, the more likely they were to have high-talent children. In the face of limited imperial resources for cultivation, the government not only allocated resources according to ability talent ranks but also by gender, giving resources preferential treatment to high-talent male ability users to maximize their use in the fight against the Demonic Domain.
"With this unfair distribution, the biggest path for female ability users to advance is not through training their abilities but through marriage."
"Especially for women like my mother, who came from the lower district and were lucky enough to awaken an S-rank talent. Many noble men in the upper district with mediocre or even no ability talent are happy to marry such a wife to have children."
Ye Zheng calmly stated the facts. The System recalled this minor setting and fell silent for a moment before explaining.
[This setting actually caused some controversy among readers.]
[The creator explained that he wasn't very good at drawing women, so almost all of the main characters were male. But that wasn't logical. In a world of ability users, gender differences weren't much of a factor. Logically, there should have been many female powerhouses.]
[So he added the setting that female ability users would be severely damaged after childbirth, and the Empire needed to procreate...]
"This way, it's logical to construct a male-dominated world."
"They're both S-rank, but my mother can only worry about her daughter's marriage at home, while male ability users of the same age are not only heroes admired by thousands but also hold a place in the center of power."
Ye Zheng chatted with the System, her fingers playing with the scattered puzzle pieces on the bed.
[Well, he's a male creator. He doesn't give the male lead a harem or draw any questionable fan service, so he's already considered friendly to female readers.]
[If you were the female lead in another male-centric work, you would have no plot highlights and would have to fight with the other women in the male lead's harem.]
The System defended the manga creator, not noticing that the girl had already completed most of the puzzle. If it had looked closely at the puzzle, it might have noticed that the image looked like a map, though the outlines were still very blurry and difficult to make out. Ye Zheng's hand swept across, and the completed image was once again scattered.
Hearing this, she curled her lips. "Is that so? Then I should be grateful to have been born into this world."
[Hmph, you're being sarcastic again.]
Ye Zheng lowered her eyes. She wasn't being sarcastic. From the System's fragmented descriptions of the real world and the information she had gathered herself, the world outside the manga didn't seem much better. At least in the manga world, she could use high-dimensional power to change the course of her life. Ye Zheng could feel that the 5,000 popularity points, which translated into 50 action points, were enough to change a small plot point. So, what if she had 500, 5,000, or even 50,000 action points? Besides the manga's plot, could she also change the fundamental settings of this world?
"By the way, System, why isn't there an update spoiler in the manga app?" Ye Zheng scrolled through the manga app on her phone. The progress was stopped at the scene where Zhao Mei joined the protagonist's group.
[To avoid disrupting the plot development, you can only see the parts of the plot that concern you.]
[According to the original plot, you won't appear until the third stage of the ability competition, so you won't see your original plot for the next few days.]
No plot involving her meant that she wouldn't be controlled by the plot until the third stage of the ability competition. Ye Zheng suppressed the rising corners of her mouth and lowered her eyelashes sorrowfully. "That's a shame. I guess I'll have to attend the Crown Prince's banquet without any prior knowledge."
[The original plot says Saintess Ye Zheng didn't attend this banquet.]
[You have to be careful not to let the protagonists find out that you are Zhao Mei.]
The System couldn't help but complain.
[Your female-disguised-as-male look is so half-hearted. You're just wearing a wig and a pair of green contact lenses. Your face hasn't changed at all.]
Ye Zheng pointed at the colorful manga characters on her phone screen and defended herself. "But that's how it is in the manga world. A different hairstyle and eye color make for a different character. Everyone's faces are more or less the same." The System was unable to refute that.
The Crown Prince's banquet was the most anticipated event in the upper district these past few days. The banquet was held in the name of celebrating the end of the second stage of the ability competition and invited all the teams that successfully entered the third stage, as well as many upper-district nobles who came to support the event. After all, this was a banquet hosted by the future heir of the Empire. Everyone was scrambling for an opportunity to curry favor and get a glance from the Crown Prince.
In the Ye family mansion, "Zhengzheng, try this one. This color is even more stunning."
A girl in a light-blue dress turned gracefully. Her ankle-length hair was braided and hung over her chest. A beautiful and gentle face was furrowed in a frown as her fair, slender fingers held the hem of her light-blue skirt, walking as if she were a fairy wading through water.
"Mother, there's no need to try anymore. I'm just going to the Crown Prince's banquet, not to get engaged to him." Ye Zheng looked at her mother helplessly.
The Crown Prince, Sykes, was the villain in the manga. Ye Zheng wasn't surprised at all and disliked him very much, even though he was handsome, had an S-rank talent, and the noblest of backgrounds. What Ye Zheng found perplexing was that he was very popular on the manga forums, and his fan base seemed to be second only to the male lead. Now even her mother had the intention of getting her to befriend Sykes. What did people even like about this guy? Ye Zheng didn't want to befriend someone like him. However, she couldn't deny Sykes's usefulness, otherwise, she would have had a million ways to reject this banquet invitation.
Ye Zheng quickly left, holding up her light-blue dress, afraid that her mother would try to get her to try on more clothes.
"Oh, and Mother, when you remind Ye Di to go kneel... I mean, pray, at the church, tell him to wear knee pads. After all, he'll be kneeling for six hours for me."
Ye Zheng let out a sigh as she sat in the car. Okay, the most important reason she agreed to go to this banquet was that she didn't want to kneel and pray anymore. It would be even better if she didn't have to go in the future, Saintess Ye Zheng thought with great disrespect.
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