C35 Part2

Edited by Rinrin

The TN for Frigid Desire may be rather disturbing and is somewhat nsfw. It’s fine if you don’t check it; it won’t effect your understanding of the plot.

After a moment of chaos, Shan Ziwei was brought back to the room he had started out in. He sat upon a long couch while his palace maid stood to the side crying, “thank the heavens you’re alright, Your Highness,” and “long live Your Highness the Queen.”

“His Majesty the King has arrived!”

The guard at the door announced, and then Shan Ziwei saw the king on the oil painting walk inside in a long robe. He was a very strongly built middle-aged man with handsome features, looking rather intimidating. However, in contrast to his appearance, he had a very kind, warm aura. The moment he saw Shan Ziwei, he gave the other a friendly smile.

“I heard an assassin managed to get inside.” The king patted Shan Ziwei on the shoulder comfortingly. “Are you alright?”

Shan Ziwei shuddered unnaturally with a start from the king’s touch, though to everyone else’s eyes, it made him seem frightened and helpless.

“I’m alright.” Shan Ziwei said with a blank face. In reality, he had no idea what expression to wear. Luckily, it seemed that everyone, including the king, was used to his cold (?) attitude. “It was starting to feel a little stuffy so I went out for a walk and didn’t encounter the assassin.”

“A fortune amidst misfortune,” The king said with relief before promising Shan Ziwei, “I’ll make sure that assassin doesn’t get a quick death!”

Assassin Shan: “Ha.Ha.”

The king sighed softly, temporarily putting the assassin onto the back burner and bringing up a new topic to Shan Ziwei.

“My dear, though we’ve only just gotten married, I must go to patrol our territory. Before then, I’ll introduce you to someone.” The king beckoned towards the door as he spoke, “Come in.”

What Shan Ziwei first saw was a pair of shining black shoes, then above that, a frilly, white, knee-length dress. Then further above that, a familiar small face and black hair. It was the little princess Shan Ziwei had just parted with no longer than half an hour ago.

Shan Ziwei struggled to keep his expression unresponsive, looking at the king tensely without anywhere to vent his tumultuous emotions: there’s no need to introduce us; we already got to first base just now!

The king summoned the little princess to his side. “This is our cutest princess, Snow White.”

Shan Ziwei’s expression cracked slightly.

Snow White, it wasn’t the Snow White he was thinking of, was it!?

No matter how much Shan Ziwei wanted to live in denial, the little princess’ looks and name, the king marrying a new queen, and the queen being a witch, was all very much canonically Snow White. In reality, he had already had a feeling about this, but he didn’t want to admit to it, because this would mean that there weren’t one, or two, but three whole “beautiful princesses” he was responsible for!

The king had no idea that his new queen was about to topple over, already cluelessly, happily making plans for their wonderful happy future as a family of three.

“My dear, I’ll leave her to you. You two get along while I’m away patrolling.”

After the king left, Shan Ziwei and the little princess stared at each other. The child had seemed rather down when she first came in, but now she had perked up, staring at Shan Ziwei unblinkingly. Her eyes were completely black, as if incapable of reflecting anything impure.

Shan Ziwei stared at his reflection in the little princess’ eyes and recalled his previous behaviour. He definitely hadn’t revealed anything. He even made sure to disguise the sound of his voice —— it wasn’t something hard for this game lover who often used VoIPs and would occasionally live stream. The little princess shouldn’t be able to make a connection between her step mother and the pervert ghost from her room.

Seeing Shan Ziwei staring back at her, Snow White blinked her long, thick lashes and addressed him docilely. “Mother.”

That crisp voice was sweet enough to melt anyone’s heart, but Shan Ziwei felt goosebumps rising. He really couldn’t stand that address. Alright, well, his character was indeed Snow White’ mom, Snow White’s step-mother, in fact. Though it was hella weird, knowing that this was Snow White had its benefits. At least he knew how the plot went and how Snow White found her true love.

“Don’t call me mother again!”

Shan Ziwei barked, pinching his voice. His impression and understanding of the story Snow White all came from that Disney movie classic. He vaguely remembered that the queen and Snow White were never on friendly terms. With the king away, Snow White was abused and neglected by her villainous step-mother, and didn’t have a very good life. Shan Ziwei acted accordingly, deciding to follow the plot and raise her pitifulness stat and aggro.

“From today onwards, you’ll wear rags and be a maid, understood?”

Snow White stared at her new mother, wide eyed and mouth open in shock, but all she got in response was the other raising their gaze, as if she were too lowly to even look upon.

Shan Ziwei averted his gaze, not daring to look at the terrified expression on the child’s face. He could only see from his peripheral vision Snow White slowly lowering her head, exposing her fragile neck.

“……..I understand.”

Shan Ziwei felt like his heart had just been cut up into a thousand pieces. He was such a bully… Such a cute, sweet child deserved love and care.However, he still hardened his heart and continued, “Go and fetch your new clothes.”

Snow White left in silence. Her little leather shoes thudded dully against the ground. This was the second time Shan Ziwei heard her retreating footsteps, but it was far worse to bear than the fear of being discovered from the first time.

…….For the sake of meeting your true love, little Princess, just bear with it for a while!

The moment Snow White disappeared out the door, Shan Ziwei collapsed onto his long couch. His straightened back could finally relax, but his mind didn’t stop for a moment.

He had finally finished this story’s horrible beginning. It had taken him around an hour, and this was only Snow White’s story. Shan Ziwei felt despair at the thought of a total of three princesses. He didn’t have any time for rest at all. He had to find the other two princesses as soon as possible.

So, Shan Ziwei summoned a palace maid. The king had left absolute power over the entire castle in his hands when leaving, so no one dared say anything when he was bullying that poor kid just now.

Shan Ziwei asked, “Do you know of Princess Rose?”

The palace maid replied respectfully, “I do, Your Highness.”

“Is she here?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

That was great! Shan Ziwei was delighted. He thought he’d have to jump through a whole lot of hoops to find her, but it seemed to be quite easy.

Shan Ziwei quickly asked, “Where is she? I’d like to see her.”

The palace maid replied respectfully, “Your Highness, she’s in the library, would you like me to fetch her from the shelf for you?”

The shelf…?

Though “the shelf” was a weird place for a newborn princess to be “fetched” from, Shan Ziwei thought it was probably the name of some room in the palace, so he nodded. “Yes, please.”

The palace maid disappeared for a while and then returned with… a book.

Shan Ziwei emotionlessly stared at the hardback book titled Princess Rose, feeling like his IQ was being made fun of.

“This is…….Princess Rose?”

The palace maid seemed to sense the other’s darkening aura, replying anxiously, “Th-that’s right.”

“Princess Rose is a book, not a person? I mean, there isn’t a princess named ‘Rose’? ”

“There isn’t……” the palace maid replied timidly, “Fairytale Kingdom only has one princess, and that’s Her Highness Snow White.”

“……Last question,” Shan Ziwei took a deep breath, suppressing the emotions that were about to boil over. “Is there a Princess Donkeyskin here? If there is, then bring ‘her’ over to me!”

Five minutes later, there were two books, side by side, in front of Shan Ziwei. Princess Rose and Princess Donkeyskin were written on their respective covers in fancy cursive English. Shan Ziwei already knew the contents of these books. In reality, he had only read the beginning of each of them, only to find out that Princess Rose was actually just Sleeping Beauty—— please forgive his ignorance that the princess in sleeping beauty was called such in the Grimm Fairy Tales—— and Princess Donkeyskin was just Grimm’s All Kinds of Fur.

“So then, they’re all fairy tales?” Shan Ziwei was about to hold his head and groan. “What’s more, they’re all separate fairy tales.”

At present, he was in Fairytale Kingdom. The people here told him that only Princess Snow White existed, and that Princess Rose and Princess Donkeyskin did not. Yet, the system clearly required him to “attend the party celebrating Princess Rose’s birth”, be “the godmother of Princess Donkeyskin”. In that case, there was only one explanation that made sense: Princess Snow White, Princess Rose and Princess Donkeyskin were from different fairy tales, and each fairy tale was independent from the others, existing in different dimensions.

And so Shan Ziwei ran into a dead end——How could he attend the party celebrating Princess Rose’s birth in another dimension? Or become the godmother of another dimension’s Princess Donkeyskin?

Scenario 1 was fast approaching, about to activate in ten minutes. The game wouldn’t give him an unachievable scenario, though, so that meant… Shan Ziwei’s gaze landed on his wild cards. This was the only path he could take.

Shan Ziwei whipped out a wild card. Right now, he knew that the wild cards were like a big pie given to players that looked good, but actually tasted horrible. Though he had learned this lesson from his blood and tears, Shan Ziwei still didn’t truly understand how the wild cards worked so he didn’t know how to defend against them.

So Shan Ziwei decided to test something. He carefully recalled his past experiences and formulated his sentence with meticulous caution before he spoke, word by word.

“I have a piece of equipment that can grant all wishes without any cost or any side effects.”

Even Shan Ziwei thought this was a shameless as hell demand, and so, unsurprisingly, the wild card sneered at his shamelessness, and then disappeared.

… Holy crap it disappeared!?

Shan Ziwei stared in wide-eyed shock as the wild card turned to dust. It didn’t turn into blue spots of light and enter his scenarios, but returned to the earth from which it was born.

Gaaaiaaaa, you never said the wild cards would disappear upon failure!!!

Shan Ziwei wanted to collapse onto his knees and cry, but all he could do apart from complain was to take out another wild card. Shan Ziwei hesitated for a moment before he strengthened his resolve and decided to continue testing it. This time, he put even more thought into it before saying cautiously, “I have a magic mirror that can reflect reality and be infinitely reused.”

This time, the wild card reacted immediately and two new scenarios soon appeared on this scenario tab.

[Scenario Four: You have a magic mirror that can reflect reality and be infinitely reused.]

[Scenario 4: You attended Princess Snow White’s wedding. (6:00:00)]

As expected. Shan Ziwei let out a breath of relief. He had just about figured out how these wild cards worked.

To put it simply, the wild cards were like a scenario card search engine——it only searched for a matching, appropriate card. It didn’t create one out of thin air. In reality, Gaia had told him this already, saying it would automatically match with similar scenario cards, becoming a player’s personal scenario. So, the fewer keywords you used to search, then the more matches it would get; the more keywords you used, then a vague search would become a search for something exact. If any keyword couldn’t be matched, then the search engine could only give you zero results, and so the wild card would disappear.

Apart from that, the wild card’s scenario power would be proportional to the difficulty of the mission the system would give. For example, just now he had given himself a magic mirror that wasn’t all that useful, so the system had given him a better-than-nothing scenario of “attending Princess Snow White’s wedding”. It was basically a freebie. He had to attend Snow White’s wedding anyways, it was just that now he had a time limit.

After figuring all this out, Shan Ziwei felt more secure. He picked up a new wild card and carefully said, “I have a piece of equipment that can guide me to anywhere I want to go.”

The clown on the wild card grinned, and became blue spots of light that flew into Shan Ziwei’s scenario tab. Shan Ziwei felt something weigh down his hand; a metal object had appeared out of thin air in his hand.

Shan Ziwei looked down and found that it was a little golden key that was very intricate and shiny——apart from a small area that was dark red, which seemed both like rust and dried blood.

[Scenario five: You have a key that can open a door to wherever you want to go]

Shan Ziwei turned his attention to the scenario tab. His gaze went from bottom to top. He first saw his new personal scenario. It looked very useful——even better than the requirement Shan Ziwei had set. However, this generosity from the system gave Shan Ziwei, who’d just barely figured out how this all worked, a feeling of foreboding. He swallowed thickly and moved his gaze upwards like he was about to accept a death penalty.

[Scenario 5: Your key belongs to Bluebeard. After you use Bluebeard’s key to open a door, if the first person to see you is female, then nothing will happen; but if they’re male, then they will develop a Frigid Desire (Active) relationship towards you.]

Rinrin: !! Ha, so it is double cross-dressing it seems. Loving all the fairytale elements too. Bluebeard’s another popular childhood story~(it’s creepy though–did ppl spot the nod to the original in the key?)

Joui: And I just found out what 冰恋 (Frigid Desire) was………………… I didn’t expect some articles to be… so specific…