The Male Protagonist Should Die in the First Chapter

Next to the black war hammer, a young girl in a black cloak stood in a field of tulips that seemed to have been bathed in black blood. Her dark hair fell behind her, swaying at her waist in the wind. The black armor beneath the cloak hugged her figure. The armor wasn't solid and heavy; instead, thin plates inscribed with mysterious runes were arranged to form a short skirt, a design that didn't seem practical for combat...

Gu Qing'an glanced at the description of the female protagonist in a novel on his e-book, then looked at the small black figure in an abandoned factory that seemed intent on dismantling the entire place.

Gu Qing'an took a photo with his phone, then put it down. He walked past the perimeter wall, slowly approaching, and gradually began to make out the small black figure.

Ink-black hair.

Swaying at her waist in the wind.

A black cloak.

Beneath the cloak, black skirt-like armor.

A large black hammer.

The long handle of the black great iron hammer was about 1.6 meters long. One side of the hammerhead was square, while the other end was reminiscent of the base of the Zeng Houyi Jian Gu, with many large and small dragons intertwined. The dragon bodies twisted around each other, and countless small dragons, their heads and tails entangled, coiled upwards, giving a sense of unpredictability and vibrant spirit.

Gu Qing'an looked again at this great hammer, which was identical to the weapon of the female protagonist in the novel. The author of the novel must have been inspired by the base of the Zeng Yi Hou Jian Gu from the real world when describing this weapon.

The girl wielding this great hammer didn't seem to be as tall as the long handle of this great iron hammer. Yet, in her hands, such a massive hammer looked as if an ordinary person were holding a toy air hammer.

This was clearly not a toy air hammer. With every swing, half-meter thick concrete walls crumbled and shattered, and steel pipes as thick as an arm snapped in two. A three-story factory building was being hammered into a wreck, on the verge of collapse at any moment.

She showed no signs of stopping.

Finally...

"Boom!"

"Crack!"

"Clang clang!"

The dilapidated walls and supports of the factory could no longer bear the weight of the roof. The entire structure collapsed.

"Hoo... hoo... hoo..."

The girl, the instigator of this destruction, watched the scene with a strange laugh, but one could clearly hear the pride in it.

She stood before the collapsed factory for a few moments, then, carrying the hammer, walked towards another building.

This was a ten-story building with a more than ten-meter-tall iron tower on its roof. It was obvious that such a building, towering over its surroundings, had attracted her attention and become her next target.

This was a zinc factory abandoned in the last century. Due to industrial adjustments, environmental pollution, and employee resettlement issues, it had experienced intermittent periods of production and shutdown from the 1980s onwards. By the mid to late 1990s, it had gone bankrupt and was now completely deserted and rarely visited.

Gu Qing'an couldn't figure out her purpose, but if she continued to dismantle things like this, it would eventually cause some trouble.

"Your Majesty!"

Gu Qing'an shouted.

The girl paused, but she didn't turn around. She continued to lift her hammer and unhesitatingly smashed a storage tank in front of her.

It was a ten-meter-long explosion-proof storage tank.

The storage tank flew up and landed on the ruins of the factory she had just collapsed.

"Thump thump... clang!" There were a few more earth-shattering noises.

"Zhou Nan!"

Gu Qing'an shouted the girl's name again.

Your Majesty, Zhou Nan, the girl, the great hammer, the abandoned factory, the smokestack, the water tower, Gu Qing'an raising his hand to greet her.

In the gloomy sky, dark clouds like ink-dyed cotton were rolling. There was no ostentatious display of lightning and thunder, only the muffled wind rolling with the cloud masses. Occasionally, a few rays of sunlight pierced through the thinner clouds on the distant horizon, emitting some white light, only to be instantly obscured by the spreading clouds.

It was eight in the morning, yet it felt like dusk was approaching.

"Are you talking to me?"

Zhou Nan turned around. The girl's slender figure was like a beautiful but delicate flower in the gloomy weather, adding a touch of vibrancy amidst the monotonous and oppressive colors, though her gaze was very cold.

A few bangs of her bangs lightly brushed the upper edge of her eyebrows. The hair on the sides of her ears was neatly trimmed. This hairstyle was commonly known as a princess hairstyle, and in the 11th district, it was also called "hime cut."

"Who are you?"

Zhou Nan turned around, holding her hammer, and walked step by step towards Gu Qing'an. Her indifferent eyes reflected Gu Qing'an's figure, revealing a hint of confusion, which made her clear pupils appear even more lively.

"Please forgive me, Your Majesty. To get Your Majesty's attention, I had to call out Your Majesty's name directly. My name is Gu Qing'an. I am from the Gu family of Island, one of the Thirteen Islands in the Hanguang Sea Region of the Zhou Kingdom." Gu Qing'an lowered his head slightly, not looking directly at Zhou Nan, his gaze fixed on the girl's shoes, which had walked through the dust without accumulating a speck of dirt.

"One of the Thirteen Islands in the Hanguang Sea Region, Island?" The Zhou Kingdom's territory was vast, and countless sea regions and land continents existed within the vast universe. Even Zhou Nan, as the Emperor, needed a moment to recall, "Island, that's the one that produces carp, Carp Island, right?"

"Precisely." Gu Qing'an replied neither servilely nor arrogantly. The Thirteen Islands of the Hanguang Sea Region had once been glorious in the Zhou Kingdom, a famous prosperous land in the world. Now, they had declined to the point where even the current Emperor had little impression of them, even referring to it dismissively as "Carp Island" without remembering its formal name.

But that no longer mattered. Both he and Zhou Nan were no longer in the world of the Zhou Kingdom. In this world, their statuses and the distance between them were no longer as vast as before.

Even ants had the chance to get close to the sun.

Moreover, Gu Qing'an had another identity, and he did not consider himself lowly.

"Why are you here too?" Zhou Nan nodded and asked calmly, showing no particular closeness or expectation upon seeing her subject and citizen in an unfamiliar world.

The Zhou Kingdom was vast, and its remote regions were not much different from another world. Zhou Nan had not yet fully convinced herself that this was another world, or perhaps just a western foreign land beyond the Zhou Kingdom's borders.

Gu Qing'an handed the e-book to Zhou Nan with both hands.

Zhou Nan took it. The thin, unknown material it was made of displayed text and content with the tactile quality of a real printed book.

Dense, dense text, in the same language as the Zhou Kingdom. With a light tap of her finger, it opened like a book. Zhou Nan tapped and scrolled, her expression calm, though inwardly she was slightly surprised.

"Your Majesty, this is a novel. It records all of your and my experiences," Gu Qing'an said, looking up and meeting Zhou Nan's gaze.

Now that he and she had come to this world, there should no longer be that distant gap between them. Moreover, he already knew his identity. Zhou Nan might one day be just one of his women.

"A novel? A novel from this world, why would it record all of your and my experiences?" Zhou Nan frowned, her fingers rapidly flipping through the novel on the e-reader.

The words "Zhou Kingdom," "Zhou Nan," "Gu Qing'an," "Hanguang Sea Region," "Thirteen Islands," "Island," and so on appeared in the content.

The preceding content was mostly about Gu Qing'an's life and cultivation on the Thirteen Islands in the Hanguang Sea Region, as well as trivial matters within the Gu family.

Clan competitions, markets, alchemy, auctions, street fights, gaining fame, enrollment, trials, and so on.

However, when the perspective shifted, there were also extensive descriptions of Zhou Nan's daily life and personal information. There were even scenes of Zhou Nan conversing with imperial dignitaries in the palace.

Scenes like these, with no third party present, nor any scribe, should logically not have been leaked. Yet, they were all recorded in this novel.

Some of Zhou Nan's inner thoughts, which no one else could possibly know, were also meticulously recorded here as text for anyone to read.

"Your Majesty, when I first learned of this fact... I also found it hard to believe, but we have to accept it. The Zhou Kingdom we are in, the world we once inhabited, is not real. It's just a fabrication from a novel," Gu Qing'an lowered his head again, a slight smile playing on his lips. The young empress, having lost her supreme status in the empire, in this bizarre and unfamiliar world, only he was the one she could currently rely on.

If the story were to develop according to the novel's unwritten plot, Zhou Nan would eventually be his woman. And in this current reality, she would also be his woman.

"Your Majesty the Emperor," "Zhou Nan"—what distant words they once were.

"When I was young, I received a heavenly revelation on the altar. The empire's emperor would change surnames, and I would become the empire's last emperor with the surname Zhou. My husband would wield the imperial scepter. According to the hints in this novel, my husband is you?" Zhou Nan flipped through the novel at a leisurely pace. She raised her head expressionlessly, finally fixing her gaze on Gu Qing'an's handsome face again, her fingers lightly tapping the long handle of the Emperor's Hammer.

"Indeed, it is I..." Gu Qing'an met Zhou Nan's scrutiny with a calm expression. He was the novel's male protagonist. He would obtain everything. He would obtain countless outstanding women. Some were renowned martial arts seniors, some were prodigy girls, some were heads of financial conglomerates, some were famously beautiful courtesans, and one was the empire's emperor, Zhou Nan.

These women, with their unique identities, personalities, appearances, and figures, bloomed like a riot of flowers, dazzling the eyes. In the end, they would all be captured by him.

He would possess them, and they would become his harem. Occasionally, they might bicker over him, but they would all willingly accept his other women out of deep love for him... Although the novel's plot abruptly ended before Zhou Nan and he formally met, everything that followed had already been laid out.

"Then die."

Gu Qing'an was gazing at Zhou Nan's tender, flower-like lips, his mind already filled with countless plot developments, when he heard those words. He was momentarily stunned.

Then, the massive hammer descended, heavy as a dark cloud covering the sky.

The great hammer, imbued with the power of the Empress's authority of the Great Zhou Empire.

Zhou Nan swung the great hammer, smashing Gu Qing'an into a pulp with a single blow.

Male protagonist, deceased.