"Big cheats count as little cheats; little cheats don't count as cheating."
"Besides, the BOSS is so ridiculously overpowered. How else am I supposed to play without cheats?"
Chen Mo leaned back in his gaming chair, bloodshot eyes fixed on the screen.
The game he was playing was called Absolute Immortal, a Chinese-made single-player game that blended action, character development, business simulation, strategy, puzzles, and more.
It had been out for less than a month, and he'd already put in nearly three hundred hours.
To be fair, the game itself was high quality.
Its grand story featured multiple tangled main plots. The gameplay might have felt like a mash-up of genres, but it still had plenty going for it. And the art was top-tier, with several female characters portrayed so memorably that they'd left a deep impression on players.
It had just one fatal flaw: the stat balance was an absolute mess.
Every villain was ridiculously strong.
Especially the final BOSS—
[Great Yuan Imperial Noble Consort · Ten Thousand Miles of Frost and Snow, Clear and Cold Firmament · Yu Youhan].
After enduring countless hardships to reach the final stage, you'd face her and feel utterly helpless, as if the game were saying, "You've mastered the basics. Now try killing a god."
The enormous gap in stats couldn't be overcome with skill alone.
"Isn't this just sadistic?"
After suffering through it for ages, Chen Mo decided to fight magic with magic.
A programmer with seven years' experience who'd been laid off by a major tech company and was now unemployed at home, he spent half a day writing a cheat program and tweaking the game parameters.
Including, but not limited to: immunity to damage checks, immunity to status effects, guaranteed hits, one-hit kills...
Every buff imaginable.
Then he began torturing Yu Youhan in return.
Every swing hit like a blazing inferno. She so much as showed her face and he killed her instantly, grinding her into the dirt over a hundred times...
"Now that feels good."
Chen Mo felt his thoughts clear and his whole body relax.
Just then, a few lines of text appeared on the screen:
[Yu Youhan's "Subservience" has reached the threshold.]
[Hidden event unlocked: Jade Lock Deep Palace · Spring-Dyed Phoenix Couch.]
"There's a hidden event?"
"They really buried it deep, huh?"
Chen Mo was baffled.
Suddenly, the scene changed, and he found himself inside a lavish bedchamber.
The perspective shifted to first person.
He stepped into the inner room and lifted the brocade curtains. A graceful figure lay on an embroidered couch carved with Luan Phoenix motifs.
Her gauzy robe, thin as a cicada's wing, barely covered her alluring figure. Her flesh was plump and smooth, her body slender yet shapely. A red silk cord bound her tightly, accentuating her curves until they were breathtaking.
Her jade cheeks were flushed. She bit her lip, her legs rubbing restlessly against each other.
Her dewy eyes gazed at the camera, holding seven parts humiliation and three parts resentment.
"???"
"Holy crap, that's so risqué!"
"No wonder they hid it so deep... But this doesn't fit her character at all!"
In the original story, Yu Youhan was a coldhearted fiend who'd slaughtered countless people!
Her word was law, and she held the power to grant noble titles. Though she lived in the imperial harem, her influence reached across the whole court!
Her cultivation had even reached a level beyond mortal comprehension!
How could a woman so domineering possibly strike such a willing, submissive pose?
"Ignoring the plot and characterization just to pander to male players is a serious case of catering to otaku fantasies. If this were posted on XHS or WB, it'd get you canceled on the spot..."
"What? I'm an otaku myself?"
"Then it's fine."
Chen Mo stood up to adjust his trajectory.
He also grabbed a bottle of cola from the fridge, ready to give the scene a thorough critique.
But as he stepped forward with his left foot, he accidentally caught it on the power strip's cord. He lost his balance and pitched forward, cracking his skull hard against the corner of the desk.
Thud!
A muffled impact rang out.
Chen Mo's vision went black, and he lost consciousness completely.
Great Yuan Kingdom, Heaven Capital City.
The lights burned bright inside Cold Firmament Palace.
A palace maid entered the inner room with light, quick steps. She bowed her head and said, "Your Highness, the scented bath is ready. This servant will help you change and bathe."
For a long while, there was no answer.
At this hour, Her Highness would usually have finished her cultivation and gone to wash in Begonia Pool.
Something seemed different today...
The maid mustered her courage and looked up.
A woman in plain robes sat cross-legged on a cushion.
The beautiful face that was usually cold as frost had become startlingly animated. Her lips were slightly parted, her phoenix eyes unfocused, her expression dazed and astonished.
"Your Highness?"
The maid shuddered.
She didn't know what had happened, but for Her Highness to look like that, something momentous had to have occurred!
"What... in the world is going on?"
Yu Youhan furrowed her slender brows.
A moment ago, she'd been meditating quietly when her consciousness suddenly grew hazy.
At her level, she no longer needed sleep, yet she'd somehow fallen into a "dream."
In it, a man whose face she couldn't make out had charged into the Imperial Palace alone and defeated her with ease.
It was utterly preposterous.
Given Yu Youhan's cultivation, there were no more than a handful of people in all of Great Yuan who could earn her regard.
Yet before that mysterious man, she'd been like a child who couldn't even lift a chicken. Every supernatural ability had failed, and she couldn't hurt him at all!
His unremarkable knife strike had easily pierced her Dao body.
It was even more terrifying than the Annihilation Tribulation Lightning!
"My Dao heart is clear and pure, and no evil can invade it. There's no way I could be controlled by an illusion."
"Could something have gone wrong in my cultivation, causing an Inner Demon to arise?"
Yu Youhan couldn't think of any other explanation.
The fight had already been decided.
But the "Inner Demon" hadn't stopped there.
First, it had used some method to restore her to full strength, then struck her down with a single slash, restored her again, and repeated the process... It never seemed to tire of it.
It was clearly toying with her!
How outrageous! When had she ever endured such humiliation?
Yet no matter what she tried—not even sealing off her own consciousness—she couldn't escape the dream.
After being "ravaged" again and again, Yu Youhan's mood had gone from rage to unwillingness, then despair... until at last she'd grown numb.
"Enough. Let him do as he pleases."
"I'll just treat it as a nightmare."
She couldn't beat him, and she couldn't escape.
Yu Youhan simply gave up resisting and let herself go.
After an unknown stretch of time, the nightmare finally ended, and her consciousness returned. It felt as though she'd woken in another lifetime.
"Hm?"
Before she could breathe a sigh of relief, she suddenly sensed something.
She looked down, and her pupils shrank!
A red glow appeared out of thin air and rapidly spread across her body, passing over her hands, chest, and inner thighs... It was like a red silk cord, wrapping tightly around her! And the way it bound her was outrageously shameful!
"What is this?!"
She reached out to touch it, but her hand met empty air.
Her spiritual sense found nothing unusual either.
Yu Youhan turned to the maid standing nearby and asked, "Can you see anything on me?"
"Huh?"
The maid was caught off guard and jumped.
After hesitating a moment, she ventured, "Your Highness is... is rather beautiful?"
"..."
"What else?"
"Besides your beauty, which could put the moon to shame, Your Highness has a brilliant mind, unmatched beauty and wisdom, talent and grace. You're the most remarkable woman in all of Great Yuan..."
"That's enough. You may leave."
Yu Youhan rubbed her temples.
"This servant takes her leave."
The maid left in a hurry, relieved to be dismissed.
In that brief moment, the "red silk" binding Yu Youhan had vanished, leaving only a faint red mark on her left wrist.
Yu Youhan's gaze darkened.
No one else could see it, but she was certain it hadn't been an illusion!
And it was undoubtedly connected to that "Inner Demon"!
"An Inner Demon arises from delusions. It's ever-changing and has a thousand forms."
"To the greedy, an Inner Demon is a shackle forged from gold; to the lustful, it's a web woven from beauty; to those obsessed with power, it's a blade fashioned from authority..."
"But why is my Inner Demon a man?"
"And such a... depraved one, at that?"
Yu Youhan couldn't make sense of it.
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