Wen Yanyu, you will live to a hundred

"Host Wen Yanyu, welcome home."

An emotionless mechanical voice sounded beside his ear.

Wen Yanyu opened his eyes in the bathtub and looked at the chibi Meteorite Border Collie in the empty air before him.

"Your cycle of reincarnation has ended. You will no longer be controlled by the plot and forced to reincarnate. Once the plot of this world has completely ended, you will be free."

Free?

He neither agreed nor disagreed with the system's words.

Wen Yanyu raised his eyes and asked, "What about my parents and my little sister?"

The puppy in the air visibly froze for a moment, avoiding the young man's hollow gaze. "I'm sorry. I could only send you back to this point in time. Your family and your past were plot bugs that have now been corrected. I can't bring them back for you."

"But aside from the reward for breaking free of the plot, you have also gained the abilities of the cannon fodder you once played. Although they have all been greatly weakened, they will certainly still make your life more convenient. This is an additional reward for the effort you put into playing those roles."

The mechanical voice remained cold.

Wen Yanyu tilted his head back and looked at the cold ceiling.

Since he was seven, there had been a book in his mind, a wish-fulfillment novel for male readers in which the male lead rose to power step by step. As a child, he had not known what the book really meant.

He had only known that one of its characters shared his name, Wen Yanyu. The sole difference was that the Wen Yanyu in the book had no family at all, so even by the time he came of age, he had never taken the book seriously.

But in his final year of middle school, everything had changed. His parents and little sister had mysteriously disappeared. He had searched almost everywhere and found nothing. He alone still remembered that they had existed.

Even friends he had been close to had begun forgetting him. For an entire year, everyone had treated him like a madman, and even he had begun to think of himself that way.

Until he saw Fu Hanchuan on television-the same name as the male lead in the book, the exact same course of fate. Countless familiar characters gradually appeared, along with those familiar plotlines, while he...

He was merely Wen Yanyu, the cannon-fodder male supporting character who relentlessly pestered the male lead and ultimately died in a car crash. Cannon fodder mentioned in just a few strokes, whose death the male lead's rivals exploited to turn public opinion against him.

So he did not need a family, a past, or a future, nor could he fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor and treating the sick.

He had given everything he had to get into Capital Medical University, hoping to fight the plot. Yet in the end, he could only let the plot control him and force him into the entertainment industry, like a marionette, appearing at the appropriate time, dying, and completing his part in the story.

Sometimes he could control his body, and sometimes he could not. He wanted to escape the plot and tried every method he could. During that time, the male lead became his friend and treated him very, very well.

He did not want his eventual death to become a blade that hurt the other man. He wanted freedom, so in his lucid moments, he tried to end his life to defy the plot. The result was obvious: he failed.

He was also forcibly bound to an unknown system and sent through countless worlds in a cycle of reincarnation, playing cannon fodder in those worlds, unable to control himself as he met his death over and over.

From his initial bewilderment, anger, fear, and breakdowns to numbness, he had accepted his fate as mere cannon fodder. So be it.

Fortunately, though, he was only cannon fodder. His longest lives lasted just two years, and the shortest did not even last two hours, so all told, he might only have spent a hundred years reincarnating.

Water rushed through the bathroom.

Wen Yanyu reclined in the bathtub, warm water covering his shoulders and neck. It was warm and comfortable, like being enveloped in his mother's embrace.

The scar that had once nearly torn him apart, the scar he had brought back from countless reincarnations, spread across his waist.

In the mission worlds, besides dying ordinary deaths, he had also been tortured to death several times. He had been in supernatural worlds, apocalyptic worlds, natural-disaster worlds, infinite-loop worlds, and ordinary worlds. He had brought those abilities and that pain back with him.

He did not know whether this was a reward or a punishment.

But then, he was only cannon fodder. His only purpose was to advance the plot, then die.

The puppy floated in midair. "I'll be heading back soon."

Wen Yanyu looked up at the puppy and reached out.

The puppy came over with practiced ease and nuzzled affectionately against his palm.

"Host, remember to eat on time. If you can't eat, drink something. Don't sleep in the bathtub. If you really can't help it, at least put a blanket underneath you first and cover your stomach. Don't sleep in the water. Take fewer painkillers. If you feel like you're about to faint, call... a friend. Don't try to tough it out alone. Live well, and take good care of yourself."

A rare trace of emotion entered the cold mechanical voice. Wen Yanyu quietly listened to the puppy's instructions, then stroked that warm body one last time.

"You've been looking after me for so long. We must have grown at least a little attached to each other, right? Before you go, tell me how many years I have left. How many years until that final car crash? Let me plan my retirement in advance."

Wen Yanyu asked calmly, his black hair slowly losing its color at a visible rate.

The puppy's body abruptly stiffened. The puppy watched him for a long time. After a long while, the mechanical voice vanished, replaced by a distorted, hoarse male voice.

"Wen Yanyu, you will live to a hundred."

The puppy pressed a kiss to his forehead. The warm touch faded along with the voice.

"Goodbye."

In Wen Yanyu's moment of distraction, the puppy who had accompanied him through countless worlds disappeared.

"You had to curse me one last time before leaving? What a bad dog." Wen Yanyu gave a bitter smile and lay back down in the water.

His consciousness grew hazy, and Wen Yanyu closed his eyes.

He tried to remember where he had heard that voice before.

He lay in the warm flowing water, in an imagined embrace, in a freedom he could not tell was real or false, and slowly drifted into sleep.

#Wen Yanyu rescued#

#Wen Yanyu Fu Hanchuan#

#Wen Yanyu's relentless pestering#

[I'm so done. Why does Wen Yanyu cause trouble every single day? Doesn't he get tired?]

[If you want to climb the social ladder, at least check whether you're good enough.]

[So pathetic and disgusting. If I were Fu Hanchuan, I'd be sick to death of him. He even went to the hospital to pick him up. All I can say is that Fu Hanchuan is such a good person. No wonder he took charge of a corporation so young. He's really the bigger person.]

[As a longtime fan, I'm honestly exhausted. I don't understand how such a good boy turned out like this. He managed to establish himself firmly as an A-lister just a few years after his debut, only to ruin everything for himself. Anyone who didn't know better would think he'd been possessed.]

[Sigh, Wen Yanyu's looks really do hit my buttons. His debut performance had me completely bewitched. How did he end up being so foolish, insisting on falling for a man who doesn't like him back?]

[Ew, whatever the case, it's disgusting. Why does he like men?]

[Wen Yanyu told reporters he doesn't like Fu Hanchuan anymore. Does anyone believe that bit? I certainly don't.]

[None of his tricks worked, so now he's playing hard to get.]

[Wen Yanyu really took a winning hand and played it terribly. That face and all those resources could clearly have kept him in his top-streamer spot, but he just had to pursue Fu Hanchuan publicly. Even after being explicitly rejected, he kept pestering him. He really destroyed himself.]

[Sigh, no matter what, I was genuinely his fan once. Seeing how pale he looked outside the hospital still hurt a little. I can't figure out what that kid is thinking.]

Discussions about Wen Yanyu continued online.

All kinds of mockery and ridicule all but drowned Wen Yanyu's social media accounts.