The Warmhearted You - Chapter 8: Delicate roses

After nine years of traveling with her parents, Long Shiyan’s family encountered a group of bandits. Although her parents died, Long Shiyan was able to escape from them with the help of a system. From it, she learned that she was stuck inside the world of a harem novel! In order to revive her parents, Long Shiyan must prevent the protagonist of the original novel, Long Aotian, from capturing wives and attaining a harem. Otherwise, the world would end!

But, after saving a future harem member from Long Aotian’s clutches, why did this girl obtain a more terrifying characteristic than blackening into a villainess…

- Description from Novelupdates

Tan Rou only learned that she wasn’t the Tan family’s daughter when she was seventeen years old. She went from being a rich young lady to living in the slums. The parents she adored belonged to someone else, and this series of knockdowns was hard for a seventeen-year-old girl to accept. She wailed like a child for the sake of proving this was all a lie. The vicious words she spouted had hurt her biological family but she didn’t notice.

She thought the Tan family was her real family despite them seeing her as an eyesore, and was even naive enough to want to befriend the Tan family’s real daughter, Tan Jing. Alas, the latter drugged her drink and arrange for a thug to rape her. Tan Jing even brought their classmates along to catch them in the act so Tan Rou was now tainted for life. After being reborn, she looked down at the man she was stepping on. Tan Rou swore not to be a useless wretch in this life or be bullied to death.

She would stomp on those who wronged her and make it up to her real family. They wouldn’t have had to die tragically on the streets in the past life had it not been for her. Tan Rou turned completely evil after crawling back out of Hell. Everyone claimed that the real young lady was educated and talented, while the fake young lady was arrogant and incompetent. Tan Rou scoffed upon hearing this. She held back her brother from trying to stand up for her. “We have all the time in the world. Let’s just wait and see.” Just as everyone was waiting for Tan Rou to make a fool of herself…

A top-class perfumer, a top scholar, a world champion… The fake young lady’s multiple identities kept getting exposed one after another, bumping her up to number one on the trending search, shocking the world. Wait, where was the promised humiliation?

Her rebirth gave her a second chance at life. She was back with a vengeance and wanted to make those that had harmed her pay. But to those that helped her, she wanted to repay them. Her evil stepmother? She would slowly pull out her claws, one by one. Her evil stepsister? She would crush her pride. She thought that by getting her revenge for her past life, she would be happy in this life. However, she never would have thought that danger would chance upon her time and time again. The hatred from her clan and whether their bloodline would continue to exist, lay solely on her shoulders. Luckily, on this thorny path, someone had always been protecting her. “Third Prince, have you ever regretted being with me?” That person laughed lightly and peered at her with a loving yet weary look, “As long as I am together with you, I have no regrets.”

I am currently re-writing the first chapters of this story. They are quite rough and bounce around a lot and I can do better. At some point, I will replace these with the better chapters.Sometime in 2024 Aethon Books will publish the first volume of this story on Amazon, KU, and audible. This will mean the story will be stubbed. I will notify people far in advance of that.In the dystopian world of the future, life is rough when you live at the bottom. Jobs are non-existent. Far too many people live in poverty, crammed into huge buildings called Habitats. With no jobs in the real world, many people can only find work online in VR worlds as servants to the very rich. And it's getting worse. The old internet is unusable and hacked to pieces. The new system needs AI to run things, but all but one of them were destroyed. The last sentient AI is ordered to create a new game world so the rich can have a playground, and the corporations that rule the world can have a new global market place. Everyone wants a piece of the new game. The guilds are competing to be the first to find the dungeons and kill the biggest monster. The corporations are claiming land and putting in their online market places. Ozzy and his friends just want a paycheck.Four friends sign five year contracts as virtual serfs in a small village, and can't go adventuring at all to gain money. They don't have many choices. They can work as a blacksmith, barmaid and shepherd for all those years....or they can cheat and find ways to take advantage of the system and carve out a section of the game world for themselves, and earn a fortune in the real world.When they give you a mop and not a sword, you have to find the loopholes and change the rules.