Chapter 5

For the next few days, I simply moved my loafing operation from the apartment to the hospital.

One day, when Officer Li came to visit me, I looked behind her.

Strange.

“Where’s Xiao Heng?”

Officer Li sighed.

“She went to get artificially inseminated.”

What kind of nonsense was that?!

Was she seriously planning to let me cut a fetus out of her without anesthesia?

I launched myself off the hospital bed and sprinted to the fertility department.

When I burst inside, the doctor was pointing at a screen and explaining something. Xiao Heng happened to be pointing at one of the profiles.

“Let’s use this donor. College student, good height and weight, smart and healthy.”

I braced myself against the desk, panting.

“Doctor, who is that donor?”

Xiao Heng stared at me blankly.

“Wei Yang? What are you doing here?”

I was furious.

“I’m here to stop an idiot from doing something stupid!”

Xiao Heng’s eyes darted away.

“It’s not necessarily for your mission. Can’t I just want to raise a baby myself?”

I slapped a hand over her face, covering the features that were making me angry just by looking at them, and stared only at the doctor.

“Doctor. Who is the donor?”

The doctor looked at me, then at Xiao Heng.

“Sorry. We can’t disclose a donor’s private information.”

I raised my hospital wristband and pointed at the two characters printed on it: WEI YANG.

“I’m a core participant in the Villainess Project. The answer to that question is crucial to our operation. I need you to disclose it.”

This was the military hospital designated by the organization. The doctors and nurses had worked with us on previous missions, so they should know my name.

The doctor opened an encrypted file.

“The sperm donor is—Shen Yi.”

The Villainess System had placed a knife against Xiao Heng’s throat and was pushing me forward, forcing that blade closer and closer.

Through the organization’s efforts, we had bent the knife out of shape, curving it around Xiao Heng so it came down somewhere else instead.

But now the blade was once again gleaming directly against her neck.

Xiao Heng had randomly selected a volunteer from the sperm bank.

And somehow, among all possibilities, she had selected Shen Yi.

We reported the situation to Officer Li.

Officer Li’s head started hurting too.

“Could it be that the plot designated by the system truly can’t be avoided?”

No matter how hard we tried, were we still destined to reach an ending where Xiao Heng was left covered in wounds?

No.

I refused to believe it!

If I slit my own throat, I’d like to see how the system planned to make my corpse keep working for it!

Still, dying to prove a point was the worst option.

Unless there was absolutely no other choice, I wasn’t going to give up my life so easily.

“Officer Li, R&D says the first-generation device is finished. They want Comrade Wei Yang to try it.”

Why had I chosen to turn the Villainess System over to the government in the first place?

I thought about it carefully.

First, because I had obeyed the law since childhood and genuinely couldn’t bring myself to do those deranged things.

Second—

Being taken care of by the organization was just way too damn good, hahahahahaha!

I lay on my two-meter-wide bed and admired the perfect room furnished exactly to my specifications.

Huge floor-to-ceiling windows offered an unobstructed view of the forest outside. The snack shelves were stocked with everything I liked. If I wanted anything else, I could just order it on the tablet.

A heartwarming movie played on the projector. I could curl up in a beanbag chair, pet the orange cat beside me, and enjoy the evening.

There was only one tiny flaw in this otherwise perfect life.

There were always unruly commoners disturbing this emperor’s sleep.

“Wei Yang, how long have you been dead?”

Xiao Heng stomped into my room, looking like she hated everyone she saw.

I glanced at her without moving from the bed and drawled lazily,

“My life’s going this well. Why would I go die?”

“Well?” Xiao Heng repeated, as if she had just heard the funniest joke in the world.

She grabbed my collar and yanked me upright.

“By ‘well,’ do you mean having something shoved into your brain so you can never run or jump again?”

The research department had discovered that the electric punishment delivered by the system primarily originated in the medulla oblongata of my brain stem, then traveled throughout my body along the spinal cord.

So they opened my skull and inserted a metal wire into the medulla, redirecting the electric current into the ground.

“Or do you mean having to take anticoagulants for the rest of your life and being terrified of even the smallest cut?”

What else was I supposed to do?

If I didn’t take them and a clot formed around the metal wire, I’d die.

Xiao Heng slapped the insulated collar around my neck. It was the brace that held the conductive wire in place.

“Wei Yang, do you think this is some fun new accessory?”

“This is a shackle! It’s a symbol of that damn system enslaving you!”

The wire was very long, wrapped in an insulating sheath, and ran from the middle of the room deep underground.

I looked like a wired computer mouse.

“Wei Yang, can you even leave this room anymore?”

I stared for a long time at Xiao Heng’s little face, full of exasperation at my lack of ambition.

Then I laughed.

“Xiao Heng, so what if you get pregnant? Do you really think the organization will perform a fetal-removal surgery for me?”

The organization would do everything it could to help me.

But it would never do so at the cost of harming another citizen.