The male supporting character was actually myself.

Mu Jiuxiu rubbed his face, forcing himself to calm down. He had to turn the tide.

This time, I can't complain about hardship or fatigue. Even if the conditions are a bit worse, I have to write code that satisfies this broken machine, otherwise I won't earn any points and my lifespan will be deducted!

A devoted lover... and they still end up as a couple?

Themes like *The Romance of the Western Chamber* and *The Peony Pavilion* flashed through his mind for a moment, but Mu Jiuxiu quickly dismissed them.

Those were stories he had only heard fragments of but never read in detail or in their entirety. He worried that if his writing skills weren't good enough and he didn't portray the characters as deeply in love, it would be a huge loss if his work was judged as low-scoring.

The question is, how do you define someone who is not only deeply devoted but also romantic and fantastical?

Jia Baoyu doesn't seem like a good fit either. If he were truly devoted, he wouldn't be flirting with this person or getting close to that person. He even ate the rouge off a maid's lips. A drastically altered version of his story would definitely not be acceptable.

Mu Jiuxiu felt increasingly hopeless as he thought about it. Just when he was in despair, a sudden inspiration struck him and he remembered a story from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio about a lovelorn man named A Bao!

The stories from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio are so good, mainly because they are short and don't have so many twists and turns. I've actually read the whole thing and can remember the gist of it.

After careful recollection, Mu Jiuxiu decided to delete some irrelevant details that were only meant to highlight the setting and make it more in line with what was shown in the TV series, such as cutting off one of his six fingers or his friend testing him with a courtesan.

He was self-aware enough not to be as foolish as the male protagonist, who turned away at the sight of a beautiful prostitute, blushing and sweating profusely with shame and nervousness; nor could he simply cut off his finger like that, that would hurt so much!

Mentioning the courtesan, Mu Jiuxiu recalled the girl Zhu'er with whom he had spent a night of tenderness, and couldn't help but sigh as he began to input the storyline into the machine.

The protagonist is a somewhat dull-witted scholar from a poor family; the female lead, A Bao, is the only daughter of a wealthy merchant family whose wealth rivals that of royalty.

The scholar was tricked into proposing to A Bao, but was rejected. He wanted to see what kind of beauty A Bao was, so on the day of Qingming Festival, he went to the suburbs to secretly observe the young women and wives who were out enjoying the spring outing.

From afar, he spotted a stunningly beautiful woman named A Bao, and the scholar fell in love with her at first sight, completely captivated.

The story was too full of suffering and hardship, involving both death and rebirth. Mu Jiuxiu drastically cut and modified it so that the scholar's soul followed A Bao and then lay unconscious on the bed after returning home.

His spirit was always with A Bao, never leaving her side. Every night, when she was half asleep and half awake, he would playfully engage with her and whisper his name to her.

Abao always thought it was a dream, and she was deeply in love with her dream lover. However, she soon became pregnant. She could no longer keep it a secret and found out that the person she met in her dream was the poor scholar who had proposed to her but was rejected.

The young lady, who was of marriageable age, was pregnant. Abao's parents were both anxious and angry, so they took the initiative to find a poor scholar to become their son-in-law.

Although the scholar was dull-witted, he was not stupid. The wealthy merchant had no children but only this one biological daughter. His vast fortune would be his sooner or later, so he would never humiliate himself by becoming a live-in son-in-law. Thus, he earned a good reputation for not bowing down to the powerful and wealthy.

As Abao's belly grew bigger and bigger, she could no longer hide it and insisted on marrying him. Her parents had no choice but to compromise and let her marry into a poor family with a generous dowry. The scholar was dull-witted and not good at managing money, so the family relied entirely on Abao to manage the household and make a good living. She even gave birth to a big, healthy son.

Two years later, the scholar took the imperial examination. Someone tricked him by making up a question, claiming it was a leaked exam question. The scholar believed it and wrote several suitable articles beforehand, revising them for a long time. As it turned out, the exam question was exactly the one the person had mentioned, and he immediately passed with top honors.

A few years later, his parents-in-law passed away from illness, and all their property was inherited by Abao and moved to his own small home. His virtuous wife even took the initiative to arrange for him to take several concubines, and they lived happily ever after.

"There shouldn't be any problems now, right?" Mu Jiuxiu pressed the submit button with some trepidation, thinking that Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio is a famous work that has been passed down from that era. The content is not too outrageous. The male protagonist even lost his soul for A Bao. Isn't that infatuation enough?

The world in the mirror enters the testing process, and the story is changed to the modern era in another mirror.

A poor, unmarried man nearing thirty took a fancy to a beautiful girl from a wealthy family. He followed her every day and sneaked into her room at night to rape her. When the girl's conservative family found out, they neither reported it to the police nor pursued the matter in order to avoid the scandal. Their solution was to let their daughter marry the rapist with a generous dowry.

The girl should have had a bright future, but her life was changed from that moment on.

In an era when divorce was shameful, women endured humiliation, were forced into sexual assault, and were forced to give birth to three sons and four daughters. Their substantial dowries became the capital for men to amass wealth, ensuring that the wife remained at home while having mistresses on the outside...

The shop owner has a flawed understanding of devotion. Relentless pursuit, sexual assault, and coercing marriage through pregnancy are all unrelated to devotion.

This story does not conform to mainstream values ​​and is rated as a one-star work. The original intention of writing the story was not good, so a penalty measure is initiated - 50 points will be deducted from the store's score, and the current store score is negative 100.

The story "Mirror World" has not been approved and will be archived in the backend. Please be aware of this.

[Beep beep beep! Entering three one-star entries in a row has triggered an invisible rule—the shop owner's morality and character will be put into assessment. If the assessment is not passed, points will be deducted and the shop owner will be stripped of their position.]

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." The position of shop owner carries great responsibility. To ensure the continued existence of the Wonderful Shop, the selection process for shop owners must be rigorous and fair. From this day forward, supervisors have the right to activate the moral character testing device.

The Mirror World will not be open to the public until authorized by the supervisor. Please be aware of this.

"Fuck your mother..." Before Mu Jiuxiu could finish his curse, the door to the attic room opened, and Yi Mei, still elegant and poised with her hands folded, revealed a polite smile. "Shopkeeper Mu, please cooperate with this supervisor for the moral character assessment."

................................................

postscript.

The Wonder Shop remained closed that day.

Mu Jiuxiu naturally failed the test. He was afraid of hardship and always wanted to take shortcuts, but he really had no experience to use. He had no capital to take shortcuts at all, and in the end, he suffered a great loss for trying to be clever.

He was given a negative 100 points, which would deduct ten years of his lifespan. After that, the Wonderful Shop terminated the contract with him, and their final act of mercy was to send Mu Jiuxiu to the world he wanted to go to.

After that, Jiang Chen could only follow up through the crystal paperweight. After all, the chosen one was exiled from the Wonderful Shop, and his soul fragments gradually dissipated and flew away with the little white cat.

Later, I would occasionally hear about a mysterious shop that those with the right fate would be able to see.

Inside the luxurious yet antique shop, there is an elegant, fair-skinned, and beautiful puppet maid who can always tell you all the treasures in the shop and help you exchange them for the most suitable items.

Moreover, the well-informed young lady will occasionally find someone she feels a connection with and chat with them, telling them all sorts of bizarre stories she's encountered at work.

Mu Jiuxiu's story was spread in this way in a certain world.

It is said that after careful consideration, he requested to go to the ancient world where men were superior to women, and tried to use his knowledge of poetry and songs and various recipes that time travelers were required to make a fortune and become rich.

When Mu Jiuxiu arrived in ancient times, he discovered that he couldn't understand the ancient accents at all; the management of population origin was strict, and one could not leave one's place of residence at will; there was a clear distinction between the noble and the lowly, and one could not cross the line without money to go to school, let alone write, let alone take the imperial examinations; even farming had many requirements, and even if one had money, one could not necessarily buy one's own land.

The recipe that every time traveler needs is limited by just one ingredient: lard. Poor families can only afford to eat meat once or twice a year, so where would they get lard to waste?

Salt? Sugar? Iron smelting? These highly profitable industries were all under the jurisdiction of the imperial court; ordinary people who even slightly touched them would be executed!

Without any special status, they were homeless migrants who were constantly being driven away and arrested.

Having traveled directly from modern to ancient times, Mu Jiuxiu was practically a super virus carrier, spreading bacteria and viruses wherever he went. Ancient people already lacked medical care and medicine, and now faced with a super-powerful virus, he quickly became a notorious "plague god," dying during the local county magistrate's epidemic control efforts, shot through the heart by an arrow.

After the fire burned the bodies, the terrible plague did not spread again. The local people then created a story about the plague god descending to earth, which became widely circulated.