Mo Xi spent some time figuring out the website’s interface, then spent some more time locating the novel Gu Mang had written.
Sure enough, just like most of the web novels on the Jinjiang website, Gu Mang’s cover featured a sinister-looking man in ancient Chinese clothing, with an evil, domineering expression and a gloomy face. Lightning crackled behind him, his eyes glowed with an insanely cool and over-the-top radiance, and he held a scepter in his hand. His face was extremely displeasing to Mo Xi. If there was anything about the cover that Mo Xi found acceptable, it was probably the title, printed in bold black characters. At least it looked proper.
Unfortunately, the title itself had very little to do with the word proper. Gu Mang had named his book Forbidden/Book.
Mo Xi clicked on Chapter One. It was a prologue containing fewer than eight hundred words, and he had barely glanced at it before his hand froze.
“…”
He finally understood why those officers had been so cautious whenever they mentioned this book to him. The reason was painfully obvious: the two protagonists in Gu Mang’s novel were named Gu Mang and Mo Xi. He had simply taken their real names and used them directly, too lazy even to come up with homophones.
The first paragraph of the prologue read:
Chonghua had produced two young commanders, whose paths were as distinct as the boundary between a river and a sea, as incompatible as water and fire.
The one like water was named Mo Xi. He was cold by nature, abstinent, and still single to this day. The bets circulating among the army on when Marshal Mo would finally surrender his chastity had accumulated to an amount sufficient to make any pauper filthy rich overnight.
Mo Xi: “……………………”
Then he looked at the character profile Gu Mang had written for himself:
The one like fire was named Gu Mang. He was warm by nature, loved to smile, and knew how to cherish women. If he had to pay a pouch of silver every time he kissed a girl, he would probably have gone completely broke and lost his entire fortune long ago.
Gu Mang later betrayed his loyalty and turned against his benefactors, becoming a commanding general of an enemy nation.
Unexpectedly, after reading this passage, Mo Xi let out a somewhat mocking yet helpless laugh.
Gu Mang. After all these years, everything about this man had changed, except for his shameless, undisguised narcissism. That hadn’t changed in the slightest.
The officers had been reluctant to let Mo Xi see this novel with his own eyes, presumably because its real-life inspirations were so obvious that even an idiot could tell whom Gu Mang was making fun of. But there was something that might have left those officers utterly astonished.
In fact, Mo Xi had read this kind of book more than ten years ago.
It had been back when the two of them were in middle school, sitting at the same desk.
At the time, Mo Xi had been very poor. He wore a school uniform that had faded from years of washing. Every winter, when everyone else put on bright, beautiful coats, he wore his maternal grandfather’s old military-padded jacket, which was probably older than he was. He had practically become the laughingstock of the entire school.
Most people would probably have blushed with embarrassment and hidden the jacket away. But Mo Xi simply refused to take it off. Whoever laughed at him, he beat them up.
Gu Mang, meanwhile, belonged to a completely different world. His family had been among the first pioneers to venture into business after China’s reform and opening-up. His mother ran a factory, while his father had traveled all the way to Europe to start a clothing business.
Two words were enough to sum him up: rich young master.
No one knew how the rich young master and the poor kid had become friends. The friendship of teenagers was so pure that even asking why seemed like an impurity.
After they became friends, they often walked home together after school. Gu Mang had a bicycle, while Mo Xi didn’t, so Gu Mang suggested giving him a ride. Mo Xi cursed him for being crazy, but in the end, he couldn’t withstand Gu Mang’s shameless persistence and had no choice but to go along with it.
As a result, people often saw scenes like this:
The young master Gu Mang pedaled his Forever bicycle home after school, wearing handmade Italian lambskin shoes and a peacock-blue wool coat that had appeared in a French film. Beneath it, he wore a mustard-yellow fitted vest with buttons down the front and a snow-white silk shirt. He was outrageously fashionable.
Meanwhile, sitting on the rear seat was Mo Xi, his face cold and expressionless, the breeze lifting his fine black bangs. His face was as pale as freshly fallen snow.
Unfortunately, Gu Mang’s cycling skills were terrible, yet he still insisted on showing off. After he and his passenger had tumbled into the ditch twice in succession, Mo Xi coldly gave him two choices:
A. Keep both feet firmly on the ground from now on and stop riding.
B. Let Mo Xi ride the bicycle and give Gu Mang a lift instead.
Gu Mang chose the latter. He didn’t mind at all and was delighted to take it easy. This conveniently freed his hands so he could hold up a frozen milk popsicle, which he ate until his hands were covered in cream.
Besides giving people rides on his bicycle, Gu Mang also liked writing stories.
Of course, he never properly completed the assigned essays at school. There was something peculiar about him: he couldn’t manage a thousand-word composition, but he was more than happy to spend his time tinkering with a ten-thousand-word xianxia novel.
This was actually why the other officers had been so shocked to discover that criminal Gu Mang wrote web novels, while Captain Mo had remained perfectly calm. He had seen all this a hundred years ago—well, almost.
Back then, Gu Mang’s pen name had been Drawing My Sword, I Look Around in Bewilderment. It sounded much better than his current name, Draw…rd.
Whenever he wrote stories, he would usually wait until math class. He would secretly slip a draft notebook beneath his textbook, draw a few triangles, copy down a few equations—sometimes even copying them incorrectly—and pretend he was taking notes. Then he would begin writing furiously.
Every so often, he would even raise his head to make eye contact with the math teacher and nod solemnly, indicating that he understood and that the lesson was excellent.
Keep it up, Teacher!
As the class study representative back then, Mo Xi couldn’t stand watching him do this. So he asked, “…Can’t you write during the elective period?”
“No. Only classes can inspire me.”
And what exactly was his inspiration?
Mo Xi had the honor of being the very first reader of Gu Mang’s first novel.
The Legend of the Immortal Sword: The Rich Overseas Returnee
Author: Drawing My Sword, I Look Around in Bewilderment
Male Lead: Gu Mang
Male Supporting Character: Mo Xi
Female Leads: Zhao Ling’er, Lin Yueru, A Nu, Xue Jian, Long Kui, Zi Xuan, Hua Ying
Mo Xi looked at this character list and glared at Gu Mang. But Gu Mang only grinned shamelessly at him. Not only did he show no shame whatsoever, he even looked full of anticipation.
So Mo Xi could only suppress his temper and continue reading.
That book became Mo Xi’s long-standing nightmare. It was also the fundamental reason he later refused to read any novels at all.
Neither then nor now could Mo Xi accurately describe how the experience had made him feel. After all, he didn’t use social media and had no idea there was a term for it: excessive wish fulfillment.
The Legend of the Immortal Sword: The Rich Overseas Returnee was precisely that kind of novel.
The main story was about a rich overseas returnee named Gu Mang who traveled into the world of The Legend of the Immortal Sword. This chosen one possessed a perfect height of two and a half meters—Gu Mang’s brain must have had something wrong with it—nine abdominal muscles—Mo Xi had told him that eight were plenty, but he refused to change it—a face as white as the moon, as the original novel put it, and seven-colored pupils that changed color according to his mood.
On top of all that, if he struck something with his palm using enough force, he could flatten an entire planet Earth.
“…I don’t want to read anymore.”
Gu Mang panicked and pressed down on his arm. “No! You’ve only read a few lines! Keep reading! Come on, read!”
The boy’s eyes were far too earnest. Mo Xi had no choice but to continue.
The male lead, Gu Mang, was so insanely cool, domineering, and ridiculously awesome that anyone who saw his face would fall helplessly in love with him the moment he smiled. This caused him considerable distress, so he rarely showed his smile.
One day, Gu Mang was walking along the road when he discovered someone lying in the middle of it, on the verge of death.
“Why would someone be dying in the middle of the road?”
“Uh… I don’t know. That’s just the setup. Anyway, keep reading.”
Mo Xi looked at the next line.
The man who was about to die, whose height was less than 1.3 meters, was named Mo Xi.
“…”
Mo Xi snapped the draft notebook shut with a smack, stood up, and prepared to leave the classroom.
Gu Mang shouted, “Don’t go! You’ll become stronger later!”
Mo Xi roared, “What the fuck is wrong with your brain?!”
Gu Mang didn’t bother defending his brain. Instead, he desperately shouted after his first reader, trying to keep him from leaving.
“Keep reading!”
“I’m not reading this shit!”
“Don’t be afraid! There aren’t any ghosts later!” Gu Mang pleaded pitifully. “Big bro, please. I’m begging you. Just keep reading.”
Mo Xi glared at him. Seeing how utterly sincere Gu Mang looked, he had no choice but to endure it and continue reading.
The two-and-a-half-meter-tall Gu Mang smiled radiantly at the one-point-three-meter-tall Mo Xi. Mo Xi thought to himself, Ah! How can there be such a brilliant smile in this world? He must be an angel!
Mo Xi no longer even wanted to argue about the one-point-three-meter height. He asked with a dark expression, “…Where do angels come from in a xianxia cultivation story?”
“Celestial deity, celestial deity! I wrote the wrong thing.” Gu Mang urged him on. “Hurry up and keep reading!”
The two-and-a-half-meter-tall celestial deity Gu Mang brought Mo Xi back to life with his smile. The two became the best of friends from that day onward. Gu Mang patted Mo Xi on the head, and Mo Xi instantly grew taller. He became almost as handsome, almost as tall, and almost as elegant as Gu Mang. He also acquired a special ability: whenever he was happy, a little flower would bloom on top of his head and sway back and forth, looking absolutely adorable.
“……………………”
“How is it?” Gu Mang asked, full of anticipation.
Mo Xi stood up and looked down at him coldly. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s pretty good.”
The rest of the story was more or less about how, with Gu Mang’s help, Mo Xi learned peerless martial arts and defeated the rulers of the Six Realms. Gu Mang got married eight times and married every female lead in the entire Immortal Sword series.
When one of his wives suffered a difficult labor, Gu Mang initially intended to help her give birth by striking her abdomen with his palm. But because Gu Mang was simply too strong—remember, the earlier chapters had established that he could flatten an entire planet with one palm, and unbelievably, he actually remembered that he’d given himself this ability—the female lead was killed by a single strike from her husband’s palm. Her husband, an amateur traditional Chinese doctor who had only picked up the trade halfway through life, had literally struck her dead.
With only one breath left, the female lead embraced Gu Mang and wept with him. To express how reluctant she was to part with him and how she had no regrets, she used her final breath to recite a death poem that stretched across ten pages of draft paper.
The poem began like this:
Amid firecrackers, another year departs; The spring breeze brings warmth and wine to our hearts.
And it ended like this:
Why must we always stay together in life? I’ll send my longing on the eastern wind’s flight!
Mo Xi patiently turned to the tenth page. At long last, the female lead finally breathed her last.
The male lead, Gu Mang, was devastated with grief and cried himself to sleep. When he woke up, he discovered that he had merely been dreaming in class.
The novel ended with these words:
【In reality, Gu Mang was still a handsome, wealthy, popular, and all-around wonderful young man who was adored by girls. The Mo Xi in the story was also his good friend. After Gu Mang woke up, he saw Mo Xi doing his homework beside him. Gu Mang yawned, shaking off the lingering effects of the nightmare. He firmly believed that Mo Xi would let him sneak a peek at the answers during tomorrow’s exam!】
“Finished reading?”
“Finished.”
“Heh heh heh. So, about tomorrow’s exam…?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
Gu Mang yelled, “Fuck! Why not? If you won’t let me copy your answers, I’ll change the ending! The person I killed with one palm wasn’t the female lead! It was you!”
“Go ahead and change it. What does that have to do with me?”
Gu Mang was so furious that he let out a cry. Then, completely out of his mind, he threatened, “Th-then I’ll stop writing about the female lead getting pregnant! I’ll write that you get pregnant! I’ll strike you with one palm and make you miscarry!”
Mo Xi roared, “You dare!”
Gu Mang really did dare.
Later, he actually wrote a novel in which Mo Xi had been gender-swapped, though Mo Xi threw it away before Gu Mang could finish it.
So, in the end, Gu Mang was simply that shameless and narcissistic, with an ego that knew no bounds. He had always indulged in undisguised wish fulfillment, possessed skin as thick as a city wall, and remained perpetually enthusiastic about portraying himself as the most outrageously cool and overpowered Gary Stu in his stories.
Who would have thought that after all these years, when they were both well into adulthood, he would still be the same?
Still, compared to a two-and-a-half-meter-tall male lead with seven-colored eyes, nine abdominal muscles, and a smile capable of resurrecting the dead, the protagonist of Forbidden/Book had made considerable progress. He was still shameless, of course, but at least he wasn’t quite so outrageous.
As for being charming and womanizing… well, that had more or less been Gu Mang’s actual personality to begin with.
The only thing Mo Xi couldn’t quite understand was the meaning of the prologue.
He didn’t understand why writing about the relationship between “himself” and “Gu Mang” could be considered a forbidden book. What was there between friends that had to be forbidden?
Out of professional caution, he scrolled down and discovered a comment section. He tried to find an answer to his question in the comments.
However, after flipping through a few pages, Mo Xi found that the comments looked like this—
【What the hell? Is the author dead?】
【The author is unbelievable. At first, he updated daily, then weekly, then monthly, and finally yearly. I’ve been following this novel for three years, and it still isn’t finished. Honestly, I lost all interest in the story ages ago. The only reason I still have this piece of trash in my collection is that I want to see how thick-skinned the author can be and how long he’ll drag it out before finishing. Turns out the author is even more amazing than I imagined. After dragging it out for years, he’s actually abandoned it. Oh, sorry, that’s not quite right. The author apparently did give us an ending after all. It’s neither an HE nor a BE. It’s an SE.】
【I’ve been reading web novels for ten years, and I’ve never seen such a spectacular move. Even the flower of excellence can’t outshine you.】
【Bird Bro, have you lost your mind?! You promised you’d weld the car doors shut and drive this thing beyond the universe! Fine, if you don’t want to write the steamy scenes, whatever, but changing BL to BG? Are you sick?!】
【I feel like I’ve just eaten a steaming pile of shit. I’ve been waiting at the bottom of this pit for three years just to see the seme and uke finally make love, and not only did I get no sex, the author actually slapped me across the face! Can I report the author to the Jinjiang website?】
【Heh heh, Bird Great One, may you flourish and prosper as you crash and burn all the way to the earth’s core ^_^】
To be honest, there were too many technical terms. Mo Xi still couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, but they certainly seemed furious.
Only the last comment sounded like praise. After all, it had begun with a polite, bell-like laugh and included a very friendly smiling face.
Seeing how dissatisfied everyone was with Gu Mang’s novel, Mo Xi couldn’t help recalling the plot summary the officers had prepared.
The story took place on an imaginary ancient continent. The people on that continent were naturally divided into three classes according to their bloodlines: nobles, commoners, and slaves.
Nobles were naturally more likely to form spiritual cores. Commoners could also manipulate spells through hard work, while slaves had not the slightest aptitude for cultivation.
The armies on this continent were composed entirely of cultivators, so their reasons for practicing magic were different from those in ordinary cultivation novels. Some did it to rise in rank and gain titles; others did it to protect their homeland.
Both Gu Mang and Mo Xi were generals of Chonghua. Later, Gu Mang defected and led the enemy nation’s army against Chonghua. But after one miscalculation, he was captured, leaving him hated and condemned by everyone.
The pretty young officer had summarized what happened next in roughly these words:
“Male Lead A was originally supposed to be executed, but then, for some reason, B took him back to his residence. At first, B hated A with all his heart. After the two went through some things together, B’s feelings gradually began to change. Even so, the ending still wasn’t satisfactory.”
Now Mo Xi knew that A was the male lead, Gu Mang, and B was himself, the male supporting character.
Gu Mang’s novels really did have a revolving door of female leads and an ironclad male supporting character.
If circumstances had permitted it, Mo Xi would have liked to drag Gu Mang off the operating table and ask him what personal grudge he held against him. Why had Gu Mang been writing about him since middle school, and why had he still not gotten tired of it?
Given the young officer’s extraordinary ability to summarize things—her explanation had been practically equivalent to saying nothing at all, though perhaps she simply hadn’t wanted Captain Mo to understand too much—Mo Xi knew only that the male lead’s fate was not good in the end.
He didn’t know exactly how bad it was, but he still found himself sympathizing with the people complaining in the comment section.
After all, Gu Mang’s novels had always been terrible. Just look at The Legend of the Immortal Sword: The Rich Overseas Returnee. It was a story about a female lead who recited ten pages of a death poem before spitting blood and dying.
Back then, Mo Xi had told Gu Mang that he had no talent for writing. Anyone with even the slightest talent would never come up with such a fucked-up plot.
But Gu Mang hadn’t listened. Instead, he’d accused Mo Xi of being a bad friend and crushing his enthusiasm.
And what happened in the end?
Look at him now. Back then, he had refused to accept his buddy’s criticism. Now he’d ended up being torn apart by online readers. Mo Xi wondered whether Gu Mang had ever gone back to read the comments on his own novel, and if so, how he’d felt about them.
Then Mo Xi remembered that Gu Mang was still lying in the operating room, with no guarantee that he would survive.
What was the point of talking about his feelings?
That thought left Mo Xi sitting in a daze for a while. He felt both vindicated and melancholy. He loosened the collar of his shirt, took a can of beer from the refrigerator, and stood on the fifteenth floor of his apartment building, gazing at the city’s lights blazing in the night below. He took a couple of sips.
Only after the restlessness in his heart had subsided somewhat did he return to his desk, pick up his phone, and continue reading.
This time, he found the table of contents, scrolled all the way to the bottom, and went straight to the chapter that had received the harshest criticism.
The chapter’s title was simple:
The Final Update.
He tapped on it. The content was even shorter than the prologue.
Ah, I’m so tired. I don’t want to write anymore. I still have to go do grunt work for the boss tomorrow.
So that I don’t leave this novel unfinished, I’ll just tell you the ending, okay? Basically, at the end, Mo Xi gets married and has eight children with Princess Mengze. He’s loved by the people of Chonghua and becomes a hero. He lives a peaceful, long, and glorious life.
Gu Mang is a despicable scumbag, just like all of you said. There’s no redemption for this guy, so he dies.
Mo Xi nearly choked on his beer.
“Pfft—cough, cough, cough!”
Who died?
That Gu Mang, who had always been so enthusiastic about portraying himself as a two-and-a-half-meter-tall, breathtakingly beautiful man whom every female lead desperately begged to marry, had actually written himself to death???
Mo Xi stared at the few lines on his phone. His feelings shifted from surprise to amusement, then from amusement to silence.
He fell quiet, staring at the screen for a long time. In the end, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Mo Xi—who usually couldn’t even be bothered to reply to WeChat messages—suddenly felt a strong urge to leave a comment beneath The Final Chapter.
He couldn’t explain the impulse.
Perhaps it was because he had, after all, been Gu Mang’s first reader.
Perhaps it was because he had been the male supporting character in Gu Mang’s novels for nearly twenty years.
Or perhaps it was because he knew that the username Draw…rd would probably fall silent forever. Gu Mang would most likely never log in again, let alone shamelessly show up online.
He pressed the cold beer can against his forehead, his long, slender, pale fingers rubbing it absently. He thought slowly, turning the matter over in his mind, and gradually began to feel that the whole thing was truly absurd and ridiculous.
The narcissistic little-schoolboy author Drawing My Sword, I Look Around in Bewilderment had spent twenty years growing older and still hadn’t given up writing. He had even registered an online pen name called Draw…rd, stubbornly continuing to poison the hearts of countless readers.
The narcissistic author Drawing My Sword, I Look Around in Bewilderment had actually written himself to death.
The narcissistic author Drawing My Sword, I Look Around in Bewilderment had actually given the male supporting character a much better ending than the male lead.
If someone had told him any of this back when they were in school, would he have believed it?
He would have thought that person was insane.
Mo Xi smiled faintly, his eyes still closed. The cold beer can rested against his forehead. The sensation reminded him of the day they had parted ways.
Then he thought again—
Gu Mang would never log in again.
Gu Mang had become a criminal.
Gu Mang was thirty this year. He might not even live to see thirty-one.
Mo Xi lowered the beer can, dropped his gaze, and slowly typed a line on his phone with his thumbs:
I told you long ago that you couldn’t write stories.
After watching the comment get posted, Mo Xi turned off his phone. He braced his fingers against his brow, and his fingertips unconsciously brushed across his slightly damp eyes.
He turned his face away. The faint nighttime glow of the city filtered through the study window, illuminating the sharply defined, cold profile of his face.
He closed his eyes.
There was no doubt about it. He was a cop, Gu Mang was a criminal. He hated Gu Mang to the core, and he knew that Gu Mang was guilty.
And yet, as his eyelashes trembled, he seemed to see the Gu Mang of their youth.
That boy had a clean, mischievous face, a smile that was neither wholly righteous nor wholly wicked, and a single canine tooth that showed whenever he grinned. His eyes shone brighter than any stars Mo Xi had ever seen. He would hunch over his desk, secretly writing The Legend of the Immortal Sword: The Rich Overseas Returnee, feeling immensely pleased with himself because every girl in his story was in love with him.
Back then, neither of them knew what kind of future awaited them.