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Xiao Yu’an began plotting. He! Was once a CEO who everyone had high hopes for! Although his path had increasingly diverged from that of a domineering CEO’s! But!

At the very least, he had once gone through that journey!

As a domineering CEO, he had to get things done, be filled with drive, and be wickedly charming and radical, while prudent in execution.

Consequently, Xiao Yu’an decided to kidnap Yan Heqing and directly throw him into Jingyang Palace.

When Xiao Yu’an was diagnosed with a terminal illness, his escape became webnovels. The final one he reads before his death is The History of the Four Empires, and he finds that after his death… he wakes up as the antagonist — the Emperor of the Northern Empire. In the face of the threat of the Emperor’s horrible death, Xiao Yu’an can only do the right thing: treat Yan Heqing well and matchmake him with the emperor’s sister, Princess Yongning.

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I absolutely need to put a content warning here. This novel is not a novel for everyone. The comedy can be dark and it contains violence, death and suicide from very early on. If you want something actually light-hearted, turn the other way. This ain’t it.

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THOUGHTS

I just want to preface that I have tried to read this novel before. I did not finish it at the time. I have also ready the manhua, which I’ve reviewed twice (impressions and final). As I believe we can grow into and out of different types of genres and media, I wanted to give the official translation a very fair try. All right. Time to review.

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This novel… I don’t quite know how to express my opinion about it. I think it would be great to make a character analysis of Xiao Yu’an and his coping mechanisms, but a review is just… hard.

Nonetheless, I can say that it’s a rollercoaster. There are shocking violent images, there are dark quips, and jokes sandwiched between horrible events.

It starts really light. It’s deceptively light in tone even. Then the tone is flipped and that’s when the comedy turns dark. Sometimes I would say it even goes black.

Xiao Yu’an is the deliverer of said jokes. He is detached with the reality he lives in and sees the people as characters as not real, which means he also doesn’t take them seriousy. This shows in his thoughts and behaviours and the comedy for a long time. I know, as someone who’s read more than I could manage this attempt, that it will change. As a character he is well-written and has a lot of depth. And he comes to this world with horrible bagage.

While the premise has many similarities to Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, there are many fundamental differences. Both read as satire, both have a similar setup for the end of the “villain”, both have a stallion novel premise for the novel, both have the main character in a position of power over the protagonist at the start, both start with a negative event having happened, and naturally both are comedy. These are the main similarities.

The differences exist in how the world functions and the fact that that Xiao Yu’an has no system whatsoever. Xiao Yu’an has no secondary goal, while Shen Yuan also needs to “fix” the novel itself while staying alive. Instead, events that happened in the novel will likely happen. Sometimes they’re changed or delayed because of Xiao Yu’an’s meddling, but they still happen. The world itself is working against Xiao Yu’an. It doesn’t want him to derail the plot.

And the brand of humour is very different. While Shen Yuan might have references to the world he previously lived in, these are brief and in general related to the novel. The comedy doesn’t generally go dark. Though it can maybe be said to balance on the line at times, but in my warped opinion, it’s not even close, usually. Xiao Yu’an makes direct references to popular culture or to literature. The humour goes gallous,often with Xiao Yu’an as the comic relief, both with words and by action. He is a one-man comedy skit operating among other people who don’t know they’ve been dragged into it.

I have things I genuinely love with this, I think Xiao Yu’an can be really funny, but also deeply relatable between the comedy shows he creates unknowingly. I think the translator did an excellent job translating this novel. He gives off such millennial vibes it’s wild. There are side pairings I genuinely root for and want to see together. I know that it will take itself seriously at times, and not at all during others.

But that isn’t enough for me to read it. It doesn’t pull me in, I find Xiao Yu’an horribly obstinate with some of his most ridiculous self-imposed goals that are bound to fail. I will laugh at something horrible, while thinking that I want to put the book down. And I eventually really lost any motivation to keep reading. It just sat next to my bed, waiting for its turn. And I can’t. I just can’t.

Who is this for? Who do I recommend it for? Well, if you like humour that can go dark places, if you want a system-free isekai novel, if you love oblivious characters… Maybe this book is for you? I’ve tried to read this a second time, and I just couldn’t. I’m done with this now, unless I have absolute notthing else in the reading pile.