The Archduke's Songbird - Chapter 5: Nightmares

It has been six years since the country stopped admitting college students, and no one knows when the college entrance examination will resume. Su Xiaoxiao, who was an outstanding student, was now humiliated after not being able to attend university.

She was too high for the people in the village and too poor for the people in the city. Due to this, she became a “leftover girl.”

An educated youth said he was willing to try. When Father Su then asked the educated youth when he planned to marry his daughter, the educated youth said it was Su Xiaoxiao who took the initiative to pester him before agreeing to give it a try, and he wanted to go back to the city in the future and did not plan to marry a country girl.

Su Xiaoxiao couldn’t take this humiliation anymore and decided to jump into the river to commit suicide. This made her reputation become even worse. The matchmakers had to go around when they passed by the Su family’s house. Mother Su and Father Su were so angry that they almost rode a crane to death. They decided to marry their daughter in the city regardless of the dowry.

Han Cheng, who had lost his wife for a year, went back to the city to visit his sons on his vacation. His two sons, who were once white and chubby cubs, became skinny and gloomy after living with his teacher’s wife. He was so angry and immediately asked the matchmaker to go to the countryside and find him a match. The only requirement he asked for was, that she must be literate.

The matchmaker went to the Su family’s house, and there, Su Xiaoxiao, who came from the 21st century, didn’t raise any objections and accepted it.

However, the unreliable matchmaker actually invited another girl besides Su Xiaoxiao and arranged their dates at the same time.

Han Cheng asked Su Xiaoxiao, who looked like a good match for him: “Are you literate? Do you mind taking care of my two sons?”

- Description from Novelupdates

They call him Ghost.A name whispered in fear across warzones, black markets, and underworld circles.To the world, he's a phantom—a faceless mercenary who leaves no trace but bodies in his wake.To his enemies, he’s a death sentence.To his brothers-in-arms in Graveyard, he’s family.But to himself... he's a haunted man searching for a past stolen in gunfire and smoke.After a flawless mission deep in the Eastern Province, Ghost returns to the hidden forest base he's called home for sixteen years. Yet the victory is short-lived. His foster father, the commander delivers an unexpected order:“That was your last mission.”Now, Ghost—real name Miles Sterling—must step out of the shadows of war and into a world he’s never known. Guided only by a scarred letter, a fading memory, and the voice of a woman he hasn’t seen since the day everything was taken from him.But war forged more than his body and name.Behind the mask, behind the scars, Miles has another secret.One he’s kept hidden even from his brothers in arms.He’s not just a weapon.He’s a ghost with a fortune—a hidden empire he built in silence, across borders and black markets, forged in strategy and blood.A man of many names, and many shadows.Beneath the bullets, tattoos, and silence lies a truth buried in ashes.And Ghost is about to dig it up—one letter, one enemy, one memory at a time.

They had been married for less than a week when Lin Banxia discovered that without his embrace, she couldn’t sleep; without his love, she felt anxious; without his companionship, her emotions spiraled out of control.But then one day, she had stomach troubles!The hospital handed over a test result: Congratulations, Mrs. Huo, you’re pregnant.He said, “Give birth to my child, and we won’t just have three years together—we’ll have a lifetime!”She squinted her eyes and replied, “Mr. Huo, you’ve miscalculated. Clearly, after giving birth, you’re letting me go in three years.”“The child can’t go without a mother, and I can’t go without you. Understand?” That was Young Master Huo’s confession.

There’s a trend infecting stories lately—all because of boys reading these stories rather than men.Villains who think being “dark” means having dead eyes, a tragic past, and a dick that solves all problems.They get betrayed once, and suddenly it's their life's mission to destroy the world—or worse, emotionally blackmail heroines in the name of “revenge.”Slap on a black coat, stare at walls, say something like “love is weakness”—and boom, readers start calling them “deep.”But let’s be honest:> They’re not villains. They’re just edgy losers with a god complex and a hard-on trying to satisfy the inferiority of their readers.Some of them turn so cold, they forget why they started. Others get so lust-drunk, they think sleeping with a heroine is “domination.”That making her cry is “control.” They think power is measured by how many women they can ruin. But really?> They’re just boys trying to look like men.Just like their followers who are the boys who hide their masculinity inside a woman's virginity.They go around in the review section asking if the women of the main character would be stolen and all... giving it fantasy names like NTR and all nonsense.As if they want to scream their fear out.“Please don't, I hate it... because I am a gay who doesn't even have the confidence that my woman will remember me once she gets someone better....” one of the loser’s internal thoughts.They don't want their puny hearts to be crushed.Their masculinity is so weak that it crumbles the moment they think about some other man having the women they love and her forgetting those boys for the men.And they just project that weakness of themselves in their main characters, thinking that just like them, their main characters should be weak, should be a fantasy monger who hoards women like trying to hide the incapabilities of those followers who never in their life would have held a hand of a woman.Harem has now become a way to satisfy weak audiences who feel more women mean more security for their hearts.Forgetting that Harem in truth means the masculinity is so HUGE that it needs an ocean of FEMININE to hold.Tch, not like the boys with breakups and fear of being cucked will ever realize.They treat fantasy as escape and character as their way to feel that they are men.So, naturally, to have such a huge amount of followers, authors are forced to pour the density of such books holding such weak characters in the form of the cold MC who collects harem, manipulates one or two, fucks around, and finally satisfies readers until they feel bored and drop the book....Because to those followers, they themselves realize in the long run that the story isn't satisfying even if the villain is the same cruel man.So why?Simply because they were until now reading kind boys wearing the mask of a man, and acting as a villain.Their MC, just like them, doesn't even know themselves, their needs, and what their inner soul wants... not understanding that...Fucking a woman doesn't make you her god. Breaking her spirit doesn't make you a king. And calling yourself a villain just because you were too weak to heal?That’s not power—that’s coping.And for followers—that's doping.Real villains? They don’t whine. They don’t treat women like checkboxes or trophies. They don’t mistake lust for legacy.> They don’t need to act cruel. They are cruel. Calm. Focused. Dangerous in silence. They don’t need to chase power—they embody it.This story isn’t about a guy who gets played and suddenly thinks he’s entitled to vengeance sex.This is about a villain who doesn’t....Ah, screw this shit. Just read the story already![ No Dumb Heroines ] [ No Cliche Plot ] [ Original Content ] [ Fan Services here and there ] [ R-18 might not come soon enough ] [ Yandere ] [ Tsundere ] [ MILF ] [ Dragon ] [ Elves ]