Transmigrated as the Heroine’s Perfect Alpha - Chapter 1

“Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow!”

The gasps grew louder with each utterance. Xie Ling, nearly spiraling out of control, knelt on the extravagant, oversized bed, frantically tapping away on two of the latest smartphone models. One screen displayed a detailed monthly bill, while the other showed a calculator app filled with a long string of numbers.

“Units, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands.” Xie Ling let out a joyful cry. “I am rich! I am absolutely loaded!”

This was her tenth day of not being a writer. In fact, she could no longer be called Xie Qing; now, she was Xie Ling.

The ecstatic Xie Ling’s ears twitched. Upon confirming that the sudden click was the sound of a doorknob turning, she immediately shifted her expression. With a swift movement, she dashed from the bed to the computer desk opposite.

The bedroom door opened, and the original owner’s mother walked in, carrying a black bag.

As Xie Ling looked at the wealthy mother she had picked up for free just ten days ago, she was about to offer her highest respects when the woman waved her hand dismissively and turned to leave. “It is your grandmother’s New Year’s money for you. Do not take it for granted. Follow me back to pay your respects to the old lady tomorrow. If you dare not show up, I will break your legs!”

“Understood, Mother!” Xie Ling hugged the heavy bag, agreeing readily. Her mouth widened into such a broad grin that it looked like she could swallow someone whole.

Another click signaled the door closing. Xie Ling hurriedly sat back on the bed and opened the bag; inside lay ten thick stacks of pink cash.

If there were a mirror nearby, she would surely have seen her own eyes sparkling.

The heavens truly favored her. After letting her die from overwork, they had arranged this perfect new life for her. With this much money, never mind acting like a sycophantic puppy, she would do anything!

This New Year was simply incredible!

Before her raised lips could even drop, her phone rang. Three bold characters appeared on the screen: Old Hag.

Xie Ling hesitated. Based on her ten days of experience since being reborn, this very rude contact name definitely belonged to someone significant. She politely tapped Accept. “Hello?”

“Lingling, dear, it has been so long since Grandma has seen you. Come over with your mom tomorrow, and Grandma will make your favorite braised pork belly.” The voice on the other end was filled with warmth, though the obvious fragility suggested the speaker was at least seventy.

Xie Ling’s heart skipped a beat. She replied, “I will head over early tomorrow, Grandma. Let me show off my cooking skills. I can make braised pork belly, too, and I will cook it for you.”

“Good, good, good. Come over early, then,” the old lady said happily before hanging up.

Xie Ling leaned back against the headboard cushions, casually opened her call history, thought for a moment, and changed Old Hag to Grandma. Then, with practiced movements, she opened her payment app to check her balance.

After confirming the number again, her overwhelming joy prompted her to open a shopping app. Its icon was very familiar, though she had only recently grown accustomed to the interface. She added everything she had liked but could not afford in her past life to her cart and paid for everything in one go.

Ten days ago, that is, before her rebirth.

Xie Qing had been a bottom-tier web novelist. She spent her days grinding out chapters, typing away at her keyboard day and night. Yet, her monthly earnings were barely enough to cover the following month’s living expenses. She had not dared to rest for a single day, becoming increasingly diligent.

In her memory, that cramped one-bedroom apartment did not even have a proper desk. The mechanical keyboard on her old computer table had been with her since she started her writing career eight years ago. Most of the keycaps in the letter section were worn down to the point of holes, but Xie Qing had never been able to bring herself to replace it.

That was why, as she frantically tapped her screen, almost like a form of revenge spending, everything she bought now were keyboards from various brands in all sorts of colors.

Having restrained herself for so many days, the now-satisfied Xie Ling looked at the Pending Shipment list. An indescribable pleasure filled her heart. Her fingers scrolled up and down, and upon seeing related recommendations below, she clicked on them, choosing the most expensive and highest-spec options without a second thought.

Before the excitement of her impulse spending could cool, the housekeeper knocked on the door outside and said softly, “Miss, it is time for lunch.”

“Coming,” Xie Ling said. She climbed off the bed, slipped into those slippers that cost as much as her monthly royalties, and went out to eat.

The Xie family dining table was enormous; Xie Ling estimated it was at least four meters long. However, there were not many people sitting at it. At its fullest, during last night’s New Year’s Eve dinner, the count finally broke five, totaling six including the housekeeper.

But a small headcount did not affect the quality of the food. Having never eaten anything good before, Xie Ling could polish off two big bowls every meal. In these ten days, she had already gained five pounds on the original owner’s rail-thin frame, much to the pleasure of her parents.

Xie Hongfei looked at Xie Ling, who was eating with great gusto, and nodded with a smile. He said to his wife, He Rong, “Lingling’s appetite has been good these past few days. Why do you not give her a bit more allowance so she does not go hungry?”

He Rong uttered an Mm, put down her chopsticks, and pulled out her phone to transfer the funds on the spot.

Xie Ling hurriedly put down her chopsticks to rinse her mouth, piling on the sycophancy with a beaming face. “Thank you, Mom and Dad! You are so generous, so kind, so wonderful, and you love me so much! May the New Year bring you a constant stream of wealth and endless good luck!”

“Hm,” He Rong smiled as well, exited the password screen, re-entered the transfer amount, and then, with a different kind of warmth in her expression, picked up a piece of vegetable for Xie Hongfei, who sat at the head of the table.

“…” This was the mandatory dog food segment Xie Ling had to endure at every meal. She stretched her neck and forced down the plain water, thinking that it was okay because parents being in love is the most important thing for a family, and her eating some dog food is normal.

From the dining table, Xie Ling hid behind her bedroom door and checked her phone. Fifty thousand yuan had arrived. She took a sharp breath, nearly fainting from the joy.

She pinched the space between her nose and mouth with one hand, kicked off her cotton slippers, spun around on the plush wool rug, and collapsed straight onto the bed.

Life was just too wonderful now. Xie Ling lay on the quilt, giggling foolishly. This was the eleventh day she could not help but thank the heavens.

Just this one bedroom was larger than a normal family’s two-bedroom apartment. The opulent decor radiated the scent of money: the exaggerated, fairy-tale-style canopy bed, the luxurious crystal chandelier, the oversized floor-to-ceiling windows, and the entire wall of acrylic display cases filled with strange and rare collectible figures she had never seen before.

“It is so good to be rich,” Xie Ling said, palms pressed together as she stood before the cabinet. She turned around in a daze and walked into the walk-in closet behind the sliding door, her emotions stirred once again.

Chanel, LV, Hermès, Dior; she had it all. Although Xie Ling felt that not a single piece matched her style from her previous life, she was still overjoyed.

Emerging from the closet, Xie Ling washed her hands at the spacious vanity, feeling the warm water and the soft cotton towel. She chose what she assumed was the most expensive hand cream and applied it evenly to the back of her hands.

The afternoon sun was perfect. Having eaten and drunk her fill, a content Xie Ling lay back on the lounge chair by the floor-to-ceiling window.

She looked at her phone for a while, and when her eyes grew dry, she simply closed them to rest, her lips still curled in a smile.

Time passed. A faint fragrance drifted by, and a cartoon patch fell from her neck. Half-asleep and half-awake, Xie Ling wrinkled her nose and snapped her eyes open.

The scent of coffee-flavored pheromones suddenly became clear. Xie Ling hurriedly got up to find a new suppressant patch.

After these days of adaptation, she had figured out the persona of the original owner. For the past two days, she had not seen any strange expressions on the faces of Xie Hongfei or He Rong. It could be said that she had perfectly mastered all the traits of the Xie Ling character.

The only thing was this invigorating pheromone scent, which she really had no words for.

Sitting before the mirror, Xie Ling frowned at the cartoon patch in her hand. After a moment of hesitation, she tore off another one and stuck it to her neck.

As the scent of coffee slowly faded, she got up to open the window for ventilation. However, the moment the cold wind rushed in, Xie Ling shuddered uncontrollably and froze.

“Coffee-flavored pheromones?”

Coffee-flavored pheromones. That is not right.

Did she not write a setting like this when she was typing away in her previous life?

Canopy bed, wool rug, oversized floor-to-ceiling window, a wall full of display cases, a luxurious walk-in closet, coffee-flavored pheromones.

A coincidence? Xie Ling frowned and looked behind her, then squinted at the river view outside the window. Suddenly recalling something, she turned her head toward the old desk lamp on the bedside table, her expression stalling.

“Xie Ling, Xie Ling, Xie Ling. Xie Hongfei. He Rong.” Xie Ling muttered to herself, brows furrowed.

Outside the window, a crisp bird call echoed. Her legs went weak, and she collapsed onto the lounge chair she had just been sitting on.

This was the setting from I Want to Love Like This!

Her debut work. The first novel she wrote at fifteen.

Xie Ling, Xie Ling. So, she was this Xie Ling.

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Xie Ling stood up abruptly and scrambled toward the vanity in the walk-in closet. The smart vanity mirror sensed the person sitting down and automatically lit up with a white glow.

The bright mirror reflected a delicate little face. With no cosmetics, the skin was white and tender, without a single blemish or acne mark that should have been there at her age.

Xie Ling reached out to touch her face. This face was very similar to her original appearance, only with better skin quality. There was no major difference in her features or face shape. If she had to find a difference…

There was a tiny black dot in the middle of her lower left eyelashes. Because of the lashes, it was hard to notice without looking closely.

Xie Qing took a deep breath. Memories faded by time gathered like stars in the galaxy, shimmering with a faint light, slowly converging and surfacing in her mind as larger fragments.

She was right. She was the first super villain in her own novel, Xie Ling.

She had thought it was the most common case of soul transmigration in the rebirth genre, but she never expected it to be transmigration into a book.

“!!!”

Transmigrating into a book was one thing, but what was maddening was that she had transmigrated into a nonsensical, cliché-filled ABO novel she had written herself, and she was a rich, idle, and somewhat twisted Scum Alpha.

Well, being a Scum Alpha was not so bad; having been single since birth, she had once longed for the free-spirited life of a Scum Alpha. But what terrified her was how incredibly dramatic the plot was!

The character setting of the original Xie Ling, which the original author could not even bear to look at after becoming an adult, had even won the glorious title of Total Trash in the reader comments section back then.

Recalling those criticisms and insults, as well as how she had handled the villain, Xie Qing collapsed onto the vanity, shedding two lines of hot, bitter tears.

I Want to Love Like This was a black history that made Xie Qing want to die.

Back then, when car accidents, cancer, and domineering CEOs were everywhere, the rebellious fifteen-year-old Xie Qing had put her heart and soul into it to stand out among thousands of melodramatic novels. She stayed up dozens of nights, finally churning out her debut work that combined every single cliché into one book.

For Xie Qing, the revenue from this debut was the highest of her eight-year writing career. Readers did not stop subscribing even after the book was finished. Even until the day Xie Qing died from overwork and was reborn, its daily income had reached two hundred yuan, continuing for over half a month. But that did not stop her from despising it as an adult.

Money, it seemed, could not change everything.

Black history is black history; it does not matter how many people read it.

After so much time, Xie Qing had nearly forgotten about that amateur work. Now, although she remembered the names of some characters, she could not recall much else.

Even though she racked her brains, she could only vaguely remember that the novel started with a birthday banquet. It was at this banquet that the female lead, Ji Xue, caught the attention of the supporting character Xie Ling and the official male lead, the CEO.

From there, the supporting character Xie Ling began her journey of self-destruction.

Xie Qing straightened up and wiped her tears with the back of her hand. Only after wiping did she see the tissues beside her. With a dismal face, she pulled one out to wipe the tears from the table and then wiped her hands.

This feeling of realizing she had transmigrated into a book after being reborn was truly terrible. Even if nothing had happened yet, she, who knew her own common tropes best, felt as if she could already foresee the tragic ending.

“Villains never have a good ending.”

This was a sentence she had personally typed in her writing column, and the only one at that.

Those seven short characters had run through her eight-year writing career. In eight years, not a single villain she wrote had survived until the finale. Not only were they destined to die, but they had to die miserably.

“…”

Was it too late to regret it now? Xie Qing thought, shedding more hot tears.