风流书呆

快穿之打臉狂魔 Quickly Wear the Face of the Devil

★★★★☆ [4/5 stars]

First, this novel is not for everyone. If you're planning to read this, you've got to know that this novel has A LOT of trigger warnings from beginning to end, and most of them would be really disturbing and morbid and really not for everyone. I can perfectly understand those people who don't like this novel because of those unpleasant aspects. But since I'm the kind of reader who wouldn't shy away from the ugliness of the humanity, there were times that it bothered me but it wasn't enough reason to drop this. Because I can honestly say that I was thoroughly invested in reading this book. It really hooked me!

Second, both the MC and the ML are not particularly good people. I repeat, they are not conventionally good people. You might not like them because they're not naïve, kind and merciful and they wouldn't think twice to use people to their own advantage. They don't have the hero mentality who's crazy on helping everyone. They are even willing to sacrifice someone for their own goal. But they have set their own bottom lines. They would not indiscriminately harm innocent people, but they are especially ruthless and cold-blooded when it comes to dealing with people who provoked and harmed them. Expect to see them make their enemies pay them back a hundredfold.

Every arc happened in different worlds and all of them have revenge plot on them. This novel is about the MC who was once chained by the system in a virtual world consisting of different 'small' worlds. He was forced to be the villain in every world he came in without having a freedom to act on his own, then by the end, was always miserably killed by the supposed 'protagonists' of that world without a fight. He experienced hundreds, if not thousands, of those worlds before he was able to break away from the system's control. After gaining his freedom, he can act whatever he wanted in those worlds. He still woke up in a body of a 'villain' every time but he already gained the chance to retaliate against the 'protagonists'. From there, the MC started his own revenge. And his cruel revenge would always leave his enemies neither wanting to live nor die. He has this revenge motto, "The greatest joy from revenge would be to lift them up to the heaven, as high as possible, then let them fall to the ground, dying little by little from bone-crushing despair". He didn't strike them as soon as possible. He would raise his enemies hope and self-esteem then viciously crushed it. That's how ruthless he is.

On the other hand, the ML has this mysterious vibe in him. He seems to be following the MC in every world but he actually has no memory of him. The ML has this instinct of falling in love with the MC in every world. In the first three worlds, the MC was not yet sure but he has this hunch that his lover from the first world was the same person as the guys he was inevitably attracted with in the next worlds. When he confirmed that in every world his lover was there, he had set this mission of looking for him. Kissing would be the only way to identify his lover (imagine how hard it was for the MC to look for the ML) but his lover can always picked the MC out of the crowd regardless of his 'memory loss'. The ML always, I mean always, fell in love with the MC in the most passionate way, no matter what world they are in. I was actually quite frustrated because the moment he confirmed that his lover was 'following' him in every world, the more he looked for him, the more he missed who the real ML is. He had this situation where he kissed the wrong guy but the right guy was just literally by his side the whole time. I always felt cheated whenever that happened. That actually stressed me out. But around arc 13, something happened that made the MC easily detect his lover and he now found his chance to be the one chasing the ML. It was quite cute. The arcs where the MC was not confused about the identity of his lover, those arcs are my personal favorite. Their relationship was not particularly healthy but their burning, unconditional love is what I always wanted to see. Their love transcends everything, even world and time.

Honestly, this novel is quite flawed. It has a lot of unpleasant things and might not really for everyone, but I personally loved this novel. I would be rational and not rate this novel as perfect, but this is definitely my guilty pleasure. If you're planning to read this, please beware of the trigger warnings such as death, suicide, rape, incest, huge age gap relationship (sometimes the other person was minor), murder, bestiality, cheating, prostitution, drugs, bullying and many more. You see, this really has a lot of distressing things but if you can bear it, you really need to read this.

快穿之打臉狂魔 Quickly Wear the Face of the Devil

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