The Cannon Fodder Supporting Female Character Just Wants to Live Like a Salted Fish and Pet Cats – Chapter 1

Whatever You Do, Don’t Let Me Off!

Through her eyelids, a blade of silver light abruptly split the darkness and stabbed into Qu Qi’s eyes.

Fighting the sting, she forced them open.

            

One look, and the cold sweat came pouring.

Before her hung an antique silver sword, its bronze hilt inlaid with dense, intricate patterns and locked in the grip of a broad, powerful hand. But the truly terrifying detail of the tableau was this — the frost-gleaming point hovered directly over the tip of her nose, a bare few centimeters away.

Gulp…

            

Qu Qi swallowed hard, eyes glued to the blade a hair’s breadth from her face, and somewhere along the way she’d gone cross-eyed staring at it.

Her first instinct was to scramble backward — but though nothing at all stood behind her, some invisible force clamped her limbs in place, and she couldn’t move an inch.

What the hell kind of nightmare was this?!

            

Way too realistic a dream, too. She could literally feel the cold and the killing intent gathered on that sword point.

A roar thick with banked fury crashed into her ears. “Qu Qi! Deliberately framing a fellow disciple is already a grave offense! Yet you show no remorse — and now you scheme to squirm out of the blame!”

Qu Qi’s brain flatlined. Harm a fellow disciple? Meaning what?

            

Unless she’d accidentally worked a coworker to death with yesterday’s overtime?!

She combed carefully back through the previous day. Didn’t add up. With her signature efficiency — pooping on company time, stretching every task to the horizon — even an eighty-year-old grandpa would shake his head watching her work. And even if the boss had finally caught her slacking, that was hardly grounds for a sword through the chest, was it? Evil capitalists, the lot of them!

She looked around properly: a crowd of people in period costume had her surrounded at the center, every unfamiliar face scrawled with righteous fury.

            

Qu Qi had never faced down a reception like this. The last time this many people had turned on her, she’d pulled three golds in a single ten-pull — and a whole mob of luckless players had prayed she’d burn through her allotted lifespan by morning.

Did nightmares these days really skip the “previously on” and charge straight into the main plot?

Her daze lasted only a moment before that ghastly, cold sword crept closer.

            

The man holding it glared wide-eyed and fierce. “Let’s hear what you have to say for yourself now!”

Qu Qi looked at that razor point. Her brain blue-screened.

Holy crap. My guy, you’re serious?

            

In a matter of seconds, every mistake of her life to date replayed through her skull like a dazzling revolving lantern — the front tooth knocked out in a fall at three, the public social death in front of the boss at twenty-five — each and every episode too hideous to watch, too painful to relive—

Damn it! Why was she running a whole life review?! She didn’t even know these people!

She hadn’t wronged a single one of them!

            

Finally, Qu Qi glared back at the ferocious face above her, then lowered her head with the stern, unshakable resolve of a paragon of justice. “Mercy, great hero! There’s clearly been some kind of misunderstanding…”

One sentence, and the entire crowd ignited.

“Don’t listen to her! This isn’t the first time she’s bullied a fellow disciple — this time, we absolutely cannot let her off!”

            

“Qu Qi lies like she breathes! That’s exactly how she conned my pill away last time!”

Amid the chaos, a timid voice of protest rose somewhere nearby. “Senior Brother Gao, I believe Senior Sister Qu isn’t truly so vicious a person. Perhaps there’s more to it than we know!”

To think someone would speak up for her. Qu Qi swung her head over, deeply moved. A fine-featured young man had stepped out from the crowd, fists clenched and shoulders trembling, timid yet unshakable.

            

Their eyes met. Qu Qi immediately nodded at him — over and over, nodding with all the gratitude in her heart.

The young man froze, staring back at her with a very strange expression.

The tall man they’d addressed as Senior Brother Gao was the very one pointing the sword at her. He said coldly, “Ji Ling. You two are of one heart and one lineage — of course you’d cover for each other. Our little junior sister fell from a cliff under circumstances no one can explain, Qu Qi alone was present, and she cannot be cleared of it. I will pursue this matter to the very end!”

            

Ji Ling was transparently an honest sort with no gift for argument; his fair face flushed crimson as he forced out, “But…”

“Oh, Junior Brother Ji, save your breath. You defend her, and she won’t even thank you for it.”

“Exactly! Careful she doesn’t turn around and bite you — call you the culprit instead. Besides, who on Wangxu Peak doesn’t know Qu Qi has envied the little junior sister forever? Three whole years of cultivation, and she still loses to a girl who joined a few months ago. That girl is one foot through the gates of Foundation Establishment, and Qu Qi is still parked at the third level of Qi Refining.”

            

“Junior Sister Qu has always thrown her weight around, so high on herself — naturally she’d never spare a glance for ordinary people like us…”

Voices layered on voices, thick with malice, broke over Qu Qi in waves — as if the crowd meant to itemize her entire “rap sheet” on the spot.

Her scalp prickled. The killing intent pressing down from Senior Brother Gao overhead sharpened noticeably, the sort that wanted her carved into eight pieces where she stood.

            

But somewhere in the crossfire, she was beginning to piece the situation together.

While nobody was watching, Qu Qi stealthily worked a finger free and pinched her own thigh, hard.

The pain arrived crisp and undeniable. Wincing, teeth bared, she sucked in a breath through them — and had no choice but to accept reality. Holy crap. She had actually, genuinely transmigrated into a book.

            

Transmigrated — into a beloved-by-all Mary Sue novel, no less, as… the villainess. The most cannon-fodder of cannon fodder there was.

As a humble nine-to-six corporate drone, Qu Qi liked to kill time with novels, especially the sweet, fluffy, low-stakes kind — zero nutrition, but sugary, painless, and brain-off.

Last night, home from work, she’d opened the Green Literature City¹ as usual and found a coddled-by-the-entire-cast Mary Sue riding the rankings: the plot a hackneyed old formula, sweet and naive as syrup.

            

The heroine was, naturally, the sect’s wildly adored little junior sister — Su Fuwan.

This Mary Sue of a lead had friends everywhere, looks to spare, and freakish luck. An Extreme Yang Constitution made cultivation as easy as drinking water; every cliff she fell off had rare treasures waiting at the bottom. Winning at work — and winning even harder in love.

Beautiful men and women by the dozen fought to spoil her; her golden-finger cheats were so plentiful they could be sold by the ton. In everyone’s eyes, she was the white moonlight².

            

Immortal lords, dragon maidens, the demon race’s young lord, ethereal daughters of every lofty lineage — all of them went mad for her, itching to take turns pinning their heroine against the wall, eyes burning red, hands cinched at her waist: “Kiss me once, and my life is yours!”

And the cannon-fodder supporting character who shared Qu Qi’s name existed as the junior sister’s control group: spoiled, willful, dim of talent, trailed by rotten luck — three years in the sect without a single breakthrough, forever picking fights with the heroine far above her weight.

This time, too — the heroine Su Fuwan falling off the cliff — was a gift from that vicious supporting character.

            

In the original Qu Qi’s eyes, she herself had been the youngest junior sister of the inner sect. Then Su Fuwan arrived and stole the affection of every senior brother and sister — and turned out to be a cultivation genius on top of it, thrashing her across the board.

Unable to stomach the fall, the jealous original had nursed her grudge until, out on a joint expedition, she dismissed the others, waited for her moment, and pushed a defenseless Su Fuwan off the mountainside.

When the original returned to the sect, she claimed Su Fuwan had been ambushed by the demon race and had slipped off the cliff and vanished.

            

Naively, she’d assumed that once Su Fuwan died, no one would ever learn whose hand it was.

But since when did a heroine die of a little cliff? The very next day, Su Fuwan appeared at Wangxu Peak’s mountain gate, drenched in blood and only half conscious.

The moment the heroine resurfaced, every lie Qu Qi had told collapsed on the spot, and a hall-full of righteous, furious disciples marched her up to the Discussion Hall.

            

What was unfolding now matched last night’s reading, scene for scene!

An aged voice rolled down from the high dais, cutting off her thoughts: “Enough. Quiet, all of you.”

The last syllables unfurled on a deep current of internal energy. The crowd hushed at once and turned toward the old man on the high seat.

            

Qu Qi looked over with them. On the dais stood a mirror of snow-bright silver, reflecting every figure below with perfect clarity.

Above the mirror hung a plaque — black field, golden characters: the four words Upright and Bright³ in bold, vigorous strokes, gleaming.

Beneath the plaque sat a white-bearded old man in blue robes, a horsetail whisk resting in his hand — he carried, in all, a decent approximation of immortal Daoist gravitas.

            

He narrowed his long, narrow eyes. His gaze skimmed across Qu Qi’s face, and he drawled, “Qu Qi. Regarding this matter — is there anything you wish to say in your defense?”

Qu Qi knew him: Elder Jingshu, the presiding elder of the Discussion Hall in the book.

Whenever a dispute between disciples festered past solving, it came here, to the Discussion Hall, to beg an elder for fairness.

            

In the original novel, the Sect Master and every elder doted on Su Fuwan — Jingshu no exception. Asking after Qu Qi’s opinion was pure ceremony; the verdict had already hardened inside him. Su Fuwan had surely been framed; Qu Qi surely bore the blame.

Senior Brother Gao swept his sword away, each word ringing like a struck bell: “This is a matter that touches the sect’s honor. We cannot take Qu Qi’s one-sided word for it. I beg the Elder to deliver justice for our little junior sister.”

With that, he turned toward one side of the dais — and his gaze turned abruptly tender.

            

His name was Gao Wuheng, one of this novel’s male leads — tall and handsome, exactly as advertised. Head of the Sect Master’s direct disciples, and Su Fuwan’s eldest senior brother.

This Eldest Senior Brother loved the little junior sister to the marrow; he’d have plucked down the stars and reeled in the moon if she asked. Among the book’s fandom, his popularity ran high.

A shame, then, that the beloved-by-all heroine played her romances like a legendary angler with a whole ocean on her line — any character beautiful enough, male or female, inevitably became another fish in her pond.

            

Gao Wuheng held real standing among the inner disciples. The moment he finished, the crowd took it as gospel and roared back in unison: “We beg the Elder — justice for our little junior sister!”

“Justice for our little junior sister!”

“Justice for our little junior sister!”

            

The sound rolled through the hall again and again like surf, deafening — and terrifyingly uniform.

“E-everyone, please, calm down… there must be some mistake…” Ji Ling’s thread of protest tangled in the tidal chanting and drowned within moments.

Qu Qi had never in her life seen a production of this scale. She was genuinely shaken. Even her primary-school Young Pioneers⁴ oath ceremony hadn’t been this synchronized.

            

In the middle of the chaos, a clear female voice cleaved the clamoring air, soft as warmed silk: “Thank you, senior brothers and sisters, for speaking for me.”

The hall went still.

After a beat, someone asked, gingerly, as if afraid of startling the voice’s owner: “Junior Sister, your injuries — are you still suffering?”

            

The woman cradled at the crowd’s center shook her head. Her lovely face was pale with wounds not yet healed, which only lent her a fragile, heartbreaking air. Her gaze drifted, bright as stirred water, and came to rest on Qu Qi; her fine willow-leaf brows drew faintly together.

Tsk, thought Qu Qi. Leave it to heroine Su Fuwan — even injured, she glowed like a drifting immortal.

Look at that treatment: pearwood chair, velvet cushion, held in everyone’s palms as if one drop would shatter her. Now look at Qu Qi: trussed up in coarse hemp rope where she stood, the spitting image of a boiled char siu waiting for the knife.

            

Su Fuwan turned aside to cough a few times, handkerchief pressed to her red lips, and said softly, “I receive your goodwill with thanks — but I would still like to hear Senior Sister Qu’s account first. Perhaps she truly has some hardship she cannot voice.”

The senior brothers and sisters sighed at that. “Junior Sister, everything about you is good — except that your heart is far too kind. Toward a vicious creature like that, you mustn’t leave her a single opening for excuse.”

“The Junior Sister is loyal and true, and she has a point. Fine — let’s hear the woman out. Let’s see what excuse she manages to scrape up.”

            

Chatter crisscrossed as every eye converged on Qu Qi — ten thousand invisible blades working to punch her into a bloody sieve.

Qu Qi shivered, needles crawling down her spine. Help — was that something a person was allowed to say?

She didn’t dare say much. One wrong sentence, and her little life croaked right here.

            

Qu Qi remembered this part. In the original, the host refused to confess at this exact spot — and from then on lived like a rat run off the street: sneers, bullying, mockery everywhere she went. Demoted from inner disciple to outer; with cultivation too feeble to defend herself with, she became the disciples’ communal punching bag.

For cannon fodder — a stepping stone — offending the heroine had exactly one ending: the dead-end kind. The original host never got beaten to death by the heroine’s own hand, true. But some people are alive, and it makes no difference at all.

In the end, alone and crushed beneath everyone’s neglect, the original host resolved to flee the sect for the demonic path — and walked straight into the villainous Demon Lord as he stormed Wangxu Peak.

            

The Demon Lord, with nothing better to do, plucked Qu Qi up by the scruff and swallowed her in one bite.

Yes — swallowed. Raw. Whole. No ceremony. A death of spectacularly careless workmanship, perfectly befitting a supporting actress billed somewhere in the eighteenth tier.

Her death didn’t raise so much as a ripple; one chapter later she was stricken from the record entirely — worth far less than one finger the heroine accidentally scraped in that immortal-demon war.

            

Qu Qi shuddered, and the way she looked at the heroine curdled steadily into terror — she had absolutely no plans to become the villain’s between-meals snack.

A salted fish from birth to now, ambition-free, she wanted one thing only: to lie low and survive the chaos, living a plain, quiet, gloriously stagnant life.

And surviving meant, step one, getting far away from anyone who manufactured trouble.

            

In the next instant, Qu Qi’s gaze went razor-sharp.

Up went her chin; her back went ramrod straight; her expression settled into gravity and depth, as though she were about to pronounce something that would shake heaven and earth.

Everyone watching that face couldn’t help but falter, just a little.

            

Among the inner disciples, Qu Qi was a byword for being an “embroidered pillow” — top-to-bottom terrible at everything, with exactly one redeeming feature: a face of true, devastating beauty.

It was a face of lush, saturated richness — vermilion lips, snow-white skin, brows fine as willow leaves, and a pair of fox eyes steeped in easy allure. She might have stepped straight out of a folk storybook: one of the painted-skin temptresses⁵ who lure men to their doom, or some honey-sweet, scorpion-hearted belle. One look at her, and people couldn’t help sighing: a fatal beauty⁶!

And precisely because the packaging was so exquisite, disciples had been fooled by it again and again — and, just as reliably, forgiven it.

            

Qu Qi straightened her back. The ropes had bitten red weals into her slender white wrists; ink-black hair lay flat against her cheek, and her long lashes trembled — she looked, if one were honest, rather pitiable.

Against their will, the crowd felt a twinge of pity. As one, they held their breaths to hear what she would say.

The next second, Qu Qi drew a deep breath and dropped to her knees. Thump.

            

“It was all my fault! I burned with jealousy over Junior Sister Su, and I pushed her off the cliff!”

Her voice rang out like struck iron, her face blazing with righteous fury — as though the crime had been somebody else’s entirely. “Quick, everyone, lock me up! Don’t let scum like me roam free to poison the world!”

The hall went dead silent.

            

She— she’d just confessed?! Just like that? Not even a token defense?

Even Gao Wuheng was struck wordless. A long moment passed before he managed: “You… what are you scheming this time?”

Qu Qi split into a grin of enormous white teeth. “Senior Brother Gao, you’ve got it exactly right. It was me — I did this to her. So whatever you do, don’t let me off!”

            

Gao Wuheng stared into her sparkling eyes, thoroughly shaken.

How could anyone be this excited to be punished? Was this woman’s brain broken?

Ji Ling’s eyes rolled toward the heavens, the very picture of a man about to faint: some teammate she turned out to be!

            

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