After My Vicious Mother-in-Law and I Transmigrated into a Novel

Tang Li, a woman who endured a lifetime of bullying, familial neglect, and eventual murder in her previous existence, transmigrates into the world of a romance novel. She initially believes she has become the favored heroine, only to discover she is merely a cannon fodder NPC destined to die within two hours. Her situation worsens when she learns her abusive mother-in-law from her past life, Wang Cuihua, has also transmigrated into the same world as Tang Li’s disgraced father’s concubine. Stranded in a dilapidated hut during a snowstorm with no resources, Tang Li faces imminent death until a mechanical system intervenes. The system rewards her for achieving a "Loving Family" milestone with Wang Cuihua, granting them survival time and basic supplies in exchange for maintaining domestic harmony.

To survive, Tang Li attempts to generate income by creating a modern-style dessert called Xuan Paper Cake, hoping to sell it to He Sheng, a poor but diligent scholar in the village. He Sheng rejects the cake, finding it impractical, and refuses further interaction after his grandmother destroys a gift Tang Li made for her. Desperate and facing a mounting debt to the system, Tang Li falls asleep and is abruptly pulled into a nightmare scenario. She finds herself bound in a red wedding dress inside a sedan chair, surrounded by paper figures in a grotesque ritual. The system announces a hidden storyline, the "Bridegroom of Paper Nightmare," giving her twenty-four hours to survive.

Simultaneously, Wen Shuyu, a powerful minister and the original novel’s villain who possesses his own system, learns that Tang Li is in critical condition due to the nightmare. Recalling their shared past, where Tang Li was his only friend before fate separated them, Wen Shuyu makes a drastic decision. He trades away his system’s golden finger ability to enter the nightmare himself, accepting a ninety-nine percent death rate. His mission is to find the core of the nightmare and extract Tang Li before her soul is lost. Upon entering, he finds Tang Li has lost her memory and views him as a stranger, reacting with hostility when he attempts to reveal their past.

Wen Shuyu adopts a disguise as a medical apprentice and fabricates a backstory involving an engagement token to gain Tang Li’s trust. Inside the nightmare, they navigate a distorted reality where time flows erratically and perceptions differ between inhabitants. They discover that the nightmare centers on a young man named Kang’er, who was supposedly cured of a terminal illness by a mysterious figure known as Master Zhong. Kang’er is being rushed into a marriage with a woman from a prominent family. Tang Li, now working as a maid in the household, leads Wen Shuyu through hidden paths as they investigate the truth behind the wedding.

Their investigation reveals that Kang’er is not human but a decaying entity sustained by Master Zhong, who appears as a venomous snake to Wen Shuyu but as a human merchant to Tang Li. The snake reveals that Kang’er died half a month prior and was resurrected through dark arts. His body is rotting, requiring Master Zhong to paint him new layers of paper skin daily. The resurrection was a bargain made with Wang Cuihua, who traded the He family’s secret wine recipe in exchange for her son’s false life. The nightmare’s core conflict revolves around this deception and the impending wedding, which serves as the final ritual to seal Kang’er’s transformation. Wen Shuyu must navigate these horrors while protecting the amnesiac Tang Li, racing against the clock to break the nightmare before the system erases her existence.