A Villain Trial System

Fu Fangyi cracked a banned seal with numb fingers and found another erased lesson inside. She worked for a neutral archive society, so she knew how often schools hid the parts that caused trouble. The academy’s rules looked ancient and holy, yet none of the guards could say why they still mattered. Fangyi could, because she read the torn copies nobody else wanted. When the trial system marked her, it offered clean answers for every solved round and left her with a sharper hunger each time. She stayed calm in public, but her private notes grew messier by the day, full of missing sleep, half-eaten meals, and one small knife she touched whenever her hands shook. The person helping her may also ...