Falsely Accused, I Started Plundering Monster Traits

One thing I’ve realized about my novel is that the opening moves too fast.

When I first wrote it, I was focused heavily on the idea of the "golden three Chapters." I wanted the major elements of the story to appear as quickly as possible, partly because I needed the opening to be strong enough to attract an editor and secure a contract. Because of that, I ended up cramming what should probably have been two Chapters’ worth of material into a single Chapter.

At the time, I thought faster automatically meant better.

My assumption was simple: the sooner something happened, the sooner I could grab the reader’s attention. If I introduced conflict, danger, the System, the protagonist’s personality, and the main premise immediately, then the story would feel exciting from the beginning.

Looking back, I think that was the wrong way to understand pacing.

Entering the main event quickly is useful, but speed by itself does not create engagement. Before something important happens, the reader needs at least a little time to get a sense of where they are, who they’re following, and what normal feels like. I’m not talking about spending five hundred words describing a subway carriage or writing an entire slice-of-life Chapter before anything happens. Sometimes a few sounds, a little environment, and a small piece of ordinary behavior are enough.

The important thing is that the story has to feel real before I start tearing that reality apart.

That was one of the biggest problems with my original opening. It felt impatient. Reading it again, I could almost feel the author standing behind the page, constantly pushing the next thing toward me.

Look, here’s the accusation. Here’s the twist. Here’s the countdown. Here’s the System. Here’s the contract. Here’s the ability. Here’s the joke. Here’s the goblin.

Everything was happening, but I wasn’t actually inside the story.

The Chapter was also around 2,500 words, which by itself isn’t necessarily a problem. The problem was how much I had packed into those 2,500 words. There was almost no breathing room between one major beat and the next. Even splitting the same amount of material into two Chapters would already make it feel better, because a Chapter break gives the reader a natural place to stop for a second and reset.

My old version barely had that. It just kept going.

And I think that’s why reading it now gives me this strange feeling of being out of breath. Not because the action is too intense, but because the story never relaxes its grip long enough for anything to settle.

Another problem I noticed is that I explain things too much.

I think a lot of that comes from worrying that the reader won’t get what I’m trying to do. If there’s a joke, I want to make sure they understand the joke. If I’m establishing a personality trait, I want to make sure they notice it. If there’s some implication in a conversation, I get nervous that it might be missed, so I explain it again in narration.

And then sometimes I explain it a third time just to be safe.

Reading it back, that’s obviously too much.

Readers aren’t stupid. I don’t need to prove the same point three different ways just because I’m afraid someone might miss it the first time. If Lin Yan does something that already shows what kind of person he is, I don’t always need another paragraph explaining what that says about him. If a joke lands through the situation, I don’t need to explain why it’s funny afterward.

I think I was leaving too little blank space for the reader to do anything themselves.

That’s probably one of the more useful things I’ve learned from going back through these Chapters: sometimes the writing gets stronger when I stop one sentence earlier.

I’ve also been thinking about where my obsession with speed came from in the first place.

Part of it is definitely the "golden three Chapters" idea, but I think part of it also comes from the kind of media I’ve been consuming for years.

Short-form video has trained a lot of content to get to the point almost immediately. Everything starts faster, cuts faster, explains faster. If the first few seconds don’t give you something, people swipe away.

And Chinese web novels, at least from what I’ve read over the years, can be extremely aggressive about this too. The "golden three Chapters" already feels almost outdated in some places. Sometimes it feels more like the golden first Chapter, or even the golden first half of a Chapter. If the opening doesn’t give the reader a hook, a premise, or some kind of payoff very quickly, the book can lose them almost immediately.

There’s probably a broader cultural and platform context behind that too. Everything feels fast. Work is fast, life is fast, entertainment is fast, and people have less patience for something that takes a long time to show them why they should care.

I’ve read Chinese web novels for years, so I think I carried a lot of those instincts over without really noticing it.

The problem is that I’m now writing for a different platform and a different audience, and I haven’t actually read nearly as many novels here as I have on Chinese platforms. So I was applying one set of assumptions to an environment I don’t understand nearly as well.

Some readers here obviously like fast pacing. Some like slower stories. That’s not really the point.

The mistake was assuming that faster must be safer.

Looking at my own opening now, I honestly haven’t seen many stories that try to cram this many things into one 2,500-word Chapter with almost no breathing room: the protagonist’s personality, the subway conflict, the scam reveal, the countdown, the System, the contract, the ability, several jokes, the train stopping, the monster appearing, and then the first task.

It’s a lot.

And because I was trying so hard to make sure every important element appeared immediately, I ended up making all of them compete with each other.

That became much clearer after I rewrote the opening and gave the material more space. I added some ordinary environment, more dialogue, and another Chapter instead of forcing everything through the same narrow opening.

When I read the new version back, the difference was obvious.

It didn’t feel slower in a bad way.

It just stopped feeling rushed.

And I think the same thing applies to the overexplaining. I’m starting to get more comfortable letting a line end where it ends, letting an action speak for itself, and trusting that the reader can connect two obvious points without me stepping in between them.

That’s probably progress too.

This is the old version of the Chapter, if you’re interested in reading it:

_______________________________________________________________________________

"You pervert!"

Lin Yan jolted upright with a violent gasp, one hand flying to his head.

What the hell?

Hadn’t he just died?

He could still feel the rusted club smashing into his skull, hear something crack inside his head, and feel the warmth spreading beneath his cheek as the world went black.

So how the hell was he standing here again?

"You! I’m talking to you!"

The sharp voice came from behind him.

Lin Yan turned, still trying to understand what was happening. The subway carriage was packed with evening commuters, the overhead lights were on, and the train continued rumbling along the tracks as though nothing had happened.

No corpse. No blood.

Was she talking to him?

A woman in a black coat stepped closer and jabbed a finger toward his face.

"Yes, you! Stop pretending you can’t hear me."

Lin Yan stared at her.

Where had this lunatic come from?

"You were crouching behind me and taking pictures under my skirt," she shouted, making sure everyone nearby could hear. "I saw you. Disgusting."

Several passengers turned toward them. A few raised their phones, but most simply watched, uncertain what had happened and unwilling to get involved until they did.

Lin Yan looked behind the woman. The carriage was so crowded there was barely enough room to stand, let alone crouch down without being stepped on.

Then he looked back at her.

"I was taking pictures of you?"

"What else were you doing behind me?"

"Taking pictures of what?"

His gaze traveled over her face and figure before returning to her eyes.

"Have you ever looked in a mirror? What exactly do you think I was trying to photograph?"

A muffled laugh came from somewhere among the passengers. Someone else quickly covered it with a cough.

The woman’s face flushed.

"You—"

"Even if I had a thing for pigs, I’d still need a camera."

Lin Yan pulled out his phone. Its screen was cracked, and black tape held the back cover in place. When he had run short of money a few months earlier, he had sold the camera module along with several other parts to a repair shop. The battered thing could still make calls when it felt cooperative, but taking pictures was beyond it.

He held it out toward her.

"Mine doesn’t have one. Go ahead and check."

The woman slapped his hand aside instead of taking it.

"Who knows how many phones you have? Maybe you already hid the other one."

More people were watching now, but the reaction was no longer one-sided. Some glanced at Lin Yan’s battered phone, others looked at the cramped space behind the woman, and several exchanged doubtful looks.

The woman noticed the change and raised her voice.

"Don’t let him fool you! Men like him always have excuses!"

Lin Yan barely heard her. His attention had shifted to the man beside her, whose phone had already been recording when Lin Yan first turned around.

The dark train window caught the screen clearly. More than forty seconds.

The woman hadn’t even been shouting for twenty.

When the man noticed Lin Yan looking, he didn’t lower the phone. He just smiled.

Motherfucker.

He was about to say something when a pale number appeared at the edge of his vision.

At first he mistook it for a reflection on the window, but when he turned his head, the numbers moved with him.

02:47

"What the hell is that?"

He looked toward the opposite side of the carriage. The numbers followed.

02:46

"A countdown?"

No one answered. In fact, no one around him seemed able to see it.

The rusted club flashed through Lin Yan’s mind again, followed by the sound of his skull cracking and the warm blood beneath his cheek. His stomach tightened.

No way.

Had he really died once already?

The woman grabbed his sleeve and yanked him toward her.

"Unlock your phone!"

Before Lin Yan could shove her away, every sound inside the carriage vanished.

The woman froze with one hand around his sleeve and her mouth still open. The man beside her remained motionless with his phone raised, its recording timer no longer moving. Even the train had fallen silent, although Lin Yan could still turn his head and move his arms. His legs, however, remained fixed to the floor.

A new line appeared beneath the countdown.

[Correct.]

[You have experienced your future death.]

Lin Yan stared at the words.

"The goblin was real?"

[Yes.]

"The train really stops, that thing breaks in, and I get my head smashed open?"

[Yes.]

He looked around at the frozen passengers.

"What the fuck? This is still reality, right? This is way too fucking insane."

[I can change the outcome in which you die.]

[In exchange, you must enter into a contract with me.]

A golden page unfolded beneath the countdown. The writing was unlike any language Lin Yan had ever seen, yet he understood it as soon as he looked at it.

"Holy shit," Lin Yan blurted. "Something this good actually happened to me?"

He barely glanced at the golden page before pressing his thumb against it.

The contract flashed.

[Contract accepted.]

The voice that answered had lost all of its earlier composure.

[What the fuck?]

Lin Yan blinked. "Aren’t you supposed to be some mysterious higher existence? Watch your language."

[You signed a binding contract without reading it.]

"Yeah."

[You did not even hesitate.]

"Why would I?"

He’d been dead once already, and according to that countdown, he had less than three minutes before it happened again.

If something wanted to show up now and offer him a way out, Lin Yan wasn’t about to start reading the fine print.

His attention had already moved to the words beneath the contract.

Only then did he notice the designation written beneath the contract.

[Contracting Party: System.]

Lin Yan’s eyes lit up.

"So what kind of system are you? Sign-in? Summoning? Territory-building?"

The system did not answer quickly enough, so Lin Yan continued guessing.

"Please be a sign-in system. Getting rewarded just for showing up sounds perfect. Summoning would be fine too, though. Give me a few legendary heroes and I can sit in the back while they handle everything."

[You are remarkably optimistic for someone facing imminent death.]

"That’s exactly why I’m optimistic. I was going to die with nothing, and now I get a system. How is that not good news?"

[You have not considered that I might be deceiving you?]

"Deceiving me for what?"

Lin Yan gestured at himself with the battered phone still in his hand.

"I’m broke, I have no power, and nobody would even notice if I disappeared tomorrow. If this is some enormous conspiracy centered on me, then whoever planned it chose the wrong target."

The system fell silent.

[You are the first contractor I have encountered who signed before reading.]

Lin Yan immediately caught the wording.

"The first? So there were other contractors?"

[That information is not relevant at present.]

"Fine. Then what ability are you giving me?"

[I do not give you an ability. The contract awakens a power that already exists within you.]

Lin Yan’s eyes widened.

"So I was a genius all along?"

[That is an overly generous interpretation.]

"It still counts."

[Without my intervention, your innate ability would never have awakened before your death.]

"So I was a genius with no way to access my talent."

The system chose not to argue with him.

"All right," Lin Yan said. "Wake it up."

The golden page condensed into a small seal beneath his thumb. Cold flowed into his hand, entered his chest, and spread through the rest of his body, leaving behind the strange sensation of three empty spaces opening somewhere inside him.

[Contract established.]

[Innate ability awakened: Trait Plunder.]

[Initial trait slots: 3.]

Lin Yan studied the name.

"Trait Plunder."

Kill something and take one of its traits. The meaning could hardly have been more obvious.

[Would you like an explanation?]

"No."

[You are certain?]

"It has ’plunder’ in the name. What else could it possibly do?"

[Only targets personally killed by you are eligible. Each successful kill allows you to obtain one trait.]

Lin Yan nodded.

"See? That was worth explaining."

The countdown remained frozen at 02:31.

Lin Yan looked at the woman gripping his sleeve, then past her toward the man in the cap.

"Resume time."

[You may take some time to steady yourself.]

"I’m terrified," Lin Yan admitted.

His gaze settled on the man’s raised phone.

"But right now, I’m even more pissed off."

The frozen carriage snapped back into motion.

The woman’s interrupted pull jerked Lin Yan forward. Instead of resisting, he let himself stumble past her as though she had dragged him off balance, closing the distance to the man in the cap before either of them realized what he was doing.

The man had only begun to frown when Lin Yan’s right arm came around in a full hook.

His fist crashed into the man’s face.

The man’s head snapped sideways, and he dropped against the carriage door before landing hard on his backside. His phone bounced across the floor while blood poured from a nose that was already bent noticeably to one side.

The carriage erupted in shocked voices.

"What the hell?"

"Did he just hit him?"

"He’s gone crazy!"

Lin Yan ignored them. He picked up the fallen phone and found the recording still running, exactly as it had been before time stopped. After pausing it, he dragged the progress bar back and raised the screen toward the passengers crowding around them.

"Look carefully. He started recording before she accused me of anything."

The video showed the woman adjusting her skirt, checking the camera, and deliberately stepping in front of Lin Yan. She waited until the man had her framed properly before turning around and shouting.

Uneasy murmurs moved through the carriage.

The woman recovered first.

"So what if we were filming?!" she snapped. "That doesn’t prove he didn’t do it! He’s just trying to distract everyone!"

Lin Yan looked at her, then tossed the phone onto the injured man’s lap.

He began walking toward her.

Only then did some of the anger leave her face. She took a quick step backward, pulled out her own phone, and aimed it at him.

"Everyone look at this man!" she shouted into the camera. "He attacked someone on the subway, and now he’s coming after me! Keep recording—don’t let him get away with this!"

Lin Yan continued forward.

He had always considered himself a staunch feminist. Men and women were equal, and he would never belittle a woman by assuming she was too fragile to receive the same treatment as a man.

The man had taken one punch.

Equality demanded neither more nor less.

The woman was still talking when Lin Yan swung.

Smack!

His fist struck her across the face. Her head whipped sideways, and she crashed into the seats before sliding down onto the floor.

Yet even after falling, her fingers remained firmly wrapped around the phone. Her arm shook from the impact, but the camera was still pointed in Lin Yan’s direction and the recording had never stopped.

Who said women were weaker than men?

The man was sitting on the floor clutching his bleeding nose. She had taken the same punch and was still filming.

What a formidable woman.

Lin Yan finally released the breath he had been holding. The anger that had been burning in his chest since he woke up eased slightly, leaving behind a deep and uncomplicated sense of satisfaction.

It lasted for about two seconds.

When he looked up, he found half the carriage pointing their phones at him.

His stomach sank.

The countdown was still moving at the edge of his vision, and there was a very real chance that he would be dead before any of those recordings mattered. But what if he survived?

An edited clip would show a man punching another man, then walking over and knocking a woman to the floor. No one watching it later would see the countdown or know that a goblin was less than half a minute away from breaking into the carriage.

Surviving tonight only to spend the rest of his life buried under lawsuits would be a particularly miserable joke.

Lin Yan turned toward the phone still held by the woman on the floor. His expression changed immediately, outrage replacing satisfaction as though someone had flipped a switch.

"Everyone, listen to me!"

The passengers stared.

"I may look male, but I have identified as a woman since I was a child!"

He pointed accusingly at the woman lying beside the seats.

"She looked at my body and decided I had to be a male pervert! She accused me because of my appearance!"

His voice rose another level.

"That’s blatant discrimination!"

Before anyone could respond, the entire train lurched sideways.

Passengers were thrown into seats and metal poles as the overhead lights went out. The wheels screamed against the tracks, bags and phones scattered across the floor, and the carriage shook so violently that Lin Yan had to grab a handrail to remain standing.

The train finally stopped.

A few seconds later, the red emergency lights flickered on, staining every face in the carriage a dull crimson.

Then something struck the connecting door.

Bang!

The sound silenced the panicked shouting.

A dent appeared beside the lock.

The second impact shook the entire door, and the third bent its frame inward with a scream of twisting metal. Passengers nearest to it scrambled backward, tripping over one another in their haste to get away.

"What’s happening?"

"Is someone trapped in there?"

"Call the driver!"

The lock split open before anyone could move.

A green hand pushed through the gap.

Its fingers were long and thin, with black dirt packed beneath the nails. They curled around the broken metal and pulled, widening the opening with a harsh screech.

A small figure forced its way through.

It stood only as high as Lin Yan’s chest, but its thin body was wrapped in knotted muscle. Dark green skin stretched over its limbs, pointed ears rose from either side of its head, and a strip of filthy animal hide hung around its waist.

In one hand, it carried a rusted iron club stained with old blood.

Lin Yan recognized it immediately.

The same yellow eyes. The same weapon.

The creature that had killed him.

The goblin surveyed the crowded carriage and opened its mouth in a shrill, excited laugh.

At the edge of Lin Yan’s vision, the countdown reached zero.

[Task 1 issued.]

[Survive the first convergence.]

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!