Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Chapter 249: Chapter-249

And she literally froze in place.

Her mind screamed: ’SYSTEM!’

Hearing that desperate mental call, the System hurriedly appeared beside her, invisible to everyone else, and asked worriedly, ”You called for me, Host?”

Heena’s face had gone pale. She mechanically put the rice bowl down in front of the young man, then smiled at him briefly—a servant’s polite smile—before turning around.

She roughly grabbed the System by his small form—to anyone watching, it would look like she was swatting away an invisible fly near her leg.

She brought the System close and hissed in her mind, ”What the HELL is this?!”

The System looked equally surprised and said, ”That’s the villain! The eldest son I told you about!”

And when the System turned to actually look at the young man sitting at the table, even he was shocked into silence.

”That’s... Host, that’s—”

”LARUS?!” Heena’s mental voice was almost a scream. ”How is the previous world’s NPC HERE?!”

Because literally sitting in front of her, calmly seated in the chair at the family dining table, was Larus.

Or someone who looked exactly like him.

He was wearing a normal scholar’s robe in deep blue, with long hair tied back in a traditional scholarly style. The hair wasn’t quite as golden as Larus’s had been—now it was more of a pale yellowish-blond color, more subdued.

His eyes were the same shape, the same color—but instead of Larus’s gentle warmth, there was a serene, calculating coldness in this man’s gaze.

His face was identical. The bone structure, the features—everything was the same.

Heena glared at the System, and the System looked genuinely troubled because he clearly hadn’t known this would happen either.

Heena pulled out her mental interface and started frantically scrolling through the story information the System had given her.

’Eldest son... villain... scholarly... yes, yes, all of that matches what you told me. But you didn’t mention he has the SAME FACE as my previous husband!’

She bowed respectfully to the family, then walked out of the dining room as calmly as she could manage, closing the door behind her.

The moment she was in the corridor and relatively alone, she grabbed the System again and looked him directly in his small eyes.

”What the HELL do you mean by ’villain’? And how the HELL is HE here?!”

The System looked distressed and said quickly, ”Host, this sometimes happens! It’s not unique to your missions! There’s a saying that every person has seven identical faces somewhere in the world—doppelgangers!”

He waved his small paws frantically.

”So it can happen that one NPC in one world has the exact same face as an NPC in a different world! They’re not the same person—they’re completely different souls, different personalities, different lives! They just happen to look identical!”

Hearing that explanation, Heena had to admit it made a certain kind of sense.

She’d heard similar theories in her original modern world—the idea of doppelgangers, of people who looked identical but had no genetic connection.

But still, she couldn’t quite believe it.

She looked back at the closed dining room door, her mind reeling.

’Seeing Larus’s face again... even though I know it’s not actually him... it still shocked me to my core.’

She turned to look at the System and asked in a more controlled voice, ”So what is his name in this world?”

The System looked at his floating information screen, then back at her, and said hesitantly, ”Um, it’s...”

”What? Spit it out!”

”It’s... Samuel.”

Hearing that, Heena literally froze in place.

”...What?”

The System repeated miserably, ”His name is Samuel. Samuel is the villain in this world.”

Heena looked at him with disbelief gathering in her eyes, struggling to control her emotions.

The System looked relieved that she wasn’t having a complete breakdown.

And he have to thank system god for that.

Heena didn’t feel any emotional fluctuation or tension when she saw Samuel’s face—the face identical to Larus from her previous world.

She was slightly shocked, yes—surprised by the physical resemblance, the uncanny similarity in features. But that shock was purely intellectual, not emotional.

She didn’t feel any heartache. No longing. No sense of loss or nostalgia.

No warm memories flooding back to overwhelm her.

Nothing.

And there was a very specific reason for this emotional void.

It was because of the rules and guidelines implemented by the Transmigration Bureau’s system—rules that Heena had voluntarily agreed to when she first started taking missions.

The System had explained it to her clearly at the very beginning, before her first world assignment:

’”Some Hosts become too attached to the NPCs in their mission worlds. They fall in love, make deep friendships, form bonds with children or family members. And when the mission ends and they have to leave that world behind forever, they experience devastating emotional trauma.”’

’”Some Hosts have broken down completely. Some have refused further missions. Some have tried to throw themselves back into completed worlds, which violates Bureau regulations and causes catastrophic timeline damage.”’

’”So the Bureau created an optional contract. We don’t erase your memories completely—that would be too dangerous, as you need to learn from your experiences. But we blur them. We take the emotional weight out of the memories.”’

’”After you complete a world, the precious memories you formed there—the relationships, the intimate moments, the deep connections—they all get... softened. Blurred. Like looking at a photograph through frosted glass. You remember the basic facts, the general storyline, but the emotions attached to those memories are removed. Literally extracted.”’

’”Not everyone wants this level of emotional control. Some Hosts prefer to keep all their feelings intact, even if it causes them pain between worlds. But for those who want to maintain professional distance, who want to complete missions efficiently without emotional baggage—the contract is available.”’

Heena had been one of the few people out of thousands of Hosts who decided she wanted exactly that level of emotional detachment.

She knew her own mind. She knew her purpose.

She was here to complete missions, to climb the rankings, to achieve her goals within the Transmigration Bureau system.

She was NOT here to fall in love with NPCs who would cease to exist the moment she left their world.

She was NOT here to form deep emotional attachments that would cripple her ability to move forward.

So she had signed the contract without hesitation.

And that was the only reason why Heena had been able to control herself, continue working, and successfully complete all these worlds one after another.

Even though she had met many wonderful people across multiple missions—people who had loved her, people she had supposedly loved in return, people who had changed her life within those world contexts—she literally did not remember them clearly after completing each world.

She just remembered the general outline. The basic facts. The strategic lessons learned.

The ’emotions’ were gone.

Right now, at this very moment, Heena did not remember her children from the previous world—Solene and Caelan, the twins she had supposedly loved more than anything.

She did not remember the ten years she had spent with Larus in harmony—the quiet domestic moments, the passionate nights, the deep companionship they had built.

In her mind, the previous world was just another completed mission.

She had been an Empress. She had stabilized a political situation. She had produced heirs to secure the succession. She had died according to the mission parameters.

Mission complete. Move on.

That was all.