The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System | Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong Vol. 2

It's going to be pretty difficult to talk about this series without spoilers, so I'll do my best.

After Shen Qingqiu/Shen Yuan pushed Luo Binghe into the abyss, he spent his time regretting his choices, wishing things could have gone differently. The beginning of the book deals with a brief excursion to setup some insurance in case everything goes wrong.

As you can imagine, nothing goes to plan. I thought Luo Binghe would take some time to show up in the story again since he'd be travelling the Endless Abyss, but while there is a timeskip, for the reader he appears again fairly quickly. And there are certainly hard feelings on both sides, as neither Luo Binghe nor Shen Qingqiu explain their actions or their feelings about what happened, and their intentions towards one another.

This entire book is what I call a "Misunderstanding Masochism Tango", where neither lead is upfront about their true feelings, causing misunderstandings that spiral into drastic (bad) actions. 

Since this is a Danmei novel, the reader knows to expect that Luo Binghe obviously has feelings for Shen Qingqiu. However, Shen Qingqiu does not know that he's in this genre yet, and firmly believes that he's straight. What plays out is a classic "I care about this person, and think about them all the time, but I'm not gay for them, ew!" situation. Many characters try to point out the possibility that Binghe loves Shen Qingqiu as that's the only reasonable explanation for his actions, but Shen Yuan is as dense as a black hole. 

Shen Yuan so firmly believes that he's in a stallion novel, so I'm not surprised that he hasn't figured it out yet. This forces Luo Binghe to be more aggressive and forward (downright yandere and obsessive) than he would otherwise need to be. On top of this, Shen Yuan refuses to communicate, and basically runs away from Binghe at every opportunity from what is supposed to be his beloved disciple. Nobody understands why he's doing this except for him.

Listen, are either of these traits in the leads healthy at all? Absolutely not. But this is not a straightforward romance series for people who are accustomed to reading about healthy relationships. No, this is entertainment for hardcore danmei/BL novel fans who are inoculated against insane bullshit that is normally used in this genre. 

I fall into that demographic, and I found it highly entertaining. This book wasn't always "happy and funny", but I could tell it was using its tragic moments for not only shock value, but as almost a parody of those tropes to begin with. Gory, outrageous, humorous, and sometimes, adorable. Honestly, this entire series is representative of Binghe himself, since his personality change from revenge seeking stallion to yandere, but cute and lovable male lead is basically what this series is about.

There is one thing that I'm not happy about with this series, and it's Gongyi Xiao's death. I felt that it was unnecessary, given that it occurs with little warning and no emotional buildup. Gongyi represented the flipside of Binghe, someone who is honest about their feelings but isn't obsessive. I think there was a really good character arc there that ended up cut and wasted. I also just really liked Gongyi, since he was one of the few people that Shen Yuan could rely on. It just isolated him more, and gave him even less opportunities for emotional growth. 

I'm excited to continue further, once the next book becomes available. It seems the 3rd book is the last book in the main story (since the 4th is all side stories), so I'm curious to see how things will wrap up.

If you're interested in my liveblog for this series, you can read it here.