可怜为师死得早

by 治病神仙水

尽管演艺事业陷入低谷，谢之还是嫌弃戏份少，毅然拒了某酱油角色。
谁知死后重生，竟然穿越到原著小说里，成了书里从未正面出过场、只活在主角回忆杀里的死鬼恩人——谢知微。
……等一下，这特么就是被他推掉的那个酱油好嘛！
为了悲剧不再重演，谢知微只好与系统一道，开始了苦逼的抢（作）戏（死）之路。
系统：主角要拜师，所以师尊的戏……
谢知微：放着我来。
系统：主角要升级，所以助攻的戏……
谢知微：放着我来。
系统：主角要黑化，所以反派的戏……
谢知微：放着我来。
系统：主角要谈个恋爱，所以女主的戏……
谢知微：妈个鸡，让我仙气飘飘的滚开。
穆涸：师尊，请滚到弟子怀里来~

Although Xie Zhi’s acting career was in a slump, he still hated playing bit parts and rejected the role of a soy sauce (read: extremely minor) character in a web drama. Unexpectedly, he died and transmigrated into a novel to become the dead benefactor character who only shows up in the protagonist’s memories: Xie Zhiwei.

…hold on, isn’t this the same soy sauce character he refused to act?!

To avoid repeating the same tragedy, Xie Zhiwei had no choice but to team up with the System to play (work) act (hard) at his part (death).

System: The protagonist needs a teacher, so his shizun will be…
Xie Zhiwei: Leave it to me.

System: The protagonist needs to level up, so his helper will be…
Xie Zhiwei: Leave it to me.

System: The protagonist needs to blacken, so the villain will be…
Xie Zhiwei: Leave it to me.

System: The protagonist needs to fall in love, so the heroine will be…
Xie Zhiwei: @#$^! you, let me float away ethereally.

Mu He: Shizun, please fly into this disciple’s arms~

Genres: Fantasy

Web Novel

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[V.ya]

English title: Too Bad Master Died Early
TW: noncon

2.5⭐

I picked this up to scratch my itch of a shizun-disciple story. The shizun transmigrated from a modern-day actor to a harem novel with a black-hearted protagonist. He should've been a figure that the disciple looked up to but died an early death. The disciple is a reborn soul, and is determined to get his revenge on the people who wronged him. There's also a System, and even the author of the original story as some sort of guide. Of course, the transmigrated actor ends up messing up everything while trying to survive and please the protagonist, and the harem novel turns into a danmei.

I think many elements of this plot could have made for an engrossing story, and on some occasions they did work. Unfortunately, the shizun keeps treating the whole thing as "progressing the plot" and hardly see the people as real human being. In many instances, we do see how he's an unreliable narrator, and that his disciple has taken a prominent place in his heart, but he's oblivious to the fact. This isn't a slow burn—the fire barely kindles until almost at the end of the book.

Needless to say, there's too little sweetness and romance in the story. Maybe that's why the protag has to resort to noncon actions—the author simply doesn't give him another way out, because his shizun is an immovable, straight guy, and only sees him as the protag of a novel. It's a pity, really.

[Benji]

Transmigration xianxia danmei with a master-disciple relationship. This book has strong Scum Villain by MXTX vibes but is its own unique thing. Arc 1 was fun but kinda slow while arc 2 was angst and miscommunication with the writing getting a bit unorganized. Arc 3 was where everything came together, the angst dialed up further and the plot got really tense with lots of twists and turns. The ending was very satisfying and I loved Xie Zhiwei’s character arc from a prickly “actor” to a caring hero who was fully immersed in the world. This wasn’t a perfect book but it has a lot of trashy tropes I like (yandere love interest! MC thinks the LI is gonna murder him! toxic relationship!) so I had fun. Shoutout to Cheese Bro, I love a dumb meathead jock side character

[Dianna]

English title: Too Bad Master Died Early

The story follows Xie Zhi, a modern day actor who died and transmigrated into a book/script he rejected, as a character called Xie Zhiwei. In the story, the protagonist is a young man called Mu He who was plotted against and died a sad, pitiful death in his previous life, and now he's been reborn as a blackened character who is determined to get revenge for everyone who slighted him in his previous life, and in the original novel, becomes OP and gains a harem of thousands of woman along the way.

However, with Xie Zhi there to meddle with things, the story changes quite drastically and the hero's relationship with all of his supporters from the original novel never get fleshed out.

The story was okay, but after reading a couple of transmigration stories, I don't think I'm a huge fan, especially when there are rules involved and there's a system actively monitoring the story events.

**Warning: Spoilers Ahead**

I honestly didn't like either of the main characters that much. The MC, Xie Zhiwei, treats everything happening around him as a story for the first two arcs, and it's only in the last third of the novel that he realizes these are real people with real emotions around him. And for the ML, Mu He, well... let's just say he has trouble keeping boundaries when it comes to his shizun. Right at the beginning, he pushes one of the future main members of his harem, Tantai Meng, into the water when XZW is about to take her on as a second disciple, because he doesn't want to share his shizun with anyone else. And that's his level of possessiveness right after meeting XZW at the beginning of the story... I was cringing when I read the later scenes of what he did to XZW without his consent, and cringed again when those 3 days were glossed over by XZW himself in later conversations. Just because he thought XZW was a hallucination doesn't make it okay.

There isn't much romance for most of the book, which also took away from my enjoyment. Or rather, it's there but super one-sided, due to XZW's light treatment of his character and the story. He doesn't even realize the ML likes him until much further along in the story and is cluelessly still trying to do what he can to preserve the original storyline and bring the ML together with his harem members.

I didn't have a favorite character for most of the story, but by the end I think I settled on Tantai Meng. Her character with amnesia was very sweet, and she did her best to save XZW when she thought he was in trouble and was even willing to go up against the powerful ML to save him. Plus she gave up her Golden Lotus to the little beggar boy to save his life, and pretended to still have it to keep all attention on herself. I really appreciated her noble sacrifice at the end... it couldn't have been easy.

The story was okay but not super compelling. There were some twists and the ultimate villain was someone I didn't see coming at all, so at least there was some unpredictability, but I think the lack of romance had me frustrated enough where I couldn't really enjoy the story. I did find it incredibly ironic that XZW had to pretend to be Chi Yan, the demon lord, because Qiu Chongyun accidentally killed CY too early. And then of course XZW gets captured by Mu He as the "demon lord" and almost gets killed by the ML in front of his own grave. The irony of it all XP

[Olivia Hausmann]

I feel like there are many novels where, because of how many chapters there are, the plot drags and becomes boring. This was not the case in this novel. It was enjoyable to read each chapter. And though the writing wasn't the best in the world, it kept me entertained.

I liked the romance aspect of this novel as well! The ML of the novel did sexually assault the MC (please check the tags), but the feelings didn't feel forced on the MC. He gradually understood that he loved the ML from the bottom of his heart, dying for him multiple times and even walking through fire to save him. Most yandere BL novels have more of a stockholm syndrome development so I appreciated the (mostly) realistic and honest development in this novel.

The storyline could have been improved. There didn't really seem to be a goal for the ML aside from thinking about his feelings for the MC. He was attempting to get revenge, but we saw so little of that as readers. It was mostly just him and MC doing something miscellaneous before MC dies without any prerogative. Then, after the MC comes back, it still feels like he has no motive. Yeah, he wants to see the ML, but what after that? He has no future plans. This is also where we magically see how much the ML has changed and how strong he is. It's a big jump with little explanation. If anything, the final arc after the MC dies again and the ML waits around for four years by his corpse was more believable and logical than any other part of the book, in my opinion.

I also disliked how the final boss came out of nowhere. There was zero hinting or insinuating that he would end up being such a powerful adversary. It felt like a final shot in the dark to lengthen the novel. But, I did like what the final boss molded the ending into. I love the way MC truly shows he loves the ML enough to die for him — forever this time. It gives flesh to his character.

Anyways, I loved this novel! I don't know if it's good enough to read again, but I'm glad I was able to read it the first time. I would recommend for sure!

[juuree]

3.5 stars

[Deel Hikayana]

I like this book. It was good and showed us a great character development.

[TomaKhusainova]

It was a bit of a triggering unhealthy mess with plot that was difficult to follow and even more difficult to believe. It’s like a badly written SVSS, I was bored most of the time.