Am I a Kamen Rider or the real young master who was switched at birth?

Municipal Hospital, VIP ward area.

The corridor was filled with a faint smell of disinfectant, and the air, cooled by the air conditioning, carried a strange and indescribable chill.

Several nurses at the nurses' station were busy organizing medical records, occasionally glancing up at the closed door at the end of the corridor.

That was the innermost single room in the entire VIP ward, where Shen Yunzhou, the young master of the Shen family, was staying.

The medical record states "Injured during a mission, requires rest and observation."

But the young master had been staying there for several days, and apart from the first day when a doctor went in for a routine check-up, no one had been allowed in since.

The nurses whispered among themselves, but the Shen family gave instructions, so no one dared to ask any further questions.

Inside the ward, the thick soundproof curtains were drawn tightly shut, leaving only a dim yellow light strip around the ceiling.

In the center of the hospital bed, Shen Yunzhou leaned against a pile of fluffy pillows.

He was wearing a light blue hospital gown, with two buttons undone at the collar, revealing a section of his thin collarbone.

There was still a bandage left from the IV drip on the back of his right hand, but he had already removed the IV bottle himself.

The transparent IV tube hung emptily beside the bed, dripping a drop of residual medicine every few seconds, leaving a small dark water stain on the floor.

His features were refined, with a sharp jawline, and his porcelain-white skin still gleamed with a cool luster under the dim light. But his complexion was not good; his brows were furrowed, and his thin lips were pressed together, turning pale.

A turbulent anger churned within his narrow, phoenix-shaped eyes, making his face, which should have been gentle and refined, look like a piece of porcelain that had been smashed and cracked.

"What? You said that spider-like beast was killed?" he shouted loudly at the wall in front of him.

There was nothing on the wall except for a black screen of a wall-mounted TV and a printed landscape painting.

If someone were to push the door open at this moment, they would probably think that the young master of the Shen family had some serious mental problem.

"Did the Lin sisters do it?" he repeated, his fingers unconsciously clenching the thin blanket covering his legs, his knuckles pinching deep wrinkles into the soft fabric.

He was silent for two seconds, then suddenly leaned back, his head slamming heavily onto the pillow with a dull thud.

"I'm speechless—according to the plot of the book, shouldn't they be at home right now, battling wits with that villainous male supporting character, Ye Yang? How did they end up passing through that area?"

"They should have been having a family meeting at home during that time to discuss how to kick Ye Yang out. That's how it's written in the book! I deliberately chose that time!"

"To ensure everything went perfectly, I even laid bait nearby three days in advance to lure the official patrols in the opposite direction. I considered every variable; how could they suddenly appear on that road?"

As he spoke, his right hand gestured in the air, pointing in this direction and then in that direction, as if he were re-analyzing the whole situation.

He eventually gave up, his hand hanging limply over the edge of the bed.

At that moment, a cold, mechanical voice rang in his mind.

"For some reason, something seems to have gone wrong. But host, this won't hinder our plan."

Upon hearing this, Shen Yunzhou's lips twisted into a disdainful sneer.

He raised his hand and tapped his temple hard with the knuckle of his index finger.

"How is it not interfering with my plans? That spider-like beast, do you know how long I've been raising it? I've been feeding it since the first day I transmigrated. How many people have I fed it?"

"There were at least a dozen people in total: the homeless, the drunks walking alone late at night, the college student delivering food..."

"Do you think finding someone is easy? Do you think handling the follow-up missing person reports is easy? I put so much effort into raising it from a juvenile to a mature adult, originally intending for it to do something big."

He took his hand off his temple and drew a large circle in the air with his finger.

"My plan is simple: to cause a large enough riot in the city. Then I'll use the anonymous clues I prepared beforehand to point the finger at the Dragon King's Palace."

"'Dragon King Palace Colludes with Silent Beasts' 'Dragon King Palace Releases Silent Beasts to Injure People'—with headlines like these, even if that idiot Long Aotian jumped into the Yellow River, he couldn't clear his name."

"The Dragon King's Palace was originally a grassroots organization, and the authorities have always been skeptical of it. Whenever public opinion rallied, Long Aotian could only retreat into his shell like a coward. And what happened?"

He slammed his hand on the edge of the bed, making a sharp cracking sound. "I didn't even have a chance to make it move before the Lin sisters killed it instantly. Instantly killed! My mature Shadow Spider, which I'd been raising for months! Just like that, it was gone!"

By the end, his voice was almost squeezed out from between his teeth.

The system was silent for a moment. Then, that cold, mechanical voice echoed in his mind again:

"But isn't our current plan going very smoothly? Lin Yumin has already been bewitched by you and is slowly being controlled by you. This morning, the favorability rating was still 65.3%, up 0.1 percentage points from the same period last week. Although the increase is not large, the trend is positive."

Shen Yunzhou sneered. He picked up a glass of water that had gone completely cold from the bedside table, took a sip, and, finding it was cold, put the glass back in disgust.

The cup struck the counter with a sharp, jarring sound.

"Lin Yumin—now even if I hug her, she reacts extremely strongly. Last time behind the cherry blossom grove, I just wanted to reach out and put my arm around her waist, and she froze completely, like a stone."

"You didn't see her expression at the time. She had her head down, and before I could even hug her, she pushed me away, saying it was too fast. She just stood there, like I had bullied her."

"I stood there for about ten seconds, and finally I took my hand back myself. Do you know how awkward those ten seconds were? My face was practically frozen from smiling."

He got angrier and angrier as he spoke, and raised his hand to slam the mattress hard.

The mattress in the VIP ward was very thick; when you patted it, it only made a dull thud.

"I just don't understand, when I used a spell on those women before, they all became incredibly obedient."

"I only shook hands with the youngest daughter of the Sun family three times at the party, and she threw herself into my arms on our second date."

"The second young lady of the He family was even simpler. I just demonstrated my ability to 'tame silent beasts' in front of her, and she was so scared that she trembled all over. I went over and patted her on the shoulder, saying, 'Don't be afraid.' That night, she messaged me saying she wanted to see me."

"And then there's the Li family—not even worth mentioning, they're practically throwing themselves at him. Why is it different with Lin Yumin? How long has her favorability rating been stuck at 65%? Almost two months!"

"At this rate, when will you achieve 'complete control'? Ten years from now? By then, Long Aotian will have already developed the Dragon King Palace into the number one in the world, damn it."

He cursed, then flopped onto the pillow and rubbed his temples with both hands.

The system's voice remained calm as it said, "That's because Lin Yumin is one of the female leads. She is Long Aotian's official love interest, and she is also the student council president of the Federation's First Military Academy, the inheritor of the Lin family's Awakened bloodline, and a key figure in the core plot of this world."

"Her willpower is rated S, ranking in the top three among all known targets. To completely control her, it would require even more patience and resources."

Shen Yunzhou slid his hand down from his temple and covered his eyes. He remained silent for several seconds.

The room was so quiet that only the whooshing sound of the air conditioner vents and the dripping sound of the medicine from the IV tube could be heard.

He knew the system was right. Lin Yumin was indeed no ordinary person.

She grew up under strict military training, and at the age of sixteen, she made it into the top three in the national competition. At eighteen, she became the student council president of the Federal First Military Academy.

Her willpower was unmatched by those pampered heiresses raised in greenhouses; it was forged in the crucible of reality. And that was precisely why he was determined to have her.

He enjoys the process of turning a high-and-mighty, aloof woman into a puppet who obeys his every word.

That kind of pleasure was more addictive to him than any level up of a silent beast.

But the 65% favorability rating turned this pleasure into torture.

It's like someone who's been starving for days being locked in a glass room, with a Manchu Han Imperial Feast laid out outside. He can see it, he can smell it, but he just can't reach it.

He removed his hands from his face and opened his eyes to look at the ceiling.

"It seems I need to increase the potency of the Gu poison on Lin Yumin again. What I want is complete control, not this half-hearted state. No matter how strong her willpower is, there will always be a limit."

"If the bewitching poison doesn't work, we'll increase the dosage; if the dosage still doesn't work, we'll try a different method. There's always a way. As long as we can completely control her, I can not only disgust that idiot Long Aotian."

"Can you imagine his expression when he finds out I've taken the woman destined for him? And he can use the Lin family's resources and her Awakened talent to become even stronger. At that time..."

He paused for a moment. A cold, serpentine smile appeared on his lips.

"The three Lin sisters, the villainous male supporting character Ye Yang, they will all have to submit to me. Long Aotian will kneel before me and beg for mercy."

"The strongest forces in this world—the Silent Beast Legion, the official Awakened Ones, the Dragon King Palace's influence… they are all in my grasp."

The system gave a mechanical beep, as if making a final confirmation:

"The host has requested an increase in the potency of the Gu poison, which has been recorded. However, the host should be reminded that Lin Yumin's willpower rating is S-level, and increasing the dosage may cause her consciousness to reject the poison. This may manifest as emotional instability, memory disturbance, or a brief period of lucidity. Confirm execution?"

Shen Yunzhou sneered: "Execute it. As long as we can eventually control her, any side effects along the way don't matter. Her suffering is her problem—once she's completely mine, I'll naturally 'compensate' her properly."

Then he turned over, pulled the blanket up to his chest, and gave the system his last instruction for the day.

"Oh, and could you also check if there are any new sources of Silent Beast Cores lately? I need to raise an even more powerful one."

"The Shadow Spiders have been wiped out. I only have a few larvae and that immature Heart-Eating Worm left. That's not enough. If that idiot Long Aotian really starts investigating the last attack, I need to have enough to deal with him."

(I want to mention here that the author is just a college student, so the scope of my writing is limited. Besides being a hobby, writing novels is also due to some family reasons. Kamen Rider resonated with me a lot, so I enjoy writing Kamen Rider novels. If you think the second time traveler part is problematic, feel free to tell the author directly; you can even criticize the author. The author is thick-skinned and will continue to improve.)