Spring's dawn breaks in a flash, winter's chill gradually warming.
Tens of thousands of boats crowded warmly around the island, and the sounds of people surged upon it. As if they hadn't seen such a bustling sight in many a day, the fishermen living along the island's shores poked their heads out one after another to watch the busy cultivators coming ashore, discussing animatedly among themselves.
"Hey! Penglai is opening its mountain gates. This is the first time I've ever seen so many cultivators!"
"Isn't that so? Don't the little masters from the mountain often come down to the village to buy fish?"
"How can that be the same thing?! Haven't you heard that saying? The sect rules laid down by our Penglai Dao Ancestor when he ascended: unless a momentous mandate from heaven descends, the gates shall not be opened here."
"Hah! Then something extraordinary must be happening now. What are these outsiders here for, anyway?"
The burly dark-skinned man was just about to answer when a youth suddenly cut in from the side.
The youth asked gently, "Excuse me, is this Penglai Immortal Island?"
He possessed the appearance of moonlight brushing a face, though his moon-white robes were travel-stained and caked in dust. Hanging at his waist was a longsword wrapped in tattered strips of cloth, and his overall appearance looked rather disheveled.
The burly dark-skinned man had rarely seen a gentleman who looked so bright and breezy, and he suddenly blushed somewhat, merely nodding and falling mute in his muffled silence.
Ruan Nanzhi smiled warmly, his cheeks sinking in slightly—he seemed thin enough to be somewhat gaunt. He bowed to the fishermen in greeting, and only then did the fishermen notice that he was also carrying a girl on his back.
The girl bore an eight-tenths resemblance to him, with a single red mole at the center of her brow. She looked much younger, and it was clear she hadn't finished growing yet. Lying prone on Ruan Nanzhi's back, her eyes were tightly closed and her complexion was like paper, as pale as a cold moon hanging in the evening sky.
Carrying her on his back, Ruan Nanzhi's steps were somewhat heavy and sluggish, yet he walked steadily all the same to the foot of Penglai Mountain.
He turned his head and said softly, "Weiwei, we've arrived."
At that moment, Ruan Nanzhi's cheap brother exhausted all his strength and still couldn't move a single joint of her own little finger.
No, cheap brother, say a few more words! Where on earth is "here"?
Having been rocked by boat on the sea the entire way until she was practically ready to open her eyes and curse up a storm, she could only feel that her cheap brother never left her side for even half a step. Ten days—she had lain by Ruan Nanzhi's side for a full ten days, and this was the very first sentence Ruan Nanzhi had spoken to her.
The system in her mind was still ceaselessly lobbying.
[Seeing Ruan Nanzhi working so hard, don't your heart ache? Don't you want to smooth out the frown between his brows? Don't you want to stay and save this crumbling Cultivation World?]
Ruan Nanzhi choked up internally, *"I'd like to watch, all right!"*
Her current body was so weak that she couldn't even open her eyes. Her entire person could only lie limply across Ruan Nanzhi like a puddle of water.
The system also choked up, hurriedly explaining.
[You were poisoned by the Ruan Family. As long as you follow the plot, climb Penglai, successfully take a master, and guide spiritual qi into your body to undergo spiritual qi baptism, mere poison will be nothing to fear.]
Ruan Nanzhi took a deep breath spiritually and rolled her dead-fish eyes. *"I'm saying, I'd like to climb up there, alright!"*
The system fell silent, and the sound effect of pages frantically turning echoed in Ruan Nanzhi's mind.
[That's not right... How could this be? It clearly says: Ruan Nanzhi climbed Penglai and became the 68th direct disciple of the Penglai Immortal Sect.]
An AI turning pages and providing its own sound effects.
Suppressing her burning soul of sarcasm, Ruan Nanzhi asked solemnly, "Can I really... not go back?"
The page-turning sound effect abruptly stopped, and the system's childish, youthful voice sounded.
[Mm, you cannot go back, and there is no need to go back.]
The electronic voice was exceptionally cold, as if an iron nail had been driven straight into her heart.
Ruan Nanzhi was a university student.
During the campus lockdown, Ruan Nanzhi felt unwell and asked her counselor for leave to go see a doctor at the hospital. The counselor resolutely rejected Ruan Nanzhi's request, stating that a divine creature like Ruan Nanzhi, who could throw a shot put for eight hundred meters, wouldn't have such troubles as poor health.
Furious, Ruan Nanzhi stayed up past midnight, climbed out of bed, and posted an eight-hundred-word WeChat Moments essay venting her anger.
Having worked herself up too much, she suffered a sudden palpitation, which triggered her hereditary heart disease.
After fainting, when she next wanted to open her eyes, she had already arrived in this world inside Ruan Nanzhi, unable even to open her eyes.
During the time when she knew neither the darkness of heaven and earth nor the morning and evening greetings, she could only rely on the sound of Ruan Nanzhi's breathing by her ear, the snores of others in the cabin, and the rustling slosh of the waves to judge her whereabouts.
It wasn't until the boat docked this morning, when Ruan Nanzhi carried her on his back and set foot upon this land, that the system's voice suddenly rang in Ruan Nanzhi's mind.
It was also the system that explained the script of this world to Ruan Nanzhi.
The more Ruan Nanzhi listened, the more familiar it sounded. Wasn't this precisely the dog-blood, brainless, angsty cultivation romance novel that her junior-high little cousin used to write to amuse herself in a document?
This was a fun little novel that gathered major popular elements such as angst, revenge, redemption, and a leveling-up progression all in one.
In short, the more dog-blood, the better.
After the original Ruan Nanzhi entered the Penglai sect, her brother Ruan Nanzhi returned to the Ruan Family to seize power, followed by Penglai sealing its mountains. Subsequently, the Demon Race mobilized to slaughter the aristocratic families on the borders of the Cultivation World, and the Penglai Immortal Sect took in a pair of dragon-phoenix disciples whose entire family had been slaughtered. After that, demonic qi disturbances broke out in the border fiefdoms, and the Penglai Sect Master brought a child back from the Demon Realm.
Added to the Eldest Senior Brother born on Penglai Island, the five tragic scapegoats of the Penglai Immortal Sect were fully assembled.
The Demon Realm was stirring restlessly, and the major sects of the Cultivation World successively stepped up their training intensity. Due to the special nature of the illusions surrounding Penglai, the sect masters of the Cultivation World agreed that every time a centennial grand tournament was held, they would send their disciples to Penglai for trials.
The light of righteousness—the male protagonist appeared, and the original Ruan Nanzhi fell in love with him like a moth flying into a flame, as if she had been bewitched. She sent medicinal pills, cultivation techniques, and money; whatever she had, she was completely willing to give it all to the male protagonist. Whenever the male protagonist got into trouble, she went to save him; whenever the male protagonist's junior sister got into trouble, she saved her too, operating entirely on the principle of loving the house and everyone in it.
And then, as she kept saving people, she even handed over the holy item that could cure her own poison to the poisoned male protagonist on a silver platter, after which the original Ruan Nanzhi gloriously kicked the bucket. The male protagonist wept bitterly, enshrining the original Ruan Nanzhi as the unextinguished white moonlight shining bright and dark in the depths of his heart.
Later on, at the very beginning of the Immortal-Demon War, the eldest disciple of the Penglai Immortal Sect saved a Demon Race cultivator and was branded a traitor, turning to the dark side. The third and fourth disciples used ruthless methods for revenge, implicating innocent common people, and were branded as demonic cultivators, turning to the dark side. Finally, the youngest junior brother was discussed as having impure blood, and under multiple blows, he completely fell into inner demons, transforming into a demonic cultivator and becoming the final boss villain of the entire text.
In the end, a perfectly fine Penglai Immortal Sect actually became a demon cave in the mouths of the Cultivation World.
Ruan Nanzhi remembered that none of her martial brothers and sisters had good endings in the end.
She recalled the system's icy-cold AI voice.
[The struggle between the righteous and demonic paths finally drew to a close. Fu Yi of the Wanjian Sect acted on behalf of heaven by enforcing justice, arranging a duel with the Demon Lord of Penglai. The two fought for days, their boundless spiritual qi and demonic qi clashing and churning, carving a valley scores of feet deep across ten thousand acres of forest. The Demon Lord was no match, burying his bones in Cangshan. The major sects led armies to sweep away the remnants of Penglai. From then on, the seas were clear and the rivers calm, and there was peace throughout the land.]
Ruan Nanzhi listened in a trance.
[Ruan Nanzhi, you cannot go back. You are the person most suited to completing the salvation mission whom I finally brought back after traveling through three thousand minor worlds. I expended everything to turn time back to the earliest, earliest first encounter, precisely to ensure the salvation is accomplished with absolute certainty.]
An inexplicable hatred grew in Ruan Nanzhi's heart—seas clear and rivers calm, peace throughout the land. "Why save the world?"
She pointed at those eight characters. "The world is like this—isn't this wrong?"
[Wrong.]
Ruan Nanzhi's voice betrayed no emotion. "Good, I also think it's wrong."
Since the self-proclaimed righteous salvation system also said this ending was wrong, she was naturally stubborn by nature. The very first time Ruan Nanzhi saw it, she felt this ending should not have been written this way.
Ruan Nanzhi asked, "What is meant by clear seas, and why peace?"
[It means that the livelihoods of all people under heaven can find security—that is clear seas; and that people, ghosts, immortals, Buddhas, and Daoists alike in this realm can all be spoken of with praise—that is peace.]
Thus, Ruan Nanzhi agreed to this pact in her mind.
Seeing her agree, Ruan Nanzhi actually caught a trace of joy in its even AI vocal timbre.
[Concentrate your mind and look deep into your sea of consciousness. That is the world collapse index detected at this moment, calculated using the method of your world. Everything starts anew; rest assured, this salvation task is very easy to do—]
Following its instructions, Ruan Nanzhi concentrated her mind to look, felt shocked, fell silent, and finally spoke. "70%?"
The chattering system was suddenly as if someone had grabbed it by the neck. A moment later:
[No—impossible! This is impossible! The probability of world collapse cannot possibly be this high!]
Ruan Nanzhi got a headache from its shouting. "Alright, alright, high then high, I'll still do it."
In an instant, the system seemed to give a soft laugh, and somewhere in her mind, something seemed to shatter. An abruptly arriving vital energy surged toward Ruan Nanzhi's sea of consciousness.
Ruan Nanzhi was shocked. "This is...?"
The sea of consciousness instantly fell mute, and her spirit abruptly plunged into darkness.
At this moment, Ruan Nanzhi was retrieving a length of rope from her Mustard Seed Bag, intending to bind Ruan Nanzhi to his own body. He wanted to climb up, bring Ruan Nanzhi up to the Penglai Immortal Sect, and then implore the Immortal Sect to save and treat Ruan Nanzhi.
Cultivators passing by nearby sneered one after another, "Why is he dragging someone up the mountain to take a master even now? Such wishful thinking—you think Penglai's Cloud-Ascending Ladder is just for play?"
"He's nothing more than a rogue cultivator. Kid, let me give you a kind reminder. Once you step onto Penglai's Cloud-Ascending Ladder, spiritual qi and magic treasures are forbidden; you cannot turn back, and you cannot pause. In the middle, there is also the illusion of asking the heart. If you take a single step back, you will be bounced out and dropped into the sea."
"That's right, that's right! You might be fine with spiritual qi protecting your body, but the child on your back has zero spiritual qi, so she might not necessarily survive."
Hearing this, Ruan Nanzhi lowered his long eyelashes, then suddenly raised his gaze to meet the people around him.
Just moments ago he had been drooping his head so no one could see clearly, but now that he suddenly revealed his face, quite a few people recognized Ruan Nanzhi's identity. "Hiss—it's that Qilin son of the Ruan Family!"
"Good heavens, it seems the rumors are true. The Ruan Family Clan Head suddenly passed away, and the Ruan Family Young Master and his younger sister went missing. The Ruan Family even issued a search warrant."
"These aristocratic families are always like this, fighting and seizing power. Judging by the appearance of these two, the matter of the new Ruan Family Clan Head succeeding to the position a few days ago certainly wasn't simple, heh."
Once his identity was recognized, the sneers did stop, though discussions murmured endlessly among the crowd.
As if he hadn't heard a thing, Ruan Nanzhi still hoisted Ruan Nanzhi onto his back, bowed in thanks to the cultivator who had just warned him, and took a single step onto the white jade staircase that stretched out as far as the eye could see beneath the blazing sun with no end in sight.
Anyway, things couldn't possibly get any worse than they were now.
The cultivators standing guard beside the Cloud-Ascending Ladder glanced at the pair of them, expressing no objection whatsoever to such behavior.