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keslationsGong Zhu stood alone in the cold wind, putting on a disappointed pose. Before him was a vast sea of clouds, perfectly mirroring his feelings of frustration.
—It wasn’t that he was purposely posing like a master sage in a fantasy TV drama…actually, he might really be a lofty sage right now!
This was only a “might”, because he had no clue who he was right now! Who am I? Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? He’d just suddenly appeared here, innocent and confused, without the slightest idea of what had just happened.
—Through observation and reasoning, what little information he could gather was this: The people here could fly through the air, and were dressed in a very ancient style, which meant this was most likely a cultivation world rather than a wizarding world from western fantasy. The place he was currently located was a large sect as well, but for some unknown reason the previous owner of this body had an entire mountain to himself, and there wasn’t even a single building in the area, which meant there was no chance of him finding any convenient passersby to try to coax the original’s identity out of.
Who ever heard of a transmigrator being able to tell at a glance that he had background and status, but had no idea who he actually was? Great god of transmigration, will this mistake lose you your bonus?
I’m so confused…
Gong Zhu liked reading novels in his free time, and the transmigration genre was an age-old favorite among webnovels, with countless different tropes coming out one after the other. Normally though, there was always a trigger for the transmigration. Car accidents, plane crashes, and falling in water were popular in the early years, following which came more advanced ideas: things like getting shocked while playing video games, failing to fill in the plotholes for a novel you wrote, and the greatest of them all—transmigrating into a harem novel and turning it gay.
But after thinking it over for a long while, Gong Zhu felt that he’d created a new branch of this genre—
“Blind transmigration”. The characteristics of this version were as follows:
1. I don’t know how I got here either!
2. The two scenes switched so seamlessly and naturally, there wasn’t even a fade to black!
3. And that’s not the half of it, because I don’t even have any idea where or what I transmigrated into!
With so many years of experience as a dumbass netizen, Gong Zhu’s complaints were already playing in his mind in danmaku format; and the kind you couldn’t turn off, at that.
Everything happened both naturally and suddenly. Just a second ago, he was sitting in his classroom, in a seat that was neither in the front nor the back of the class, the Ideological and Political Education teacher at the podium giving the university’s most sleep-inducing lesson in a dry voice. He’d pulled out his phone in preparation to order delivery for lunch, lowered his head, raised it again, and what appeared before his eyes was already another world.
Clouds gathered and dispersed, the morning sky beyond it an azure blue, with a vast sea of green as far as the eye could see; amidst that were luxuriant mountains dotted with emerald green, a long and winding river, and wooded mountains scattered haphazardly across the land like a chart of stars.
…What’s going on here?
The Ideological and Political Education professor’s last words were still lingering in his ears, too: “…Adhere to the Scientific Outlook on Development and realize the Four Modernizations…”
As such, Gong Zhu at the time had no idea that “transmigration” had happened; such a thing was far too unscientific, and definitely not Marxist at all. Although it wasn’t uncommon for people to transmigrate into the novel they were reading, they were generally still able to distinguish art from reality.
So Gong Zhu thought over it for a moment, and decided…the pork and mushroom baozi he’d bought at that roadside stall this morning…had been poisoned!
Weibo was covered in stories about fellow Yunnanese people eating mushrooms like they always did and hallucinating tiny people as a result, after all, so Gong Chu was extremely calm about it. There was honestly no intrinsic difference between suddenly seeing strange mountains or suddenly seeing tiny people – they were all just hallucinations. And so he coolly remained in his seat, facing a vast sea of clouds and mountain ranges, raised a hand, and said in a calm voice: “Excuse me for interrupting, laoshi, but I’ve started hallucinating. Could you please call 120, I think I’ve got food poisoning.”
A squirrel squatting in an old pine tree by the cliff edge watched Gong Zhu talking to himself, showing a very human look of concern for someone it clearly thought was mentally handicapped.
His left hand didn’t feel quite right; before he started “hallucinating”, it should have been holding his cellphone as he prepared to order delivery, but now…
“Cheep!”
A sparrow that hadn’t grown all its feathers yet?
…So I spent an entire holiday working to buy a brand new 3000-yuan smart…bird?
Gong Zhu expressionlessly lowered his head. The sparrow lying in his hand, sensing his gaze, narrowed its eyes happily and chirped again as it nuzzled its little yellow beak against his fingers.
…This…this is a seriously powerful poison mushroom! You gotta come quick, 120 people!
Once he was cured, they needed to have a serious discussion about this—#the food safety situation of vendors outside of college dormitories is worrying#—after eating their food products, a perfectly healthy male student suddenly began to hallucinate, thinking he was wearing wide-sleeved loose robes, kneeling on the edge of a cliff, and carrying a featherless baby bird in the palm of his hand!
Speaking of which, this baby bird felt way too real! Gong Zhu had always liked small animals, so it was taking all the self-control he had to resist the urge to pet the bird. What a joke—getting poisoned from eating mushrooms was already something to laugh at, but if the hallucinations made him start doing weird things on top of that, he might end up scaring his classmates and professor to tears!
Gong Zhu sat upright, quietly waiting for 120 to arrive. The mountain breeze brushed past his face; the sun and moon and stars revolved overhead, from shining sun in the sky to bright moon and scattered stars, and once again to a pale white light making its appearance in the east; a family of squirrels passed by his feet three times, transporting a total of eighteen acorns…only then did Gong Zhu gradually come to realize that something was off.
…From beginning to end, there hadn’t been any real change in the scenery aside from the unpredictable movements of the clouds around the mountain. 120 probably wouldn’t be coming, and that familiar classroom with its old-fashioned professor never reappeared either—as if they’d never existed to begin with.
Gong Zhu heard himself exhale, and in that moment the world around him suddenly became incredibly real.
For a college student from the 21st century, when the scenery in front of you suddenly changed from a classroom into a beautiful mountain peak…normally, your first reaction would be “WTF I’ve started hallucinating”, whereas the very last thing that might come to mind would be “Oh my god, did I just transmigrate?”
Gong Zhu shot up from his seat at this truly shocking conjecture. He stared dazedly at the chick currently curled into a fast-asleep ball in his palm, and slowly raised his hand. The little sparrow was warm and soft, and had yet to grow in all its flight feathers; he used his other hand to gently pet the bird’s head, and the little guy rolled over, looking like a face-up pancake in its sleep.
“Does this mean…you’re real?” Gong Zhu muttered to himself. The next instant, a beam of light broke through the sea of clouds in the distance so suddenly that Gong Zhu unthinkingly took a step backwards in shock. A flock of birds noisily circled upwards through the cloud layer, dodging away from multiple piercing lights—
Those were all people!
Gong Zhu stared in amazement at a bunch of people flying around in the distance, traveling in groups which shone in every color of the rainbow—
This…this was a cultivation world!
Right, Gong Zhu now noticed a problem: He’d been standing on this windy cliff all this time, dressed in an outfit that was perfectly celestial-looking but also so thin it was just one or two layers of soft cloth, and to top it all off, he’d just realized upon standing up that he wasn’t wearing any shoes…and yet he didn’t feel the slightest bit cold. He could feel a cool sensation on his toes when touching the frost and dew on the grass, but it wasn’t uncomfortable at all; he also didn’t feel hungry or thirsty despite not having ingested anything this whole time, and more importantly, he didn’t feel any need to pee at all.
He’d clearly still been struggling over what takeout to order not long ago, and in the blink of an eye he was suddenly a stranger to the needs of mortal men…it was hard to say if he should be laughing or crying over this.
So if he had a short bluescreen moment, that was perfectly understandable.
There was probably a really long distance between those people and the mountain peak Gong Zhu was on, yet he discovered that he could clearly make out every detail of their faces. He continued to stand there on the cliff edge for a long time, during which he figured out that the majority of the figures flying around in the distance had the appearance of young adults, and were all dressed in an identical style which was probably…a school uniform?
Some kind of heavenly music with a lively rhythm began to play, and those guys in uniform-like clothes began running frantically in several fixed directions. No matter how you looked at it, this was exactly like when high schoolers heard the school bell—Gong Zhu clicked his tongue in amazement. Back when he’d read a certain famous story about a little wizard with a lightning scar, he’d sighed, Those western wizards already started running schools to educate their kids a thousand years ago while us eastern cultivators are still kowtowing in sects, we’re seriously behind the times.
Maybe the god of transmigration had tossed Gong Zhu the chance to experience cultivation in person because they’d heard his complaints.
Also, upon closer inspection, not all of them were flying; many of them were actually…hopping around on clouds? A good number of them still seemed new to it, their clumsy appearance reminding Gong Zhu of Super Mario, and he couldn’t help laughing at this thought. After laughing though, he thought to himself, I really am careless—I’ve just gone and traveled to a strange new world, how can I still be in the mood to laugh?
But trading laughter for tears wouldn’t be any more of a help in this current situation, so Gong Zhu silently thought back to all those popular joke pieces like “The Transmigration Survival Guide” which he’d read on the internet in the past…who ever thought this sort of niche knowledge would come in handy one day?
Wait, Gong Zhu thought in a panic, according to (a famous green literature city’s popular BL) tropes, if you transmigrate into a cultivation world, and start the adventure at max level too— (normally it’s the opposing *****dian site that always has people transmigrating into a nobody, then leveling up through a series of challenging experiences, whereas on ***jiang the popular choice is transmigrating directly into a max-level godmode boss-type character) —if your goal isn’t to stop your own disciple or shidi from destroying the world, then it’s usually to stop your mortal enemy from destroying the world… Gong Zhu sucked in a breath with a hiss—he was getting kind of excited!
He’d said this before when reading novels, but if he were to transmigrate, he’d definitely spoil the protagonist to hell and back, and absolutely wouldn’t act wishy-washy like in the tropes, where the guy wants to be good to the protagonist but still has to consider how not to act too noticeably OOC, and then even when they’re about to reach the bedroom scene at the end he still insists on pretending he’s unyieldingly straight.
No, absolutely not! Besides, I was never straight to begin with!
Gong Zhu quirked his lips up in a smile—Come at me, I’m all ready to dote on the protag! Where are you protag?
No, that still doesn’t seem right, just wait another minute…who’s the protagonist?
Generally speaking, it’s standard practice for transmigration to come with a system! Shouldn’t there be a yaoi system that passes out quests, acts as a cheat program that only works some of the time, and occasionally kicks its host’s legs out from under him for lack of anything better to do? And then this system should guide the transmigrator step by step on the path to a loving relationship with the protagonist…ahem, I mean to the plot!
Just when Gong Zhu was pondering over this with a frown, wondering if maybe reality and the world of novels were more different than he’d thought, the system really did show up—
A voice suddenly appeared within his consciousness, methodically saying in the exact mechanical voice he’d always imagined: […Scanning memory…accessing life essence…simulating…System activating, startup successful—System welcomes Host’s return.]
So there really is one after all?
He’d been prepared for this, so the suddenly appearing voice didn’t scare him in the slightest.
“What do you mean, return?” The sharp-witted Gong Zhu asked—Don’t tell me, could my character design include a part about my past and present lives being inextricably linked to this world?
[…It was arrival…System is a product of this world, and learned to use words familiar to Host after scanning Host’s memories just now. Having only just learned, please allow forgiveness for any possible slight deviations in tone.]
Gong Zhu wordlessly put a palm to his forehead, after which he couldn’t help jokingly saying, “Your Chinese is seriously awkward. Could it be that you’re actually an English language system?”
The System fell silent as well, replying after a moment: [OK, I can speak English…]*
“No, thanks, let’s stick to Chinese.” Gong Zhu fully gave in.
[Based on the results of the earlier memory scan, System recommends that Host continue exploring the surrounding environment to determine his identity.] The system obediently switched back to stilted Chinese. For some reason though, Gong Zhu got the feeling it sounded aggrieved.
Feeling that he should be the aggrieved one here, he asked: “You don’t know who I am?”
The system went silent again, replying after a while with: […If…Host himself doesn’t remember who he is…how would System know?]
Gong Zhu: “…”
This must be a fake system! I’m pretty sure that under normal circumstances it should be the host knows nothing, and the system knows everything but purposely refuses to tell!
“Then do I have any missions I’m supposed to do?”
The system didn’t hesitate to answer this time: [Host’s own path in life should be up to himself to discover.]
Gong Zhu: “…” So you’re a chuuni-minded system, too.
#This doesn’t conform to the basic rules of transmigration at all!#
Who ever heard of accidentally transmigrating and then having to play detective by yourself, what do I want a system like you for, are you just here to help bump up my like count?
Looking back at what’s happened before and after transmigrating, the only thing that’s matched the tropes so far is that there’s a system, and it’s just as shitty as the stories say!
Accepting his fate with a shake of the head, he thought to himself, seeing as he no longer needed to eat, his cultivation level definitely wasn’t low; judging by what distant scenery he could see from the cliff, the cultivators were flying back and forth in groups, and there was a wide range to the area in which they flew as well, meaning this sect had to be a pretty big one; and he himself was occupying an entire mountain alone, without even anybody coming by to disturb him—
Could he possibly be a sect master living in seclusion?
He looked down at himself. His outfit was entirely different from those young cultivators’ school uniforms: his long hair wasn’t neatly tied in a proper ‘do, instead draping loosely over his shoulders, yes, and add to that the baby bird he was holding in his hand…if he were a low-level disciple playing with birds in a state of dishevelment up on a mountaintop somewhere, his shifu would’ve dragged him off for a spanking ages ago.
As such, there was no mistaking it: not only was he a max-level main account character, he was definitely a bigshot even among all the max-level characters around! The kind that had a high rank in the sect, spent his days alone in quiet contemplation, and was powerful enough that no one dared to mess with him!
Wonderful, Gong Zhu thought with a nod. Now, all he needed was a cute and well-behaved disciple who was in need of a hug! One with a tragic backstory and a deep-seated desire for revenge would be best; based on his self-cultivation built from long years of playing PVP games without breaking out in swears, he was certain he had more than enough patience and love to soothe a darling disciple exploding with resentful energy, and lead him step by step towards the Great Harmony of Life…
[…Host, shouldn’t you first figure out who you are before looking for a disciple?] the system asked melancholically.
Gong Zu expressionlessly stood by the cliffside and, just like it said in all the proper transmigration stories, wished really badly that he could blacklist the system.
…
About a dozen men and women lined the grand hall. No lamps lit the room, only the pillar of light around which they stood, seeming to pierce outwards through both the ceiling and floor of the building; a palm-sized miniature model of the hall floated within that light, and beneath it, each of these men and women stood within a magic array.
“This won’t do.” A woman with a stern expression on her otherwise lovely face dejectedly lowered her hand. “Is he still refusing to hand over the Yundu Palace array chart?”
“It’s time to charge the formation again.” A man dressed in purple retracted his hand as well, his tone cold as he said, “No matter what you say, I absolutely have to go have another talk with him.”
“You?” The woman from before mocked, “If you go, forget injecting spiritual power into the array. It’ll be a blessing from Daozu if he doesn’t stab you with his sword the moment he sees you!”
“He wouldn’t dare! If you ask me, he’s basically just a criminal to our sect, keeping him on Yueqi Peak is already more than he deserves. If he hadn’t refused to hand it over back then—”
“Tch, if you think you have what it takes then go fight him! Rob it from him, why don’t you!”
“Rob? It should belong to the sect to begin with, how is that robbery? Are we not even allowed to talk about him monopolizing it for himself?”
“Yueqi means ‘the place where the moonlight rests’. Does he still think he’s the same as he was so many years ago, like the bright moon in the sky, with the stars to guard him?” someone else sneered.
The myth had long since fallen from the altar.
They clashed in argument with each other, but luckily it didn’t go past verbal taunts, and didn’t escalate to physical violence; this continued until the man in the center stopped them, completely unaffected as he gently said, “Forget it, Yueqi Peak isn’t a place you can ascend; even I wouldn’t get any mercy from him right now. Let’s just follow the usual plan and pick a low-level disciple from the lower classes. Those young disciples are the only ones who can still cause him to have misgivings.”
“Yes, sir…” they all quietly replied, then each withdrew their spiritual power from the core of the grand array and left the hall.
HOME · NEXT =>
—It wasn’t that he was purposely posing like a master sage in a fantasy TV drama…actually, he might really be a lofty sage right now!
This was only a “might”, because he had no clue who he was right now! Who am I? Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? He’d just suddenly appeared here, innocent and confused, without the slightest idea of what had just happened.
—Through observation and reasoning, what little information he could gather was this: The people here could fly through the air, and were dressed in a very ancient style, which meant this was most likely a cultivation world rather than a wizarding world from western fantasy. The place he was currently located was a large sect as well, but for some unknown reason the previous owner of this body had an entire mountain to himself, and there wasn’t even a single building in the area, which meant there was no chance of him finding any convenient passersby to try to coax the original’s identity out of.
Who ever heard of a transmigrator being able to tell at a glance that he had background and status, but had no idea who he actually was? Great god of transmigration, will this mistake lose you your bonus?
I’m so confused…
Gong Zhu liked reading novels in his free time, and the transmigration genre was an age-old favorite among webnovels, with countless different tropes coming out one after the other. Normally though, there was always a trigger for the transmigration. Car accidents, plane crashes, and falling in water were popular in the early years, following which came more advanced ideas: things like getting shocked while playing video games, failing to fill in the plotholes for a novel you wrote, and the greatest of them all—transmigrating into a harem novel and turning it gay.
But after thinking it over for a long while, Gong Zhu felt that he’d created a new branch of this genre—
“Blind transmigration”. The characteristics of this version were as follows:
1. I don’t know how I got here either!
2. The two scenes switched so seamlessly and naturally, there wasn’t even a fade to black!
3. And that’s not the half of it, because I don’t even have any idea where or what I transmigrated into!
With so many years of experience as a dumbass netizen, Gong Zhu’s complaints were already playing in his mind in danmaku format; and the kind you couldn’t turn off, at that.
Everything happened both naturally and suddenly. Just a second ago, he was sitting in his classroom, in a seat that was neither in the front nor the back of the class, the Ideological and Political Education teacher at the podium giving the university’s most sleep-inducing lesson in a dry voice. He’d pulled out his phone in preparation to order delivery for lunch, lowered his head, raised it again, and what appeared before his eyes was already another world.
Clouds gathered and dispersed, the morning sky beyond it an azure blue, with a vast sea of green as far as the eye could see; amidst that were luxuriant mountains dotted with emerald green, a long and winding river, and wooded mountains scattered haphazardly across the land like a chart of stars.
…What’s going on here?
The Ideological and Political Education professor’s last words were still lingering in his ears, too: “…Adhere to the Scientific Outlook on Development and realize the Four Modernizations…”
As such, Gong Zhu at the time had no idea that “transmigration” had happened; such a thing was far too unscientific, and definitely not Marxist at all. Although it wasn’t uncommon for people to transmigrate into the novel they were reading, they were generally still able to distinguish art from reality.
So Gong Zhu thought over it for a moment, and decided…the pork and mushroom baozi he’d bought at that roadside stall this morning…had been poisoned!
Weibo was covered in stories about fellow Yunnanese people eating mushrooms like they always did and hallucinating tiny people as a result, after all, so Gong Chu was extremely calm about it. There was honestly no intrinsic difference between suddenly seeing strange mountains or suddenly seeing tiny people – they were all just hallucinations. And so he coolly remained in his seat, facing a vast sea of clouds and mountain ranges, raised a hand, and said in a calm voice: “Excuse me for interrupting, laoshi, but I’ve started hallucinating. Could you please call 120, I think I’ve got food poisoning.”
A squirrel squatting in an old pine tree by the cliff edge watched Gong Zhu talking to himself, showing a very human look of concern for someone it clearly thought was mentally handicapped.
His left hand didn’t feel quite right; before he started “hallucinating”, it should have been holding his cellphone as he prepared to order delivery, but now…
“Cheep!”
A sparrow that hadn’t grown all its feathers yet?
…So I spent an entire holiday working to buy a brand new 3000-yuan smart…bird?
Gong Zhu expressionlessly lowered his head. The sparrow lying in his hand, sensing his gaze, narrowed its eyes happily and chirped again as it nuzzled its little yellow beak against his fingers.
…This…this is a seriously powerful poison mushroom! You gotta come quick, 120 people!
Once he was cured, they needed to have a serious discussion about this—#the food safety situation of vendors outside of college dormitories is worrying#—after eating their food products, a perfectly healthy male student suddenly began to hallucinate, thinking he was wearing wide-sleeved loose robes, kneeling on the edge of a cliff, and carrying a featherless baby bird in the palm of his hand!
Speaking of which, this baby bird felt way too real! Gong Zhu had always liked small animals, so it was taking all the self-control he had to resist the urge to pet the bird. What a joke—getting poisoned from eating mushrooms was already something to laugh at, but if the hallucinations made him start doing weird things on top of that, he might end up scaring his classmates and professor to tears!
Gong Zhu sat upright, quietly waiting for 120 to arrive. The mountain breeze brushed past his face; the sun and moon and stars revolved overhead, from shining sun in the sky to bright moon and scattered stars, and once again to a pale white light making its appearance in the east; a family of squirrels passed by his feet three times, transporting a total of eighteen acorns…only then did Gong Zhu gradually come to realize that something was off.
…From beginning to end, there hadn’t been any real change in the scenery aside from the unpredictable movements of the clouds around the mountain. 120 probably wouldn’t be coming, and that familiar classroom with its old-fashioned professor never reappeared either—as if they’d never existed to begin with.
Gong Zhu heard himself exhale, and in that moment the world around him suddenly became incredibly real.
For a college student from the 21st century, when the scenery in front of you suddenly changed from a classroom into a beautiful mountain peak…normally, your first reaction would be “WTF I’ve started hallucinating”, whereas the very last thing that might come to mind would be “Oh my god, did I just transmigrate?”
Gong Zhu shot up from his seat at this truly shocking conjecture. He stared dazedly at the chick currently curled into a fast-asleep ball in his palm, and slowly raised his hand. The little sparrow was warm and soft, and had yet to grow in all its flight feathers; he used his other hand to gently pet the bird’s head, and the little guy rolled over, looking like a face-up pancake in its sleep.
“Does this mean…you’re real?” Gong Zhu muttered to himself. The next instant, a beam of light broke through the sea of clouds in the distance so suddenly that Gong Zhu unthinkingly took a step backwards in shock. A flock of birds noisily circled upwards through the cloud layer, dodging away from multiple piercing lights—
Those were all people!
Gong Zhu stared in amazement at a bunch of people flying around in the distance, traveling in groups which shone in every color of the rainbow—
This…this was a cultivation world!
Right, Gong Zhu now noticed a problem: He’d been standing on this windy cliff all this time, dressed in an outfit that was perfectly celestial-looking but also so thin it was just one or two layers of soft cloth, and to top it all off, he’d just realized upon standing up that he wasn’t wearing any shoes…and yet he didn’t feel the slightest bit cold. He could feel a cool sensation on his toes when touching the frost and dew on the grass, but it wasn’t uncomfortable at all; he also didn’t feel hungry or thirsty despite not having ingested anything this whole time, and more importantly, he didn’t feel any need to pee at all.
He’d clearly still been struggling over what takeout to order not long ago, and in the blink of an eye he was suddenly a stranger to the needs of mortal men…it was hard to say if he should be laughing or crying over this.
So if he had a short bluescreen moment, that was perfectly understandable.
There was probably a really long distance between those people and the mountain peak Gong Zhu was on, yet he discovered that he could clearly make out every detail of their faces. He continued to stand there on the cliff edge for a long time, during which he figured out that the majority of the figures flying around in the distance had the appearance of young adults, and were all dressed in an identical style which was probably…a school uniform?
Some kind of heavenly music with a lively rhythm began to play, and those guys in uniform-like clothes began running frantically in several fixed directions. No matter how you looked at it, this was exactly like when high schoolers heard the school bell—Gong Zhu clicked his tongue in amazement. Back when he’d read a certain famous story about a little wizard with a lightning scar, he’d sighed, Those western wizards already started running schools to educate their kids a thousand years ago while us eastern cultivators are still kowtowing in sects, we’re seriously behind the times.
Maybe the god of transmigration had tossed Gong Zhu the chance to experience cultivation in person because they’d heard his complaints.
Also, upon closer inspection, not all of them were flying; many of them were actually…hopping around on clouds? A good number of them still seemed new to it, their clumsy appearance reminding Gong Zhu of Super Mario, and he couldn’t help laughing at this thought. After laughing though, he thought to himself, I really am careless—I’ve just gone and traveled to a strange new world, how can I still be in the mood to laugh?
But trading laughter for tears wouldn’t be any more of a help in this current situation, so Gong Zhu silently thought back to all those popular joke pieces like “The Transmigration Survival Guide” which he’d read on the internet in the past…who ever thought this sort of niche knowledge would come in handy one day?
Wait, Gong Zhu thought in a panic, according to (a famous green literature city’s popular BL) tropes, if you transmigrate into a cultivation world, and start the adventure at max level too— (normally it’s the opposing *****dian site that always has people transmigrating into a nobody, then leveling up through a series of challenging experiences, whereas on ***jiang the popular choice is transmigrating directly into a max-level godmode boss-type character) —if your goal isn’t to stop your own disciple or shidi from destroying the world, then it’s usually to stop your mortal enemy from destroying the world… Gong Zhu sucked in a breath with a hiss—he was getting kind of excited!
He’d said this before when reading novels, but if he were to transmigrate, he’d definitely spoil the protagonist to hell and back, and absolutely wouldn’t act wishy-washy like in the tropes, where the guy wants to be good to the protagonist but still has to consider how not to act too noticeably OOC, and then even when they’re about to reach the bedroom scene at the end he still insists on pretending he’s unyieldingly straight.
No, absolutely not! Besides, I was never straight to begin with!
Gong Zhu quirked his lips up in a smile—Come at me, I’m all ready to dote on the protag! Where are you protag?
No, that still doesn’t seem right, just wait another minute…who’s the protagonist?
Generally speaking, it’s standard practice for transmigration to come with a system! Shouldn’t there be a yaoi system that passes out quests, acts as a cheat program that only works some of the time, and occasionally kicks its host’s legs out from under him for lack of anything better to do? And then this system should guide the transmigrator step by step on the path to a loving relationship with the protagonist…ahem, I mean to the plot!
Just when Gong Zhu was pondering over this with a frown, wondering if maybe reality and the world of novels were more different than he’d thought, the system really did show up—
A voice suddenly appeared within his consciousness, methodically saying in the exact mechanical voice he’d always imagined: […Scanning memory…accessing life essence…simulating…System activating, startup successful—System welcomes Host’s return.]
So there really is one after all?
He’d been prepared for this, so the suddenly appearing voice didn’t scare him in the slightest.
“What do you mean, return?” The sharp-witted Gong Zhu asked—Don’t tell me, could my character design include a part about my past and present lives being inextricably linked to this world?
[…It was arrival…System is a product of this world, and learned to use words familiar to Host after scanning Host’s memories just now. Having only just learned, please allow forgiveness for any possible slight deviations in tone.]
Gong Zhu wordlessly put a palm to his forehead, after which he couldn’t help jokingly saying, “Your Chinese is seriously awkward. Could it be that you’re actually an English language system?”
The System fell silent as well, replying after a moment: [OK, I can speak English…]*
“No, thanks, let’s stick to Chinese.” Gong Zhu fully gave in.
[Based on the results of the earlier memory scan, System recommends that Host continue exploring the surrounding environment to determine his identity.] The system obediently switched back to stilted Chinese. For some reason though, Gong Zhu got the feeling it sounded aggrieved.
Feeling that he should be the aggrieved one here, he asked: “You don’t know who I am?”
The system went silent again, replying after a while with: […If…Host himself doesn’t remember who he is…how would System know?]
Gong Zhu: “…”
This must be a fake system! I’m pretty sure that under normal circumstances it should be the host knows nothing, and the system knows everything but purposely refuses to tell!
“Then do I have any missions I’m supposed to do?”
The system didn’t hesitate to answer this time: [Host’s own path in life should be up to himself to discover.]
Gong Zhu: “…” So you’re a chuuni-minded system, too.
#This doesn’t conform to the basic rules of transmigration at all!#
Who ever heard of accidentally transmigrating and then having to play detective by yourself, what do I want a system like you for, are you just here to help bump up my like count?
Looking back at what’s happened before and after transmigrating, the only thing that’s matched the tropes so far is that there’s a system, and it’s just as shitty as the stories say!
Accepting his fate with a shake of the head, he thought to himself, seeing as he no longer needed to eat, his cultivation level definitely wasn’t low; judging by what distant scenery he could see from the cliff, the cultivators were flying back and forth in groups, and there was a wide range to the area in which they flew as well, meaning this sect had to be a pretty big one; and he himself was occupying an entire mountain alone, without even anybody coming by to disturb him—
Could he possibly be a sect master living in seclusion?
He looked down at himself. His outfit was entirely different from those young cultivators’ school uniforms: his long hair wasn’t neatly tied in a proper ‘do, instead draping loosely over his shoulders, yes, and add to that the baby bird he was holding in his hand…if he were a low-level disciple playing with birds in a state of dishevelment up on a mountaintop somewhere, his shifu would’ve dragged him off for a spanking ages ago.
As such, there was no mistaking it: not only was he a max-level main account character, he was definitely a bigshot even among all the max-level characters around! The kind that had a high rank in the sect, spent his days alone in quiet contemplation, and was powerful enough that no one dared to mess with him!
Wonderful, Gong Zhu thought with a nod. Now, all he needed was a cute and well-behaved disciple who was in need of a hug! One with a tragic backstory and a deep-seated desire for revenge would be best; based on his self-cultivation built from long years of playing PVP games without breaking out in swears, he was certain he had more than enough patience and love to soothe a darling disciple exploding with resentful energy, and lead him step by step towards the Great Harmony of Life…
[…Host, shouldn’t you first figure out who you are before looking for a disciple?] the system asked melancholically.
Gong Zu expressionlessly stood by the cliffside and, just like it said in all the proper transmigration stories, wished really badly that he could blacklist the system.
…
About a dozen men and women lined the grand hall. No lamps lit the room, only the pillar of light around which they stood, seeming to pierce outwards through both the ceiling and floor of the building; a palm-sized miniature model of the hall floated within that light, and beneath it, each of these men and women stood within a magic array.
“This won’t do.” A woman with a stern expression on her otherwise lovely face dejectedly lowered her hand. “Is he still refusing to hand over the Yundu Palace array chart?”
“It’s time to charge the formation again.” A man dressed in purple retracted his hand as well, his tone cold as he said, “No matter what you say, I absolutely have to go have another talk with him.”
“You?” The woman from before mocked, “If you go, forget injecting spiritual power into the array. It’ll be a blessing from Daozu if he doesn’t stab you with his sword the moment he sees you!”
“He wouldn’t dare! If you ask me, he’s basically just a criminal to our sect, keeping him on Yueqi Peak is already more than he deserves. If he hadn’t refused to hand it over back then—”
“Tch, if you think you have what it takes then go fight him! Rob it from him, why don’t you!”
“Rob? It should belong to the sect to begin with, how is that robbery? Are we not even allowed to talk about him monopolizing it for himself?”
“Yueqi means ‘the place where the moonlight rests’. Does he still think he’s the same as he was so many years ago, like the bright moon in the sky, with the stars to guard him?” someone else sneered.
The myth had long since fallen from the altar.
They clashed in argument with each other, but luckily it didn’t go past verbal taunts, and didn’t escalate to physical violence; this continued until the man in the center stopped them, completely unaffected as he gently said, “Forget it, Yueqi Peak isn’t a place you can ascend; even I wouldn’t get any mercy from him right now. Let’s just follow the usual plan and pick a low-level disciple from the lower classes. Those young disciples are the only ones who can still cause him to have misgivings.”
“Yes, sir…” they all quietly replied, then each withdrew their spiritual power from the core of the grand array and left the hall.