At the foot of Kunlun Mountain, in Yutian City.
It was the middle of winter, and snowflakes were swirling down from the sky.
The city walls of Yutian City stood tall and imposing, covered with thick layers of snow. The entire world seemed engulfed in a wintry haze, with everything in sight blanketed in snow.
This was the northernmost place a mortal could reach. Due to the city being covered in snow for half the year, the harsh natural conditions made it difficult for crops to grow, and so few people lived here.
Compared to the bustling Jiangnan, this place was vast and sparsely populated.
The only stone-paved street in the city was coated in ice. A merchant wearing a rabbit fur hat opened his shop door, looked up at the sky, then at the empty street, and thought to himself that today wasn't suitable for business.
The entire street was empty, with not a soul in sight. Occasionally, a flash of light would streak across the sky—an indication of a highly skilled cultivator flying by on a sword.
In such cold weather, a few people would likely freeze to death.
In a courtyard corner within the city, a half-man-tall pile of snow suddenly trembled. A pair of frostbitten, purple hands emerged, groping around until they pushed against the ground and, with difficulty, stood up.
Snow fell from the figure, revealing a shabby gray cloak and a face pale with cold, yet still youthful and innocent.
It was a little girl.
She looked about twelve or thirteen years old, small and skinny, with sunken cheeks that made her eyes appear especially large.
Her head and shoulders were covered in snow, and even her long eyelashes were dusted with silver.
She stood there, motionless, confusion filling her eyes as if she couldn't understand why she was there.
Wasn't she… supposed to be dead?
Where was she now…?
Su Luowei stood dazed for a long while, trying to recall the last image in her memory to make sense of her situation.
The last thing she remembered was lying in Meng Shuying's arms, telling her not to forget her true purpose in cultivation.
The details were blurry, but she distinctly remembered that day had been bright and clear, with a sky as blue as water after the storm clouds had dispersed—completely different from the cold and darkness she was experiencing now.
A cold wind blew past, snapping her out of her stupor.
So cold…
The most pressing issue now was finding shelter from the cold.
In this terrible weather, every door in Yutian City was tightly shut. Su Luowei trudged along the icy stone-paved road, head down against the wind, which stung her eyes so badly she could barely keep them open.
Suddenly, the sound of wheels grinding against the ground came from behind, accompanied by loud shouting: "Move aside! Move aside!"
She wanted to move, but her body wouldn't cooperate. Unable to dodge in time, she was struck by a speeding carriage, sent flying into the air, and then heavily slammed back down to the ground.
… She hadn't meant to cause an accident.
Before she lost consciousness, Su Luowei's last thought was: Wasn't she a Golden Core cultivator? How could she be so weak…
Before she even opened her eyes, a familiar voice sounded in her head:
"Host, you're awake?"
Hmm? This scenario felt a bit familiar.
Even though she had a guess who it was, she asked just to be sure, "Who are you…"
Whether it was because of the blow to her head or something else, Su Luowei's head was throbbing with pain.
"Host, you've forgotten! I'm Xiao Ba! You didn't really forget me, did you? Wuwuwu~"
Persistent! It just wouldn't leave her alone!
"No, how could I ever forget you?" Her tone was still somewhat gentle.
But the next sentence sounded like it was spoken through gritted teeth.
"Xiao Ba, you deceived me so badly…"
When she had first met Xiao Ba, it had told her that she had to complete the tasks to return to her original world. It also said that if she failed a task or died in this world, she would die for real.
But clearly, even after her spiritual sea was destroyed and her Golden Core shattered, she hadn't died. Instead, she'd somehow ended up in another body.
Had she known this… Had she known this from the start, she would have ignored the system and Xiao Ba, and taken Meng Shuying straight to the Wenxian Platform, instead of wasting three years.
After all, she couldn't go back, and she wouldn't die. She might as well have followed her own heart and lived with passion.
"Eh… This, this can't all be blamed on me… Let me explain, I was misled too! This whole thing… It's Meng Shuying's fault!"
"Alright, go ahead and explain. I'm listening." Su Luowei prepared herself, curious to see how Xiao Ba would explain this.
"But what does this have to do with Meng Shuying?"
She was so calm that Xiao Ba didn't know where to start.
"Let me think… Where should I begin… Um… You know, this world is divided into the Human Realm and the Demon Realm. Human cultivators can ascend to immortality after breaking through to the Mahayana stage. In the Demon Realm, it's similar, but those who break through to the Mahayana stage aren't called Immortal Lords; they're called Demon Lords."
"Once a cultivator ascends to immortality, they can no longer absorb spiritual energy from the world and must rely on incense offerings for sustenance. The more incense they receive, the stronger their power and the longer they can live. A great war broke out among the immortals over the competition for incense.
In that war, countless immortals fell, and the Human Realm suffered greatly. The Demon Lords seized the opportunity to invade the Human Realm."
"The war dragged on for a long time. Three of the four Demon Lords died, and the last one was seriously injured. The Human Realm fared even worse… not a single one survived. Without Immortal Lords to protect it, the Demon Seal was broken, allowing the demons to wreak havoc in the Human Realm. It wasn't until Wen Miaomiao broke through to the Mahayana stage that the Human Realm began to have the strength to fight back."
Su Luowei said, "Right… I remember that was how it was written in the book."
At the end of the book, Wen Miaomiao successfully sealed Meng Shuying under Qingxu Peak and closed the passage between the Human and Demon Realms, finally attaining immortality.
It seemed like a very typical, happy ending.
Xiao Ba fell silent for a long moment before speaking again, this time with a heavy tone, "That wasn't the true ending."
Its voice was dull, and for the first time, Su Luowei detected a sense of sorrow from it: "The true ending is that the Demon King Fugang rescued Meng Shuying, and together they led the demon army to invade the Human Realm once more…"
Su Luowei frowned. "What about Wen Miaomiao? She had already ascended; didn't she stop them?"
"She wasn't their match…"
"How could that be?"
Su Luowei distinctly remembered that Xiao Ba had said that three of the four Demon Lords had died and that Fugang had been seriously injured.
Had he already recovered? Or…
A sudden suspicion rose in Su Luowei's mind.
"It was Meng Shuying. She became the fifth Demon Lord of the Demon Realm." Xiao Ba's tone was now filled with an undeniable complexity when it mentioned Meng Shuying.
"She became incredibly powerful, even more so than Fugang. She led the demons to drive all the cultivators of the Human Realm to the foot of Kunlun Mountain. With Kunlun Mountain as the boundary, they were confined to a prison, not allowed to take a single step beyond. Anyone who tried to challenge her met a terrible end…"
Remembering the rows of cultivators' heads lined up at the foot of Kunlun Mountain, Xiao Ba couldn't help but shiver. It was terrifying. Just mentioning her name made it feel like there was a pair of eyes watching it from the darkness.
The information Xiao Ba provided was overwhelming, and Su Luowei needed some time to process it. After a long while, she finally asked, "But what does all this have to do with you lying to me?"
Xiao Ba let out a very human-like sigh, "I was just getting to that… Although Wen Miaomiao couldn't defeat Meng Shuying, she wasn't willing to give up."
In this world, everything has a predetermined course. Originally, it was believed that after the cultivators retreated to Kunlun Mountain, they would spend thousands of years rebuilding and recovering, and that would be their fate.
But Heaven is merciful and always leaves a sliver of hope in the darkness.
Unwilling to see the world fall into ruin and mortals become fodder for demons, Wen Miaomiao racked her brains until she finally came up with a plan.
Though the immortals had fallen, some of their consciousnesses remained in the world. Wen Miaomiao contacted these remnants and, with the combined power of the immortals, was able to glimpse the faint glimmer of hope for the Human Realm within the Heavenly Dao.
"That hope was you, Host. You were that glimmer of hope. In fact, your task wasn't to follow the original plot, but to guide Meng Shuying back to the righteous path.
As long as Meng Shuying didn't join the demons, the Human Realm wouldn't face utter defeat.
And the reason the system malfunctioned was because, on the day Meng Shuying ascended to immortality, she tried to foresee her future and caught a glimpse of you in the River of Destiny.
So, she interfered with the system and gave it a second command, instructing it to guide you to kill Wen Miaomiao before she grew too powerful.
It was because the system had two conflicting missions that I became so confused."
At this point, Su Luowei finally understood everything.
No wonder she always thought the system wasn't very smart—it had two conflicting commands in its head. These commands were so contradictory that neither could override the other, and by chance, they collided to create what appeared to be a neutral mission—to follow the original story to the end.
These three tasks had absolutely nothing in common.
Su Luowei couldn't help but laugh.
"Actually, according to the original setup, even if you failed the task, there wouldn't have been any punishment. All those penalties you suffered were added by Meng Shuying." Although Xiao Ba knew that this Meng Shuying wasn't the same as the one they were dealing with now, it was still furious after learning the truth. So, it couldn't help but try to paint her in a bad light.
"Meng Shuying originally set it up so that if you didn't kill Wen Miaomiao, you would die. Fortunately, I protected you. See? I was still pretty useful, wasn't I~" By the time it got to this point, Xiao Ba's tone was almost bursting with pride.
"You still have the nerve to say that." Su Luowei shook her head in exasperation. "You were all so unreliable."
Then, she suddenly remembered something very important, "Do I still need to complete any tasks?"
"No, because you've already died once, your bond with the system has been automatically severed. From now on, you're a free person."
After all the things Xiao Ba had said, finally hearing some good news was a relief.
"Does that mean I can go back to Qingxu Sect?"
But before Su Luowei could even begin to celebrate being free of the heavy shackles, Xiao Ba quickly interrupted with a question, "There's one more piece of good news and one piece of bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
Su Luowei chose to hear the bad news first.
"The bad news is…" Xiao Ba hesitated. "You probably… can't go back to Qingxu Sect. Because your previous body's spiritual sea has been destroyed, and your Golden Core has shattered. It's just an empty shell now, and it can't hold your soul."
… She knew things wouldn't be that easy.
"What's the good news?"
"The good news is… you have a new body now. Um, the one you're in right now. I've been waiting for a long time, and I finally found a new body that suits you."
Waited… for a long time.
Su Luowei suddenly had a bad feeling.
"Wait! What year is it now?"