“Achoo!”
Half-awake, Fu Yan was jolted out of her dream by a massive sneeze. The movement was so big her whole body seemed to shake.
She reached up and rubbed her nose, and only then did she realize her entire body was icy cold, like she’d just been hauled out of a freezer.
“Why is it so cold? Where’s my blanket?”
Not caring about anything else for the moment, Fu Yan hurriedly rubbed her arms and legs like crazy, trying to warm herself up as fast as possible.
She hadn’t even been rubbing for thirty seconds before she finally realized something was wrong.
This… didn’t seem to be her room.
She quickly looked around, and the sight that met her eyes scared her stiff.
“Holy shit, where is this?”
All around her were run-down, dilapidated buildings. In the center of the hall stood a statue of a Buddha missing one arm, cobwebs draped thick over it. No matter how you looked at it, this was an abandoned little shrine.
Fu Yan, at this moment, was lying in a pile of straw beneath that statue. In front of her, a campfire was nearly burnt out, with only a faint trace of heat left.
Faced with this unfamiliar environment, her first reaction was—
Had she been kidnapped?
She clearly remembered going to sleep safely at home last night. How did she wake up kidnapped and dumped in the middle of nowhere? Forget tossing her out in the wilderness—couldn’t that bastard kidnapper at least have brought her blanket along?
She’d almost frozen to death out here!
Just as Fu Yan was on the verge of cursing someone out, a sharp pain stabbed through her head. Right after, something flooded into her mind.
She sat dazed on the straw pile for the time it would take to drink a pot of tea, before she finally had to accept a single fact.
She hadn’t been kidnapped.
She had… transmigrated into a book.
Lately, a cultivation novel called “Cultivating the Dao” had exploded across the male-reader rankings. Curious, Fu Yan had clicked in, binge-read two hundred chapters in one go, and had to admit the author’s pacing was excellent—bloody, exciting, and satisfying as hell.
Only when the male lead’s second wife showed up did Fu Yan belatedly realize this was yet another harem novel.
Having stepped right on that landmine, Fu Yan was thoroughly disgusted. She cursed out the author and the male lead a few times in her heart, then instantly dropped the book.
But reality now was that, of all things, she had transmigrated right into that very same cultivation story, “Cultivating the Dao.”
“Fuck this…”
The only blessing in this mess was that she hadn’t become one of the male lead’s harem. Otherwise she really might have found a wall and bashed her head in.
She hadn’t even become some villainess or cannon-fodder supporting role.
Instead, she’d become a complete background extra sharing her exact same name.
Yes. She’d become a Fu Yan who had never once appeared on-page in “Cultivating the Dao,” a random nobody.
This Fu Yan was an outer-sect disciple of the Shuiling Sect.
And according to what she remembered, the Shuiling Sect would eventually be destroyed by the male lead alone.
That…
For a moment, Fu Yan genuinely didn’t know whether to be happy or worried.
Once she finished digesting the fact that she’d transmigrated, Fu Yan could only let out a sorrowful sigh. What was done was done. Since she was here, she could only accept it and make the best of it.
After settling her mood, she went through the original owner’s memories again and again, sorting them out carefully.
In short: she—Fu Yan—was just sixteen this year. She came from an ordinary background and had utterly average cultivation aptitude. She’d joined the Shuiling Sect five years ago and only become a proper outer-sect disciple two years prior.
As for her cultivation, she’d been stuck at the ninth level of the Foundation Establishment Stage for over half a year now.
As expected… just average aptitude. About as standard and unremarkable as it got.
Fu Yan thought, this background-extra setting really didn’t lie.
In this novel’s world, the first step of cultivation was the Foundation Establishment Stage, divided into nine levels. After that came opening one’s Qi Sea and stepping into the Aperture Stage, which was further divided into early, mid, late, and great completion.
But in truth, Foundation Establishment didn’t even really count as having stepped onto the true path of cultivation.
Since ancient times, to mortals, cultivation itself was going against the heavens—hard beyond hard.
For cultivators, only by drawing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into their bodies, opening up a Qi Sea within, and transforming that spiritual energy into true essence for their own use—only by stepping into the Aperture Stage—could they be considered true cultivators.
But opening the Qi Sea was easier said than done.
Countless cultivators with mediocre aptitude failed to open their Qi Sea their entire lives. They never stepped into the Aperture Stage, their cultivation forever stuck at the ninth level of Foundation Establishment.
You could say that opening the Qi Sea was a filter on the cultivation path, blocking countless mediocre people outside, a gate they could see but never pass.
The original owner’s cultivation had been stuck at the ninth level of Foundation Establishment for over half a year, with no sign of a breakthrough. Naturally, she was unwilling to accept that. So she’d taken on a sect mission and come down the mountain to temper herself.
After all, aside from enlightenment, real combat experience was crucial for improving one’s cultivation.
But for some unknown reason, on the way down the mountain, the original owner had kept feeling chilled to the bone. In the end, she froze to death in this deserted, ruined temple.
Which was how Fu Yan managed to transmigrate into her body.
“…”
After sorting through the original owner’s memories and recalling the plot of “Cultivating the Dao,” Fu Yan could more or less figure out the current timeline.
Right now, the male lead had probably just gotten his cheat—his “golden finger”—not long ago and hadn’t started shining yet. His cultivation was likely not even as high as her current ninth level of Foundation Establishment.
As for the destruction of the Shuiling Sect, that was still several years away.
“Forget it. My existence doesn’t clash with the male lead’s storyline anyway, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
Fu Yan thought it over and couldn’t help muttering to herself.
Since she’d entered a cultivation novel, obviously she had to cultivate. In a world where human lives were as cheap as ants, Fu Yan knew clearly that only having enough strength could keep her alive. That was an eternal truth.
As for the male lead, she couldn’t be bothered.
He had plot armor and a huge golden cheat. She definitely wasn’t going to run over just to play cannon fodder.
As for going to cling to his thigh while he was still weak? She had zero interest. The guy would eventually build a harem. If she went to cling to him, wouldn’t that be volunteering to be one of his harem?
Just imagining that scene gave her full-body goosebumps.
Having made up her mind, Fu Yan finally relaxed somewhat. She slowly climbed out of the straw pile. Her once-freezing body was at last starting to warm up.
Outside the broken window, the sky was already lightening with pale fish-belly white. Dawn was almost here. The campfire in the ruined temple had just gone out, losing its last trace of warmth.
Maybe because she’d just transmigrated, when she got up and walked a few steps, her limbs still felt stiff. To quickly adapt to this body, she did a set of radio calisthenics in the ruined temple.
“One, two, three, four…”
“Two, two, three, four…”
…
Panting hard as she jumped around, Fu Yan naturally didn’t notice that, at that very moment, someone was flying past above the ruined temple on a sword. Passing overhead, that person slowed down unconsciously.
This was none other than Bai Li, an inner-sect disciple of the Shuiling Sect.
Bai Li had been in seclusion for two months. The moment she came out, she’d wanted to go down the mountain for a walk, and just so happened to catch sight of the scene inside the ruined temple.
With Bai Li’s cultivation, already at the late stage of Aperture, even without deliberately probing her surroundings, the sight of Fu Yan doing radio calisthenics in the temple below still slipped straight into her perception.
The dance Fu Yan was doing was something she’d never seen before. Finding it a bit novel, she stopped to watch for a while.
“This dance… is actually kind of interesting.”
Bai Li couldn’t help it. Watching Fu Yan in the ruined temple, she almost burst out laughing.
As she thought this, the identity token hanging at Fu Yan’s waist fell into her line of sight.
“Fu… Yan? So she’s actually an outer-sect disciple of my Shuiling Sect. Pity her aptitude’s rather mediocre.”
After saying that, Bai Li shook her head slightly.
She could see Fu Yan’s cultivation at a glance. Although she’d reached the ninth level of Foundation Establishment, there were no signs of an impending breakthrough. Without some stroke of fortune, it would be very difficult for her to open her Qi Sea and step into the Aperture Stage.
On the path of cultivation, fortune was something you could only hope for, never seek.
Down below, Fu Yan seemed to have tired herself out and stopped to rest. Bai Li didn’t think much more of it, and soon stepped back onto her sword and flew away.
“Phew, that killed me!”
Fu Yan had no idea someone had just secretly watched her doing radio calisthenics. At this moment she was panting heavily, exhausted.
Still, she finally felt life in her limbs again. Her movements were much smoother, and her whole person felt more energetic.
To better adapt to the body, after resting a bit, Fu Yan ran through the whole set again. Only when the sun was high in the sky did she finally prepare to leave the ruined temple.
After tidying herself up, Fu Yan picked up the original owner’s iron sword and walked out.
“Let me see what sect mission the original owner took for this trip down the mountain.”
Muttering, she pulled the sect’s mission booklet from her chest.
Turned out, some fifteen hundred li east of the Shuiling Sect was a place called Black Spring Town. Rumor had it a notorious “flower-picking thief” had appeared there recently, to the point the women of the town no longer dared step outside easily, afraid they might be snatched away by him if they weren’t careful.
Because of this bastard pervert, the entire Black Spring Town was living in fear.
So they’d sent people to the nearest Shuiling Sect to ask for help, hoping someone could come rid them of this flower-picking thief.
Seeing this, Fu Yan’s lips twitched.
“In a xianxia cultivation setting, there’s actually still this kind of scummy flower-picking pervert…”
According to the intel the Shuiling Sect had received, this pervert’s cultivation was around the ninth level of Foundation Establishment. He hadn’t opened his Qi Sea or entered the Aperture Stage, so the mission had been assigned to outer-sect disciples as training.
The original owner was also at the ninth level of Foundation Establishment and just happened to need combat at her own level, so she’d taken the mission without hesitation.
Overall, the mission wasn’t especially difficult, so she hadn’t chosen to team up with her fellow disciples. She’d come alone.
In modern terms, a “flower-picking thief” was just a blatant rapist. The kind of person Fu Yan hated most in daily life.
“All right then. ‘Flower-picking thief,’ huh? You can be the first grindstone I use in this world.”
Fu Yan put away the mission booklet and smiled slowly as she spoke.
