Chapter 107| Chapter 108| Chapter 109
Chapter 107: False
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
Wen Liyun blinked his watery eyes, his handsome brow twitching slightly as his thin lips parted.
Lu Yunxi’s eyes lit up, her heart surging with hope. She leaned closer, moving her two fingers directly in front of his face while tilting her ear down to catch whatever he might mutter.
Junior Brother hasn’t completely lost consciousness after all! He can still see clearly…
Huh?!
The relieved smile on her face froze instantly when her junior brother suddenly reached out and grabbed her hand.
“W-What are you doing?”
Wen Liyun gently pulled her slender white fingers to his mouth, taking them between his lips.
The warm, soft sensation against her fingertips sent a jolt through her, proving with absolute certainty that she wasn’t dreaming!
! !
“So sweet…” he murmured softly, his voice muffled and slurred as he sucked on her fingertip.
Staring down at his tear-bright eyes and flushed cheeks, she froze, completely paralyzed by shock before she could even think to pull her hand back.
When reality finally crashed down on her a moment later, she violently wrenched her hand away, scrambling backward to create some distance between them.
A fierce, burning heat rushed to her face, making it difficult to breathe. The air inside the small tent suddenly felt suffocatingly dense, entirely saturated with the man’s intoxicating scent of pine needles.
Lu Yunxi averted her gaze, her heart hammering against her ribs. “The medicine is almost done. I’ll pour it for you,” she whispered hurriedly, practically fleeing the tent.
Once outside, she vigorously patted her burning cheeks. She stood frozen in the biting desert air for a long time, letting the freezing wind cool her down before she finally managed to regain her composure and walk back over to the campfire.
Junior Brother must have been completely out of his mind with fever just now. There’s no way he would have done that otherwise! I just hope he has absolutely no memory of this when he wakes up, or it’s going to be a massive social death scene for both of us!
Then again, a second thought struck her. He was the one who had crossed the line, not her, so why on earth was she the one dying of embarrassment?
With that realization, her flustered blush vanished entirely, replaced by a sudden, indescribable wave of concern.
She had spent the last hour chopping wood, lighting the campfire, handling raw medicinal herbs, and messing with a soot-covered stove. Heaven only knew how many bacteria were crawling all over her hands… and Wen Liyun was already gravely ill. Now that he had just…
Lu Yunxi glanced back at the tent where her junior brother lay wrapped in his sleeping bag, a knot of worry tightening in her chest.
I just hope his condition doesn’t take a turn for the worse because of this.
Fortunately, her anxieties proved groundless the following morning.
Lu Yunxi let out a massive sigh of relief when she found her junior brother up and about, looking entirely lively and restored. Best of all, he clearly possessed absolutely no memory of his feverish antics from the night before! Thanks to his blissful ignorance, she wouldn’t have to endure any agonizing awkwardness as they traveled together.
“Senior Sister, my sudden illness cost us a lot of time,” Wen Liyun said apologetically. “Let’s hurry and find the Desert Gate.”
“Don’t worry about the delay. I’ve already mapped out the correct path while you were asleep. We just need to head straight in this direction.”
Meanwhile, in the Interstellar World.
Inside a luxury five-star restaurant on the Capital Planet, bright sunlight streamed through massive French windows. Transparent beige curtains filtered the harsh rays, bathing the elegant dining room in a warm, muted glow. On the windowsill, a bouquet of artificial flowers emitted a pleasant, engineered fragrance.
However, Fu Jinheng, who sat alone at a central table, was in a thoroughly foul mood.
He glanced down at the digital clock on his personal terminal, his expression darkening.
Twenty minutes.
It had been a full twenty minutes since the agreed-upon time.
His eldest brother had sent him an incredibly frantic message earlier, demanding he show up at this exact location for a monumentally important, urgent meeting.
What a joke. To ensure he wasn’t late for this supposedly critical gathering, Fu Jinheng had abruptly logged out of the game, thrown on a formal suit, and driven like a madman. He had even encountered a massive traffic jam caused by a hover-car accident along the way, forcing him to abandon his vehicle and run the remaining distance on foot!
Yet, after all that effort, he had arrived only to find an empty table.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, leaning back into his chair with a heavy, exhausted sigh.
If I had known it was going to be a waste of time, I would have never logged off. Going on adventures with Master is infinitely more entertaining than this.
He waited for another ten minutes. Seeing that still no one had arrived, his brow relaxed into a cold, indifferent line. He called the waiter over, settled the bill, and stood up to leave.
But just as he turned—
“My apologies, I’m late.” An elegant, deliberately sultry voice echoed from a short distance away.
Fu Jinheng’s brows knit together as he turned around.
Silhouetted against the bright sunlight stood a woman with perfectly sculpted, wavy hair. She wore a striking red tube-top miniskirt paired with slender, towering red stilettos, a practiced, charming smile plastered across her painted lips as she sashayed toward him.
Fu Jinheng: “…”
This was the “monumentally important meeting” his brother had raved about? Fine. He would sit back and listen to exactly what kind of urgent business she wanted to discuss.
The two sat down across from each other. Up close, the woman’s dark, dramatic eyeshadow looked remarkably heavy under the restaurant’s ambient lighting.
Master is still significantly more handsome… Fu Jinheng thought to himself, completely detached. Should I try applying heavy makeup to Master next time just to see how it looks?
He muttered the thought under his breath. His voice was far too quiet for the woman to catch, but judging by his intense stare, she likely assumed he was simply transfixed by her beauty. She had grown entirely tired of such predictable reactions from men.
She let out a disdainful scoff, critically inspecting him from head to toe before cutting straight to the chase. “Mr. Fu, I assume you are well aware of why we are meeting today? Let me be entirely frank with you—a man of your disposition is simply not my type. You aren’t worthy of me.”
If Qiu Yan was going to marry, she intended to land the absolute finest catch available—someone peerless in character, wealth, and appearance. She demanded perfection. While Mr. Fu possessed an enviable family pedigree, his demeanor was far too dull and rigid for her tastes. She had been sitting there for minutes, and not only had he failed to pull out her chair, but he hadn’t even bother to pour her a glass of wine. In short, the man was entirely useless.
Fu Jinheng: “…”
The critical glare she shot him reminded him vividly of old matriarchs inspecting slabs of pork at a wet market, causing a wave of profound discomfort to wash over him. The sheer absurdity of her words left him thoroughly stunned.
His older brother—that supposedly honest, upstanding man—had actually turned into a deceptive rogue! To resort to such underhanded tricks and mask a blind date as an urgent business emergency… Was finding a marriage partner truly that desperate of an affair?
Having delivered her verdict, Qiu Yan didn’t waste another second. She swept up her designer bag and exited the restaurant with graceful, calculated model steps, completely ignoring him.
Fu Jinheng watched her departing back, utterly defeated, and pressed a hand against his forehead.
If he had known his day would be squandered on such a ridiculous farce, he would have stayed firmly planted in his gaming capsule, accompanying his master back to her sect. His master must be missing him terribly in his absence, right?
At the thought of his master weeping tears of pure longing over his sudden disappearance, a surge of anxiety gripped him. He hurriedly stepped out to hail a hover-cab, desperate to get back home and log in.
Meanwhile, back in the game, a completely tearless Lu Yunxi: ? ?
In reality, Lu Yunxi hadn’t given her apprentice a single thought. She was currently so overwhelmed with sect duties that she was losing her mind.
“Senior Sister, the negotiations with the Desert Gate must have been incredibly exhausting for you. Would you like me to sing a soft melody to help you relax?”
“Senior Sister, I personally prepared your favorite pastry… My culinary skills are rather amateurish compared to yours, but I truly hope it suits your taste.”
“Senior Sister…”
Every single evening, the moment they returned to their shared quarters, Wen Liyun would stick to her side like glue, hovering anxiously as if terrified she might vanish into thin air if left alone.
Lu Yunxi slumped into a chair, far too drained from the diplomatic gridlock to maintain her usual proper posture.
She rubbed her temples, nursing a massive headache. “Junior Brother, there’s really no need to coddle me like this. I’m not made of glass.”
“Senior Sister, please don’t push me away,” Wen Liyun pleaded softly. He dropped into a crouch before her chair, looking up at her with quiet, earnest eyes. “The elders of the Desert Sect are stubbornly insisting that you must marry into their faction to secure the alliance… I know how much pressure you’ve been under these past few days. I’m completely powerless to help you on the diplomatic front, so I thought… the least I could do is massage your shoulders and back to help you unwind.”
“If I simply stand by and do nothing, I won’t ever be able to forgive myself,” he murmured, his gaze overflowing with unadulterated tenderness. “If it pleases you, Senior Sister, you can try leaning on me for support. An outer disciple like myself has no place in the high-level negotiations with the Desert Gate, but I am more than capable of managing all your minor burdens.”
Staring into his luminous, deeply sincere eyes, Lu Yunxi swallowed back the rejection that had been forming on her tongue. “I just want to rest.”
Wen Liyun offered a warm, radiant smile. He gently pulled a heavy quilt over her lap, then took a seat directly beside her bed, softly humming a soothing lullaby.
Lu Yunxi closed her eyes, her tense muscles gradually relaxing into the rhythm of his voice…
A few days later, Lu Yunxi and Wen Liyun stood side by side on a vast stone platform, watching a massive teleportation array slowly lock into place before them.
Unlike the unstable, single-use portal they had utilized to arrive, this newly constructed array was a permanent, two-way channel capable of transporting multiple groups of people simultaneously.
Once the spatial coordinates were fully stabilized, the pair stepped through, returning instantly to the Misty Rain Palace.
“Palace Master, the Sect Master of the Desert Gate has formally agreed to our terms of mutual defense, but he requests a face-to-face meeting to iron out the final details,” Lu Yunxi reported upon their arrival. She deliberately omitted any mention of the Desert Gate Master’s bizarre, eccentric behavior during their initial talks. Since the Palace Master was going to handle the final summit in person anyway, she figured it was best to let the elders deal with those oddballs themselves.
Shortly after, the Palace Master of the Misty Rain Palace and the Sect Master of the Desert Gate convened within the inner sanctuary, locking themselves away for an entire day of intense deliberations.
Lu Yunxi was completely locked out of the specifics of their discussion. The only piece of news that eventually trickled down to her was an absolute bombshell: she was officially getting married.
“I am deeply sorry for dragging you into this mess… I have already given my heart and my vows to the woman I love most, so I promise I will never touch a single thread of your robes. You have nothing to fear from me,” the Young Master of the Desert Gate explained as he approached her later that evening, his eyes heavily shadowed with exhaustion. “Once we complete the public wedding ceremony, this political charade will be effectively over… It is purely a performance to pacify the lower disciples of both our factions.”
Lu Yunxi nodded in immediate understanding. “Do not worry, I completely understand the situation. I’m sure Senior Sister will wake up very soon.”
It wasn’t until the two sect leaders had finalized the treaty that she had learned the true story: the Young Master of the Desert Gate and the Eldest Senior Sister of the Misty Rain Palace had been deeply in love for years.
Unfortunately, her senior sister had suffered catastrophic injuries during a high-stakes mission months ago and had been trapped in a comatose state ever since. Had she been conscious, Lu Yunxi would never have been drafted into this fake political marriage in the first place.
Chapter 108: Sect Mission
The moment Shen San spawned back into the game world, he was greeted by the same stretch of shoreline—and a massive, swirling flock of carrier pigeons descending directly upon him.
Buried in a chaotic cloud of feathers, he frantically waved his hands to clear the birds away before unrolling the letters sent by his friends. Curiously, every single message touched upon the exact same topic:
The game’s first server-wide Sect War was about to begin!
[Brother Shen, the faction struggle is officially launching. You need to join a sect immediately. The system requires you to complete at least ten sect missions before you’re eligible to participate in a large-scale conflict of this scale.]
[Third Brother, I heard the rewards for this world event are astronomical. Specifically, the higher the status of the NPC you manage to assassinate, the greater the loot drop.]
[Third Brother, the moment you get back to the city, remember to pick up the package I sent you. It’s a newly synthesized medicine our guild developed; its health-regeneration properties are incredible.]
Staring at the flooded notifications regarding the upcoming grand-scale event, Shen San’s mind filled with a massive wall of question marks.
He had only been logged off for a few short days, yet it felt as though an entire century had passed in the outside world. He couldn’t make heads or tails of anything they were talking about.
After frowning in deep thought for a minute, he pulled out a blank scroll and fired off a letter to his eldest brother. He aggressively complained about the horrific “urgent meeting” he had been tricked into attending, threatening that he would absolutely never bail him out again.
Once he finished venting his frustrations at his sibling, he penned a few more questioning notes to other family members before finally preparing to write to his master.
However, as the carrier pigeon waited impatiently on his shoulder, Shen San sat with his brush hovering over the parchment, leaving nothing but a single, bleeding ink dot on the paper.
His brow furrowed. When he first started following Lu Yunxi, it had been a complete accident born out of a desperate bid to survive in a high-level zone. Having a powerful master nearby gave him the necessary breathing room to level up safely. But now that they had finally separated, he realized he didn’t actually want to rush back to her side.
At the end of the day, she was still an elder. No matter how profoundly he respected his master, what young player wanted to hang out with a strict NPC maternal figure twenty-four hours a day?
He was still a young guy; when the sun went down, he wanted to stay up, explore, and have a bit of fun. But his master adhered to a rigorous, old-fashioned routine—sleeping early and waking up at the crack of dawn.
A sharp glint flashed across his eyes. Ultimately, he rolled up the blank parchment, abandoning the letter entirely.
Instead, he logged into the world forum to research the event mechanics, systematically replying to his friends’ messages as he gathered information.
As it turned out, this massive server-wide event had been triggered entirely by accident when a lucky player stumbled upon a hidden chain quest. The objective involved rallying all player-led guilds and sects to launch a coordinated siege against a specific native faction. Crucially, the player who initiated the event was granted the authority to select the target.
The original announcement thread had already been pinned to the top of the trending boards by the moderators:
[Hello everyone, I’m the player who triggered this global sect campaign. Since my starting zone is the Forest Continent, I decided to set our target as the undisputed strongest native faction in the region—the Misty Rain Palace. This particular sect has zero active players; it is populated entirely by pure NPCs. We don’t have to worry about PvP infighting or ruining another player’s progression! Let’s band together and tear it down!]
Reading through the details, a surge of adrenaline rushed through Shen San’s veins.
Exactly! This is what gaming is all about!
An open-world RPG would be incredibly dull if there weren’t massive wars to fight.
Rubbing his hands together in anticipation, he began meticulously analyzing the quest requirements. Participating was remarkably simple: as long as a player was registered on the Forest Continent, belonged to an official sect, and cleared the baseline quota of faction dailies, they were clear to join the vanguard.
His eyes lighting up, Shen San enthusiastically set off toward a local sect that caught his fancy.
“Third Brother, you’re an absolute monster,” the youngest cousin of the Fu family muttered, giving him a massive, awestruck thumbs-up. “It’s only been half a day, and you’ve already blitzed through your mandatory faction dailies to unlock the campaign! I honestly thought by the time you qualified, the entire siege would be halfway over.”
Shen San let out a proud scoff, arching his eyebrows. “Take a look at my current standing on the server rankings. I am a certified frontrunner. A baseline entry barrier like this poses absolutely no challenge to me.”
He had already cruised past the level eighty threshold. There was a staggering gap of at least ten full levels between him and his younger cousin, who was still desperately grinding to break out of the advanced tier. Naturally, clearing standard combat trials was child’s play for him.
The younger Fu cousin froze, instantly pulling up the global server leaderboards. He stared at the golden crest marking the number one spot, blinking in absolute disbelief as he muttered, “Third Brother… the top player is actually level 87?! That’s completely insane…”
“87? What do you mean, 87?” Shen San’s brow knit together in confusion. He quickly opened the interface himself. He remembered his own rank clearly—he was only level 83!
On the glowing leaderboard, the actual username of the rank-one player was toggled to anonymous, but their statistics were on full display for the entire server to envy: a massive, golden “87” gleamed at the top of the chart.
Shen San’s pupils contracted slightly as his gaze traveled down to the second-place slot. His own name was similarly hidden from public view, displaying only his current level: 83.
From the third-place contender downward, the levels plummeted sharply, starting at a mere level 69 and dwindling fast.
The top two spots sat upon a massive, vertical fault line, entirely segregated from the rest of the player population.
“I’m not the one at level 87; I’m only level 83,” Shen San clarified, staring blankly at the screen. “How on earth did the person in first place pull that off? Level 87… Did they manage to level up by completely abandoning food, water, and sleep?”
Even an elite player like Shen San couldn’t help but marvel. The reigning champion of Ancient Times certainly earned their title. He deeply respected that level of pure, unadulterated dedication.
“To be honest, Third Brother, from where I’m standing, you’re also one of those monsters who levels up without eating or sleeping,” his cousin countered, scrolling through the local chat channels. “By the way, how did you two manage to break past the level 69 threshold? Everyone on the forums is losing their minds over this. I’ve been capped at level 69 for ages, and no matter how much experience I hoard, the system won’t let me level up.”
“A level cap?” Shen San blinked, entirely bewildered by the statement. It took his brain a few seconds of backtracking to realize that he had encountered a major progression bottleneck in the past. However, because his master had been right there with him, the obstacle had been bypassed effortlessly without causing him a single moment of frustration.
“Ah, I remember now. I consumed a specialized pill designed specifically to break through spatial bottlenecks, and my level naturally went up after that,” Shen San recalled, mentally parsing the memory. “The medicine tasted quite bitter, though it wasn’t completely intolerable. The pill itself was chalk-white…”
“Wait! A breakthrough pill?!” His cousin looked ready to burst into literal tears of frustration. In a major metropolitan hub, securing high-grade medical pills was already an expensive nightmare, let alone a legendary consumable specifically coded to shatter server-level caps. “Third Brother, where in the world did you farm that? How much gold did it cost?”
Thinking of his currently unreachable master, Shen San could only offer a helpless shrug. “The pill was a direct gift from an NPC acquaintance, and I don’t have any spares left. You can forget about buying one from me.”
Naturally, the younger Fu cousin wasn’t one to surrender so easily. He aggressively pestered his older relative for several days, but despite his relentless interrogation, he failed to extract a single shred of actionable data.
Instead, the server-wide environment underwent a sudden, drastic upheaval.
Virtually overnight, every player on the Forest Continent abandoned their personal grinding routines, their attention entirely locked onto a sudden anomaly in the global event tracker.
[Did Anyone Else See the Event Progress?]: What the hell is going on with the dev team? Our frontline factions were completely organized and ready to launch the vanguard, but the campaign completion tracker suddenly plummeted from 50% straight down to 20%! What was the point of all the hours we wasted securing those supply lines? This is a massive game-breaking bug. The publishers need to issue server-wide compensation immediately!
[Star-Chasing Girl]: I just pinged the official customer support matrix. They stated the technical team is actively investigating the backend anomaly, and we’ll have to wait for an official patch note to discover what went wrong.
[Universe’s Most Handsome]: The mega-corporation running “Ancient Times” is genuinely bizarre. Every other virtual reality MMO utilizes live human tech support, but these guys rely strictly on an automated AI interface!
…
[Star-Chasing Girl]: Update! I’m back. The AI support matrix just verified that the system is functioning exactly as intended… The regression in campaign progress isn’t a glitch. It was triggered because the target faction’s NPCs caught wind of our military mobilization and are actively forging defensive alliances with neighboring native sects to resist the invasion.
Reading through the updated forum thread, Shen San’s brows knit together.
The artificial intelligence governing the NPCs in Ancient Times was terrifyingly sophisticated; the fact that they knew how to dynamically initiate diplomatic countermeasures to safeguard their borders was proof enough. Worse still, according to the live tracker, the event progress bar was still slowly ticking downward. If the counter hit absolute zero, the entire server-wide event would be officially flagged as a failure and locked out permanently.
In an instant, the entire continent’s player base exploded into a frenzy of activity.
Tacticians began posting fragments of local intelligence onto the main boards, coordinating the data into structured, crowdsourced directives so players could maximize their effectiveness based on their specific sub-professions.
Meanwhile, players stranded on different continents voiced loud complaints about being entirely locked out of the action. To date, not a single player had discovered a viable method to fast-travel across ocean boundaries; any attempt to sail across the deep seas invariably resulted in a swift death and a standard respawn loop within minutes. Nevertheless, countless exploration guilds continued hunting for a safe nautical route.
Shen San studied the virtual maps for a long moment before making a executive decision: he would personally infiltrate the Misty Rain Palace to scout the terrain ahead.
The mysterious level 87 player who held the top spot on the leaderboard had never shown their face in public, suggesting they likely spawned on an entirely different continent. As the server’s rank-two powerhouse, Shen San was realistically the only player with the high-tier stealth and evasion stats required to slip past the palace’s outer wards undetected.
If he could map out the internal layout of the Misty Rain Palace—or, better yet, find a way to sabotage their defensive arrays from the inside—he could turn the tide of the entire campaign single-handedly.
Fired up by the sheer thrill of a high-stakes stealth mission, he checked his gear and slipped into the shadows, completely oblivious to the familiar face he was about to run into within the palace walls.
Chapter 109: Replacement
When Shen San successfully slipped past the outer defenses of the Misty Rain Palace, he didn’t feel a shred of excitement. Instead, his instincts flared with heightened caution.
Logically speaking, the security of a legendary hidden sect of this caliber shouldn’t be so rudimentary. If any random intruder could just waltz across the perimeter undetected, how could it possibly maintain its reputation as the most formidable faction on the continent?
He frowned slightly, but quickly masked his expression when he caught sight of someone walking down the corridor.
“Are you one of the visiting disciples here for the grand wedding? What are you doing wandering around this section? There’s nothing entertaining over here. If you’re looking for a tour, come along—I’ll show you where the main dining hall is!” A young girl in a bright purple dress spotted him, immediately bouncing over with a cheerful smile and gesturing for him to follow.
Shen San lowered his gaze, intentionally adopting a timid, sheepish demeanor. “Um, yes… I only recently arrived, and I’m not very familiar with the layout here yet.”
The girl in purple offered an even more enthusiastic smile. She took him on a sweeping tour of the entire estate, unknowingly allowing him to map out the sect’s inner layouts via his system interface. As they walked, Shen San finally pieced together why his infiltration had been so incredibly effortless.
As it turned out, the defensive pact between the Misty Rain Palace and the Desert Gate was being sealed through a strategic political marriage!
In exactly three days, the Eldest Senior Brother of the Desert Gate would wed an elite disciple of the Misty Rain Palace. The grand ceremony was scheduled to take place within the palace’s main ancestral hall.
Delegations from various allied factions had already arrived in droves, packed into the guest quarters as they awaited the upcoming festivities. Because of the sheer volume of high-profile visitors, an influx of low-level menial disciples had also flooded the grounds to join the excitement. Naturally, the sect’s internal patrols had been drastically relaxed to accommodate the chaos. Besides, the Misty Rain Palace was confident that no one would be foolish enough to instigate a fight on their home turf.
Inventing a polite excuse, Shen San separated himself from the guide in purple. He wandered the corridors alone, recording a continuous video feed of the internal layout to upload onto the world boards.
While he was thoroughly enjoying his exclusive access, the rest of the player base was losing their minds outside; the scouting parties assigned to locate the hidden faction couldn’t even find the palace’s outer entrance, prompting a flood of bitter complaints on the forums.
Suddenly, a sharp system ping resonated in Shen San’s ears.
[System Announcement]: Congratulations to the player for successfully infiltrating the enemy faction’s inner sanctuary and unlocking the exclusive campaign objective: Sabotage the Wedding.
[Campaign Objective – Sabotage the Wedding]: Disrupt the upcoming nuptials between the disciples of the Misty Rain Palace and the Desert Sect. Success will instantly boost the global Forest Continent Campaign progression bar to 70%. Would you like to broadcast your username server-wide to claim credit?
Without a moment’s hesitation, Shen San selected anonymous.
He truly didn’t know what to say about this newly unlocked objective. Disrupting an NPC wedding didn’t exactly sound like a standard, heroic questline.
In the next second, the system notification broadcasted the campaign update three times consecutively across the entire server, causing every active player to freeze in absolute astonishment.
The world forum exploded into a state of sheer pandemonium.
[Star-Chasing Girl]: Holy crap, was it the rank-one or rank-two powerhouse who breached the coordinates? That’s absolutely insane!
[Universe’s Most Handsome]: Ruining an NPC wedding is incredibly straightforward. We just need to launch an ambush and kidnap either the bride or the groom right before the vows!
[Tactical Mastermind]: Don’t be an idiot! A standard kidnapping event can be easily countered by high-level NPC guards. I noticed the local medicine stalls sell a specialized paralyzing powder. We just need to spike the palace’s central water supply, immobilize the entire faction, and the wedding will be automatically canceled!
Netizens flooded the threads with an endless stream of bizarre strategies.
Shen San’s eyelid twitched violently as he shut down the forum interface.
What he failed to realize, however, was that the moment the campaign objective went live, the exact coordinates to the Misty Rain Palace’s hidden entrance were automatically pinned onto the system maps for all eligible participants. As long as players followed the newly unlocked quest markers, they could easily bypass the outer labyrinth.
Armed with this information, hordes of players across the Forest Continent immediately mobilized, rushing toward the Misty Rain Palace’s position.
“Please, follow me. She’s right inside,” the young girl in the purple dress said with a bright smile, leading him down a secluded hallway.
Shen San, however, couldn’t shake a growing sense of unease. The progression of events felt entirely bizarre. The moment he had casually asked to see the bride, this purple-clothed guide had agreed without a single question, yet any mention of visiting the groom’s quarters was met with an immediate, polite deflection.
“Is it truly appropriate for an outside visitor like myself to meet the bride alone right before her wedding?” he asked, keeping his tone carefully neutral while tracking her expressions out of the corner of his eye.
The girl in purple bit her lower lip nervously, letting out a soft sigh. “It’s perfectly fine, honored guest. Young ladies are invariably prone to severe pre-wedding anxieties. If your presence can help elevate our bride’s spirits, the Misty Rain Palace will gladly treat you as a treasured friend.”
Shen San maintained a calm, cooperative facade, but internally, his guard had spiked to its absolute maximum.
With a low creak, the heavy, reddish-brown wooden door before them slowly swung inward.
Directly opposite the threshold was a massive, open window overlooking a scenic courtyard lake. The afternoon sunlight poured through the frame, casting a shimmering, golden glaze over the water’s surface.
“Senior Sister, a guest has arrived to see you,” the girl in purple announced softly. She then turned back to Shen San, offering a brief nod. “Sir, I shall leave you here.”
Without a shred of hesitation, she spun around and departed, firmly shutting the heavy wooden door behind her.
Shen San’s gaze darkened. Something is seriously wrong here. If the sect didn’t harbor some hidden agenda, why on earth would they leave an unrelated man and a bride-to-be locked alone inside a private bedchamber?
Gripping the hilt of his weapon, his eyes rapidly scanned the room.
To the left of the window stood a large, intricately carved wooden bed, with a standard table and chairs positioned in the center. To the right, seated before an ornate dressing table with her back turned completely toward him, was the bride.
Shen San’s hand shifted down toward his greatsword.
What a flawless opportunity! If he could catch the bride completely off guard, knock her unconscious, and smuggle her out through the window, wouldn’t his campaign mission be instantly completed? Without a bride, the wedding ceremony would fall apart automatically!
Steeling his resolve, he silently stepped up directly behind her.
“Who goes there?” the bride asked, suddenly turning around.
The moment their eyes locked and they processed each other’s faces, the expressions of both individuals shattered.
“Master?!”
“Shen San?!”
Lu Yunxi stared in utter disbelief. She had never, in her wildest dreams, anticipated running into her own apprentice deep within the inner chambers of the Misty Rain Palace.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she asked in astonishment, immediately grabbing his arm and pulling him down onto a nearby stool.
Shen San stood entirely frozen, his brain short-circuiting as he subconsciously allowed himself to be dragged along by her movements. It took him a long, agonized moment of sitting on the wooden stool to finally regain his faculties.
“Master! Why are you here? I heard… you’re the one getting married? Are you actually an elite disciple of the Misty Rain Palace?”
Oh, merciful heavens. Talk about a catastrophic friendly-fire incident!
If his master ever discovered that his official system mission was to actively sabotage her wedding, she would beat him within an inch of his digital life!
Recalling the harrowing memories of her past combat corrections, Shen San instinctively shifted his stool two paces backward, desperately wishing he could sprout wings and blast through the ceiling.
“The ceremony takes place tomorrow,” Lu Yunxi explained, a soft, amused smile playing on her lips as she began brewing a fresh pot of tea. “I didn’t expect you to arrive by such a bizarre coincidence, but you absolutely must attend the front rows tomorrow…”
When she lifted her gaze to hand him a cup, she froze. His complexion had turned a horrific, chalky white. “Shen San! What is wrong with you?!”
Before she could even finish her sentence, her apprentice’s eyes rolled back, and his body toppled sideways. She lunged forward, catching him right before he slammed into the floorboards.
After running a quick medical diagnostic, Lu Yunxi was left thoroughly bewildered.
Shen San had actually passed out from a severe psychological shock. The problem was, he had been perfectly fine when he first walked through the door. How could he have been frightened into a literal coma in the span of a single minute?
Lu Yunxi quickly brewed a restorative tonic and poured it down his throat, relaxing only when a healthy color returned to his cheeks.
When Shen San finally opened his eyes, he stared blankly at the ceiling, his mind trapped in a spiral of pure dread.
In reality, he was frantically refreshing the world forums.
He couldn’t believe his luck. He had only been unconscious for a brief moment, yet the forums were already flooded with updates from hundreds of players proudly declaring that they had successfully infiltrated the Misty Rain Palace. The entire player base was locked and loaded, merely waiting for the morning vows to launch a massive, synchronized riot.
His face turned completely black as a wave of intense self-loathing washed over him. Why did I have to pick this specific sect to infiltrate?!
Shen San’s thoughts raced at a million miles an hour until a desperate spark of inspiration finally struck him.
“…Master, are you truly entering this marriage willingly? Are the sect elders forcing you into this alliance against your will? If you harbor even a shred of reluctance, I will gladly put on the bridal robes and take your place at the altar right now!” He bolted upright, his eyes burning with a desperate, self-sacrificial resolve.
Yes! If he could somehow convince her to let him substitute as the bride, he could navigate the ceremony himself and keep his master out of the crosshairs. When the player riot inevitably kicked off, he would cling to the groom with a death grip, forcing the wedding to conclude no matter what!
“I volunteered for this assignment; no one forced me into anything,” Lu Yunxi replied, momentarily stunned before a wave of warmth touched her heart. It seemed her investments in this apprentice hadn’t been in vain after all. “Why do you look so tragic? As my disciple, shouldn’t you be offering me your blessings? Are you not happy for me?”
In truth, sending Lu Yunxi to the altar was a highly calculated move by the faction. Aside from the Sect Master and the Grand Elders, she possessed the highest raw combat capabilities in the entire region. If any hostile forces attempted to disrupt the ceremony, she was more than capable of executing them on the spot.
As for why the senior elders didn’t simply stand in as the primary representatives for the alliance, the reasoning was purely aesthetic—they were far too old, and dragging a wrinkled centenarian to a youthful political union would look utterly ridiculous.
Shen San remained entirely oblivious to his master’s strategic considerations. His facial expressions twisted into a grotesque mask of pure panic. He desperately wanted to flee the room, but he didn’t possess the courage to move a muscle.
Lu Yunxi watched him, thoroughly perplexed. What on earth was wrong with this kid? They had only been separated for a brief period, yet he looked as if he had endured a century of psychological torture.
She had absolutely no clue what kind of chaotic schemes were running through his head.
“…Congratulations,” Shen San finally managed to squeeze out, forcing a stiff, skeletal smile onto his face while his brain continued to scream in agony.
What do I do now?! Do I confess the truth to Master right here and now? Hell no! How could I possibly explain that I’m leading a player army to raid her wedding?!
