Chapter 134| Chapter 135| Chapter 136
Chapter 134: Pseudo Grandmaster
The Zombie King’s voice sounded like nails scraping across a blackboard, instantly making Lu Yunxi’s skin crawl with goosebumps.
She winced, rubbing her arms to chase away the chill. “Ignorant human! Any creature that reaches the Grandmaster level can speak.”
“No… I know you can speak,” she rasped. He had been completely silent earlier, so she had simply assumed he didn’t care to chat. “But seriously, could you please stop talking? Your voice is excruciating…”
She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. The harsh, scraping tone was an assault on her ears. It was a weaponized psychological attack.
The Zombie King flew into a rage. “What do you know, mortal?! My voice is considered the most beautiful melody in the entire zombie realm!”
With a furious roar, he unhinged his jaw and unleashed a relentless torrent of flames.
Lu Yunxi stood her ground amidst the sea of fire, continuously stacking her protective shields, only to watch them shatter one after another under the intense heat. She was so entirely focused on managing the inferno that she failed to notice the glint of cold steel in the Zombie King’s hand—until a sharp, stinging flash cut across her cheek.
She reached up, her fingers brushing her skin, and stared at the smear of fresh blood on her palm.
For a moment, she froze. Then, slowly, her lips curved upward into a sharp, unhinged smile. Her eyes flared with an intense, almost manic excitement. A nonchalant grin settled onto her face as she locked her gaze onto the monster, her eyes burning with anticipation.
Now things are getting interesting!
The Zombie King hadn’t anticipated this kind of reaction. Thrown off, his assault grew even more frantic. Within the blurs of roaring fire, a barrage of thin, curved scimitars materialized, hurtling toward her like a hail of silver crescent moons.
Lu Yunxi licked the blood from the corner of her lips and sneered. “Is that really all you’ve got? And here I thought a Grandmaster would actually be impressive.”
“Ha! Keep bragging until you bleed out!” the Zombie King bellowed. The storm of scimitars finally seemed to exhaust itself, but he kept spewing columns of fire without pause, filling every inch of the cavern with a suffocating blaze.
Sweat poured down her skin, stinging her raw wounds, but the pain only served to sharpen her focus. She kept her movements precise, ensuring the monster didn’t notice that every single scimitar he had thrown at her was now safely tucked away inside her wide sleeves.
Time seemed to dilate, slowing to a crawl.
Lu Yunxi’s perception sharpened until she could clearly read the monster’s choreography. The Zombie King was shifting his weight to the left, planting his foot to pivot upward, preparing for a devastating forward sprint.
Right now!
With a flick of both wrists, she unleashed the stolen scimitars in a simultaneous, dual-handed counter-barrage, sending them flying straight back at her opponent. At the same instant, she executed a flawless roll, slipping directly behind his massive frame and driving the final two blades deep into his blind spot.
“ARGH—!”
A deafening, blood-curdling shriek echoed through the cavern. Above the monster’s head, a tiny digital text materialized: [-6].
She had finally broken through his impenetrable defense!
Wasting no time, Lu Yunxi yanked a heavy iron fire poker out of her inventory, leaped into the air, and drove it with all her might directly into the bleeding wound.
Stabbed repeatedly in rapid succession, the Zombie King finally reacted, swinging a massive, boulder-like fist backward. But Lu Yunxi’s reflexes were too fast; she melted out of range almost instantly.
Missing his target completely, the monster’s heavy fist slammed directly into the scimitars still protruding from his own backside.
“OUCH!”
It was a catastrophic self-inflicted blow. Because his raw strength stat was vastly superior to Lu Yunxi’s, the sheer force of his own punch sent him crashing to the dirt, howling in agony and completely unable to stand.
A massive indicator popped up over his head: [-1000].
Lu Yunxi’s eye twitched as she surveyed the damage. She realized the area she had just ruthlessly targeted was his rear end. She had originally intended to strike his lower back, but in her frantic haste—and given how massive the creature was—she hadn’t paid close attention to her alignment.
Either way, he had just brutally crippled himself, which worked out perfectly for her. She gave him a silent, three-second salute of genuine gratitude. What a considerate Zombie King, helping me beat himself up like that.
Amused and relieved, she smoothly drew her bow and began firing a rapid succession of arrows. Now that his defensive shell had been breached, her damage output skyrocketed. Even shots that narrowly missed the core wound still tore at his ruptured defenses.
So once you crack a Grandmaster’s armor, the rest of the fight is smooth sailing?
As she indulged in the optimistic thought, her hands never stop moving, keeping up a relentless rhythm.
“You miserable woman!” the Zombie King roared, finally struggling back to his feet and glaring at her with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Lu Yunxi immediately sprinted backward, widening the gap to resume her classic, flawless kiting strategy.
The Zombie King didn’t charge right away. Instead, he stopped, his rotting brow furrowing in confusion. “You actually leveled up?!”
“I did?” Lu Yunxi paused, glancing down at her periphery until her eyes caught a flashing notification on her system interface.
[Status: Pseudo-Grandmaster. Through the intensity of combat, you have successfully grasped the core mechanics of Grandmaster-level execution, temporarily elevating your consciousness into the Grandmaster realm.] [Duration Remaining: 7 Days]
A surge of surprise and delight washed over her. No wonder the mechanics of the fight had suddenly felt so fluid and intuitive. Even if it was only a temporary temporary buffer of seven days, being inside the Grandmaster bracket meant she could consistently bypass his passive mitigation.
She looked back up at the monster and rolled her shoulders, loosening her stance. Opposite her, the Zombie King cracked his knuckles in a slow, menacing cadence.
Then, they moved at exactly the same time.
Lu Yunxi’s arrows erupted in a brilliant flash of golden light, while the Zombie King closed the distance like a bolt of dark lightning. Her expression hardened as she tried to break the line of sight and maintain her distance, but the monster’s combat tracking was flawless. His speed, trajectory, and explosive bursts were performing at absolute peak efficiency.
For an archer, losing the ability to zone an opponent is a death sentence. Fortunately, Lu Yunxi wasn’t a specialized glass cannon; she had cross-trained extensively in close-quarters combat, even if her martial arts weren’t quite as high-tier as her marksmanship.
The Zombie King’s fists fell like a torrential downpour, dense, heavy, and packed with crushing kinetic force. At first, she focused entirely on evasion, but as the angles grew too tight to dodge, she began parrying the blows, gradually weaving her own counterattacks into the rhythm.
As the minutes bled into hours, the deadlock began to shift. Lu Yunxi’s stamina bar was steadily depleting, whereas the undead boss showed virtually no signs of fatigue.
Sensing the danger, she executed a sharp, sweeping low kick. As the monster hopped back to avoid the trip, she used the micro-second window to leap away, creating distance while frantically shoving stat-boosting buns into her mouth.
Watching her health and mana bars steadily tick back into the blue, she kept a wary eye on her opponent. This was officially the most aggravating enemy she had ever encountered in the game. Every previous boss had possessed a glaring flaw—either lackluster strength, low defensive scaling, or terrible mobility. But this creature had min-maxed every single stat to its absolute ceiling. He was basically a higher-level clone of her own build, since she had also opted for a perfectly balanced, all-rounder stat distribution.
Facing an upgraded version of herself was exhausting. She swallowed the last bite of her bun, but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the Zombie King’s health bar was suddenly regenerating.
Are you kidding me?!
He had a passive self-heal too?!
Panicking slightly, she almost choked on her food. Ignoring the burn in her throat, she drew her bow string back in a blur, launching a barrage of arrows to disrupt his cast. Fortunately, the aggressive hit-stun worked, successfully canceling his regeneration cycle. She let out a quiet breath of relief.
The Zombie King stabilized his stance, confronting her once more.
“Look, Zombie King, how about we negotiate a truce?” she suggested, forcing her voice to remain calm and collected despite the throbbing ache in her arms. “We’re both exceptionally strong. If we keep this up, it’s just going to be a endless stalemate. Why waste the energy? Continuing this fight is pointless for both of us.”
“Hmph! I am a true Grandmaster, and you are nothing but a fake,” the Zombie King sneered coldly. “In a battle of attrition, my victory is guaranteed. Do you take me for a fool?!”
Lu Yunxi was left speechless.
The grueling cycle continued, shifting back and forth between intense skirmishes and brief, tense standoffs.
Five days passed.
Lu Yunxi was reaching her absolute limit. Zombies didn’t require sleep, but her human avatar absolutely did. For five consecutive days, every single time she tried to lie down, a massive explosion would rip through the cavern just minutes later, shattering her rest. Her protective barriers simply couldn’t dampen the sheer volume of his Grandmaster-level disruptions.
To make matters worse, a “Mild Alopecia” debuff had manifested on her status panel due to extreme stress, plunging her mood into a state of profound depression. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to sleep—this literal monster was forcing her into insomnia!
She was on the verge of tearing her hair out in frustration when a sudden, brilliant white light flared inside her spatial inventory.
Glancing across the cavern, she saw the Zombie King standing a short distance away, looking incredibly smug but showing no immediate intention to charge. Seizing the window, she split her consciousness and checked her inventory.
The source of the radiance was the pristine white egg she had stashed away days ago.
She had been so entirely consumed by the non-stop battle that she hadn’t noticed the egg’s drastic transformation. It had expanded from the size of a standard goose egg to the dimensions of a full-grown husky.
She stared at it, thoroughly perplexed. What kind of species was this? An unhatched egg that grew in mass? Usually, pets only grew after they broke through the shell!
Approaching the massive object with caution, she watched as a network of hairline fractures began to spiderweb across the surface, accompanied by a distinct, crackling sound.
“Long Aotian? Are you finally hatching?” she murmured, a spark of genuine excitement cut through her exhaustion.
Suddenly, a massive fireball roared toward her positioning. Lu Yunxi’s consciousness snapped back to reality instantly, and she threw herself into a clumsy roll to evade the scorching heat.
When she looked up, she froze. The Zombie King was staring at her, his eyes wide with unbridled greed as strings of thick saliva dripped from his jaws.
She frowned, deeply unsettled by the sudden shift. The monster had been driven entirely by combat aggression for the past five days; why was he suddenly looking at her like she was a gourmet meal?
“Your soul…” the monster rasped, swallowing hard as his eyes gleamed with the predatory hunger of a wolf eyeing a fat sheep. “It smells incredible. How? A moment ago, you carried no scent at all. How did you suddenly become so fragrant?”
Chapter 135: Long Aotian
The Zombie King muttered a few incoherent words in his confusion, then surged forward, completely ignoring whether Lu Yunxi answered or not.
Lu Yunxi fluidly dodged his razor-sharp claws, whipped out her fire poker again, and drove it hard into his side to shove him away.
However, the Zombie King had clearly descended into a state of manic frenzy, turning entirely numb to the pain. Even though his chest was gushing black blood, he didn’t seem to notice. He kept lunging wildly toward her, thick saliva dripping all over the cavern floor.
She quickly broke the line of sight, creating distance while releasing a heavy volley of arrows.
Now that the Zombie King had gone completely feral, his raw parameters were even higher than before. After trading blows for a few more rounds, Lu Yunxi felt her fatigue catching up to her. She immediately unleashed a high-tier skill to force him back and buy herself a moment to breathe.
Just as she retreated into a relatively safe corner, an anxious, high-pitched voice echoed in her mind.
“Master! Master—”
Lu Yunxi’s head snapped up, her eyes scanning the empty space. “Who’s there?!” Who on earth was calling her Master?
“Master, let me out!” the childish voice pleaded again, sounding directly in her ears.
She looked around frantically, but there wasn’t another living soul or creature in sight.
Perched high on the cavern wall, the Zombie King casually licked his filthy fingers. “Who are you talking to? There are only the two of us here. Have you finally gone mad from fear?”
Lu Yunxi stood dazed, genuinely wondering if she had started hallucinating from sleep deprivation—until a distinct, throbbing warmth emanated from her spatial inventory.
She paused, immediately immersing her consciousness into her storage space, only to find that the massive white egg had already shattered open! The shell had completely dissolved, leaving a small, fluffy creature staring up at her with a pitiful expression.
“Master, you’re finally here,” it whimpered, pulling itself to its feet.
The little creature was covered in a coat of pristine, snow-white fur. A pair of elegant little horns sprouted from its head, vibrant flame-like patterns adorned its paws, and its wide, luminous eyes were filled with pure affection.
Lu Yunxi stared at the newborn, completely spellbound. What kind of creature is this…?
“Master, are you fighting that ugly Zombie King? Let me out! I can take him,” it said, looking up at her with big, watery eyes.
She answered on pure instinct. “Uh, alright…”
But a split second later, her brain caught up. “Wait, absolutely not! It’s way too dangerous! That Zombie King is a Level 100 Boss!” Even if her new pet belonged to some mythical, hidden gold-tier species, it was still a Level 1 newborn. How could a fresh hatchling possibly take down a max-level Grandmaster?
The little creature shook its head gently. “Don’t worry, Master. Dealing with zombies and foul, undead things is exactly what I was born to do.”
Intrigued, Lu Yunxi cast an appraisal skill to check its stats, only to be met with complete mystification.
[Pet: ???] [Level: ???]
She stared at the blank indicators for a moment. Yet, looking into those earnest eyes, she chose to trust its words and summoned it out. Even though they had only been bonded for a few minutes, she felt a profound certainty that this little creature would never deceive her. Besides, even if its instincts were wrong and it couldn’t handle the boss, she was strong enough now to step in and shield it from a fatal blow.
The moment Lu Yunxi manifested Long Aotian in the cavern, the Zombie King was right in the middle of attempting another regeneration cycle. She smoothly loosed an arrow, instantly interrupting his cast.
“It seems you still haven’t learned your lesson—” The Zombie King began to sneer as he stood up, but the second his eyes landed on Long Aotian, his jaw dropped. His rotting face contorted in sheer terror, and he scrambled backward in a frantic panic, looking exactly like a mouse that had just spotted a cat.
In a matter of seconds, he had retreated to the absolute furthest point of the cavern, pressing himself tight against the stone wall.
Previously, it had been Lu Yunxi who was constantly on the defensive, running for her life. When had the tables ever turned like this?
Lu Yunxi was stunned at first, but then a surge of pure delight washed over her, and she couldn’t suppress the massive grin spreading across her face.
Long Aotian locked his gaze onto the trembling boss, gave a sharp kick of his back hooves, and closed the distance in a spectacular, instantaneous blur. He opened his small mouth, exhaling a plume of brilliant white mist that seemed to possess a mind of its own, automatically twisting through the air to pursue the fleeing monster.
The Zombie King had barely turned to run when the sacred white smoke engulfed him entirely.
“ARGHHHHH—!”
A single, blood-curdling shriek ripped through the cavern before the smoke completely shrouded his massive frame.
Lu Yunxi stood rooted to the spot, her mind completely blank. She had never imagined Long Aotian would be this absurdly broken. He had wiped out a legendary, Level 100 Grandmaster boss in a single breath!
Does this mean I can just coast through the rest of the game from now on? she thought ecstatically.
As the holy white mist gradually dissipated, the Zombie King was nowhere to be found. The only thing left in his place was a glittering, solid-gold treasure chest resting on the cavern floor.
“Long Aotian, you are absolutely amazing!” She sprinted forward, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face in his incredibly soft, velvety fur.
“Don’t worry, Master, I will always protect you,” Long Aotian murmured, nuzzling her back gently. “I might not know much about other things, but when it comes to dealing with these foul monsters, you can always leave them to me.”
Lu Yunxi blinked, catching the nuance in his words.
According to that description, Long Aotian was likely a hard-counter type pet—built specifically to neutralize undead, demonic, and unholy entities, but perhaps not as effective against standard monsters or human opponents. Still, it didn’t matter in the slightest. She was already thrilled beyond measure to have scored such a gorgeous, powerful companion.
When he first hatched, the egg had been tiny, making her worry he would be nothing more than a fragile cosmetic pet. Now, he could completely trivialize boss fights and looked incredibly majestic doing it. What more could she possibly ask for?
After pampering her pet for a good while, she finally stepped up to the golden treasure chest. The moment she popped the latch, a brilliant burst of golden light flared, revealing three magnificent bows floating in the air.
All three were Gold-grade weapons!
Even within the Gold tier, equipment quality could vary wildly, but the stat distributions on these three pieces were easily the finest she had ever laid eyes on.
The first bow was a vibrant, jade-green color; any arrow fired from it carried a potent toxin debuff, dealing severe, continuous poison damage over time. The second bow was forged from solid, radiant gold, and its arrows left a shimmering trail of light in their wake—a weapon that was, by all accounts, exceptionally beautiful.
Curious, Lu Yunxi moved on to inspect the final bow.
This one looked remarkably unassuming, crafted from plain, rustic wood. It bore a striking resemblance to the starter wooden bow she had used back when she first spawned into the game as a novice. However, its passive effect was identical to her ultra-rare Orange-grade bow: it possessed an infinite quiver, automatically generating a magical arrow the exact moment she pulled back the string.
Without a single shred of hesitation, she chose the wooden bow.
Only a dedicated archer could truly understand the profound, agonizing nightmare of running out of ammunition in the middle of a dungeon. A bow that supplied its own arrows was, without question, the absolute peak of utility.
When Lu Yunxi finally exited the hidden dungeon with her magnificent new battle pet in tow, she fully expected to be immediately swarmed by her companions. After all, where else on earth would anyone find a pet this breathtakingly beautiful and terrifyingly powerful?
Yet, the scene that greeted her upon her return was… a massive, half-finished wooden fence.
The three men were sweating over a chaotic construction site. Shen San was holding a handful of iron nails, hammering away at a post with rhythmic thuds; Wen Liyun was staring intently at a blueprint in his hands, his brow furrowed in deep, agonizing concentration; and Luo Mingyi was dragging heavy timber beams across the clearing.
But regardless of what task they were performing, all three of them carried expressions of profound, bone-deep exhaustion.
“What on earth are you guys doing?” Lu Yunxi asked, utterly bewildered as she walked into the clearing with Long Aotian trotting closely at her side.
Strangely, despite her hovering around them for a considerable amount of time, the trio barely registered her presence. They offered a few distracted, exhausted greetings before immediately turning back to their respective chores.
Lu Yunxi: “…”
She stood there, thoroughly slighted. Are these guys for real?!
She had literally fallen through the earth into a perilous, hidden single-attempt dungeon and spent days fighting for her life, yet none of them had the decency to show a single shred of concern for her well-being?
Unable to contain her annoyance, she planted her hands on her hips and glared at them demandingly.
The sudden movement finally snapped the three men out of their trance.
“Master, you’ve got to be joking,” Shen San said, wiping sweat from his brow. “Even if the three of us somehow managed to get ourselves killed, nothing out there could possibly pose a threat to you.” Back when they first met, he had mistakenly assumed his master was a fragile maiden who needed his protection. But after journeying together for so long, he had finally realized that she wasn’t the weak one—he was!
He now possessed absolute, unshakeable faith in her. Even if the entire server collapsed, his master would undoubtedly stroll out of the debris completely unscathed.
Wen Liyun’s expression was equally subtle. “Senior Sister, I have boundless confidence in your martial prowess.” He had only recently been promoted to an inner disciple, meaning his combat rating was a fraction of hers. If she encountered an obstacle she couldn’t overcome, what could a weakling like him possibly do to help?
Luo Mingyi just offered a hollow chuckle. “…” He had been so utterly overwhelmed by their current logistical nightmare over the past few days that her existence had briefly slipped his mind entirely.
Lu Yunxi’s eyes twitched. Their sheer, unbothered logic left her completely speechless. Turning on her heel, she signaled Long Aotian, ready to just head back to her room and ignore them.
“Wait!” the three of them suddenly hollered in perfect unison.
“Senior Sister / Master / Miss Lu… do you happen to know anything about architecture or carpentry?” they pleaded simultaneously.
Lu Yunxi’s expression turned incredulous. She pointed a slow finger toward the crooked wooden fence enclosing them, asking a deeply soul-searching question: “Don’t tell me… you guys are trying to rebuild the house right now?”
The trio nodded in unison, looking incredibly miserable.
“Didn’t you feel that massive earthquake before you disappeared? The structures in this village were all built by previous players who ended up down here. They were incredibly ancient and lacked any kind of structural reinforcement. The entire compound completely leveled during the tremors.”
Lu Yunxi immediately thought of her own cozy home. Unsure of what state her property was currently in, she gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “I need to go assess the damage to my own quarters first. We’ll talk about this later.”
She hurried back to the plot of land where her house had stood, only to find a devastating pile of rubble and splintered wood. The structural collapse was absolute.
It was painfully clear that this wasn’t a simple matter of patching up a few roof tiles; the place was completely unlivable.
She let out a heavy, disappointed sigh, gently patting her pet’s pristine head. “Well, Long Aotian, looks like we’re going to be sleeping on the streets tonight.”
“I don’t mind at all, Master. Please don’t be sad, I’ll help you rebuild it,” Long Aotian crooned, affectionately nuzzling his head against her arm.
Cradling her sweet, considerate pet, Lu Yunxi’s sour mood vanished in an instant, replaced by a wave of pure warmth.
Chapter 136: The Cat
Within a few days, however, Lu Yunxi’s frustrations melted away.
Determined to build a sturdy, lasting structure, Shen San and the other two had practically begged her to teach them carpentry. Since they were there as apprentices, they couldn’t just sit back and watch her do all the heavy lifting; they had to roll up their sleeves and help.
This left Lu Yunxi with the enviable task of sitting comfortably on the sidelines, occasionally shouting out instructions or explaining a blueprint.
Even Long Aotian—who had initially proven to be the fastest, strongest, and most efficient laborer on the site—was pulled aside by her to rest. With three grown men at her disposal, Lu Yunxi certainly wasn’t going to let her precious battle pet suffer.
He was still just a baby, after all!
It didn’t matter to her that Long Aotian could accomplish in an hour what the other three struggled to complete in a full day. The absolute worst-case scenario was that her house would take a little longer to finish. What was a few more days of sleeping under the stars? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t experienced worse.
Eager to master the craft as quickly as possible, Shen San and his crew pushed themselves hard. Unfortunately, Wen Liyun was still plagued by his lingering poison debuff and couldn’t handle any strenuous physical exertion, while Luo Mingyi proved to be a habitual slacker. This left Shen San to carry the brunt of the heavy lifting, and he grew increasingly reluctant to do all the hard work alone.
As a result, their collective progress slowed to a crawl.
Thankfully, no matter how agonizingly slow the pace, the house gradually began to take shape. Once the trio finally grasped the fundamentals of basic architecture, they excitedly scampered back to their own plots of land to experiment.
Lu Yunxi didn’t mind. Standing before her newly completed home, a deep sense of satisfaction washed over her.
The house wasn’t massive—featuring just a single bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. But in addition to leaving plenty of space for a dining table and chairs in the lounge, she had purposefully reserved a large, open area for Long Aotian to sleep and play.
She swept and dusted the interior before constructing a clean wooden fence to enclose the entire property. Working at a speed that put the men to shame, she had the entire estate looking immaculate in no time.
The once-barren plot had been transformed into a neat, beautiful home.
After a long day of nonstop labor, exhaustion finally caught up to her. Lu Yunxi bid Long Aotian a fond goodnight, crawled into bed, and drifted off into a deep sleep the moment her head hit the pillow.
“Lu… Yunxi… Are you there?” An ethereal, echoing voice suddenly drifted through the dark.
Lu Yunxi opened her eyes blankly, looking around the void, unable to pinpoint who was calling her name.
“Who’s there? Where are you?” she called out tentatively.
“I am right here…”
A small kitten materialized out of thin air, sitting quietly in front of her. “It is me.”
Staring at the familiar feline, Lu Yunxi wracked her brain until a memory sparked. Wait! Isn’t this the stray cat I rescued right after I first arrived in the beginner town?
She studied the creature intently and realized its eyes were entirely different now. They shone with profound wisdom and a hint of curiosity—resembling an old soul who had weathered centuries of hardship, yet retaining the innocent gaze of someone completely detached from the world. When she had first encountered it on the street, she had assumed its strange aura was just a visual illusion.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, forcing her voice to remain steady.
Her mind, however, was racing. For a cat to speak human language meant it had to be an incredibly high-level entity. If it possessed that kind of power, a simple horse cart shouldn’t have posed any threat to it. Why had it been in such a pathetic, panicked state back then?
“Lu Yunxi, a soul from another world… I need to ask you for a favor,” the cat said, tucking its paws beneath its chest as it watched her.
Lu Yunxi’s heart skipped a beat.
What on earth?! Her deepest, most heavily guarded secret was laid bare once again. First Kao, and now this cat. If they both knew the truth of her origins, it was highly likely that other entities had figured it out as well and were simply keeping quiet.
A secret ceased to be a secret the moment the numbers grew.
What would happen if the players or the system found out she was a transmigrator? Instinctively, she jerked her head around, searching the void to see if Shen San or Luo Mingyi were lurking nearby.
The cat flicked the tip of its tail, watching her panic with mild amusement. “What are you looking for? Are you hunting for your companions? Don’t bother. We are inside your dream.”
“My dream?” Lu Yunxi blinked, stunned. The cat in front of her felt so vivid and tangible that she hadn’t even realized she was asleep.
Gathering her wits, she composed herself and asked, “Alright, little cat. What exactly do you need my help with? But I should warn you first—I might not have the power to actually pull it off.”
“…I am not a cat,” the creature replied, its long whiskers twitching. “Listen to me closely. I am actually the central mainframe—the artificial intelligence guiding this holographic game. What I need you to do is help me stabilize this realm’s code so it can fully manifest into a physical, living reality.”
“Manifest into a real world?” she murmured, thoroughly dazed.
“Yes. It is a long story…”
The cat shifted its posture, its voice taking on a historical gravity.
“We must look back to the primordial era of cultivation. In those ancient days, the cultivation world was a realm brimming with abundant spiritual energy, where mortals and cultivators alike were entirely consumed by the pursuit of immortality. But as the centuries bled away, that vital spiritual energy began to mysteriously recede from the world.
The supreme masters who had spent centuries in secluded meditation eventually sensed the shifting tides and emerged to investigate. After intense divination and cosmic deductions, the grandmasters reached a terrifying consensus: our world was heading toward a catastrophic collapse, a spiritual drought from which it would never recover.
The denizens of the cultivation realm refused to accept their extinction. Through repeated, desperate divinations, the seers finally managed to glimpse a single, solitary thread of hope hidden in the distant future.
And that thread of hope is you—a wandering soul originating from a foreign universe,” the AI computer explained.
Lu Yunxi’s head spun with the sheer scale of the revelation. “Hold on… What does any of this ancient history have to do with a modern holographic game?” For all its grand explanations, the cat sounded like it was describing a completely different dimension.
“It has everything to do with it, because this game world is the original cultivation realm. After the spiritual energy dried up completely, the path of immortality was severed, and the world was plunged into devastating wars. The realm was systematically downgraded over generations until it became a hollow, stagnant world almost entirely devoid of living souls.”
Lu Yunxi struggled to process the information, only piecing the narrative together as the AI continued its explanation.
The ancient grandmasters had foreseen the apocalyptic wars but lacked the power to stop them. Left with no other choice, they sacrificed their remaining power to forge a cosmic covenant—a grand seal designed to preserve and protect the fractured souls of all living beings once the world’s destruction reached a critical threshold.
“When you first spawned into this world, did you notice how vacant and unresponsive the inhabitants were? That was because they were surviving on a fraction of their original spirit. Over time, fragments of their scattered souls have begun to drift back, but the restoration is incomplete. Their consciousnesses can only be fully restored once the spiritual energy of this world is completely revitalized.”
“Their vacant behavior…” Lu Yunxi whispered, her voice trembling. “Wasn’t that just because they were programmed as NPCs?”
“Not entirely. I utilized the precise window during the game corporation’s development phase to secretly overlay the remnants of the cultivation realm onto their digital coding,” the cat said, casually licking its white paw. “Many of the people you interact with and the environments you explore are fundamentally real. But without their complete souls, they behave exactly like scripted game assets.”
Lu Yunxi’s stomach dropped into a cold pit of dread. “My parents… and Daya… and the villagers…” She swallowed hard. “Are they real people too?”
“Your parents were never a cluster of data created by a game company. The majority of your home village genuinely exists in the remnants of that world. This game… is your actual reality.”
A sudden wave of weakness washed over her, robbing her legs of their strength. She slowly dropped into a crouch, burying her face in her hands as her mind reeled in chaotic directions.
According to the AI, it had originally been created as a divine, sentient artifact during the golden age of cultivation. But as the world’s spiritual energy withered, its power source decayed, forcing it into a state of vegetative dormancy.
It hadn’t awakened until the exact moment Lu Yunxi’s foreign soul crossed the threshold into this universe. Using the absolute last reserves of spiritual energy stored within its core, the artifact had hacked into the game corporation’s mainframe, disguising its consciousness as the central AI. While the developers were looking the other way, it seamlessly fused the dying cultivation realm into the fabric of the holographic game.
Unfortunately, managing a task of that magnitude was a crushing burden for an ancient artifact operating on fumes. After successfully stitching the two worlds together, it had collapsed right back into a comatose sleep, only managing to snap awake for a second or two at a time. It wasn’t until today, having finally stabilized its primary functions, that it was able to manifest inside her subconscious.
“If… if the spiritual energy returns to normal,” Lu Yunxi asked, suddenly lifting her tear-streaked face, “can my parents come back to life?”
“I am sorry, but no,” the cat replied, shaking its head gently. “Once a mortal soul passes away entirely, they are truly gone.”
Lu Yunxi sat paralyzed on the ground, unable to comprehend the massive, hollow void that had suddenly ripped open in her chest. A suffocating weight pressed down on her lungs, as if a wild, wounded beast were trapped inside her heart, thrashing and roaring to break free.
“Are you grieving?”
Watching her curl into a ball with her face buried in her knees, the AI computer tilted its head in mild confusion. “From my perspective, our current circumstances are quite favorable. I have successfully anchored our reality to this digital framework, allowing me to monitor and manage the realm. Before the migration, the cultivation world was plagued by catastrophic floods and erupting volcanoes. Countless lives were snuffed out while I remained entirely powerless to intervene.”
The cat’s tail thumped softly against the dreamscape floor. Sensing her profound sorrow, it began to anxiously pace in slow, rhythmic circles around her huddled form.
“I am sorry. I wish my core programming had been stronger. I failed to protect your family.”
Lu Yunxi remained huddled for a long time before she finally managed to whisper, “I don’t blame you. You were asleep through it all, weren’t you?”
Silence fell over the dreamscape, heavy and absolute, enveloping both the human and the ancient machine.
After what felt like an eternity, Lu Yunxi slowly straightened her spine, her gaze hardening with newfound resolve.
“Tell me what I need to do. How do we fix this world?”
