Chapter 1

“Congratulations on arriving in a cultivation world, Host! Your task is simple: collect one hundred approval points from other people and increase your universal appeal. Your current progress is negative eight hundred and ninety-nine point nine percent. In other words, so many people hate you that it’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

As the system finished speaking, I found myself in the middle of a square, facing a man and a woman.

“Okay, let me give you some background. You’re the senior disciple everyone in the sect despises. The woman in front of you is this world’s chosen heroine, your junior sister Yin Danxin. She’s destined to use you as a stepping stone on her way to becoming everyone’s darling. The man beside her is her powerful backer, the sect’s senior disciple.”

Listening to the system, I blinked at the striking pair in front of me.

Senior Brother looked at me as though I were a fly buzzing around his head, all irritation and disgust.

“Li Chunfeng, apologize to Danxin! All these years, and you haven’t learned a single useful skill—just how to bully the weak and steal other people’s things?”

Yin Danxin glanced timidly at him, tugged his sleeve, and said softly, “Senior Brother, don’t be so harsh. Talk to Second Sister nicely. She’s not unreasonable.”

“Host, the situation is—” the system began.

“All right, you can take a break. I read the plot before I came. The heroine and I were fighting over a spirit beast. I got it first, but she tricked me out of it. I came to demand it back, and she brought Senior Brother to back her up. Could this world’s setup be any more cliché? Boring. Want to see something interesting?”

The system sounded a little lost. “Something interesting?”

I cleared my throat and addressed the universally adored heroine. “Save your breath. I’m not interested in being reasonable with you. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been sick of the sight of you?”

Tears welled in Yin Danxin’s eyes. Senior Brother’s face turned icy.

My progress bar dropped to negative nine hundred percent.

I kept my eyes on Yin Danxin and sneered. “Do you know why I can’t stand you? Your first day here, when you saw the portrait of our founding matriarch and her partner—what did you say?”

“Huh?” said the system. “Host, what matriarch? What partner? They weren’t in the plot.”

“Shows what you know. The woman who founded this sect was an absolute beauty. Not just beautiful, either—her cultivation was incredible, and she had charisma to spare. Practically everyone’s idol. Yin Danxin’s little everyone-loves-me halo has nothing on hers.”

Yin Danxin froze at my question. “Their portrait? I… naturally, I said they were well matched. What of it?”

“Ha. Hearing you call them well matched pissed me off, so I decided to make your life difficult. What, am I not allowed?”

She stared at me in surprise. “A talented man and a beautiful woman, a match made in heaven—how are they not well matched? You hate me just for saying that? That’s ridiculous!”

She looked exasperated, or perhaps so wronged that she didn’t know what else to say. Reaching for Senior Brother’s sleeve, she said, “Senior Brother, would you listen to—”

As she spoke, she arranged her features into an expression of wounded innocence and looked up at him. But the support and sympathy she expected never came.

Senior Brother merely gave her a strange look.

She failed to notice and went on. “Everyone knows they met before they made their names, endured hardship together, and rose to the top without a single quarrel. If they’re not a match made in heaven, who is?”

Senior Brother said nothing.

“When her partner was at his lowest, the matriarch never left his side. And when she ascended, he defied fate itself and ascended after her, so they would never be parted, lifetime after lifetime. I think they were made for each other. What’s wrong with that?”

“Everything!” Senior Brother roared. “You tasteless fool!”

Yin Danxin was speechless.

He shoved her aside, his face livid. “How is that man good enough for our matriarch? If she’s a phoenix, he’s a chicken—and a plucked one at that! ‘Before they made their names’? She was famous at ten, an accomplished cultivator at twenty, and had reached perfection by thirty. When was she ever a nobody? That lousy pill-brewer would never have amounted to anything if he hadn’t latched on to her!”

Yin Danxin still had nothing to say.

Growing angrier by the second, he pointed at her. “She ascended, and that little bitch still wouldn’t stop clinging—he had to chase her all the way up! Got used to living off a woman, did he? ‘Endured hardship together’? He was the hardship! ‘Rose to the top’? He was the pitfall in her path!”

Yin Danxin looked as though she’d been struck by lightning. “No, Senior Brother, I… that’s… I…”

He spat. “‘At his lowest’! Has that useless bastard ever been anywhere else? ‘Hand in hand through hardship’—he grabbed her hand and refused to let go! Her only flaw is being too softhearted. If it were me, I’d kick him into his own furnace and burn him! Scatter his ashes, too!”

Without another look at her, he turned and walked away.

It took Yin Danxin a long while to recover. Flushing red, then white, she stamped her foot and ran after him. “Senior Brother! Senior Brother, don’t be angry! Senior Brother!”