Chapter 75 The Cycle After all, everyone was hoping he would die sooner...

The first person moved his fingers, about to make a hand seal, but Shen Cangyu summoned the Kunlun Sword and swung it at him first.

A crisp clanging sound reverberated, and Shen Cangyu lifted her eyelids to see Shen Qingyan raise his sword to block her attack.

"You're courting death." Shen Cangyu sneered.

With a jolt and a shove, Shen Qingyan felt his hand go numb, and his longsword flew out of his hand. The next moment, Shen Cangyu's sword was right next to his neck.

Shen Cangyu stared into his eyes and saw the deep fear within them.

What? He's actually that afraid of her?

Shen Cangyu's eyes were contemptuous and mocking: "I thought you had some ability, daring to block my sword, but it turns out you're nothing special."

"We have no grudge against each other, why did you hurt her?" The Tongmenghui disciples beside her were afraid that Shen Cangyu's sword would really cut off Shen Qingyan's head, but they dared not step forward. They could only shout at her, trying to accuse her first.

"Do you think I'm blind?" Shen Cangyu looked at him disdainfully. "You want to use heavenly lightning on me? Don't you even know your own limitations? In terms of mental skills, you can't beat me. In terms of swordsmanship, you can't beat me either. You still want to mess with me? That's ridiculous."

Shen Cangyu moved her sword aside and drew a circle on the tip of that person's pen: "You attacked first. I was only acting in self-defense. Even if I killed you, it was because you provoked me. I did nothing wrong." Even if she really killed someone, she was slaying evil. She was still a righteous cultivator who eliminated evil and protected the innocent.

"Walk……"

A voice sounded in his ear, and Shen Cangyu looked at Shen Qingyan, only to see him pulling the person beside him backward: "Let's go."

Shen Qingyan's eyes still held fear as he looked at Shen Cangyu, but were also filled with many complex emotions. He held tightly to the person beside him, afraid that they would start fighting again, and could only repeat, "Let's go."

Watching the group of people walk away in a few scattered places, Shen Cangyu looked down at the oil-paper umbrella she had thrown on the ground, bent down and picked it up.

*

The crowd took a long detour towards Kunlun, remaining silent as if still pondering what had just happened.

That was indeed a good opportunity; if they had seized it, perhaps they could have... Unfortunately, their opponents were far stronger than they had imagined.

"She's only been in Kunlun for a little over a year, how did she become so powerful?" someone said through gritted teeth. Many of them were Kunlun disciples from the previous year and had no direct contact with Shen Cangyu. All their information about Shen Cangyu came from rumors spread by others.

They said that Shen Cangyu was a good student, exceptionally intelligent, and highly favored by the elders. They had heard the term "exceptional talent" countless times before; every disciple born into the inner sect was given this title by the elders. This Shen Cangyu from Penglai was probably one of those people—having only the title, favored by the elders, and praised by the inner sect disciples.

Unexpectedly, in their first encounter, they discovered that the rumors about Shen Cangyu might be true. Her reactions were incredibly fast, her swordplay was ghostly, and her attacks were always sudden and unexpected... truly terrifying.

Just then, a voice suddenly came from the crowd: "I just recorded a video." A girl took off the photo bead hanging on the corner of her clothes.

Photograph beads!

Their eyes lit up instantly when they saw the bead in her hand. The recording bead could capture all the sounds and images within a certain period of time, recreating the scene at that moment.

With this photo-recording bead, an idea came to their minds.

Just now, Shen Cangyu drew her sword against them, attempting to kill them. This scene was recorded by the image-recording bead. If the contents of the image-recording bead could be edited to capture the moment when she held the sword to Shen Qingyan's neck, then the image-recording bead could become evidence to accuse Shen Cangyu of premeditatedly murdering her fellow disciples.

"Yes, that's what we should do. She intentionally harmed her fellow disciples, and the situation is dire. If word gets out, even if the elders want to protect her, they won't be able to convince everyone. She will definitely be punished." It just so happens that Kunlun has a low tolerance for the Five Evils right now. By associating her with the Five Evils at this time, we might be able to drag her down with us and take the opportunity to expel her from Kunlun.

Let her end up like Xu Qiubai, or perhaps her fate will be even worse.

Back then, Xu Qiubai killed people in the environment, and those people wouldn't be harmed in reality. But Shen Cangyu is different this time; she's using her sword against her fellow disciples in reality!

Xu Qiubai was expelled from Kunlun because he had the support of Xingxiang Hall and Elder Xu Mei; he was only expelled and did not receive any other punishment. However, Shen Cangyu had no powerful backers, so her punishment would definitely be more severe than Xu Qiubai's.

Thinking of this, they looked excited.

Suddenly, someone made a move, snatched the recording bead, and crushed it before anyone could react.

The photo-recording beads turned into powder and drifted in the air.

Everyone was stunned for a moment before they came to their senses and glared angrily at Shen Qingyan: "What are you doing? How could you crush the recording bead? We finally found a way to deal with her, and you do this... Have you forgotten how she just pointed her sword at you? What if she had used her strength and your neck had really been sliced ​​off!"

Facing the accusations from the crowd, Shen Qingyan said, "Don't touch her. She's not as simple as you think. People who offend her never have a good ending."

"What? She's just a disciple from Penglai. Penglai is so far from Kunlun, and she doesn't have many connections there. She's nothing like what you're saying..."

“Don’t touch her,” Shen Qingyan said, looking at them with his dark, deep eyes. “This is my advice to you. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to try it.”

His sudden serious tone caught everyone off guard. Finally, someone chuckled and said, "Forget it, let's not move. We're riding high right now, so it's better to keep a low profile."

As they spoke, they continued walking towards Kunlun. This time, everyone walked on their own, and no one spoke again.

Shen Qingyan walked at the very back of the crowd, recalling Shen Cangyu's gaze and the words she had just spoken.

When exactly did it change?

He thought that perhaps he had always viewed the world and Shen Cangyu through a lens of prejudice, which was why he hadn't noticed her changes.

Perhaps he should have noticed something amiss when he heard that Shen Cangyu was an envoy from Penglai.

In the original story, Shen Cangyu grew up in Kunlun. She was not from Penglai at all. The Penglai storyline only appears in the latter half of the story. In the early part of the story, there should not have been any Penglai people in Kunlun.

Perhaps, that person wasn't Shen Cangyu at all.

Shen Qingyan narrowed his eyes.

All the stories he had ever seen were just words, and the images were just his imagination. He didn't know what Shen Cangyu looked like. If the person in front of him was just an outsider who was eyeing Shen Cangyu's name, then everything would be explained.

No wonder her personality was somewhat different from what he remembered.

No wonder she showed undisguised malice when she first saw him, even though he had never offended Shen Cangyu.

No matter how many times he tried to win her over, she would reject him without hesitation.

No wonder she suddenly used the term "self-defense" just now.

Shen Qingyan suddenly recalled the internet buzzwords he had overheard from Mingzhao. Perhaps to Mingzhao they were just ordinary, interesting words, but to him they were like thunderclaps. Only someone who had traveled from the modern world could understand the true significance of those words.

At that time, he wondered if there were other transmigrators in the world besides him, but when the system heard his guess, it just told him not to think too much.

It turns out that besides Shen Qingyan, there is a second time traveler in this world.

It turns out that the transmigrator was Shen Cangyu, or to be precise, an outsider who occupied Shen Cangyu's body.

Shen Qingyan finally understood the source of Shen Cangyu's hostility towards him: because they were rivals.

In the story's plot, Shen Cangyu is the protagonist, while Shen Qingyan is merely an insignificant background character who appears later in the story to advance the plot.

He was just a minor character, while Shen Cangyu was the protagonist of this world. What did he have to do to oppose her?

They were both time travelers, but their statuses were completely opposite.

In a daze, Shen Qingyan suddenly understood why the system had always urged him to follow the plot when it brought him to this world, making him constantly build good relationships with others and increase his favorability, but it refused to let him befriend Shen Cangyu.

It turns out the system already knew that there was another transmigrator in this world besides him.

It turns out that from the moment he entered this world, he had already embarked on the path arranged for him by the system. They all wanted to compete for the protagonist's position, but in the era of the great protagonist, a book could only have one protagonist. In the current plot of this book, the protagonist is Shen Cangyu, so his role can only be that of the villain.

Only one of the protagonist and the antagonist can survive.

Because what readers want to see is a story of a hero fighting a dragon; they want to see the protagonist trample the villain underfoot and see the villain ultimately meet a bad end.

And that is exactly what he is—a villain.

Everything the system had done in the past was to gain favor with other characters and readers so that when the author arranged for the protagonist to kill him, the readers' comments would spare his life.

Shen Qingyan stopped and stood still. The crowd in front of him did not notice his movement and continued to walk forward, getting further and further away from him.

Shen Qingyan thought that now he had lost the system, and he could no longer see the plot or the readers' comments. All he had left was the favorability value interface.

Because the system created the favorability value interface for him, it remained with him as a relic of the system.

On his favorability rating screen, there were only two characters with 100% favorability: the system and Dong Tang. He and Dong Tang were both villains, and out of a sense of shared suffering, he released a paper boat lantern for her. After he released the lantern, Dong Tang's favorability rating towards him, which had previously been zero, instantly reached one hundred.

Perhaps at that time, he should have realized that he could only gain favor from fellow villains, and he could never integrate into the main characters.

The system told him to follow the plot properly. It turns out that becoming a villain, a stepping stone in the protagonist's path, and finally being defeated by the protagonist was the ending he deserved.

After all, everyone was hoping he would die sooner.