The setting sun, like blood, spilled its light onto the piles of rocks in the desolate wilderness.
Xiao Chen dragged his unsteady leg and nearly crippled body forward, stumbling along. His tattered shirt was no longer recognizable as its original color, stained with mud, dirt, and his own blood. Several unhealed scars marred his exposed arms.
He didn't know where he was going, or what the meaning of living was. He wandered aimlessly, his dantian now empty, his meridians throbbing with pain, each step feeling like pulling on rusty parts.
"Cough cough cough..." A gust of cold wind blew into his throat, and he couldn't help but cough violently, the phlegm he coughed up containing a faint trace of blood.
Just then, a dark figure darted out from the shadows behind him like a ghost. Xiao Chen looked at the man in black expressionlessly and said, "I just want to know who it is? So eager to get rid of me?"
"Xiao Chen, enough nonsense. How could you have known what would happen now? Why did you do it in the first place?"
The long sword in his hand gleamed with a chilling light, aiming straight for Xiao Chen's back!
"Xiao Chen, your death is near!" The man in black's voice was hoarse, filled with undisguised resentment. "Back then, you relied on your talent to humiliate my sect's disciples. Today, I will avenge them!"
Xiao Chen froze. He had no cultivation at all and couldn't even sense the most basic spiritual energy, so he had no way to avoid this fatal blow.
He didn't even bother to turn around; a self-deprecating smile simply played on his lips. Death might be better; perhaps this way, he could find release.
The wind from the sword drew ever closer, and the shadow of death instantly enveloped him.
...
In the courtyard of Qingyun Sect.
Lin Zhou struggled with the system for a long time, but in the end he couldn't resist the cold threat of "annihilation".
"Fine, fine, I'll go, I'll go, okay?" He climbed up from the rocking chair with a look of utter despair, dusting himself off. "But let's make this clear first: I can take on disciples, but I can't teach anything. I don't even know how to use my cultivation myself, so don't expect me to impart knowledge."
The system did not respond, which can be considered a default decision.
"Also, where is that genius? I can't just wander around looking for him, can I?" Lin Zhou rolled his eyes. "Give me a location, hurry up, you're making me miss my nap."
[Target location marked. Use the "Travel Thousands of Miles in a Breath" talisman?]
"Traveling ten thousand miles in a single breath?" Lin Zhou raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you have such good stuff here? Why didn't you give it to me before?" He thought the system would only give out ores and weeds.
[...]
"Use it, of course I'll use it." Lin Zhou was too lazy to argue with the system. "Hurry up, I need to come back and sunbathe after I finish this."
As soon as he finished speaking, he felt a faint light appear beneath his feet, and his body instantly became light and airy. The scene before him began to rush backward, and the wind whistled past his ears.
This feeling... is quite strange?
The moment Lin Zhou had that thought, he landed steadily in a desolate wilderness.
Wherever he looked, he saw a man in black holding a sword, about to stab a ragged and emaciated young man.
"Wow, what a coincidence?" Lin Zhou clicked his tongue, thinking to himself, "If I had arrived a moment later, wouldn't I have been eliminated the moment I stepped out the door? System, are you doing this on purpose?"
Just as the longsword was about to pierce the young man's body, Lin Zhou didn't think twice. He picked up a stone from the side of his feet and flicked it with his finger.
He didn't even use much force; it was purely an unconscious action.
"call out--"
The pebble shot through the air at such a speed that it created a sonic boom.
"Pfft!"
With a soft sound, the pebble pierced precisely between the black-clad man's eyebrows.
The ferocity on the man in black's face hadn't faded when his body fell straight down, his long sword clattering to the ground. He was dead beyond any doubt.
Xiao Chen stood frozen in place. He felt no pain, only a strange noise and the sound of something heavy falling to the ground. He slowly turned around and saw the man in black lying in a pool of blood, and also saw Lin Zhou standing not far away, dressed in clean robes, looking out of place in this desolate place.
Who is this person?
Lin Zhou walked to the corpse of the man in black, kicked it to confirm that he was dead, and then turned to look at Xiao Chen.
Is this what the system meant by "a peerless genius, but doesn't seem like it"?
Looking at the sickly, injured man before him, Lin Zhou was filled with questions. Had the system malfunctioned and mistakenly labeled a "good-for-nothing" as a "genius"?
But he was too lazy to investigate further. He just accepted whatever the system told him to accept, regardless of whether the person was a genius or not.
"Want to know who's coming to kill you?"
Xiao Chen cupped his hands in a gesture of respect to Lin Zhou, saying, "Thank you for your trouble, senior."
He crouched down, touched the black-clad man's brow with his finger, and a barely perceptible spiritual energy probed in—it was the "Soul-Collecting Technique" that the system had just "given" to him.
A moment later, Lin Zhou withdrew his hand, looked at Xiao Chen, and said in a calm tone, "The person who killed you was from the Li family of Tianfeng City. You broke his leg back then."
Xiao Chen's pupils contracted slightly. The Li family? He remembered; there was indeed such a family.
Lin Zhou paused, then added, his tone tinged with a hint of gossip: "However, someone else hired him to kill you."
Xiao Chen suddenly looked up at Lin Zhou, his eyes filled with a mixture of hope and fear.
"Who is it?" His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping.
Lin Zhou looked at him and slowly uttered a name: "Su Wanqing".
"boom--"
The name struck Xiao Chen like a thunderbolt!
Su Wanqing... his childhood sweetheart, the woman who once smiled at him and said she would wait for him to rebuild the Xiao family and marry her in glory?
It's her? It's actually her?
After being abandoned by his family, the only person he still held onto a sliver of hope for turned out to be the mastermind behind the scenes who wanted to kill him.
Xiao Chen staggered back a step, his face instantly turning deathly pale. His lips trembled, but he couldn't utter a single word. The last glimmer of light in his eyes was completely extinguished.
"Do you need me to rub it and help you solve it?"
Xiao Chen shook his head and said, "I won't trouble you, senior. I'll handle this myself from now on."
Not bad, not bad at all! That's more like the protagonist in a novel!
Lin Zhou shrugged as he looked at his distraught appearance, thinking to himself: This plot is more exciting than any storybook.
He stood up, dusted himself off, walked up to Xiao Chen, looked down at him, and asked in an extremely casual tone, "Hey kid, want revenge? Want to start cultivating again?"
Xiao Chen raised his head blankly, his empty eyes looking at Lin Zhou as if he were looking at a stranger.
He said with a wry smile, "My cultivation is completely ruined now, my meridians are all destroyed, there's no use in cultivating anymore."
Lin Zhou yawned and slowly stated the purpose of his trip:
"If you want to, come with me."
"From today onwards, you are a member of my Qingyun Sect."
"From now on, I will be your master, Lin Zhou."
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