Chapter 90
Cold.
This was Gu Xiyu’s first feeling after crossing over.
The drifting snow that fell on him was not soft, and accompanied by a strong cold wind, it fell fiercely, as if it were about to drown him in a moment.
But it happened to be the temperature he liked best.
The man lying on the snow slowly opened his eyes; his silver-white robes spread out messily, mixing with the white of the snow on the ground. If it weren’t for his long black hair, which contrasted with the snow, it would have been hard to notice that a man was lying in a place where only white could be seen.
His eyelids twitched a few times, and the white frost that had fallen on his eyelashes was gently shaken off.
Although Commander Gu had regained consciousness, his body could not move for the time being.
[[The automatic system program is now online.]]
[[The host’s damaged body is being repaired…The host’s body is too damaged this time, so the repair time will be longer than usual, please be patient, host.]]
He felt it.
It was the first time after crossing over that Gu Xiyu felt a pain that was worse than death. Because his soul had completely fused with the body, he now had 100 percent perception of it. His entire body, except for his head, was in pain. It was as if all the cells and tendons had burst before he died, even his toes were aching.
He closed his eyes again and let out a breath, lying on the cold snow as if he were in a soft cotton ball. It didn’t affect him in any way, and he even felt extraordinarily comfortable.
Finally, he was no longer sickly.
Gu Xiyu could even feel the extremely powerful energy and spiritual power contained in this body, which was slowly increasing as the body was repaired.
“Since this is the last world, let me start the next mission immediately.” Gu Xiyu, who had left the ancient world and returned to the central station, did not choose to rest and directly plunged into the new mission world.
If this was the last soul fragment, it meant that this world was the cultivation world that had caused all the previous mission executors so much headache.
Before he came here, he thought he would be looking forward to it, and was even very motivated to meet the mission target. But now that he was lying here, he didn’t know if it was the cold breeze that had cleared his mind, but his mood was as unprecedentedly peaceful, and he was suddenly free of desire.
It seems that he had returned to the state he was in at the beginning of his mission, and his expectations of what kind of great demon he would see were gone.
“Hiss …… is there another one left here?”
“It was so well hidden, I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t told me.”
Along with the small sound of footsteps, Gu Xiyu, whose body was still being repaired, heard a conversation slowly approaching him, and it sounded like a group of men.
“Then let’s take them back, or we’ll have to get beaten up again if we don’t have enough offerings ……”
“Getting beat up is a small matter, I’m afraid he’ll get mad and just capture us to make up for it. Nothing can stop him from laying hands on fellow practitioners. “
One could hear that they were talking about someone who could be associated with the word ‘crazy’, and although Commander Gu had not yet received the data information from the system, he had already guessed the identity of the person they were talking about.
He wondered what kind of person the mission target of this world is.
Gu Xiyu felt himself being lifted and thrown onto something soft; it was neither cold nor hot.
Apparently, there were others beside him who were captured.
His identity in this world was that of a cultivator after all, and it took an exceptionally long time for his body to recover. The system was still showing ‘repair in progress’ when it sent him straight into a short hibernation period.
To put it bluntly, he was forced to sleep. According to experience, he should be able to move normally by the time he wakes up.
[[The repair is complete.]]
[The body is back to normal operation, the damaged dantian is restored, and lost cultivation has been recovered ……]]
When Gu Xiyu became conscious again, his mind was filled with the expected string of system announcements that made his head spin. In short, this body had not only returned to the best state it was in before death, it had even slightly combined his soul’s energy to boost his combat value a little more.
With just a thought, he could see images floating in his sea of consciousness when he closed his eyes. In a clear, bright blue shimmering light, he could see his ‘Yuanshen’ and the weapon revolving around it – a sword.
*Yuanshen means the predominant spirit or the fundamental essence of life.
A common weapon in the cultivation world.
This was his own Yuanshen, as the original owner’s Yuanshen had left this world when the dantian was broken, so he was able to cross over in the process.
“Senior brother, I’m so scared ……,” a girl sobbed quietly. She was sitting right next to Gu Xiyu, so her voice reached his ears without hindrance.
They were in a room surrounded by rough stone walls with no way out. A few human-sized luminous pearls were embedded high up, illuminating the space eerily. Gu Xiyu was placed in a sitting position against the wall, surrounded by several cultivators in the same sorry state as him. He even saw a few demon cultivators with obvious demonic features on their bodies. Compared to the immortal cultivators, who were huddled together in a group to keep warm, the demon cultivators were much more irritable.
One man with wolf ears was banging on the stone wall angrily, cursing, and trying to break the stone prison open by brute force.
[[Data loading is complete.]]
[[The mission executor is currently in the body of Tai Ling, a junior elder in the Tiansu Immortal Sect, and has been practicing the Emotionless Dao since he went through the Immortal Gate. He is cold and lacks desire, and is dedicated to his cultivation. A while ago, his cultivation came to a bottleneck, so he left the Immortal Sect temporarily to go on a trip to look for opportunities or to understand the Dao. Unexpectedly, there was an accident, and the original owner probably died due to a deviation in cultivation. The details are not entirely clear to the system, so the mission executor can investigate on his own.]]
It turned out that the original owner was cultivating the Emotionless dao. Gu Xiyu instantly understood why he had a sudden, saint-like state of mind. He had inherited all of the other party’s abilities and cultivation after all, which meant that he was now one of the cultivators of the Emotionless Dao.
Gu Xiyu shifted slightly and raised his hand to remove the hair that was covering his face. The original owner’s body was in a disheveled state when he died. He searched his storage device but could not even find a simple hairpin.
The young girl on the side had her eyes on him at some point and did not move them again. Seeing that he seemed to be worried about his loose hair, she took out a white jade hairpin with a monotonous design from the small bag she was carrying and carefully handed it to him with trembling hands.
Gu Xiyu was not polite, and he immediately accepted it. His voice was as clear as a cold spring, but with a hint of imperceptible gentleness: “Thank you.”
The cute girl did not know how to hide her emotions, and her cheeks instantly flushed.
He calmly pulled back his hair, which attracted the attention of the other people in the room. The panicked mutters gradually decreased, and eyes slowly turned to him. As he tied his back in an orderly manner, his exquisite face was gradually exposed to everyone’s eyes, causing people around him to be stunned, and they even started to mentally look up the list of all the big shots in the cultivation world, trying to find a name that could match this face.
Although all cultivators in the cultivation world were generally quite good-looking, only a few could bring out the aura of an immortal to be extremely outstanding. A man as good-looking as this should have been on that list, but the crowd thought for a long time and couldn’t name him, so they were unfamiliar with him.
So everyone’s eyes on Gu Xiyu became even more blatant, but he did not feel any discomfort. He was so calm that he could not lose his temper, even if he wanted to.
This feeling was familiar, but it was not similar to the state he had been in when he first started these missions. However, he couldn’t tell what the differences were.
The man next to the girl who had just given him a hairpin suddenly asked her with a smile, “Isn’t that the birthday gift you chose after much deliberation and said you wanted to give to your second senior brother?”
Sensing Gu Xiyu’s eyes falling back on her, the girl’s ears reddened, and she proudly raised her head and said, “Second senior brother also said that we should help people. I gave it out because this …… daoist master was in need.”
The man on the side was older than her, and he smiled as he stroked her head, but Gu Xiyu didn’t miss the bitterness in the smile on his lips. The girl also regained awareness of their current predicament, and she frowned as she dug into the man’s arms in fear.
The system continued to pass information to Gu Xiyu: [The mission target of this world is called Bu Tianhan, a great demon among demon cultivators. He has carried a kind of magic evil in his body since he was born, and once he went on the demonic path, he was able to climb up the ladder like a dragon flying through the clouds. However, the skills he practices are extreme, and the fastest way for him to advance is to hunt and kill cultivators, taking their yuanshen and inner dantians, and transforming them into spiritual energy that he absorbs with his evil techniques.]]
[[This is the fastest way for him to cultivate. The host has been assigned such an identity in this world because the only way to restrain the mission target is to use the emotionless Dao technique. This is why, over the years, whenever the mission target meets a practitioner of the Emotionless Dao, he will not let them go and will try to kill them before they grow to become a great threat to him. Tai Ling was gifted but very low-key, and he has hardly socialized since he started practicing.]]
[[ People outside the Immortal Sect only know that there are many elders of high cultivation in the Tiansu Immortal Sect, but they don’t fully understand the techniques they practice, so Bu Tianhan was not yet aware that the Tiansu Immortal Sect had an extremely capable Emotionless Dao practitioner.]]
So that’s how it is.
The Great Demon of this world was not easy to deal with, and there was a certain possibility he wouldn’t be able to handle a direct explosion in risk value. To prevent such a situation from occurring and having no escape route, the system assigned him an identity with some restraining properties to give him a better chance of escaping and completing the mission.
[[The current risk value of the mission target in this world is 80, please remember that once it reaches 100, a mission to annihilate the mission target will be forcefully triggered. This is the last world that system number W-XH3771 will assist in, so please do your best.]]
80 points, the highest value ever, a few more random provocations, and it would soar to a devastating 100 points.
Gu Xiyu was a little worried.
His body in this world was really powerful, so it could probably hold up in a fight with the Great Demon. In the past, most of the missions included emotional strategies and intimate contact, but his current body’s cultivation path was the opposite of these worldly desires, making it impossible for him to have any love or affection with the Great Demon.
To put it simply, all he could think about now was cultivating and completing his mission. But completing his mission will most likely require him to have access to his target ……
As he was thinking about this, the door to the stone prison was suddenly opened, and several demonic cultivators with a strong demonic aura strutted in from outside. They had chains in their hands and were looking at them like they were picking out cabbages in a vegetable market, looking for their next prey to be taken.
Apart from the demon cultivator, who was irascible and tried to resist but was completely unable to beat the demon cultivators because of his injuries, everyone else cowered in the corner in fear, trying to lower their presence.
Everyone knew what they were here to pick, and if they were taken away, they would become ‘food’ for the great demon Bu Tianhan.
The girl beside Gu Xiyu was so scared that she buried her head into her senior brother’s arms, and despite her efforts to restrain herself, she could not help crying.
While the devil cultivators were picking people out, he suddenly received a notification from the main system.
&123;A side mission has been triggered, please help everyone in the stone prison escape safely from this place.&125;
A simple and clear side mission. The main system hid after issuing it and didn’t say anything more to him.
With this mission, Gu Xiyu had to intervene even if he didn’t want to. He was intending to stop it as soon as he saw the group of demon cultivators heading toward the girl who had given him the hairpin, and the mission came at the right time to give him an extra reward for his actions.
So as everyone in the prison waited in fear and trepidation to be sentenced to death, they saw the quiet, yet distinguished man in white rise of his own accord and slowly walk up to the demon cultivators, the dragon embroidered in silver silk behind him swaying slightly as he walked.
The man’s figure was tall and slender, and his body seemed to have a natural elegance to it. When he was with the demon cultivators, he inexplicably gave them a sense of oppression.
The people In the stone prison were all brought back by them. Most of the prisoners had been injured for various reasons, and only a few of them had been attacked by them. They dared to walk in so boldly because they had confirmed that all the cultivators trapped here were incapable of fighting and could not resist.
Unexpectedly, there was a Gu Xiyu who had a system that could help him repair his body. They didn’t know that he had already recovered his spiritual power, and they proudly tilted their heads back, with one asking, “Yo, what, are you coming out to die on your own initiative? That’s good, you save us the trouble of having to choose someone, hahaha!”
After saying that, the demon cultivator only saw the corner of the handsome man’s mouth move slightly, a movement so small that he wouldn’t have noticed it without looking closely. It was not a full smile, but he sensed that it was a cold one.
………
Bu Tianhan waited for a long time at the training place, but his subordinates still hadn’t brought him a new sacrifice. It took too long—so long that he ended up going there himself.
At the stone prison, the guards who should have been guarding the outside had fallen over. Bu Tianhan’s red eyes, which were already fierce, flinched as he strode towards the stone room dedicated to the prey. The cell door was open, and a large opening that would have allowed several people to pass through was there in plain sight, stinging his eyes. There was no one to guard it, and those who could were all passed out on the floor.
Including the men he had sent to bring the new offerings.
“Rubbish.” Bu Tianhan, who was wearing black and gold robes, looked down at the demonic cultivators who had fallen to the ground, his steps gradually slowing down as he walked into the cell at an unhurried pace.
Unexpectedly, there was someone inside.
The man was wearing white clothes that were the opposite of his. He was sitting cross-legged with his back to the wall and his eyes slightly closed, as if he were calmly meditating.
Bu Tianhan could even feel the Qi flowing around the man.
The main thing was that the man was very good-looking and impeccable, and his skin was as white as the bright moon. He had clearly not yet attained the full Dao, but his body was already exuding an immortal-like aura.
He thought that the silvery-white mark of fire on his brow was the most stunning embellishment on his face, until the man suddenly opened his eyes. The cold, unfeeling gaze like ice touched him in a flash, his dark blue eyes looked ethereal and indifferent, but a closer look revealed stars scattered beneath.
Gu Xiyu looked at the man in black, who was as strong as an emperor. He walked into the cell with his hands behind his back and looked at him calmly. The moment their eyes met, he confirmed the identity of the other man as the Great Demon.
Bu Tianhan’s fierce red pupils were staring at him firmly, and it had to be said that the intimidating force was indeed full.
Worthy of being the most fearsome demon in the cultivation world.
[[Dingdong, your cute and lovely intelligence system is now online!]]
Bu Tianhan’s eyes looked like he was staring intently at Gu Xiyu, but in reality, he was looking at the strange glowing panel that suddenly appeared in front of him, his fist behind his back clenched tightly.
What was this?
He thought angrily, could it be related to… those people again?
This object was directly bound to his yuanshen, and he could not unbind it even if he wanted to. The feeling of being controlled by an unknown object made him irritable.
Until a calm and pleasant voice came into his mind.
“Hello system, I am the executor of this mission, my name is Gu Xiyu.”
If Bu Tianhan had been holding something in his fist behind him, that item would have definitely been crushed into powder by now.
He immediately sensed that this voice belonged to the man in white in front of him and that he was bound to the other side of this thing called “system”.
Bu Tianhan was a little excited.
‘Gu Xiyu.’ He recited this name in his heart, and a smile mixed with anger and madness suddenly slipped under his eyes.
‘… you have finally appeared!’