Chapter 47

Su Zhen looked at him calmly. "Does the senior have something to say?"

Xiao Yu paused for a moment, then gave a bitter smile. "I originally intended to tell you everything, but for a moment I didn't even know where to begin, and some things are hard to put into words."

Su Zhen was slightly startled. "Does it relate to..."

As she spoke, she raised her eyes to look at the sky.

Xiao Yu nodded slightly. "Some things are inconvenient for me to say too much about, as they involve the rules of this realm. But primarily, because you have not yet reached the Saint Realm, there are certain matters you are not yet permitted to hear. I will pick the things I can share first."

Su Zhen nodded in silence, then suddenly asked, "What does 'brain-dead fan' mean?"

Xiao Yu chuckled. "I thought you had already guessed?"

Su Zhen pondered. "...That was a bluff. I roughly guessed that what you said meant you like me very much. I understand the two characters for 'brain-dead', but how exactly should the character for 'fan' be interpreted?"

Xiao Yu looked her up and down thoughtfully.

Su Zhen appeared composed, but in reality she felt somewhat unnatural. Ever since she uttered the word 'like', her gaze had remained fixed in the distance, stubbornly refusing to look at him.

Xiao Yu tilted his head to stare at her, remaining silent for a while.

When Su Zhen received no reply after waiting for a long time, she couldn't help turning her face to look at him.

Their eyes met.

Su Zhen glared at him and said with considerable displeasure, "Has the senior gone foolish, or are you just pondering how to brush me off?"

Xiao Yu snapped out of it, turned his head slightly, and raised a hand to press against his lips to hide the corners of his mouth, which kept curling upward. "Cough, no."

He gave a couple of light coughs, adjusted his expression and demeanor, and then spoke with a serious expression: "This involves another language. Translated phonetically, it sounds somewhat like 'fan'. Its original meaning is an admirer or worshipper of someone, and one who can even be described as fanatical. Adding the words 'brain-dead' in front of it makes it a bit more extreme. Saying that it means 'like' is naturally not incorrect, but the word 'like' is probably insufficient to describe this feeling. After all, I would also like the potted plants displayed for sale along the street, but that is definitely different, right?"

Su Zhen was on the verge of speaking, then stopped.

This fellow was deliberately using potted plants to make a point.

As a half-demon with the bloodline of a tree spirit, her true form was fundamentally no different from a potted plant.

Su Zhen fell silent for a moment. "...Senior actually didn't make a serious effort to conceal it either. Earlier, I had wondered whether you recognized me, or had devoured the memories of some relative or friend of mine, which explained why you understood me so well. But every now and then, novel words would slip from your mouth. Several of them I had never heard before, yet I had seen them in the comments section of that book. Later on, the names of the cities you mentioned sounded even stranger. The reason I didn't break the illusion earlier was, firstly, because we weren't that familiar with each other, and secondly, for fear of leaking heavenly secrets."

Xiao Yu had been listening seriously at first, but upon hearing that last sentence, his face immediately broke into a bright smile. "So we are very familiar with each other now?"

Su Zhen cast a sideways glance at him. "Not familiar."

"Well then, not familiar it is."

Sensing that this was not her true thought, Xiao Yu did not restrain the smile at the corners of his lips at all. "The comments for that book were particularly numerous. Many of the terms you found unfamiliar are extremely common among the readership over there, so I wasn't even sure if the ones you saw were posted by me."

Su Zhen already had a vague inkling in her heart. "A book from another world?"

The ultimate goal of a cultivator's training is to shatter the void and ascend to this realm, thereby leaving the Nine Realms plane and traveling to other worlds. Therefore, the existence of other worlds was not strange to them.

She was not overly surprised, and in fact had harbored suspicions for a long time.

"Yes."

Xiao Yu admitted it as well. "Speaking of which, the notion of the wicked female supporting character is actually not official either. All of you are actually POV viewpoint characters. Wicked female and male supporting characters are terms used by the protagonist's fans; anyone who goes against their master is branded a wicked villain. The author never said such things. The author merely used the perspectives of different characters to write about their experiences and observations in order to showcase the entire world. Among these characters, some were friendly to the protagonist while others were not..."

After rattling off a long string of words, he suddenly stopped and looked at her uncertainly. "You can understand, right?"

Su Zhen frowned. "I roughly understand. The folk customs and cultural climate in that other world where the readers and author reside are vastly different from here?"

Xiao Yu nodded. "Correct. And not just those; many aspects are different. There are no Nine Realms over there either."

He spent a considerable amount of effort finally explaining the eight planets of the solar system, the rotation and revolution of the Earth, the various eras of the Phanerozoic eon, as well as human evolution and the history of civilization.

Some of these contents were not very easy to understand, but paired with the images from his memories that he displayed, it became much easier.

"This is truly endless; in short, it's roughly like this."

Xiao Yu massaged his brow and said, "These are not my areas of expertise, so some parts might not be stated entirely accurately."

Su Zhen also nodded slowly. "I understand what you mean."

She immersed herself in the history of that world, pondering it for a long time, and even wanted him to elaborate more, but this seemingly was not the most important matter at present.

Her thoughts inevitably drifted back.

Su Zhen had also read similar vernacular tales, though none as lengthy as *The Nine Realms Sword-Seeking Record*. Moreover, since it was a book from another world, and that world was utterly distinct from the Nine Realms, the readers knew nothing of this world here. For the author to tell a story, a detailed introduction of the background was undoubtedly required, rather than mere narration.

Both Liu Yunyao and Xie Changfeng were intimately connected to the Demon Realm, occupying half the narrative space, while the remaining supporting characters encompassed all the various races.

Her own story was likewise tied to the Demon Realm, and among the supporting characters, she was not the only one with demon ancestry.

Through the eyes of the supporting characters, even more elements untouched by the protagonists could be displayed; only by piecing together everyone's respective experiences did the whole story become complete.

"So it's actually considered an ensemble cast story, and one can hardly speak of righteous or villainous sides, since the male and female protagonists aren't good things either."

Xiao Yu lowered his voice. "I found it preposterous whenever I saw people making an issue out of the wicked female supporting characters. Earlier, some people even felt that you—characters like you—wouldn't enter the pool because you were villains..."

Su Zhen: "?"

"Ahem, it's just that the book was adapted into a video game."

Xiao Yu attempted to explain, but got stuck on the issues of computers and cell phones, causing him a headache. "This is slightly troublesome. If you don't have any other questions, I'll explain it to you in detail later."

Su Zhen thought for a moment, then couldn't help asking, "Does the author of that book actually have any connection to this realm—"

Before the rest of her question could pass her lips, she felt a sharp pain in her mind, and her primordial spirit trembled vaguely, her whole body's spiritual energy plunging into disorder in an instant.

Su Zhen swayed on her feet.

In merely a fraction of a second, she actually felt as though her primordial spirit was about to leave her body, and her physical form temporarily lost most of its sensation.

A sudden force wrapped around her waist, pulling her firmly against a solid, strong arm as her forehead bumped into a sturdy bicep.

"...No matter what you wanted to say, stop thinking about that for now."

Xiao Yu reached out to support her, easing his strength somewhat so that he only loosely encircled her waist. Beneath his palm, her waist was slender and lithe, rising and falling slightly with her ragged breath.

Su Zhen's divine body had nearly separated, and being affected by this inexplicable external force made it extremely agonizing.

As it subsided slightly, she could barely perceive her body once more, though a splitting headache remained.

Overwhelmed by shock and exhaustion, she leaned against his embrace, turning her cheek slightly to rest upon his arm.

Xiao Yu looked down at her. "Would you like to sit down?"

Su Zhen shook her head lightly, deliberately gathering her thoughts and shifting her attention. As a master of mental arts, she was well-versed in handling such matters.

In the blink of an eye, the spiritual energy within her body stabilized significantly, and her primordial spirit fully fused with her physical form once again.

She slowly straightened up. "...Was the senior like this in the past as well?"

Xiao Yu likewise withdrew his hand. "I am originally a person from another world, so I naturally differ somewhat from you all."

Su Zhen blinked. "Did the senior ascend in that other realm, breaking the void to come over here?"

"I ascended over there?"

Xiao Yu was amused. "You think far too highly of me. There are no cultivators at all in our world... well, I can't say there are none who seek the Dao, but it is completely different from here."

Su Zhen pursed her lips. "You stopped right when you were talking about the urban settlements of the alluvial plains, skipping the whole middle process, and then started rambling about computers from several millennia later. How was I supposed to know what your world looked like?"

Xiao Yu fell silent for a moment, then gave her a thumbs-up. "You understood even when I explained it so poorly; you truly are a genius."

Su Zhen swatted his hand away. "Spare me the flattery."

"Well..."

Xiao Yu thought for a moment. "It was just that I fell asleep and suddenly transmigrated, opening my eyes to find myself turned into an infant, nearly buried alive."

"?"

"Similar to borrowing a corpse to resurrect the soul? This body had been dead for a while, and had even attracted a flock of fledgling underworld vultures that had bitten off several chunks of flesh. Two passersby couldn't bear to watch and chased them away, intending to do a good deed by burying the body, and that was when I woke up."

He recounted it lightly. "Those two ran away in fright. Fortunately, this body is of mixed Asura blood and develops rapidly. When I arrived, I made an effort and finally managed to crawl a few steps. Looking back, the parents of this body were lying right beside me, having been dead for a long time."

Su Zhen looked at him in disbelief. "Underworld vultures?"

Those were strange beasts of the Void Realm, utterly unfindable anywhere else. If any existed, they must have been captured from the Void Realm by someone; it was impossible for them to be roaming outside eating corpses.

"...Were you in the Sea of Rotting Bones? That place has the most underworld vulture nests."

"More or less. I was on that beach beneath the Upside-Down Cliff, with a mangrove forest right beside it. You know it, right?"

"Ah."

Su Zhen understood at once. "That place is actually not too bad. There are patches of heartbreak flowers in the forest, and underworld vultures hate that smell, so they won't get too close unless they are starving. Fortunately for that, otherwise that body would probably have been torn to shreds long ago."

"It can indeed be considered lucky."

Xiao Yu spread his hands. "Moreover, there was food in the forest. Do you remember that there is a pool of water in the tree forest, with stones scattered across it? Looking down from the high slope on the opposite side, the pool looks just like a human face? The stones look like..."

"...Eyes and mouth."

Su Zhen finished the sentence. "So it was already like that two thousand years ago."

Xiao Yu nodded helplessly. "Mhm, that's right. The book described you collecting red herbs over there, and I memorized all the plots related to you back-to-back. When I crawled all the way into the forest to that slope and saw the water pool, I roughly figured out where I was, and realized I had truly transmigrated into a book. Sometimes I felt like I was dreaming; I was tortured to death by those sting-bees, fainting countless times, and every time I woke up I thought it probably wasn't a dream, otherwise how could it hurt so much and yet not wake me up..."

Su Zhen listened earnestly, temporarily at a loss for words.

When she went to the Void Realm, she was already in the upper seven realms, and things like sting-bees posed no threat to her; they couldn't even break through her protective spiritual energy.

However, she had also seen people in immortal cities selling sting-bees. A shop assistant who wasn't quick-handed accidentally released a few, and a Qi-Condensation realm cultivator was stung a few times and nearly died of pure agony.

For a child without spiritual energy, even one with the sturdy physique of the Asura race, it must have been unbearably painful. She had no idea how he managed to endure it.

As Su Zhen thought of this, her heart seemed to tighten along with it.

Xiao Yu glanced at her, seemingly unaware of her emotional shift, and slowly continued: "Fortunately, there was water to drink and bugs to eat. I lingered on in a <strong>miserable</strong> state for a while. Once I could stand and walk steadily, I went out for a stroll. Walking further, I discovered more corpses, including the two passersby who had helped me earlier. They had all been poisoned to death by the scorpion-fish in the sea after coming into contact with polluted water. My parents back then probably perished the same way."

Su Zhen nodded in silence. "And then?"

"Then I just continued to muddle along, and even tried to cultivate. Didn't the original text write about the method of drawing Qi into the body? Although there was no spiritual energy in my world and it was completely useless, I still remembered it carefully when reading the book, just in case I transmigrated. I never expected that one day... tsk. Later on, I encountered cultivators from the Tianyuan Sect. They noticed a trace of spiritual energy on me and took me away."

Xiao Yu stopped as he spoke. "Hey, stop laughing. I'm not the only reader who did that."

Su Zhen looked at him helplessly. "I'm not laughing at you; I am merely feeling glad for senior. That place is terribly dangerous, so it's fortunate it turned out that way."

"Is that so?"

Xiao Yu let out a long sigh. "I wasn't particularly glad, though. After meeting them, I played the fool and asked a few questions, only to learn that the current sect master was Immortal Master Jingyang, who held the title of Sword Saint in the outside world. Imagining that it was still two thousand years before your birth, I felt like crying to death back then. Do you know that when I was enduring a living hell in the mangrove forest, my only thought was to meet you, so that if I had several dreams of waking up and seeing you picking red herbs by the water pool and asking me for directions—that plot of your adventures in the Void Realm written in the book..."

Su Zhen stared at him blankly, at a complete loss for how to handle this, and had to forcibly control her spiritual energy to keep the blood vessels on her face from expanding.

Otherwise, she probably would have blushed long ago.

"Mhm?"

Xiao Yu lowered his gaze slightly. "What is going on with your spiritual energy?"

Su Zhen abruptly turned her head away. "You are not allowed to look at my spiritual energy flows!"

Xiao Yu looked at her innocently. "I certainly didn't use inner-vision techniques to pry into the meridians within your body; I merely sensed your aura..."

Su Zhen cut him off. "You are not allowed to sense it!"

Xiao Yu: "..."

Xiao Yu raised his hands in surrender, looking as though he were trying hard to suppress a smile. "My mistake. No sensing, everything is normal, alright."

Su Zhen put on a serious expression and looked at him. "What if you had met me? You were just a toddler who had barely learned to walk back then."

"It wouldn't have mattered much. I just wanted to meet you. Don't you have a story character you like very much, and wouldn't you want to see the real person?"

Su Zhen narrowed her eyes.

She did have one, certainly.

But absolutely not as outrageous as him.

Su Zhen: "I don't believe you never fantasized about what would happen after meeting me."

Xiao Yu sighed. "Alright, I did. I wondered if I could try becoming your disciple, but I knew you weren't fond of taking on disciples, so I didn't hold out much hope. It would be fine just knowing you, and ideally becoming friends with you so I could warn you early on to stay away from..."

Feiyuan City.

Su Zhen caught that lip movement.

She closed her eyes. "You only wanted to save me?"

"Yes. Your cousin's words were very true; I certainly hoped you would live a happy and peaceful life, but staying alive comes first, so that matter has the highest priority. Everything else can be discussed later."

Su Zhen felt a slight urge to laugh, yet couldn't manage a smile.

"Before I met the Tianyuan Sect cultivators, I thought for a very, very long time about how I should introduce myself to you if we met, how to make friends with you, how to make you trust me, and then how to help you escape the ending from the original book. I thought of countless ways, thought about it every day, and came up with new ideas every day. I also thought about what it would be like if I struck gold and actually managed to become your disciple—that would be a different scenario, and helping you would be even easier. So I started thinking again..."

Xiao Yu spoke unhurriedly, appearing extremely calm, as though he were recounting someone else's story.

"I spent a very long time like that. Later, when I learned that the head of the Su family was still your great-grandmother, and that your grandfather was still just a half-grown child, I still couldn't help daydreaming about all sorts of scenarios after we met. Although I was busy with cultivation, almost all my spare moments were spent pondering these things. Of course, there were also times when I felt anxious, because I wasn't sure if I could live long enough for you to be born, so this matter became my greatest motivation."

Su Zhen really found it hard to describe her feelings. "However..."

"Right."

Xiao Yu turned his head back, those pale blue eyes locking onto her. "What did your previous sentence mean? That I was still a toddler who could barely walk?"

Su Zhen looked up at the sky. "I guessed that you wanted to help me. How could a child be of any help?"

Xiao Yu raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you meant?"

Su Zhen glared at him. "What else could it be?"

Xiao Yu watched her in silence for a moment, then suddenly curved the corners of his mouth, raising a hand to reach out as his fingertips hovered near her cheek.

He didn't actually touch her, pausing slightly before tracing a phantom path through the air.

"Mhm."

Xiao Yu chuckled, his voice dropping low. "...If you don't control your spiritual energy any further, you really are going to blush."

Su Zhen: "..."

Su Zhen expressionlessly swatted his hand away.