Novel [BL] 1000 Love Songs for A Lazy Tyrant

Hello, I'm co-writing a story tentatively called "1000 Love Songs for A Lazy Tyrant". I’m still undecided where I want to host it and my co-writer really doesn’t give a damn where, so I’ll just be posting it here sporadically as we complete chapters to see if it’s even interesting to anyone but the two of us (lol). In essence, let’s just share what we like.


Synopsis: Li Nian Ping (former name [redacted]) transmigrates into a musician cultivator who is quite (in)famous for being a waste of a heavenly spiritual root. Through no fault of his own, Li Nian Ping Original has never been able to cultivate with any technique and in this world where a lack of technique means stagnating, he’s been forever stuck as a mere stage two cultivator and eventually kicked out of his prestigious sect and then disowned by his family of powerful cultivators as a result of his innate failure.

Enter our transmigrator, [redacted], who was freed from his lonely life by the kind graces of the transmigration truck (read: car crash) and thrown into the body of Li Nian Ping just as the latter finally gave up the ghost and expired from grief.

Of course, he has a worthless system and a double-edged blade of a golden finger to help him navigate this new world.

Uncertain if he’s grateful for a second chance to participate in an even more ruthless rat race for success, the new Li Nian Ping meets Zhang Xiao, notoriously an impoverished but still very powerful Lord of Demonic Cultivators with a ramshackle sect that he barely takes care of due to (laziness) pressing matters and an even more pitiful love life. With a feeling like he had been scammed, Li Nian Ping (reluctantly) joins this bumbling sect of demonic and not-so-demonic cultivators with a determination to do some damned spring cleaning around here.

Whether or not any feelings blossom successfully between the two will depend on whether Zhang Xiao can finally overcome the death of his former lover(?) and whether Li Nian Ping can find it in his heart to be vulnerable enough for a home.

And something-something or other about the rest of the cultivation world raising its grudges and hackles at the return of this usually absentee Lord of Demonic Cultivators who had instigated a bloody war several hundred years ago to avenge his lover and who had wiped out many of the righteous sects at the time.

Everyone else: We’re not a peanut gallery, Sunsplitter Sword Zhang Xiao! Take our grievances seriously and die a thousand deaths for our ancestors!

Li Nian Ping: Ack! Lord Pillow hasn’t been fed, yet! Sorry everyone, can you come for revenge another day? (He felt this was a reasonable proposition that respected their rights to protest.)

Zhang Xiao: Why did you bring the fat chicken with you to our bed?

Lord Pillow: Bawk bawk! (The great me is angry at this neglect!) Bawk bawk bawk bawk! (Bed exercises are more important than my food?!)


Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Slice of Life, Xianxia, Yaoi

Status: Ongoing (no fixed schedule for updates, yet)

Table of Contents (required)

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2

 

Spoiler: Chapter 1: I Came, I Saw, I Sang

“Input Name Here,” blared a holographic interface in bright red letters. The screen floated patiently in front of ____'s face. He realized then that he couldn’t remember his own name. His memories, too, floated in his mind like flotsam, indistinct and vague, like he was watching someone else. In all instances, the sound of his name was removed from the audio and any visuals that contained his face blurred so much they couldn’t be discerned by him, as if carefully edited by some higher power. It wasn’t until he had mentally floundered for some time that the last dredge of memory ended abruptly with the sound of wheels screeching against asphalt and a cacophony of noises—a thunderous impact, glass shattering, distant honking, and before he faded to black the faint wailing of police sirens.

Whoever he had been then had died, this much was clear. So he blinked until the residue of panicked emotions and tears stopped threatening to overflow. He didn’t remember who he was, but even without a name, he could figure out a bit from context: some meaningless desk job where he was a glorified paper-pusher for an unscrupulous insurance company; a family he had lost contact with after moving away post-college; a mountain of debts from repeatedly trying (and failing) to form those much-vaunted “connections” through steady plying with food and alcohol and dressing for the part; an apartment nearly two months behind on rent and his tenancy facing eviction. Whatever drops of happiness had existed in those memories had been diluted entirely by everything that followed. He had been a hard worker. He had firmly believed in the adage that hard work would yield results. It was only a shame that he had lived in a world where that saying simply wasn’t true.

“Input Name Here,” the message in front of him blinked again, more aggressively this time like it was tired of waiting for him to process his death and upcoming rebirth. Hadn’t he spent over 20 minutes floating around this purgatorial void in a daze now? Hurry up, it seemed to insist.

“You’re way too tyrannical,” he complained out loud to the system, a sense of who he was forming slowly despite the loss of his name. Perhaps it was the shock of death or the calm of the void, but the panic with which he had woken up was gone now, replaced by a quiet repression. It seemed trauma and breakdown could be side-stepped for now. Maybe forever. He thought it was a blessing in disguise that the meticulous editing to his memories had removed the emotional punch of losing whoever he had been. How could he feel attached to someone he couldn’t even see and hear?

“Picking a new name—this kind of thing normally takes me hours to do in games, okay? It can’t be something stupid, but it can’t be too boring, either,” he explained patiently to the blank space around him. It was okay that it didn’t respond.

As he pondered, the screen circled him like a vulture. He usually spent hours scouring lists of baby names and name generators trying to think of a good name for any new video game character he created, but he always seemed to settle for something simple and uninspired. In the end, he met the same fate here.

“Li Nian Ping,” he eventually decided on after a long period of deliberation.

Finally getting its answer, the system quickly threw the name into its registry and zooped him off to his new world.

He landed on the outskirts of some rural town that seemed to be situated at the base of a mountain, deposited unkindly onto his ass by the teleportation before the system plopped a jode scroll onto his head a moment later like an afterthought.

“Name match found. Transfer complete,” the screen now blinked with a brief ding, the glow of the letters more prominent in the deep night of this place.

He had a million questions to ask the temperamental screen about his predicament, but it switched quickly to“Downloading resources… 1%” and seemed to have become unresponsive before he could even open his mouth. He found when he stopped paying attention to it that the screen had lost its opacity and was now nearly 80% transparent, yet still clearly visible should he choose to pull it up. The newly minted Li Nian Ping suddenly realized he couldn’t see very far and that the brightness of his screen couldn’t be used to illuminate anything but its damn text. He was clear now that he couldn’t use the system interface to interact with anything in the world.

It seemed to be very late at night since no bright lights were on as far as he could squint towards the direction of the town’s main cluster of buildings. Faint glows in the distance were all he could make out. He picked up the strange scroll that had the system had produced and, by some kind of muscle memory, tucked it into his sleeve for later perusal.

A pale sliver of a moon couldn’t illuminate much, so Li Nian Ping walked carefully across the uneven outskirt road until he reached smoother ground in the main street. He could feel something like robes flowing around his feet as he moved and the shoes he wore felt very comfortable, like he was walking on air. There was something strapped to his waist, but he didn’t want to deal with it at the moment. The more he focused on his sensations, the more unfamiliar it felt. In his blurred out memories, he had certainly worn normal clothing and had short hair, but now that he was finally paying attention he could feel his hair was quite long and something comfortably heavy, yet balanced, sat on top of his head. He could feel the tug of his hair tightly pulled into this headpiece.

At last, he saw light down one street, and eventually found that he had wandered his way into the affluent neighborhood of the town, where there was enough wealth to keep a bit of everfire on at all times floating in the air.

Li Nian Ping stopped abruptly when his mind naturally came to this conclusion, like it was knowledge he had all along. Everfire? He blinked at the floating wisps of light lining the street, illuminating the surroundings with a warm, orange glow.

It was only then he noticed that the system screen had marked the download at 100%. All at once, a deluge of information poured into him, reams of knowledge unspooling in his mind about the world he was in and the laws of mysticisms, politics, and history here. Before he was knocked unconscious to consolidate all this background information, Li Nian Ping briefly saw the system screen change to “Downloading music library… 1%”.

This was a cultivation world where strength ruled all and where he was a cultivator named Li Nian Ping. He had been deemed a waste of resources by his previous Resplendant Moon Sect, the largest and most powerful sect in this continent known as the Ascending Dragon. He was therefore ‘gently’ expelled when it became apparent that despite his heavenly spiritual root, he was not compatible with any known technique. Keeping such a high quality disciple meant properly providing him with high quality materials, lest the sect was ridiculed for being so wealthy yet stingy.

When it became too obvious that none of the techniques known to the sect were compatible with Li Nian Ping, they sent him away with a hefty amount of severance pay in spirit crystals and magical herbs so he could continue cultivating alone into his dead end, as if to say ‘we didn’t treat you badly, all right, this just can’t be helped so don’t bad mouth us to that respected family of yours’. Little did they know that after receiving the news of his son’s ‘honorable discharge’ from the Resplendant Moon Sect, Father Li would immediately disown his useless son and bar him from entering the family estate.

And that was when the new Li Nian Ping had arrived not even a month after the Li family had abandoned their son, just as the previous Li Nian Ping had decided there was nothing worth living for. Wherever the original soul had gone to, the new host could only hope it was somewhere better. In the memories he had finally digested, the original Li Nian Ping had been a hard worker despite being born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had truly looked forward to earning his family fame and reputation by becoming a success in the Resplendant Moon Sect. He had also seen how those fawning faces had turned to disdain once they realized Li Nian Ping’s excellent spiritual root was housed in a body that rejected all of the techniques he tried to cultivate, and it was well-known that without a proper technique to cultivate further, one’s cultivation could only be doomed to stagnation.

They suspected someone as innately talented as Li Nian Ping would turn to demonic cultivation, but with a body that was so finnicky and having already started on the path of righteous cultivation, he would be lucky to find a technique that would fit him and surely wouldn’t be able to cultivate effectively, so they ignored the possibility and settled for grinding their teeth over the waste of such a good talent. The Sect Leader had considered keeping him a bit longer, but the pressure from his other disciples and colleagues was becoming too severe after years of zero progress in cracking the secret of Li Nian Ping’s compatible technique, meanwhile the person in question guzzled their high-quality resources constantly in his desperate test attempts. With how hard he had tried to cultivate various techniques, if he had been successful at all he surely would have reached at least stage four by now.

Some people’s fates were just so poor, some of them lamented, but they quickly relegated his presence in the sect to a footnote in history after just a few weeks.

This was when Li Nian Ping finally woke up on the bed of a well-to-do inn that advertised itself with a gaudy placard on the wall he was facing. “The Realm of Jade”, and he found a corresponding memory immediately that told him this was a popular chain of inns found throughout the major cities and towns, run by a friend of the Li family, but one the original Li Nian Ping had never seen before. He could immediately see the pinpoint-accurate rolling clouds embroidery of the tapestry on the wall next to him and the subtle details handcrafted into the silk blankets and sheets surrounding him. It still hadn’t quite settled into his mind that this was now his problem, so he hoped vaguely that Li Nian Ping had been carrying money or he would have to dine-and-dash on this nice place.

But the sound of the door creaking open put a stop to his criminal plans. Li Nian Ping whipped his head toward the sound so fast it made him dizzy, just in time to watch a strange man enter. The surprised look on his face must have been comical, because the man gave a tiny smile as he strolled over, a smoking pipe in hand.

“You’re awake,” the strange man remarked simply, stopping just a few steps from the bed. He seemed content to just stand there, as if it was Li Nian Ping’s turn. To do what? He had barely processed the information about who he was, let alone what he was doing here in this place. Who was this guy anyway?

Once the initial panic subsided, Li Nian Ping finally observed the stranger in front of him. To say that the man was beautiful would be an understatement. It was not a word he often used for strangers he met in passing, but in this case, he was quite stumped. There was just no other way of describing those finely sculpted jawlines, those deep dark eyes and thin, elegant lips, or that curtain of black hair hugging toned, broad shoulders. And his gaze couldn’t help but drift lower to the stranger’s exposed chest, because oh, of course he was wearing only a single layer of black robe that wasn’t evenfastened properly.

How very inappropriate, the old Li Nian Ping’s emotions supplied without any censure. In fact, he felt something like appreciation from the original (and quite secretly bent) Li Nian Ping. The new one only gulped.

“Who are you?” Li Nian Ping asked, once he cleared his throat, deciding it best to get it over with and see if his new life was going to end in a few strokes of a sword and a dark alley or if this stranger really had no ulterior motives.

At the lack of etiquette, the stranger took another puff on his pipe and exhaled before jabbing Li Nian Ping with it, his dark eyes bright with amusement.

“Who are you?” he countered, coy.

“Li Nian Ping,” came the ready answer. But when he saw no flicker of recognition across the stranger’s face, this new Li Nian Ping could only sigh. So he wasn’t some sort of secretly famous cultivator or anything, even though he could surmise as much from the memories he had processed. Still, he had hoped for some kind of golden finger on transferring to this new world. Was this deadbeat system really all he had? His eyes glanced at the system screen, still mutely flashing“Downloading music library… 95%”. What did that even mean? A music library?

“Zhang Xiao,” the stranger answered, returning tit for tat and staring curiously in the direction of Li Nian Ping’s gaze. It was clear that he found nothing of note, because the now-identified Zhang Xiao turned back to him, quiet again in anticipation. Li Nian Ping couldn’t help but feel pinned, like the man was trying to get him to give himself away first, before moving in for the kill. He blinked stupidly back. He had only just arrived in this world, no way was he ready for some kind of hard mode interaction like this. The name felt vaguely familiar and he had probably seen it somewhere in that long movie reel of memories, so was this guy somewhat famous? Maybe this man thought Li Nian Ping wasn’t giving him enough respect for his position.

Having decided on his course of action through his thankfully-still-intact powers of deduction, Li Nian Ping stood up groggily from the bed, swayed briefly, then cupped his hands and bowed.

“This humble servant thanks the generous Lord Zhang Xiao for his magnaminity,” he recited, the etiquette he had seen in the memories familiar on his tongue and somehow calming to perform.

Zhang Xiao only smirked, like he was in on a joke that Li Nian Ping didn’t get. He waved his pipe dismissively, before pulling out a nearby chair and sitting down. The scent of something light and faintly sweet drifted from the pipe, calming Li Nian Ping’s nerves. Zhang Xiao took his time too, getting comfortable in his seat and puffing on his pipe for a few times, leaving Li Nian Ping there to fiddle awkwardly meanwhile.

“You’re from the Resplendant Moon Sect.” Eventually, the strange man spoke, more of a statement than a question. Li Nian Ping figured his outfit must have been a giveaway. Old memories surfaced, of crisp white robes and blue embroideries, clean and neat for morning inspections. It made him wonder if the original Li Nian Ping felt such a deep connection to his sect, to the point of holding onto their colors even when he was, in all sense, exiled. A deep sense of shame and sorrow permeated the memories, and this new person felt guilty for not being able to understand the depths of that melancholy.

“Uh, well, I think I was kicked out,” Li Nian Ping mumbled absentmindedly, his casual manner of 21-st century address slipping out again. “I guess I just… didn’t want to give up the thought yet.” Another memory rose unbidden in his mind, of the tears the original Li Nian Ping held back while begging the elder disciple who was escorting him out to let him keep the delicate robes at least, and swearing an oath that he wouldn’t use the sect’s reputation in any way. With that kind of binding oath, the elder disciple had seemed assured, so he had just dismissively waved Li Nian Ping out. After all, the Resplendant Moon Sect was so rich, what was a low-ranking training robe or two?

“Ah.” The stranger said simply, punctuated with a puff of faint smoke. And that was it, no more prying. Zhang Xiao didn’t seem to care much about who he was, or where he came from. He had already moved on from the topic, seemingly content to enjoy his pipe, gaze drifting.

It was at this time a light ding came from the system screen. Li Nian Ping glanced over as the screen displayed a brief“Would you like to activate the tutorial?” followed by a red X button and a green circle button. He mentally decided on the green circle to confirm, but realized he didn’t need to physically press it at all. Once he had confirmed it mentally, the button flashed and a second set of options appeared: “Custom or express tutorial?”

He stared at it curiously. What was the difference? But in the end, thinking it was a matter of just more or less text inside boxes, he preferred if the system would be more concise as a whole. He decided on the “Express” tutorial. The corresponding button flashed and he immediately lost control of his body.

When the surge of qi pulsed from Li Nian Ping, Zhang Xiao seemed to snap to attention. One moment he was lounging in his chair, the next he was already across the room and standing right in front of Li Nian Ping, eyes narrowing. His posture was barely threatening, but Li Nian Ping knew, from one cultivator to another, the man was poised for the kill. And the thing was, he knew the other man was much, much stronger than him.

There it was, Li Nian Ping thought, he was going to die right in the tutorial, just because he pressed the wrong button.

Then Li Nian Ping realized his body didn’t attack, but instead summoned his spiritual weapon and settled into a proper playing pose behind an ethereal guqin that glimmered with what seemed like stardust, its body exquisitely white as if the material was beyond any type of wood. Every curve and corner of the instrument was carefully crafted, the details of the elegant, flowing engravings along the edges and the crystalline finishes on all corners a work of art by themselves.

Though Zhang Xiao wasn’t worried about this cultivator’s level of strength, something felt different about the cultivation technique used to power the guqin. Before he could ponder longer, strange sounds that could not possibly have been produced by a quqin emitted from the instrument and the melodic male voice that had been speaking to him moments before was now singing in a woman’s timbre.

Li Nian Ping was in despair at this moment. The moment the “Express” tutorial had begun he had realized very rapidly that the screen in front of his eyes was one of his playlists. From the modern era.

His. MeTube. Playlist.

And! This! Song!

He recognized with a sinking feeling as he heard the clean, high pitch emerge from his throat that this was…

Starly Mae Burnsen’s “Text Me Maybe”.

It changed his voice, it actually did! He could see the astonishment on Zhang Xiao’s face as well, but more importantly he couldn’t—

Li Nian Ping struggled to close his mouth that was now sliding easily into the first verse of the song once the opening instrumentals began, “I threw my dreams in the well, my regrets, I’ll never tell. I wished for you as I fell, and still you’d look away—”

He really couldn’t stop! His eyes darted frantically around the various screens. He could see the current tracklist, how much time was left on the song, and on a second screen beside it a bulleted list of the… “effects of the current song”?!

Mastery: Beginner 5
Effect(s):

• Main Effect: Moderate increase to cultivation progress (flat effect)
• Sub Effect 1: Moderate boost to atmosphere (flat effect)
• ???
• ???
• ???

Other screens were muted out beside these two, with the phrase “Not yet available” plastered onto them in appropriately ‘disappointed’ gray text.

In his current distress, Li Nian Ping failed to notice the increasing alarm on Zhang Xiao’s face. There was not much that could surprise him anymore; his long sojourns into every corner of this continent and beyond had seen to that. He had seen his fair share of musician cultivators, whose voices and songs held unimaginable powers. Yet, this little failure of a cultivator had managed to catch him off guard, with a tune he had never heard before played on an instrument he did not recognize. It might have looked like a guqin, but Zhang Xiao knew what a guqin sounded like, even bolstered with qi. But it wasn’t the technique that was making Zhang Xiao worry, extraordinary though it was.

The truth was that Zhang Xiao had reached a plateau in his cultivation a long time ago, despite being at the peak of his stage. It was not uncommon in cultivation, especially at his level, to stagnate. He didn’t expect to find his breakthrough any time soon, and definitely not at any place like this.

Yet, he could feel the unique way this cultivator’s qi threaded into the notes and those strange rhythmic sounds of the song, even if he couldn’t understand a word coming out of the man’s mouth. The energy gathered, then pushed into his meridians. It was feather-light and smooth, trickling at first, before surging up like a storm. He had already been teetering on the edge for a long time now, the breakthrough within sight but out of reach. But with this nudge, he might just make it.

“Enough!” Still, he called out, waving a hand to dispel the unusual qi wrapping warmth and comfort around him like a soft blanket. The effect weakened, but the continuous stream of qi flowed forth without stop to replace that which he had just banished. He could just kill this whelp, but then he would only take the secrets of his unusual cultivation to the grave.

Li Nian Ping could only make the most distressed of faces as he found himself on full autopilot, fingers merely hovering over the spirit “guqin” since his qi created all the necessary sounds on its own. The golden finger had finally revealed itself to be… an absolute menace. At the bottom of the effects screen, he could see small text in fine print on closer inspection.

Warning: Songs cannot be interrupted during play. High risk of injury to host on failure to comply.

It wasn’t like he could stop anyway! And at this point he was willing to bang his head against the wall in shame. This! Song! It was horribly appropriate for the situation—wasn’t this on purpose, hey, system!

Outside the thunderheads gathered, the ominous clouds rolling across the dawn sky just as the first of the townsfolk were waking up. The mortals couldn’t tell, but the heavens and earth were shuddering in response to this tribulation, the flow of qi through both realms fluctuating madly. Heavenly lightning struck craters into the earth for the rest of the morning.

And just like that, the Ascending Dragon continent welcomed the second seventh stage cultivator in 1000 years. Applause.

By the time the tribulations were over, there was nothing left of the small town and a barren wasteland stretched out around them. During the turbulent whirlwind, thunder, and lightning, Zhang Xiao had grabbed hold of Li Nian Ping and tucked him under his arm like a bag of rice, inadvertantly protecting him from the worst of the heavenly lightning even as Li Nian Ping had continued to stubbornly (read: unwillingly) sing through not just one but two more songs in the aftermath. The second song was supposed to affect enemies, but as a test run with no enemies around, Li Nian Ping had barely registered in his sheer panic what it was supposed to have done and would have surely missed it had he not seen the second screen’s description. The third was a defensive song with a main effect of “Increases defensive capabilities for 4 hours (scaling effect)”, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. It hadn’t occurred properly to Li Nian Ping during this catastrophe (that he had caused [by accident!]) that he had rocked through Nevermore’s “Suffering Profession” and then crooned through Davey Baretta’s “Zirconium”.

Zhang Xiao, however, had commited the outrageous tunes and instrumentations of all three songs to memory, even if he couldn’t for the life of him identify what sort of instruments would be able to make any of these sounds.

Regardless, the strength of the breakthrough was such that they were both left half naked, the vast majority of their upper clothes’ singed into oblivion.

It was at this time the jumbled panic of his mind helpfully informed him of how these things worked in this world: there were nine stages of cultivation here, with each separated into early, middle, and late phases and with more formal names attached to them that he wasn’t in the mindset to process at the moment. The continent had only ever seen one seventh stage cultivator in the last millenia with most of the world not being able to surpass the peak of sixth stage cultivation—if they could even reach so high to begin with. There were tales of previous eras in human history where cultivation was far less strenuous and immortals ascended at a less dismal rate, but that age had long passed.

The original Li Nian Ping had hit his dead end at the second stage, and it was a well known fact that every stage upwards, the chasm between the levels grew wider and wider. From sixth to seventh, scholars had surmised the difference as one between destroying a singular mountain and destroying a mountain range.

Further details about cultivators drip-fed themselves into his frazzled mind, but at this moment Li Nian Ping couldn’t focus on anything, having now noticed the awe with which Zhang Xiao was staring at him. He couldn’t help but swallow hard, both the current him and the old feelings unable to tear his eyes away from that illegally handsome visage. To be this attractive surely had to be a crime.

No, wait, this wasn’t important! The entire town had been leveled! Did he just somehow kill everyone around him?!

He glanced around at the scorched wasteland in panic, trying not to stare at the tight, perfect muscles of Zhang Xiao’s exposed shoulders and chest.

“I teleported them all away beforehand,” Zhang Xiao spoke at last, as if reading his thoughts. “They’re all in Half Moon City.”

“Oh, okay, that’s good—” Li Nian Ping answered automatically before whipping his head around to stare at Zhang Xiao again.

What do you mean you just casually teleported an entire town away?! What! Do! You! Mean! His face was a blank sheet of paper as he stared at Zhang Xiao, the gaps in his knowledge slowly fleshing out. To teleport even one extra person required at least a fourth stage cultivator and mastery of the technique and a moderate consumption of fourth stage-quality qi to fold space. Exactly how much stronger was this man to just poof an entire town at the drop of a hat!

The delayed reaction finally hit him around this time as well that he was being held aloft under the other man’s arm, after somehow nuking an entire town. He found a moment to be offended by this treatment, but really this was the least of his problems for now.

Speaking of problems, what the hell was with this golden finger? He glared at the screen again, watching as an empty bar beneath the playlist window filled to half-full and a notification pinged him to let him know he had “Achieved 50% progress!”

On what?! He wanted to scream, but realized he had been glaring at nothing for too long now and Zhang Xiao was eyeing him curiously. Nearby, a glowing jade scroll had fallen from the devasted remains of his sleeves, the material of the jade as pearlescent as the guqin the system had summoned for him. It was Zhang Xiao who picked it up first, realizing it was some form of inherited technique that couldn’t be opened much less read by anyone other than its chosen owner. He could feel it was unfathomably powerful, but also absurdly specific—in essence, useless unless a certain long set of conditions were met. A shame. It was something bound to fate and only that, with how difficult the threshold seemed to be to acquire mastery of it. Almost as if there was only one soul in all the realms that it was meant for.

“Yours?” he offered lightly to Li Nian Ping as if there weren’t other extremely pressing matters at the moment.

Li Nian Ping was about to suggest they leave this hellscape of a ground zero first, but the lingering qi that had been activated around his body flickered in rhythm to the now gentle pulse of the jade scroll’s glow. He took it from Zhang Xiao’s hand despite his awkward position, only to jerk upward abruptly when the scroll activated.

In his daze, the information flooded into his mind from the scroll.

Whatever the system had spit up for him, it turned out to be the technique of an ancient master who had consigned the scroll to some impenetrable void before his ascension. Apparently that was just the purgatorial space where the system liked to squat, because the scroll was now here in his hands, transmitting its lamentations like a scorned maiden. Techniques! Where were the techniques!

The dramatically angled portrayal of its old master discarding it into an abyss paused like a video, then faded away. In the next instant, breathing techniques and qi techniques rushed into him as if something had opened the floodgates. A technique developed to turn songs into formidable auras that could empower allies or debilitate enemies, but it had been limited by the lack of variety in music and thus its full potential had eluded the old master despite the best musicians composing vast swathes of musical pieces for it with a variety of instruments. In the end, a technique that couldn’t be mastered was useless to everyone and the master who had created it, disgusted with his own failure, had thrown the scroll away personally.

Who would have thought all it needed was some mediocre MeTube playlist and the rather bland tastes of an ex-tryhard office worker.

Li Nian Ping wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry at this development. With the new wisdom imparted from the scroll, it was clear the only way to cultivate this technique was to continue performing songs that suited the system. Higher levels of this technique would add even more effects to the songs along with certain “mash-ups” and would eventually allow him to compose his own instead of borrowing the creativity of others. But his access was limited to the first chapter for now, the scroll flashing proudly as if to say, “You’ll have to earn my secrets.”

With that parting attitude, it finally deigned to tell him the name of this technique—and emphasized very firmly that it, and not that bastard master, had named itself the “Unrelenting Melodies Rewriting Causality”. Pleased with itself and that mouthful of a pretentious name, the scroll’s light dimmed and the input of information ceased. Li Nian Ping felt like his facial features had been rearranged at random during this process. He was having a hard time making any comprehensible expression in response to the rollercoaster of events, the tamest of which so far had been this mind-blowing scroll with an attitude problem.

Just as he was ready to shamelessly ask this mighty cultivator to help him for a while, movement nearby caught his eye. A tribulation like that wasn’t going to be ignored by anyone. In shining streams of light, nearby cultivators had already flashed to their side, eager to see who had finally broken the glass ceiling of the sixth level.

Co-Writers’ Thoughts:
Slug: Lord Pillow is basically the main character later.
Meat: We have to do our best to make him cause all the important plot points.
Slug: I just want to write him breaking through time and space to photobomb all events before he’s even born.

 

Spoiler: Chapter 2: Testing the Waters

Li Nian Ping recognized several of the robes that had appeared nearby, the gleaming white expanse decorated with blue clouds being parted by a full moon, the embroidery exquisite. The Resplendant Moon Sect. Some old feelings surged up within him: longing, bitterness, self-loathing, despair. He wanted to cry out from the intensity of them, but the passing remnants of the person before faded just as quickly as they had come. Distracted by the growing crowd of cultivators around them, Li Nian Ping failed to see that not a single one of those fleeting emotions across his face had been missed by Zhang Xiao, who was still meticulously scrutinizing the profile of the half-naked man slung under his arm like a bushel of wheat.

Soft features furrowed in worry, lips curved in an elegant frown, and long eyelashes that trembled with every expression, the face was as delicate as a blossom without losing the fine, smooth lines of a gentleman who had grown up pampered and free of worries. Li Nian Ping had the fortune of taking after his late mother (and not his dour father with what the new Li Nian Ping could only describe as a resting bitch face), a stunning beauty who could even make his father’s pinched visage relax a little. Almond-shaped eyes blinked warily at the people around them, the irises a striking shade of light hazel that looked nearly honey-amber in the early afternoon light. The angle and expression of Li Nian Ping’s face from Zhang Xiao’s view looked nearly coquettish, like the other was just annoyed that people were interrupting them. Nevermind that he could feel the panicked tautness of Li Nian Ping’s body tucked in his grasp.

For now though, with a medley of righteous cultivators and demonic ones alike closing in, Zhang Xiao couldn’t help feeling quite… bothered. He had been avoiding them for a reason, since the politics of the cultivation world were often more tiring than not and hardly better than the two-faced dealings of the mortal realm that cultivators looked down upon so much.

“First day we meet, and you’ve already brought down the tribulation of heaven on me.” He took the opportunity to jab his pipe at Li Nian Ping’s soft cheek again. Despite the smoke still drifting lazily from the pipe, it wasn’t hot to the touch.“Maybe you’ll bring my death within a week.”

“Wh-what death!” Li Nian Ping couldn’t help but exclaim. “You’re clearly so strong it’s probably cheating, right? All that lightning didn’t even leave a scratch on you!” In truth, Li Nian Ping would have much rathered having a golden finger like Zhang Xiao’s than some sort of bad karaoke power.

Of course Zhang Xiao had noticed, but only now did he really consider it. He knew he was strong, yet, tribulations were also meant to be tests from the heavens with power equivalent to the stage of that cultivator’s breakthrough. In his lifetime, he had witnessed too many friends and enemies alike meet their ends there, powderized into ashes under the sacred lightning. That was why people tended to prepare well in advance for their tribulations, and most would fight tooth and nail over any artifacts that increased their odds of survival even a smidge.

But this little whelp here, with only his outlandish songs….

Zhang Xiao also hadn’t missed how the effects of that third song had kicked in just as the divine lightning had begun increasing in severity and how the qi shrouding Zhang Xiao’s body had solidified into a nearly impenetrable barrier that had even regenerated itself when several bolts of lightning had cracked the protection in places.

Zhang Xiao pondered, for just a moment, then he decided: he would like to keep this musician for himself, at least for a little while. He had already considered this when the tribulation started, which was why he hadn’t teleported Li Nian Ping away as well, but now he was certain he wanted to keep this melting pot of tricks nearby, at least until he determined if Li Nian Ping could be useful for the long run.

Before the first of the crowd could even begin the lengthy process of cajoling and wheedling for this new seventh level cultivator’s favor (and before more conscientious others could even begin the process of identifying him), Zhang Xiao had teleported both himself and Li Nian Ping far away. One of the largest benefits of being a sixth level cultivator was the ability to teleport without needing an array and Zhang Xiao was exactly the kind of person who would abuse his heaven-gifted talents.

Everything came with its drawbacks, of course, and even for someone like him teleporting an entire town a relatively short distance away and then two people a long distance away in such rapid succession at least winded him enough that he had to stop and rest. The benefit of teleporting over even regular flash-stepping was that their path couldn’t be traced, so at the very least he could rest and fully temper the unstable qi that had burst forth from his recent breakthrough. He wasn’t sure if Li Nian Ping needed rest, as the potato sack under his arm hardly seemed tired despite using such powerful effects.

But if there was a singular, unshakeable truth in the world, it was that everything had its price, even if one had ways of cheating. Zhang Xiao was sure there was some catch to Li Nian Ping’s effects—it was simply impossible for a spell to defend against such powerful tribulation lightning without some form of cost, disregarding that the first spell had been one to increase cultivation progress since he was already at the peak of sixth stage and even a drop of water into the dam at that point would have been enough to push him over the brink.

They had arrived at an abandoned hut deep within a mountain forest, the location still steeped in the gentle ebbs and flows of residual power. Rare spiritual herbs and flowers shimmered nearby under the forest’s canopy, the trees here so thick they blocked much of the sunlight. Thin shafts of light broke through the foliage when the branches swayed to the occasional breeze, but beyond the gentle glow of the magical plants, there was little light in this densest area of the forest. It would seem that while he had been gone, another of Zhang Xiao’s old friends, too, had left this world. Either by death or ascension, he wouldn’t know.

There was a vague bitterness in his heart over having lost yet another familiar face, but Zhang Xiao bore it well.

A loud groan that suddenly cut itself off interrupted his reminiscing and Zhang Xiao looked down to see the figure under his arm go slack, form unconscious again as the jade scroll in Li Nian Ping’s hand dropped to the floor. At the same time, he felt that protective veil over his body finally dissipate, the supporting qi from Li Nian Ping that worked beneath the effect fading at last. For a moment, Zhang Xiao feared the effect of the cultivation increase would somehow reverse itself as well, heavenly tribulation be damned, but when no such thing occurred he relaxed.

This cultivator held too many mysteries:

The first of which was why someone with this ability would be ‘kicked out’ of a sect, to use Li Nian Ping’s own carefree words about it. Zhang Xiao decided it was impossible for a sect to not hold on to this kind of power, even if the user’s cultivation level was low, therefore Li Nian Ping had never told them or had only developed it after leaving. If the clothes were anything to go by, perhaps Li Nian Ping had also planned on returning at some point. Regardless, it was safe to assume only the two of them currently knew about these effects. Who in their right mind would know what Li Nian Ping could do and still fully ignore it? Even considering that musical cultivation was a common branch and style, there was no accounting for the particulars of Li Nian Ping’s technique, which at the least warranted further research.

Second, Li Nian Ping occasionally looked at something that only he could perceive. Zhang Xiao had seen the way Li Nian Ping’s eyes occasionally moved back and forth, as if he were reading something, but no matter how much Zhang Xiao had tried to peek, he had found nothing in the entire direction of that gaze, even if he had swept his senses over all the nearby rooms at the inn to check earlier. A secret so great, he would pry out eventually.

Third, he had never heard of a musician cultivator whose songs sounded like this—and he was quite certain he had listened to some of the most progressive composers, too. More importantly, he had never heard these kinds of instrumentals—to the extent that he couldn’t even imagine what sort of musical tool could make those sounds. Even the sounds he could identify as drumbeats had a different quality to the normal drums he knew. It was either that Li Nian Ping’s creativity with the sounds his qi produced and the compositions he created was sky-shattering or he knew a composer whose creativity was sky-shattering.

Either way, this needed a thorough investigation, especially when Zhang Xiao thought back to some of the melodies and realized that once he overcame his initial reaction at the sheer strangeness of the sounds, he actually did not dislike what he’d heard and would probably like to hear it again.

He shook the human ragdoll under his arm for a while, trying to wake him, but when that failed Zhang Xiao simply picked up the scroll, strolled into the empty hut, and unceremoniously deposited Li Nian Ping and his scroll onto the simple bed in the corner of the hut’s one austere room.

He looked at the discomfort written all over this young master’s face and passed a hand over the prone body, checking Li Nian Ping’s core and meridians. Nothing seemed out of place, but it was clear his spiritual energy was exhausted.

So it seemed the aftereffects of such powerful songs delayed themselves until the application duration was over and the current limit seemed to be three songs at any one time.

Zhang Xiao wasn’t worried about his new ‘friend’ suffering for long. The spiritual energy in this location was highly concentrated and he was certain Li Nian Ping would wake up soon. As he waited, Zhang Xiao had the time to leisurely look around the hut. He found a few sets of clothes from the nearby chest; they smelled musky and a bit damp, but otherwise they fit him nicely. It might be a bit loose on the skinny whelp, though.

Regardless, he wrestled the runt into some clothes, grudgingly noting that a young master would naturally have very nice skin. His physique was hopeless, though, more suited for sitting pretty at banquets than fighting the lightning of tribulation.

Some time when Zhang Xiao was pulling the last layer of outer robe on, Li Nian Ping began to mumble in his sleep. Just incoherent nothings, so Zhang Xiao ignored him and finished helping the younger man get decent. Once he did though, he began poking Li Nian Ping incessantly on the cheek with his pipe, hoping to get his answers. He would not let this little rascal sleep his day away, especially after all that had happened.

To think, Zhang Xiao’s days of peaceful contemplation and occasional work were gone in an instant. It was too optimistic to presume no one in that crowd earlier had recognized him, so now that both the righteous and demonic sects had already caught wind of his return, he probably would never have any free time ever again.

How bothersome.

Zhang Xiao rummaged around for a small bag of tobacco hidden in one of the ornate chests and relit his pipe with a quick burst of fire from his fingertip. The familiar scent of sweet smoke relaxed him, then he began to consider his next step.

Which involved poking the sleeping Li Nian Ping with his pipe until the latter finally roused.

“What happened…” Li Nian Ping groaned, the mere motion of opening his eyes already vaguely painful. As such, he didn’t dare move an inch of his body otherwise.

“You happened,” Zhang Xiao replied, though without much malice, “and you have a lot of explaining to do.”

The frank demand caused Li Nian Ping to break out in cold sweat. What would he tell Zhang Xiao? That he got transmigrated after dying in a car accident? That he was a 21st century man’s soul stealing the original Li Nian Ping’s body? He couldn’t do that. As far as he knew, this Zhang Xiao guy might be a hard ass and would probably kill him for being a possessed body or something. Or experiment on him, which would possibly be worse.

He couldn’t die or be tortured like this!

While Li Nian Ping was having his internal conflict, Zhang Xiao seemed perfectly relaxed. Actually, the guy looked like he was on a tropical vacation, having picked out a chair and found a small bottle of something, which he took long swigs out of while puffing his pipe.

In all honesty, Li Nian Ping was jealous. He wished he could be in a position to understand everything better, but for now all he could offer was the luminous white jade scroll that he now saw had been placed nearby.

“It’s a song technique to…affect things around me, I think,” he explained feebly. “I still don’t really know how it works, sorry. This was the first time I used it.”

“Where did you learn it?” Zhang Xiao was completely focused on him now, dark eyes alight with curiosity. The attention made his stomach do a weird flip-flop, and Li Nian Ping had to try to not squirm like a child under that gaze.

“I, uh,” he paused, unsure how to explain that it had just plopped out of thin air and onto his head, “I don’t know who gave it to me. I just woke up and it was nearby.” It was as close to the truth as he could get without opening the can of worms that was his transferred soul.

“Hmm.” Zhang Xiao was inclined to believe the boy. After all, what was the alternative? He was there, he had seen for himself. He had even tried to look into Li Nian Ping’s strange scroll. There was no mistaking it; such a powerful technique could definitely contain miraculous and terrible secrets.

Speaking of which…

Zhang Xiao suddenly remembered. “Why don’t you show me again how it works?”

Li Nian Ping obliged readily, handing over the scroll so Zhang Xiao could inspect it. Never let it be said the system’s express tutorial wasn’t effective though, because he could still distinctly recall how to summon the instrument even in all that turmoil. He focused just as his body had done while automated before and called out a… wireless microphone. This was clearly not the elegant instrument that had been summoned earlier.

He held it blankly in his hand, before looking up at some space vaguely to his left.

Instrument configuration may differ between default settings and tutorial settings.

Oh, thank god. With a practiced flick of his hand that may have been more of the old Li Nian Ping than him, he resummoned the instrument, concentrating on something less anachronistic. A modern, silver flute with subtle engravings appeared this time, complete with the intricate rod system and keys, glowing faintly in his hand.

Li Nian Ping: …

He’d just bullshit something about the mechanism. This was a cultivation world where almost anything could be done, surely some master somewhere could make something like this, right?

But for the entire time, he actually forgot that Zhang Xiao had never stopped watching. By the time he finally looked up, Zhang Xiao was staring at him, eyebrows almost getting lost in his hairline.

“What is that?” The man gestured at his flute. A beat of silence passed, and Zhang Xiao narrowed his eyes. “What are you looking at?”

“Huh?” Li Nian Ping held out the flute. “This?”

“No,” Zhang Xiao frowned, though he was interested in that strange flute. “It’s your eyes. You keep looking at something that I can’t see.”

“Uh… I guess I am?” Li Nian Ping stared at the tracklist that now appeared with the instrument summon, a small triangle of a play button beside each song. He could see clearly now that each track could be mentally selected beforehand to check on the effects before playing the song, but the warning remained below in small print that there was a severe risk of injury on any interruption.

He knew it was odd to be staring into space all the time, but he didn’t think Zhang Xiao was so perceptive that he could tell it was more than just a ditzy absentmindedness. How was he going to explain quasi-holographic screens that clinically displayed information like a modern database. Who would even understand in this world? But he had already underestimated Zhang Xiao once. And he had a feeling that the man would be persistent.

“…Do you have a pen and paper?” he asked at last.

Zhang Xiao looked like he wanted to say no, but eventually, the man stood up and went off to rummage in some corner of the hut. He returned shortly with an old dirty brush and a small glass jar, which Li Nian Ping determined to be some kind of inkwell.

Oh, right. Ballpoint pens or something similar probably not been invented yet, though it was a magical world so who knew, really. He sighed in relief regardless, glad he hadn’t called it anything but a pen. He received the brush and gave it his best anyway, on a dusty piece of parchment that Zhang Xiao also eventually provided. He tried his best to capture the likeness of the user interface onto paper, but with his worse-than-average penmanship and the whole ordeal of having to write with a brush, his illustrations came out looking very much like a child’s drawing. Though Li Nian Ping caught on quick to elevate the brush a little for the more refined strokes, the end result wasn’t to be salvaged.

At least Zhang Xiao did not comment on that when he looked. In fact, he didn’t comment at all for a while, staring at the diagram of a user interface carefully. If it was an array, he had never seen the likes of it before.

“This is what I look at,” Li Nian Ping decided to explain. He had already gauged Zhang Xiao as best he could and determined that if Zhang Xiao were the sort of low-IQ cannon fodder that populated so many stories, it wouldn’t matter one way or another if he drew this, because someone like that would never understand it. On the other hand, he had already seen how powerful Zhang Xiao was. If anything, having someone like this on his side was better than alienating him, and it wasn’t as if he could escape from Zhang Xiao even if he had wanted to, so for now Li Nian Ping didn’t mind explaining everything truthfully sans the whole transmigrated soul thing. Even he still didn’t quite get what the hell was going on there.

“This screen has a list of my… songs,” he indicated towards his hand-drawing of a box on the right. “This one reminds me what each song can do,” he continued, pointing at the box drawn on the left, “and this one is… other information, I think,” he concluded with the center box. “I told you I’ve never used this technique before, so it was my first time seeing it, too.” That much, at least, was the full truth.

Zhang Xiao examined the paper carefully, for quite a while. He was focusing with such intensity that it made Li Nian Ping uncomfortable, even when the gaze was not directed at him. It felt almost like he was back in high school again, and his teacher was scrunitnizing his subpar assignment.

Thankfully, Zhang Xiao looked up shortly after, looking slightly amused. Li Nian Ping wondered if he was going to get made fun of, then the man asked, unexpectedly.

“Why did you get kicked out of the Resplendant Moon Sect anyway?” His smile had a bit of an edge to it, though Li Nian Ping wasn’t really sure. “Was it because of that mouth of yours?”

“Huh?”

“You talk like a street brat.” Zhang Xiao pointed the smoking pipe at him. While he was no stickler to etiquette, Zhang Xiao was also quite aware of how the righteous sects loved and obsessed with their social trappings. This boy didn’t seem like he was a low-born; there was no reason for him to act and talk constantly this way. In fact, hadn’t he greeted Zhang Xiao properly when they first met?

Li Nian Ping paled when he finally put two and two together. In the flurry of events that had occurred since he’d awoken in that inn he hadn’t bothered checking up on the old Li Nian Ping’s memories much, thinking he could do that later when, you know, heavenly lightning wasn’t trying to annihilate an area. It was only when he peered desperately into some fragments of Li Nian Ping’s memories of etiquette lessons that he realized how rude his casual, modern cadence was to literally anyone in this world. He had read a few of these types of novels and knew how deadly it was to lack etiquette in this setting. People had died for looking at someone the wrong way. Never mind trying to curry favor with this powerful cultivator—maybe he had just succeeded in pissing him off thoroughly!

He fell to his knees immediately (which wasn’t hard to do now that his legs were jelly) and bowed profusely, following the body’s memories with ease now that he was actively using his stupid, stupid brain.

“This worthless one begs for your forgiveness!” he cried out appropriately, mimicking as well the times the original Li Nian Ping had seen servants beg for forgiveness from his unforgiving father.

To his surprise, Zhang Xiao just laughed. It was one of those full-bellied laughs too, when the man just threw his head back and was laughing so hard his shoulders shook.

Going through the vast reams of bad young adult novels he’s read in his (former) life, Li Nian Ping guessed (wrongly)that this was the sound of someone about to kill him after they’ve had their last laugh at his pathetic attempt to beg for his life. He knew Zhang Xiao was powerful, even more so than he could probably imagine, but he had just undergone a tribulation and heavy use of his spiritual energy in teleporting so many people around. If… maybe… he didn’t think he could win, but maybe he could at least put up a fight before he died. Escaping had never been an option, he figured, but if it was the same result either way, he’d at least want to die a bit more dignified this time.

He eyed the horrifying auto button sitting smugly in the upper left of the system’s tracklist. It wasn’t hard to guess how it worked now that the system had puppeted him already.

He turned it on.

With his current abilities, the system had a limited range of options to combat someone as powerful as Zhang Xiao, but even worms could be said to have their own ways of surviving. The flute disappeared from Zhang Xiao’s grasp and reappeared in Li Nian Ping’s hand as the previous microphone, the song already playing the moment he touched his instrument with qi—a discordant, electronic piece with a heavy, menacing beat and click-sharp transitions into aggressive rapping.

The effect was immediate. Zhang Xiao must have already detected the disturbances in his meridians, because he stopped laughing and raised his eyebrows at Li Nian Ping.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Despite the effects of the song, Zhang Xiao kept moving foward until he was barely an arm’s reach away from Li Nian Ping. However, once the song didn’t stop, Zhang Xiao decided to lean in and grab Li Nian Ping’s chin in his hand, holding his jaws hostage. The disturbance in the song’s flow was instantly noticeable and Li Nian Ping spat out a glob of blood from the backlash of having the piece interrupted. Oh, so this was what it meant about the dangers of interrupting a song. Despite that, the system was now humming the song, mitigating the current damage by magnitudes.

“Hmm.” It seemed that Zhang Xiao could tell, too. He saw how disrupting the flow of qi in these songs caused it to go haywire, not unlike the effects of a deviation. And it was clear this technique honed all the users qi into its outward effects, leaving them entirely defenseless for the duration of the songs. If they were stronger than the cultivator using the technique, all one had to do was walk up to the musician and attack normally. He sighed, before letting go, wiping the splash of blood on his hand onto the front of Li Nian Ping’s old, dusty robe. That the song could disrupt the cycling of qi throughout the meridians was surprising, but at its current level it was little more than a vague annoyance to him rather than any real threat. He wondered what this technique would look like fully mastered.

When the song finished, Li Nian Ping stared at Zhang Xiao in a mixture of horror and pain. This was it, he decided, this was pretty much the limit of what he could do right now.

“If you’re going to kill me, just make it quick,” he coughed out, already relapsing into his casual speech.

“Do I look like a butcher to you?” Zhang Xiao smiled, taking a few steps back to avoid the flecks of blood. Once Li Nian Ping’s breathing seemed to have return to normal, Zhang Xiao patted him on the head, as if he was trying to comfort a small, scared animal. Maybe in some ways, he was. “You know, this cultivation style of yours isn’t that great, now that I’ve got a better look at it. No one would want to learn a style that’s so passive.”

“R-Really?” Li Nian Ping blurted out. He had expected death, but instead was being patted on the head. It evoked some old emotions in him, from his original life—the one whose name he couldn’t remember. A time when that unknown person’s mother had patted him on the head similarly after he had witnessed another of his parents’ fights. That person was slowly becoming more and more removed from him, fading like the morning dew. It felt more natural to be in this body, strange as it was to think.

“You’re not going to kill me for… lacking etiquette?” He’d tried to choose his words more carefully, he really had, but it was so natural to talk like he was still in the modern era. If he survived long enough, Li Nian Ping decided he would make a sincere effort to watch his mouth.

“I’m not going to kill you.” Zhang Xiao nodded, suddenly solemn. Yet, there was a playfulness in his eyes, glimmering.“You should know, I’m not from those righteous sects. I don’t really care how you act, as long as you’re not completely rotten inside. Right?”

“So you’re…” It felt like he couldn’t say more than a few words before he had to stop and reconsider his tone, so Li Nian Ping did just that as he ransacked his predecessor’s memories about sects and alliances. If not from the righteous sects, then Zhang Xiao was either a wandering cultivator, or some variant of the demonic cultivators. The memories were filled with hearsay about what demonic cultivators supposedly did or didn’t do, but he couldn’t find any indication that the previous Li Nian Ping had ever encountered any personally, sheltered as he was. “Would you—uh—be willing to enlighten this ignorant one?”

“If it isn’t clear to you, I don’t care that much for etiquette. So drop it,” Zhang Xiao said, and Li Nian Ping promptly earned a smack over his head with the pipe. But once he looked up, he found that Zhang Xiao was smiling. “I’m actually a sect leader. And since you’re alone now, how about coming with me?”

“You’re not angry about earlier? I’m sorry about that, I really thought you were going to kill me,” Li Nian Ping mumbled, both in relief and guilt. He hadn’t been quite ready to die, but it wasn’t like he could have protested if Zhang Xiao had wanted to kill him. Still, he felt a little guilty for attacking—the song’s main effect that time had been “moderatedisruption of enemy qi (flat effect)”, but it hadn’t seemed to affect Zhang Xiao at all. Now he was glad nothing had happened. “It didn’t…hurt you or anything, right?”

“Hah, a shrimp like you dreamt of hurting me?” Zhang Xiao just laughed. It seemed he really didn’t take offense. “So are you coming or not?”

Li Nian Ping nodded rapidly. If he was left alone here, who knew where he would end up with his awful mannerisms.And since Zhang Xiao said he was a sect leader and not of a righteous sect, this Zhang Xiao must be a demonic cultivator.“Are demonic cultivators as bad as they say?” he asked as the thought occurred, then paused to gauge Zhang Xiao’s reaction.

To his credit, Zhang Xiao only looked mildly amused. In fact, he was intrigued. Most righteous cultivators would not be so civil to their demonic counterparts, exiled or no. Yet, he couldn’t even sense the slightest hint of fear from Li Nian Ping. There was nothing but genuine curiosity, and it almost baffled Zhang Xiao.

“Yes, we eat babies.” He couldn’t help but tease. “Did you bring one?”

Li Nian Ping narrowed his eyes. He knew when someone was fucking with him at least, so he pursed his lips and refused to answer, waiting instead to be led to wherever this sect was. Zhang Xiao seemed like he was preparing to teleport them there, gathering qi and drawing a makeshift array around them with the brush Li Nian Ping had used earlier to spare himself the extra effort of teleporting without an array. Like this, he just needed to apply a bit more energy at the end since there was no destination array.

“What’s the name of your sect anyway?” Li Nian Ping asked Zhang Xiao, who was turned away at the moment and finishing up the array.

The silence that followed was concerning, though, as well as how Zhang Xiao seemed to freeze at the question. Eventually, he answered, but it was not what Li Nian Ping was expecting.

“I… actually don’t know. They might have changed the name. My generals have always thought the one I gave them was rather stupid.”

Li Nian Ping raised an eyebrow. He was starting to feel like he had been scammed into joining something shady and it wasn’t because of their demonic affiliation.