Chapter 154 - System vs. System (4): The original work, the cliff, double rebirth
Translator: kiribold
editors: sarah, yoantlers
Duan Shujue, the male lead of The Mermaid Immortal, was successfully robbed of his destiny by Yan Jinhua, a transmigrator. He was framed as a demon, refined into a mermaid pill, and died without a body or soul.
Meanwhile, Yan Jinhua believed that he had finally become an immortal and the well-deserved protagonist. Of course, he had to spend a few more carefree years here to make it worth it.
A few days later, a young man in black came to the foot of the peak, claiming to be Duan Shujue’s old friend. He pleaded to return Duan Shujue’s bones home and begged for his request to pa.s.s.
When he heard the person’s description, how could Yan Jinhua not guess who that person was? He sneered and asked someone to pa.s.s on the message, “Since he’s requesting the body, he must show some sincerity.”
He knew the story’s development. Although the “black snake” was still a viper, in 500 years, he would become a jiao-dragon, and in another 500 years would become a lóng. Therefore, just like Duan Shujue, Yan Jinhua used clever tricks and set traps to seriously injure him and bring him back to the mountains to raise, hoping that one day, the dragon would follow him as a xiao-di. Wouldn’t that be splendid?
Who would have thought that snakes were ungrateful creatures that couldn’t be raised properly? He left without a word after eating his spiritual fruit, drinking from his spiritual spring, and laying down a profound power that unknowingly exceeded many other vipers. Then he pretended not to know him when they met again. Truly detestable.
As the protagonist, he ought to teach this snake a lesson.
Soon, there was a reply from the bottom of the mountain, “What kind of sincerity do you want?”
He replied, “Do you know what the ‘long kowtow’ is?”
The so-called ‘long kowtows’ were a way of worshiping Buddha for the most devout Tibetan Buddhist believers.
Yan Jinhua required Ye Jiming to start from the foot of the mountain and kowtow every three steps. During each kowtow, he must wait for the long head and perform a five-body cast.
He must kowtow the same width as the river on the bank before wading through the water at every river.
Yan Jinhua had a sufficient reason. Duan Shujue deceived his teacher and was ungrateful. The sect suffered a loss and he transgressed against Jingxu Peak. Since Ye Jiming was his close friend if he could easily take him away, how could Yan Jinhua explain this to everyone in Jingxu Peak as the future master of Jingxu Peak?
Ye Jiming didn’t ask anyone to send a message back. He flicked his sleeves, lifted the bottom of his robe, leaned over, and bowed.
To reach Jingxu Peak’s main summit, Ye Jiming had to cross three peaks to get to the main entrance.
Ye Jiming didn’t say a word. For half a month, he worshipped three mountains and arrived at the main gate.
Chi Yunzi also heard about this.
He only knew that Ye Jiming was a snake and was expected to cultivate the right path. Seeing him kowtow up the mountain, he was without a doubt a man of righteousness. So, Chi Yunzi called Yan Jinhua to give Duan Shujue’s bones to Ye Jiming.
Yan Jinhua agreed readily but laughed in his heart.
Duan Shujue had no bones left. They had all turned into grey ashes in the furnace’s raging fire.
Ye Jiming’s worship was in vain. When the time came, his hope would turn out empty.
Half a month later, Ye Jiming arrived at the mountain gate. Yan Jinhua invited him into the mountain and entered the alchemy pavilion. He arrogantly showed it to him while saying regrettably that the Bagua furnace was too hot. The little fish he desperately wanted had already gone up in smoke.
Ye Jiming’s complexion was normal. He walked around the alchemy pavilion once and then took his leave down the mountain.
Instead of flying away, Ye Jiming trekked down the mountain.
He thought about the past in a trance and turned the fish scale bracelet that Duan Shujue gave him around in his hand.
When he got this fish scale bracelet, he remembered that he disdained it for a while. “What is this? It can’t be that you rubbed it off when you had nothing to do, right?”
Duan Shujue didn’t laugh at him for being rude. His temperament had always been this gentle. “Don’t like it?”
Ye Jiming snorted, “I don’t like it.”
“Take it.” Duan Shujue said, “In the future, you can exchange it with me for something good.”
Ye Jiming’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
Duan Shujue replied, “A gentleman’s word.”
Ye Jiming walked all the way, and blood dripped from the palm of his hand the whole time.
…What gentleman bulls.h.i.t, you should have lived a good life for this lord.
Leaving Jingxu Peak’s range, Ye Jiming finally couldn’t bear it anymore, and a mouthful of blood splattered into the air.
In the dragon race, love and hate were both intense. There was no such thing as liking a little bit or hating a little bit.
If he fell for someone, then that person was his.
Correspondingly, the person who caused him to lose his love forever was Ye Jiming’s lifelong enemy.
Five years later, Ye Jiming cultivated using a method that went against the heavens by burning his body and quickly transformed into a jiao-dragon. He immediately went to find Yan Jinhua, set aflame the five mountains of Jingxu Peak with dragon fire, and nearly chopped off Yan Jinhua’s arm.
Ye Jiming spoke wildly, saying that Jingxu Peak’s calamity was made by Yan Jinhua’s own hands.
He captured the disciples of Jingxu Peak but didn’t kill them. He only imprisoned them to live in a sinkhole and sealed their spiritual power.
He didn’t kill innocent people, and the little fish was besieged and killed because no one knew his ident.i.ty. Moreover, he had no reason to kill indiscriminately, nor was he stupid enough to attract all of the world’s cultivation sects as his enemy.
Five years ago, to obtain the little fish’s bones, he endured humiliation. Five years later, to avenge the little fish, he bore his killing intent.
He, Ye Jiming, was never a reckless man.
I want to catch one person alone in Jingxu Peak. You choose to ignore me? That’s fine. I will catch hundreds and thousands of disciples, and if you want them to live, hand over the one surnamed Yan.
However, Yan Jinhua had always occupied a righteous t.i.tle, and he held the legendary sword in the stone in his hand. With the thousand-year-old sword’s will, how could he not defeat a recently transformed jiao-dragon?
Yan Jinhua was furious and decided not to give this wicked person a way to survive. He only sighed that his luck wasn’t good. He obviously only wanted to accept a xiao-di, but who would’ve thought it would be the story of The Farmer and the Viper.
He reluctantly contributed the mermaid pill that he planned to use for his collection as a trophy and made it into a hidden weapon. He took the opportunity to seriously injure Ye Jiming and led the way to force him to the edge of the cliff successfully.
Yan Jinhua looked at the black dragon who was supposed to be all-powerful in the original text. With his hair disheveled, Ye Jiming stood in the fierce wind, his lone figure looking disgraced. Yan Jinhua inevitably felt a twinge of happiness.
In the original book, The Mermaid Immortal, this was a wild and unbridled dragon. There was the merman immortal in the light, and the demonic dragon lord in the dark. The two should’ve been a pair of archenemies who admired each other but stood on opposite sides. Who would have expected to see the day when the black snake fought with his life for the merman in white?
Yan Jinhua raised his voice. “Black snake, you have committed great evils. Will you restrict your hand to stop the slaughter?”
Ye Jiming looked up to the sky and laughed loudly. “Surname Yan, this lord doesn’t know how to write the words ‘restrict your hand’! You can bind my hands, but can you bind my heart?”
He was already wearily injured and knew that he would be defeated in this battle. However, he threw the fish scale bracelet covered in blood from his hands. “If you want my life, I will be here. But Duan Shujue was wronged! Truly wronged! If what this lord said is true, then please splash the cliff for three meters with the blood from my neck. If the blood doesn’t fade, then it’ll be inextinguishable for a hundred years!”
Yan Jinhua knew that Ye Jiming was at the end of his rope, so he ignored him and waved his hand for the disciples to come forward.
Being the boss had such advantages. He didn’t have to do it himself, and with the slightest movement of his hands, he would have thousands of troops and horses working for him. But that Duan Shujue was too stupid to use it.
Yan Jinhua took the form of a master, standing with his hands behind his back. As the sound of fighting reached his ears, his heart was full of disdain.
The Mermaid Immortal was without a stream of CP upgrades. The protagonist Duan Shujue was born as a merman. When he was twelve years old, his parents were hunted by monsters, and both died. Duan Shujue was rescued by an idle Taoist and received the name Shujue from the immortal. The immortal taught him benevolence and also taught him to repay his grievances directly. He taught him swordsmanship and mind tricks, and after helping him transform his legs, he gracefully walked away.
Duan Shujue sought the path of enlightenment. He humbly requested to climb the mountain with Jingxu Peak as his first choice.
In the Jingxu Sword Meeting, he took the lead in first place, rushed to the inner circle of the seven great formations, and held the hilt of the sword in the stone.
As soon as he grasped it, he felt a familiar aura rushing straight to the top of his skull. Immediately, his divine energy was calm, and a voice whispered in his mind, explaining the origin of the sword to him.
…This sword was owned by the cultivation partner of the founder of Jingxu Peak, and this Daoist companion was, in fact, a merman from Guixu.
The sword in the stone was forged from the sunken jade stone at the bottom of the sea, which was suitable for the physique of a mermaid. Only when a drop of mermaid blood fell on the sword could it be pulled out.
The sword was made for a mermaid’s physique. It would be best if a mermaid wielded it, but even if someone else accidentally acquired it, they would need to constantly absorb the essence of a mermaid to command the sword in the stone normally.
After Duan Shujue obtained the sword, he didn’t dare pretend to be an expert. He approached Chi Yunzi, revealed his ident.i.ty, and explained the ins and outs of the sword.
Chi Yunzi thought it over and decided to keep him as a disciple.
In the original book, Chi Yunzi’s untalented second disciple was a person who had almost no sense of existence. He only occasionally said a few bitter words when Duan Shujue was favored, but when outsiders denigrated Duan Shujue, he almost got in a fight with them.
In The Mermaid Immortal, there were such uninteresting good people; there were no brainless villains who could be easily face slapped. Even Duan Shujue’s nemesis, Ye Jiming, was also a dashing, willful young man. One good, one evil. He and Duan Shujue both admired each other but couldn’t agree with each other.
Such a stupid f.u.c.king reason could choke them for so many years, and Yan Jinhua thought both of them had something wrong with their brains.
For Yan Jinhua, this wasn’t the only flaw in The Mermaid Immortal. He sneered the entire time while reading this book.
This f.u.c.king Xianxia novel protagonist didn’t blacken and didn’t accept a harem. What was the point of living?
Some years after Duan Shujue became an immortal, he met the monsters who killed his parents. Instead of killing the monsters’ whole clan and eradicating their roots when he had the ability, he only killed those monsters who had killed people themselves.
He was a living Virgin Mary b.i.t.c.h.
No wonder it was flamed on the Internet so much. It wasn’t even finished because the author’s statistics were so bad, plus there was something wrong with the three-dimensionality, so it was directly cut off.
Yan Jinhua’s mission was to fill these incomplete endings.
In his opinion, this was clearly the happiest thing ever.
Especially in The Mermaid Immortal, where he gained more than a little bit of happiness.
He seized the protagonist’s halo. Yan Jinhua let that indifferent Daoist immortal, pretentious p.r.i.c.k of a protagonist kneel and worship him, wagging his tail pitifully and even taking the initiative to proposition him. The protagonist cried under him and was even forced to repeat, “Duan Shujue loves Yan Jinhua” over and over again. This kind of extreme happiness, how could it be summed up in a few words?
While Yan Jinhua was enjoying the satisfaction, the battle over there was also coming to an end.
Ye Jiming was only one person after all. Before coming, he dismissed his little demons with no intention of dragging others down.
But those disciples came in never-ending waves.
A sword slit Ye Jiming’s throat during the battle, his blood-spattered, and he fell off the cliff.
However, miraculously the blood spurting from his neck actually dyed the mountain wall red. The mountain’s jade color was deep, turning the rocks into the shade of crimson jade.
Yan Jinhua laughed secretly. Who are you playing The Injustice to Dou E with here?
In the end, they were just two stupid cardboard people.
He led his disciples, flung his sleeves, and walked away.
Little did he know, the dead Ye Jiming’s soul was not like Duan Shujue’s, which was instantly destroyed.
An enormous force pulled Ye Jiming into another world.
“Entropy reading…the entropy value is up to standard…”
“h.e.l.lo, sir, do you want to join the revenge system?”
Ye Jiming didn’t understand what he was talking about, but the situation in front of him was such that when he heard the word “revenge,” he thought it was something set up by a bored immortal. He opened his mouth and said, “If I can take revenge, that would naturally be good. But what do you want this lord to pay?”
However, after hearing all the puzzling details, Ye Jiming shook his head and said, “Forget? I don’t want him to forget. This lord doesn’t want him to live muddle-headed for the rest of his life, you have to revive him too.”
The person speaking was a little helpless to Ye Jiming’s request, “The rules are like this. If you have a remnant of his consciousness left in your hand, I can help you transfer it to my colleague.”
Ye Jiming stroked the fish scale bracelet on his hand and was a little reluctant, but he still handed it over with gritted teeth, “Here. It’s right here.”
When he kowtowed up the mountain back then, he only caught a trace of this disheartened remnant soul near the Bagua Furnace in the alchemy pavilion. The remnant soul resided in the bracelet.
Over the years, he had been cherishing it carefully. When the pain of cultivation was unbearable, he would touch the bracelet, and his body and heart would feel much better.
The person who called himself “system” took the bracelet and kindly warned Ye Jiming, “Are you sure? Giving him all the power. What if he still has feelings for that person?”
“This lord will be watching by his side if he dares.”
“…You also want to keep your memory?”
Ye Jiming replied, “That’s only natural.”
The “system” was backed into a corner. “I’m afraid that won’t work… it would change the rules of the system. I don’t have this authority, so you have to write a report to the supervisory agency.”
Ye Jiming was stupefied for a while, thinking that this would be impossible, and then said, “Forget it, you can just let him remember it.”
The “system” was used to seeing too many flip-flopping hosts. Ye Jiming thought that Duan Shujue would want revenge. But what if he didn’t hate Yan Jinhua? Or didn’t hate him enough? What would happen if that sc.u.m coaxed him with a few words?”
The “system” tentatively asked, “In case he refuses to take revenge…”
“That’s his business.” Ye Jiming said, “It’s my business to keep him alive.”
The “system” was a little moved and said, “Then I’ll help ask around for you, maybe there’ll be a turnaround.”
Sarah: Ah, I had a feeling Ye Jiming might be the true love interest of the little fish ;w; can’t wait to see how things will develop in the story!
kiribold: The only decent thing Yan Jinhua did was accidentally creating a childhood friends backstory for the little fish and snake