Fortunately, Su Muxue was fully focused on confronting the skeletal hand and didn’t hear the whispered remarks.
Otherwise, she would’ve been furious.
Spoilers?
Who knew when the second bell would toll?
She had to achieve her goal with maximum efficiency…
Who knew if a single delay might cost her her life, leaving her trapped here forever?
Did they expect her to piece together clues while explaining her reasoning and analytical logic?
Did they think this was some escape room game?
Su Muxue had already reached the dried-up fish pond.
The middle-aged man followed closely behind, his expression tense as he scanned their surroundings, ready to react to any sudden threat.
The spot where the eerie skeletal arm had vanished was hastily covered with dirt, showing no visible traces of disturbance.
Yet the unsettling feeling lingered.
She had seen something beneath that thin layer of soil—something stirring restlessly.
Kneeling, Su Muxue prepared to inspect the black tendrils and grotesque bone fragments at the bottom of the pond.
The courtyard was unnervingly silent.
Apart from their breathing, only a heavy, deathly stillness remained.
And outside the door…
Playful bickering?
"Brother, look—she’s not sharing her findings with us. She just ran off to search for clues on her own."
"This is supposed to be a team game. The warning at the entrance said it required 5-8 players, so there must be parts where we need to cooperate…"
Liu Yuan tugged at Su Qi’s sleeve. "It’s no fun, brother."
Su Qi felt her warm breath against his ear, along with the faint scrape of her little fangs.
He tilted his head slightly, taking in Liu Yuan’s pouting face, clearly broadcasting her displeasure and desire to leave.
Gently, he patted her head in reassurance.
Meanwhile, inside the other room—
Just then—
Thud!
A dull impact.
Not loud, but in the suffocating silence, it was jarringly distinct.
Like something heavy colliding with force.
Su Muxue froze mid-motion.
Slowly, she straightened, her icy gaze shifting toward the wooden door they’d come through.
It was now shut, even veiled by a thin mist that severed the connection between inside and out.
The middle-aged man tensed instinctively, inching closer to Su Muxue.
He could sense it—the "things" in the courtyard had been disturbed.
Boom!
Another sound.
Louder this time.
The ground itself seemed to tremble faintly.
Beads of sweat formed on the man’s forehead, his breathing ragged.
Su Muxue noticed something else—the dirt where the skeletal arm had shattered earlier… seemed looser now.
A few inky threads, hair-thin, slithered up from the cracks in the soil, writhing with unnatural life.
Their target appeared to be… Su Muxue?
No, not quite.
The black filaments were more interested in the fish-scale-covered finger bones scattered near her feet—the ones coated in dark sludge at the pond’s edge.
As if drawn to their kin, or perhaps… awakening them.
The threads spread like tidewater, swiftly coiling around the pond.
The moment they touched the grotesque finger bones, the fragments twitched faintly, their fish-scale surfaces emitting an eerie glow.
Screech—
A grating, bone-chilling scrape echoed.
The finger bones were moving on their own.
Puppeted by the black threads, they jerked stiffly, struggling to claw their way out of the muck.
"Creak—creak—"
The unsettling sound of grinding bones grew increasingly dense.
Those pale finger bones scattered across the dried-up fish pond floor, pulled by thin black threads, broke free from the mud's grasp.
Trembling, joint by joint, they pieced themselves together.
In the blink of an eye, several segments of finger bones had twisted into an incomplete skeletal hand!
The black threads slithered like veins through the gaps between bones, pulsing with an ominous aura.
The assembled skeletal hand suddenly jerked upward, its five uneven, razor-sharp fingers clawing viciously toward Su Muxue!
A gust of icy wind rushed at her.
Su Muxue reacted swiftly, leaping backward just in time to evade the strike.
The moment she dodged, the spot where she had stood was torn apart by the skeletal hand, leaving behind unstable spatial fissures.
The middle-aged man’s face turned ashen. "Tenth-rank peak?!"
His voice trembled, barely coherent.
This skeletal hand was bizarre—its power didn’t belong to any known force, making its rank impossible to assess.
But in Great Xia, tearing space, even briefly, required at least tenth-rank peak strength.
Of course, he had forgotten one crucial detail.
This wasn’t Great Xia.
The stability of space here far surpassed that of Great Xia.
Su Muxue ignored her uncle.
Her focus remained entirely on the reanimated skeletal hand.
Having missed its first strike, the skeletal hand didn’t pause.
It braced against the ground as more scattered finger bones were swiftly ensnared by the black threads, absorbed and fused into its structure.
The skeletal hand grew in size, its form becoming more complete, even beginning to extend upward as if reassembling into an arm.
The black threads writhed, bones clattering.
"Creak!"
The skeletal hand moved again—this time, its target wasn’t Su Muxue, but the middle-aged man behind her!
Its speed was even faster than before!
The man had no time to dodge, watching helplessly as the ghastly, twisted claw lunged for his face.
He could only hurl his briefcase forward.
"Purge!"
The man roared, and the briefcase exploded, dozens of yellow talismans scattering like startled birds.
He bit his fingertip and drew a bloody sigil in the air—the blood coagulated into a crimson seal hovering midair.
The flying talismans seemed drawn to it, instantly arranging themselves into an Eight Trigrams formation.
"Heaven and Earth decreed—"
"Evil be cleansed—"
Before he could finish the incantation—
"Crack—"
The entire Eight Trigrams formation shattered like a brittle potato chip.
The talismans’ cinnabar inscriptions burned away in midair. The man coughed up blood, staggering back several steps.
Utter devastation.
His proudest defensive technique hadn’t even lasted a second before being crushed like a toy.
Was this the power of tenth-rank peak?
Even if the undefeated Jiangxia Guardian were here…
There was no time to consider whether the Jiangxia Guardian could win.
The man’s expression twisted as he swiftly formed another hand seal. "Burn the wicked!"
The scattered talismans ignited simultaneously, azure flames surging back along the black threads.
But the threads coiled around the skeletal hand writhed, absorbing the "Purging Flames" like a sponge soaking up water.
At the critical moment—
Su Muxue spun around and shoved the middle-aged man aside.
The skeletal claw barely grazed her arm as it slashed past.
The sleeve was torn, revealing a shallow red mark that burned with a stinging pain.
The middle-aged man lay sprawled on the ground, staring in shock at his chest.
With a sharp crack—
The surface of the heart-protecting mirror split into a spiderweb of fractures.
A spiritual treasure capable of withstanding a direct strike from a tenth-tier expert had nearly been destroyed just by grazing a mere finger’s force?
Yet Su Muxue showed no reaction, her cold face devoid of any excess emotion. "Uncle, I’m going to use that move."
The middle-aged man’s expression turned grave.
Su Muxue was different from him.
Her rapid rise to the ninth tier at such a young age was due to her "inheritance"—something vaguely similar to a Cardholder’s "unique talent," yet fundamentally distinct.
"What are the odds?"
"Enough to die with some dignity."
Gritting his teeth, the man struggled to his feet, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth as he looked at Su Muxue with a complicated gaze.
His voice was hoarse. "Fine…"
Su Muxue didn’t turn back, the sharp lines of her profile tense.
She raised her right hand, her pale fingertips tracing an arcane pattern in the air.
Something seemed to stir in the atmosphere—
No, not just something.
A presence.
An invisible ripple expanded outward from her.
Her aura surged violently.
By burning a portion of her own life essence, she forcibly activated her inheritance, drawing power far beyond her current tier!
This was a true last resort.
At best, her cultivation would regress. At worst… she would perish, body and soul extinguished.
In the ancient era of immortal cultivation, such desperate techniques had been relatively common. But in this age, they were nearly extinct…
"Slash!"
A crystalline, translucent sword materialized with her clear shout.
As the blade descended, each tremor sent fine cracks spiderwebbing through space.
It carved a flawless arc of light—
"Clang!"
The metallic clash sent a ring of black ripples exploding from where the sword met the bone spike.
The crystalline blade shattered instantly.
And the skeletal hand…?
The tip of its longest fingernail was cleanly severed, spinning through the air.
Skeletal Hand: ???
Su Muxue: …
Middle-aged Man: …?
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
and couldn't return to the real world. Finally, I gave up and decided to go with the flow, only to discover that writing a diary could make me stronger. Since no one could read it, Su Luo wrote freely, daring to pen anything and everything. Female Lead #1: "Not bad. This diary helped me steal all the protagonist's opportunities. I just want to get stronger." Female Lead #2: "I don’t care about reaching the peak of the cultivation world. Right now, I just want to enjoy the chaos." Female Lead #3: "What? Everyone around me is a spy? I’m the Joker Demon Lord?" ... It’s so strange. Why is the plot completely off track, yet the ending remains the same? Are you all just messing with me?!
