Hakiye, just how far can your eyes see

Bang! Bang! Bang!

On the outskirts of the Mo family’s minor world.

The Ascending Immortal Stairway arrived in an instant. Four white frames abruptly materialized, trapping the System—who had been gloating just moments before—within them and forming the character “prison.”

“What? How is this possible?”

The System was startled.

At a time like this, there was actually another expert here?

Zhao Xiong, Mo Yuan, and the others were equally stunned. They all turned toward the direction from which the Ascending Immortal Stairway extended.

A white-clad figure came walking over, his feet treading upon the blue-stone steps. A foxtail grass stem hung from the corner of his mouth, while the unmistakable spirit of youth shone between his brows. He advanced one step at a time.

“You’re… Ye Shu?”

At the sight of him, Zhao Xiong and Ao Kun’s pupils contracted.

“Aren’t you dead?”

“If I were dead, who would clean up this mess you’ve made?” Ye Shu glanced at their astonished expressions and spoke helplessly. “This world still needs a savior, after all.”

He let out a bitter laugh.

“Who else could it be, when I’m the Heaven’s Chosen?”

As the few of them spoke, the System finally broke free of the Immortal Gate’s restraints. It stared at Ye Shu, who had returned from the dead, its face filled with disbelief.

“It’s you again. You’re like a ghost that just won’t go away.”

But what shocked it most was not merely Ye Shu’s resurrection. It was the means he had displayed. He had actually managed to affect the System.

That shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be possible!

The System was utterly baffled.

Because of the innate nature of the System race, they were fundamentally unconnected to the worlds themselves. Like the Heavenly Dao, they were formless beings with no physical bodies. The methods of the various Heavenly Dao worlds could not affect them. Likewise, they could only influence the worlds indirectly, seizing their fortune.

It was both a limitation and a form of protection.

It was precisely this special nature that gave the System race the confidence to plunder the fortune of world after world.

But today, that invulnerable shell had been shattered.

How could it not be bewildered?

How could I be afraid?!

As if sensing the System’s confusion, Ye Shu clasped his hands behind his back and gave it a faint smile.

“Do you find it unbelievable?”

The System remained silent, but the curiosity in its eyes was unmistakable. It, too, wanted to know how Ye Shu had managed to influence it.

“Actually, a long, long time ago, from the moment I learned of your existence, I began wondering how I should deal with something that existed on an entirely different plane—something whose sole purpose was to seize destiny’s fortune, with everything else deemed irrelevant.”

“After all, even if I dealt with the villains and the final mastermind…”

“Even if I killed those female leads who betrayed me…”

“It would all be meaningless, because they were originally part of this world.”

“Only by dealing with you could I truly get to the root of the problem.”

Ye Shu spoke with a touch of emotion, his face filled with reminiscence.

“I began thinking about it back in the Demonic Beast Mountain Range. I kept thinking about it, day and night.”

“Because killing you was practically impossible. You don’t belong to this world, so naturally, no one from this world could affect you.”

“I racked my brain and pondered day and night.”

“Finally, while I was at the Qingxuan Sect, I figured it out. The answer was—cause and effect.”

“But how could we establish a causal connection?”

Ye Shu murmured softly, recounting his thought process step by step.

“What is there that could definitely create a causal link between us?”

“Then I thought of something.”

As he spoke, he raised his right hand and spread his five fingers. Several dazzling threads extended from his fingertips, firmly connecting him and the System.

“What is this?”

The System lowered its head. From its illusory body, more than three hundred and sixty threads had been pulled free, pinning its outline in place according to the arrangement of the acupoints throughout the Heavenly Circulation.

“It’s those children of fortune…”

The System immediately understood. What connected it to Ye Shu was precisely the fortune it had plundered from them!

“That’s right. It’s this fortune.”

Ye Shu nodded and said with a smile, “There’s no way you would ever let go of this fortune, so this is the absolute causal connection we can establish between us.”

“But that brings us to another problem.”

“The ones whose fortune is stolen will inevitably die. If I use that fortune to establish a connection with you, but then die as well, establishing the connection would be meaningless.”

“After all, by then, I’d already be dead…”

A trace of reminiscence flickered through Ye Shu’s eyes. He seemed to recall the time at the Qingxuan Sect when he had ascended the Immortal Stairway alone and faced six powerful cultivators of the Mahayana stage by himself.

“Do you remember what happened at the Qingxuan Sect?”

He looked at the System. “If you had paid attention to my conversation with Lin Qingxue back then, you would have realized that I had long since anticipated this day—that you would bring the endgame villain to surround the sect. There was no need to think about it, because if I were in your place, I would have done the same.”

“And that was when my plan began.”

“You mean that your death at the Qingxuan Sect was something you had planned all along?” Zhao Xiong and Mo Yuan’s pupils contracted, and they stared at Ye Shu in shock.

“If not, then what was it?”

Ye Shu turned around and looked at the two of them speechlessly.

“Come on, I can activate teleportation arrays without restriction. Would it really have been difficult to move the Qingxuan Sword to the Central Province so it could absorb spiritual energy?”

“Insufficient spiritual energy was nothing more than a pretext.”

“It was all so I could die in a way that made sense, allowing my fortune to be dispersed among my celestial star lodges. That way, the System could gather the fortune without growing suspicious.

“As long as even one of my star lodges survives, I will live on through it.

“So whenever you killed one and seized its fortune, another had already quietly been reborn—a version without any fortune—waiting in the shadows until you believed you had harvested it all. Then it would merge back into one, and I would rise from the dead.

“It’s just that I never expected…”

At this point, Ye Shu let out a bitter laugh. “I never expected Xiaobai to have Liu Ruyi, the Demon Sect’s Holy Maiden, resurrect me. Truly, Heaven’s will is unfathomable, and things rarely go as planned.”

“…”

Listening as Ye Shu revealed his entire plan, piece by piece, the people nearby were all stunned.

Even the System’s illusory face revealed a distinctly human look of shock.

“Was this all part of your calculations too, Haji Ye?!”