Chen Miemie occasionally suffered a sudden lapse in emotional intelligence.
“Persimmon, you’re in your fifties. Calling yourself Granny is indeed a little premature, but it’s not exactly outrageous.”
Persimmon folded her arms across her chest. “Hmph. I’m a high-level Mystic. Do you understand what ‘high-level’ means? Several stories tall! At my level, people are usually over a hundred years old. I’m still just a young woman.”
“Then what did you mean when you said you were about to die?”
“Exactly what I said. Back when I was lower-ranked than I am now, I was constantly fighting one battle after another, often using various methods to squeeze my potential dry. That damaged my foundation. And since humans naturally have limited lifespans, I’ve got at most ten years left before I kick the bucket.”
“That’s not quite how you use ‘kick the bucket.’ Never mind. I’ll put it plainly: this request is beyond what I can handle. I can’t help people live forever.”
Persimmon nodded, then surprisingly turned the tables on him.
“I know. Since that’s the case, shopkeeper, I can’t come all this way and leave empty-handed. How about this? Tell me what’s troubling you, and I’ll solve it for you.”
Chen Miemie: “...”
“My problem is harder than immortality. You can’t solve it.” Chen Miemie wore an expression of outright refusal.
As the dignified shopkeeper, Chen Miemie found it unbearable to ask a customer for help. He shook his head repeatedly.
Persimmon was indignant. “You haven’t even told me what it is. How do you know I can’t solve it? I’ll have you know, the witches all trust me because I, Persimmon, am very good at smoothing things over! If you’re in trouble, come to me!”
Chen Miemie gave a cold snort. “What an outrageous claim. Fine. I need to pass something tangible through a super-powerful barrier. The barrier is incredibly sturdy, and breaking it would have serious consequences, so destroying it is out of the question. Do you have any ideas?”
Persimmon placed her left hand beneath her right, then rested her chin on her right hand, thinking very seriously.
After a long while, she asked, “This barrier you mentioned—can absolutely nothing pass through it? Not even forces such as time or space?”
Chen Miemie saw that she was taking the matter seriously and entered the discussion himself. “I can say for certain that spatial forces won’t work. I’m not sure about time, but even if it has an effect, it would probably be very slight.”
Persimmon nodded. “Good. Time might have a subtle influence—that’s a possible opening. But there’s something else you haven’t answered. Can truly nothing pass through?”
Chen Miemie thought for quite some time. “Almost nothing. The only two things that can pass through are light—the light of the sun and moon—and my consciousness.”
Persimmon’s right eye immediately lit up.
“Excellent. An exception is good news. If there are two exceptions, there might be a third. Time, light, consciousness. I can’t be certain, but I know of a force similar to all three.”
Chen Miemie hadn’t expected Persimmon to actually have something worthwhile to offer. He was skilled at changing his attitude, and immediately began asking questions with shameless humility.
“Miss Persimmon, please enlighten me.”
Persimmon did not keep him in suspense. Smiling broadly, she began to analyze the problem.
“Time, light, and consciousness can combine to form time itself. Time and stories are highly similar. Both possess the power to transcend dimensions and cross the boundary between subject and object.
“You happened to find exactly the right person. My codename is First Words, and I wield the power of [Story].
“I can collect the beginnings of stories. The first sentence anyone says in front of me, the first character they write, or the first action they perform may all be taken away by me.
“Once I take away a beginning, its original owner can never remember it again—they won’t remember what they were about to say, write, or do.
“Of course, I don’t take beginnings for free. I give the original owner a new one in return, and it’s usually better than the old beginning.”
Chen Miemie was having trouble keeping up. “So, your [Story] can help me bring something in from outside the barrier?”
“Of course not. It has to be your own story.
“You write your own story as a book. In the book, you retrieve something from outside the barrier. Then, outside the book, there’s a chance you’ll be able to retrieve it in reality as well.”
“A chance?” Chen Miemie didn’t much care for that word.
“Obviously. You can’t make anything happen just by writing it down. The probability of success is directly proportional to the limits of your ability and inversely proportional to the difficulty of what you’re trying to do.”
Chen Miemie considered it. Probability might be unreliable, but having some hope was better than having none at all.
“Persimmon, I may not have explained the barrier clearly enough. The one I need to deal with is extremely, extremely powerful—one hundred times more powerful than a Great Witch. Does your [Story] possess that kind of power?”
Persimmon smiled. “One hundred times more powerful than a Great Witch? That really is something. Whether it can work or not doesn’t depend on the power of my [Story]. When the time comes, it will be your story, and it will rely on your own power.”
Only then did Chen Miemie relax a little. “So how do we begin my story?”
Persimmon glanced toward the study. “I need a book.”
“What kind of requirements does it have?”
“The closer your relationship with it, the better.”
Chen Miemie thought for a moment, then waved a hand. The books The Brocade Zither and Gathering Spring Blossoms, Reaping Autumn Memories floated out of the study.
The Brocade Zither, which had originally been slightly behind, overtook the other book and arrived in front of Persimmon first.
Persimmon praised him. “What amazing control.”
“Hm? Why can’t I open it?” Persimmon asked, puzzled. “I can sense some very strange power on these two books, and there aren’t any words on their covers, either.”
Chen Miemie frowned slightly. “It’s normal that you can’t open them. But did you say you can’t see the titles on their covers?”
“I can’t see them. I know there are several characters where the title should be, but they look like twisted lines. I can’t make out the shapes of the characters.”
“All right. These two are books I had a hand in. They’re called The Brocade Zither and Gathering Spring Blossoms, Reaping Autumn Memories.”
“ The Brocade Zither? Since that one arrived first, let’s use it. Can you give me a rough summary of what happens in it?”
Chen Miemie nodded and recounted the story of The Brocade Zither as concisely as possible without leaving anything out.
Persimmon clearly loved listening to stories. Her right eye sparkled as she blinked.
When he finished, she clapped her hands. “That’s a wonderful story. I hope the Yi siblings, who paid the price for the other party, can eventually recover their health.”
“Mm. I hope so too.”
“All right. I’m going to activate my [Mystery]. Oh, right—since I’m taking part in this, I’ll need to play a role in your story. Which character do you think would suit me?”
Chen Miemie looked at the three characters on the cover of The Brocade Zither—the name of its original author, “Granny Qiu”—and slowly said:
“On Warm Jade Road, there’s a Granny Qiu who runs a small restaurant that sells honey.”
Persimmon puffed out her cheeks again.
“All right, all right. Since it’s your story, you get to decide. I’ll reluctantly play Granny Qiu this once. But let me make this clear: just this once.”
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
