Zhou Yue’s illusionary world.
“Clang!”
“Clang!”
“Clang!”
The crisp clash of blades rang out without end.
Unlike the illusionary worlds of the others, the sound of hammering carried a faint rhythm, and every collision sent sparks flying.
In Zhou Yue’s eyes, the path of the katana grew increasingly clear.
“Sparks… That means it was a perfect deflect! Counter slash!”
After successfully deflecting the attack, Zhou Yue decisively spun his right arm and delivered a counter slash, immediately following it with a thrust at the Samurai General’s face.
After landing two strikes, Zhou Yue did not greedily press his attack. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the blade in the Samurai General’s hands.
The heavy force of the sword began to gather. Zhou Yue decisively halted his attack and raised the Kusabimaru horizontally in front of his face.
“Clang!”
Another flash of sparks appeared, and Zhou Yue followed up with another counter slash.
By now, Zhou Yue’s movements flowed like water. He dealt with every move from the Samurai General with ease and composure.
All of this experience had been bought with countless deaths.
Use attacks to suppress the enemy, but don’t get greedy. Keep the rhythm of the assault in your own hands.
Driven by this principle, the Samurai General’s every movement gradually began to slow in Zhou Yue’s eyes.
Danger!
Red killing intent formed a vicious character that exploded inside Zhou Yue’s mind.
“A low sweep? Heh… Bring it on!”
Rather than retreating, Zhou Yue advanced. The instant the Samurai General swung his blade, he lightly leaped into the air.
The Samurai General’s blade cut through empty space. Zhou Yue lightly stepped onto the back of the katana, kicked it aside, and followed up with another slash!
The Samurai General’s first life was forcibly cut down just like that.
“Heh. In an illusion that doesn’t rely on luck… I’m invincible!”
Zhou Yue shouted as he prepared to press his advantage.
“Awooo~”
A strange howl suddenly came from behind him.
Zhou Yue instinctively turned his head.
The wild wolves that had been roaming outside the city gate had somehow wandered into the battlefield between him and the Samurai General. Without a word, they lunged at him and began biting.
“Damn it, you guys… Stop messing things up!”
Caught off guard, Zhou Yue was bitten on the arm by a wild wolf and stumbled two steps.
At that moment, another wave of fierce red killing intent struck from behind him.
Danger!
“Damn it! You’re a general—can’t you fight fair instead of launching sneak attacks?”
“Why the hell am I so unlucky?!”
…
A wild wolf running into the city gate was ultimately a low-probability event.
After dying unexpectedly and respawning, Zhou Yue was so furious that he gunned down every wild wolf nearby before returning to the Samurai General’s position.
This time, with no unexpected interference, he successfully slew the Samurai General.
“Die!”
The Kusabimaru, trailing a sharp sword wind, pierced through the Samurai General’s throat.
As the Samurai General’s body slowly collapsed, it transformed into a Prayer Bead and a Gourd Seed, which entered Zhou Yue’s pocket.
Zhou Yue could not help raising his arms and shouting:
“Awesome!”
At that moment, all the humiliation and frustration he had suffered before were swept away.
Just then, a line of text suddenly drifted across the sky of his illusionary world:
[Spirit Firmament Sect’s Zhou Yue has achieved the first kill of the Samurai General (Normal)!]
“First kill?!”
Zhou Yue froze for a moment before clenching both fists and shouting for the second time:
“Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome!”
Clearly, this was a server-wide announcement for all Sekiro players.
Whenever someone became the first to defeat a powerful opponent, the announcement would appear.
It displayed not only the player’s name, but also their sect, allowing them to bask in the glory.
Breaking through his own limits through sheer effort and defeating a powerful opponent was already exhilarating enough. With the addition of this server-wide announcement, Zhou Yue was practically floating on air.
As the first-kill announcement appeared in the illusionary worlds of every cultivator, the fighting spirit of the various sects and schools—almost beaten out of them—instantly burst into flames.
At that moment, no one cared who would win the Asking Sword Ruins anymore.
The cultivators subconsciously decided that whoever obtained the most first kills in Sekiro would be the strongest sword cultivator and the strongest sword sect!
For a time, countless new players flooded into Sekiro’s illusionary world, all to compete for the first-kill spots of the various bosses…
…
“Hahaha! My progress is the fastest right now. I heard Junior Sister Li suffered some grievances at the Infinite Sword Sect. Today, I must claim all the first kills!”
Greatly encouraged, Zhou Yue prepared to continue searching for powerful demons to slay.
As he looked for his next opponent, Zhou Yue savored the battle he had just fought.
It had been a battle in an illusion, with not a trace of spiritual energy or any exquisite sword techniques involved, yet he felt he had benefited enormously.
“Come to think of it, I felt a strange sense of familiarity when I was fighting the Samurai General…”
Zhou Yue suddenly stroked his chin. Closing his eyes, he recalled the moments when Danger and Death had appeared.
Especially when Danger appeared.
Killing intent surged, and danger lurked in every direction.
That sensation of being watched by an unseen threat, combined with the vicious character exploding inside his mind, was truly an astonishing presentation!
But beyond being astonishing, Zhou Yue faintly felt that he had seen something similar somewhere before.
“Where exactly have I seen it…”
After casually dispatching two foot soldiers, a wave of killing intent suddenly rose behind Zhou Yue, and another Danger character appeared.
He calmly rolled aside to evade it, then casually dealt with the spearman who had attempted the ambush. Suddenly, he slapped his forehead.
“Oh, damn… I remember now!”
That brief moment reminded him of the scene when he had sparred with Zhong Yi in the real world.
“The Great Dao Words of Truth Art!”
Zhong Yi’s Great Dao Words of Truth Art could influence reality through words, giving language tangible form.
The Danger and Death characters in Sekiro gave him the same impression. The only difference was that the words themselves had been made tangible, making the sensations of danger and death especially real and intense.
“Junior Brother Lu actually observed the profundity of the Great Dao Words of Truth Art and imitated it in his illusionary techniques? Impressive… truly impressive! As expected of Junior Brother Lu, as expected of the number-one illusion master under heaven!”
Zhou Yue could not help sighing in admiration.
…
At the same time, Lu Ze, who was watching multiple livestreams simultaneously, suddenly received a prompt in his mind.
[The host has won over the admiration of the righteous cultivator Zhou Yue through his strength, causing him to hold you in high regard. You will randomly acquire one of his abilities.]
[Reward obtained: Karma Fire Azure Lotus Art]
[Would you like to learn it?]
“No! No! No!”
Cold sweat broke out on Lu Ze’s forehead as he hurriedly rejected the prompt again and again in his mind, afraid that the system had made a mistake.
Ever since suffering from the consequences of learning the Great Dao Words of Truth Art, Lu Ze had realized that not every cultivation technique was worth learning.
After cultivating the Great Dao Words of Truth Art, he had begun to suffer from an uncontrollable tendency to jinx things.
If he cultivated Zhou Yue’s Karma Fire Azure Lotus Art as well, would he turn into the unluckiest man alive?
Only after watching the golden cultivation manual disappear did Lu Ze finally relax.
“Senior Brother Zhou’s insight is quite sharp. He actually saw through the origin of the Danger character at a glance…”
Lu Ze nodded with a smile.
Zhou Yue’s guess was indeed correct. When Lu Ze had created the illusion, he had incorporated the Great Dao Words of Truth Art into it, which was how he had produced the stunning presentation of Danger and Death.
Otherwise, if he had merely created the images, they would have seemed too ordinary within the illusion and would have fallen far short of the effect they had possessed in his previous life.
“Since I can still steal skills from the various senior brothers…”
Lu Ze couldn’t help turning his gaze toward another figure drenched in sweat.
“I wonder if I can get Senior Brother Zhong’s [Ten-Character True Formula] to drop…”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
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?"
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
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)
