The night quietly dissipated, leaving Mount Qingxuan in deep tranquility.
“Reporting to the Sovereign, there are no living people left on the mountain.”
The man before them was clad in dark robes, his face as flawless as jade, his eyes carrying a hint of a smile that nevertheless sent chills down one’s spine. He looked down at the demon soldier kneeling before him. “Oh? Then why are my sixth senior brother and good uncle not to be found?”
The man’s overwhelming pressure caused the demon soldier to tremble uncontrollably. “Perhaps, perhaps they were never on the mountain at all.”
The one the demon soldier addressed as Sovereign was none other than Zeng Youran, the seventh-ranking disciple of the Qingxuan Sect leader. Having now fallen into demonic ways and returned, his very first objective was to slaughter the mountain and exact a hundredfold repayment for the humiliation he had suffered there.
Zeng Youran did not heed his subordinate’s explanation. With a mere wave of his sleeve, the soldier who had just been speaking vanished into thin air, instantly reduced to ash.
He knew his dear senior brother was certainly not one to cling cowardly to life. Stepping casually onto the corpse of a disciple, Zeng Youran bent down to retrieve the man’s sword, raised his hand to cast a spell, and instantly locked onto the pair’s lingering auras.
Zeng Youran let out a cold snort and muttered, “If I could do it over, I would choose…”
“Ah, seriously? They cut away right before the exciting part, how annoying.” A harsh, abrasive phone ringtone jolted Qiao Yiting back to reality. Glaring at the hospital’s main duty phone displayed on his screen, his heart filled with absolute reluctance. After listening to the phone belt out another couple of notes, he picked it up anyway. “Hello?”
A hurried female voice came through the receiver: “Dr. Qiao, an emergency patient has been sent in and requires surgery. I have sent the specific details to your WeChat, hurry over!”
With that, she hung up, leaving Qiao Yiting alone in his car in a state of utter disarray. He had no idea why the hospital had been exceptionally busy lately; he had already performed two surgeries today and only managed to clock out at seven o’clock, yet an emergency popped up right as he was about to reach home.
“It is not like I am the only doctor, why do they always have to squeeze me dry?” Although he grumbled under his breath, his hands never stopped turning the car around. As a doctor, saving lives was his bounden duty, but who could have predicted that this surgery would drag on for a full six hours.
As the patient’s heartbeat on the monitor gradually stabilized, Qiao Yiting felt slightly dizzy from the symphony of medical equipment, yet he forced himself to stay conscious to sew the final stitch for the person on the operating table.
After changing out of his scrubs, he returned to the on-duty room only to find the entire bed already occupied by a colleague pulling the night shift.
A resigned Qiao Yiting had no choice but to drag his exhausted body back toward home.
Once inside his car, he instructed his AI assistant to open the unfinished novel, Please Rain Equal Favors Upon Me, Lord Demon Sovereign, listening to the emotionless mechanical female voice read aloud as he drove.
The novel he was reading was a top-ranking title on a male-oriented web novel platform. The plot wasn’t particularly spellbinding, and the endings were almost entirely predictable. But human nature being what it was, people always had a few peculiar habits.
Just like some people who knew they were already in a hospital, yet still couldn’t help Googling their own symptoms online.
Qiao Yiting was precisely like that. Knowing full well that the male protagonist of this novel would undoubtedly end up as the undisputed, invincible supreme demon sovereign of the realm, taking several beautiful women by his side to live a carefree life, he still couldn’t help craving the journey to get there.
He remembered a colleague catching a glimpse of him reading this novel earlier, wearing a look of sheer astonishment accompanied by thinly veiled mockery, utterly baffled that someone like him would read such an utterly devoid-of-substance story.
Yet Qiao Yiting felt differently: working like a beast of burden by day and serving as a mortgage slave by night, when reading a novel to unwind, who needed deep literary substance? Pure escapist thrills were more than enough.
The protagonist of this novel was named Zeng Youran, the abandoned child of a demon sovereign cast out into the mortal realm. As for who his biological father was, Qiao Yiting hadn’t reached that part yet. Through a twist of fate, Zeng Youran had managed to apprentice under one of the world’s premier major sects, becoming the sect leader’s seventh and final closed-door disciple.
Naturally, as a child of unknown origins, his senior brothers and sisters up top didn’t take him seriously at all, constantly making things difficult for him. Several years later, coinciding with a massive assault by the demon faction against the sect, they conveniently reclaimed him and passed the mantle of the demon sovereign directly to Zeng Youran.
Years later, Zeng Youran returned in full glory as the demon sovereign, leading a horde of demons to brutally slaughter the gates of Mount Qingxuan. Qiao Yiting had happened to read right up to this exact moment, but he never expected that the sixth senior brother—a character who had remained utterly obscure and whose very name hadn’t even been mentioned in the preceding chapters—would suddenly step up to fight.
Qiao Yiting only knew from the synopsis that there were six senior brothers and sisters in total: some died, some went mad, while the senior sister naturally ended up in Zeng Youran’s harem.
However, the author had never spent much ink on this sixth senior brother, leading Qiao Yiting to assume the sixth senior brother had long since perished. He never anticipated that the character would show up here, secretly suspecting the author was merely padding out the word count.
“If it were me, I would never let him slaughter the mountain so easily. I would definitely fight him to the bitter end and turn the skies upside down!”
The emotionless mechanical female voice droned on:
“Zeng Youran figured that his sixth senior brother was far too proud ever to run away. Molding a hand seal, he tracked the lingering aura, narrowed his eyes, and let out a cold snort. ‘So he actually fled. I overestimated him.’
Following the trailing aura, Zeng Youran didn’t even need to chase; with a sweep of his long sleeves, he materialized right before him, blocking his path.
‘Qiao Yiting, my good senior brother, just where do you think you are going?'”
Yet never in his wildest dreams did he expect a slap in the face to arrive so swiftly!
Qiao Yiting, who had been feeling slightly drowsy, instantly became wide awake: Wait, what did the sixth senior brother just get named?!
No one answered him; inside the car, only the cold, mechanical voice of the AI continued reading: “It was evident that Qiao Yiting was already utterly exhausted from the preceding battles. Compared to Zeng Youran, he looked far more like a demon god crawled straight out of the abyss.
Pity that, despite possessing a cultivation level rivaling a sect leader, he remained ultimately made of mortal flesh and blood, still carrying his martial uncle piggyback on his back. Seeing Zeng Youran effortlessly materialize before him, he could no longer hold his footing, relying entirely on his treasured sword jammed into the ground to keep from collapsing to his knees.
‘Heh, why is it that when you run for your life, you didn’t even bother bringing Master along, only troubling yourself with Uncle? Ah, I remember now, that old fogey has already been beaten to death by me.’
Zeng Youran walked with a playful, teasing swagger toward the man reputed as the world’s number one swordsman, crouching down before him. Smiling brightly as he looked at the two men, he said, ‘Reputed as the world’s finest swordsman, I have yet to receive guidance from Sixth Senior Brother. Why don’t we spar a little right now? The stakes are entirely negotiable.’
Looking at the youth smiling so radiantly before him, a trace of ruthless ferocity flashed across Qiao Yiting’s eyes. He turned around, gently laid his martial uncle down, and stepped three paces away. ‘Very well.'”
“Very well, my foot… what an absolute waste of time! This is a cultivation fantasy world, for crying out loud! Since you’ve been reduced to a cannon fodder, why aren’t you running faster? A gentleman takes ten years to exact revenge!” Qiao Yiting muttered under his breath, hurling curses inwardly while driving.
“Before the words could even leave his mouth, fast as lightning, even completely exhausted, Qiao Yiting’s sword-draw speed was unlike anything ordinary cultivators could ever hope to match.
It was a pity Zeng Youran was no ordinary adversary. By now, Zeng Youran’s cultivation had long since far surpassed Qiao Yiting’s. Before him, Qiao Yiting’s sword techniques were utterly insignificant; this so-called spar was merely a game to toy with him.
Every single time Qiao Yiting aimed for a fatal strike, Zeng Youran effortlessly evaded it. Gradually, Zeng Youran grew weary of the game.
‘Senior brother, why do you feel so restrained? A swordsman’s true destructive power shouldn’t be limited to this,’ Zeng Youran lightly deflected Qiao Yiting’s razor-sharp sword qi, realizing the other had reached his absolute limit, and continued, ‘It’s that old fogey holding you back, isn’t it? Let me kill him first, and then the two of us can resume our fight without distraction.’
With that, Zeng Youran vaulted behind Qiao Yiting, his demonic claws reaching toward their martial uncle. Yet Qiao Yiting seemed determined to protect him with his dying breath, abruptly shifting his sword stance to intercept Zeng Youran head-on.
In the next instant, Qiao Yiting felt every ounce of strength drain completely from his body. It was Zeng Youran’s hand, gripping tightly around his throat.
Enduring excruciating agony, Qiao Yiting still refused to release his sword, nor did he abandon that breathing-his-last martial uncle: ‘Junior brother… I beg you… please spare… Master Uncle, he is…'”
By this point, the real-world Qiao Yiting was entirely sucked into the book’s narrative: No way, did “I” just get written off the show like this? That is way too perfunctory! Climax appearance, obsessed with cultivation, cultivation level rivaling a sect leader, and it ends right here? This author really has no idea how to pad a plot!
“Zeng Youran let out a cold laugh, lifting his head to gaze at the skies of Mount Qingxuan. ‘Spare him? When you all treated me like a dog, why didn’t you spare me? And the root of all this suffering is him!'”
Listening to the chilling computerized reading, Qiao Yiting found himself completely immersed, feeling thoroughly indignant. “Why would the author write the character to death like this? So speechless.”
“Does only the protagonist deserve to experience satisfaction? Do cannon fodders not even deserve names?” He shook his head helplessly, noticing the traffic light ahead turning green, and steered his car straight ahead.
Without warning, a massive heavy-duty truck barreled out from a blind spot on his flank. By the time he registered what was happening, it was already too late.
Chaos erupted in his mind; the wails of police sirens and ambulance alarms echoed back and forth. The mobile AI assistant was still diligently serving its master, uttering garbled fragments: “Spare… me, I… spare… me…” Yet the moment those words finished, the screen went completely black, crashing permanently as it met its final demise.
He thought to himself that this time he was truly going to perish because of his own runaway mouth. His very last conscious sensations were the blinding overhead lights of the operating room and the steady beeping of the cardiac monitor, before plunging into absolute darkness.
As a blinding flash of a heavy truck braking flickered across his vision, he jolted awake. Yet what greeted his eyes was neither a hospital sickbed nor the familiar scent of antiseptic. He massaged his temples and slowly pushed himself upright, only to discover not a single trace of pain or injury anywhere on his body. But this blanket, these robes, and…
“Junior Brother!” A stunningly beautiful woman lunged toward him, sobbing. “You’re finally awake!”
He stood dumbfounded, peeling the tear-soaked, weeping beauty off his chest, his face plastered with sheer terror. “Big sister, who on earth are you?”
Did he not just get into a car accident? How on earth did he suddenly become someone’s junior brother, complete with such a gorgeous senior sister… He shifted his gaze toward the other figures in the room; every single one of them was dressed in antique, traditional garb, completely devoid of any modern appearance.
His brain operating at breakneck speed, he looked with total perplexity at the woman he had just pushed away. “Did I transmigrate?”
“It’s over, the sixth junior brother has gone mad!” The woman looked back at him with an expression far more terrified than his own. “He’s actually been driven completely insane by a deviation in his cultivation!”
Sixth Junior Brother? The moment Qiao Yiting heard he had become the sixth junior brother, his mind instantly connected the dots back to the brainless harem web novel he had just been reading. Yet refusing to give up hope, he asked, “Is this Mount Qingxuan?”
Upon receiving an affirmative reply, tears welled up in his eyes, leaving him completely speechless. “Crap, I’ve really turned into cannon fodder.”
With that, he went completely rigid and collapsed straight backward, only to be caught by a pair of hands.