At midnight, a crescent moon hung low in the sky, its light flickering alongside a few scattered stars.
At the foot of the mountain, a cold pool mirrored the celestial glow.
The occasional chirp of a cicada only deepened the serene silence surrounding the water.
A convoy moved slowly along the narrow mountain path, the low rumble of its wheels breaking the quiet of the moonlit night.
This convoy looked quite different from ordinary ones.
The main difference lay in the guards—every single one of them appeared to be female.
A carriage curtain brushed aside, revealing the youthful yet beautiful face of a young girl.
Her bright, wide eyes stared curiously at the pool for a moment before she suddenly piped up, “Master, Master!
Is that the Peak-Ascension Pool?” Her voice was as crisp as a songbird’s.
Ringing out suddenly in the dead of night, it startled the roosting birds into a flurry of flapping wings.
Beside the girl sat a woman with her face veiled in light silk.
She had been leaning back with her eyes closed, half-asleep.
Hearing the girl’s question, she cracked her eyes open a sliver, cast a hazy glance out the window, and sighed softly.
“Yes, that is the Peak-Ascension Pool.” The girl blinked curiously.
“Didn’t they say this is a sacred pool that’s constantly guarded?
There isn’t a single soul out there.” “A sacred pool?
In name only,” the woman scoffed.
“People used to guard it because back when the sacred cauldron fell and formed this pool, the water absorbed the spiritual energy radiating from the World-Suppressing Cauldron.
Bathing in it benefited one’s cultivation, so the royal family claimed it.
But over a thousand years have passed, and the spiritual energy has completely bled dry.
Now, it’s just ordinary water.
The royal family lost interest in maintaining it, and it has been abandoned for nearly a century.” The girl seemed reluctant to accept it.
“Is there really not a single trace of spiritual energy left?” “None,” the woman said, glancing at her with an amused smile.
“You just like the look of the water and want to sneak in a bath, don’t you?” Having her thoughts read like an open book, the girl grinned.
“Master knows me best.
We’ve been traveling for a day and a night, and my skin feels all sticky…” The woman chided her gently, “Your cultivation level already keeps you free from dust and grime.
Where would any stickiness come from?” The girl’s eyes darted around mischievously.
A sudden hint of seductiveness crept into her smile as she leaned her entire weight against her master.
“A girl gets sticky when she’s longing for a man…” She looked thirteen or fourteen at most, her face still carrying a touch of childhood innocence.
Yet, in that single instant, her aura shifted completely, hinting at the dangerous allure of a future temptress—a mature charm that absolutely did not belong to someone her age.
Furthermore, those words were definitely not something a proper young lady should say.
Yet, hearing this, the woman only laughed in spite of herself.
Not at all offended, she replied, “Fine, then.
You simply love being clean.
Well…
let us take a short break.
Master will join you.” If any outsider had witnessed this exchange, they would have known instantly that these two were up to no good.
The convoy came to a halt.
The female guards fanned out, quietly securing all paths leading to the water.
Holding the young girl’s hand, the master stepped out of the carriage bare-footed.
Their sleeves fluttered under the moonlight as the two slender, elegant figures glided gracefully across the moonlit ground, a picture of dreamlike beauty.
Their light silk veils dropped onto the grass, and two exquisite bodies, pale and smooth as mutton-fat jade, slowly waded into the water.
Even if a day’s journey hadn’t actually exhausted them, the crisp chill of the pool soaking into their skin still made the master and disciple let out soft sighs of pure comfort.
“Master…” The girl gently stroked her arms, lowering her voice.
“The Nine Cauldrons have stabilized the world for a thousand years.
Can our goals really be achieved?” “The cauldrons are merely inanimate objects.
If they were truly that stable, the great sects wouldn’t have grown so powerful and unruly today,” the woman replied casually.
She removed her veil and washed it idly in the water, revealing a face beautiful enough to topple empires.
In truth, the so-called master was still quite young.
Her flawless features made her look twenty-six or twenty-seven at most, yet she possessed a mature elegance her disciple lacked.
Having survived the blood and fire of the martial world, she carried the weight of leading an entire sect.
Because she belonged to a demonic sect, her aura was a flawless blend of heroism, nobility, mystery, and seductiveness.
The girl looked at her with pure envy.
“Master, you are so beautiful.
There must have been so many men who went crazy over you in the past.” “Heh…
men are worthless creatures.
They only go crazy for what they cannot have,” the woman chuckled.
“So remember this, Chan’er: feelings are just toys.
You can play with them, but never take them seriously.
Otherwise, the one going crazy will be you.” No matter how clever the girl was, she was still too young to fully grasp the weight of those words.
“Besides, seducing men is a job for our subordinates.
You and I bear the future of the sect; there is no need for you to lower yourself to such things.” The woman smiled faintly, playfully splashing her disciple’s flawless chest before continuing, “If anyone dares to look at you, you gouge their eyes out.
That is what you should do.” Before her voice could even fade, she sensed something amiss and snapped her head up toward the sky.
About a hundred feet in the air, the space twisted violently.
A sudden roar of thunder boomed, and fierce winds whipped through the night.
A rift faintly flickered open amidst the lightning, and a human figure plummeted out of it.
The very instant the figure emerged, the wind and thunder vanished without a trace.
It was as if the entire event had been nothing but a bizarre hallucination.
The master and disciple stared blankly as the figure tumbled down from the sky, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Right before smashing into the water, the person seemed to spot someone by the pool.
His eyes lit up, and he let out a desperate yell: “Help!” Splash!
He plunged straight into the deep pool, bubbling as he sank like a stone.
The master and disciple looked at each other, their eyes lingering on each other’s exposed, snow-white chests above the water line.
Then, they slowly turned their heads back toward the spot where the man had fallen, their eyes flashing with murderous intent.
On the water’s surface, only a few expanding ripples and a steady stream of bubbles remained.
Xue Mu was an operations manager at a domestic music agency.
He had produced and launched a girl group that completely flopped—and while the average person had likely never heard of them, Xue Mu actually held a decent reputation within the industry as someone at the cutting edge of the idol manufacturing wave.
He had plenty of disposable cash, regularly fooled around with high-end call girls, and occasionally slept with starry-eyed starlets looking for a break.
All things considered, his daily life back home was pretty sweet.
In his spare time, Xue Mu liked hunting for antiques.
That evening, he had picked up a tiny bronze fragment, smaller than a fingernail.
After studying it all night without finding a single clue, he accidentally cut his finger.
Whoosh.
He vanished right out of his apartment.
Having read plenty of web novels in his free time, he was all too familiar with the concept of isekai.
The moment he was flung into the midair over a strange, wild landscape, Xue Mu knew he had experienced an inexplicable transmigration.
Heaven knew he had never asked for this.
He had spent the last few days hitting on a minor starlet and was finally about to seal the deal—transmigration my foot!
Furthermore, he quickly realized a brutal truth: transmigration does not come with coordinates or GPS.
The lucky ones might land directly in a beauty’s perfume-scented bed, while the truly unfortunate might materialize in a far less pleasant location.
Dropping straight out of the sky made him unsure whether his luck was good or bad.
His only silver lining was the pool below—at least he wouldn’t hit solid ground.
While these useless thoughts whirled through his mind, the surface of the water rushed up to meet him in the blink of an eye.
Only then did he spot two women by the edge.
Were they…
bathing?
Before he could even register what they looked like, Xue Mu barely managed to scream “Help!” before crashing violently into the water.
As it turned out, martial arts movies where characters dive off cliffs into water and survive completely unscathed are pure fiction.
Falling from such a height, the impact was devastating.
The force of the water felt like a physical blow, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to lose consciousness almost immediately as he sank beneath the surface.
If no one saved him, his journey in this new world was going to be very short indeed.
By the pool’s edge, the stunning woman slapped the water with her delicate hand.
A geyser shot upward, launching him out of the depths.
The current then gathered him up, steadily floating his body over until he hovered right before the two women.
It was a supernatural display of skill.
“Strange.
What a potent, toxic vapor…” The two had initially looked at him with murderous intent, ready to gouge his eyes out for sport.
But as Xue Mu drifted closer, they knit their brows simultaneously and instantly circulated their energy to seal all the pores across their bodies.
This man was radiating a bizarre, toxic aura.
Even with their background in a demonic sect—making them thoroughly acquainted with every venom under the sun—they couldn’t identify what kind of poison this was.
The young girl, Chan’er, stared at Xue Mu’s short hair and muttered to herself, “A monk?
Could he have been targeted with a newly engineered poison by one of our fellow sects?” The master placed her slender fingers on Xue Mu’s wrist.
As she channeled her energy to investigate his condition, a look of profound astonishment flashed across her eyes.
“Incredible…” “What is it, Master?” “This man’s body is completely saturated with at least a thousand different types of toxins.
It spans from his skin and flesh down to his internal organs and marrow.
Many of them are highly volatile and entirely unheard of…
In other words, if he walked into a town of ordinary citizens, he would act as a walking plague.
Within days, he could turn a hundred miles into a barren wasteland.” Chan’er stared, utterly dumbfounded.
“But he’s still alive?” “Even Young Master Zhao, who practically eats poisons for breakfast, would have rotted to the bone if he were this severely contaminated,” the woman mused.
“Yet, not only is this man alive, he is perfectly healthy.
He merely lost consciousness because the impact from the fall bruised his internal organs.” Recalling his bizarre entrance, Chan’er felt her heart skip a beat.
“Could he be even more powerful than Young Master Zhao?
But how could someone that powerful get taken down just by hitting the water?” The master pulled her fingers away from Xue Mu’s wrist, her eyes clouded with an absolute, unfathomable bewilderment.
“That is precisely the strangest part…
He doesn’t possess a single shred of cultivation.
He is completely, indisputably a normal human!”