“Who are you?”
A hoarse, restrained pant brushed against her ear, carrying the scorching breath of a man.
The moment Mu Qinqin opened her eyes, this was the first thing she heard. Her brain moved faster than her mouth, and the words slipped out immediately:
“Your ancestor!”
The man beneath her seemed to fall silent for a moment.
At that point, Mu Qinqin couldn’t care less whether he was a man or not.
The instant her eyes swept across the surroundings, they widened in shock, and another sentence burst out of her mouth:
“What the hell?”
The man clearly didn’t understand what that meant.
But he could hear the tone well enough, and he fell even more silent.
No wonder Mu Qinqin was stunned.
Anyone who had been chasing a fire phoenix through the cultivation world one second, trying to pluck its feathers, only to appear the next second in a strange place—especially one this shabby—would be horrified.
Everything around her was dirt-colored.
Mud walls, a dirt bed, a dirt roof…
A large red plastic basin straight out of some bygone era, chipped at the rim.
And a wooden table missing a leg.
There wasn’t even a stool.
Oh wait.
The thought had barely formed when Mu Qinqin realized her body had moved uncontrollably.
More accurately…
The man beneath her had moved. At that moment, she was straddling his waist in an extremely domineering posture, while the man sat on the only wooden stool in the tiny room.
As he shifted, the stool creaked ominously, sounding very unsafe.
“Don’t—”
Before the word “move” could leave her lips—
Crack.
One of the stool legs snapped instantly.
Mu Qinqin’s expression cracked too.
Because when the man fell, her body dropped along with him, slamming heavily onto him.
“Mn.”
A muffled groan escaped the man’s lips, beads of cold sweat appearing on his forehead.
“So weak. Your waist is that bad? You can’t even handle this little weight?” She weighed barely over ninety pounds, yet this man couldn’t support her. Absolutely useless.
The moment the words left her mouth, her gaze landed on the ropes binding the man’s hands, and her voice abruptly stopped.
Meeting his deep, icy black eyes, she changed her tone and drawled slowly:
“Oh, sorry. Didn’t notice your hands were tied up. Who did that?”
The bound man said nothing, merely staring at Mu Qinqin with an unreadable gaze. She blinked and pointed at herself.
“I did that?”
Under her stare, the man let out a low “Mm.”
Good lord.
Had she forcefully abducted an innocent man?
Mu Qinqin closed her eyes with a headache. Ever since she had crossed from the twenty-first century into the cultivation world hundreds of years ago, she hadn’t had a headache once.
What a mess.
When she opened her eyes again, the dirt-yellow surroundings were still there, and so was the man beneath her. She finally realized this wasn’t a dream, nor some powerful cultivator’s illusion.
It was real.
Just as she was deep in thought—
A strange sound suddenly came from the roof.
Mu Qinqin instantly looked up in alarm.
Unnoticed by her, the man beneath her also turned his head with a cold murderous gleam in his eyes.
Then a massive dark shadow dropped down.
It landed squarely on the man’s head, knocking him unconscious on the spot.
“Falling object from above?” Mu Qinqin focused her eyes and discovered the thing that had knocked the man out was actually a book twenty centimeters thick. It even looked familiar.
She grabbed the book off the man’s face and looked at the title—
Rebirth in the Seventies: Marrying a Military Officer
This was a novel Mu Qinqin both loved and hated back when she still lived in the modern world before crossing into the cultivation realm. She loved it because of the cannon-fodder side character Si Chengchen. She hated it because the plot was utterly insane.
In the original story, the heroine Shen Feng’er was the youngest daughter of the village chief of Da’er Village. In her previous life, she had suffered miserably. After nearly drowning as a child, she became mentally slow-witted and was tricked by a local thug into losing her virginity. Forced to marry him, she endured endless beatings and abuse before finally being beaten to death, dying with her eyes open in resentment.
Unexpectedly, Heaven gave her another chance.
After being reborn, she avoided her tragic fate and married one of the only two military officers in the village. Both officers belonged to the Si family.
The eldest, Si Chengchen, and the third son, Si Ming.
Shen Feng’er chose Si Ming.
It wasn’t because she didn’t want Si Chengchen—she had tried every possible way to get close to him, but the man remained completely unmoved. Shen Feng’er secretly hated him for it, so she settled for the second-best option: the male lead, Si Ming.
After marrying Si Ming and following him to the military camp, the two joined forces to sabotage Si Chengchen during a mission, blinding him and ruining his path to promotion.
As for why Si Ming would harm his own older brother? Simple jealousy.
Si Chengchen outranked him and overshadowed him everywhere. Si Ming was merely a company commander, while Si Chengchen was a battalion commander. And if he completed a few more missions, he would almost certainly be promoted to regiment commander.
Si Ming couldn’t stand it.
So he teamed up with Shen Feng’er to destroy him.
And because they were the male and female leads, it felt as if all fortune in the world bent over backward for them. Si Chengchen’s blindness could never be cured, and even his military allowance was stolen away by the couple under the excuse of being his younger brother and sister-in-law.
After finishing the novel, Mu Qinqin had immediately written a thousand-word negative review. These days, apparently anyone with two legs could become protagonists. Their morals were so twisted they made rabid dogs look honorable.
No, wait.
Comparing them to dogs was an insult to dogs.
The moment her hand brushed over the title, a golden light shot toward Mu Qinqin and entered her forehead.
At the same time, a flood of memories appeared in her mind.
Mu Qinqin froze.
Because she had become part of the protagonists’ twisted little game too.
A grand ancestor of the cultivation world had actually been thrown into a novel by the Heavenly Dao???
And she was just a minor cannon-fodder character!
The person she had transmigrated into was also named Mu Qinqin.
The original owner was a beautiful young educated youth sent down to the countryside. During one of Si Ming’s visits home, he had accidentally seen her once and become obsessed with her beauty, even calling out her name in his sleep.
Because of that, Shen Feng’er grew to hate her.
She instructed her friend Chang Qiuyue to drug the original Mu Qinqin and throw her onto Si Chengchen’s bed, hoping to get rid of both of the thorns in her side in one move.
The original owner had been truly innocent. She barely remembered Si Ming at all. They had only crossed paths once, and she hadn’t even remembered his name.
Yet Shen Feng’er still targeted her.
After being drugged, the medicine proved too strong. Furious and overwhelmed, the original owner failed to catch her breath and died on the spot.
As for why the Heavenly Dao had thrown Mu Qinqin into this world—
Apparently it thought she had too much free time, spending every day neglecting cultivation in favor of catching birds and wreaking havoc on immortal herb gardens and secret realms, so it tossed her down here as “training.”
All she had done was leave seclusion after cultivation, hear that a fire phoenix had appeared in the Southern Realm, and decide to pluck a few feathers to make a shuttlecock.
She had almost caught it too.
And then what happened?
Right.
Nine bolts of heavenly lightning straight to the head.
And the next thing she knew, she woke up here.
At the thought, Mu Qinqin’s face darkened.
Heavenly Dao!
Those nine lightning strikes had definitely been its doing!
Ever since she began cultivating, she had noticed it already! Other cultivators only got struck by one or two bolts during tribulation.
Only her.
Every single tribulation looked like the heavens themselves were unleashing an apocalyptic lightning storm.
And this time was even more outrageous.
It had literally blasted her straight into a novel!
“Damn Heavenly Dao!”
Mu Qinqin raised her head toward the giant hole smashed into the roof by the falling book and flipped it the middle finger.
The next moment—