The sky was overcast, and a gust of briny, chilly sea breeze blew in.
Shang Daoling cast his gaze downward, looking at a stretch of desolate beach below a hillside overgrown with knee-high weeds, and beyond the beach, the pitch-black seawater.
Gusu Terrace encompassed the East China Sea coast, with harbors and islands bordering the sea, but the waters of Gusu Terrace were a vast, verdant green, reflecting the blue sky above—nothing like this dark, deep hue.
An hour ago, he had been walking along the emerald coast as usual.
A few days prior, he had encountered a thousand-year serpent demon. That serpent, failing to recognize a true master, had actually tried to swallow him whole—by the time it realized just how powerful he truly was, it was already too late. He leisurely, with a smile on his face, treated the hunt of that serpent demon like a game. Every time it thought it was safe, he would reappear and slice off another section of its tail.
He toyed with it like this for days, cutting a hundred-zhang serpent demon down to just three chi, and then, with a single sword strike, pierced through its skull.
A spray of crimson demon blood splattered across his pale face.
Shang Daoling raised his hand, wiping the fresh blood from his cheek with his fingertip, then tasted it. Not bad, he thought—it could replenish a bit of his spiritual power. For this lowly beast to contribute some spiritual energy to him, it had died a worthy death.
A cool breeze swept past, and his ink-dark eyes shifted. Only then did he realize that chasing the serpent demon had brought him to a stretch of azure coastline.
Gusu Terrace had thriving trade, and every harbor bustled with noise and commotion. Such a silent stretch of coast was a rare sight.
He hadn't expected to discover such a secluded spot. Since he hadn't taken on any missions these past few days, he decided to treat it as a short vacation. He had been cultivating here ever since.
Until today, when he felt he had rested enough and it was time to find an intermediary to pick up a few missions and earn some coin.
Yet a stick of incense's time passed, and he still hadn't walked out of this stretch of coast.
One stick of incense.
A quarter of an hour.
An hour.
The seawater shifted from azure to pitch black. Above the cliffs was wasteland; below the cliffs was beach, and boundless desolation spread out before his eyes.
And this secluded place, which had been utterly uninhabited just days ago, suddenly revealed the entrance to a fishing village.
A blatant trap, plain as day.
His first instinct was that he had fallen under someone's Illusion Arts, but he cast several spells to break through the Illusory Realm, and none of them worked.
After investigating, he was almost certain this was no illusion, but rather…
"This is some kind of alternate space, isn't it? You've stumbled into some strange place by accident."
The Ghost Immortal, who hadn't been nagging in his ear for days, finally appeared now.
Had she only shown up because she saw he was in trouble?
This woman was utterly malicious—she always seemed to lurk, waiting for moments when he was trapped in difficulty, then seize the opportunity to get a handle on him…
Meanwhile, on the other end, Rong Chunsong had simply noticed that this electronic pet had been staying in one spot on the map the whole time. Every day it was either meditating or punching and kicking at the mountains, unleashing all sorts of thunder and flames. She had grown bored of watching, and only after several days did she remember to check on him again.
As luck would have it, the moment she looked, he was in danger.
Truly a Schrödinger's male lead. Nothing happens when you don't look, but the moment you do, a side quest triggers.
The Observation Avatar raised one long brow slightly and said, "What is an alternate space?"
"Simply put, you've accidentally entered a place that cannot be observed from the outside."
Shang Daoling let out a derisive snort. "So that serpent demon was bait."
"Exactly. If you'd just cut it down on the spot, none of this would have happened. But no, you had to chase it and torment it slowly. See? You played around too much and lost."
"…"
Rong Chunsong said, "Didn't you just say that fishing village appeared out of nowhere? They're clearly inviting you into a trap. If you go over there and smash that trap to pieces, maybe you'll be able to get out."
She was quite curious about what this alternate space really looked like.
Shang Daoling, however, let out a scoffing laugh. "That fishing village reeks of fish. I'm not particularly eager to go in."
That fishing village was obviously full of entertainment value—and yet this protagonist of entertainment didn't want to go?
After a moment, Rong Chunsong recalled that he had once taken shelter in a fishing village as a child. Could it be… she'd stumbled upon his childhood trauma? Oh my, so this guy actually had childhood trauma. What a contrast. But given how he was putting on that nonchalant, cocky air, asking him directly would be a waste of breath.
"The mighty Daoist of the Nightmare Nest, afraid to even set foot in a fishing village? Little Shang, all this hesitation and second-guessing puts me in a difficult position. I don't know whether I should continue to entrust you with important tasks and promote you in the future."
Hesitation was no match for action—let her give him a push and help him shatter that childhood trauma.
The words were a work of linguistic art. At first glance, she was dangling a carrot in front of him—go into the fishing village and he'd get promoted—but in reality, there was no concrete promise at all.
Shang Daoling said with a smile, "If I go in, will Your Holiness promote me to Guest Rank Seven?"
"That's not quite right. Entering the fishing village is only the start of a project. We'll have to see how the final results turn out." Of course, even if the project was a resounding success, promotion wasn't guaranteed either. This naive ancient man probably had no idea how terrifying a world ruled by capitalists could be.
He should count himself lucky to have a sect leader like her, who didn't really exploit him and only dangled empty promises.
With the provocation deployed and the carrot dangled, the handsome young man in the System's real-time feed gave a slight twitch of his brows, his gaze drifting toward the village not far away.
A faint, distant stench of rot and fishiness from years past wafted over.
As a child, he had struggled up from beneath the water, only to see the disgusted expressions on the faces of the people ashore and…
Enough. Those tedious memories from the past were a waste of time to recall.
The most important thing was—
That Ghost Immortal had actually reached out and patted his… rear again!
"Your Holiness, I must ask you to restrain yourself." A vein bulged on Shang Daoling's handsome face.
Rong Chunsong, who had just patted the handsome man's lean, firm backside, naturally turned a blind eye to his look of indignation.
"Hurry up and go. You've been here for days, either meditating or throwing punches and kicks. It's rare that we've unlocked a new location—go take a look." To her, he was nothing more than an Observation Avatar of an immortal realm electronic pet, fully within her grasp. A vein might have bulged on his handsome, pale face, but she took it as him playfully sulking with all the charm in the world.
Besides, given his signature McBrand nature, maybe patting him would even earn a little ding and add a few points to the Favorability Value.
This Ghost Immortal, with her frivolous touches and flippant words… Shang Daoling was deeply displeased.
Fine. At least she might help him escape this place.
He drew the pitch-black longsword from his waist and strode toward the fishing village.
The wild grass on the hillside stretched all the way into the dilapidated fishing village.
After stepping into the village, the sky grew even more overcast, dark clouds pressing down overhead.
Just as the two had expected, this small fishing village in the middle of the vast wilderness was bound to be strange.
Shang Daoling had barely walked a few steps along the village path when several ghastly pale faces emerged from beneath a withered locust tree.
The facial features were completely distorted. The eyes were upside down, standing vertically on the face; where the nose should have been, there were only two small holes; and it was smiling, with its mouth split all the way to the back of its head, packed densely with teeth.
Truly a bunch of… ugly and lowly things.
Shang Daoling felt disgust in his heart, but his handsome face showed no ripple of emotion. With a single swing of his long sword, those few Wraiths instantly dissipated.
Rong Chunsong sighed heavily in her heart.
She still wanted to watch this Eastern cult horror livestream.
Before it had even streamed for two seconds, these monsters were gone in a flash, all physically sent to salvation by the male lead, and the eerie atmosphere had vanished without a trace. Sigh, the demons and monsters in this little fishing village had better fend for themselves—a male-frequency dragon-proud-heaven protagonist had arrived on the set of their mountain-village-corpse film.