No wonder, after regaining his memories, Lou Xingyao always felt that the name Tianming Continent carried a strange sense of familiarity.
At first, he thought it was simply the lingering influence of Lou Xiaowu’s memories. But now, piecing everything together, he suddenly realized the abnormality hidden within.
As for this novel, despite more than a decade having passed, Lou Xingyao still remembered it vividly.
It wasn’t because the book was particularly well-written or unforgettable. On the contrary, the plot could hardly be called original.
In one sentence: the protagonist transmigrates into another world, levels up at breakneck speed, slays monsters, collects a harem, changes maps, levels up again, slays more monsters, collects more wives and so on, looping endlessly until he finally ascends to immortality.
The only reason Lou Xingyao remembered this Dao and Heaven Aligned was because, out of the countless novels he had read in his life, this was the one and only book where he developed a genuine dislike for the protagonist.
Before reading this book, Lou Xingyao firmly believed that protagonists didn’t have to be perfect! They could have flaws, they could even be outright villains in the truest sense.
But no matter what, they would still possess a unique kind of charisma that belonged to a protagonist alone.
Yet the so-called protagonist of Dao and Heaven Aligned, Ye Hantian, completely shattered that belief.
As a friend, he was treacherous and untrustworthy, ready to kill his brothers for the smallest gain.
As a husband, he was arrogant, disrespectful to his wife, yet never failed to chase after every beauty he laid eyes on.
As a disciple, he was ungrateful, dragging disaster to his sect and watching as his entire sect was slaughtered without the slightest hint of guilt before happily throwing in his lot with the murderer.
Lou Xingyao couldn’t even find a single redeeming quality in Ye Hantian. That such a man could slice his way through obstacles and ultimately ascend to immortality was nothing more than pure protagonist plot armor working overtime.
Even now, Lou Xingyao could clearly recall the nauseating disgust Ye Hantian’s character had brought him back then.
What made it worse was that the author clearly knew how to write a compelling character. Take the antagonist Wen Hanshan, for example, he was brimming with charm. A man of his word, principled, and carrying himself with elegance.
If Ye Hantian’s character embodied every trait Lou Xingyao despised, then Wen Hanshan’s character embodied every quality Lou Xingyao longed for!
So much so that he indirectly awakened Lou Xingyao’s understanding of his own orientation. Wen Hanshan had been like the pure white moonlight in his heart.
Even Wen Hanshan’s flaws, his scheming and deep calculations, Lou Xingyao only saw as signs of being thoughtful and thorough.
The only reason Lou Xingyao managed to suppress his disgust for Ye Hantian and keep up with the daily updates was entirely because of his love for Wen Hanshan.
Unfortunately, in the latter half of the story, Wen Hanshan still fell victim to the author’s shameless dumbing-down and was forcibly written out.
And that how the masterpiece was ruined.
After all, nothing strikes harder than killing off the beloved moonlight. From that moment on, no other character ever surpassed Wen Hanshan’s place in Lou Xingyao’s heart.
This was why, even after more than ten years, just a few fragmented details were enough to bring back all of Lou Xingyao’s memories of Dao and Heaven Aligned.
Of course, this also had much to do with Canglan City and He Wanqing’s special roles in the story.
Both the protagonist and Wen Hanshan hailed from Canglan City. Their origin and foundation.
It was also the very first “map” of the novel, so iconic that readers jokingly called it “the land where dreams begin.”
As for He Wanqing, she was the very first woman Ye Hantian took into his harem, once occupying the crucial position of lead consort, and was regarded by readers as the “official wife.”
With all these connections stacked together, Lou Xingyao’s mood instantly turned complicated.
So… did this mean he had actually transmigrated into the novel?
But one thing Lou Xingyao was very certain of the original novel had never mentioned any engagement between He Wanqing and Wen Hanshan.
After all, Ye Hantian was, to put it nicely, “traditionally conservative,” and to put it bluntly, had an extreme obsession with female chastity.
Every woman he accepted into his harem had to be utterly pure, body and soul spotless.
This “pure and spotless” standard even excluded women who had been engaged before.
Lou Xingyao had seen him in the text multiple times sneering at such characters, spitting out the words “used shoes” with blatant contempt.
So how could a man like that possibly allow his very first wife, the woman in his central position, to be a “used shoe”?
Was the original plot missing pieces?
Or was this just a coincidence that this Tianming Continent was not the same Tianming Continent, and that he had simply transmigrated, not transmigrated-into-a-book?
Unfortunately, the information at hand was too scarce…
Lou Xingyao lay back down, feeling that with his current knowledge of Tianming Continent, he really couldn’t pin down the truth of the situation.
But just as he resigned himself to not getting an answer anytime soon, a sudden flash of memory made him sit bolt upright again.
This time, Lou Xingyao headed straight for the foot of the bed. He bent down, groping and tapping against the wall hidden behind the bedframe.
Soon, he found the right spot. With a bit of force, he loosened one of the green bricks and pulled it out.
Reaching inside the hollow, Lou Xingyao retrieved a small wooden box about the size of the brick.
The box was simply made of rather crude, the kind of clumsy handiwork you’d expect from a beginner.
But even the poorest beggar has a treasure chest of their own. Lou Xiaowu was no exception. And this small wooden box contained what he had once considered his most precious treasure.
From the thick layer of dust, it was clear that Lou Xiaowu hadn’t touched the box in a long time.
He had probably even forgotten about this treasure he had once so carefully hidden away as a child.
If not for suddenly recalling a particular item that had appeared in the novel, Lou Xingyao himself might never have thought of this long-buried scene.
With a faint sigh in his eyes, Lou Xingyao wiped the dust off the wooden box and finally opened the fragile thing that looked like it might fall apart with just a little more pressure.
Inside the wooden box were only a few items, so few that with one glance you could take them all in: a thin little stone chip, a bird feather whose colors had already faded, a dried-out flower long devoid of moisture, and a small dusty bead strung on hemp cord.
At first sight, they looked like worthless junk you could find anywhere on the street.
Things so shabby that even if they were lying on the ground, no one would bother picking them up.
But to Lou Xiaowu, these were treasures, each carrying a meaning far beyond their appearance.
Take that little stone chip, for instance. If there was anything special about it compared to ordinary stones, it was simply that it was exceptionally suited for skipping across water.
And that was exactly why Lou Xiaowu had put it into the wooden box.
When Lou Xiaowu was about seven years old, the Lou family had dug out a new lake near the back mountain, supposedly to cultivate some aquatic spiritual herbs.
Children didn’t care about such things, they only knew the lake looked perfect for skipping stones.
During that time, whenever the Lou family’s children had free moments, they would gather in groups by the lakeshore, competing in games of stone-skipping.
Back then, Lou Xiaowu’s situation in the family wasn’t as terrible as it later became. Though he vaguely sensed that his peers didn’t really like him, he never paid much attention to it.
Deep inside, he still longed to play with children his own age.
So when he discovered their “secret” pastime, he naively thought that if he could just find good stones for skipping, he would finally be able to join their games.
But in the end, when he brought his stones, not only was he mocked and ridiculed, but the stones he had carefully collected were snatched away by the other children.
That lone chip of stone was the only one they hadn’t managed to steal.
Even as the years passed and those children grew older. Long after the Lou family’s kids had outgrown the “boring” game of stone-skipping, Lou Xiaowu still couldn’t bear to throw that little stone away.
The faded feather, on the other hand, came from a small bird Lou Xiaowu encountered when he was ten.
By that time, his situation in the Lou family had grown much worse. His peers no longer limited themselves to mocking words, they had moved on to fists and kicks.
Still, since they were all children, their strength was nowhere near what it would become later, so the blows weren’t unbearable.
For Lou Xiaowu, who had an extraordinary ability to recover, the punches were not the hardest thing to endure. What truly tormented him was the loneliness, being ignored, unwanted, invisible.
It was in that loneliness that the bird appeared before him.
Perhaps the bird had only stayed because its wing was injured. But for Lou Xiaowu, that little bird was like the bright feather it carried, an unexpected splash of color in his otherwise bleak life.
He tended the bird’s wounds, fed it, and even confided his frustrations to it. Of course, the bird couldn’t understand his words, but simply having it there soothed him.
The two grew inseparably close, and Lou Xiaowu even gave the bird a cute little name: Jiujiu.
Because every time he spoke to it, the bird would chirp “jiu jiu” in reply, as if it were a tireless, ever-patient listener.
The dried flower in the box was Jiujiu’s gift of thanks after it had healed.
It was a simple roadside wildflower, but to Lou Xiaowu at that time, it was worth more than gold.
Unfortunately, Jiujiu didn’t escape the eyes of his bullies.
A group of older children caught the bird when Lou Xiaowu wasn’t paying attention. By the time he discovered it, all that remained of Jiujiu was a broken heap of bones.
The sight of bright feathers, stained with blood and scattered across the dirt, stabbed straight into Lou Xiaowu’s heart. It also ignited in him one of his rare sparks of defiance.
That day, Lou Xiaowu’s reaction could almost be called earth-shaking. For the first time ever, he fought back and his sudden retaliation truly caught the bullies off guard.
But two fists cannot beat four. After injuring two of them, he was quickly overwhelmed and pinned down.
His rebellion only enraged them further. Realizing how important Jiujiu was to him, one boy immediately summoned a fireball and burned the bird’s bones and feathers to ashes.
Only then did Lou Xiaowu fully understand that he had no status in the Lou family at all. Worse, anything that came close to him would only end up cursed.
Already quiet and withdrawn, he became even more closed off after that. He stopped seeking closeness, stopped nurturing curiosity, stopped showing his likes or dislikes.
As for the feather in the box, it was one he had accidentally pulled from Jiujiu while changing its bandages.
He’d been scolded by the bird’s angry pecking afterward, but who could have guessed it would become the only feather left behind?
Lou Xingyao’s fingers brushed over each item one by one. Through them, he could almost feel Lou Xiaowu’s emotions of that time, the raw, heart-wrenching pain of seeing Jiujiu’s remains still seemed to linger in his chest.
Closing his eyes to steady himself, Lou Xingyao’s fingers finally rested on the dusty bead strung with hemp cord.
This was the only belonging Lou Xiaowu’s mother, Lou Yiyi, had left him or more accurately, the only thing in his possession that had anything to do with her.
When Lou Yiyi died, Lou Shaohui had immediately claimed her storage pouch and all other valuables in her quarters under the pretense of “family property.”
After that plundering, Lou Xiaowu had been left with almost nothing. And what little remained was stolen by his peers after his talent test, leaving him with nothing at all.
This bead survived only because its dull gray appearance made it look too ugly to bother stealing.
Still, after Jiujiu’s tragedy, Lou Xiaowu had feared he might lose even this last remnant of his mother, so he hid it in the wooden box.
And this dusty bead was precisely the reason Lou Xingyao had gone digging through the wall to retrieve the box.
He walked to the table and lit the stub of a candle, barely the length of a knuckle.
Holding the bead between his fingers, he turned it slowly under the candlelight. Just before the flame burned out, he finally saw it: beneath the dull gray surface shimmered faint streaks of golden-red light.
Anyone who reads cultivation novels knows the three ultimate golden cheats: a storage space, a system, and an old grandpa mentor.
Though Dao and Heaven Aligned lacked a system and an old grandpa, it certainly didn’t skip the cheat of a personal storage space.
No transmigrated protagonist leaves home without one.
The original text had described Ye Hantian’s space in great detail: a plain, unremarkable gray bead that, when illuminated by firelight at a certain angle, revealed the vast world hidden within.
As the book put it “a treasure conceals itself.”
It had originally been written to highlight Ye Hantian’s heaven-defying luck that even the junk he picked up was a priceless treasure. But now, that fortune had fallen into Lou Xingyao’s hands instead.
Looking at the bead that matched the novel’s description exactly, Lou Xingyao didn’t hesitate. He cut his palm and pressed the bead against the wound.
At once, the nondescript bead, soaking in blood, shed its dull gray surface. The faint golden-red light hidden within blazed brighter and brighter, until the gray was completely gone.
Then the bead itself dissolved into a streak of golden-red light that shot straight into Lou Xingyao’s brow.
The next moment, a space linked to his mind unfolded in his consciousness, a simple domain with a well, a small wooden hut, and an acre of dried-out soil.
And it was identical to the personal storage space Ye Hantian had obtained in the novel.
At last, Lou Xingyao was certain: the world he was in now was indeed the Tianming Continent described in “Path equal to Heaven”
✦ ✧ ✦
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
Please distract the translator from abandoning everything with coffee. (ง •̀_•́)ง
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · Crossing OverChapter 2 · Lu XioaWuChapter 3 · UncleChapter 4 · Substitute MarriageChapter 5 · Travelling Through BookChapter 6 · SpaceChapter 7 · InheritanceChapter 8 · ExplanationChapter 9 · He familyChapter 10 · CompensateChapter 11 · WeddingChapter 12 · LeavingChapter 13 · SuspicionChapter 14 · Change SurnameChapter 14 · Change SurnameChapter 15 · SummaryChapter 16 · Family BusinessChapter 17 · ResettlementChapter 18 · DeterminationChapter 19 · TreatChapter 20 · Enter the TaoChapter 21 · Private TrainingChapter 22 · BreakthroughChapter 23 · ExperienceChapter 24 Part 1 · Questions and AnswersChapter 24 Part 2 · Questions and answersChapter 25 · GiftChapter 25 Part 1 · GiftChapter 26 Part 1 · Sword IntentChapter 26 Part 2 · Sword IntentChapter 27 Part 1 · SelectChapter 27 Part 2 · SelectChapter 28 Part 1 · PastChapter 28 Part 2 · PastChapter 29 Part 1 · ConfessionChapter 29 Part 2 · ConfessionChapter 30 Part 1 · TradeChapter 30 Part 2 · TradeChapter 31 Part 1 · Male LeadChapter 31 Part 2 · Male LeadChapter 32 Part 1 · LuckChapter 32 Part 2 · LuckChapter 33 Part 1 · GuessingChapter 33 Part 2 · GuessingChapter 34 Part 1 · SystemChapter 34 Part 2 · SystemChapter 35 · OpportunityChapter 36 Part 1 · LingquanChapter 36 Part 2 · LingquanChapter 37 Part 1 · Hundred Flowers PartChapter 37 Part 2 · Hundred Flowers PartChapter 38 · Worth itChapter 39 · SaintessChapter 40 · ExperimentChapter 41 · Vampire SystemChapter 42 · NotesChapter 43 · WarningChapter 44 · PlanChapter 45 · Fellow VillagersChapter 46 · AssimilationChapter 47 · IlliterateChapter 48 · Pak WahChapter 49 · Sudden EnlightenmentChapter 50 · Wen ZhiChapter 51 · CarrierChapter 52 · LeavingChapter 53 · Follow UpChapter 54 · OutrageousChapter 55 · OnceChapter 56 · TeasingChapter 57 · Playing aroundChapter 58 · Beast fireChapter 59 · Watching a PlayChapter 60 · Extermination of the entire clanChapter 61 · ChoiceChapter 62 · PossessionChapter 63 · CalculationChapter 64 · GuaranteedChapter 65 · Grand OpeningChapter 66 · Grand OpeningChapter 67 · Protecting one’s ownChapter 68 · Secret RealmChapter 69 · BetrayalChapter 70 · DetailsChapter 71 · FramedChapter 72 · MeetingChapter 73 · KillChapter 74 · MapChapter 75 · FoundationChapter 76 · Strange Phenomenon!Chapter 77 · ExchangeChapter 78 · LetterChapter 79 · ShortcutChapter 80 · God of Slaughter!Chapter 81 · Poison PillChapter 82 · Lou ShuChapter 83 · ProgressChapter 84 · An attemptChapter 85 · Movement and StillnessChapter 86 · Good intentionsChapter 87 · ChangeChapter 88 · Childhood friendChapter 89 · ThoughtsChapter 90 · Old storiesChapter 91 · HeritageChapter 92 · TestChapter 93 · LoverChapter 94 · Heartfelt wishesChapter 95 · MasterChapter 96 · TeachingChapter 97 · IllusionChapter 98 · Mutual RestraintChapter 99 · ObstructionChapter 100 · PalaceChapter 101 · Core TechniqueChapter 102 · OathChapter 103 · Dual cultivationChapter 104 · AccessChapter 105 · VulnerabilityChapter 106 · DensityChapter 107 · WantedChapter 108 · EntrustChapter 109 · RevisitChapter 110 · MonitoringChapter 111 · Secret RealmChapter 112 · NourishChapter 113 · InventoryChapter 114 · Get Rich QuicklyChapter 115 · ElderChapter 116 · Grand FormationChapter 117 · Heaven’s WillChapter 118 · BountyChapter 119 · GainChapter 120 · BlameChapter 121 · ChattingChapter 122 · GuessChapter 123 · Zheng TianChapter 124 · SparringChapter 125 · Sword intentChapter 126 · KenshinChapter 127 · Auditing a classChapter 128 · CoincidenceChapter 129 · ContradictionChapter 130 · RouteChapter 131 · CostChapter 132 · ConfiscatedChapter 133 · Holding a grudgeChapter 134 · SupportChapter 135 · DeteriorationChapter 136 · Unable toChapter 137 · PriceChapter 138 · VariantChapter 139 · Start AnewChapter 140 · ShamelessChapter 141 · Black PotChapter 142 · Benefiting fromChapter 143 · PieChapter 144 · DifferencesChapter 145 · DetoxificationChapter 146 · Current situationChapter 147 · TeasingChapter 148 · IntelligenceChapter 149 · Returned GiftChapter 150 · Old debtChapter 151 · FleshChapter 152 · OpeningChapter 153 · GrudgesChapter 154 · RegretChapter 155 · Gang fightChapter 156 · GentleChapter 157 · ComplaintChapter 158 · ScreamsChapter 159 · GeniusChapter 160 · ConcernChapter 161 · Hidden StoryChapter 162 · StingyChapter 163 · Guilty conscienceChapter 164 Part 1 · StruggleChapter 164 Part 2 · StruggleChapter 165 · Win or LoseChapter 166 · TasteChapter 167 · Shifting The BlameChapter 168 · MoonlightChapter 169 · Past EventChapter 170 · RegretChapter 171 · RetributionChapter 172 · Cause and EffectChapter 173 · BackgroundChapter 174 · FlatteryChapter 175 · HonestChapter 176 · BookkeepingChapter 177 · FarewellChapter 178 · GuidelineChapter 179 · BottleneckChapter 180 · HabitChapter 181 · Casual ChatChapter 182 · Flowing WaterChapter 183 · RumoursChapter 184 · Seeking AdviceChapter 185 · PityChapter 186 · FormationChapter 187 · BasicChapter 188 · Fake TombChapter 189 · BewareChapter 190 · TraceChapter 191 · DiscussChapter 192 · Ancestral preceptsChapter 193 · Loose CultivatorChapter 194 · AllocationChapter 195 · Thank you for your kindnessChapter 196 · ExplanationChapter 197 · ErrorChapter 198 · Culinary skillsChapter 199 · Starry SeaChapter 200 · ComparisonChapter 201 · FrustratedChapter 202 · Don’t watchChapter 203 · LonelinessChapter 204 · NoChapter 205 · Exposing ShortcutsChapter 206 · CraftsmanshipChapter 207 · Bottom LineChapter 208 · StrikeChapter 209 · Ten GoldChapter 210 · Pretentious