Volume 1, Chapter 2 – The System That Arrived Ten Years Late

The afternoon sun carried a scorching heat, pressing heavily against Gu Han’s back.

She was crouched in the palm-sized vegetable patch in the yard, wrestling with a deeply rooted weed.

“Heh!”

With a muffled grunt, she finally yanked the stubborn thing out by the roots.

Just as she was about to toss it aside—

“[Ding!]”

A crisp metallic chime suddenly exploded deep inside her mind without the slightest warning, making her ears buzz.

[Detected that the host has persevered ten full years with unyielding tenacity (slaving away like a beast of burden), meeting the activation requirements for the “System”!]

[The “Strongest Sect System” is now binding… 1%… 50%… 100%!]

[Hello, Host. I am your system. You can call me… uh, whatever you want, really.]

Gu Han froze instantly.

The weed slipped quietly from between her fingers.

The sunlight was still blinding, the smell of the soil still mixed with the scent of grass. Everything was exactly the same as it had been a moment ago.

But her entire body felt as if she had been struck by an invisible heavenly thunderbolt, numb from the crown of her head all the way to her heels.

A hallucination?

Heatstroke?

She violently shook her head, then instinctively raised a hand and smacked herself across the face with a sharp slap.

It hurt!

It hurt like hell!

So it wasn’t an illusion!

The stagnant lake inside her heart, silent for ten years and long since dead as still water, instantly boiled over.

“S-sys… system?”

Her throat was dry, and her voice shook so badly it barely sounded human, thick with tears and wild joy.

“Y-you finally fucking showed up?!”

She sprang up from the ground in one motion.

But her legs had gone numb from squatting, and her vision blacked out so suddenly she nearly pitched straight into the nearby manure bucket that gave off a strange smell.

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“Ugh…”

Flailing in panic, she grabbed the fence beside her and barely managed to steady herself.

“Ten years! A whole ten years!”

“Do you know how I’ve lived these ten years?! Huh?!”

“Other people transmigrate and become princes or young masters. Even the unlucky ones at least don’t have to worry about food and clothes.”

“But me? I’ve been here for ten years pulling weeds, spreading fertilizer, feeding pigs, and chopping firewood every single day!”

“I thought this was going to be my whole life, that I’d rot away here together with this broken-down temple!”

[Host, my apologies. There was a traffic jam on the way.]

“A traffic jam?!”

“If you’d come ten days or half a month later, I might’ve ended up marrying Wang Ergou from down the mountain and gone over there to be his wife!”

[System analysis: based on this system’s scan of Wang Ergou’s physical data, his health is good and his farming ability is acceptable.]

[From the standpoint of reproduction, he is the optimal solution in the host’s current environment. Of course, the host would need some physiological adjustment.]

Gu Han: “…Adjust my ass!”

The tide of ecstasy and excitement gradually receded.

A question she had buried for ten years, one that had nearly become a heart demon, suddenly surged to the surface.

Her voice dropped at once, carrying a tremble of caution and almost pleading hope.

“System… since you’re here, and you’re obviously this powerful… can you turn me back?”

She unconsciously tugged at the collar of her coarse linen clothes and pointed at the body she had been using for the past ten years.

Her eyes were full of all-or-nothing hope.

“I mean… turn me back into a man.”

“This body still feels a little awkward to me.”

[Ding! Host, my apologies, but this system cannot do that.]

The expression on Gu Han’s face instantly froze.

All the expectation and hope filling her heart popped like a bubble and shattered completely.

She was silent for a long time. Then she slowly let out a long breath, as if trying to exhale all the frustration of the past decade.

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“Forget it…”

She shook her head and pulled a relieved smile from the corner of her mouth.

“Just getting you at all is already a miracle. I can’t ask for everything.”

“As for whether I’m male or female… whatever.”

“As long as I have enough strength, who cares what gender I am? I can still flirt with girls either way.”

“It’s nothing more than the difference between being on top and being on the bottom…”

Her gaze refocused, turning incomparably resolute.

“All right, talk. Where’s the beginner gift pack? The standard transmigrator package?”

“You’re ten years late, so you should at least make it up to my poor little heart, right?”

The system fell silent for a rare moment.

A long while later…

[Ding! Beginner gift pack is being issued…]

[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained Immortal Ascension realm cultivation!]

[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained one Sacred Land Construction Card!]

“Imm… Immortal Ascension?”

Gu Han only half understood this world’s cultivation system, but the name alone sounded absurdly overpowered.

[Host, would you like to begin fusing with this cultivation?]

“Fuse it! Right now! Immediately! Do it!”

Gu Han practically roared the words out, afraid that if she delayed even a second, the system would run into traffic again.

[Friendly reminder: because the host has no cultivation foundation, the fusion process will involve a certain degree of “comfort.”]

[Please do your best to remain conscious so you can better enjoy the pleasure of increasing your strength.]

“Comfort? Pleasure?”

Before Gu Han could even complain about the system’s bizarre choice of words, an indescribable sensation suddenly hit her.

At first, it was like a tiny spark igniting in her dantian with a soft snap, giving rise to a thread of warmth that was faint yet incomparably pure.

“So this is… spiritual power?”

Just as a flicker of understanding rose in Gu Han’s heart, that weak stream of energy abruptly turned into a prairie fire and exploded.

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If it had been a trickling current just now, then in the next instant it became a roaring heavenly river pouring across the nine skies.

Vast, boundless power surged out from her dantian and flooded wildly through every inch of flesh and blood, every meridian in her body.

“Urgh—!”

Gu Han couldn’t stop a pained groan from escaping her throat.

This did not feel anything like the “comfort” the system had promised!

It felt more like countless red-hot steel needles forcibly piercing through and opening up her slender, fragile meridians.

Or like millions upon millions of alpacas stampeding through her body.

Fine beads of blood began seeping out across the surface of her skin, the slight damage caused as her meridians were widened and remade.

Qi Refinement first layer, second layer, third layer… Qi Refinement ninth layer!

The instant the energy erupted, she crossed nine minor realms in a row without even the slightest pause.

Sticky gray-black impurities oozed from the pores of her skin. They were the acquired filth and turbid qi buried deep within her flesh.

That power did not stop. Instead, it drew in the spiritual qi of heaven and earth around her, forming a visible pale-cyan vortex that poured crazily into the crown of her head.

Foundation Establishment!

A flawless, crystalline spiritual foundation was forged within her in an instant.

A faint hum came from her bones as they became denser and tougher.

Her flesh was being frantically tempered and compressed, impurities stripped away as vibrant spirituality was nurtured within it.

“T-too fast…”

Gu Han clenched her teeth, her entire body trembling violently beyond her control.

She could clearly “see” the world-shaking changes happening inside her own body.

The Golden Core realm was reached almost in the very next moment after Foundation Establishment was complete.

The immense spiritual power compressed and condensed madly in her dantian.

A golden pill the size of a longan, round and radiant, rapidly took shape and began to rotate slowly above the sea of qi in her dantian.

The instant the Golden Core first formed, a phenomenon appeared.

Centered on the ruined Heavenly Maiden Temple, faint five-colored spiritual clouds began to gather across the sky for dozens of miles around.

The mountain wind grew urgent. Birds in the forest took flight in alarm, while beasts lay prostrate on the ground, whining uneasily.

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Down in the peaceful village at the foot of the mountain, every villager suddenly felt an inexplicable pressure in their chest, as though something extraordinary was about to be born.

They looked up at the sky and saw only clear blue emptiness, with no idea where the palpitations were coming from.

“Not enough… nowhere near enough!”

Gu Han could feel it. That so-called Immortal Ascension realm cultivation was still only the tip of the iceberg.

Her Golden Core reached perfection in an instant, then shattered with a boom.

A tiny figure about an inch tall, seven or eight parts resembling her own face and emitting a soft glow all over, leapt out of the shattered Golden Core.

It sat cross-legged above the sea of qi in her dantian.

Nascent Soul, formed!

At this point, the pain in her body gradually weakened, replaced by a marvelous, unprecedented sense of control.

Her divine sense expanded explosively with the birth of the Nascent Soul, spreading like mercury pouring across the ground, like a surging tide flooding outward.

Ten zhang, a hundred zhang, a thousand zhang…

The entire Heavenly Maiden Temple, together with every blade of grass, every tree, every insect, and every beast on the back mountain, appeared within her mind in the finest detail.

Her body was also undergoing earthshaking changes at the same time.

The skin that had once been rough and even slightly dark from years of labor was now becoming translucent and jade-smooth at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Those thick calluses and ugly scars all peeled away, revealing fresh new skin beneath with a faint luminous sheen.

Her once gaunt figure, made thin by long-term malnutrition, became fuller and more upright, with smooth and beautiful lines brimming with healthy strength.

That delicate face, which had always carried traces of hardship and numbness, now seemed as though it had been carefully refined by an invisible hand, all signs of exhaustion erased from it.

Her skin was whiter than snow, her eyes as bright as stars, and there was now an indescribable spiritual vitality and grace between her brows.

Yet the changes still did not stop.

Her Nascent Soul rapidly grew more solid, until it was almost no different from her actual body.

Then her soul and flesh began to fuse on a deeper level. The power of her divine sense surged again, faintly brushing against the edge of the laws of heaven and earth.

Spirit Transformation, formed!

Void Return, formed!

Body Integration, formed!

…