Chapter 1: I’m Here to Quit the Yixiu Sect

Drifting clouds and mist, immortal mountains hard to find.

Within the endless mountain ranges, inside a cultivation sect, the sun had climbed high into the sky, yet Ji Wangshu sat on his chair yawning.

He braced the wooden box on his knees with both hands, tilting his head to look at the wooden armrest.

A thick layer of dust had settled on the armrest, untouched for quite some time.

‘Next time I clean, I’ll definitely remember this,’ he mused, tapping his fingers against the wooden box.

Inside the hall, a steady female voice rang out:

“Senior brother, senior sister, I’ve come to announce something.”

“I’m leaving the Yixiu Sect.”

Ji Wangshu’s brows lifted slightly as he glanced at the woman who had spoken.

She stood in the center of the hall, right hand holding a sword behind her back, her gaze fixed directly on him.

She wore a sky-blue sleeveless Daoist robe, delicate cloud-white silk ribbons tied around her forearms, fluttering in the breeze and trailing behind her bare feet.

No emotion showed on her beautiful face, but the faint furrow of her brows the moment her eyes met his ultimately betrayed her.

Her name was Yu Zengmiao, one of the second batch of disciples.

In the years since the master had left the sect, disciples had been quitting one after another, and Ji Wangshu had long grown accustomed to it.

But he hadn’t expected that Yu Zengmiao would have her day too.

“Junior sister Yu, why is this?” Another hurried female voice sounded from within the hall.

On the chair beside Ji Wangshu sat a woman, also wearing a sky-blue sleeveless Daoist robe with cloud-white silk ribbons. Her hair cascaded like a waterfall, obscuring her pupils.

She set the booklet in her hands onto her knees, stealing a glance at Ji Wangshu beside her, looking uneasy.

Her name was Mo Chuhua, also a disciple of the second batch, but since she was a few years older, she and her contemporary Yu Zengmiao addressed each other as senior and junior sisters.

“Not counting senior brother Ji, we all joined the sect at the same time.”

Mo Chuhua paused, her brows twitching slightly, as if hiding something weighing on her mind, then continued.

“We agreed to cultivate in the sect for a lifetime, so why suddenly quit? Qingyu, you think so too, right?”

Mo Chuhua’s gaze fell on the woman standing behind Yu Zengmiao. Her name was Qingyu, also from the same batch, and she usually got along with Yu Zengmiao like glue—so close that rumors had even spread in the sect that the two were… that kind of relationship.

‘Looks like those rumors are true,’ Mo Chuhua thought, because she could see Yu Zengmiao’s left hand, hidden behind her back, secretly holding Qingyu’s right hand.

Unlike Yu Zengmiao’s composed expression, Qingyu dared not raise her head to look at the man and woman on the dais, speaking in a low voice:

“…I never once felt happy in the sect.”

At those words, all the arguments Mo Chuhua had prepared got stuck in her throat, and she couldn’t say another word.

Ji Wangshu looked at Mo Chuhua beside him, then at the two women in the center of the hall, and let out a sigh before speaking:

“Heaven will rain, and a mother will marry—go on, the two of you, do as you please.”

“In the years since the master left, I, as the male sect master, have done a poor job. My cultivation is insufficient, and I’m lazy, which is why the Yixiu Sect has fallen to this state today.”

He finished speaking, ignoring Yu Zengmiao’s startled gaze, and turned to his junior sister, who kept her head deeply bowed:

“Junior sister, check how many spirit stones the sect still has. Since we were all fellow disciples once, give them both a little severance pay. We were all classmates—better to part on good terms.”

Mo Chuhua kept her head down, flipping through the booklet in her hands. Her waterfall of hair covered her pupils, hiding her expression from view.

After about three breaths, she responded: “Senior brother, the sect still has… roughly fifteen thousand spirit stones.”

The three in the hall were all stunned. Ji Wangshu let out two sharp hisses through his teeth.

He recalled the days when the master was still around—the sect was brimming with talent, the surrounding mountains covered with disciple lodgings, one peak specially dedicated to growing spirit herbs, and a spirit stone reserve of several hundred thousand.

That vibrant, thriving scene of life in full bloom was still vivid before his eyes.

How could it be that only four years after the master went down the mountain and disappeared, the sect was left with just him and his junior sister? The surrounding peaks were overgrown with weeds, the Spirit Herb Peak held few quality herbs, and the spirit stone reserve was down to fifteen thousand?

Was it really his fault—being the male sect master of this female-dominant world, with only a poor aptitude? The female disciples all had heavenly spiritual roots or dual spiritual roots, but he alone had a four-element spiritual root, a false root; his cultivation was low—his junior sisters who joined later had already reached Golden Core, while he, the earliest to join, was still at Foundation Establishment; and he was lazy, loved staying up late, never rose early to practice swordsmanship with everyone, leaving all sect affairs to his junior sister.

Could it really be his problem?

Ji Wangshu instinctively lifted his hand from the wooden box and placed it on the armrest, rubbing it absently.

Then he felt a sensation in his palm. Looking down, he opened his hand and saw a handful of dust drifting in the breeze.

Ji Wangshu fell silent.

After a few breaths, he let out a deep sigh, turned his head to Mo Chuhua, who was still bowing her head, and said: “Junior sister, give them ten thousand spirit stones.”

“Senior brother! This—”

Ji Wangshu waved his hand, cutting Mo Chuhua off.

“Say no more… For things to have come to this, it’s because I, as the acting male sect master, did a poor job.”

He rose from his chair, set the wooden box from his knees onto the seat, and walked toward the hall’s exit.

Yu Zengmiao and Qingyu watched Ji Wangshu walk past them and lowered their heads one after another, staring at the floor, following behind him.

Mo Chuhua sat in her chair, lifting her head to glance at the two women, letting out a cold snort. Then she turned to look at Ji Wangshu, a faint curve forming at the corner of her lips.

Outside the hall, mountain wind howled fiercely.

Ji Wangshu stood at the sect gate, gazing at the courtyard before the hall. A few years ago, this place had been bustling with voices, and plum blossoms had bloomed across the mountains.

The plum blossoms were still there, but the people of the past were gone.

He sighed again and turned to face the two women: “You two… are going to the Xinghe Sword Sect, right?”

Qingyu lowered her head even further.

Yu Zengmiao was briefly startled, thinking: ‘Hasn’t our senior brother, since becoming sect master, never bothered with sect affairs? How does he know about these things?’

Ji Wangshu saw her expression and understood what she was thinking. He smiled and said:

“In recent years, everyone who left the sect has gone to the Xinghe Sword Sect’s Ningzhou branch. All because the Central Continent headquarters produced a Snow Lotus Sword Immortal—a sword genius unseen in a thousand years—and this year just happens to be her rotation as a visiting elder in Ningzhou.”

He paused, lifting his head to look at the plum blossoms in the courtyard. “If I didn’t even know something like this, then I might as well quit being the acting male sect master.”

After speaking, he mused to himself: ‘Disciples leaving the sect for this reason is hardly unreasonable. People climb higher, water flows lower—it’s only human nature.’

But their Yixiu Sect was nestled deep in the mountains, with disciples rarely descending, and even when news did come, it was usually events from a decade or more ago.

The Snow Lotus Sword Immortal’s rotation to Ningzhou had only started within the last two years—so how had the sect’s disciples come to know about it?

Ji Wangshu pushed aside his stray thoughts, drew a storage pouch from his sleeve, and handed it over.

“Here’s ten thousand spirit stones. Split them between you two.”

Yu Zengmiao took the storage pouch, opened her divine sense to scan it, and a look of surprise appeared on her face.

Inside were actually a dozen or so bottles of four-grade pills—worth far more than ten thousand spirit stones.

“Senior brother Ji… this…”

Ji Wangshu smiled. “It’s what the master left me before she left—this is the last of it. I don’t go out anyway, and we were all fellow disciples once. Keep it.”

Qingyu bowed her head even deeper at those words, and even Yu Zengmiao’s voice grew choked with emotion: “Senior brother, take care.”

Ji Wangshu watched the two of them rise on their swords, and in moments they turned into two streaks of light vanishing into the mountains, disappearing beyond the horizon.

He stood there for a long time, until the plum blossom petals from the courtyard drifted down before him. He let out a sigh.

‘In the end, they still called me senior brother Ji, not sect master Ji…’

‘Seems like this unemployed shut-in from the twenty-first century is still a total loser, even after transmigrating to a cultivation world.’

Yes, Ji Wangshu had actually transmigrated to this world from Blue Star.

In his previous life, he’d worked in civil engineering for two years after college, then taken the fall for a major accident his boss was responsible for. After being released from prison, he was thoroughly disillusioned, staying home as an unemployed, NEET otaku living off his parents. Then, one late night, on a whim, with his intermittent bursts of motivation, he went downstairs for a five-kilometer run—and died of a heart attack.

When he opened his eyes again, he had the body of his twenty-four-year-old previous self, transmigrated into a female-dominant cultivation world.

He spent two years getting familiar with life there, guarding his chastity carefully, until he was picked up by his master and brought back to the sect, becoming her first disciple.

The master used countless heavenly treasures and miraculous herbs to improve his constitution, but in the end, he was over twenty years old—too late to start cultivating—and with his four-element spiritual root, he remained at the late Foundation Establishment stage.

And so a few more years passed. Then, four years ago, on a cool summer night, the master said to him:

“Stay right here and don’t move. I’m going out to take care of something, and I’ll be right back.”

Words like that were practically a flag raised to the sky, and Ji Wangshu had a bad feeling about it then and there.

Sure enough, that cheap master of his left and never came back, leaving him only a storage pouch of pills.

And the wooden box she’d warned him not to open until four years had passed.

For those four years, he’d actually wanted to go down the mountain to find his master countless times.

Every time he walked to the sect gate, looking at the green stone path that stretched from the mountain base up into the clouds, his feet would freeze in place.

‘With my Foundation Establishment cultivation, what could I even do out there? And this is a female-dominant world too…’

So he’d find countless reasons to convince himself, turn around, and go back to the sect to slack off.

In his heart, he thought that as long as he gave himself a little more time to adjust, tomorrow for sure, next time for sure.

Tomorrow after tomorrow, how many tomorrows can there be?

In the end, it was the same morning filled with ambition, the same afternoon full of hesitation, the same nighttime fantasies, wondering if tomorrow’s self would be different.

And so, for four years, every day was the same.

Just like his previous life.

Maybe he was just that kind of person—over fifty years across two lifetimes, and none of it had changed him.

Ji Wangshu sighed, turned around, and walked back into the Yixiu Sect’s main hall.

Inside the hall, Mo Chuhua was still sitting in her chair, head lowered, flipping through the booklet on her knees.

Hearing the footsteps grow closer until they reached her side, she finally looked up, revealing half her face hidden behind her long hair.

“Senior brother, they’re gone?”

“Yeah, they just left.” Ji Wangshu set the wooden box from his chair onto the nearby table, flopped lazily into the seat, and stared blankly at the beams overhead.

Spiderwebs had formed on the beams too, with a few small bugs crawling around.

Mo Chuhua hesitated for a moment, then spoke softly: “Senior brother, the sect now… is only the two of us.”

“Yeah.”

“The sect dissolution rule states that if a sect has fewer than five members for five consecutive years, its banner must be revoked.”

Her voice grew quieter and quieter, yet still carried a calmness, like a lake suppressing its ripples beneath the surface. “We… only have one year left.”