“I…”
“I don’t know either.”
I wasn’t sure if the ghost infant was just casually saying that, or if she was genuinely being sincere.
Most of the time, her tone didn’t change much.
Aside from her childish, baby-like voice, there was rarely any fluctuation in her speech—it was always calm and composed.
And I no longer dared to bet on her moods with my own words or actions.
“I really am being serious, you know.”
“…No idea what you’re thinking about again.”
The once-near-invincible Ghost King of this generation showed, for once, a rare trace of fatigue on her small face.
She was still holding that book—one she had manifested with divine consciousness.
The pages were packed with diagrams and characters, heavily annotated and filled with countless revisions.
After a long while, she sighed from deep within her throat.
Trying to revise a cultivation method into something approaching perfection had cost her far too much mental energy—even delaying her physical development slightly.
She wanted to craft the most flawless method possible, but the final revision still hadn’t been confirmed.
She kept scrapping and rewriting parts of it.
After all, this was a path no one had walked before.
Anything could happen.
She had to guarantee her mother’s absolute safety.
Outside, after hearing no reply for a long time, she finally peeked out.
Only to see—
I was staring blankly at a stone lion statue in front of me.
“Mother” was a very old-fashioned term.
The ghost infant’s consciousness was born in the modern era, yet in her bones, she seemed more like someone from ancient times.
The ghost infant didn’t have the best temper.
Seeing me still spacing out, she immediately snapped with irritation, “Why are you always daydreaming? I’m trying to talk to you about something serious—did you even hear me at all?”
“I heard you.”
“Your choices… just make them yourself, it’s fine.”
I sat on the steps, resting my head on my knees, with my arms loosely hanging over the sides.
“Who upset you this time? Why do you look so down again?”
“Don’t go all moody and withdrawn,” the ghost infant said, her voice laced with sudden panic.
Most of all, she never dared raise her voice too much with me.
“…Can you even understand how I feel right now?” I murmured dully.
“It’s like… just when someone has finally recognized their own place in reality—someone else comes along and says, ‘You’re actually a little bit important.’”
“It’s like training a dog.”
“A dog that doesn’t obey gets hit a few times. Then when it finally quiets down, it gets rewarded with a bowl of meat.”
“Training a dog?” the ghost infant’s voice rose with disbelief.
“Hit you a few times? Who hit you a few times??? I don’t even understand what you’re talking about!”
I fell silent again, hugging my knees.
I didn’t know if I could ever truly open up to her—speak frankly, heart to heart.
The vast disparity in our status meant I always had to consider far more than she ever would.
Just a few days ago, that conversation in the peach blossom grove with the ghost infant was still vivid in my mind.
It served as a constant reminder not to forget reality.
The dazzling battles in the sky—I had admired them, even felt quietly disheartened.
But none of that had hurt as much as her single, casually spoken line:
“You can keep on envying them.”
That line… didn’t it basically mean, you’re not worthy?
And she had said it right to my face, after promising to help revise my cultivation method.
The few days she said it would take had long passed.
Yet there was still no progress, no sign of change. The truth was painfully obvious.
I hadn’t guessed wrong.
She had never truly intended to help me. She had already put aside the whole plan to revise the method.
The reason—probably because I hadn’t been obedient enough these past few days.
This was punishment for not listening to her.
And what if those things she just said to me—about calling me her “mother”—were just a momentary whim?
I’d asked myself countless times whether I had the right to continue that conversation.
The answer was painfully clear.
I didn’t want to hear one more sarcastic “you’re not worthy.”
That kind of thing—really made me feel like a fool. Like a clown.
With that thought, a decision quietly took shape in my heart.
I slowly stood up from the ground.
From now on, I would be more cautious with my words.
Saying less might make me more likable.
A person should know their place.
If you don’t yearn for what doesn’t belong to you, you won’t be crushed by disappointment.
If I angered her again, I truly didn’t dare imagine what might happen next.
I only hoped that, seeing how obedient I’d been lately, she might still give me a barely usable cultivation method.
I suddenly thought of Shangguan Xiyue’s engagement, and a shadow crossed my eyes.
So many thoughts… yet only about ten seconds had actually passed.
“No one hit me,” I said, smoothing out my tone and forcing a trademark polite smile.
“I just… said something I shouldn’t have.”
“Sorry.”
Beneath the parasol tree, the young girl’s thin figure seemed inexplicably solitary.
At that moment—
Inside the sea of consciousness, the ghost infant was already screaming wildly, shrieking at the top of her lungs.
She felt like she was going insane.
Finishing half a sentence—only half a sentence!!!
She could only hate that her body hadn’t finished growing yet.
Otherwise, she would’ve stretched out her tiny foot and kicked someone hard right in the stomach.
That’s what you get for clamming up. That’s what you get!
Playing riddles, speaking in code, making others guess—is that fun for you?!
She was just a ghost, dammit!
She really couldn’t understand the twists and turns of human behavior.
This damned feeling of collapse.
The ghost infant had just learned a new word from the outside world—“damn it.”
But she couldn’t use it yet.
So basically… she couldn’t say anything to her either, huh?
The ghost infant really couldn’t understand.
Why was there such a huge gap between her and humans?
She wasn’t scary anymore!
At worst, she was just a little hot-tempered and impatient most of the time.
Keeping all her thoughts bottled up like this—how could that not eventually lead to some kind of emotional illness?
The ghost infant wanted to understand the complexities of human emotions.
She suddenly snorted softly.
What’s so hard about that? Sooner or later, she’d learn.
Her gaze slowly dropped, eventually landing on the cultivation manual, and she broke into a bright, radiant smile.
Oh right—she’d almost forgotten.
There was still this thing.
Once she finished modifying the cultivation method her “Mom” had been longing for, surely that would finally make her truly happy, right?
The little ghost regained her energetic drive once more.
Taking a deep breath, she fought through her heavy drowsiness and began revising the pages of the manual again.
As for that pretty girl surnamed Su—who knew where she’d run off to this time?
The little dumpling muttered non-stop inside the sea of consciousness.
After finally managing to cheer her mom up for a few days, she had just disappeared again like smoke.
In the ghost infant’s heart, she had already classified a certain young lady as a “temporary mom-pleasing machine.”
Even if she occasionally stopped working, she was surprisingly effective overall.
*****
The villa, with only one person inside, felt especially quiet and empty.
I sat in the spacious living room.
The ambient noise of the television helped me feel just a little more at ease.
[Where did you go?]
On the white screen of WeChat, my message from five hours ago still sat unread at the bottom.
There was a study on the second floor of the villa, just beside my bedroom.
I’d been allowed to go in once, with Su Liumeng’s permission.
The bookshelf had been filled with books about cultivators.
I stayed there for a long time, reading silently, before quietly slipping out again.
My longing for strength had never faded—not for a single moment.
Who says ants can’t have dreams of soaring into the sky?
The only issue was—ordinary people had so few ways to even come close to cultivation methods.
I had lived in the vast Su household for ten years, yet never heard even a whisper of such things.
That alone spoke volumes about how tightly the great families and prestigious sects controlled access to the real secrets of the world.
I shook my head to clear out the mess of thoughts, forcing those lingering regrets to scatter.
Ding-dong.
As I sat staring blankly at cartoon characters on the TV, the phone beside me suddenly buzzed twice.
[She’s not back yet?] —Shangguan Xiyue.
[No, she isn’t.] I picked up the phone and replied instantly.
[Xinxin, wanna come play a game?]
My fingertip hovered over the screen.
[Why did you suddenly call me that name?]
[Because I thought it sounded sweet, so I called you that.]
[…]
[As long as you’re happy.]
I puffed out my cheeks and casually sent a sticker of a hissing kitten, then quickly sat down at my computer.
A high-spec, latest-model laptop with an external keyboard—
For my current life, this setup was more than sufficient.
After several days, I opened the Stellar game interface again.
I typed in the password with practiced ease, staring at the main lobby screen… but for a moment, I had no idea what to do next—
Until a team-up request from a friend popped up in the top-right corner.
This season, I was still firmly holding the number one spot on the ranked leaderboard.
The friend request panel was overflowing with unread messages, most of them from strangers.
Among them, one system-pinned request came from the manager of a certain professional team.
It wasn’t the first time I’d received such invitations.
But I had no interest in going pro, nor did I want to be tied down by a fixed job, so I had never accepted any friend requests from strangers.
Because of this, people online jokingly called me the “cool and aloof god-tier player.”
My popularity across major gaming forums had never dropped.
—One hour later.
I set down the mouse, my face full of fatigue.
“What’s wrong?” Shangguan Xiyue asked.
“I can’t keep playing. Stellar requires long-term high mental focus. An hour is already my limit.”
Especially at night—I get drowsy easily and constantly feel like I haven’t slept enough.
“Mm, go rest now.”
“If anything happens, just tell me. I live right next door, I can be there in a few minutes.”
In front of Shangguan Xiyue was her desktop computer.
Her screen, too, was flooded with friend requests.
One of the chat windows had popped open, making her brows knit tightly.
[Mo Shao is coming back to the country next month. Maomao, are you mentally prepared?]
The message was from one of her real-life friends.
She irritably rubbed her temples.
[I’ve seen plenty of three-legged men. What’s the big deal?]
Her computer screen instantly went dark.
She stood by the window, gazing toward a distant villa.
Only the second floor still glowed faintly—like a solitary beacon, staking its claim at the edge of the darkness.
On a rainy night, the scent of damp earth permeated the air.
Hundreds of kilometers away from the capital, nestled deep in a stretch of untouched forest, lay a mysterious place rarely visited by humans.
And right now—it was time for predators to prowl.
Chilling wolf howls echoed endlessly through the mountains, rustling flocks of birds into a startled flight.
Atop a sheer cliff within this forest, hidden away from sight, was a secluded mountain cave…
*****
Deep within the pitch-black cave, lay a girl of breathtaking beauty.
Su Liumeng’s entire body was covered in a fine sheen of sweat, her teeth sinking deeply into her lower lip—as if she were enduring unbearable agony.
She clung to her last shred of willpower, yet the intense pain still forced muffled moans from her throat.
One minute later, a strangled, almost bestial scream burst from the cave’s depths.
Her once-elegant dress was already in tatters, her delicate features contorted in pain, every pore of her skin radiating a chilling, bone-deep cold.
She began to writhe uncontrollably on the ground.
“Ah—!”
The poison of that cold pond from long ago had long since seeped into her very bones, making it nearly impossible to fully expel.
The special enchanted bracelet on her wrist was designed to suppress her cultivation—a tool meant to restrict her use of inner force.
So long as she didn’t use her qi recklessly, she could maintain a relatively stable condition.
Normally, the cold poison in her body only flared up once every two months.
But lately, she had made one too many moves.
As a result, the frigid toxin that had been forcefully suppressed in her inner thigh now surged through her meridians and limbs—erupting in a full-blown attack far ahead of schedule.
At this moment, Su Liumeng’s body was terrifyingly cold—like a chunk of thousand-year-old black ice.
Even the faintest contact with her skin could freeze an ordinary person instantly.
And the pain wrought by this chilling poison—was so intense that even someone as steely and stoic as her could no longer endure it through sheer willpower.
She was biting down hard on her lip—the taste of iron had long since spread across her mouth.
It was only by sheer grit that she managed not to cry out.
Animals always retreat to what they believe is the safest place when they’re at their weakest,
to quietly lick their wounds.
Su Liumeng was no different.
The cave had already been sealed with formations she laid beforehand.
In the past, every time her cold poison flared up, she would come here.
And now, she had returned again—but more than anything, it was because she didn’t want Si Xinyan
to witness her in such a pathetic state.
The bitterness she bore, the suffering she endured—she didn’t want to pass any of it on to Si Xinyan.
Just thinking of that beautiful figure made her let out a bitter smile.
If Si Xinyan ever found out that this latest episode was triggered because Su Liumeng had helped her…
she’d likely blame herself to no end.
Su Liumeng knew her personality too well—toward strangers, Si Xinyan could be ruthlessly cold-blooded,
able to watch someone die without so much as flinching.
But once someone had earned her trust, she would extend unwavering kindness.
On three walls of the cave were countless dark red fist imprints—so densely packed they were impossible to count.
Every time she reached the brink of mental collapse, she’d strike the walls with her bare fists—using physical pain to drag herself back to sanity.
The cold poison was like a parasite gnawing through bone.
Once someone’s will snapped, the toxin would shoot up their spine and invade their mind in an instant—
turning them into a walking corpse, driven by instinct alone.
When she first fell into the frozen pool, there had already been a sword wound on her thigh.
After escaping the secret realm, she tried every method imaginable—but none could purge the poison completely.
The best she could do was drive it back to its original point of entry.
Those strange, vividly purple butterflies she used were precisely the seal formations keeping the toxin in check.
On the cave floor, a dense frost slowly spread outward, as though trying to turn the entire place
into a true frozen hell.
Su Liumeng continued screaming in agony.
This outbreak of the cold poison was far stronger than she had anticipated.
And she had no idea when it would finally come to an end.
In the corner of the cave, a brand-new phone lay silently on the ground—its dark screen now covered in a delicate layer of frost, evidence that its owner hadn’t touched it in a very long time.