Chapter 68

Translated by boilpoil Edited by boilpoil

Resting back in the system space, Bai Lianhua appears unenergetic and without focus.

The system is somewhat worried. If the handsome little white lotus is always so depressed, he will seem less handsome.

So it approaches him, “before it was host that said you can cheer up with computer and the Internet… So you’ve got all you wanted in the last world. What’s with the long face now?”

Bai Lianhua pauses for a second before answering, “of course it’s because they’re once again beyond my reach.”

System “…”

Uh, is it really that hard admitting that part of this feeling is because of the antagonist.

Still, looking at how stubborn the host seems to be, never mind, it won’t pressure him with this.

…

After being projected onto the next world, Bai Lianhua still feels off.

It’s the usual wooded hills setting, somewhere quiet without a single person, but you know, he doesn’t feel like when he would have a physical form after returning to a world as usual, rather, it feels kind of like as if he’s resting in the system space.

Bai Lianhua takes a look downwards, yup, his feet aren’t touching the ground, no shadow… So, he’s a ghost this time?

Bai Lianhua is complaining to the system saying that he has never ever existed purely as a soul in any possible world. So has the system finally bugged out?

It’s too cruel to not even offer him a body this time around.

The system seems serious, “it’s not an error, host. True, your first transmigration to this world is not in ethereal form…”

“But now this would be better for you, host, really!”

“First it will help you explain yourself to the antagonist——Not suddenly disappearing without notice in the previous worlds and barely making up some excuse for coming back, or remaining silent until the antagonist gives up on interrogating you. In this world you died right in front of the antagonist’s eyes, and not in the normal sense of someone passing away. It’s worse if you aren’t a ghost this time around.”

“Second, your ethereal apparition self is better for you to approach the antagonist and finish your mission… A decision this system made after much deliberation.”

Bai Lianhua “???”

Ok, you’re the system, so what ever can I do.

#What, a human-ghost tale this time between me and the antagonist?#

Still, dying right in front of the antagonist in an unnatural way… Bai Lianhua furrows his brows trying to recall a world in which this was the case, but he comes up blank after half a day.

He can’t help it. He’s been to too many worlds and he has died more than a few times in front of the antagonist. With just that Bai Lianhua has a hard time working out which world this is. The system’s hint is too vague.

Though he might complain about it, a ghost isn’t hard to adapt to, or, at least, it’s not much constraining for Bai Lianhua. He can walk freely during the day, without worrying about food, so it’s even more convenient than his vampiric self.

——Bai Lianhua also specifically visited a river to have a look at himself, and is quite certain that even if he’s a ghost right now, he’s not scary at all. He looks clean without any terrifying scar or bloodstains. At least he would be unable to scare himself if he looked at a mirror at midnight.

And because ghosts are unconstrained by physical limitations in their floating movements, it only takes him a short amount of time to explore the nearby hills.

Bai Lianhua still can’t help but wonder how this form of his would help him approach the antagonist. When he feels like asking the system, he recalls how damned unhelpful it is and chooses to remain silent.

Though it’s not long afterwards, perhaps only several hours later that, when Bai Lianhua is finished exploring and lying flat on his face on a tree in boredom, he feels a certain sense of being summoned.

Bai Lianhua seems quite shocked, “jeez, what in the world?”

The system looks innocently confused as it answers, “uh… a little white lotus ghost in the world?”

Bai Lianhua feels his head hurts, “no, I mean… Am I something that is not free and is under someone’s control?”

Being turned into a ghost without a physical form is unlucky enough, ok? Now you’re telling him it can get even worse?

The system soothes him, “don’t be scared, host, nothing of the sort will happen to you.”

Ho, only a ghost (TL: In Chinese colloquialisms ‘ghost’ can have the same function as ‘who the heck’) could believe that!

Bai Lianhua hugs the branch he was lying on, refusing to float towards the unknown place that’s summoning him. At least, the person summoning him doesn’t seem to want to move him even if it would harm him, so, when he doesn’t move, this summoning force is actually getting closer to him.

Bai Lianhua feels even more scared.

And when the source continues to approach him, he waits unblinkingly as it closes in with terrifying speed… Which is when he discovers from afar that this person is also someone without a physical form.

He looks familiar… Wait, is that Li Wenge?

Bai Lianhua seems dazed in disbelief.

Li Wenge’s world has left him with quite the impression, even though it’s one of the worlds to which he thought he would never have had to return to even when the system has conscripted him for the return of white moonlight mission… Since, he remembers that the antagonist has completely disappeared the first time he was doing the mission. And if the antagonist is already gone, there’s nothing that could grow tainted and be reinfluenced, right?

This also doesn’t match the system’s hint from before… He never did die in front of Li Wenge, you know? It was that Li Wenge disappeared first before he died. The former shouldn’t have been aware of the latter’s death.

The system knows that Bai Lianhua already remembers Li Wenge, so it tells him directly, “you know, host yourself could see all the different antagonists with all their wishes that made it inevitable for you to have to return, so what else could be impossible?”

Bai Lianhua “…”

Ignoring the system, he quickly recalls stuff related to Li Wenge in his mind.

Li Wenge, the antagonist of this world, the Ruler-to-be of Ghosts, was actually not a ghost at first. He was birthed naturally from the polluted qi of the world. While he is , in a sense, naturally unholy, but he is still a type of natural-born existence, that is, something permitted by the Heavenly Principle to exist.

It would be a given that all the negativity in the world that continued to pile up had to have some way of depressurising, so in that sense, that Li Wenge is formed is a good thing.

Though he couldn’t enjoy freedom for long. When it was discovered by accident that he had the ability to take in polluted qi and command ethereal beings, there was this cultivator that specialised in this branch that restrained him and tried to order him around.

It can be said that Li Wenge was forced to become an ethereal cultivator. Without that incident, he might have perhaps just wandered about freely like a little birdie… that, regardless of his will, when he went somewhere, couldn’t be helped that he would diminish somewhere’s fortune slightly. Not a lot in total, nor to the degree that it would cause great misfortune. So, at worst he would just be a somewhat unlikeable, odd ethereal existence. He could have been a mostly harmless background object in this world.

When he was caught, his fate took a turn for the worse… As he was not limited by such things as natural talent, Li Wenge who was forcibly cultivated ended up more and more powerful, until he could command all ghosts in the world. It was clear that if it continued he would eventually become the Ruler of Ghosts. Also, thanks to the special circumstances surrounding him being born due to the polluted qi of the world, the greater his cultivation amount the worse it becomes for the whole world. It should be obvious that when polluted qi grew prosperous that pure qi would become diminished more and more.

When rumours arose that two elder cultivators failed to ascend for some reason and noticing that wherever he went cultivable qi would quickly diminish, the cultivator that once ambitiously tried to be the master of Li Wenge and use this unique ‘ghost’ to found a sect realised that Li Wenge wasn’t lying when he said before that he was no mere ethereal being that should or could be manipulated.

This was when the cultivator discovered that he couldn’t eliminate Li Wenge anymore. As his master himself, he also realised almost all his longevity had already been diminished in response.

He had not much longer to live. And when he died, Li Wenge would be freed… The cultivator was worried this would jeopardise the world eventually, and he would be an unforgivable perpetrator… So, he took advantage of the fact that he was still his master and sealed Li Wenge up when he still could.

Cultivation commanding ghosts is a non-mainstream branch in this cultivation realm, belonging to the uncommon techniques. It was for this reason that the cultivator saw Li Wenge as something akin to a rare good that could help him popularise ethereal cultivation and become its unofficial leader… Meanwhile, as long as the cultivators were not evil ones that enjoyed creating new ghosts with normal people, and only utilised existing ghosts, then these cultivators weren’t specifically targeted in this realm either.

The cultivator didn’t want to bring disaster to his branch, nor did he want the branch to die out due to this… Therefore he never told anyone about this. He only told his successors about this seal and that the existence within was calamitous and was locked in a vicious relationship with the cultivation realm’s fortune, i.e. one grows stronger when the other grows weaker. The ethereal being sealed there must therefore be continuously deprived of growth.

Though the hundreds, thousands of years of confinement in a seal only exacerbated Li Wenge’s grudges.

He couldn’t understand why it was that when he had no mind of hurting people, how he ended up like this. It was true that he was formed from polluted qi, but he didn’t feel like growing strong himself. He felt that floating about and maybe gaining a title of a god of misfortune among the common people would be interesting enough.

He never thought to involve himself with the cultivation realm.

Eventually, Li Wenge’s mental stability deteriorated. He started to feel everything was the cultivator’s fault. He first despised all ghost-rearing cultivators, until that eventually turned into hate for all cultivators… In the original world’s timeline, there would come a day when Li Wenge was finally freed from his shackles to bring doom to the cultivation realm.

Unfortunately, Bai Lianhua was himself set as a descendant of that cultivator in this world. He was even noble-born of the main family, but he was just left behind in the home base where those members of the family that had no cultivation talents gathered because he had none himself.

While he was judged to be of zero talent, but only Bai Lianhua knew that this time the system’s body wasn’t actually that terrible in talent. If he didn’t walk the unpopular path of commanding ghosts he could have went to be a sword cultivator, a runic cultivator, an alchemical cultivator, or even going off to a beast-rearing sect would mean he would end up in a better situation than this.

——Because… he’s afraid of ghosts, you know.

Not in the character setting sense, but he himself was afraid of ghosts as well, so it wasn’t even acting… Just being a ghost in the system space himself was totally different from seeing actual ghosts. Real ghosts might have died from any number of situations, the majority of which would end up with them having an odd appearance or even shape. It was often quite harsh on the eyes.

How terrible. A person born to a family known for rearing ghosts in the cultivation realm, was afraid of the supernatural… What else could he do?

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