Luo Taozhi asked so many questions that Xiao Nanchu couldn’t possibly make up lies fast enough to keep up.
So, he decisively picked up a piece of date cake and stuffed it into her mouth to temporarily silence her.
“Mmm~”
“Hold on a second. My situation seems a bit different from that of a normal Player.”
Xiao Nanchu breathed a sigh of relief. He continued to feed the remaining breakfast tea snacks to Luo Taozhi while recounting everything that had happened on the Celestial Ladder—meeting Li Xunxian, the Immortal Sect, and his Master, Fourth Elder Luo Mingmei.
He didn’t lie about the content, though he did exaggerate the amount of time he had spent on the steps.
By the time he finished his story, he had run out of things to feed her. The entire table of breakfast snacks had been fed to her, bite by bite.
“Gulp. So, you’re saying you’re not in a Novice Village?”
Swallowing the last bite, Luo Taozhi voiced her confusion.
However, the moment the words left her mouth, she was met with a look of pitying affection from Xiao Nanchu.
Her face flushed red, realizing she had just asked something incredibly obvious.
“Ahem, I was just asking…” she defended herself in a small voice, muttering something about having eaten too much just now.
“Forget it, that’s not important! Let’s get to the point. You said the level on your System Window matches my deduction?”
Seeing that Luo Taozhi had finally grasped the main point, Xiao Nanchu nodded approvingly.
“Yes, exactly. It’s identical to your deduction. Combined with when you appeared, I reasonably suspect that the Cultivation World you transmigrated to and the world in this game are likely one and the same!”
Luo Taozhi, however, shook her head.
“Probably not. Based on the people and events you encountered, that Longyuan Empire clearly isn’t a Mortal empire. Since it’s not a Mortal empire, it must be one of the subsidiary empires of that so-called Immortal Sect.”
“A Sect with subsidiary Cultivation empires must be massive in both scale and power. The Longyuan Empire, the Immortal Sect… I’ve never heard of either of them.”
Xiao Nanchu remained skeptical. “Is it possible you just haven’t been to many places?”
“No!” Luo Taozhi shook her head decisively.
Was he joking? Did he think she had spent those hundreds of years doing nothing?
The Sacred Land was one of the top five superpowers in that world, and she had been its Saintess. Following the Sect’s promotional efforts, she had traveled to almost every major power that had even a shred of fame.
There were very few places she hadn’t been. Even if there were, it was absolutely impossible for such a large-scale Sect to exist in some obscure corner.
Therefore, the situation Xiao Nanchu described was virtually impossible.
“You’re that certain? You were only at the Foundation Establishment stage. Even at the peak of Foundation Establishment, you can’t claim to have been everywhere, right?”
“……” Luo Taozhi had to admit that Xiao Nanchu had a point.
But that was only true if she really had been just an ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator.
“The Sect I belonged to was no simple thing. Don’t look down on me just because I was Foundation Establishment; I was quite famous in those circles. You don’t think my title as the Peach Blossom Fairy was just for show, do you?!”
“Then you…”
“Have you ever heard of a Sect’s foundation? I’ve been to almost all the major powers. Even if I was just a background character, I still went there, okay!”
Fortunately, Luo Taozhi reacted quickly, immediately placing herself in the context of the Foundation Establishment disciples who would often accompany the Sect leadership on visits.
When visiting slightly larger powers, there were always classic sparring sessions.
In those situations, it would be unseemly for her, the Saintess, to take action personally. That was exactly what Foundation Establishment disciples were for.
“I see. You were just ‘Mob A,’ right?”
“……Yes! Exactly!!”
Luo Taozhi practically gritted her teeth as she said it.
“But speaking of which,” Xiao Nanchu suddenly remembered something. “Even if they aren’t the same world, they’re both Cultivation-type worlds, right? If the worlds are going to merge, will there be something like a Spiritual Qi Recovery?”
“Probably… maybe. Anyway, for now, the Spiritual Energy level in this world is still 0.”
Luo Taozhi shrugged, conceding to Xiao Nanchu’s point.
“Does that mean I might have a chance to practice Cultivation in the future?”
“Perhaps?”
“That’s not bad! The game merging with reality might actually be a good thing! Even if people from the game world descend into reality, it shouldn’t be a problem, right? Maybe the collision of technologies from two different worlds will cause some kind of grand explosion of progress.”
“It’s hard to say…” Luo Taozhi looked at Xiao Nanchu with a complicated expression.
There were things Xiao Nanchu hadn’t seen, making it difficult for him to understand.
Cultivators and ordinary people could no longer be considered the same species.
As far as most high-level cultivators Luo Taozhi had seen were concerned, they did not view ordinary people as humans.
To them, ordinary people were ants, slaves, livestock, or more likely… materials.
Such things were not uncommon; they could even be called the norm.
Of course, the Sacred Land, as the leader of the righteous path, would not do such things. But that wasn’t out of mercy; they simply looked down on weak Mortals.
After all, they had countless Qi Refining and even Foundation Establishment disciples to exploit. The efficiency of using them far exceeded that of any Mortal.
Luo Taozhi didn’t say anything more. She picked up the water cup on the table and took a sip.
She didn’t want to make Xiao Nanchu panic. But once the game truly merged with reality and those cultivators who viewed Mortals as ants descended, ordinary people like him would become the most fragile existences.
She lowered her head slightly, her long eyelashes casting a small shadow over her eyes.
“Don’t think of things too simply. The cruelty of the Cultivation World is beyond your imagination.”
“But it’s also possible things won’t be that bad, right?” Xiao Nanchu stood up and patted Luo Taozhi’s head, smiling.
Luo Taozhi froze for a moment. Then, she looked up at the smiling Xiao Nanchu, and her lips couldn’t help but curl upward.
‘This guy is still as optimistic as ever. He’s exactly like he was when we first met—the kind of person I envy most.’
She could still remember the first time she met him, right when she had stepped through the university gates. Back then, she was still a boy—an orphan who had grown up in an orphanage.
It was her first time traveling far from home. She had been carrying a straw mat and snakeskin bags from her time working at a factory. With her large and small bundles, she had looked like she belonged to a completely different world compared to the other students carrying sleek suitcases.
Looking at the massive campus, the sea of people, the booths, the banners, and the upperclassmen greeting the freshmen, everything was completely foreign to her. It was nothing like the guides she had researched.
It was beyond her scope, completely beyond it.
Before that, she had been a child who only knew how to study and work.
She wanted to find a student volunteer to help her, as the guides suggested, but volunteers were scarce, and everyone looked busy. She looked so… out of place.
That was when Xiao Nanchu appeared.
Thinking back carefully, Luo Taozhi could still recall Xiao Nanchu’s face from back then. He had looked a bit more youthful than he did now, but he was meticulously groomed and preferred wearing brand-name clothes.
It was hard to imagine that he was the same person as this penny-pinching, unkempt guy sitting in front of her.