After They Changed My Spiritual Root, I Decided to Go Mad - Chapter 1

1.

Su Miaomiao screamed louder than a pig at slaughter.

In my previous life, she had turned her sweet, innocent face toward my master and asked, “Can Sister still cultivate with a spiritual root like that?”

This time, she never got the chance.

She was too busy looking for water.

The steward in charge of welcoming new disciples brought her a basin. She wiped her face, looked up, and saw me watching the water.

She kicked the whole basin away in terror.

Actually, I couldn’t do anything to ordinary water.

A urine spiritual root could only sense and draw the corresponding liquid. It couldn’t create any from nothing, or affect anything inside a living person’s body.

But she didn’t know that.

Without changing my expression, I raised a hand.

Su Miaomiao stumbled back three steps and into a flower bed.

Wonderful.

For the second time since my rebirth, I understood the joy of being alive.

The first had been catching the smell when the bun shop outside the sect gates opened its steamer.

I had spent the last ten years of my previous life toothless, eating nothing but porridge.

The elders finally recovered.

The head of the Disciplinary Hall slammed his hand on the table. “Ning Zhao! How dare you behave like this at the induction ceremony!”

I looked bewildered. “Weren’t we told to demonstrate our gifts after having our spiritual roots tested?”

“Who told you to demonstrate yours on a person?”

“Junior Sister asked me to try.”

Su Miaomiao looked up, glaring as though she wanted to burn two holes through me.

She had, in fact, said it.

When the altered character appeared in the sky, she had been standing beside me. In a low voice, she had said, “You’re so impressive, Sister. Why not give it a try?”

There was a recording stone on the platform.

I pointed it out to the hall master.

He fell silent for a moment. Evidently, he had never expected to encounter a sparring match quite so difficult to classify.

Su Miaomiao cast a pleading look at my master.

He turned his head and pretended not to see.

I smiled.

I might not be able to wash the sect in blood, but I could certainly wash it in piss.

After Su Miaomiao’s example, I doubted anyone wanted a second demonstration.

2.

I had been twenty when I joined the Qingxu Sect, renowned for my supreme-grade water spiritual root.

I had already had one foot in the door as the sect leader’s personal disciple.

Su Miaomiao had arrived with me as a candidate for the outer sect. She had a triple spiritual root and middling aptitude.

Her true ability was hidden in her eyes.

She could see a fate record above everyone’s head, like an invisible sheet of paper. It displayed their name, aptitude, and key events taking place around them.

At first, she could make one change a day, adding, removing, or replacing a single component of one character.

If the alteration worked, reality changed with it.

As for how I knew all this so clearly—

She had talked too much when she came to see me die.

Someone who has spent a lifetime winning often finds it hard to resist boasting to someone who has spent seventy years losing.

She told me she came from another world, one with mobile phones and novels.

She had entered a cultivation novel.

And I was supposed to have been its heroine.

She also told me that every time she stole someone else’s destined opportunity, she earned fate points.

Once she accumulated enough, she could replace an entire character. Beyond that, she could rewrite sentences.

“Taking your place as a personal disciple earned me a full three hundred points right at the start.”

Smiling, she stroked my white hair.

“If you hadn’t withdrawn and given up on yourself, I might not have advanced so quickly.”

Only then did I understand. Every time I had hidden from a crowd, abandoned a tournament, or concealed my spiritual root, I had added another brick to her cultivation.

She gave me a mirror so I could see how old I had become.

I hurled it at her feet.

I missed.

So this time, I had chosen something easier to aim.

3.

The ceremony did not resume.

Not because I had broken any sect rules.

Mainly because Su Miaomiao insisted on ten buckets of hot water to wash her hair. The Qingxu Sect stood on a mountain, water had to be hauled up, and the kitchens refused.

Several stewards began arguing. At last, the sect leader spoke.

“Take her away to clean up. Ning Zhao, stay.”

Only a few peak masters remained in the hall, along with my fiancé, Pei Qiao, the chief disciple of Sword Peak.

In my previous life, his first words upon seeing my spiritual root had been, “How could I cultivate alongside such filth?”

This time, he opened his mouth too.

I cut him off. “Breaking off the engagement?”

He froze.

“If you are, get on with it. Give me back my jade pendant and hand over the marriage contract.”

Pei Qiao’s face turned cold. “Ning Zhao, must you try to force my hand by throwing a tantrum?”

I held out my hand.

Instinctively, he retreated half a step.

I looked at his sword hand and suddenly smiled.

For seventy years, I had hidden like a criminal who dared not face the light, all because someone had called me filthy.

Now I only had to hold out a hand, and they moved away of their own accord.

The same spiritual root. A different attitude.

What a difference it made.

“Fine if you won’t give them back,” I said. “I’ll come to Sword Peak every day to ask.”

Then I added, “Nice latrines you have there.”

Pei Qiao stopped telling me to calm down.

He set the jade pendant on the table and untied his storage pouch, moving as quickly as if he kept snakes inside.