When Snow Ends, Green Returns - Chapter 1

【Host, I’m begging you—could you please take better care of yourself? You only just finished fighting a whole crowd of cultivators! You’re riddled with internal injuries!】

The System wailed as it spun circles beside me.

I ignored it.

Blood dripped steadily down, soaking into the icy-blue pearl suspended above the lotus pedestal.

Thanks to the unusual constitution I had brought from the modern world, however, the bleeding soon stopped and the wound began to heal.

So, as casually as if I were slicing pork, I aimed spiritual power at my wrist and split the newly formed scab. Blood began flowing again.

The more blood the pearl absorbed, the brighter it shone—

At last.

The pearl descended onto the pedestal, radiant with brilliant icy-blue light. In its heart, the shape of a blood-red lotus slowly appeared.

Ignoring the agony as my wrist rapidly repaired itself, I pressed the petals of the pedestal inward one by one until they closed completely around the pearl.

Then I gripped the base of the pedestal and yanked.

The entire lotus came free. I held it in my hands.

Turning around, I stood atop the steps and looked down at the high-level cultivators sprawled dead below—

Human cultivators, demonic cultivators, yao cultivators, and ghost cultivators alike.

Corpses and severed limbs lay packed together from the highest step all the way to the cave entrance.

A pleased smile slowly spread across my face. “In one month, it will be Master’s twelve-thousand-five-hundred-and-sixty-seventh birthday. Shizun should like this gift.”

The divine artifact known as the Calamity-Crossing Ice Lotus Pearl.

Worn daily, it reduced the likelihood of inner demons, purified evil influences, and nourished the soul.

More importantly, it could repair damage to a mighty cultivator’s foundation.

It was also stunning: a translucent icy-blue pearl with a red lotus blooming silently inside.

The System: 【…】

The System stared at me. I was covered in blood and wounds beyond counting, some so deep that bone showed. My unusual constitution had begun healing them rapidly without pills, but the sight remained gruesome.

Blood loss had also left my face as pale as a ghost’s.

It gave me a smile that was no smile at all.

【I don’t know whether he’ll like it. But I do know that if he finds out you’ve hurt yourself this badly again, you won’t be getting out of bed for a month.】

As I descended the steps, I kicked aside the corpses blocking my path. “Shizun won’t find out. I heal quickly, and my body never scars.”

Several bones were fractured or broken, true, but I had already set them. With cultivation speeding up the ten days or half a month such injuries would have taken in the modern world, I would recover in about five days.

Besides, Shizun was in seclusion. How could he possibly know?

When I gave him the present, I would simply say I had happened across it while exploring a secret realm.

I congratulated myself happily.

What a genius I was!

【Ha. Ha.】 said the System.

I flew on my sword toward Tianheng Sect.

“System, how many years has it been since I came to the cultivation world?”

Sitting on my shoulder, the System answered, 【One hundred and seven.】

“…A century already.”

I sighed, a little despondent. “A Nascent Soul cultivator over a hundred years old. People would laugh their teeth out.”

Cultivation in this world was divided into Qi Refinement, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Soul Transformation, Great Ascension, and Tribulation Transcendence.

Nascent Soul was truly pathetic…

【You have the nerve to complain! Twenty years ago, you got your soul scattered to the winds. Yu Xuejin spent ten full years weaving it back together! It cost him a thousand years of cultivation and more heavenly treasures than anyone could count to save you. You’re damn lucky to be alive!】

【You should be celebrating the fact that you can cultivate again!】

【He used to be the gentlest, most patient, responsible, perfect shizun alive. Over the years, you drove him into becoming a complete pervert! Morals, propriety, convention, the taboo between master and disciple—he threw them all away.】

【If this seclusion weren’t so important, I bet Yu Xuejin would want to set you into his own flesh and carry you everywhere!】

I fell silent.

I touched the scar over my chest, the one that would never fade, and still felt I had done nothing wrong. “He didn’t want me anymore. What reason did I have to live?”

“Either I have everything… or I have nothing.”

Seeing that I remained incorrigible, the System launched into its ten-thousand-and-eighty-sixth earnest lecture. 【Host, love isn’t the only thing in this world. There’s fam—no, the bond between master and disciple, friendship, money, power, delicious food, beautiful scenery… You have to keep looking forward…】

“You’ve seen my memories,” I drawled. “You know perfectly well what Yu Xuejin means to me.”

The System: 【…】

It glanced at me cautiously. Seeing that my mood was stable, it relaxed and grumbled, 【Host, I do understand you, and I feel sorry for everything you went through. But binding myself to you must be karmic punishment. I may be the first System ever to chase after its host begging him not to die…】