Chapter 2: The Immortal of a Thousand Blossoms

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In the pivotal moment where Zhang Wang was about to kill the demon king, his view was obstructed by distorted characters flashing in front of his eyes. He almost jumped and cursed. This damned bugged out system only knew how to pop up at the worst of times!

But he was already committed! And even if his heart felt oddly bitter when finally faced with the demon king, he could not waver. After all, no matter how polite and graceful King Yanlin was in death, it wasn't like all the atrocities and crimes he committed would just suddenly go away. Zhang Wang clung onto this logic.

He gritted his teeth and swung at the demon king's neck.

But apparently nothing could ever go his way. Even after transmigrating and being reborn into a cool xianxia world, he never had a chance to become overpowered or obtain a harem of beautiful voluptuous women. Not even a single princess with white jade skin and cherry blossom petal lips has yet to profess their love to him.

His system was hopelessly bugged and stopped working after he carelessly dumped all his points into appearance when he was still a toddler in this world.

Zhang Wang was pretty sure he hadn't leveled up since.

He wasn't even able to check to make sure.

And all this time there hadn't been a single side quest or update to the main mission so why…!

Why was this shitty system ruining his one, single, glorious heroic moment!

The moment his sword came down on the demon king, a bright blue light exploded and consumed his vision. He yelped as his world was engulfed, his hearing deafened by a ceaseless ringing.

Ah, he thought absently, why did he even try with all this protagonist-level plot manipulating nonsense? System or not, he never seemed to be protected by convenient things like plot armors or OP cheats.

He closed his eyes and lamented his actions, maybe this was just karma or something.

The demon king's calm smile floated in his mind's eyes. The simple words that cut into Zhang Wang's gut like a knife.

'It was a good fight.'

Hah. Really? A good fight?

Was this some sort of ironic joke? A good fight after Zhang Wang underhandedly got all of the king's officials to betray him and feed him flesh corroding poison?

A good fight?

When all they did was exchange a few slaps and whacks in the main hall. No toppling of mountains or summoning of storms.

And no matter how much Zhang Wang tried to remind himself that this demon king was evil, the flicker of guilt refused to quell.

He sighed one last time, as the strange light consumed the last vestige of his awareness. He really shouldn't have tried to become the main character after all! Just leave the whole Chinese Chad trope to Sikong Ren!

Too late now.

...

Zhang Wang truly thought he was about to face some sort of mysterious puzzling death and regretted ever making that stupid bet with the Shidi he privately called Mr. Protagonist.

And when he tried to pry his eyes open, darkness was thick around him and he wondered if he was finally making a trip down to the underworld this time.

That wasn't the case.

Because even if he couldn't see anything else there was an obnoxious message obstructing his view.

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[ >> ZHN$$G WANSDZ'S #095..s#ner h%44a //…/ NoW S3t to YU YAN$#%IN ]

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"..." Could this failure of a system get any more obnoxious? Zhang Wang wondered but was not given an answer. He lost count of the years since the last time his useless system flashed a bugged out message like that in his face.

He hadn't been able to summon the interface since when he was a child either, aside from the annoying main mission bar that hadn't moved from 10% since the moment he transmigrated.

"..." Curious, he brought up that main mission interface and jolted up into a seated position way too quickly, "Ow!"

His sore muscles screamed sharply and made him curl over and fall back to the ground from the sudden movement. But Zhang Wang didn't care about the pain, he was way more shocked at what he saw!

[ Main Mission Progress: 12% ]

Twelve percent! That was a whole two percent higher than what he'd been able to achieve in his entire twenty years of life in this world! Amazing!

But after the initial excitement and shock settled, Zhang Wang sighed. That still left another eighty-eight percent to go. And at the rate he was going, how long would that even take? Never mind, maybe he really ought to give up.

He wiggled on the stone floor and listened to his stomach grumble in complaint. The air was a little damp and his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness to reveal a shallow cavern. There was a shower of rain outside, dark night even darker with the shroud of storm clouds. But Zhang Wang could tell that the cave was located on a cliffside. He could see swaying treetops from below his vantage point.

He wondered how he even got up here.

Wasn't he just at the Palace of Sins? What happened to the demon king?

But there were no answers to be readily found so Zhang Wang ignored his curiosity in favor of sitting back up and looking around. Practical problems needed to be solved first, particularly his thirst and his grumbling stomach.

The thirst part wasn't too difficult. He simply stepped out to the edge of the cave mouth and held out his hands, cupping the heavy rainfall.

Thirst quenched, now all was left was hunger.

He turned his attention back to the cave and had a good look around.

There was evidence of a small fireplace that burned not to long ago. Zhang Wang could still smell the char of wood through the musk of moisture. That was when something else caught his attention in the far corner of the cave.

"...?" There was something with a striking white-silver color and Zhang Wang almost flinched, remembering the beautiful silver hue of the demon king's hair.

Ahahaha. His mind sure liked to go to strange places.

Shrugging off the offending thought, he picked up one of the sticks left lying around near the fireplace and cautiously inched closer to the form lying on the ground.

Whatever it was, it was curled up into a tight ball with black clothes. It seemed human, aside from the long white thing that curled around it and a mop of platinum silver hair.

The long thing almost looked like a snack, except it was extremely soft and furry and striped black.

Hadn't he seen this kind of thing before…?

Zhang Wang used the stick to prod at the long white thing that looked suspiciously like a tail. A white tiger's tail to be exact, he was neither blind nor dumb and recognized it right away. But the thing it was attached to looked suspiciously more like a person than a large wild cat.

When he moved the tail out of the way, he saw that there were two rounded cat ears protruded from the top of a human scalp. They were white like the tail and tipped black with a black spot in the middle.

Zhang Wang gulped, overcome with the itching temptation to touch the soft tail.

He reached out his hand to touch the tail only to stop himself.

Because really, no one should be going around petting wild beasts unless they were Sikong Ren and had a healthy dose of plot armor to protect them from lack of common sense.

But just when Zhang Wang was about to retreat his hand, the sleeping person's hand shot out from under the mass of robes and grabbed his wrist.

Zhang Wang swore and froze, but remembered that this person was probably the one that saved him, so they couldn't be too terrible right?

Wrong!