Chapter 45
Chapter 45: You Said You Could Cause a Tsunami Just by Transmigrating
Once Liang Xue Yao finally got used to the surroundings, new players began arriving in waves.
Everyone who entered after him didn’t react quite as wildly, but it was obvious they were walking the same path the veteran players had stumbled through at the start.
“Holy shit, holy shit!!”
“Oh my god—this is actually a game. I didn’t transmigrate?!”
“Why is there a foreigner too?!”
“I don’t believe this is a game. Holy shit, I really thought it was a joke. Mom, I’m playing real-life Sims!!”
“Thirty years of being single finally paid off—my hands were fast enough to grab a slot. Amazing. So damn amazing!”
The players were dazzled, and their “cultural level” showed in every way it could.
Zhou Xiao and the others understood all too well.
When they first came in, they’d acted just as brain-dead—gaping at everything, marveling at every little thing—until a day or two passed and the shock finally settled.
This time, Zhou Xiao led one batch of newcomers, and Fan Gu Zhou took another.
Mostly because the two of them were closest to what you’d call “life players,” and they were constantly running errands all over Wangan County. If anyone could shepherd clueless newbies through an unfamiliar world, it was them.
There was also one more player in Zhou Xiao’s group this time.
Old Daoist Ascension.
From the moment he entered, he stayed frozen with his mouth open, staring like he’d gone half-stupid. In the end, he slapped his thigh and could only say one thing:
“Fucking awesome.”
A notification flashed across their vision.
Twenty new disciples have arrived. Sect Master Song Jiu Lai will be here shortly.
New players were here—meaning it was time for Song Jiu Lai to put on a show again.
The twenty newcomers gathered on their new turf. Song Jiu Lai appeared with a warm smile, the hem of her robes stirring as she stepped into view.
Ever since she reached Mid Qi Refining Stage, standing before a bunch of players who didn’t even have spiritual roots yet, her presence had gained an effortless pressure—calm, commanding, impossible to ignore.
She looked like pale moonlight: distant, immaculate, hard to read.
In plain words, she was acting her ass off—and doing it well.
“Welcome to Longevity Sect. From today on, you’re part of us. I hope you’ll spend a pleasant stretch of time on Yun Zhou Continent.”
Her tone remained gentle, but her gaze didn’t waver.
“I won’t waste time with extra nonsense. Once your spiritual roots are opened, your Senior Brothers and Senior Sisters will guide you through sect missions.”
With a flick of her hand, twenty spiritual root inner pills appeared again.
The System reissued them every time a new batch of players entered.
The recipients sat down where they were, just like the earlier groups had, waiting for the talent-awakening period to end so they could log back in.
Out of the twenty newcomers, only two were women again.
Both were idol stans in real life. Otherwise, there was no way they’d have grabbed a recruitment slot with the hand speed of someone who’d been single for decades.
They’d only joined because the game was trending and they were bored—then they’d walked straight into the biggest surprise of their lives.
The moment spiritual roots opened, Liang Xue Yao logged off.
Back in reality, the strap pressing across the bridge of his nose snapped his mind fully awake. He blinked, dazed.
Why did it never feel like VR?
In the game, he wasn’t “controlling a body.” He was living—moving through a world that felt freer than breathing. And yet the instant he opened his eyes, the safety harness around his waist was still buckled exactly as it should be.
He hadn’t sensed it once inside.
His gaze dropped to his right leg.
Or what was left of it—an empty pant leg, limp and light.
Ever since the accident, he’d hated looking at it. Even if he tried to ignore it, he couldn’t erase the awareness: below the knee, there was nothing. No touch. No feeling. Just absence.
But this time, the familiar heaviness didn’t clamp down on his chest the way it usually did.
He picked up his phone and called his cousin.
“Bro,” Liang Xue Yao said, voice tight, “did you log in? I’m in the middle of opening spiritual roots. I can’t get back in.”
Jiang Tian Ya had just gotten home. He didn’t waste words.
“How long?”
Liang Xue Yao thought. “Two hours and forty-five minutes.”
“Not bad.” Jiang Tian Ya sounded almost pleased. “Decent talent. Mine’s three hours.”
Liang Xue Yao caught the smugness hiding in the corners of his voice and rolled his eyes.
“Seriously? You’re competing with me over this?”
Jiang Tian Ya chuckled.
Then the line went quiet. Not awkward—just the kind of quiet that comes when two people are listening to the same breath on the other end.
After a moment, Jiang Tian Ya said softly, “Feels like we haven’t talked this easily in a long time.”
“…Bro.” Liang Xue Yao swallowed. “How did you even find this game?”
“If I tell you I was bored, would you believe it?”
He’d seen it in a game group chat he joined ages ago. He never spoke there. Most people didn’t even remember he existed.
That day, Zhou Xiao posted a link. He clicked it on impulse, killing time.
But the moment he looked closer, he realized it wasn’t like anything on the market. Full-dive simulation was a gimmick that should’ve been impossible—and yet it was right there, staring back at him.
Curiosity took him by the throat.
And luck opened the door.
“We’re lucky,” Jiang Tian Ya said. “And now you’re part of that luck too.”
Liang Xue Yao agreed—yet something about it still felt wrong.
“Do you think this is technology our country has?”
Jiang Tian Ya’s answer came without hesitation.
“No one in the world has this. Full-dive simulation is scientifically impossible. For the brain to experience a one-hundred-percent real environment… forget everything else—how do you replicate touch perfectly? Can you control yourself in a dream?”
Liang Xue Yao’s throat went dry. “Then where did it come from?”
“That’s the question.” Jiang Tian Ya’s voice sharpened. “And… I found something interesting.”
He glanced at the information on his phone—public records his people had pulled.
“Do you remember our Sect Master’s name? Song Jiu Lai.”
“Yeah,” Liang Xue Yao said. “The game told us.”
“I got curious and searched it.” Jiang Tian Ya exhaled. “In the real world, in Lin City, there was a girl with the same name. An orphan. And she looks almost exactly like our Sect Master—except the one in the game looks like a flawless, perfect version.”
Liang Xue Yao’s mind raced. “A game designer? They used her name?”
There was a pause—long enough to feel like a step off a cliff.
“A month ago,” Jiang Tian Ya said, “she died. She got hit by a car while saving a cat.”
Liang Xue Yao didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
—
“Achoo!”
Song Jiu Lai sniffed, tugging her robe closer around her shoulders.
“What the hell? I’m a cultivator in another world and I still sneeze?”
She frowned and rubbed her nose. “Am I catching a cold? But I don’t even feel cold.”
The System’s voice cut in, flat and mechanical.
“Finished your drama?”
“I did!” Song Jiu Lai slapped her thigh, livid. “If I’d known the ending would feed me shit, I wouldn’t have watched. Who the hell swaps the male lead in the last episode? Is the director and writer trying to get revenge on society?”
After finishing, she’d even searched her name out of habit, scrolling through news feeds with a strange, distant curiosity.
Nothing.
Hit by a car saving a cat, and it didn’t even make the local news.
Song Jiu Lai stared at the screen, suddenly a little hollow.
“So that’s it,” she murmured. “I really was just one person in the endless sea of the Great Thousand Worlds. Not even a ripple.”
The System replied, brisk as ever.
“If you post online saying you transmigrated, you won’t just make a ripple. You’ll cause a tsunami.”
Song Jiu Lai went still.
“…”