Night fell, and all sounds ceased. The cultivators entered meditation to cultivate, leaving only scattered human voices and the whisper of wind in the surroundings.
In the quiet chamber of Myriad Beasts Sect’s Immortal Boat, the gilded Game Panel unfolded, displaying the judgment content specified by the Player using her item.
【Directed Random use successful】
【You decide to cast a spell tonight to construct a dream. The spell target is “Elder Shen.” Although the cultivation gap is too vast, your luck is excellent—the spell’s success rate is 100%.】
【Guaranteed success】
The words “Guaranteed success” made Li Yin start to relax. But then, a new reminder popped up.
【However, the cultivation gap is too vast. Although you successfully construct a dream, it can only persist for…】
Li Yin held her breath as she watched the Game Panel calculate the time:
【10 minutes】
Ten minutes? What could she possibly accomplish in ten minutes?
Li Yin deflated in an instant. She raised her hand and dejectedly patted her cheek.
But then she comforted herself with bitter amusement.
“No problem. Ten minutes is still pretty impressive…” Li Yin murmured to herself. She selected the skill and began constructing the dream.
–
The chamber was dimly dreamy. Obscure light draped a layer of yellowish gauze over the furnishings, hazy and indistinct, like a long-forgotten memory.
As the dream took shape, a girl’s silhouette emerged from the gauze.
When the figure solidified, it felt as if an invisible hand lifted the veil from around her.
Her features gradually sharpened. Her fair cheeks reflected in the nearby bronze mirror, free of time’s yellowed stains.
In the mirror, the girl’s dark lashes fluttered slightly.
Li Yin opened her eyes.
She immediately saw her own reflection in the bronze mirror—from her brows to her eyes, from her nose tip to her lips, it was completely her face.
It gave her a real fright.
This was a single-player game. Back when she’d played it, the Player had been lazy and inputted her own holographic image.
But the dream revealed the impression the spell’s target had of her.
This meant that after transmigrating into the game, her capture target still recognized her by this appearance.
In other words, all her previous conquest targets might be hunting her down because of this face.
Li Yin immediately resolved to hide her face whenever she went out.
As she pondered what spell might allow for a Disguise Art, a voice suddenly drifted from behind her.
“Li… Yin?”
The man’s voice was clear and cold. At first listen, it seemed emotionless, but a closer ear caught a faint tremble.
It was like a strand of spider silk stirred by the wind—lightly quivering, ethereally faint as it brushed her ear.
Li Yin’s heart skipped a beat. She turned to look.
Elder Shen stood there, not far away.
His brows were lowered, his ink-black pupils deep and shadowed like a frigid pool. His stunning yet transcendent features carried a hint of icy alienation.
He spoke again. “It’s a dream.”
His voice was soft as a whisper.
A high-rank cultivator could naturally discern a dream and retained clear awareness even within one.
The instant he realized it was a dream, a thread of dawning realization mingled with his chill aura. His brows and eyes softened for a fleeting moment.
Not far away, his long-dead betrothed said nothing. She simply watched him in silence.
Her face showed no joy or sorrow, like a mere passerby.
Shen Ting’an’s gaze fixed on her face. He parted his lips. “After centuries, you’ve finally deigned to enter my dream.”
He spoke word by word, his trailing tone turning cold once more.
Li Yin still said nothing.
She racked her brain to recall the fourth round’s character card.
Holographic games required in-character performance, so she wasn’t worried about breaking persona. She just needed to quickly lock into the role of the deceased wife.
To her, this was nothing more than a failed game route—nothing serious. Deceased wife it was.
Her goal in crafting this dream was to test how her capture target operated now that the game had become reality.
“Shen Ting’an?” At last, Li Yin called out hesitantly, taking her first probing step. “You still remember me.”
As she spoke, the man’s pupils shifted slightly. His gaze fell to the lips that formed her words. Slowly, he replied, “Of course I remember you. How could I ever forget?”
With those words, he began to move—lightly, unhurriedly toward her.
He approached step by step, yet he lightened his footfalls, as if afraid to startle a delicate heron.
He drew right up to her, face-to-face.
The heron did not fly away. The dream did not end.
But as he closed in, Li Yin suddenly felt a pang of panic.
His adult male frame towered over her. The sense of oppression was inexplicably intense.
Her current height only reached his chest, and this youth’s broad build was nothing like the boy from her memories.
Only then did she truly grasp that the Elder Shen before her was not her capture target, Little Young Master Shen. He was a high-rank cultivator, hundreds of years old.
Li Yin tensed slightly. The man’s lowered gaze had already silently swept over her brows, her eyes, her nose tip, her lips…
In just a few breaths, it was enough for him to examine her many times over.
At the end, his long lashes trembled almost imperceptibly. “You’re still exactly the same as you were back then.”
His long-deceased betrothed remained in the form of a girl, while he was over seven hundred years old. Time had passed far too long.
He raised his hand. His fingertip brushed his own face.
Li Yin paid no mind to his gesture. She tried to recall her conquest strategy from back then.
Little Young Master Shen had an arrogant temper, and the marriage had been her status climbing high via her character card. In that scenario, her approach had been to pamper and coax the little young master.
…Of course, she occasionally teased him on purpose. Watching the pretty little young master fume was its own kind of fun.
But the situation now was entirely different. He was Elder Shen, not Little Young Master Shen.
Li Yin felt a touch of distress. She looked up at him and weighed her words. “I’ve been dead for so many years now… It’s about time you let it go. Why keep hating demonic cultivators every day and targeting them? You should free yourself.”
And free her, too.
“Free myself?” Shen Ting’an echoed the words, then let out a sudden light chuckle—like a cold scoff.
He lowered his head. His fingertip paused on her shoulder, then seized the heron before him.
His ink-dark pupils reflected her faintly panicked face. The man stared at her intently, his chilled voice clear and deliberate. “What I hate most—besides demonic cultivators—is you.”
The force on her shoulder spiked abruptly. Li Yin raised her hand to pry at his wrist, utterly tense. “You hate me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” her former capture target countered.
The icy alienation melted away. But in its place, his vivid brows and eyes overflowed with excessively intense emotion—baleful and full of resentment.
“Of course I hate you.”
“I hate you for eloping with that lowly mongrel. I hate you for turning me into a complete laughingstock.”
Each word came more gritted than the last, as if he were chewing over past pains and hatreds.
Amid his mounting agitation, his slender fingers pressed to her neck. His distinct knuckles suddenly clenched. Li Yin choked.
The man’s exquisite face loomed extremely close. She had no attention to spare for admiring it—her vision filled with his desolate, eerie, resentful eyes.
“In looks, background, talent—which way was I inferior to him? You spent your days tangled up with him. Did you ever consider my feelings? What of our betrothal? How dare you abandon me!”
Amid the barrage of accusations and restraints, Li Yin nearly suffocated. She wrenched at his arm with all her strength, desperate not to be strangled by this suddenly deranged ex-target.
Forget constructing a Jade Ecstasy Seal to supplement him—she couldn’t even speak.
Just as she prepared to end the dream, the man before her abruptly softened his tone.
“No, it wasn’t your fault.” He withdrew his force in a rush and gently stroked the side of her neck. But his voice remained bitterly cold.
“It was that cheap breed who seduced you. Back then, I should have sold him off directly. How dare a snake blood half-demon slave covet his master…”
But soon, even his cold tone eased, laced with a faint, elusive gentleness. His fingertip lifted her chin as he gazed into her eyes.
The man seemed to mutter to himself—or perhaps to question her—as if searching her expression for some trace. “He was the one who goaded you into eloping, wasn’t he? Without him, you never would have broken our betrothal.”
Meeting his profound gaze, Li Yin finally snapped to her senses. She flung off his hand and retreated repeatedly.
Forget everything else—the target’s volatile mood had scared her badly. This man’s mental state was deeply troubling.
Shen Ting’an refused to let her create distance. He pressed forward step by step, his briefly eased expression turning gloomy in an instant. “Where are you going? Do you want to abandon me again?”
His repeated demands only annoyed Li Yin more.
The mere thought infuriated her. Her two capture targets had failed one after another, leading to her bizarre and frustrating death in the fourth round. Put nicely, she’d died of anger; put bluntly, she’d been pissed to death.
The game experience had been utterly awful, and she still hadn’t lost her mind.
In the end, Li Yin couldn’t hold back. She glared up at him and refuted him word by word. “Wasn’t it you who broke off our betrothal? If you hadn’t insisted on it, how would I have… died of anger?”
With the topic broached, she only grew angrier and wanted to say more. But the ten minutes were up.
The dream collapsed abruptly. As she awoke, she caught only the sight of his lips moving.
In the quiet chamber, Shen Ting’an jolted awake. His outstretched hand groped for something to grasp, but it clutched only a palmful of empty moonlight.
The answer he hadn’t voiced broke past his lips and teeth at that moment—only to dissipate into the vacant quiet chamber.
“No, it’s not…”
He had never truly wanted to break off the betrothal. He’d only said it in a fit of pique. The actual decision had come from the clan elders.
“It’s not. That was just angry words in the heat of the moment.” He murmured it again, but no one was there to hear.
Back then, he had been merely a little young master relying on his clan’s power, with no authority over family decisions. By the time he’d learned the elders had gone over his head to end the betrothal, it was far too late.
Shen Ting’an’s pupils shifted slightly, falling to his empty palm.
Aside from the moonlight, he had grasped nothing.
It was a dream.
In the empty quiet chamber, he sat cross-legged on the cushion. His lowered lashes trembled faintly.
Silver moonlight lay in dead silence across his front and shoulders—cold as ice, laden with damp heaviness that nearly bent his spine.
It was a dream.
He drew a soft breath, closed his eyes, and regulated his disordered qi.
Cultivators rarely dreamed. He’d dealt with a demonic cultivator during the day and now suspected something off about this dream. Yet his personal magic artifact showed no reaction—no anomalies detected.
A dream was just a dream.
Nothing more.
His spiritual energy remained turbulent. At that moment, a cat’s meow suddenly sounded in the quiet chamber.
“Meow?”
The white banner flag inserted in the table stirred without wind. This was an artifact for sustaining a ghost soul.
A Little White Cat poked its head out from the Soul Returning Banner and meowed at Shen Ting’an.
More precisely, it was the ghost soul of a Little White Cat—a little ghost creature.
An ordinary white cat couldn’t have survived from centuries ago until now.
He had poured tremendous effort into it. After defying his family and entering Azure Profound for bitter cultivation, he’d researched soul-summoning arts. In the end, all he’d managed to preserve was this Little White Cat’s ghost soul.
The little ghost creature tilted its head at him, as if asking what was wrong.
Shen Ting’an turned his gaze to stare at it.
During her elopement, she hadn’t even planned to take this cat.
He let out a cold sneer. “Get out, you unwanted thing.”