After I Failed to Reform the Female Lead of a Tragic Novel - Chapter 4

If Gong Dongling’s character could be called a famous villain, then Eldest Senior Brother Qiu Yan could only be described as both righteous and wicked.

Everyone knew Qiu Yan was Buzhou Mountain’s renowned eldest disciple, but no one knew he was actually an undercover agent sent by the Demon Realm.

In the original novel, he paid a great deal of attention to Xie Yu. He knew every instance of bullying and humiliation she had suffered, yet never took the initiative to help her. He merely stood by coldly and watched it all happen.

That was because Qiu Yan had accidentally discovered what made Xie Yu different, and from then on, he became very interested in her.

But his position was more like that of a documentary filmmaker. He rarely involved himself in conflicts. He simply watched with anticipation, waiting to see to what extent Xie Yu would awaken through her suffering.

Regardless of what kind of person he was, Eldest Senior Brother’s appearance this time had helped Gong Dongling greatly. He had also brought back one important piece of news: the once-in-a-century Xuanji Grass had reappeared in the Ruoxu Secret Realm.

To Gong Dongling’s ears, this news was practically the horn signaling the beginning of the next plotline.

Gong Dongling sat in her room and began carefully sorting through everything.

To put it simply, this section of the plot was about both her and Xie Yu needing the Xuanji Grass at the same time and fighting over it.

That was because the Xuanji Grass could not only clear the stubborn cold energy from Gong Dongling’s body, but more importantly, it was also an indispensable medicinal ingredient for reshaping one’s spiritual root.

As something that determined the upper limit of every cultivator’s talent, the importance of a spiritual root went without saying. It was not impossible to improve a useless spiritual root, but the conditions were extremely harsh.

Because of that, the Xuanji Grass had become something all cultivators fought over.

After all, only one stalk of Xuanji Grass appeared every hundred years. It was nurtured entirely by the essence of heaven and earth, and there was no way to cultivate it artificially.

Xie Yu needed the Xuanji Grass because she was currently preparing the materials required to reshape her spiritual root.

Her spiritual root was the rare ice spiritual root, seldom seen in the world. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, this spiritual root was severely damaged. Whenever the spiritual energy she accumulated through cultivation circulated into her spiritual root, she could usually absorb less than thirty percent of it.

This meant that her cultivation speed was not even half that of others. No matter how hard she worked, at most she would stagnate around the Golden Core stage. For a cultivator, this was undoubtedly a devastating disaster.

Xie Yu had learned of an ancient prescription for reshaping the spiritual root from an old manual and had been gradually collecting the relevant materials. All she hoped for was that one day, she would be able to reshape her own spiritual root.

But would the stepmother author let her get what she wanted? Obviously not. And so, there came the plotline of the two of them fighting over this grass.

Xie Yu moved faster than the original owner’s group and arrived at the secret realm first, only to fall into an illusion created by the Xuanji Grass. After breaking through the illusion, she actually advanced her cultivation inside the secret realm.

Just as she was breaking through, the original owner and the others ignored the fact that the Xuanji Grass had already accepted a master and snatched it away.

This incident not only greatly deepened Xie Yu’s blackening, but also became the true culprit that ultimately led to the awakening of her demonic bloodline and her descent into demonic cultivation. After all, her spiritual root limited her so severely that she could only choose such a path.

Of course, as for why no other cultivators could beat the two of them to such a precious medicinal herb reappearing in the world—don’t ask. If you ask, the answer is that the plot required it.

“Is there really only one stalk of this Xuanji Grass every hundred years?” Gong Dongling suddenly asked the system.

In this novel, heavenly treasures that appeared once every hundred years or once every thousand years were as common as cabbages, which made her deeply suspicious.

【As long as it’s a setting the author wrote, then it exists. The second stalk of Xuanji Grass will only grow a hundred years from now. Also, this grass can only be used whole as medicine, so put away that idea of splitting it in half.】

Gong Dongling: “…”

Fine!

She sighed and pushed the problem aside. No matter what, raising her cultivation first was the proper thing to do. Otherwise, in the future, she might not even know how she died.

The original owner’s memories provided Gong Dongling with quite a bit of help. She sat cross-legged and began circulating her qi. She only felt a warm current emerge from her dantian, gradually flowing upward like all living things beginning to grow.

The feeling of cultivating for the first time was very strange. That warm current seemed capable of cleansing her meridians and soul, relaxing her entire body from head to toe.

Up to this point, her cultivation had gone fairly smoothly. But at that moment, something unexpected happened. Gong Dongling felt that before the warm current could even flow into her meridians, it was extinguished as if by a basin of cold water, vanishing without a trace. What replaced it was a bone-piercing chill.

This cold that came from the inside out was unlike standing in ice and snow. Instead, her whole body felt like a human refrigerator, the kind that could exhale white mist with a single breath.

Cold… cold energy? Gong Dongling had not expected the cold energy to affect this body so severely that even cultivation had become difficult.

In the cultivation world, if a cultivator could no longer cultivate, it was no different from being sentenced to death.

She shivered several times in a row, quickly grabbed the quilt behind her, and wrapped herself into a ball. After covering herself for a while, the chill finally receded somewhat.

Unwilling to give up, Gong Dongling tried circulating her qi again. Who would have thought that this time, it was not only a bone-piercing cold? Even her meridians felt as if they had been twisted together, sending pain stabbing straight into her heart!

“Hiss—” Gong Dongling’s features scrunched together. She sucked in sharp breaths from the pain and flopped onto the bed with a plop.

When she was finally able to form a complete sentence again, she rolled around on the bed and complained bitterly, “If I can’t even circulate qi, how am I supposed to cultivate?!”

【Then go get the Xuanji Grass.】 The system sounded as though the matter had nothing to do with it, which was especially infuriating.

But Gong Dongling knew very well that if Xie Yu could not reshape her spiritual root and cultivate through orthodox methods, she could only rely on blackening and awakening her demonic bloodline to explosively power up.

“Aaaah, what am I supposed to do?!” Gong Dongling buried her head under the brocade quilt and wailed.

On the other side, when Xie Yu returned to her own room, she discovered something unusual on the table.

It was an ordinary sheet of beige rice paper. Black cursive characters swept wildly across it, but the words could still faintly be made out: “Xuanji Grass has appeared in the Ruoxu Secret Realm.”

The moment she saw the words Xuanji Grass, Xie Yu’s heartbeat seemed to skip half a beat. She held her breath and looked around.

Although the letter had appeared suddenly, there was not much surprise on her face. It seemed she had long since become accustomed to this method of delivering letters.

Xie Yu gently picked up the letter and examined it for a while. Finding nothing unusual, she placed it into a wooden box. Inside the box, there were already several sheets of rice paper almost identical to this one.

This was not the first time she had received such a letter. To this day, Xie Yu did not know who the writer was, but the information revealed in these letters was always exactly what she needed. The other party understood her very well. They even knew about her secretly collecting medicinal ingredients in hopes of reshaping her spiritual root.

At first, Xie Yu had worried whether that person would use her secret to threaten her. But after several times, it seemed they truly only wanted to deliver information to her.

Although Xie Yu did not know what that person wanted, she also did not believe they were helping her without expecting anything in return. After thinking about it for a long time without reaching any conclusion, she eventually let it be.

At this thought, for some reason, Gong Dongling’s figure suddenly appeared in Xie Yu’s mind.

Xie Yu lost focus for a moment. She could not help lowering her gaze again to the bow on her wrist. When she came back to herself, irritation filled her heart, and she immediately wanted to tear the thing off.

No matter what, she was determined to obtain that Xuanji Grass. After all, it was her only chance.

She wanted to become stronger. Especially when she was being toyed with in the palms of those people’s hands, there was only one thought in her heart: become stronger. Strong enough that no one could bully her again. Strong enough… to protect others.

Xie Yu carefully took a yellowed, tattered page from the wooden box. She had secretly torn it from that ancient book. Written on it were all the things required to reshape a spiritual root.

When she had first obtained this page, she had only recognized the characters for “reshape spiritual root.” But now, she had long since memorized every word by heart.

Whenever she obtained one of the items, she would dip a brush in cinnabar with a sense of ceremony and cross that line out.

With that person’s help, she only had a few especially precious medicinal ingredients left to collect, and the Xuanji Grass was one of them.

After carefully checking it again, Xie Yu cautiously placed the torn page back into the box. There was probably still some time before the grass fully matured. She could use this period to make preparations.

Although her goal was already close at hand, she did not rush. She sat back down on her stone slab bed and began her daily cultivation routine.

Because Xie Yu’s spiritual root had been defective since birth, her path of cultivation was especially difficult. Daofa Zhenren never guided her, so she could only fumble forward on her own.

After so many years, she had long since grown used to that lost spiritual energy, but she still held on to a little hope. Unfortunately, this time was the same as always.

However, as she closed her eyes and cultivated, she did not notice a faint blood-red light flickering between her brows.

She remained completely unaware as the red light slowly moved along the surface of Xie Yu’s meridians beneath her skin. It seemed as though it could absorb that spiritual energy, becoming more and more obvious, carrying a strange, sinister beauty.

After completing a full major and minor circulation, Xie Yu exhaled and opened her eyes. In that instant, the red light swiftly sank into her fair skin and vanished without a trace.

She had cultivated for three whole years, yet had still not broken through to Foundation Establishment. She was stuck at the ninth level of Qi Refining, unable to advance or retreat. Her day-and-night cultivation was like a stone sinking into the sea, without the slightest echo.

If she were merely an outer sect disciple, she might still receive a word of praise from others for cultivating so diligently. Unfortunately, Xie Yu’s master was Xu Ruozhen, the number-one sword cultivator in the current cultivation world.

She could not blame Zhenren for never caring about her. After all, she truly was unworthy of being his disciple.

Xie Yu knew her talent was poor, so she intensified her physical training and swordsmanship. On top of that, her hands were dexterous, and she could often turn the hidden weapons recorded in ancient books into real objects. In certain competitions and training trips, she did not lose to others, and she could even fight fellow disciples at Foundation Establishment or even Golden Core.

But she was unwilling to accept this.

She had always remembered the day Zhenren brought her back to Buzhou Mountain, and the amazement everyone showed when they first heard she possessed an ice spiritual root.

Even after learning that her spiritual root was damaged from birth, Elder Ye, the head of the female cultivators in the sect, had still wanted to ask Zhenren to give Xie Yu to her. It was simply because both of them had the one-in-ten-thousand ice spiritual root. Elder Ye had wanted to help Xie Yu reshape her spiritual root, then pass everything she had learned down to her. But Zhenren had refused.

She wanted to become a true favored child of heaven.

Soon… Once she gathered everything…

Xie Yu took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down before beginning a new round of circulation.

Seeing that Xie Yu was immersed in cultivation and made no further movements, someone jumped down from the tree behind the room.

This person was none other than their Eldest Senior Brother, Qiu Yan. He took the ink brush tucked behind his ear and swiftly wrote a few strokes in his booklet.

As he wrote, a faint, satisfied smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

He wondered who would win this time.