In some unknown star system.
"Ah!! I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
Jingliu suddenly sat up from the bed.
Accompanying her hate-filled scream, killing intent spread outward like towering waves.
Immediately after, uncontrolled lunar power surged from her body, with her as the center, ice turning into thorns spreading wildly in all directions, instantly expanding to over a thousand meters.
Looking down from the sky, a giant ice lotus flower emitting a chilling aura quietly bloomed under the night sky.
Wherever the ice reached, everything was frozen, turning the surrounding few thousand meters into a frost-covered hell on the spot.
At the center of the ice lotus, Jingliu clutched her eyes, panting heavily.
Her black eyepatch was gone who knows where, her eyes emitting a terrifying red glow, like an extremely bloodthirsty beast.
After a long while, Jingliu's breathing calmed slightly.
If one approached now, they would find her aura even more terrifying.
The previous Jingliu was like a raging wildfire, fierce and rapid, but now she was like a seemingly stable volcano, constantly accumulating energy, bound to destroy heaven and earth once it erupts.
She condensed stolen lunar essence into a profound ice greatsword, gripping the hilt tightly, murmuring—Seth! Kill!
…
[You spar with Jingliu, and Jingliu accidentally severely injures you.]
[You died.]
"Damn! Failed again."
Seth couldn't help but curse.
A system hour ago, seeing there was still time, Seth started the intermediate difficulty simulation out of curiosity.
Only after starting did he realize that, while it was still a script related to Jingliu, the intermediate level was several times harder than the beginner one.
Basically, he died within a few plot segments right from the start.
The key was that he tried all options and found they were all dead ends.
Only then did he understand why the system gave a minimum trait requirement for clearing.
The system didn't prohibit him from challenging high-difficulty simulation scripts.
But below the minimum trait requirement, the probability of clearing the simulation was almost zero.
Moreover, since he died too quickly and the plot didn't advance, failing to meet the minimum clearing standard, he couldn't even obtain any trait rewards.
In other words, even being a grind emperor was useless.
The reason for such a massive difficulty increase was simple: first, he now only had one white trait plus a C-level evaluation, equivalent to one blue trait.
But Jingliu's intermediate script required at least one gold trait.
Second, the beginner difficulty welfare 'Noble Lineage (Gold)' was canceled in intermediate difficulty.
Noble Lineage (Gold), though just an auxiliary trait that couldn't boost combat power, had a huge effect, allowing Seth to win at the starting line.
Oh, and intermediate scripts had another hidden difficulty increase, which Seth believed had the biggest impact.
That was, intermediate scripts used entirely new plots, nullifying Seth's advantage of 'familiarity with the plot.'
In the intermediate script, he and Jingliu were both survivors of the Xianzhou Cangcheng, apprenticed to the same master.
Their relationship changed from master-disciple to senior-junior siblings.
He had to admit, this was a very novel shift.
Stuck, plus the continuous simulations consuming quite a bit of energy, Seth decided to rest for today and continue tomorrow.
Seth lay on the bed and soon fell into a deep sleep.
He slept soundly and sweetly, but in another star system, Jingliu couldn't sleep at all.
…
At this time, Jingliu was constantly teetering on the edge of complete Mara-Struck loss of control, greatly stimulated by the shameful memories of being toyed with and tuned by Seth in the simulation.
With nowhere to vent her killing intent, Jingliu began frantically searching for Abundance abominations in this star system, then... went on a killing spree!
A wheel of lunar essence hung high in the sky, silver moonlight spilling down, the ground covered in ice spikes. Looking around, the entire land seemed overgrown with blue, transparent thorns.
Even more eerie and terrifying were the various corpses impaled on these ice spikes: Cloud Knights with branches growing from their bodies, Wingweaver, Borisin...
At the deepest part of this slaughterhouse, atop a mountain piled from countless Abundance folk remains.
A blindfolded female swordswoman in blue light armor stood proudly, leaning on a profound ice greatsword.
After a bout of mad slaughter and thorough venting, Jingliu seemed to have calmed down a bit.
However, anyone approaching her would be frozen stiff by the unconscious killing intent she emitted.
Clearly, the calmness was an illusion; the killing intent in her heart had merely transformed from raging flames into solid, condensed ice, more enduring and resolute.
Jingliu didn't even glance at the countless corpses under her feet. She looked up at the lunar essence in the sky, her gaze seeming to pierce through countless star systems in the universe, straight to Luofu.
"Luofu...! I'll be back soon. You better wait for me, 'good disciple'!"
…
The soundly sleeping Seth had no idea that the blackened, yandere, deranged, and overwhelmingly powerful Jingliu had completely fixated on him.
Although the system had warned him that after simulation completion, associated characters in the script would retain memories from the simulation.
He was mentally prepared, but clearly underestimated the severity.
In Seth's view, Jingliu was currently wanted by the Xianzhou Alliance and wouldn't easily set foot in Luofu.
Moreover, the simulation was just like a dream; even if he was irredeemably bad, it was only in a dream, equivalent to a fairly realistic game.
Who would take a dream seriously?
Well, now he was seeing it.
Jingliu, already afflicted with Mara-Struck, had an extremely unstable mind. To others, it might just be a nightmare, but to her, it was a deep-seated hatred etched into her heart.
The memory confusion caused by Mara-Struck might mix her simulation memories with reality.
In short, Seth was in for some big trouble this time!
After a comfortable night's sleep, Seth got up from bed feeling refreshed.
After a simple wash-up, Seth went straight to Exalting Sanctum, found a cheap little eatery, and enjoyed a hearty breakfast.
A few steamed buns wrapped in lotus root cakes, topped off with a can of warm soda bean juice—that flavor was authentically delicious~
After breakfast, not in a hurry to go home, Seth wandered around Exalting Sanctum to aid digestion.
As he walked to an area like an open-air teahouse, he suddenly heard a familiar clacking sound.
It was the sound of mahjong tiles colliding; of course, on Xianzhou, this thing had a fancy name—Celestial Jade.
"Bump! I win! Pay up! Hurry and pay!"
At that moment, at one table, a girl in green clothes jumped up triumphantly, pointing at her fellow players and shouting loudly.
Looking at that familiar appearance, Seth raised an eyebrow. Wandering around and running into an 'acquaintance'—what a coincidence.