Chapter 8: System (Fake)

Chapter 8: System (Fake)

Yes, a system.

These days, systems, much like reincarnation and transmigration, have become practically a given for protagonists.

Unfortunately, Zhou Hui had never gotten that lucky.

He'd been reborn and transmigrated several times, yet never once did he see anything extra appear in his mind's eye—and honestly, there was nothing to regret about that, considering he couldn't even be bothered to use spirit stones to boost his cultivation level, let alone accept some sketchy system.

Besides, it was just a system. It wasn't like Zhou Hui couldn't just whip one up himself.

In the other world, not to mention the experience he'd picked up in aerospace engineering, he'd taken on numerous programming contracts while putting himself through school—from food delivery apps to short-form video, from educational software to games. After graduation, he'd even been tempted by a high salary and almost jumped ship to a major tech company.

For someone like Zhou Hui, creating a "slacker system" to assist himself was no big deal.

—Actually, Zhou Hui himself knew that his habits—like using the mustard seed space to delay time, building a question bank just to scope out the exams, rereading every book in the library to put together lesson plans, and launching sect-wide exams on a whim—weren't exactly "slacking" by most people's standards, even if they didn't benefit his own cultivation.

So Zhou Hui built a system based on his "Retirement Plan" to keep himself in check.

"Still, needing a whole system just to keep my schedule straight—my self-discipline really has declined!"

"From that perspective, this is what retirement should look like, isn't it!"

The Tireless Immortal Venerable thought to himself, feeling pretty proud.

He introduced it to his disciples as if he were redesigning the automated systems of an alien probe:

"This is a supercomputer system I designed to help manage the sect's construction and the disciples' daily study schedules... Don't get it? Then just think of it as our sect's mountain protection formation. It can not only guard and manage the sect's construction, but also hand out tasks for me when needed."

No—whose mountain protection formation hands out quests!?

Ran Deng and Guan Ye grumbled internally.

Ignoring the weird looks on his disciples' faces, Zhou Hui continued, "But it's still the first version—the learning system is still in the works. In the future, I'll roll it out to all disciples to track your exam scores, study progress, rankings, and everything else. It'll make things super easy."

Wait—are the exams going to be a permanent thing now?!

Both disciples were dumbfounded.

Especially Ran Deng.

Although Ran Deng was the Senior Sister of the Celestial Spirit Sect, she was so lazy she barely counted as one of Zhou Hui's disciples. Every day, aside from sleeping, she hid in the library reading whatever she could get her hands on. Her cultivation was just okay, but her practical skills didn't match her level. Thus, in the original script, even though Qu Qianxing had her escape with the younger disciples during a crisis, she ran too slowly and was blown up as cannon fodder by the protagonist.

The current Ran Deng, however, had no sense of urgency.

Hearing words like "tasks" and "exams," she was hit by a wave of exhaustion.

"Master, are you... trying to renovate the entire sect? Do a full overhaul?" Ran Deng asked in a shaky voice, staring at the map on the light screen and realizing the Celestial Spirit Sect's territory had never looked so vast. "Why the sudden urge to do this?"

Zhou Hui explained patiently, "Didn't I tell you? I'm done with ascending. I intend to enjoy retirement—I mean, mortal life. Naturally, I can't keep living so sloppily. I need to properly renovate my cave dwelling and upgrade my digs."

"...Starting with the Wordless Hall and the library?" Guan Ye ventured.

"Yes, starting with the library," Zhou Hui said, puzzled. "What's wrong with that?"

Wrong!

Everything about it was wrong!

In mortal terms, the library was equivalent to a study, and the Wordless Hall, even generously speaking, was a child's reading room!

Your "enjoying mortal life" kicks off with renovating these two places?!

Guan Ye was screaming internally, but perhaps because there were too many points to complain about, it all got stuck in his throat, and he couldn't utter a single word. He could only look at his Senior Sister, hoping she'd say something on his behalf.

Ran Deng, however, chimed in: "The library is obviously the most important—"

Oh no, he'd forgotten—this one was a bookworm with no common sense at all who spent all her time in the library.

She would, wouldn't she?

Guan Ye was at a loss for words.

But for Ran Deng, her love of reading clearly couldn't beat out her desire to slack off.

She couldn't even be bothered to organize the bookshelves in her own cave dwelling—there was no way she'd renovate the library! And on top of that, the Master had made a whole system just for this! What if he asked her to renovate the entire sect in the future!

Ran Deng turned him down politely but firmly: "But Master, I can't imagine a library better than the one you already have!"

"That's because you've never seen a better one." Zhou Hui sighed.

He tapped the keyboard, brought up "Building Mode," and selected the "Library" category under "Major Buildings."

"This is a building constructed by mortals—you can use it as a reference," Zhou Hui explained.

Ran Deng and Guan Ye had no objection to referencing mortal architecture. In fact, it was common practice in the cultivation world.

Because the cultivation world lacked architects.

More precisely, there were no professional architects in the cultivation world at all.

After all, everyone in the cultivation world was rushing toward ascension, and few bothered to study "trivial matters" like building houses. Only when researching formations and feng shui would they incidentally pick up some knowledge of construction.

Ran Deng, for instance, came from a fairly renowned formation-master family.

That was also why Ran Deng was terrified that Zhou Hui would dump the entire sect's renovation on her.

But a formation master's specialty was formations, after all. Aside from a few talented exceptions, most formation masters designed houses that were functionally sound but aesthetically questionable.

Therefore, most cultivators preferred to buy just the formations themselves rather than purchase cave dwellings from formation masters. As for those ethereal, celestial palaces floating in the air, the more particular cultivators would keep mortal architectural families as retainers, offering cultivation in exchange for designing their dwellings. The more brutish cultivators would simply go to mortal towns, grab buildings that caught their eye, and refine them into portable cave dwellings with more suitable materials. This had even become an industry—every cultivation market sold such artifacts.

But now, when Ran Deng and Guan Ye got a clear look at the so-called "references," both wore expressions of subtle discomfort.

"Master, where did you find these references?" Ran Deng asked with a frown.

Guan Ye added worriedly, "Who sold them to you? How many spirit stones did they cost?"

It was no wonder the two disciples reacted this way.

The "references" before them were bizarre: some were boxy, like paper containers; some were round, like eggs woven from silver wire; some were twisted into spiral shapes and coated in a layer of "silver (?)" that gleamed brightly. They looked utterly ridiculous.

Both Ran Deng and Guan Ye suspected that their Master, having been out of touch with the world for too long, had been scammed by mortals.

Zhou Hui smiled without explaining.

He didn't expect disciples raised in the cultivation world to understand modern architectural art (?) anyway—even he, having experienced that world, still couldn't comprehend it.

"Don't look at the exterior—that's what I need you to improve. Focus on the interiors of these buildings."

Zhou Hui said this, casually picked a "reference" and hit a key.

Instantly, the air around them twisted.

Thick fog instantly swallowed up Zhou Hui and the others, with huge, shadowy figures shifting in the mist, stacking things like building blocks, and tall structures rose up in seconds.

In just a few breaths, Zhou Hui and the others were already standing inside one of those buildings.

An illusionary realm?

Ran Deng and Guan Ye thought, completely unfazed.

Though their cultivation levels weren't particularly high, as inner disciples of a Tribulation Transcendence Stage Immortal Venerable, they'd seen way more than your average cultivator. Stuff like this, "raising towers out of thin air," was no big deal to them, because they knew their master could whip up a whole city in a blink if he felt like it.

But the next second, when the fog cleared, both of them stared with wide eyes.

"So many books!"

Ran Deng walked up to the rows upon rows of bookshelves.

"...So many people."

Guan Ye instinctively scooted closer to Zhou Hui.

Then the two looked around, curious:

"Is the whole wall made of crystal? I thought only the sea demon tribes were that flashy?"

"All these books are just sitting out for mortals to read for free? There's someone even more wasteful than Master!"

"Wait, hold on—how many mortals can even read, anyway?"

"Even in Second Senior Brother's hometown, the biggest mortal city, there couldn't be that many bookworms, right?"

Zhou Hui listened to his two disciples babbling and gave a wry smile.

"These books are for anyone to read—you can even check them out!" Zhou Hui said. "Come with me."

He then walked the two disciples through getting a library card and checking out books.

"This is amazing!" Ran Deng said, eyes full of envy as she stared at the library's reading area.

The scripture pavilion didn't have anything like this.

After all, books were so precious in the cultivation world that most people just "hoarded" them.

Even someone as open-handed as Zhou Hui had never thought of opening a public reading area in the scripture pavilion, letting folks read freely, let alone worrying about the reading setup.

A big, bright reading space like this library was Ran Deng's dream.

She felt like she could just live here.

But when Ran Deng excitedly grabbed a copy of *Geographical Records of Mountains and Rivers* off the shelf, she found only three or four pages had any writing on them.

"Master?" Ran Deng looked at Zhou Hui, all hurt.

Zhou Hui looked away, feeling guilty: "They were mortal books. I read a few pages, thought they were useless, and stopped."

Ran Deng was disappointed: "You should've flipped through every book in this place. With your Divine Sense, memorizing it all would've been effortless."

"When I was traveling through that mortal world, there were too many restrictions. I didn't take the chance." Zhou Hui shook his head.

To be exact, this library was built from Zhou Hui's memories.

In that "dream world," Zhou Hui was a plain mortal with limited time and energy. No matter how hard he tried, there was no way he could've read and memorized every book in the library, let alone skimmed them all.

So Zhou Hui felt regret too—if he'd read all those books back then, even if "dream him" couldn't remember them, after waking up he could've used spells to dig out those fuzzy memories.

Take the book in Ran Deng's hands, for example. Back then, Zhou Hui had only flipped through it in the library. "Dream him" couldn't remember a thing, but after "waking up," he still managed to pull out that little piece of memory.

But Zhou Hui only felt regret for a second before shaking it off: "Doesn't matter that I didn't memorize everything. That mortal world's 'rules' don't apply to ours anyway. Copying them blindly would just lead us down the wrong path."

"But a lot of those books looked really interesting." Ran Deng couldn't drop it.

She secretly pulled a book off the shelf called *The Cold Master Who Faked His Death and Got Together with the Demon Sovereign*, thinking the title alone was juicy (X) and exciting—too bad every page was blank.

Clearly, her master had only glanced at the title, decided it was worthless, and never even thought about opening it.

Ran Deng was super disappointed.

Zhou Hui looked at Ran Deng's face with a sly smile: "I was hoping you'd study this library's book sorting system and help me organize the scripture pavilion. But since you hate it so much, forget it—I can find another disciple—"

"...No! Master!" Ran Deng leapt up.

Sure, she was lazy, but if she could turn the scripture pavilion's inside into something that awesome, even Ran Deng would put in the work.

Not to mention, this "reference" had so many interesting books.

Even if her master only remembered a tiny bit, that tiny bit was already enough to hook Ran Deng.

Ran Deng grabbed Zhou Hui's sleeve, begging, "Master, please let me handle renovating the scripture pavilion! I feel like I'd die without this place!"

At that moment, Ran Deng had no idea she was jumping into a hole way deeper than she thought.

A pit called "architecture."