Is It Wrong to Bully the Novice Village for System Rewards?

Chapter 215: What Bad Intentions Could This Little Grand-Disciple Have?

The momentary vertigo faded, and Qi Yuan’s boots hit solid stone.

Stepping forward, he quickly realized the pavilion was an incredibly high-tier spatial artifact housing an entire pocket dimension. The interior was breathtakingly vast. An eternal, seven-colored luminescence bathed the floating mountains and rivers in a dreamlike, dazzling glow.

In the center of this majestic space sat a white jade pavilion with intricately carved railings. Lounging on a swan-neck chair inside the pavilion was a woman in luxurious robes, idly flipping through a paperback.

She was the picture of absolute languor, yet her lazy posture did nothing to mask her weaponized, overflowing charm. She had delicate brows, a sculpted nose, and slightly elongated phoenix eyes that seemed to drip with natural allure. Her ink-black hair spilled loosely over her shoulders, half-veiling a dangerously voluptuous figure.

This walking embodiment of ripe maturity was none other than the youngest Great Ascension realm expert in the Supreme Mystery Sanctuary. She was his Master’s Master—Grandmaster Ling Yu.

Right now, the terrifying apex predator of the Sect was giggling softly as she read a trashy novel titled The Overbearing Immortal Venerable Falls in Love with Me.

Not daring to breathe too loudly, Qi Yuan hurried to the edge of the pavilion and bowed deeply. “Grandmaster Ling Yu.”

The woman threw a sideways glance at him. “Little grand-disciple,” she drawled casually. “Come give this venerable one a shoulder rub.”

She extended a slender, perfectly manicured finger and pointed to the space behind her chair.

Qi Yuan’s brain stalled for a second before his survival instincts kicked in. “As you command, Grandmaster.”

He briskly stepped into the pavilion and familiarly placed his hands on the woman’s shoulders, beginning a gentle massage. Her skin was warm and incredibly soft beneath the silk.

A rich, intoxicating floral scent wafted up to him. Lowering his eyes slightly, he caught sight of how the moon-white gauze of her dress clung to her breathtaking curves. His heart instantly hammered against his ribs. He snapped his gaze straight ahead, absolutely terrified to look down again.

As the old saying went, accompanying a sovereign was like keeping company with a tiger. The Grandmaster currently purring under his hands wasn’t just a tiger; she was a late-stage Great Ascension tigress. Worse, he was the idiot who had recently poked her with a stick.

Sensing his stiff posture and elevated heart rate, Ling Yu’s lips curled into a wicked, playful smile. “Little grand-disciple, you are the Holy Scion now. Are you really still this shy?”

“D-Disciple wouldn’t dare…” Qi Yuan hastily denied it, massaging her shoulders with twice the focus.

“Oh? What wouldn’t you dare do?” Ling Yu snorted, her tone dropping by several degrees until it was practically frostbitten. “Wasn’t that last novel you wrote an absolute masterpiece? You wrote it so well that this Grandmaster nearly suffered a collapse of her Clear Dao Heart. It took me three full years of Secluded Cultivation just to recover.”

A cold sweat instantly broke out across Qi Yuan’s forehead.

Here it comes.

The Supreme Mystery Sanctuary was paranoid about spies, meaning every disciple underwent a ruthless background check upon entry. As the Headmaster’s personal disciple, Qi Yuan’s history had been scrutinized down to the atomic level.

Naturally, the Sect’s intelligence division had dug up his old pen name and discovered that he had authored The Secret Records of the Golden Vase—an unapologetically smutty novel—just to earn some quick Spirit Stones before joining the Sect.

Writing erotica wasn’t a crime, and the Headmaster had just laughed it off as a funny quirk of his youth.

But then Grandmaster Ling Yu found out.

She didn’t punish him. Instead, she drafted him. She had zero interest in his smutty historical fiction; she was obsessed with the tacky, overbearing CEO and “white moonlight” romance tropes.

Thus, Qi Yuan was forced to become Ling Yu’s personal ghostwriter. Every day, after exhausting Cultivation sessions, he had to sit down and churn out brain-dead titles like This Spirit Field is Contracted by Me and Woman, You’ve Successfully Caught My Attention.

For the love of heaven, in his previous life, he actively despised cloying, predictable romance trash. Being forced to write it daily was a unique form of psychological torture. Add in a Great Ascension demoness threatening him with physical violence if he missed an update, and it was a living nightmare.

Driven to the brink of insanity, Qi Yuan had decided to sabotage the arrangement. He wrote an ultimate, soul-crushing, maximum-angst tragedy to shatter the female demon’s fantasies, hoping she would get so depressed she’d fire him.

He just… overdid it a little. The novel was so emotionally devastating that Ling Yu read the ending and immediately locked herself in Secluded Cultivation for three years to heal her emotional damage.

Snapping back to the present, Qi Yuan quickly plastered on a fawning, innocent smile. “Grandmaster Ling Yu, you know my loyalty to you is absolute! I would never dare overstep my bounds. I only wrote that tragedy to give you a change of pace, a palate cleanser! If it upset you, your disciple will go rewrite a happy ending right this second!”

Admit to premeditated psychological warfare against a Great Ascension expert? Never. If she slaps me with the crime of ‘Deceiving the Master and Destroying the Ancestors,’ I’ll be executed on the spot!

Ling Yu raised a delicate eyebrow, looking at him with a half-smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Right. What bad intentions could my little grand-disciple possibly have?”

She reached into her sleeve. “Since you are so filial, this venerable one has decided to give you a proper Reward. I hold in my hand a Ten Directions Illusion Talisman. I have custom-built the Illusion Realm inside to perfectly replicate the plot of your last novel.”

She smiled sweetly, her eyes flashing with vindictive glee. “As long as you endure the simulation, you will personally experience the agonizing hardships of love, which will surely temper your Dao Heart.”

With a flick of her wrist, she revealed a dazzling, iridescent Talisman.

“Ah?”

Qi Yuan’s stomach plummeted. He wanted to weep.

As the author, he knew exactly what kind of radioactive, misery-inducing dumpster fire that tragic romance novel was. If he was forced into the male lead’s shoes, the emotional damage would be astronomical.

This wasn’t a lesson. This was pure, unfiltered revenge.

Ling Yu was a generational monster with terrifying Providence. She had reached the late Great Ascension stage before the age of nine thousand and was considered one of the top candidates for true immortality in the entire realm. For his book to deal enough emotional damage to destabilize her, the plot was undeniably psychotic.

Worse, Ling Yu was a peerless Talisman Master. Her creations flirted with the laws of the Great Dao itself. The Illusion Realm inside that paper would be indistinguishable from reality.

Qi Yuan snatched his hands back from her shoulders as if she were on fire. “Grandmaster! This disciple’s Cultivation is far too shallow! I will literally die of a broken heart in there!”

“Little grand-disciple, don’t tell me you’re chickening out?” Ling Yu’s voice was honeyed, dripping with mocking pity. “Tell you what. I am a reasonable woman. If you write me ten more novels exactly like The Overbearing Immortal Venerable Falls in Love with Me, this venerable one will let you off the hook.”

“Ten?!” Qi Yuan’s eyes practically bugged out of his skull.

This manipulative demon! So this was her real goal! Writing one of those brain-dead CEO romance novels made him want to vomit blood. If he had to write ten, his Dao Heart would genuinely shatter from the sheer cringe.

Seeing Qi Yuan looking as if he had swallowed a live toad, Ling Yu’s smile widened triumphantly.

Qi Yuan stared at the Talisman, then at her smug face. He ground his teeth together. “Fine!”

He puffed out his chest, completely abandoning the act. “This disciple is willing to experience the Ten Directions Illusion Talisman!”

Ling Yu’s smug smile instantly froze. Her beautiful eyes widened in genuine shock. “Are you out of your mind? Are you sure?”

Qi Yuan offered her a calm, confident smirk. “I am absolutely sure. However, if this disciple successfully clears the Illusion Realm, will Grandmaster agree to two requests of my choosing?”

Why the hell was he panicking? He had just remembered his ultimate trump card. The System had literally hard-coded the [Clear Dao Heart] talent into his soul. His mind was an impenetrable fortress of iron! It was just a soapy romance plot—what was there to fear?