The reason why Meng Ruji came to this cursed place and fell into this wretched situation wasn’t a long story, but every detail vaguely revealed the word “absurd.”

Eight hundred years ago, Meng Ruji endured countless hardships and finally ascended to the position of “Demon Lord” with her half-demon body. With the tacit permission of the immortal sects and the support of countless demons, she had almost reached the pinnacle of life.

As for why it was “almost”…

Because the day before she was to officially take the throne, just one day!

Something happened to her.

The spiritual power in her body surged so violently that it became impossible to suppress. Her meridians throughout her body felt like they were about to explode with pain. She sat in meditation at her cultivation ground, trying to forcibly clear her meridians.

Just as she was circulating her qi, in her chaotic consciousness, she seemed to sense someone standing beside her.

A mysterious person wrapped entirely in black cloth. He looked at her and said:

“I’ve come to read your fate. You…” He kept shaking his head at her, sighing. “You’re destined for a life of toil.”

What kind of ridiculous fate reading was this?

She, Meng Ruji, was a daughter of fortune, possessed Creation Power, and was about to ascend to the throne of the Demon Lord.

She had already planned it out—she had finished all the work for the next eight hundred years before becoming king. She was going to lie down and rest! If she so much as stood up and took a single step, she’d consider herself the loser!

A life of toil?

Toil?

What did that have to do with her?

But before she could say a word, the mysterious person disappeared as mysteriously as he had come, silent and without a trace.

Immediately after, Meng Ruji’s Five Guardians entered. They surrounded Meng Ruji, looking worried, completely unaware that someone had been there before.

In the burning pain throughout her body, Meng Ruji struggled to open her eyes.

Around her, besides the Five Guardians, there was indeed no trace of anyone else’s presence. Meng Ruji was naturally confident—she assumed she had been delirious from pain and imagined someone.

And now, her physical condition left her no time to worry about anything else.

After struggling for a while longer, Meng Ruji still couldn’t resolve even a fraction of the increasingly accumulated spiritual power. She had no choice but to resign herself to fate.

“The power in my Inner Core is too great—I can’t suppress it anymore.” Meng Ruji spoke, and just the spiritual power leaking from her mouth was enough to make people feel terrified. “On the back mountain, atop Xuejing Cliff, there’s a Five Elements Formation I prepared for this day long ago. Take me there, work together to activate the formation, and seal me.”

Hearing this, the guardians were all shocked:

“Why would the Master want to seal herself?”

“There must be other solutions—Master, don’t give up!”

Meng Ruji shook her head: “My Inner Core was never meant for a mortal like me to possess. I borrowed its power and became a half-demon with such heaven-defying abilities—this day was bound to come sooner or later. It’s just more sudden than I expected…”

“Master…”

Meng Ruji didn’t let them say more, forcibly ordering them to take her to Xuejing Cliff on the back mountain.

Atop Xuejing Cliff stood a vertical wall covered in solid ice, like a heaven-sent mirror. The platform below the ice mirror had standing room for a dozen people.

Meng Ruji stood with her back against the ice mirror as the formation’s light slowly appeared.

“Begin,” she commanded.

Her Five Guardians had never disobeyed her orders. Though tears filled their eyes, they still activated the formation.

The formation emitted golden light, slowly pulling her body into it bit by bit.

Though Meng Ruji was standing, she felt as if she were slowly sinking to the bottom of an extremely calm lake. The bone-chilling lake water gradually submerged her hair, back, and shoulder blades.

“The sealing power will scatter my leaked spiritual energy throughout the mountains and rivers of the five elements.” Meng Ruji watched the falling snow and spoke softly. “Given time, this Hengxu Mountain can become a blessed land, able to shelter homeless orphans, regardless of birth or past.”

Wind and snow rustled, mixed with the guardians’ uncontainable weeping.

They were all orphans she had picked up during her tumultuous journey through the treacherous martial world—immortals and demons, men and women, those she could trust with her back and entrust with her life.

“After I fall into slumber, the day of my awakening is uncertain. Perhaps… we’ll never meet again.”

Meng Ruji closed her eyes. Her entire being completely merged into the ice mirror. The cold air was stirred by her final warm words into white mist:

“Guard Hengxu Mountain well.”

Her voice dissipated in the mountain wind and snow.

Meng Ruji was completely sealed in the ice and snow.

Her five senses disappeared, and the surging spiritual power in her body immediately rushed in all directions, merging into the mountains and earth.

Her world fell into silence.

In the dark stillness, Meng Ruji had no awareness of time’s passage.

She had prepared herself to never wake up, so when the sound of cracking ice reached her ears, she even felt this moment had come too quickly.

Her heart, resuming its beat, seemed unable to keep up and jumped irregularly. Heart palpitations, chest tightness, and nausea struck, making the whole world spin.

The moment consciousness returned to this body, Meng Ruji felt no joy, only pain.

Much more uncomfortable than the moment she fell asleep…

This must be why children cry when they come into this world…

Meng Ruji thought intermittently. When her body fully regained sensation and her heart began beating regularly, when the spinning sensation disappeared, she slowly opened her eyes.

Atop Xuejing Cliff, the wind and snow remained as before, the weather as gloomy as it had been for hundreds of years. Only… today seemed somehow different from the familiar past.

Meng Ruji extended her pale hand toward the sky—her fingers were distinct and much thinner than before. It was precisely this hand that made the black snowflakes falling into her palm particularly striking.

Black… snowflakes?

How peculiar.

Meng Ruji took a deep breath and used her hands to support herself as she sat up. But halfway up, she was startled by the texture beneath her hands. This… wasn’t the feel that Xuejing Cliff’s snowy ground should have.

This wasn’t ice and snow—it was hard stone.

Meng Ruji looked around. The platform of Xuejing Cliff was covered entirely in black rubble, as if some tremendous force had split apart the ice and snow that had remained unmoved for years, turning up the rock beneath and contaminating the surrounding white snow.

Looking further, Meng Ruji saw the natural ice mirror wall… was gone…

Gone!?

Not only was the ice wall gone, but even the rock behind it had shattered. Some debris was still clattering down.

Her formation was also flickering in and out of view among the broken stone wall. When the wind and snow blew, it flashed twice with a “crackling” sound, then disappeared as well.

She…

She hadn’t awakened on her own—her formation had been broken!

Xuejing Cliff had been attacked!

Who would dare be so bold!?

“Crash!” A sound startled Meng Ruji. She whipped her head around toward the source of the noise.

It was a pile of rubble on the ground, like a grave, burying… who knew what.

“Who!?”

Meng Ruji saw that there was a person in the rubble pile. Her hoarse voice questioned the intruder as fiercely as possible.

The rubble shifted. In the shadows, a male figure seemed to be struggling.

Meng Ruji didn’t dare let her guard down. She tried to summon her sword, but when she circulated her power, she was even more shocked—where was her spiritual energy? Where had that inexhaustible spiritual power gone!?

Meng Ruji quickly probed inward with her divine consciousness.

Then she froze.

Where was her Inner Core?

Her Inner Core was missing?

After being stunned for only a moment, Meng Ruji immediately looked toward the young man struggling in the rubble pile.

The broken seal, the shattered Xuejing Cliff, the missing Inner Core, the mysterious intruder—all this information was telling Meng Ruji one thing:

She had been robbed!

Absurd!

How long had she been asleep? Was Hengxu Mountain gone!? Why would they tolerate someone coming to steal her Inner Core? What kind of world was this—had human hearts become so corrupt that they would rob “graves” for cores?

“Uncultured little thing.”

Meng Ruji’s hoarse voice made her seem even weaker. She struggled to stand and looked at the person struggling in the rubble.

Meng Ruji thought this person must be very weak right now, unable even to push away the rubble burying him. If he had shattered her seal and stolen her Inner Core, then now was the best time to take it back!

Though she had fought as an “immortal” for many years, she hadn’t forgotten her days of struggling among refugees as a child!

Meng Ruji picked up a small but sharp piece of rubble and approached the pile step by step. Her gaze constantly followed the movement of the rubble to judge the person’s location, determined to knock him down with one strike.

But when she was still three steps away, the rubble pile suddenly became still.

Meng Ruji also narrowed her eyes and didn’t continue forward.

A silent and eerie standoff.

Just as Meng Ruji wondered whether the person in the rubble pile had died inside, suddenly! A rock came flying straight at Meng Ruji’s face!

Meng Ruji immediately dodged, and in the next instant, a black shadow leaped up like a wild beast, pouncing directly at her.

Hmph, naive.

She had seen this move countless times before. Meng Ruji instinctively formed a hand seal, wanting to control the wind to blow him away, but where was the wind? Only the cool mountain breeze mocked this person without an Inner Core for her delusions!

Meng Ruji reacted and immediately swung the stone in her hand!

A bit too late—the young man knocked her down, but she still struck his shoulder.

Both fell to the ground together.

Meng Ruji’s head hit the ground hard, making her entire spine ache.

The young man was also knocked aside by Meng Ruji’s stone. Instead of landing on top of her, he fell to Meng Ruji’s left side.

Having just awakened and lost her Inner Core, this struggle left Meng Ruji’s eyes unfocused, her vision completely black. She couldn’t recover for a long time.

The young man beside her wasn’t much better off.

That pounce seemed to have exhausted all his strength.

He bore unknown injuries, his clothes torn, exposing his right arm where the muscle lines spoke of his usual disciplined training.

In his remaining tattered garments, some knife-like black wounds were faintly visible, with lightning flashing in the wounds and “crackling” sounds audible when close.

Just hearing it made one’s teeth ache.

Despite such severe injuries, he still lay prone, propping up his body. He shook his head, seemingly trying to regain control of his body, but his injuries were too severe.

He glanced at Meng Ruji, and she caught his gaze through her chaotic vision.

Sharp eyes, full of killing intent.

Not like a young man at all.

He must be someone who has been baptized by blood and fire…

Meng Ruji made this assessment.

But the next moment, the owner of these eyes seemed unable to hold on any longer and collapsed to the ground.

In the air, only the black lightning on his wounds continued to crackle softly.

The wind and snow were cold.

Meng Ruji recovered for a while, then sat up and reached toward the young man’s back.

His tattered clothes exposed his somewhat dark skin, which was also wounded. When Meng Ruji placed her palm on it, she felt her palm burning hot. The black electric light dancing on the young man’s wounds occasionally struck Meng Ruji’s palm.

The sensation caused by the tiny electric current was between pain and itching.

Meng Ruji closed her eyes and concentrated. Though she no longer had spiritual power in her body, she could still sense spiritual power outside her body.

She could feel a surging and familiar power flowing within the young man’s body, so much so that his heartbeat vibrations could reach her fingertips.

It was her Inner Core.

Meng Ruji confirmed it.

Indeed, a little thief!

Meng Ruji’s expression grew cold. Without further hesitation, she immediately felt for the sharp stone she had picked up earlier. The stone point went straight toward the young man’s back.

She wouldn’t show mercy to someone who had harmed her.

But Meng Ruji never expected!

When the stone struck down—”clang!” The stone was knocked away, and her tiger’s mouth split open from using too much force.

She didn’t know if the young man was hurt, but he seemed… uninjured by her stone…

Why?

Was what she picked up not a stone but a steamed bun?

Did this young man have some protective technique on him?

Or was it…

Her Inner Core’s power protecting him?

Just as this Inner Core had once protected her? Unless faced with enormous spiritual attacks, nothing could harm her in the slightest…

Meng Ruji looked at the unconscious young man, at his invulnerable flesh, and fell into a silence as dead as her seal.

Absurd!