The cave was quite dry.

A snail was slowly crawling on the cave wall, leaving a wet trail in its wake. When she touched its tentacles with her finger, the snail retreated into its shell and stopped moving.

Yang Zanxing withdrew her hand and gazed at the bare black cave, silently sighing.

After five consecutive days of working all night, she was exhausted. She had bought a boxed meal from the convenience store downstairs, but fell asleep before she could eat it. When she woke up, she was in this godforsaken place—it was hard to describe exactly how she felt at this moment.

The moment she opened her eyes, she saw a dark, massive creature lunging toward her from the water. She instinctively pushed the young woman beside her away, but heard someone call that girl’s name “Yunxin,” and also heard what might have been her name, “Miss Yang.”

She was just an ordinary salaried worker—hardly at the level where people would call her “Miss.”

She didn’t know how long she had been lost in thought here until she saw two characters written on the jade pendant at her waist: “Zanxing.” Yang Zanxing vaguely formed a hypothesis—perhaps she had transmigrated into a cultivation upgrade power fantasy novel called “Nine Heaven Summit.”

Corporate slave Yang Zanxing worked diligently at her job, doing honest work, with her only hobby being reading web novels. Among these, the golden finger cultivation upgrade power fantasies were her favorite. Each book was extremely long—ten to twenty million characters—able to kill plenty of time. Over the years, she had read at least fifty, if not a hundred, cultivation power fantasy novels. The plots were largely similar, nothing more than “thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river, don’t bully the poor youth,” “broken engagement face-slapping,” “trash to genius upgrade streams.” She knew all the tropes by heart, sometimes even mixing up the plots. The reason she was so certain this book was “Nine Heaven Summit” was probably because of the name “Yang Zanxing.”

“Yang Zanxing” was the name of a female supporting character in “Nine Heaven Summit,” sharing the same name as her. Unfortunately, this cannon fodder female supporting character was slapped to death by the male protagonist within seven chapters of her appearance. From start to finish, her total description didn’t even span three chapters—she was just one of the stepping stones on the male protagonist’s path of counterattack and face-slapping.

Truly a human tragedy.

If she remembered correctly, at this point in the original story, “Miss Yang” was supposed to be jealous of Liu Yunxin receiving her fiancé Wang Shao’s favor. Taking advantage of Mu Cengxiao’s battle with the demon beast “Yu,” she would push Liu Yunxin into the water when no one was looking, intending to kill and silence her. Mu Cengxiao, to save his childhood friend Liu Yunxin, would jump into the water and be swept by “Yu’s” demonic qi into an underwater cave, thus obtaining his golden finger treasure. He would level up and break through underwater, ultimately killing the demon beast “Yu” and returning to the surface.

The first thing Mu Cengxiao did upon returning to the surface was to slap “Miss Yang” to death in front of everyone for her assassination attempt on Liu Yunxin, thus forming a deadly enmity with Wang Shao. This opened the “I’m the protagonist, I make enemies and slap faces everywhere” mode.

Though the plot was clichéd, it was reasonable and logically consistent. However, the transmigrated Yang Zanxing saw the demon beast “Yu,” and in that critical moment, instinctively pushed Liu Yunxin aside. So it was she who fell into the water, and she who was the unlucky one swept into the cave by the demonic qi.

Yang Zanxing stood up and surveyed her surroundings. This was a very dark cave with only a sliver of light coming from overhead, but it seemed very far away. Yang Zanxing shouted a couple of times, but her voice seemed to be snuffed out like a flame pinched by fingers before it could travel halfway, dissipating without a trace.

There was no one else around, not even any animals—only a snail curled up in its shell. She pried the snail from the cave wall and boldly walked forward a bit.

The ground was very soft. When she scooped with her hand, it was all dry white sand, just like a desert. She had fallen into underwater depths, yet there wasn’t a drop of water in this underwater cave. Such unscientific phenomena could only happen in cultivation novels. But… continuing like this, wouldn’t she die of thirst before finding an exit?

In the original story, how did the male protagonist find the exit after obtaining his golden finger? Golden finger… right, where was the golden finger?

That golden finger that was practically like a stat-boosting red-blue buff, cheating so outrageously that it made villains and cannon fodder weep with heartbreak—where was it?

Just as Yang Zanxing thought of this, she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her fingertip. Looking down by the weak light from overhead, she saw that the spiral-shelled snail she had been holding in her palm had somehow crawled to her fingertip, where a dot of red had appeared.

Bleeding? Yang Zanxing was stunned.

Even if a snail bit someone, it wouldn’t cause bleeding, right? What kind of unscientific setting was this?

The next moment, the ground beneath her feet suddenly began to shake, and the cave walls started dropping broken stone fragments. Yang Zanxing covered her head and crouched down, looking for somewhere to hide, when she saw her palm suddenly emit a strange light. Unlike the light from the cave ceiling, this radiance was blindingly bright, blooming from her palm and making her feel as if she were being burned by fire.

The light was emanating from the spiral-shelled snail.

The fingernail-sized snail gradually became blurred, and amid the surging brilliance, it slowly transformed into a transparent pearl. The pearl seemed to come alive, absorbing the fresh blood flowing from between her fingers, gradually dyeing the pearl’s color red bit by bit.

She didn’t know how much time passed before the shaking beneath her feet stopped and the light faded.

Yang Zanxing steadied herself and looked at the red pearl in her palm.

This pearl was about the size of an eyeball, cool and cold like a glass marble. At first glance, it appeared red, but looking carefully, one could discover that within this transparent pearl, a small flame was burning. The flame continued to burn as if it would never be extinguished.

“Xiaoyuan Pearl…” Zanxing murmured.

In the original story, this pearl was the designated cheat item, Golden Finger, for the male protagonist Mu Cengxiao. This Xiaoyuan Pearl was omnipotent—it could sense spirit artifacts and treasures, enhance cultivation, shorten leveling time, and replenish health points at critical moments. It was practically an essential divine artifact for ranking up. It was precisely because of this pearl that Mu Cengxiao, who had been called “trash,” managed to surge in cultivation level before the Taiyan Sect selection, jumping directly from Refining Qi Stage to Foundation Establishment, then to the early Golden Core stage. He made a spectacular showing at the Taiyan Sect selection, washing away his previous shame and entering the Taiyan Sect to become a sect disciple.

Now, it was she who encountered danger with Liu Yunxin, she who played the hero saving the beauty, she who fell into the water ravine, she who was swept into the sand cave by demonic qi, and naturally, she who obtained the golden finger Xiaoyuan Pearl.

“So that means,” Yang Zanxing pondered, “the plot has changed?”

Just as she spoke these words, the Xiaoyuan Pearl in her hand suddenly transformed into a wisp of red smoke and, with a “whoosh,” drilled into her body.