Knock. Knock-knock.
Two steady raps at the courtyard gate pulled Gu Chengming out of his post-practice review.
He dragged his aching, rubber-legged body across the courtyard one step at a time and pulled the gate open.
A young man stood outside.
He wore the same Huiyuan Gate disciple robes as Gu Chengming. His face wasn't exactly handsome, but the features were well-defined, and his expression carried a gravity that seemed a few years older than it had any right to be — a settled, unruffled composure that sat oddly on someone his age.
His name was Jiang Lu.
He had opened his mouth to speak the moment the gate swung open — then stopped. One look at Gu Chengming and the words died in his throat.
The man in front of him had his fringe plastered to his forehead with sweat, his breathing still not fully settled, his robes soaked through and clinging to his skin. He looked, in a word, bedraggled.
Something flickered in Jiang Lu's eyes.
He still remembered the day he had first joined the Wenjian Sect — lost, overwhelmed, a stranger to everything. It had been this very Senior Brother Gu who had walked him through the enrollment procedures and shown him around every corner of the sect.
He studied the man in front of him without letting it show.
Talent-wise, this senior brother was, frankly, a disaster. But credit where it was due — on looks alone, the man was genuinely what the old texts meant by transcendent bearing. Those four characters fit him embarrassingly well.
A pity his ambitions had never pointed toward the path of cultivation. All that potential, squandered on everything else.
Jiang Lu reined in his wandering thoughts and smoothed his expression back to its usual calm. He cupped his hands toward Gu Chengming and offered a polite greeting.
"Fellow Daoist Gu, sorry to drop by unannounced. Have you been…"
His gaze swept briefly over Gu Chengming's soaked robes, a faint note of curiosity in it.
"It's nothing." Gu Chengming smiled, his breathing already mostly settled. "Just got done with a bit of sword practice."
At the words sword practice, something complicated passed over Jiang Lu's face. He hesitated for a moment.
He had come on his master's errand, fully expecting to find a dejected, listless Gu Chengming — not this. The scene had thrown off every line he had prepared on the way over. They all felt a little beside the point now.
But a master's orders were a master's orders. He turned it over briefly, then decided to say what he had come to say.
"Fellow Daoist Gu."
Jiang Lu's tone took on a more serious note.
"I'm here on my master's behalf, to pass along something to Senior Brother."
He explained the situation in full. It turned out things had been far from peaceful inside the Wenjian Sect lately — the various Gates under its banner had been jostling against one another, both openly and behind closed doors, and Huiyuan Gate had inevitably been caught up in the turbulence.
"My master wanted me to come and give you a heads-up."
Jiang Lu kept his voice low.
"Please raise your cultivation level as quickly as you can. If your performance at next month's sect evaluation falls short, there's a real risk you could be expelled from the sect."
As he said it, Jiang Lu found his thoughts drifting to another rumor quietly making the rounds among the disciples — one he hadn't been asked to relay.
Apparently, the reason Huiyuan Gate had been thrust into the spotlight in the first place was directly tied to something this senior brother had done not long ago. Something deeply, spectacularly ill-advised.
He had apparently marched straight up to the girl from Daoning Gate — the one everyone called the Dao Seed, the sect's brightest prodigy — and declared his feelings for her in front of everyone, asking her to become his cultivation partner.
Setting aside the fact that this particular junior sister had an ice-cold temperament and had never given anyone so much as a warm glance, there was also the small matter of the gulf between the two of them — one standing in the clouds, the other firmly on the ground.
This senior brother had, predictably, been shot down in the most humiliating fashion possible.
And it hadn't stopped there. He had made himself a laughingstock — and dragged all of Huiyuan Gate down with him, leaving the whole lot of them unable to hold their heads up in front of disciples from other Gates, who had been quietly sniggering ever since.
A toad lusting after swan meat was the consensus view, and nobody was bothering to whisper it anymore.
Never mind the elite disciples from other Gates who had been nursing their own feelings for the Dao Seed — even within Huiyuan Gate itself, there were plenty who felt he'd dragged their name through the mud and couldn't wait for him to get out of the Wenjian Sect entirely.
Naturally, none of these sordid back-room opinions and mutterings passed Jiang Lu's lips.
He had simply done his job and delivered the message.
If Gu Chengming could have heard what was actually going through Jiang Lu's head right now, he probably would have had nothing to say except a long, exhausted silence.
After all, the reason the original Gu Chengming had done any of that was embarrassingly simple: in the game, that Dao Seed junior sister's character illustration had been absolutely stunning — a direct, devastating hit to his personal taste.
Who could have guessed that a few mouse clicks later, he'd actually end up transmigrated here?
Gu Chengming fell quiet after Jiang Lu finished.
From the memories that had come with this body, he knew that the Wenjian Sect was actually considerably more humane than most cultivation sects out there. Disciples facing expulsion for stagnant cultivation — like him — were a rare occurrence, maybe once every few years.
And yet Gu Chengming had been here long enough that his cultivation still sat at the Third Layer of the First Realm. Across the entire Wenjian Sect, that was practically unheard of.
The sect supplied cultivation resources. It couldn't exactly let you collect those resources indefinitely without ever producing results.
That said, even if he really were expelled, it wasn't as though the process was designed to destroy him. The sect would strip his cultivation arts, apply a secret technique called Clearing the Spirit Terrace to make him forget everything about cultivation, and then send him back to the mortal world with a generous sum of silver — enough to live out the rest of his days as a wealthy commoner in comfortable retirement.
But — but!
Strip his cultivation arts? Clear the Spirit Terrace?
His romance target was a cultivation technique. The romance route had already officially begun. In galgame terms, this was a straight shot to a Bad End — no detours, no saves.
No technique, no romance target. Game over. What would even be left to play?!
The thought hit him like a cold bucket of water, and a fierce, gripping sense of urgency closed around his chest.
He raised his head. His gaze was steadier and more serious than it had ever been. He turned to Jiang Lu and gave a deep, formal bow.
"Thank you for the warning, Senior Brother. I'll keep it in mind."
At the word Senior Brother, Jiang Lu's face did something slightly uncomfortable. He waved a quick hand and corrected him.
"Senior Brother is too much — I'm the junior here. Junior Brother."
Gu Chengming looked at the man's face — which, generously speaking, looked at minimum thirty years old and prematurely aged at that — and found himself at a complete loss for words.
Mate, your face needs to slow down a little.
He kept that thought firmly to himself. With admirable adaptability, he corrected course.
"Thank you, Junior Brother."
Jiang Lu waved it off, apparently unbothered. His gaze dropped again to the iron sword still in Gu Chengming's hand, and something seemed to click for him.
"You were just now practicing the Huiyuan Sword Art, Senior Brother?"
He paused, then added:
"As it happens, I've spent quite a bit of time with that particular sword art myself and picked up a few things along the way. If you ever run into something you can't work out, feel free to come ask me."
Jiang Lu's raw cultivation talent was nothing special either — but in the area of martial forms and sword technique, his grasp and intuition ran far ahead of most people.
Perhaps it was a nod to the debt he owed Gu Chengming for guiding him when he first arrived. Whatever the reason, he had said the extra words.
There was also a more practical angle: with the inter-Gate tensions running as hot as they were, if Gu Chengming failed the evaluation and got expelled, it would hand other Gates yet another stick to beat Huiyuan Gate with.
That was probably what had moved his master to do something as out-of-character as sending someone to warn this senior brother in the first place.
Gu Chengming's eyes lit up at the offer. He thanked him sincerely, and meant it.
Jiang Lu, satisfied that his errand was done, gave a parting bow and took his leave.
Gu Chengming watched the other man's silhouette disappear around the bend at the end of the stone path. Overhead, a bright full moon hung high in the night sky, its cool, clean light spilling across every corner of the courtyard.
He closed the gate. His eyes were blazing.
The news Jiang Lu had brought hadn't dampened his spirits in the slightest. If anything, it had lit a fire under him.
If this isn't a timed route, then what exactly separates me, the Great Master of Completion, from some casual who never finishes anything?
System — pump those stats up!
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