Chapter 2: The original second male lead and the roadside wildflowers
by SungoldThere wasn’t a need to rush to cling onto a “big thigh”.
From a series of deductions, Lin Xi had worked out from his fellow disciples that Gui Ying was twenty-two years old…
From that, he could infer that the male lead was twenty-one, the second male lead was seventeen, which meant…
This year was a safe year!
In other words, he still had one whole year to find the right “thigh” to hug.
So, Lin Xi simply settled down among the sect disciples and laid completely flat, doing nothing!
A month later, he realized—this life of having food and clothes without worries, and not having to work, was wonderful!
Although cultivation was still unavoidable, at least he didn’t have to worry about being homeless.
The Silver Moon Sect was the strongest combat force under the Bi’An banner. Aside from them, the Green Apricot Sect handled the sect’s environment, the Cloud Veil Sect took care of medicine, healing, and providing cultivation pills, and the Ten Thousand Night Sect had long since become the Bi’An’s intelligence division.
So, within the Bi’An, the Silver Moon Sect undoubtedly held the highest status.
(TN: I was confused at first but basically, Bi’An is the overarching group, and within this group, there’s smaller sects/groups/halls, and Silver Moon Sect is one of them.)
If he had to name the most headache it would definitely be the eccentric female cultivator Xuan Hou, the deputy sect leader of the Green Apricot Sect—minor drama every three days, major drama every five. It was literally unbearable.
Of course, calling her a “female cultivator” was giving her too much credit—she wasn’t even the same species as the rest of them.
Compared to her, the Silver Moon Sect’s leader, Yue Chuyin, was much easier to deal with.
Xuan Hou… Once he remembered that Xuan Hou had only been a puppet to push Yue Chuyin into demonization in the original novel, Lin Xi relaxed.
Why take a tool person so seriously?
I am your dad!
So I’ll be a bit more tolerant of you! An exemplary standard of a son hitting their father!
Today, Lin Xi was curled up in his cave residence as usual, sleeping in. But before long, noisy chatter outside woke him.
“Look! Isn’t that Young Master Jin?”
The sharp, high-pitched female voice cut through the air, making the half-asleep Lin Xi jump up like a startled raccoon.
“AHH!!! Is Young Master Jin being summoned by the Sect Master again today? He’s dressed so formally!”
This time, Lin Xi was completely awake.
From far away, shrill, birdlike voices rang out, and Lin Xi almost fainted on the spot, foaming at the mouth.
Lin Xi: If I’ve committed a crime, please let the Big Villain kill me—not these ear-piercing screeches.
Dragging his stiff body outside, he was surprised to find that all the fellow disciples sharing his cave were gone. More precisely, they had all gone to watch something.
But… all the people who lived in the same cave as him were men!
What on earth could make both men and women gather to watch, screaming at such a terrifying pitch?
Lin Xi soon found out.
A young man in snow-white robes walked towards them. His robe hems were embroidered with a few sprigs of what looked like lilac flowers, but they were gray-white rather than purple.
That must be the national flower of Snow Rabbit Kingdom from the novel—snow lilac.
However, the most eye-catching thing was undoubtedly his breathtakingly beautiful face.
A pair of sword-like eyebrows arched slightly, pupils the deep color of black jade, expression unreadable, skin pale, face completely emotionless. This youth, beautiful like a banished immortal, could only be—
The cool, aloof Second Male Lead from the novel—Xue Mufeng!
As the younger martial brother of the protagonist, Meng Yulan, his talent was undeniable.
But according to the plot, at this moment he should be in a state where his cultivation was sealed.
To those who greeted him warmly, the youth returned polite salutes, his expression calm the entire time. There was no arrogance of someone high-ranking or a natural genius.
Very fitting for his “pure white on the outside, black on the inside” character setting.
Lin Xi’s lips couldn’t help but curve into a faint smile.
Hadn’t his golden thigh arrived?
But Lin Xi’s excitement only lasted a brief moment before it fizzled out.
He remembered that in the original story, although Xue Mufeng kept a low profile in the Bi’An Sect, he was secretly building his own network of influence the whole time.
For example: Lan Moqian of Qingxing Sect, Song Yunling of Yundai Sect, the guest elder Kui Zhuo, and that troublemaking follower, Yin Ruohua.
The first was the younger sister of Qingxing Sect’s leader Lan Xing, and quite formidable in strength.
The second was a healer and the leader of Yundai Sect—valuable both in status and skill.
The third held a high position among Bi’An Sect’s guest elders.
And Yin Ruohua? Not only were they currently Xue Mufeng’s most trusted subordinate, they were also extremely reliable when it came to getting things done.
That’s not even mentioning later confidants like E’Xi and Jiang Ling.
As for his own role…
Well, it seemed to be limited to eating then sleeping, sleeping then eating, and running away.
Lin Xi quickly realized that none of them would favor a good-for-nothing like him. The male lead, the second or third male leads, the villains, and even the countless side characters.
Lin Xi felt the tiniest bit like dying right now…
The little grove was truly a wonderful place, especially Bi’An Sect’s little grove.
The spiritual energy there was indeed abundant, but more importantly, it was far from those lunatic, cultivation-obsessed sectmates, which eased a lot of his stress.
Lin Xi finally decided to turn over a new leaf (or rather, was forced into it) and reluctantly took out the cultivation manual he had kept hidden for years.
Tsk.
His wish from his past life had finally come true.
Back then, all he wanted was for his teachers, principal, and school to disappear.
In this world, those things really didn’t exist… though, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that different.
He had even been “blessed” with a brand new challenge: survival.
Pushing down his wandering thoughts, Lin Xi opened the manual. Because of his lying flat lifestyle, he had only skimmed through it in a rush once or twice. Now, at last, he started studying it seriously.
And so, he spent that entire period holed up in the little grove. At night, he would return to his cave dwelling on time to sleep, then wake up around noon the next day… and go back to cultivating.
Xuan Hou still came to Silver Moon Peak every so often, bossing people around.
Lin Xi could only sigh helplessly.
He decided to just treat her like a mentally deficient puppet who had lost their mind.
Life was, all in all, quite comfortable. In the blink of an eye, a few more months had passed.
Gradually, he began to panic.
With “hugging a thigh” as his ultimate goal, his cultivation goal was to reach the level of those friends, subordinates, and hangers-on who followed the second male lead.
At first, he thought this would be easy.
Take Yin Ruohua, for instance—his main job was running all over the place gathering intelligence for the second male lead, never doing any proper cultivation.
And yet, his cultivation level was skyrocketing.
The Qingxing Sect folks were in charge of maintaining the sect’s environment, basically like the janitors at Lin Xi’s old school.
Lan Moqian didn’t do anything serious all day, relying entirely on her sister Lan Xing to keep things together.
And yet, Lan Moqian’s cultivation level soared day after day.
Wait a minute!
Why did he think that, as some random background character, his luck and talent could be better than these important supporting characters?!
The past few days, Lin Xi’s daily schedule had finally shifted from sleeping between chou hour (1–3 a.m.) and wu hour (11 a.m.–1 p.m.) to a somewhat healthier hai hour (9–11 p.m.) and mao hour (5–7 a.m.).
But every time he woke up to see his fellow sect members cultivating like maniacs, his head throbbed.
So f*cking done! Had the toxic “involution” culture from the 3D world now spread to the 2D cultivation world as well?
Would they die if they didn’t overwork themselves?
…Actually, yes. They would.
In his heart, Lin Xi silently swore:
Cherish life, stay far away from grind-obsessed lunatics.
(Too bad life didn’t just have the “lunatics in front of you” — but also “lunatics filling every corner of the sect.”)
He found himself missing his old life.
Carrying his own crudely-made drawing board, he decided to go do some late-night outdoor sketching.
In the wilds surrounding Bi’An Sect, rare flowers and exotic grasses grew everywhere. Even if not all of them were true spirit plants, their shapes were still breathtakingly beautiful.
Walking alone among the mountains and fields, Lin Xi felt as though he’d stepped into the fairyland he’d imagined as a child.
As expected, the air quality in ancient-style cultivation novels was amazing!
Just as that thought crossed his mind—
Thump!
He suddenly pitched forward, hitting the ground headfirst.
Rubbing the bump now swelling on his unlucky head, he looked up… and saw a sight he’d never forget in his life.
Under the moonlight, clusters of golden flowers bloomed brilliantly. If you looked closely, the petals reflected the moonlight in a shimmering cascade, encased by layers of large white petals that cradled them like a fairy’s lotus throne.
Slender golden filaments stretched outward, each tipped with tiny, snow-white spheres of pollen.
Dazed, Lin Xi picked one up, but the flower was unbelievably fragile. A few filaments instantly fell away, and in the next second… the entire blossom came free in his hand.
Before he could even process it, his body began to feel wrong.
The hell?! Why was he suddenly dizzy, his limbs weak, as though he were about to collapse?
Sure, his cultivation wasn’t great, but it wasn’t so bad that staying up late would make him faint!
Trying to summon his spiritual energy, Lin Xi was shocked to discover that the little bit he had was completely gone!
Regret.
A sudden childhood memory flashed through his mind and his kindergarten teacher’s gentle admonition:
“Don’t go picking wildflowers on the roadside!”
In the original novel, there was a flower called the Phoenix-Immortal Golden Stamen, the national flower of Yangxin Kingdom. The big villain loved using it for all sorts of nasty tricks—steeping it in tea, tossing it from above, scattering it mid-battle. Anyone who touched it without preparation would temporarily lose their cultivation.
If your cultivation was low, you could even faint on the spot.
And the effect was so strong that once it touched you, no one could escape. Not even the male lead.
Naturally, plenty of them grew around Bi’An Sect.
And so, the utterly unremarkable passerby Lin Xi collapsed to the ground, completely unconscious.
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