I Want to Be Beautiful Alone [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Consummating Our Marriage (2)

 

“I want to consummate our marriage, Senior Sister.”

 

Xu Jiao heard her voice—a low whisper almost like a demon’s. It was clearly a melodious, pleasing voice, drawing out its tones like a soft murmur or a shallow song, yet the content was so utterly audacious.

 

Consummate our marriage?

 

She chuckled softly in her mind, but her expression remained unfazed. Her dark eyes, illuminated by the flickering candlelight, seemed to be veiled in a layer of warmth, lending a gentle quality to her indifferent face.

 

“She doesn’t want to consummate the marriage with me; I think she wants to consummate me.” Xu Jiao commented to the System in her mind.

 

System: “Host’s speech violates the Harmony Mechanism. It has been automatically censored for you.”

 

Xu Jiao: “…” Boring, rigid.

 

The System had annoyed her several times, yet it still wasn’t satisfied. At this moment, it coldly reminded her: “Currently, Xia Jingzhe’s Blackening Value is 99. If the Blackening Value reaches maximum, it will violate our Socialist Harmony System’s original intention to create truth, goodness, and beauty for the world, hindering the world’s development toward a beautiful future. Please, Host, strive to resolve the protagonist’s emotional knot and eliminate the Blackening Value.”

 

Xu Jiao innocently retorted: “Can you blame me for her blackening?”

 

“See, if you hadn’t put me in here, according to the original progression, she would still be an innocent and miserable little victim. Would she have become someone who wants to destroy the world if she can’t get love?” She casually tossed the blame back onto the System.

 

The System, using its mechanical voice, reminded her: “Has the Host forgotten the reason for your selection?”

 

Hearing this question, Xu Jiao didn’t doubt that if the System weren’t designed to be emotionless, it would probably be spitting at her right now.

 

She sighed and gave a perfunctory answer like reciting a textbook: “I remember, I remember. Because the content of the chapter I wrote didn’t conform to the core values of Socialism, you chose me to come here and help the protagonist feel love and beauty, thereby rectifying the tragic ending—”

 

The person standing before her, Xia Jingzhe, was the protagonist of her novel, The Celestial Sovereign Doesn’t Need Emotions.

 

Xu Jiao, being a fan of the “beautiful, strong, and tragic protagonist” archetype, had set up a very convoluted background and story for Xia Jingzhe.

 

The village where Xia Jingzhe was born happened to be the ruins of the divine-demon war from ten thousand years ago, and it was also the location where the Celestial Realm sealed the exit to the Demon Realm. However, ten thousand years had passed, and the Demon Realm’s seal was loosening. On the day of her birth, Demonic Qi leaked out, dyeing half the sky black.

 

Her mother bled too much during childbirth and could not be saved. Since Xia Jingzhe was the only baby born in the village that day, she was deemed an ominous sign. The villagers all believed she was possessed by a demon and not human, capable of bringing death to her kin. They demanded that her father hand her over to be buried alive.

 

Her biological father, grief-stricken over the loss of his beloved, fainted outside the delivery room, powerless to stop the villagers. And so, in the dead of winter, the newborn infant, who had just managed a faint cry, was placed in a wooden coffin, carried out of the village by the villagers, and buried in the ground far away.

 

Fortunately, in that midwinter season, a lame old woman from the village, unable to find food, was outside trying to dig up some wild roots to eat. She saw the villagers’ actions from afar, secretly followed them, and only after they left did she quietly carry a hoe to dig the infant out again.

 

The old woman’s shelter in the village had been crushed by the recent heavy snowfall, leaving her nowhere to go. She dared not take the poor child back to the village. With frozen hands and feet, she went to a neighboring village in the harsh weather, begged for a place to stay, and struggled to feed and keep the baby alive.

 

Perhaps due to being weak and exposed to the cold, the little infant’s cry only became slightly stronger on the day of the ‘Awakening of Insects’ (Jingzhe). Before that, she was either silent or only managed two weak, breathy cries, as if she was always on the verge of dying. It wasn’t until the following spring, when the old woman saw that the baby might finally survive, that she found someone to give her a name.

 

It was the name of that day’s solar term: Jingzhe.

 

The little girl and the old woman depended on each other, surviving on neighbors’ relief. Once she was slightly older and could walk, she would climb the mountains to dig wild vegetables in spring, climb trees to pick wild fruit in summer, and anxiously stand in the fields in autumn to collect grains that people had dropped, striving to make it through winter with her grandmother.

 

Alas…

 

When she was five, the old woman went up the mountain one time and failed to return for a long time. Late at night, no one would accompany her to search the mountain, so she could only venture deep into the mountain alone with a torch. Yet, beside the path that people usually took, she found a cold corpse.

 

Some kind of wild beast had mauled the old woman, leaving hardly an intact piece of skin on her body. The fruits around her were crushed, their juices ground into the dirt, and a sweet, honey-like smell wafted from her coat pocket—

 

In the darkness, all things fell silent. Little Xia Jingzhe’s entire world collapsed that night, silently.

 

She sat quietly in the dark for a long time. Nothing happened all night. It wasn’t until the sky was faintly lighting up that she, shrouded in the morning mist, stiffly went to the roadside, dug a hole, and buried the old woman.

 

When she returned to the village, she happened to run into the village chief’s fat son, who was dressed in expensive clothes. She moved to the side of the road, trying to avoid these people.

 

However, the little fat boy grinned and approached her, asking: “I heard you went up the mountain yesterday? My dad said there are bear demons in the mountains that specifically eat tender little girls. Did you see one?”

 

Xia Jingzhe mechanically tried to walk past, but the fat boy kicked her from behind: “Hey! I’m talking to you! Tsk, did that old bat of yours come back? I told her a few days ago that there was a beehive in the mountains. I tasted some from a hunter, and it was delicious. Did she go look for it?”

 

“She didn’t really go, did she?! Hahaha, I think I forgot to tell her that beehive is the territory of the bear demon in the mountain! Not to mention ordinary people, even hunters who aren’t good at martial arts go there and never return!”

 

Xia Jingzhe fell to the ground, nearly chipping her front teeth. Hearing those words, she propped herself up with her thin hand, and murmured as she stood:

 

“Beehive…”

 

“Grandmother went to find honey because you instigated her?”

 

She stood up, her gaze completely devoid of emotion. She turned to look at the fat boy behind her, who slapped her with brute force: “You, what kind of look is that? Don’t look at me like that!”

 

Xia Jingzhe seemed not to feel the pain. She stumbled back two steps following the force of the slap, then pressed forward again, obsessively repeating: “Grandmother went to find honey because you instigated her?”

 

“Was it or wasn’t it?”

 

The fat boy was frightened by her demeanor and stepped back twice. Realizing this made him seem weak, he charged back up to push her, even resorting to punching and kicking her. When villagers passed by, they all looked straight ahead, as if they saw nothing.

 

Xia Jingzhe lay on the roadside, staring at the sky, her eyes lifeless.

 

At some point, the sky changed from azure blue to light gray, and then to an inky black, as if a hole was about to tear open and drag the world into an abyss of wailing ghosts.

 

Suddenly, a strange, powerful gust of wind and energy slashed down from the sky.

 

Just as it was about to fall into the village, it was cleansed and dispersed by a power that made souls tremble.

 

The dense blackness was swept away by a raised hand. A seven-colored rainbow arced across the sky. Immortal cranes and magpies flew in from all directions. Flowers in the village and on the mountains all bloomed. Even immortal music seemed to drift in from afar.

 

Amidst the scene that was nearly divine, a voice came from the edge of the sky: “What demon dares to cause mischief here?”

 

“This girl has a Pure Yin body constitution and a fate marked with misfortune. She is a reincarnation of a human-demon hybrid—ruthless, cold-blooded, and cruel. Her birth brought disaster. Senior Brother, she cannot be kept.”

 

“Our Kunlun lineage has taught for ten thousand years. If we cannot even civilize a demon, how can we speak of saving the common people?”

 

“But… but she has an evil bone in her body. She cannot even ascend the Immortal Ascending Steps in front of the sect gate…”

 

“She can.”

 

Xia Jingzhe watched expressionlessly as two immortals came up to her. The surrounding villagers were all prostrating themselves on the ground, shouting “Immortals have manifested!” She had a feeling of disbelief.

 

Do Gods and immortals truly exist in this world?

 

Listening to what the immortal said, her mind was in a daze, wondering why she was born cursed and how she was considered ruthless and cold-blooded.

 

However, no one listened to her voice.

 

Ignoring her wishes, they brought her to the foot of the Kunlun Sect’s mountain. The person who advocated for her cultivation smiled kindly and asked:

 

“What is your name?”

 

“Jingzhe.”

 

“Jingzhe? A good name… Presumably, you know your background is unusual, and that you were born bringing disaster to others. Are you willing to change this fate?”

 

Xia Jingzhe lowered her eyes and asked: “If I change it, will the people around me no longer die in the future? If I change it, will no one ever bully me again?”

 

“Yes,” the Immortal Master replied.

 

Xia Jingzhe asked again: “How do I change it?”

 

“In front of you are ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine Heavenly Steps. They were formed when the Celestial Sovereign descended during the divine-demon war. Demonic Qi cannot invade them, and demons cannot taint them—”

 

“But if a demon is willing to remove the Demonic Qi from their body and reform, they must kneel every three steps and kowtow every nine steps. Upon reaching the summit, Celestial Qi will cleanse their demonic body. From then on, you must devoutly serve our Kunlun for a hundred years. After a hundred years, you will become a Kunlun disciple, protected by the righteous power of the Immortal Dao.”

 

And so.

 

Xia Jingzhe spent three days and three nights climbing the Kunlun Heavenly Steps, her knees nearly shattered, her forehead swollen and bruised. She endured heart-biting pain to draw in Celestial Qi for cleansing, believing she had finally seen the end of her long suffering.

 

Little did she know, what she climbed was not the Immortal Ascending Steps, but the Road to Hell.

 

In the Kunlun Sect, her life was worse than it had been in the village. Because she was not a formally accepted disciple of Kunlun, even the cleaners looked down on her, withholding her food and assigning her the hardest, most tiring tasks…

 

She was tormented by the disciples using magic spells. After finally enduring a hundred years and gaining a disciple status, she was thrown out as bait to lure demon beasts during a trial in the Kunlun secret realm, almost losing her life there.

 

She fought desperately to rise above it, taking the blame for everything. In the end, all she received was a decree:

 

“This person is inherently violent. After a hundred years in our Kunlun, she has failed to improve and willfully fallen into depravity. She is unfit to be a Kunlun disciple. Her immortal powers must be crippled, her immortal bone extracted, and she is to be expelled from the sect, never to be readmitted.”

 

The Senior Sisters of the Kunlun Sect, however, were not finished. After she was expelled, and before the righteous energy from cultivating immortal methods had completely dissipated from her body, they casually tossed her into the nearby Demon Realm abyss.

 

Due to her demonic identity, she always desperately climbed upwards, climbing until she was covered in blood, only to ultimately fall back into the mud.

 

The entire story of The Celestial Sovereign Doesn’t Need Emotions was a poisonous tale of Xia Jingzhe constantly growing, only to be defeated by even greater evil forces. In the end, she finally became the Supreme Ruler of both the Celestial and Demonic Realms by virtue of her combined immortal and demonic body.

 

Yet the story wasn’t over.

 

No one knows what the author, Xu Jiao, was thinking, but in the final chapter, she suddenly added a scene for the former Celestial Sovereign, the previous ruler of the Celestial Realm. The former Celestial Sovereign revealed that Xia Jingzhe’s ascent to the Supreme position had all been planned. He had known long ago that this demon would appear in the world, so he had orchestrated everything. When Xia Jingzhe ascended to the Supreme position and harmonized with the Heavenly Dao, she would realize that the day she became the Supreme Ruler was also the day this realm would collapse.

 

Readers who had subscribed to the three to four hundred chapters of this long story, having finally endured the bitter journey only to reach the final chapter, were: “…” Table flip!

 

The comment section exploded!

 

Countless negative ratings flew in like razor blades. Readers desperately wanted to knock on her conscience and ask: “Why!”

 

Why stab the protagonist in the back at the very end? What huge grudge did the author have against the protagonist?

 

Right now, Xu Jiao tried to resonate with the System: “But don’t you think this ending was handled very artistically? Like that saying goes—tragedy is eternal beauty.”

 

The System didn’t know if tragedy was beautiful. It only knew that the story was too negative and had to be changed.

 

“Host, please do not change the subject. Eliminate Xia Jingzhe’s Blackening Value as soon as possible,” the System reminded impassively.

 

Xu Jiao secretly sized up Xia Jingzhe, who was waiting to “consummate their marriage,” and somewhat awkwardly negotiated with the System in her mind: “How about I just go along with it for now? Maybe she’ll be happy and the Blackening Value will drop?”

 

System: “Host, please decide for yourself.”

 

At this moment, Xia Jingzhe suddenly rose, walked over to the table, and returned with a silver-white wine pot in her right hand and two silver cups clamped in her left.

 

“Senior Sister, shall we begin with the Nuptial Cup Wine?” Xia Jingzhe asked her gently, her eyes filled with fervent emotion.

 

Xu Jiao looked at the wine. She had just agreed to cooperate, but now she hesitated slightly. Soon after, her eyebrows slightly furrowed, and a brief rejection came out: “I don’t drink.” She truly disliked alcohol.

 

System: “?”

 

The smile on Xia Jingzhe’s face also froze.

 

“That’s right, how could I forget that Senior Sister is always cold and ruthless, pushing people away at a thousand miles—”

 

She threw the two silver cups onto the floor, where they clattered loudly.

 

Then, the hand still holding the wine pot tilted slightly. The strong, sweet wine liquid visibly poured onto Xu Jiao, dripping from her neck. The cold wine seeped into her clothes, making her instantly feel as if she had been fished out of a wine barrel, smelling of alcohol all over.

 

She looked at Xia Jingzhe, who was causing trouble at the slightest disagreement, in astonishment: “You…”

 

Xia Jingzhe, however, leaned in, her warm breath falling on Xu Jiao’s jawline, gently licking away the droplets of liquid on her pointed chin. She smiled broadly and said: “So sweet.”

 

“Since Senior Sister won’t drink, I’ll have to taste it myself.”

 

Saying this, Xia Jingzhe applied a little force with her hand. With a tearing sound, the snow-white Taoist robes on Xia Jingzhe’s body fell apart, scattered like the curtains had earlier. The room temperature was not high, and the fair skin on Xu Jiao’s neck was covered in goosebumps from the cold.

 

Right then, Xia Jingzhe lowered her head, just as she had said earlier, and began to savor the taste of the Nuptial Cup Wine.