Dawan Fishing Village was not too far from Wuling City. Shen Jue and Pei Du arrived at the location quickly with a handful of foot soldiers.
The camp where Feng Chunya was stationed with her troops was supposed to be on the rocky beach outside Dawan Fishing Village, but now as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but crumbling ruins — even the fishing village itself had vanished without a trace.
"General Feng! General Feng!" All the foot soldiers shouted at the top of their lungs, their voices bouncing back and forth between the wreckage.
At first, there was no response.
Just as everyone's hearts were sinking little by little, a voice drifted out from behind a reef.
"I'm over here!"
"That's General Feng's voice!" Pei Du exclaimed, overjoyed.
Shen Jue also let out a long breath of relief. "Go take a look."
The crowd hurried over, but what they laid eyes on first was not a person, but a vast stretch of silvery sea fish, packed so densely they covered half the beach, their scales glinting dazzlingly under the sunlight.
Behind the pile of fish, quite a few soldiers of the Northern Town Army and the fishing villagers were picking up the catch. Their clothes were caked in dirt, their faces smudged with mud, but their spirits were high, without a trace of the despair that usually comes after a natural disaster.
Feng Chunya spotted the arrivals and waved them over at once.
"General Shen, Strategist Pei, you've come just in time! Hurry and help carry these fish — this haul is more than enough to feed all of us for days!"
Shen Jue froze for a split second, then bounded down the sandy beach in three quick strides, his eyes fixed intently on the piles of fish.
"Where did all these fish come from..."
"General Shen, these fish were all sent to us by Lord Spirit Fish," a foot soldier standing nearby answered, the rims of her eyes still red. "Yesterday, when the flood hit and our camp got submerged, it was Lord Spirit Fish who rushed over to save us. If it weren't for the Divine Lady and Lord Spirit Fish, we would never have survived."
Feng Chunya brushed the mud off her hands.
"It's not just our troops, either. Lord Spirit Fish saved all the villagers of Dawan Fishing Village too." She gestured toward the distance. "All of them are over there. A few caught a chill, but none of their injuries are serious."
Shen Jue followed the direction she pointed. Around the bend of the beach, a group of soaking wet commoners had indeed gathered — white-haired elders huddled with small children squatting beside bonfires, and young wives wrung out their damp clothes to hang and dry on the rocks.
Before they set out to find Feng Chunya, both he and Pei Du had already braced for the worst. Dawan Fishing Village was so close to the sea, it was nearly impossible for anyone to survive such a massive flood.
He lifted his gaze to the sky and murmured softly, "The debts ordinary humans owe the Divine Lady can never be repaid..."
Meanwhile, Yun Shu, the one everyone was thinking of, was in the temple with Little Fox, watching all of them through the system's surveillance feed.
"Host, why didn't you just use the Kunyu Crop-Growing Set to ripen the nearby crops for them? Why did you make Little Blue go through all that extra trouble to send them all these fish?"
Little Fox was perched on the sofa, its amber eyes full of utter confusion, its tail swishing nonstop.
Yun Shu picked up the water cup on the table and took a sip.
"Lil' Sys, I already used the Dream-Inducing Bell to plant a false memory in their heads that the Heavenly Venerable dragged me back to the celestial palace and locked me up for disciplinary confinement. If I suddenly showed up to ripen crops out of nowhere, that would completely contradict that story, wouldn't it?"
When Yun Shu mentioned the Heavenly Venerable, Little Fox knew that this Heavenly Venerable was a fictional character, but the negotiation Yun Shu had with the Lord God was very real. Its fox face fell. "I'm so sorry, Host. I had no idea how the Lord God found out we were messing around in this novel world..."
Noticing Yun Shu's gaze on it, the Little Fox seemed to think of something, and it pawed at her arm anxiously. "But you have to trust me, I absolutely did not sell you out!"
"Why would I ever suspect that you betrayed me?" Yun Shu looked at the little fox whose every emotion was written plainly on its face. "We are the best of partners, comrades who have fought side by side."
She would never claim to be so sharp-eyed that she could see through everything, or the cleverest person alive, but she still had enough sense and perceptiveness. From all the Little Fox's past behaviors, it was obvious that it had no hidden agendas, and at times was even a little slow-witted. If the Little Fox's acting skills were so masterful that it could fool her completely, then she would just have to accept that fate.
The Little Fox stealthily wiped away its tears. "Host, even if that old thing the Lord God finds out, it's no big deal! It can't step into this book world at all, so we still have a chance to turn things around!"
"What do you mean by that?" Yun Shu perked up with interest.
The Little Fox rolled its eyes. "All the strategy missions set by the Lord God follow a fixed underlying logic that even he himself cannot alter. As long as we exploit this bug and never max out the male lead's favorability, keeping it bouncing up and down all the time, the system will never mark the mission as a success or failure. Then even if this world turns into a real, tangible place, we can stick around here, build up our strength, and lay low."
Yun Shu narrowed her eyes slightly. "The Lord God can't enter this book world, but can he enter the real world?"
"Yes," the Little Fox replied. "But host, you don't have to be scared of that. Once you turn this fake world into a real one, the whole world will recognize you. You will be like the Heavenly Dao of this realm, and even the Lord God won't be able to do a thing to you."
Yun Shu's mind raced as she processed this. "I get it now. So the Lord God set up this whole strategy the male lead mission just to get rid of the strategists, so he can seize these small worlds that have been turned from fiction into reality for himself?"
The Little Fox scratched its head. "I don't know the details about that. All of us systems, once bound to a host, just follow the rules to complete all kinds of tasks the Lord God sets. No one but the Lord God knows exactly how a small world gets turned from fake to real."
"Host, that Lord God is a petty, narrow-minded guy. He's definitely not going to let you off easy. Even if he's acting all soft and reasonable right now, he's definitely cooking up some nasty tricks to get back at you behind your back!"
Its expression grew more and more serious as it went on. "Either way, we're bound to face off against the Lord God eventually. Host, you're the first person ever to figure out how to turn a book world into a real one. I think this is total fate, pointing you to become the new Lord God!"
"That Cultivation System is a total rebel. If we decide to take down the Lord God, he'll be the first one to throw his support behind us."
Yun Shu did not give a clear response to the system's suggestion. "That's a matter for the distant future. Right now, our top priority is to first rebuild Wuling City, take back the southern territories, and unify the whole realm."
The system had urged her to overthrow the Lord God more than once. It wasn't that she lacked the guts to do so, but after going through so many things in this world, she had learned that everything has two sides. Just like what she was doing now: even though her original intention was to save people, she still couldn't escape the fact that she was deceiving the people who placed their faith in her.
Or take another example: she was overthrowing the feudal system, with the original goal of making this world a better place and liberating all the people, but countless lives would still be lost in the process.
And the Lord God ruled over far more than just this one small world.
Who can say for sure whether a major event like the succession of a Lord God won't affect the countless small worlds under that Lord God's jurisdiction?
When there are still options to choose from, we must always boldly hypothesize and carefully verify before making any major decisions.
There's no room to rush to a final conclusion.
With that thought in mind, she turned to ask the Little Fox, "Lil' Sys, are Shen Yu and the others almost here?"
