Fairy, Please Listen to My Explanation

Chapter 1: Ancient Temple in the Deep Mountains

“Finally completed all achievements.”

As the boss fell, the exhausted Xu Yuan leaned back in his gaming chair, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the screen where the credits rolled after the final cutscene.

After over a month of sleepless nights, he had finally completed Ancient Origin—a game hailed as the most narratively complex domestic title—with every route, every ending unlocked.

As a 2.5D pixel art game, Ancient Origin featured remarkably rich storytelling.

Thousands of choices, twenty-five branching storylines, and dozens of wildly different endings ensured that each playthrough offered a fresh experience.

“With the current technology, I guess only 2.5D pixel art games can handle storylines of this scale.”

After carefully watching every scene of the credits, Xu Yuan turned off his computer with satisfaction. Fighting his drowsiness, he went to the bathroom to wash up before climbing into bed, habitually reflecting on the game’s plot.

“It’s finally over. Shame about the Grand Chancellor, though. In all the endings where he becomes the final boss, the writers just kill him off with cheap plot devices.”

“And once you get the hang of the mechanics, the difficulty drops off a cliff.”

“Yawn.”

“So tired… Can’t think anymore. Gotta help out at the old man’s company tomorrow. He’s probably going to chew me out after slacking off for over a month.”

Muttering to himself, exhaustion pulled him into a deep slumber.

***

BOOM—

Lightning flashed and cracked as torrential rain poured down from the heavens.

Amidst the crackling of flames from a nearby fire, Xu Yuan painfully opened his eyes in a state of confusion.

“Is it raining? Ugh, my head hurts… I think there’s some painkillers in the medicine cabinet.”

The splitting headache made Xu Yuan instinctively try to get up to find a painkiller in his half-dazed state, but when his pupils finally focused, the dim surroundings made him freeze in confusion.

Where is this?

Where’s my home?

The once-familiar ceiling was gone, replaced by the unfamiliar sight of a dilapidated, abandoned Buddhist temple.

Old, decaying wooden beams and pillars.

A stone Buddha statue sitting on a lotus pedestal, missing one arm.

A bonfire flickering in the cold wind.

And…

A woman in black, her face veiled in thin gauze, sitting quietly beside the bonfire.

The rhythmic patter of rain outside was the only sound in the eerie stillness.

He closed his eyes for two seconds, then opened them again.

Nothing changed.

“…”

Xu Yuan tried to comprehend what was happening to him.

But after pondering for a while, he remained clueless.

The only thing he could confirm was that he seemed to have transmigrated.

However, the source of his headache wasn’t from the aftereffects of his memories blended with the original body’s memories, but rather from a physically swollen bump on the back of his head.

This transmigration came with no memories, leaving Xu Yuan utterly unfamiliar with everything around him. His gaze scanned the dilapidated Buddhist temple.

Torrential rain cascaded like beaded curtains from the eaves along the old tiles, splashing ripples into the puddles outside the temple. Beyond the illumination of the bonfire, the temple entrance opened into an abyss of impenetrable darkness.

Like most people, Xu Yuan had fantasized about transmigration, but that was just wishful thinking.

He had a clear understanding of himself—without any special abilities or golden fingers, he would probably not survive past the third chapter in a certain literary genre.

And the current gloomy environment felt eerily similar to the settings in those very stories where he wouldn’t last long.

The winter rain was bone-chilling, and waves of cold kept washing over him.

Using the faint light of the campfire, Xu Yuan’s gaze repeatedly swept the room.

The temple hall was spacious. Now that its days of glory and incense were gone, the once-majestic Buddha seemed sinister in the dim hall.

After scanning the room, Xu Yuan’s gaze finally settled on the only other living being in the temple besides himself.

The black-clothed woman sat quietly with closed eyes by the bonfire, a sword lying flat beside her.

The dancing firelight illuminated her snow-white skin. A black veil covered her face, and her long, straight black hair cascaded down her back like a waterfall. The cold wind occasionally blew her black robe, vaguely outlining her graceful figure.

A rainy night, an abandoned temple in the mountains, a beautiful woman—these elements combined made it difficult for Xu Yuan not to let his imagination run wild with strange ideas.

In the complete silence, Xu Yuan slowly rose to his feet.

In the years he had spent helping with the family business, his old man had shown him many people and things—both the clean and the unclean.

Though the surroundings were somewhat eerie, after coming to terms with reality, Xu Yuan knew he needed to do something.

His current body seemed to be injured, and his clothes were thin. At the very least, he needed to sit by the bonfire; the chill of the winter rain was already freezing him.

Xu Yuan fixed his eyes on the woman and slowly walked towards her, step by step.

The woman in black seemed oblivious to his footsteps, continuing to sit by the fire with her eyes closed, as if meditating.

The thin veil couldn’t conceal her elegant aura. She was breathtakingly beautiful in her stillness.

Just as he drew near, Xu Yuan’s pupils suddenly contracted.

On the ground beside the woman lay a huge arm that caught his attention.

His footsteps faltered, his heart pounding, but then quickly calmed down.

Although the arm was lifelike, it wasn’t human. It had the texture of stone.

He glanced back at the enormous Buddha statue he had seen earlier, the one missing an arm.

It must have broken off from that, he figured.

Using the stone arm as a seat, Xu Yuan stared at the woman’s flawless face hidden behind the thin veil.

After a few seconds of silence in the desolate cold wind,

The black-clothed woman suddenly opened her ink-dark, cold eyes and looked toward Xu Yuan.

Suddenly,

BOOM—

A thunderclap ripped through the pitch-black night sky, illuminating everything inside and outside the dilapidated temple.

The flash of light was fleeting, but in the instant he met the woman’s gaze, Xu Yuan’s peripheral vision caught something outside the temple.

Corpses.

In the brief illumination of the lightning, Xu Yuan saw that the puddles in the clearing outside the temple’s main entrance were filled with mangled corpses. Viscous blood mixed with the rainwater and flowed freely.

Xu Yuan’s still-foggy mind instantly cleared, his heart beginning to race uncontrollably, and his hands, hidden in his sleeves, trembled.

No matter how shady his family business is, they aren’t operating in the Golden Triangle; a scene of bodies strewn everywhere was somewhat beyond his capacity to handle.

Biting his tongue hard, Xu Yuan tried to suppress his increasingly panicked mind, attempting to rationally analyze the situation before him.

The pain from his tongue finally calmed Xu Yuan somewhat. He forcibly steadied his breathing and stared at the black-clothed woman before him.

The lightning disappeared, and the temple entrance was once again swallowed by darkness, shrouded in gloom.

But the scene he had witnessed was already etched into Xu Yuan’s mind.

Every corpse outside, each clutching a weapon, wore the same uniform. Though the causes of their death varied, their feet were almost all pointed towards the temple.

This meant they came from the same place and, for some unknown reason, had tried to break into this temple.

The glimpse of this scene made Xu Yuan think of many possibilities. He looked somewhat stiffly at the woman beside him.

He realized he seemed to be sitting next to an extraordinary—and likely dangerous—woman.

There were only the two of them in the temple. His current body was visibly frail; the corpses outside, those who had tried to break in, could only be this woman’s doing.

Outside, the dark sky rumbled with continuous thunder. The cold wind relentlessly penetrated the broken temple gate. Inside, a woman in black, her clothing as dark as ink, and a young man in luxurious silk sat around a bonfire, while a bloody mess was hidden in the shadows beyond the temple’s gate.

In the silence,

“You’re blocking my path.”

The woman’s voice was as cold as ice, calm and detached.

“…”

Xu Yuan was taken aback.

He was blocking her?

Then he realized that the woman in black wasn’t looking at him, but at something behind him.

Behind him?

Doubt rose in his heart.

He had observed his surroundings earlier. The temple hall was large, but from this his observation, there was nothing behind him except the enormous, armless Buddha statue.

Driven by curiosity, Xu Yuan subconsciously glanced back.

And with this one look, a chill instantly shot from his tailbone to his brain.

Xu Yuan saw a pair of legs.

Shins as tall as he was standing.

His gaze moved up bit by bit.

That huge stone Buddha had somehow silently moved from its lotus pedestal to stand right behind him.

Its cracked, eerie face, hidden in the shadows of the roof, seemed to be smiling as it looked down upon him and the woman beside him.

“…”

His mind went blank for a moment.

Science, which he had always believed in, couldn’t explain the phenomenon before him. Fear of the unknown instantly exploded in Xu Yuan’s heart, no longer containable.

Xu Yuan’s breathing quickened uncontrollably. The eerily gigantic Buddha statue, seven or eight meters tall, was uncomfortably close. His body stiffened as if he had fallen into an icy abyss.

After several seconds of stunned silence, Xu Yuan forced his rigid body to move aside.

He… he had to get out of the way quickly.

His heart pounded so violently it felt like it would burst from his chest. This eerie scene had already exceeded his comprehension and tolerance threshold.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the woman in black.

With the giant Buddha approaching, the veiled woman in black hadn’t stood up but remained sitting quietly in place. She hadn’t even picked up the sword beside her. Her flawless face showed no change in her cold expression; she merely calmly observed the Buddha statue.

The woman’s calm and composure gradually gave Xu Yuan a sense of security.

While shrinking into a corner of the hall to calm his fear, he carefully watched the Buddha and the woman in the center of the hall.

Thankfully, this woman appeared very powerful.

Xu Yuan thought of the corpses outside the temple.

What had frightened him moments ago now became Xu Yuan’s reassurance.

Xu Yuan couldn’t imagine facing that bizarre ‘Living Buddha’ alone in this remote mountain temple.

The woman and the Buddha remained in silence for two seconds as a chilling, murderous aura slowly spread. Meanwhile, Xu Yuan took the opportunity to carefully retreat to a corner of the dilapidated temple.

Suddenly,

Suddenly, the eerie ‘Living Buddha’ moved.

Its lightning fast strike didn’t match his enormous form at all. With a swiftness Xu Yuan could barely register, its giant palm slammed down.

BOOM—!

The temple hall and ground simultaneously shook violently. The giant palm struck the ground, extinguishing the bonfire—the only light in the room.

Xu Yuan’s vision instantly plunged into darkness.

Without light, sound became the only highlight within the darkness. A series of massive tremors and rumbles blended together, rising and falling one after another.

Listening to the commotion coming from nearby, Xu Yuan’s heart raced in his corner, his fingernails digging into his palms without him even noticing.

Suddenly,

SWOOSH!!!

A clear sword hum resonated throughout the temple.

A blue sword light flashed once in the darkness.

Then everything instantly returned to silence.

CRACK— BOOM!

A thunderclap and lightning flash illuminated everything in the hall.

Xu Yuan finally saw what had happened.

The woman’s black clothes remained unstained by any dust. With a calm expression, she sheathed her sword, while the head of the giant “Living Buddha” she had faced was nowhere to be seen.

While Xu Yuan was still stunned,

THUD—

A dark shape crashed down in front of him, sending up a cloud of dust that made Xu Yuan frown and take a step back.

It was the giant head of the ‘Living Buddha.’

And the pair of benevolent-looking eyes on the head were now staring at him with a ghostly gleam.

Seeing this, Xu Yuan instinctively wanted to hide behind the black-clothed woman; this kind of eerie thing was too dangerous.

After the thunder, everything returned to darkness.

Xu Yuan silently considered his words while walking toward where the woman had been, thinking about what to ask her.

At that moment,

A weak whisper came from the darkness before him.

“Third Young Master.”

“Run.”