An Interesting World

Liu Bing hadn't expected Empress Nuwa to suddenly make him the same size as them. He was still standing there in a daze when he found himself on the mahjong table.

"Okay, get down. You're not allowed on the table. You were way too tiny just now, practically a bacterium—smaller than one, even. It was hard to look at." Empress Nuwa waved him away with a disgusted expression, as if shooing a fly, and told him to get down himself.

Liu Bing obediently climbed off the table.

Once he was standing on the ground, he finally had a chance to look around. He'd been so tiny before that he couldn't even see the whole table. Now he could finally get a proper look at Wa Huang Tian—and he was immediately left feeling bewildered and disappointed.

It wasn't nearly as grand as he'd imagined. If anything, it seemed rather small. How should he put it? Liu Bing thought "pocket-sized" was the best way to describe it.

He looked around. As far as he could see, there was only a small mahjong table and a little patch of flat ground. That patch was piled high with all sorts of miscellaneous things.

Weren't these the supplies he'd bought earlier and put in his system space? Apart from those, there was nothing but endless emptiness. It was like a tiny island floating in the void.

This was Wa Huang Tian? It was way too small! It hardly seemed like a place where a person could live.

Just as he was grumbling to himself, Empress Nuwa explained, "This is just a little space I carved out especially for playing mahjong. All magic is forbidden here, so nobody can cheat."

At that, Houtu, Xuan Nu, and Sinu all looked at Empress Nuwa with odd expressions.

Nuwa seemed to sense their gazes. She immediately turned and glared at them. "What's with those looks?"

"Heh..." The three women responded in perfect unison, expressing everything they had to say with that one sound.

"What do you mean by that? Are you saying I'd cheat? If I cheated, could I really have lost fifty rounds in a row? Watch it, or I'll sue you for slander!" Nuwa stamped her foot.

Houtu smiled faintly. "We didn't say anything. Besides, if you hadn't made such a scene when you won, this little fellow wouldn't have ended up here."

Liu Bing had been enjoying the show, but when he heard why he'd wound up here, he instinctively looked at Nuwa.

Nuwa seemed to notice his doubtful, bewildered gaze. She didn't look embarrassed in the slightest. Instead, the corners of her mouth lifted into a meaningful smile. "That's right. You ended up here partly because of me. But you were lucky to come here; otherwise, you'd have been tricked to death. You should be thanking me, actually."

Nuwa chuckled, then suddenly produced a gun and pointed it at Liu Bing. "Say thank you."

Liu Bing's mouth twitched. Empress Nuwa wasn't just mischievous—she was downright playful. If she also gave herself a mouthful of buck teeth, she'd really complete the look. Still, he played along with the joke. "Thank you."

"Good. Very polite. And don't go imagining me with buck teeth, or I'll knock yours out." Nuwa nodded in satisfaction, then warned him.

Liu Bing hurriedly nodded and continued, "Empress Nuwa, could you tell me why I'd have been tricked to death? Was that system really no good?"

Compared to the system, Liu Bing trusted Nuwa more. After all, she was the Human Ancestor Saint Mother—nothing like some system. Besides, Nuwa was stronger than the system, and the system had already been dismantled.

Nuwa replied, "Of course the system is no good. It's not doing charity work. You've probably heard the saying: everything in this world comes with a price. When the system grants you a benefit, it also makes you pay the corresponding cost."

Liu Bing's heart tightened at her words, and a sense of foreboding welled up inside him. Still, he clung to a sliver of hope. "At least I only just bound myself to the system. I haven't gotten any benefits from it."

Nuwa chuckled and went on, "How naive. Do you think it only counts after you've actually enjoyed the system's benefits? In truth, the moment you decided to bind yourself to the system and answered its call, it had already begun collecting its price. And the instant you crossed worlds, everything it had put in had already been repaid."

Liu Bing's expression darkened. He'd already paid a price? Then what was it?

"Empress Nuwa, can you tell me what I paid?" Liu Bing was afraid the price might be his soul, or perhaps his luck. He didn't think he had much luck to begin with—he was just an ordinary person, so how could he have any? As for his soul, there wasn't much he could do about that either. He was just an ordinary person, after all.

But even if he was ordinary and had little luck, he was still afraid the system had taken what little he had left as payment. Plenty of couples broke up these days because one of them said the other brought them bad luck. When it came down to it, they were all afraid their luck would be affected.

"Heh, the soul and luck of an ordinary person like you aren't worth much." Nuwa saw what he was thinking and chuckled before continuing. "Actually, systems usually use someone from a world as a foothold, then break through that world's barriers to obtain the world origin they want."

"And you were a native of your world—in other words, an inseparable part of it. By taking you out, the system made a small opening in a world that had been completely sealed. Your world has probably become the system's hunting ground by now." Nuwa calmly delivered the news that chilled Liu Bing to the bone.

His binding himself to the system had brought disaster upon his own world. Liu Bing nearly broke down. He dropped to his knees before Nuwa and begged, "Empress Nuwa, can you help me save my world?"

"I can't. We don't interfere in the affairs of other worlds." Nuwa refused outright, then continued, "And don't go dropping to your knees and begging people all the time. Humanity must be self-reliant. If you want to save your world, then you—the person who caused all this—have to save it yourself. You have to take responsibility for your own mistakes."

"That's right. I have to save the world. Please send me back, Empress Nuwa." Liu Bing was so confused now that he'd completely forgotten he was just an ordinary person, and going back would be like delivering himself on a platter.

"That's more like it. Self-reliance is the conviction humanity should have. Then I'll send you back now." Nuwa nodded with satisfaction, then used Liu Bing's karmic connection to locate his world.

When Nuwa saw Liu Bing's world, she blinked. His world was rather interesting. It was a small world even more barren than an End of Dharma World—a man-made Spiritually Barren Land.

Worlds like this were the least valuable of all. Nuwa could even tell that someone had specially created that world as an absolute prison, meant to grind down certain enemies.

Only a special existence like a system could travel somewhere like that. The person who'd created the prison had clearly taken precautions against systems, carving out a vast expanse of void in the boundless Sea of Realms and placing the small world at its center. The void blocked all outsiders from observing it.

Unfortunately, that person had already died. The Void Land had gradually disappeared, leaving the small world exposed to the system. So really, it came down to cultivation not being strong enough. If it had been, there wouldn't have been any enemies—and no death.

Nuwa glanced at Liu Bing. This time, she wasn't merely giving him a casual look. She looked directly into his past life and all his reincarnations. She even examined the reincarnations of the entire world, and soon, she found something interesting.