After Clearing the Level

"A big cheat counts as a small cheat, and a small cheat doesn't count as a cheat at all."

"Besides, with a boss this overpowered, how else are you supposed to play without hacking?"

Chen Mo leaned back in his gaming chair, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the screen.

The game he was playing was called Absolute Immortal, a domestic single-player title that blended action, cultivation, simulation, strategy, and puzzle-solving.

It had been on the market for less than a month, yet he had already poured nearly three hundred hours into it.

To be fair, the game itself was of high quality.

The plot was grand with intricate, overlapping storylines; the gameplay, while arguably a patchwork of genres, had its own merits; and the art design was top-tier, with the characterization of the female leads leaving a deep impression on the players.

It only had one fatal flaw: the stat balancing was abysmal.

The villain characters were all ridiculously strong.

Especially the final boss—

[Imperial Noble Consort of Great Yuan · Ten Thousand Li of Frost and Snow Clearing the Cold Heavens · Yu Youhan].

When you finally reached the last stage after enduring countless hardships, facing her gave you the helpless feeling of, "You've mastered the basic controls, now try to kill a god."

The massive gap in stats could no longer be bridged by skill alone.

"Isn't this just pure malice toward the player?"

Chen Mo, having suffered enough, decided to fight fire with fire.

As a programmer with seven years of experience who had been "optimized" out of a major tech firm and was currently unemployed, he spent half a day writing a cheat program to tweak the game's parameters.

This included, but was not limited to: damage immunity, status effect immunity, absolute accuracy, and one-hit kills...

With all buffs stacked.

He began to torture Yu Youhan in return.

Every strike was ablaze with fire, killing her the moment she appeared, pinning her to the ground and grinding her into the dust over a hundred times...

"Satisfying."

Chen Mo felt a sense of mental clarity and physical relief.

Just then, a few lines of text popped up on the screen:

[Yu Youhan's "Submission" has reached the threshold.]

[Hidden event unlocked: Jade Lock Deep Palace · Spring Stains the Phoenix Bed.]

"There's a hidden event?"

"And it was hidden that deep?"

Chen Mo was full of question marks.

Suddenly, the scene shifted to a luxurious and magnificent bedchamber.

The perspective switched to first-person.

Walking into the inner room and pulling back the brocade curtains, a beautiful figure lay on the embroidered bed carved with phoenixes.

A garment as thin as a cicada's wing barely covered her charms; she was plump and jade-like, with delicate skin and a graceful frame, her body tightly bound by a Red Silk that accentuated her curves in a heart-stopping way.

Her cheeks were flushed, she bit her lip, and her legs rubbed together restlessly.

Her moist eyes gazed into the lens, filled with seven parts humiliation and three parts resentment.

"???"

"Holy crap, this is way too lewd!"

"No wonder it was hidden so deep... but this doesn't fit her character design at all!"

In the original plot, Yu Youhan was a cold-blooded, ruthless female demon who killed without blinking!

Her words were law, she held the power of kings, and though she resided in the harem, her influence swayed the entire imperial court!

Her cultivation had reached a realm that defied gods and ghosts!

How could such a powerful woman ever adopt such a submissive, yielding posture?

"This kind of behavior, ignoring the plot and characterization to deliberately cater to male players, is a serious case of pandering to otaku—it would be sentenced to death on XHS and WB..."

"What? I'm an otaku?"

"Never mind then."

Chen Mo stood up to adjust his posture.

He decided to grab a Coke from the fridge, preparing to critique the scene thoroughly.

But as he took his first step, he accidentally tripped over a power strip cord, lost his balance, and fell forward, his head slamming solidly against the corner of the desk.

Thud!

A dull sound echoed.

Chen Mo's vision went black, and he completely lost consciousness.

Great Yuan Kingdom, Heaven Capital City.

The Cold Firmament Palace was brightly lit.

A palace maid walked into the inner chamber with quick, small steps, bowing her head as she said, "Highness, the scented water is ready. This servant is here to assist you in changing and bathing."

A long silence followed.

At this hour, the Highness would usually have finished her cultivation and gone to the Begonia Pool to bathe her jade-like body.

Today, however, things seemed a bit different...

The maid gathered her courage and looked up.

A woman in plain, casual robes sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion.

That face, usually as cold as frost, was now incredibly vivid:

Her thin lips were slightly parted, her phoenix eyes had lost their focus, and her expression was a mix of bewilderment and shock!

"Highness?"

The maid shivered.

Though she did not know the reason, for the Highness to display such a look meant that something of monumental importance must have occurred!

"This... what on earth is going on?"

Yu Youhan's moth-like brows were tightly knitted.

Just moments ago, she had been sitting in meditation when her consciousness suddenly blurred.

At her level of cultivation, she had long since outgrown the need for sleep, yet she had involuntarily fallen into a "dream."

In the dream, a man whose face she could not clearly see had charged into the imperial palace alone and defeated her with ease.

—This was simply a fantasy.

Given Yu Youhan's cultivation, there were only a handful of experts in the entire Great Yuan who could catch her eye.

Yet, before that mysterious man, she felt like a child with no strength to truss a chicken; all her divine abilities had lost their effect, unable to cause him any harm at all!

The opponent's plain, unremarkable blade had easily pierced through her Dao body!

It was even more terrifying than the Nirvana Lightning Tribulation!

"My Dao heart is clear and bright, immune to all evil; it is impossible for me to be swayed by illusions."

"Could it be that something went wrong with my cultivation, giving rise to an inner demon?"

Beyond this, Yu Youhan could think of no other answer.

The outcome had been decided.

Yet, that "inner demon" did not stop there.

First, it used some method to restore her state to its peak, then it struck her down with a blade, only to restore her again... repeating this cycle over and over, seemingly enjoying it.

It was clearly toying with her!

Preposterous! When had she ever suffered such humiliation?

Yet, no matter how many methods she tried, even sealing her divine sense, she could not escape the dream.

Under the repeated "ravaging," Yu Youhan's mindset shifted from anger to unwillingness, then to frustration... and finally, she became numb.

"Fine, let it be."

"I shall treat it as a nightmare."

She could neither win nor escape.

Yu Youhan simply gave up resisting and completely let go.

After an unknown amount of time, the nightmare finally ended, and as her consciousness returned, she felt as if she had lived through a lifetime.

"Hm?"

Before she could even breathe a sigh of relief, she suddenly sensed something.

She looked down, and her pupils constricted sharply!

A red light appeared out of thin air, rapidly spreading across her body, winding through her arms, across her chest, and along her inner thighs... like a piece of Red Silk, it bound her tightly! And the way it was tied was incredibly shameful!

"What is this?!"

She reached out to touch it, but felt nothing but empty air.

Her divine sense swept over it, yet found nothing unusual.

Yu Youhan turned her head to look at the palace maid standing to the side and asked, "Can you see anything on This Highness's body?"

"Ah?"

The palace maid was startled by the sudden question.

After hesitating for a moment, she tentatively replied, "The Highness is... is a bit beautiful?"

"..."

"Anything else?"

"Aside from a beauty that puts the moon to shame and eclipses the flowers, the Highness possesses a heart of seven apertures, combining beauty with wisdom, talent with temperament. You are the number one extraordinary woman of the Great Yuan..."

"That will do, you may withdraw."

Yu Youhan rubbed her temples.

"This servant obeys."

As if granted a reprieve, the palace maid hurried out.

In that brief moment, the "Red Silk" that had bound her body had vanished, leaving only a faint red mark on her left wrist.

Yu Youhan's eyes darkened.

Although others could not see it, she was certain that this was absolutely no hallucination!

Furthermore, it was inextricably linked to that "Inner Demon"!

"The Inner Demon is born from delusions, impermanent and unfixed, possessing ten thousand forms."

"To the greedy, the Inner Demon is a shackle forged of gold; to the lustful, the Inner Demon is a web of passion woven from beauty; to those obsessed with power, the Inner Demon is a blade fashioned from authority..."

"But why is This Highness's Inner Demon a man?"

"And why is he so... base?"

Yu Youhan could not fathom the reason.