Spirit Hall, underground chamber.
Bibi Dong knelt on the cold stone platform, her body trembling like a leaf in the autumn wind.
The seventh trial of the Rakshasa God Trial was tearing her body apart.
Purplish-black evil energy seeped from every pore, as if ten thousand venomous snakes were writhing and biting beneath her skin.
She bit through her lip and spat blood onto the platform, where it splashed into an eerie red lotus.
She had endured this pain for three years.
Every divine trial was a brush with death, and the Rakshasa God's malice would seize the opportunity to gnaw at her mind, showing her the sights she least wanted to see.
Like that man's face.
Her master, the former pope, Qian Xunji.
Bibi Dong's eyes snapped open, bloodshot and blazing with frenzied hatred.
Just then, a cold mechanical voice suddenly rang out in her mind.
[Ding—Host meets the conditions for a bond. The God-Level More Children More Blessings System is now online.]
Bibi Dong froze.
The agony of the Rakshasa God Trial was forcibly suppressed by an external force. Then an even more domineering power invaded her Sea of Divine Consciousness without so much as asking permission.
"What is this?"
She instinctively tried to resist, but the power gave her no chance. It tore open a fissure in her mind and forcibly poured in a vision of the future.
In the vision, Spirit Hall was engulfed in towering flames, and tens of thousands of disciples lay dead beneath the city walls.
Tang San wielded two divine artifacts, the Seagod Trident and the Asura Sword, crossing them as he struck. Divine light ripped the heavens and earth apart.
She saw her own body split in two, her blood spilling across the entire Pope's Palace.
In her final moment, her eyes were still wide open, and the name on her lips was Qian Renxue.
The vision vanished.
Bibi Dong slumped onto the stone platform, her face deathly pale, cold sweat instantly soaking through her underclothes.
She had never ruled out the possibility that Spirit Hall might lose.
But she had never imagined she would die so horribly, so alone.
Abandoned by everyone.
Those four words scraped back and forth across her heart like a dull knife, hurting so badly she almost curled in on herself.
[Host's emotional fluctuations are excessive. The system is stabilizing your Sea of Divine Consciousness.]
The mechanical voice sounded again. Bibi Dong managed to prop herself up, her voice hoarse as an old bellows. "What exactly are you?"
[This system is the God-Level More Children More Blessings System. After bonding with the host, it will issue missions. Completing them will grant rewards that can change fate. What the host just saw was a predetermined future.]
Bibi Dong fell silent.
She had been pope for years. She had encountered Titled Douluo, Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts, and even divine inheritances.
But this was the first time something had made a home inside her head.
"Change fate?" Bibi Dong gave a cold laugh. "How?"
[The only variable capable of changing fate has been identified—Lord of Creation: Su Chen. Current location: Spirit Hall's Library Pavilion. Identity: low-level librarian.]
Bibi Dong frowned.
Su Chen?
She searched her memories, but found no trace of him.
The Spirit Hall Library Pavilion was packed with useless people who hadn't met the requirements for Innate Soul Power, or who had family connections.
And one useless nobody was supposed to change her fate?
"Are you mocking me?"
Bibi Dong's voice turned cold. The pope's pressure seemed to take physical form, freezing the air in the chamber.
If this system had a body, she would have crushed it to dust by now.
[The system is incapable of deception. The host's resistance has been detected. Issuing the introductory mission.] [Mission: Go to the Library Pavilion within one hour and pour a cup of tea for Lord of Creation Su Chen.] [Reward: Remove 10% of the Rakshasa God's malice.] [Penalty for failure: Immediately suffer Soul-Devouring Pain for seventy-two hours.]
Bibi Dong's pupils shrank sharply.
Remove 10% of the Rakshasa God's malice!
She understood the weight of that reward better than anyone.
The Rakshasa God's malice was a by-product of the divine trial. It couldn't be eradicated; she could only bear it.
Half the reason she had grown so cold and paranoid was that this thing was eroding her reason day and night.
If she could truly get rid of a tenth of it...
Bibi Dong took a deep breath, her expression changing.
But the next moment, she clenched her fist, her nails almost digging into her palm.
What nonsense!
She, the pope of Spirit Hall and the most powerful woman on the continent, was supposed to pour tea for some nobody whose name she'd never even heard?
"Absolutely not!"
Bibi Dong rose and strode straight toward the chamber's exit. She would show this so-called system who was in control.
Five minutes later, Soul-Devouring Pain descended.
It was only a small warning pang, but the agony that struck her soul made Bibi Dong brace herself against the wall. All the color drained from her face in an instant.
This pain was completely different from the way the divine trial tore at her flesh. This was torment that crushed the soul itself!
She knew perfectly well that if pain this severe continued for seventy-two hours, her mind would completely collapse, leaving her a raving lunatic.
Dead silence filled the chamber.
Bibi Dong stood alone in the darkness, her back still ramrod straight, but her trembling fist betrayed her struggle.
Ten minutes later, she walked over to the wardrobe in the corner of the chamber.
Her usual papal robes and a few sets of casual clothes hung inside.
Bibi Dong reached in and took out the plain moon-white dress at the very back.
She had never worn it. Its simple design was like something an ordinary woman from the street might wear.
She changed into the dress, undid her elaborate updo, and removed her heavy papal crown.
The bronze mirror reflected an unfamiliar woman.
There was no longer any of the pope's stern majesty, none of Bibi Dong's ruthless decisiveness.
Only an ordinary woman with a peerlessly beautiful face and reddened eyes.
Bibi Dong turned away, unwilling to look any longer.
She pushed open the chamber door and slipped out under cover of night, deftly avoiding every patrol's blind spots as she headed for Spirit Hall's most remote northeastern corner.
The Library Pavilion was a three-story, dilapidated building that had been ignored for years.
Standing before its dust-covered wooden door, Bibi Dong suddenly felt that the whole thing was utterly absurd.
She, the mighty pope of Spirit Hall and a Titled Douluo, was now going to pour tea like a servant for some useless nobody.
If Qian Renxue found out, if those old fossils in the Worship Hall found out...
Bibi Dong closed her eyes and took three deep breaths.
For Spirit Hall, and for... the chance to live.
She pushed the door open.
Spirit Hall's Library Pavilion, third floor.
Su Chen dusted the last row of bookshelves and yawned.
He propped the broom against the wall, dug a bamboo lounge chair out of a cupboard, set it up by the window, and flopped onto it, blissfully at ease.
Moonlight fell across his face, accentuating features far too handsome for his own good.
His sword-straight brows swept toward his temples, his nose was high-bridged, and his gentle demeanor was almost otherworldly, like some jade-faced Bodhisattva enshrined in a temple.
Su Chen was nineteen years old, though his soul was thirty-five.
He had been transmigrated to the Douluo Continent sixteen years ago.
Sixteen years without a system or a cheat. Apart from a face handsome enough to shame both gods and men, he had nothing.
His Martial Soul was a withered branch, and his Innate Soul Power was only level one. He was as useless as they came.
At first, he'd panicked too, but eventually he'd come around. Fighting and killing didn't suit him. He was better off taking it easy.
The Spirit Hall Library Pavilion was quiet and safe, and even provided meals. It was practically paradise for a couch potato.
He'd been lounging around for sixteen years.
Just as Su Chen was about to turn over and continue dreaming of Duke Zhou, a pale blue Light Screen exploded into view in his mind without warning.
He jolted, nearly tumbling out of the lounge chair.
[Eye of Omniscience—activated.] [More Children More Blessings System—Subject 001's Status Panel] [Host: Bibi Dong] [Identity: Pope of Spirit Hall/Heir to the Rakshasa God] [Current State: Just awakened, extremely resistant] [System's Core Directive: Find and bond with "Lord of Creation" Su Chen, conceive a Creation Bloodline through intimate interactions, and obtain divine-level rewards.] [Introductory Mission: Go to the Library Pavilion within one hour and pour a cup of tea for Lord of Creation Su Chen.] [Reward: Remove 10% of the Rakshasa God's malice.] [Penalty for failure: Immediately suffer Soul-Devouring Pain for seventy-two hours.] [Host's current inner monologue: Absurd! I, the dignified pope of Spirit Hall, have to pour tea for a... menial laborer? Once I get to the bottom of you, I'll wipe you and whatever lies behind you off the face of the earth!] [Current emotions: Anger 88%/Humiliation 95%/Killing intent 75%/Favorability: -15]
Su Chen sat frozen in the lounge chair for three seconds, repeatedly checking that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.
Good grief, this panel was practically dripping with bloodlust!
Then he noticed a line of tiny text in the corner of the Light Screen.
[Lord of Creation identity confirmed. For every mission reward earned by a bonded partner of the More Children More Blessings System, you will receive a tenfold to hundredfold critical return. You need do nothing; you only need to be loved.]
Su Chen stared at the words "be loved" and fell into deep thought.
The cheat he'd waited sixteen years for had turned out to work like this?
He glanced again at the three characters "Bibi Dong" on the Light Screen, along with the constantly changing emotional readings.
Favorability: -15. Killing intent: 75%.
The pope was probably in a state not unlike a tigress chained up and forced to shake hands for an audience.
Once she finished pouring tea, she'd likely kill him on the spot.
Su Chen got up from the lounge chair and went over to the tea table, lining up the teapot and cups.
Then, after a moment's thought, he shoved the tea caddy back into the deepest corner of the cupboard.
If she was going to pour tea, she'd have to find the tea leaves first, which meant bending down and rummaging through the cupboard.
The pope bending over to rummage in a cupboard... Ahem, the point was, the longer she stayed here, the more time he had to observe her and figure out how to handle her.
A Titled Douluo with a favorability rating of -15—if he didn't watch her emotions closely, what if she really attacked him?
A faint sound of footsteps came from far away.
Su Chen immediately threw himself into the role, clearing his mind, grabbing the broom, and bending down to sweep a floor that wasn't dusty at all.
The footsteps drew closer, then finally stopped outside the door.
"Creak..."
Someone slowly pushed open the wooden door of the Library Pavilion from the outside. Moonlight streamed through the gap, stretching a slender shadow across the floor.
Su Chen looked up.
A woman in a moon-white dress stood in the doorway.
Her hair was pinned up with a wooden hairpin, her eyes were slightly reddened, and her lips were pressed into a pale, tight line. She was breathtakingly beautiful—and cold as ice.
There was no papal crown, no overwhelming soul pressure.
Yet the arrogance etched into her bones was more suffocating than any soul pressure.
On the Light Screen, her favorability jumped from -15 to -10.
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