Failing the Tribulation

[Placeholder for brain...]

[This novel doesn't require too much brainpower, just hope everyone enjoys reading ♥]

Beginning of the text:

Shen Mo opened his eyes in a daze. A sharp pain on his forehead gradually brought him to his senses, and he reached up to touch it.

"Bandages?"

Wasn't he undergoing the Heavenly Tribulation? Was this failing the Heavenly Tribulation?

As a cultivator who had climbed from an ordinary person to his current height, Shen Mo was no stranger to injuries. Because he retained his previous habits, he was quite familiar with this stuff.

Yet later on he didn't use them much anymore. Compared to the healing of a wound, he preferred watching the burst of fresh blood.

That flowing sensation proved he was still alive, but... why was he still alive?

Why make him live?

Depressive thoughts stimulated Shen Mo's still-confused brain. His respiration grew hurried, and face after face of tragic death involuntarily surfaced before his eyes.

His fingers uncontrollably pressed down at some point onto the wound that still carried a distinct stinging sensation, the force growing greater and greater until a warm, sticky feel spread to his fingertips.

Endless darkness tugged at his soul, dragging it downward, suffocatingly painful.

Just die. He should have died together with them long ago, that way he could be liberated forever...

The feeling of constantly gaining and losing was truly too painful, he couldn't take it anymore...

Suddenly, a refined voice emerged from his memories like a pool of warm spring water: "Live on. Perhaps someone hopes you live, or perhaps their existence is for the sake of letting you live. If you live, those who love you will all feel very happy."

Shen Mo's dual pupils instantly regained clarity. Oxygen poured in from his throat, causing him to involuntarily take a few deep breaths and quickly adjust his state.

He had lost control again.

Lowering his hand from his head, Shen Mo rubbed the red, moist liquid stained on his fingertips. Remembering the sound of someone in his mind just now, he gave a light chuckle: "You really are like a ghost that refuses to disperse."

Yet afterwards, his expression grew gloomy again, and he muttered to himself: "This time it wasn't that I didn't want to live, you can't blame me."

After all, a matter like the Heavenly Tribulation wasn't something he could manipulate either.

He wondered if that good friend of his would collect his corpse. Bah, under the lightning tribulation it seemed there was no corpse left for him to collect.

He would probably feel sad, right? Come to think of it, his last glance seemed to have seen him too—it must have been an illusion.

After all, back then his heavenly lightning tribulation hadn't completely finished yet, and approaching was tantamount to courting death.

Thinking of this, Shen Mo suddenly reacted.

So, didn't he fail the Heavenly Tribulation? Logically speaking, his soul should have scattered into nothingness right now, turning into a pile of charcoal.

Shen Mo raised his eyes in puzzlement to survey his surroundings.

An unfamiliar environment, an unfamiliar place.

Where on earth had this lightning blasted him?!

Just as Shen Mo was wondering, an unfamiliar electronic voice suddenly popped up in his head.

[Ding! Transaction complete. Congratulations to the host for successfully returning to the original world. Memory loading...]

[...10%]

[...20%]

...

[99%]

[Warning, warning, insufficient energy, unknown obstruction encountered, memory loading failed! Activating backup plot memories.]

[Activation successful, transmitting memories...]

Shen Mo didn't hear the loading and transmitting parts very clearly; vaguely, it seemed to be some memories.

However, Shen Mo didn't feel like he was lacking any memories. He felt his head was all fuzzy right now, and the sequelae of excessive blood loss caused by his self-harming behavior just now were only fully permeating through at this moment, causing him to find it somewhat difficult to tell whether these sounds truly existed.

Still, he shouldn't be severe enough to hallucinate, right? And such a long string of hallucinations at that, with that kind of combined effect of auditory hallucinations and a sense of imagery.

Before Shen Mo could think more, he felt something being forcibly shoved into his head, swelling and aching.

A few sporadic images flashed past rapidly in his mind. Shen Mo closed his eyes to soothe the discomfort, and a moment later, he gradually understood what was happening now.

Good news: it wasn't an hallucination.

Bad news: it seemed he couldn't die again.

Shen Mo let out a regretful sigh and first sorted out his current situation.

His present situation was somewhat like possessing a body and being reborn; the master of this body was already dead, and for some unknown reason, his soul had entered it.

Although he had suffered extremely heavy injuries under the Heavenly Tribulation, his soul power was still exceptionally formidable. After completely merging with this body, the powerful impact caused this body's functions to recover once more.

Although the injuries on his body were not fully healed, it was no longer that half-dead state from before.

Shen Mo rubbed his temples with a headache. Since he was alive, then alive he would stay.

Because of someone's reason and out of sheer habit, he could control himself not to actively seek death.

The images constantly flashing in his mind told him that he had transmigrated into a book—transmigrated into a doomsday reverse-harem novel featuring one female protagonist and multiple male leads.

As the female protagonist's younger brother, he acted recklessly and stirred up trouble in the early stage, tangled endlessly and made a nuisance of himself in the middle stage, and even grew to like the male lead in the later stage, continuously harming the female protagonist for his sake.

In the end, the male leads could bear it no longer, and behind the female protagonist's back, they covertly did away with him.

At the current time point, the original owner was supposed to collect his boxed meal, but unfortunately an accident happened and his own soul transmigrated over.

Recalling those foolish things the original owner had done, several black lines crossed Shen Mo's temples, and he was speechless to the extreme.

From start to finish, he couldn't see any logic behind the original owner doing these things from the images; could it be simply because he was stupid?

Being so stupid, wouldn't it be better to just die?

Fine, he was already dead now.

At this moment, a strange odor broke his train of thoughts. Shen Mo sniffed around his surroundings and discovered that this smell actually originated from his own body.

He raised his own arm and brought it close to take a sniff, almost vomiting.

How long had this body gone without a bath? Although the wound was treated very well and there wasn't much bloody smell, the hard-to-conceal corpse stench and sweat stench were simply unbearably stinky.

Even though this was a common phenomenon in the doomsday, it didn't prevent him from being utterly disgusted.

Shen Mo thought about it carefully; the wounds on his body right now should have been treated by the female protagonist. Although the original owner was bad, the female protagonist doted on this younger brother exceptionally.

Yet the female protagonist was a girl after all, so it was impossible for her to help the original owner wipe his body down. As for those male leads, they avoided the original owner like the plague, let alone serving him.

A trace of disgust flashed in Shen Mo's eyes. A person like the original owner, back when he was in the Cultivation Realm, would have been pinched to death the very moment he started jumping around.

He truly admired the female and male leads' forbearance for keeping this scourge alive until now.

Recalling the images from his mind just now of the original owner wearing a face identical to his own to do those things, Shen Mo shuddered all over with goosebumps.

Terrifying! Fortunately, those things the original owner wanted to do never succeeded, otherwise he really wouldn't mind going to die once more; even his good friend coming wouldn't stop him.

However, although they didn't succeed, those images were still enough to make Shen Mo—who suffered from severe mental mysophobia—feel uncomfortable all over.

At this very moment, both physically and psychologically, he had an urgent desire to take a bath first and clean up.

Thinking this, Shen Mo dragged his body, which had just recovered a bit, and tiredly got down from the bed.

The body that had lain for several days left him powerless; his legs were as weak as cotton, and with a stagger, his body swayed along, managing to steady himself only by leaning against the wall.

With something tied around his head, Shen Mo always felt rather uncomfortable.

Thinking he would take a bath in a moment, he directly raised a hand and untied it.

Looking at the bandage stained with some blood and medicine in his hand, Shen Mo casually tossed it into the trash can beside the bed.

The bandage still looked very new and might have been changed not long ago, stained with large patches of bright red blood from his earlier actions. Free from its restraint, his already-grown-out black hair hung down casually.

The messy bangs obscured Shen Mo's brows and eyes, making it impossible to see his expression at the moment; anyway, it definitely wasn't pleasant.

After recovering for a while, Shen Mo let go of the hand supporting the wall, stretched the joints all over his body, and then raised his arms to stretch a huge, lazy stretch.

Hearing the crisp cracking sounds emitted by all the bones in his whole body, Shen Mo felt the heavy sensation of his body finally disappear completely at this instant.

"Comfortable~"

Shen Mo narrowed his eyes and sighed softly, continuing to stretch his arms and move around for a while. Only after he thoroughly familiarized himself with this body did he begin searching his memories for the layout of this villa.

This villa was divided into three floors: the first floor stored supplies, the second floor was where several male leads lived, and the third floor was the safest. Due to some "special" reasons, currently only the female protagonist and the two of them lived there.

After the doomsday, resources were precious, and the plumbing and power systems had long since collapsed and broken down—some cut off, some stopped—with many people not even having water to drink, let alone the luxury of taking a bath.

Naturally, as the protagonist group, they were obviously different from others.

He remembered that in the plot, apart from "himself" as the dead weight, everyone else in the protagonist group had awakened supernatural abilities.

Among them, one male lead had awakened both ice and water dual-element abilities, and another had awakened a lightning ability, which happened to solve the electricity and water usage problems within the villa.

Still, in the early stage the abilities hadn't risen yet, and to conserve resources, it seemed only the second floor, which had the largest number of people, had a bathroom that could be used normally.

Yet the problem Shen Mo now faced was that the original owner had offended every male lead equally, and therefore the protagonist group had specifically made a rule strictly forbidding him from going to the second floor.

If he violated it, they would rather disregard the female protagonist's opposing opinion and drive him out.

The original owner still wanted to hook up with the male leads, so naturally he didn't dare continue stirring up trouble, suddenly behaving himself for several days with his range of activities restricted to the first and third floors.

Until he was plotted against and injured in the end.

Strictly speaking, however, it was the male leads who had made the move first, which counted as a breach of contract first.

Shen Mo, possessing a god's-eye view, knew this through the plot, but he had no evidence either; those male leads had wiped their little tails very cleanly.

Presently, though, Shen Mo didn't care about these things at all. If he were the male leads, he might have done even more excessive things—the kind that cut the weeds and eradicated the roots.

Anyway, he wasn't the original owner. If the male leads still couldn't tolerate him next, at worst he would break away from the team and casually find a place to hunker down and survive for a while first.

Once his injuries were more or less healed, he could support himself too; after all, he hadn't spent his time in vain in the Cultivation Realm.

If worse came to worst and he died, then he died; anyway, no one would stop him here anymore.

As for whether he could go to the second floor, Shen Mo couldn't care less about that—he was definitely going to take this bath. At this point, he would rather be kicked out cleanly and bitten to death by zombies than stay here being this filthy all over.