Xia Die's Novel

Bai Mo thought for a moment, then began replying to the enthusiastic upperclasswomen one by one.

To Meng Hongchen: "So that's how it is. Thank you for clearing that up, Sister Meng. The academy's system is amazing."

To Nan Qiuqiu: "Got it. Thank you, Senior Qiuqiu. Please take care of me from now on."

To Ye Guyi: "Mm, thank you, Senior Guyi."

To Ling Luochan: "Hello, Senior Ling."

Finally, to Jing Ziyan: "Thank you for your concern, Senior Jing. If there's anything I don't understand in the future, I'll definitely ask you for advice."

After replying to the upperclasswomen's messages one by one, Bai Mo began exploring this phone from a supernatural world with a long-forgotten sense of excitement.

The feeling was too wondrous, as though an invisible bridge had instantly connected him to memories of his long-sealed past life.

Chatting, searching, downloading apps... Every familiar operation immersed him in a nostalgia that was almost homesickness.

He soon saw a dazzling array of game icons and novel apps in the app store.

It left him deeply moved. For one brief moment, he even thought he had never transmigrated at all, that he had merely experienced a long, vivid, absurd dream.

Yet once he opened those apps, the overwhelming unfamiliarity pulled him back to reality. Whether games or novels, every title, cover, and piece of content was something he had never seen or heard of.

He opened a novel app and discovered that its content came from all sorts of sources.

Most were works uploaded by students and teachers from the academy. Some were "local specialties" brought from their respective worlds, while others were original creations written in their spare time.

Before long, an author with the pen name Moonlit Flower Wilds captured Bai Mo's full attention.

Several novels were listed under this author's name, every one of them astonishingly popular. Their comment sections were packed with readers' tearful, desperate pleas for updates.

But this author also had one fatal flaw—she seemed to be a habitual digger of holes who never filled them. Every single one of her works, without exception, abruptly bore a "To Be Continued" tag at the end.

Even so, a huge number of readers both loved and hated her. They cursed her for abandoning updates while still helplessly showering her talent with praise and points.

Driven by curiosity, Bai Mo opened her most popular work.

This author's writing style was remarkably distinctive. Her subjects were mostly gorgeous yet sorrowful fairy tales, prose poems brimming with fantasy, and a kind of death-aesthetic novel he had never encountered before, one that portrayed death as beautiful and moving.

The stories' themes also always revolved around the healing of life and death, dazzling seas of flowers in the underworld, and the forgotten memories of departed souls.

That delicate, ethereal, slightly melancholy prose seemed to possess magic. Even Bai Mo found himself immersed beyond escape after reading only a few chapters.

Still, amid his fascination, he could not shake the feeling that the two protagonists—Hurt-Pain Bro and Blazing Sun Bro—gave him an intense sense of déjà vu.

Especially when he read that Blazing Sun Bro, cheerful and sunlike by nature, had a lifelong hobby of collecting items with yellow-and-purple color schemes, Bai Mo's mouth twitched uncontrollably.

This author who loved dropping updates... couldn't possibly be the one he was thinking of, could she?

He suddenly recalled Natsuki Minamiya casually mentioning that Golden Scions existed in the academy.

He was almost certain that the author known as Moonlit Flower Wilds was most likely Xia Die—the reclusive princess, the demigod Titan who wielded the authority of death.

Bai Mo was no longer surprised by this bizarre and fantastical world.

He was merely curious how the Golden Scions, whose essence was closer to electronic signals, had ascended from electrical signals and arrived in this world.

But those questions were far too distant for him, not answers he could pursue at present.

Rather than worry about matters involving gods clashing with gods, he might as well think about what kind of first soul skill he would obtain tomorrow.

At that thought, an uncontrollable anticipation and heat surged through Bai Mo's heart.

After all, it would be a genuine supernatural ability that belonged solely to him, something he had never controlled before. Any ordinary person from the mundane world of his past life would have been thrilled and excited by it.

Having touched such a familiar electronic device again after so long, Bai Mo became completely absorbed in it.

Curled up on the soft sofa, he opened a novel app called Fantasy Library and was soon captivated by the strange and fantastical stories within.

Fufu also sensed his concentration. She played with the empty cola can for a while, then, finding it boring, jumped onto the sofa and rested her fluffy little head on his leg. Her golden vertical pupils followed the scrolling words on the screen with great interest.

One man and one beast became immersed in the world of stories, forgetting even the passage of time.

Only when the artificial sun Helios, suspended above the academy's dome, slowly began to sink did its blazing white radiance shift into a warm orange-yellow, bathing the entire room in soft afterglow.

Although Helios allowed the academy to maintain endless day or endless night, the academy's administrators had still set it to follow the external celestial cycle of sunrise and sunset in order to better mirror the laws of nature.

As evening drew near, the hollow feeling in his stomach finally pulled Bai Mo from the sea of words.

Fufu beside him felt hungry as well. She stretched out a little paw and gently pawed at his arm, making urging "Fufu" sounds in her throat.

This was no longer Blackstone Village. She could no longer sneak out on her own to hunt wild prey.

Bai Mo put down his phone, stretched lazily, then scooped Fufu into his arms.

"Come on, let's go eat."

He opened the map on his phone and looked up the cafeteria's location.

Sanctuary Academy had cafeterias open to students free of charge. They only needed to swipe their student cards to enjoy all the food inside without limit.

As Bai Mo stepped out through the doors of Villa A-07, a coincidence occurred.

The equally smooth metal doors of the neighboring Villa A-08 silently slid open to either side, and a little girl around his age stepped out.

Bai Mo glanced over instinctively, and a flicker of amazement flashed through his eyes.

What an adorable, soft little girl.

She looked only six or seven years old. Her silky light-blue hair was tied into playful, cute twin tails that swayed gently behind her as she moved.

Her skin was snow-white and delicate, while her large light-blue eyes shimmered like the purest sapphires. Yet her gaze was somewhat timid, carrying the nervousness and unease of meeting someone for the first time.

She wore a pristine white JK uniform. Beneath her pleated skirt were slender legs wrapped in matching white stockings, and the tiny black leather shoes on her feet had been polished to a shine.

She looked like an exquisite, fragile porcelain doll that had stepped out of a fairy tale.