Crossing a World to Seize a Fairy's Destiny

"Midnight sharp, something's coming out from under this flagstone!"

This sentence was spoken by Li Lao'er, the current abbot of Willow Grove Temple, when he headed down the mountain.

Lin Xiaosu didn't believe a single punctuation mark of it.

He was a college graduate who had received higher education, and a "potential-tier" civil servant who had already taken the civil service exam once and was currently undergoing a "second round of preparation." Could he believe that something would crawl out from inside a solid slab of bluestone?

Yet what of it?

He had promised Li Lao'er to keep watch at Willow Grove Temple for him for a single night!

The origin of the matter was that Li Lao'er's wife had fallen ill with her recurring condition, and whenever this aunt fell ill, she would go to Lin Xiaosu's mother to cry and pour out her grievances. Once she started, she simply couldn't stop, and today twenty years later she could still recount how Li Lao'er had peeked at Feng Widow of the same village bathing back when he was young in such tearful and vivid detail.

Lin Xiaosu agreed to send the second uncle down the mountain out of neighborly consideration, because this second aunt always gave him good things to eat, and of course also because her daughter Hu Ya had grown up playing barefoot with him since they were little.

Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that while he arrived just fine, he wouldn't be able to go back!

The second uncle said today was the "Celestial Change Day," and someone had to stay in the Taoist temple to suppress the "Mystic Gate." Otherwise, when midnight struck, something would crawl out from beneath this very spot.

It wasn't that Lin Xiaosu hadn't voiced objections, but he couldn't withstand how truly stubborn the old man was.

Thinking of Hu Ya's increasingly generous chest, Lin Xiaosu finally had a rush of blood to his head, patted his chest, and said, "Second uncle, stop agonizing over it. Won't it do if I stay and watch the temple for you?"

With this promise, the second uncle happily went home to soothe his wife's trauma from twenty years ago, leaving Lin Xiaosu alone to flutter desolately in the wind atop the mountain peak...

Fortunately, the second uncle was a man with a daughter.

The moment he stepped down the mountain, his daughter stepped right up it.

She brought Lin Xiaosu his dinner in a basket.

Lin Xiaosu used to have psychological trauma regarding Hu Ya's dinners. Why was that?

This girl was utterly eccentric. She caught rabbits on the mountain, felt around for frogs in the paddy fields, yanked big snakes out of rock crevices by their tails, and poked wild boars in the ass with huge sticks, poking sows until they avoided her like ghosts and boars until they broke out in a sweat of shame...

Without exception, all these game animals ended up in her pot, and Lin Xiaosu had been tricked into eating goodness knows how much of it. As a result, every time he ate her food, Lin Xiaosu had to habitually inspect the bones to see whether the stuff he was eating was proper or not.

Today's chicken meat should be quite proper.

However, was Hu Ya's sleeping posture right now—lying sprawled out foursquare on the bluestone flagstone with her clothes half-open—proper or not?

That was truly impossible to know.

Lin Xiaosu glanced once more at the time on his phone...

It was just one minute shy of midnight.

He turned off his phone, cast his gaze toward Hu Ya, who was sprawled haphazardly on the ground, and told himself: the moment midnight passes, I'll consider my second uncle's commission fulfilled, and I'll carry her to the bed in the back to sleep. It's chilly on the ground...

Midnight arrived!

The mountain didn't shake, and the earth didn't move.

The second uncle had indeed spoken complete nonsense with a straight face!

Just as Lin Xiaosu's inner self verified this "as expected"...

A faint shimmer swept past.

It was extremely weak, resembling starlight from the heavens, or perhaps a firefly that had squeezed into the Taoist temple.

It came from the bluestone flagstone beneath his buttocks.

Lin Xiaosu took three steps, arrived above this point of light, and dropped prone. He pressed one eye against the luminous spot, wanting to see through to whatever was inside the stone.

At this single glance, his entire person completely turned to stone!

The stone that had looked utterly unremarkable during the day seemed at this moment to open a sky window...

Looking across through the "sky window"...

Inside the stone lay an endless river of stars.

Amidst the river of stars stood an ancient stone tablet.

Atop the stone tablet grew a bare little tree with only a single branch, and on the branch were a dozen or so leaves. Each leaf radiated seven-colored light with extreme peculiarity, looking as though it were also a miniature universe.

Beneath the stone tablet was a crystal coffin, clouds and mists floating within it.

The moment Lin Xiaosu's gaze landed inside the coffin, his mind and soul shook violently. There was someone in this coffin—a female corpse lay quietly within it.

Below her neck, clouds and mists covered her form, revealing only a face. Even though it was merely a face, it still dealt Lin Xiaosu the utmost shock.

Fish sinking and geese alighting, the moon hiding and flowers blushing probably weren't enough to describe it...

She didn't look as though she had already died.

She looked as though she were simply sleeping quietly beneath this myriad-mile starry sky.

Her sleeping posture possessed a beauty that all the painters of the present world could never paint.

Before he knew it, Lin Xiaosu felt his consciousness shift, transforming into a tiny silver fish that swam and glided above this peerless face, quietly watching the sleeping fairy.

Suddenly, a leaf on the stone tablet above flickered, and a single dewdrop dripped down.

This droplet shimmered with seven-colored light, as if passing through endless time and space to drip downward.

Seeing it was about to drop onto the female corpse's eyelids.

Lin Xiaosu was startled and instinctively moved to block it.

With this block, an ice-cold sensation piercing straight to the bone came from within his Sea of Consciousness, and a mysterious piece of information passed into his mind: Heavenly Insight Eye, discerning the infinitesimal, Temporal Reversal...