Why Are You So Weak?

Su Mu stayed in his rented room and sent his boss a message on his phone saying he was quitting.

Even if his boss never paid him his half-month's wages, Su Mu no longer cared. It was only a few thousand yuan anyway. Right now, all he wanted was to solve this enormous problem he had.

If he had to spend the rest of his days in this half-paralyzed state, what was the point of living?

Without falling ill, you could never appreciate how blessed you were to be healthy.

Su Mu was a perfect example. Before, he could do whatever he wanted. How could he ever have imagined that simply getting up would take so much effort now?

Fortunately, he could still order takeout. Otherwise, Su Mu felt that going downstairs for a meal would probably cost him half his life.

A day quickly passed.

Su Mu stayed in his rented room, ordering takeout when he was hungry and spending ages making his way to the door to collect it.

Then he brought it back and ate.

Afterward, he went back to thinking about how to solve this problem, constantly testing his control over his body and hoping for a miracle. Perhaps he would inexplicably recover.

But those thoughts were nothing more than wishful thinking. His control over his body remained terribly awkward.

Sometimes, he even felt as though this body were not his own, as though he had lost the connection to some of its sensations.

Three days passed in the blink of an eye. Su Mu raised his head numbly and stared at the ceiling.

He was completely out of options. He had tried every method he could and consulted quite a few doctors.

From the looks of it, the only way he could recover was for that soul to return.

His bank balance totaled 33,891 yuan. After paying off his Huabei bill, he would have a little over 32,000 left.

After several years of working, this was all he had saved. Su Mu had already made arrangements so that if something really did happen to him, the money would reach his parents' account.

It was only thirty-odd thousand yuan, but it was still some money.

While Su Mu's thoughts were running wild, he suddenly felt an inexplicable tremor in his mind, then passed out.

When he woke and opened his eyes, Su Mu immediately saw the wooden room around him.

Before him stood two pretty maids wearing dresses made from an unknown material.

The two maids stared coldly at Su Mu. Seeing that he had woken, one simply said, "Come with me. The eldest princess wishes to see you."

With that, she stepped outside.

Su Mu hurried after her, uneasy at heart. He had no idea what sort of temper this eldest princess had, or whether she bore him any ill will.

Su Mu followed her, but the moment he reached the doorway, his soul grew somewhat insubstantial. Then he felt an incomparably scorching wave of heat, as though a field of lava lay outside.

And the source of that heat was the sun outside!

Su Mu's eyes widened. Back on Earth, the sun had never felt like anything special, yet here, it felt as though it could take his life at any moment!

Was it because he had no body here? Was a soul alone yin in nature, unable to endure such fierce sunlight?

Noticing Su Mu's condition, the maid reached out a slender hand and patted him. A cool sensation immediately spread through him, and the scorching heat vanished in an instant.

Su Mu breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness he had not thought of escaping while he was locked up here.

Otherwise, even if they had failed to catch him, he felt he would not have lasted long beneath this blazing sun before being roasted alive!

The maids led Su Mu out of the room and through the palace grounds. Half an hour later, the maid on his right suddenly reached out, grabbed his arm, and soared into the air.

Su Mu instinctively looked up. Only then did he notice that there were actually three palaces above the palace grounds!

The imperial palace in the middle was clearly larger, radiating imposing majesty.

The one on the right was somewhat smaller and more delicate. He could not see the one on the left very clearly, but its scale was much the same as the one on the right.

The maid flew straight to the palace on the right with Su Mu and slowly landed on the stone steps, then gracefully led him farther upward.

Compared with the grounds below, the palace grounds in the sky were far more magnificent. All around were plants he could not name. The more familiar ones were probably some purple bamboo, along with trees that looked rather like pines and cypresses.

He had no idea whether they were called pines and cypresses here.

One difference from landscaped gardens was that the little mountains here were actual mountains, rather than artificial rockeries.

Su Mu's gaze lingered mostly on these strange and wondrous sights.

He had come to terms with it, too. If he really was going to die, he had no power to stop it. Being able to see places he could never have seen or experienced before, right before his death, would at least barely count as dying without regrets.

The maids moved lightly. He could not see their feet moving beneath their skirts, yet they were not slow, and soon brought Su Mu to a pavilion.

Gauzy curtains hung around the pavilion, concealing the person inside. All he could make out was a hazy figure.

"You may withdraw."

The eldest princess's voice rang out, as cool and distant as it had been that night, as though keeping others a thousand miles away.

"Yes. Your servants take their leave."

The two maids bowed slightly and answered softly, then withdrew with small steps, leaving Su Mu standing there at a loss.

The eldest princess did not look at Su Mu. He could tell that clearly, because he could see her back through the gauze, and she had never once turned her head.

Of course, perhaps she did not need to turn around and could observe him just like that.

"Ah..."

A soft sigh sounded, carrying disappointment that was impossible to hide.

"Judging by your soul, you are merely someone weaker than an ordinary person, with nothing special about you. Although the formation was damaged, it still consumed at least a hundred million Spirit Stones, not to mention countless other supreme treasures. Its power was immense, so why did it summon an incomplete soul like yours?"

The eldest princess was truly disappointed now.

With all those Spirit Stones and supreme treasures, even if the attempt to summon an auspicious beast had failed, surely it should not have summoned someone this useless?

Why did it have to be such a useless person? No matter how she looked at him, there was nothing special about him at all.

She had originally thought that Su Mu might be the remnant soul of a mighty expert. If a formation meant to summon an auspicious beast had summoned only a person's remnant soul instead, could that mean he was simply too powerful to summon in his entirety?

But after examining him carefully now, she realized she had been overthinking it.

If he truly were a mighty expert, he would have simply left when she had him confined earlier. Otherwise, he should at least have found a way to sustain this soul.

Yet he had neither left nor absorbed the power of moonlight to stabilize his soul. He truly knew nothing at all about cultivation.

When her maids brought him outside, he had even nearly been burned by the power of lesser yang.

Now that she had carefully examined him once more, he was indeed just an ordinary soul, with nothing special about him whatsoever.

Allow the author a moment to vent. When people encounter danger, their first thought is how to survive. They will not have any other thoughts, really.

At a time like that, some people will panic and be at a loss, while those with greater mental fortitude will calm down and think about how to survive.

People keep complaining that the author's writing makes no logical sense. If the author writes something more realistic, that makes it logical, right? But there is still all sorts of abuse, calling the protagonist a spineless good-for-nothing and so on.

The question is, when you see similar scenes in movies, or hear about someone being kidnapped on the news, don't you also just want the victim to stay alive first and worry about everything else later?