TBIP: Chapter 5

It was no wonder that after receiving the memories, Lou Xingyao always felt that the name of Tianming Continent was inexplicably familiar. At that time, he thought he was affected by Lou Xiaowu’s memory. Now, he suddenly realized the abnormality after the information before and after were combined.

More than ten years might’ve passed, but Lou Xingyao still remembered this novel.

It wasn’t because the book was so wonderful and unforgettable. To be honest, the plot could even be called unoriginal.

To sum it up in one sentence, the protagonist who had traveled to another world used a cheating speed to upgrade, fight monsters, and collect a harem along the way. He changed maps to upgrade, fight monsters, and collect a harem. Then he continued to change maps… and so on, until the protagonist finally ascended to become an immortal.

It was just because this ‘The Dao and Heaven are Equal’ was the only novel in Lou Xingyao’s career of reading countless novels where he felt a disgust for the protagonist.

Before this novel, Lou Xingyao always thought that the protagonist could be imperfect, have various shortcomings and even be a real villain… But no matter what, he would have his own charm that belonged to a protagonist.

However, Ye Hantian, the protagonist of ‘The Dao and Heaven are Equal’ completely subverted Lou Xingyao’s cognition.

As a friend, he was treacherous and could kill his brothers for a small profit. As a husband, he was arrogant and disrespectful to his wife while falling in love with every woman he met. As an apprentice, he was ungrateful and caused disasters that led to the bloodbath of his master’s sect while feeling no guilt at all. In the end, he even got along with the murderer…

Lou Xingyao couldn’t find any shining points in Ye Hantian. Such a person could actually pass all the levels and ascend to become an immortal. It could only be said that it depended on the protagonist’s aura during the entire process.

To this day, he could still clearly remember the disgusting feeling that Ye Hantian’s character brought to him.

It wasn’t that the author of ‘The Dao and Heaven are Equal’ wasn’t unaware of how to create a charming character. For example, the villain Wen Hanshan in the novel was a very charismatic character. He kept his promises, had a bottom line, and acted with grace.

If Ye Hantian’s character gathered all the characteristics that Lou Xingyao hated, then Wen Hanshan’s character satisfied all of Lou Xingyao’s fantasies. He even indirectly became Lou Xingyao’s enlightenment of his own sexual orientation. It could be said that he existed like the white moonlight in Lou Xingyao’s heart.

In Lou Xingyao’s view, even his shortcomings of being good at calculating and scheming were a manifestation of careful thinking and thorough actions.

In the beginning, Lou Xingyao was able to endure his disgust for Ye Hantian and follow the daily updates entirely out of his love for Wen Hanshan.

It was a pity that in the middle and late stages of the full novel, Wen Hanshan still couldn’t escape the author’s outrageous operation of forcibly lowering his intelligence. He was forced to go offline.

At this point, the art was complete.

After all, the one who was more lethal than a white moonlight was a dead white moonlight. Since then, no character had been able to surpass Wen Hanshan’s position in Lou Xingyao’s heart.

This was the reason why a few scattered pieces of information could still evoke all of Lou Xingyao’s memories of ‘The Dao and Heaven are Equal’ after more than ten years.

Of course, this was also inseparable from the special nature of Canglan City and He Wanqing in ‘The Dao and Heaven are Equal.’

Both the protagonist and Wen Hanshan were born in Canglan City. At the same time, this was also the first map in the full novel. It was once jokingly called ‘the place where dreams begin’ by readers.

As for He Wanqing, she was the first female protagonist that Ye Hantian took into his harem. She once occupied an important position in Ye Hantian’s harem and was regarded as the main wife by readers.

Once all this information was combined, Lou Xingyao’s mood suddenly became complicated. So had he actually transmigrated to a book now?

However, Lou Xingyao was very sure that there was no description of the engagement between He Wanqing and Zhou Hanshan in the original novel.

After all, Ye Hantian was a feudal tradition to put it nicely. He had a very serious virginity complex to put it unpleasantly. All the female protagonists that he took into his harem must be pure and flawless, clean in body and mind.

The standard of a clean body and mind even included engagement. Lou Xingyao had seen Ye Hantian call the female supporting roles who had been engaged ‘broken shoes’ more than once in the novel. His words and expressions could be said to be full of contempt and disgust.

How could such a person allow the first woman he took into his harem, his wife who occupied the main wife position, to be a ‘broken shoe’?

Was there something missing from the original plot or was it just a coincidence? This Tianming Continent wasn’t that Tianming Continent. He just transmigrated through time, not through to a book?

Unfortunately, there was too little information…

Lou Xingyao lay back down again. With his current understanding of the Tianming Continent, it was really hard to determine what the current situation was.

Just when Lou Xingyao regretted that this question might not be answered in a short time, the scene that flashed through his mind made Lou Xingyao stand up again.

This time, Lou Xingyao walked towards the end of the bed with a clear goal. He leaned over slightly and groped and knocked on the wall covered by the bed board. Soon, he determined the position and pulled out one of the blue bricks with a bit of effort.

He reached out for the position where the brick was pulled out again. In the next moment, Lou Xingyao took out a small wooden box that was about the same size as the wall brick.

The workmanship of the small wooden box was very simple, or to be more precise, it was a bit rough. At first glance, it was obvious that it was a defective product made by a beginner.

Even the poorest beggars had their own treasures, and Lou Xiaowu was no exception. The small wooden box in front of him contained Lou Xiaowu’s treasure.

However, it wasn’t difficult to see from the dust accumulated on the wooden box that Lou Xiaowu hadn’t paid attention to this wooden box for a long time.

He was afraid that even Lou Xiaowu himself had almost forgotten this treasure that he carefully hid when he was a child. If it weren’t for an item that appeared in the original novel, Lou Xingyao might not have thought of this long-forgotten scene.

A trace of emotion flashed in Lou Xingyao’s eyes. He reached out and wiped the dust off the wooden box. Finally, he opened the small wooden box that seemed like it could fall apart with a little force.

There were very few items in the wooden box. He could see all of them at a glance. There was a thin piece of stone, a bird feather that had faded a bit, a flower that had long since lost its moisture, and a small gray bead strung on a hemp rope.

These ‘trash’ could be seen everywhere on the street. No one would be willing to pick them up even if they were thrown on the ground. They were Lou Xiaowu’s treasures and each of them had an unusual meaning to him.

For example, the only way this small stone was different from ordinary stones was that it was extremely suitable for skipping on water. This was indeed the reason why Lou Xiaowu put it in this small box.

When Lou Xiaowu was seven years old, the Lou family dug a lake in the back mountain as if to plant some aquatic spiritual herbs.

Children didn’t understand these things. They only knew that the lake looked very suitable for water skipping. During that time, whenever the children of the Lou family were free, they would gather by the lake in twos and threes to play the game of skipping rocks on water.

At that time, Lou Xiaowu’s situation in the Lou family wasn’t too bad. He vaguely knew that his friends didn’t seem to like him, but he never took these things to heart. He was still very eager to play with his peers.

So after discovering the ‘secret’ that his friends liked to play skipping stones, he naively thought that he could join his friend’s game team if he could find suitable stones.

Unfortunately, Lou Xiaowu finally held the stones but failed to join the team of friends as he imagined. He was ridiculed and the stones he found were snatched away by the children.

This piece of stone was the only one not snatched away by the children at that time.

Lou Xiaowu couldn’t bear to part with this small stone even though the children gathered in the back mountain to play water skipping had grown up, and the children of the Lou Mansion no longer liked the boring game of water skipping.

This faded feather came from a wounded bird that Lou Xiaowu met when he was 15 years old.

At that time, Lou Xiaowu’s situation in the Lou family was no longer as good as before. The children of the same age had already changed from verbal ridicule to fists and feet. However, the bullies at that time were also young and far less powerful than later. Their fists that fell on him weren’t difficult to bear.

For Lou Xiaowu, who had amazing recovery ability, what was more unbearable than the fists of his peers was the loneliness where no one was willing to care about him.

It was under such circumstances that the bird came to Lou Xiaowu.

Perhaps the bird couldn’t leave due to its injured wings, but for Lou Xiaowu, the bird had become a bright spot in his dim life, just like its gorgeous feathers.

Lou Xiaowu healed the bird and fed it. He also told the bird about his troubles. Even though the bird couldn’t understand his words at all, it could still relax Lou Xiaowu.

The man and the bird gradually became close. Lou Xiaowu gave the bird a very cute name: Chirp.

It was because the bird would respond with ‘Chirp’ every time Lou Xiaowu communicated with him, like a listener who would never be disappointed.

The flower was a thank you gift from Chirp to Lou Xiaowu after his injury healed. It was just a small wildflower that could be seen everywhere on the roadside, but it was worth a thousand gold for Lou Xiaowu at that time.

It was a pity that Chirp’s existence didn’t escape the eyes of those bullies.

A group of half-grown children caught Chirp while Lou Xiaowu wasn’t paying attention. By the time Lou Xiaowu found out, the only thing left of Chirp was a pile of broken bones.

The sight of the bright bird feathers mixed with bloodstains scattered on the ground directly hurt Lou Xiaowu’s eyes. It also aroused Lou Xiaowu’s rare resistance.

This time, Lou Xiaowu’s reaction could be called earth-shattering. He attacked the bullies for the first time. The sudden fight back really caught the bullies off guard.

However, two hands couldn’t beat four. After injuring two people, Lou Xiaowu was quickly pinned down by the others.

Lou Xiaowu’s resistance aroused the anger of the bullies. They realized the importance of Chirp to Lou Xiaowu and a fireball immediately burned the remaining broken bones and bird feathers on the ground.

Lou Xiaowu finally realized that he not only had no status in the Lou family but getting close to him would become a misfortune.

A person who was already reticent closed his heart even more from then on. He no longer approached anything, was no longer curious, and no longer expressed any of his preferences.

The bird feather in the wooden box was accidentally pulled off by Lou Xiaowu when he changed the medicine for Chirp. At that time, he was chased and bitten by the angry Chirp several times. He didn’t expect that this would become the only feather left by Chirp.

Lou Xingyao’s fingertips passed over these items one by one. It was as if through these items, he once again experienced Lou Xiaowu’s original mood. It seemed that the heart-wrenching pain he felt when he saw Chirp’s corpse still remained in his heart.

He closed his eyes to calm down. Then Lou Xingyao’s fingers finally stopped on the small bead hung on a hemp rope.

This was the only item left to him by Lou Xiaowu’s biological mother, Lou Yiyi. To be precise, this was the only thing related to Lou Yiyi left in Lou Xiaowu’s hands.

As early as when Lou Yiyi died, Lou Shaohui took back Lou Yiyi’s storage bag and other valuables in the house in the name of the family.

After Lou Shaohui’s plunder, there weren’t many things left for Lou Xiaowu. These few things were snatched away by the children of the same age after the talent test.

The small bead was preserved because its gray color was too ugly. Even so, the incident with Chirp made Lou Xiaowu afraid that he couldn’t even keep this last item belonging to Lou Yiyi. He simply found a small wooden box to hide it.

This gray bead was the purpose of Lou Xingyao looking for the wooden box in the wall.

Lou Xingyao walked aside and stretched out his hand to light the candle on the table, which was only knuckle-length.

He pinched the gray bead between his fingers and slowly turned it under the candlelight. Finally, before the candle burned out, he saw the golden red light flickering under the original gray skin of the small bead.

People who often read novels about cultivation knew that the protagonist’s golden finger had three treasures: A space, a system, or a grandfather.

As a novel with no novelty in the plot, ‘The Dao and Heaven are Equal’ didn’t have a system or a grandfather, but the portable space of the protagonist wasn’t absent.

The original novel had a very detailed description of the portable space that Ye Hantian obtained.

The small gray bead looked unremarkable on the surface, but under the light of the fire, he could see the appearance of the universe hidden in it from a specific angle. To describe it using the description in the book, this was an obscure treasure.

It was just intended to express that Ye Hantian’s luck was against the sky. Any rags he got were rare treasures in the world of cultivation. But at this moment, it was a bargain for Lou Xingyao.

Looking at the small bead in his hand that was exactly the same as in the original novel, Lou Xingyao didn’t hesitate at all. He directly cut his palm and placed the bead on the wound in the palm.

The originally unremarkable beads gradually lost their gray surface under the infiltration of blood. The golden red color, which had only appeared faintly under the firelight, also appeared. Once the gray faded away, the bead turned into a golden red stream of light, rushing straight between Lou Xingyao’s eyebrows.

The next moment, Lou Xingyao felt a space connected to his mind. This space was composed of a well, a small wooden house and an acre of long-dried land that was exactly the same as the portable space obtained by Ye Hantian in the original novel.

At this moment, Lou Xingyao finally confirmed that the world he was in now was the Tianming Continent described in ‘The Dao and Heaven are Equal.’