Cheesy Pickup Lines, Recovered Memories

Chen Sheng considered his plan to be flawless. He just couldn't understand why, after running down the mountain, Chen Xiaoyi hadn't reported back at all. Instead, she had borrowed divine power from him several times. This made Chen Sheng almost want to use his divine power to take a look at what this little rascal was up to, but the thought of his rare, quiet time alone with a certain young maiden immediately made him suppress the urge.

If that little brat wasn't going to report back, then so be it. She was so weak anyway that she had probably run into a formidable opponent, making it completely normal for her to take a longer time.

Thinking along these lines, Chen Sheng continued to bond with the egg.

"I lack the talent to please you, but I am more sincere than anyone else."

The rolling egg abruptly stopped, and a small face materialized on the eggshell, gazing at Chen Sheng with a pair of eyes filled with curiosity.

"I cannot name a reason why I love you, but apart from you, I love no one else," Chen Sheng continued.

"Squish!"

The egg looked startled, and then, as if standing on tiptoes, it began to hop away frantically in an attempt to escape.

"I want you to be jealous, yet I fear you wishing me happiness!" Chen Sheng looked directly at the egg, meeting those eyes dead-on.

Their gazes locked.

Then the egg fled even faster.

It felt so cheesy!

So sickeningly cheesy that she felt the entire world had turned gooey and greasy.

"What is difficult to smooth over is not the mountains and seas, but your heart," Chen Sheng said. The moment he finished speaking, he saw the egg instantly pierce through the void and teleport to the other side of the world.

Seeing this, Chen Sheng had no choice but to reach out and fish her back.

He retracted his extended palm, and the egg lay there reluctantly in his hand, rocking back and forth.

"What are you running for?"

Chen Sheng asked with a trace of annoyance, realizing that self-deception was no longer an option.

"Squish!"

The egg hopped in his palm as a response.

This was its way of showing it had been scared.

Chen Sheng's face darkened by half. He then cast his gaze into the distance, tracing the borrowed divine power to instantly lock onto a massive black dragon stirring up chaos.

The black dragon was nearly a thousand zhang long, seeming to connect heaven and earth. Its majestic presence covered the heavens and the earth, wreathed in billowing black flames as if it intended to swallow the entire world whole!

As Chen Sheng's gaze arrived, the sounds of the scene also transmitted to his ears.

"Kill this demonic dragon!"

"It is this wicked dragon that snatched away the Empress Dowager! Wicked Dragon, His Majesty has decreed that as long as you surrender the Empress Dowager, your life will be spared!"

"Demonic dragon, quickly return the mountain gate of my sect! That cannot be used as a hand fan! If you want to cool down, go to the Extreme North; there are snow-capped mountains that never melt for a millennium!"

Beneath the black dragon, voices of stern reprimand rang out continuously.

Chen Sheng instantly fell silent.

Didn't he tell her to go invoke wind and rain, do good deeds, infiltrate a mortal court, and become the state preceptor? How on earth did it suddenly mutate into a fantasy template of an "evil dragon abducting the princess"?

Although the endings of both scenarios bore some similarity, wasn't this grand finale coming a bit too fast?

He hadn't even been invited down the mountain yet!

At least let him harvest some civilization matter before executing judgment!

Filled with lingering resentment, Chen Sheng reached out, crossed the void, and scooped the black dragon directly into his hand.

This caused the few individuals who had been clamouring endlessly to instantly turn pale with shock.

For that palm was simply too colossal, and the aura it radiated was completely beyond anything they could ever hope to resist.

"Everyone, it's all a misunderstanding!"

Chen Sheng's gentle voice crossed the void and echoed through the area.

"I shall take her back to the mountain first. If she has caused any trouble, allow me to question her myself."

The moment his words fell, the gigantic palm and the nearly thousand-zhang-long black dragon vanished into thin air instantaneously.

It was as if it had all been a mere hallucination.

Yet none of the people present dared to dismiss it as such, for they were already the most powerful individuals in this strange, Liao Zhai-styled world.

And the very instant that voice had sounded, every single one of them had been rendered completely immobile.

They exchanged glances, seeing nameless terror in each other's eyes, mingled with a burning trace of fervor.

"Was that an immortal?"

"Definitely a living immortal!"

There were quite a few cultivators of immortality in this world, but since ancient times, even among legends, those who achieved immortality were vanishingly rare. Having seemingly encountered one now, how could they not be utterly thrilled?

...

After bringing Chen Xiaoyi back, Chen Sheng intended to ask her what kind of stunt she had pulled, seeing as the script he gave her didn't go like this at all. But just as he was about to speak, he received a communication from Cthulhu.

That tool had been successfully crafted!

"Fine, whatever!"

Dismissive, Chen Sheng raised his hand and pointed casually. Instantly, an exquisite woman riding atop the black dragon tumbled to the ground. Chen Sheng then asked Chen Xiaoyi, "What is the meaning of this? Empress Dowager? What did you do?"

"Nothing much, just crashing a wedding," the black dragon transformed back into Chen Xiaoyi's appearance, and she raised her little face, looking ingratiatingly at Chen Sheng.

Crashing a wedding...

Good job, you're doing stellar!

"This humble maiden, Su Wan'er, pays respects to the Immortal. This was entirely my fault alone; I beg the Immortal not to blame the Dragon Girl." At that moment, the exquisite woman knelt prostrate on the ground, pleading for Chen Xiaoyi.

"Dragon Girl?"

Hearing this, Chen Sheng could not help but cast a peculiar glance at Chen Xiaoyi.

Immediately afterward, he invoked his divine power.

In an instant, he understood the whole sequence of events. It was nothing more than a clichéd drama of a young woman forced into a marriage she despised. The only slight difference was that once this woman was married off, she would become the Empress Dowager of a nation.

"Very well. Since you could come here, it means we share a destiny. I am about to leave. If you are unwilling to go, this place shall be left to you. Here is a manual of cultivation; whether you can master it depends entirely on yourself."

With that, Chen Sheng directly took Chen Xiaoyi and departed this human world of Liao Zhai aesthetics.

Chen Sheng's departure was so sudden and swift that the exquisite woman was left momentarily dazed. Just as she wanted to express her gratitude, she discovered that Chen Sheng's figure was already nowhere to be seen, leaving her no choice but to kneel and kowtow several times.

Afterward, she opened the manual of cultivation left behind by Chen Sheng.

This was not something Chen Sheng had casually materialized on the spot; rather, he had compiled it by combining weird physical training methods. Once mastered, one could alter their physical form, rendering themselves impervious to swords, spears, water, and fire, while also capable of splitting into hundreds of avatars and regenerating from a single drop of blood.

"Such a formidable cultivation manual!" Su Wan'er naturally possessed good judgment. Having read through the manual, a thought she had never entertained in the past suddenly sprouted deep within her heart.

"From this day onward, Su Wan'er is dead; there is only the Blood Demon Su Wan!" wisps of black malevolent Qi surged from within her body, transforming her entire being into a pool of blood before writhing and reassembling into a human shape.

"Hahahaha!" The Blood Demon Su Wan could not help laughing aloud. The sheer power of this cultivation art was beyond anything she could have imagined.

Yet the more terrifyingly powerful it was, the greater her awe and reverence grew toward Chen Sheng, who had casually left it behind.

She knelt on the ground once more and kowtowed heavily: "Thank you, Master!"

...

Chen Sheng naturally had no idea that he had left behind a massive hidden danger in that Liao Zhai-styled world—a Blood Demon whose cultivation prowess would become unprecedented and peerless within that world's cultivation realm.

This was the Universe's Grand Will using Chen Sheng's hand to punish that Liao Zhai-styled world for refusing to join the Cosmic Civilization Chain.

All demigods owed their existence to the recognition of the Universe's Grand Will, and correspondingly, these demigods were all controlled by it. Yet, this was something none of the demigods themselves knew.

Among them, the more powerful a demigod was, the more heavily they were controlled by the Universe's Grand Will.

Conversely, for low-tier demigods, the Universe's Grand Will scarcely bothered to pay them any attention.

Had Chen Sheng been a bottom-tier Second-Chain demigod, whatever he left behind during his visit to that mortal realm—no matter how earnestly—would have quickly vanished from that world with the passage of time, rather than directly "spurring" the birth of a powerful villain as he had just done.

Chen Sheng had already arrived before Cthulhu. Looking at the tiny speck of crystalline light resting in the other's palm, he immediately focused his gaze upon it.

This was the tool.

Although it looked remarkably small, only about the size of a fingernail, it contained a miniature space within its interior, complete and intricate enough to be regarded as a micro-world.

If Chen Sheng wished, he could even allow other living beings to reside within this small space.

"You can now travel the universe freely. This is a mandatory path for all demigods. After wandering for a couple of epochs or so, you will grow weary of it. At that time, you are welcome to come and stay with my clan for a while," Cthulhu handed the small crystal to Chen Sheng while extending an invitation.

"Alright, I certainly will," Chen Sheng agreed. After all, regardless of anything else, Cthulhu was a rather useful tool "demigod".

Chen Sheng stepped inside the micro-crystal and discovered that the crystalline space was significantly larger than he had last seen, now roughly the size of a city.

"At least dozens of people can live here. What an ark," Chen Sheng mused with a hint of admiration, and then he began to select the worlds he wished to visit.

There were countless worlds in this universe, the majority of which belonged to the Cosmic Civilization Chain, and this crystalline space recorded every single world within that chain.

However, recording them was one thing; whether one could actually arrive there was another matter entirely.

For instance, the worlds of the Ninth-Chain civilizations were not hospitable places, and demigods of average strength simply lacked the qualifications to enter them.

As Chen Sheng was making his selection, a sudden thought stirred in his heart.

He wondered what would happen if he redefined the civilized races in all these worlds as Ninth-Chain civilizations?

The moment this notion arose, Chen Sheng felt an irrepressible urge to try it.

And so, he attempted the redefinition.

"All the worlds I see before me, and the civilized races within those worlds, belong to the Ninth Chain!"

The words left his lips, and Chen Sheng felt no resistance whatsoever. This meant the definition was successfully granted. He could sense a strange substance continuously emanating from those worlds—a substance resembling drifting grayish-white snowflakes. When he tried to touch one of those snowflakes, his field of vision abruptly turned a vivid crimson.

Immediately afterward, some strange and unfamiliar imagery flashed through his mind.

It was an ordinary-looking office building, yet within this building drifted some bizarre wisps of aura, resembling fog.

Then, a red eyeball emerged from the darkness.

The perspective of the imagery shifted accordingly, appearing to trail right behind that red eyeball as it penetrated deep into a dark room.

There, an old computer glowed with light, and a pair of deathly pale human hands pressed upon the keyboard.

Suddenly, those grayish-white hands twitched, and an afterimage appeared, giving Chen Sheng an inexplicable sense of familiarity. But before the afterimage could fully manifest its form, the imagery abruptly cut off.

Then, the scene seemed to rewind to the beginning, back to that ordinary-looking office building where one human head after another drifted away into the distance. Each head had something clamped in its teeth—resembling a piece of gauze, thin as a cicada's wing, yet bearing the shadowy outlines of human forms, with hands, feet, and heads distinctly visible.

Chen Sheng instinctively wanted to look closer, but the scene shifted once more. This time, he saw the exterior of that office building.

It was an utterly desolate street.

Almost no people were out on the pavement; only the wind blew incessantly, scattering unburnt paper money everywhere. Yet, not a single sanitation worker came out to clean it up.

At the very end of the street squatted a figure—it appeared to be a woman wearing a pair of glasses. At that moment, she was feeding sheets of paper money one by one into a brazier.

Beside the brazier stood a framed photograph, and as Chen Sheng looked closer, he realized with a shock that the person in the photograph was none other than himself!

He desperately wanted to see the face of the bespectacled woman clearly, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make it out. She seemed to be speaking, uttering words, but unfortunately, Chen Sheng couldn't catch a single one of them.

Chen Sheng expected more imagery to follow, but nothing came. Puzzled, he looked around, intending to search for those grayish-white snowflakes again, only to see Chen Xiaoyi weeping, alongside an egg that also seemed to be crying.

"What's wrong with you two?" Chen Sheng asked aloud.

"I remembered that I still have a mom and dad, and a younger sister," Chen Xiaoyi choked out. Her voice sounded the same as ever, but her tone was radically different.

The former Chen Xiaoyi still possessed the mindset of a child, but the tone of the current Chen Xiaoyi carried the weight and maturity of an adult.

"Mom and dad? A younger sister?" Hearing this, Chen Sheng was completely bewildered.

What on earth was going on?

At that moment, Chen Xiaoyi continued, "I begged them not to send me away, I didn't want to die yet. But mom and dad told me that if I didn't go, either they or my little sister would have to die. My older brother died before, so now it was my turn to go."

Chen Sheng looked at Chen Xiaoyi with a gaze that had grown rather strange. Although he still didn't understand the full picture, he could tell that "memories that did not belong to her" had surfaced in Chen Xiaoyi's mind, and those memories had even usurped her original personality.

Was it because of those grayish-white snowflakes from earlier?

Chen Sheng frowned slightly and turned his gaze toward the egg: "What are you crying about?"

The familiar little face materialized on the eggshell. This time, an actual voice emerged—a soft, sweet, girlish voice: "I'm crying because I've died so many times, yet I'm still a virgin! I want a boyfriend, I want to experience a sweet romance! Waaaah..."