“Luo Daoqing, do you recognize your sins?”
The Divine Lady stood in the center of the sea of flowers, her silver hair reaching her waist.
“I...”
Luo Daoqing’s knees buckled, and he fell straight to the ground.
His forehead pressed against the cold earth, petals brushing against his cheeks, carrying the moist scent of soil and green grass.
“Divine Lady... Divine Lady, have mercy...”
Don't say he lacked backbone or was spineless; facing a deity with heaven-defying power, anyone would kneel.
A mere mortal trying to oppose a deity?
What a joke.
The Divine Lady lowered her eyelashes slightly, her silver-white hair obscuring half her face. She said calmly, “You beg Me to spare your life. When those who died because of you begged for mercy, did you ever feel a shred of compassion and spare theirs?”
Luo Daoqing froze for a moment, then looked up.
“I did harm many people...” His eyes were bloodshot as he gazed at the deity within reach, his voice raspy. “But if they didn't die, I would have. What did you want me to do?”
He remained kneeling, hands bracing against the yellow earth, his shoulders shaking violently.
“In the modern world, I had a bright future ahead of me. I was just about to get my doctorate!” His voice suddenly choked. “My parents are both disabled. They supported my studies for over twenty years. My father’s finger was cut off by a factory machine, and he wouldn't even go to a big hospital just to save money for my tuition. My mother has bad legs. With a monthly salary of eight hundred yuan, she still sent me five hundred, saying she grew her own vegetables at home and didn't need much...”
Everyone listened in confusion, not understanding what Luo Daoqing was talking about, but they remained silent.
Luo Daoqing ignored the strange looks from those around him, still immersed in his grief.
Tears rolled from his bloodshot eyes, dripping onto the petals and his mud-stained hands.
“I was almost graduated... I was about to start earning money... I was about to give my parents a good life...”
“Then, I accidentally transmigrated to two thousand years ago!”
“Two thousand years ago! In a cannibalistic era of chaos! If you don't eat others, they will eat you!”
“Do you think I wanted to kill? Do you think I enjoyed using these cannons for war?”
His tears finally burst forth, snot and tears mixing together, leaving him in a wretched state.
“I just wanted to live... I just wanted to survive in this godforsaken world... If I die, what happens to my parents? They’re still waiting for me to come home...”
At this, his back slowly curved into a humble arc, like a bow crushed under pressure.
“Divine Lady... I beg you...”
“I want to go home... I just want to go home...”
Yun Shu watched him kowtow in silence.
A pitiful person must have a hateful side.
The reverse was also true.
The system, invisible by her side, spoke in a voice only she could hear: “Host, Luo Daoqing is actually quite unlucky. The night before he was to receive his degree, he was swept into this world by a rift in space-time.”
“Emmm, in human terms, he’s basically a victim of human trafficking.”
“I just checked. Luo Daoqing wasn't lying. In the future, he was indeed a top student, a PhD candidate in science and engineering with excellent grades...”
A thoughtful look crossed Yun Shu’s eyes.
The Casket of a Hundred Crafts could produce a new industrial sample every four months, but the problem was that if she didn't understand the principles, having the samples wouldn't be very useful.
As for collecting the full Thousand Machines and Myriad Crafts Set to unlock the core technical skills of various industries, she wasn't considering it at all.
She knew exactly how bad her luck was with the prize pool.
Although Luo Daoqing deserved to die.
Killing him now would be a waste of the modern knowledge in his head.
Since he could build cannons in an age of cold weapons, he could surely build other things.
Keeping him alive was more cost-effective than killing him.
However, she had already made her pronouncement; she couldn't let him off too easily.
Ah, she had an idea.
The limited-time prize pool had refreshed with new outfits.
There was still only one set, called Mirror of Retrospection. Collecting all four pieces would unlock the Retrospection skill, allowing her to look back at a person's life experiences.
Seeing the set's skill, she clicked the 100-pull button without hesitation.
The Eyes of Good and Evil could see good and evil deeds, but it was too general. She couldn't deduce the details of those experiences from just a few words, which made her previous use of the Domain of Retribution to punish Guo Pan seem a bit sloppy.
The Retrospection skill made up for that perfectly.
Perhaps the more one wanted something, the harder it was to get.
Unsurprisingly, she had been played again. Her luck was so bad it cost her a full 50,000 Shock Value to complete the Mirror of Retrospection set.
【Congratulations, Host, for obtaining the Mirror of Retrospection Set - Handheld Component (1/4): Retrospection Gem.】
【Component Description: Can backtrack a person's past for over a month to observe their history (Cooldown: 120 hours).】
【...】
【Congratulations, Host, for obtaining the Mirror of Retrospection Set - Robe Component (2/4): Trace-Light Robe.】
【Component Description: Briefly freezes the movement of all living things within ten steps (Cooldown: 120 hours).】
【...】
【Congratulations, Host, for obtaining the Mirror of Retrospection Set - Earring Component (3/4): Echo Drop.】
【Component Description: Wearing this earring allows the user to hear the target's inner thoughts for three days (Cooldown: 120 hours).】
【...】
【Congratulations, Host, for obtaining the Mirror of Retrospection Set - Formation Component (4/4): Return Formation.】
【Component Description: Mark a location; once activated, the user can teleport back to the marked point (Cooldown: 120 hours).】
【...】
To increase the retrospection time from three months to a year, she spent another 90,000 Shock Value to upgrade the set to Level 2.
【Current Shock Value: 236,800】
After not receiving a response from the Divine Lady for a long time, Luo Daoqing was nearly swallowed by despair, tears falling one by one.
Fortune had never favored him.
Every time he thought he had finally made it, his hopes were crushed.
Looking back at his life, he had gained nothing.
No good birth, no healthy parents, no bright future—nothing...
“Divine Lady, You are compassionate and love all beings. Why do You not love me alone?”
He hated that the bright moon hung high but refused to shine on him.
The wind suddenly stopped.
Petals ceased their fall, flower buds stopped swaying, and even time itself seemed to freeze at this moment.
The Divine Lady’s voice drifted from ahead.
“Luo Daoqing, before you ask Me to show you love and pity, you should first ask yourself: why should someone whose hands are stained with the blood of the innocent receive the compassion of a deity?”
She lowered her obsidian-like phoenix eyes to look at the black-robed Daoist prostrate at Her feet.
Luo Daoqing opened his mouth but could not speak.
It was undeniable that he had long since been assimilated by this era; in his eyes, human lives were like weeds.
Before transmigrating, he didn't even dare to kill a fish and would turn his face away at the sight of blood in a market.
After transmigrating, in just one short year, he had learned to slit throats. Through repeated practice, he even knew which angle would make a person die in the most pain.
During this year, anyone who stood in his way—
Whether good or bad, he had killed them all.
At first, he would tremble and retch, remembering those he had killed in the middle of the night.
Then, he wouldn't be able to sleep for entire nights.
But later.
His hands stopped shaking, and he stopped having nightmares. Killing became as simple as eating or drinking.
“I just wanted to live...” He told himself once more, like a form of self-brainwashing.
Rate on N.U.
