INE Chapter 126: The Grand Finale

Ji Rong flew upward, finally seeing the last missing piece.

She reached out and touched the square, then stepped into the plane.

It was a courtyard, with peach blossoms gently drifting through the air. In front of the house, vibrant phoenix flowers bloomed.

Sunlight fell softly upon the stone tiles, like flowing water, casting a delicate golden hue across the ground.

Standing there, Ji Rong felt a deep serenity, so tranquil and beautiful she hesitated to even move, afraid to shatter the stillness.

Then she saw a white figure enter the room upstairs.

The moment that person pushed open the door, Ji Rong saw her face clearly.

It was Sanhua.

Ji Rong immediately soared after her, gliding through the corridor.

From the window, she saw an elderly woman with white hair lying silently on the bed.

With just one glance, she knew it was Gu Baiyi.

Though her face had aged, the shape of her bones and the expression etched into her features were unmistakable.

Sanhua’s expression was cold and detached. She said to Gu Baiyi, “I’ve come to erase you.”

Based on 01’s memories, Ji Rong knew that Sanhua was now acting under a forced command issued by the Administrator.

The person in the room was herself, yet she had no idea what her other self would do, because this version of her was executing the Administrator’s will.

But Ji Rong couldn’t step in either. Intervening would risk disrupting the timeline.

As she frantically searched for a solution, she noticed that Gu Baiyi, lying on the bed, showed no reaction to Sanhua’s presence.

Eyes wide, Ji Rong used her energy to sense the surroundings, but could only feel Sanhua’s power.

Gu Baiyi was already dead.

She had passed before Sanhua could extract her soul.

After death, her soul had become a faint silhouette, now quietly gazing at Sanhua with warmth.

Sanhua looked at the soul shadow and said, “Human bodies contain only the thinnest trace of energy. The form you’ve taken now is nothing more than a weak flicker.”

“I have a reason for erasing you, for 01’s sake.”

Before Ji Rong could understand what that reason might be, she saw Sanhua take out a mechanical weapon.

It looked small and delicate, yet it could break apart molecules using an unknown energy field. Once hit, anything would instantly disintegrate.

She remembered, the Administrator had once told her that certain mutated entities were nearly impossible to eliminate. In those cases, special weapons were necessary.

Then, a beam of light flashed.

It was the same silvery light that burst forth from the pocket watch, like an electric current, like a venomous serpent striking its prey, it shot straight at the soul suspended midair.

[Elimination Progress: 50%]

[Elimination Progress: 70%]

As the shadowy soul grew more and more transparent, Ji Rong’s mind went completely blank.

Though she had long lost human emotion, her body now trembled uncontrollably.

To be eliminated, was to be destroyed.

Watching Gu Baiyi’s soul fade away, Ji Rong acted on instinct. She raised her sword and slashed at Sanhua.

She didn’t think, she simply used the sword move she had practiced most:

“Thunderous Lightning." the thirteenth form of Silent Mountains and Rivers.

A roar of thunder split the skies, channeling through the tip of the Qinghe Sword, striking Sanhua squarely in the back.

At the same time, the mechanical voice paused:

[Elimination Progress: 90%]

Sanhua’s body surged with powerful energy, this attack alone would not be enough to kill her.

She merely furrowed her brow, then turned, and saw Ji Rong’s face.

The moment their eyes met, Ji Rong’s thoughts froze.

She felt the energy inside her begin to surge, as though it were being drawn into Sanhua.

At the last moment, she managed to move her fingers, sealing the last fragments of Gu Baiyi’s soul into the Mountains and Rivers Chessboard.

Mo Yu would know where to take her.

Then, Ji Rong’s body disappeared.

Because Ji Rong and Sanhua were, ultimately, the same person. The body that the Administrator had created for her ceased to exist in this moment of temporal overlap.

As her form vanished, the blood jade bracelet on her wrist shattered. The five swords it held flew out, clattering to the ground.

The moment she saw Ji Rong, Sanhua’s eyes widened too.

And then, they became one.

Or perhaps, they had always been one.

But two identical beings could not exist in the same timeline without causing a disruption.

The laws of time and space had been established by the Administrator and enforced by the system. When she wrote the rules, not even she was exempt.

Thus, Sanhua was now identified as an anomaly, and forcibly locked down.

The lock would last a long time.

Even when a thunderous bolt drew cultivators from every major sect, Sanhua did not awaken.

They thought it was the Divine Sect’s Feng Lan undergoing a tribulation, but it wasn’t.

They found only a motionless woman lying on the ground, and confusion rippled through the crowd.

Someone recognized her and cried out, “Isn’t that Immortal Sanhua?”

“True Immortal? Are you serious?”

“I heard a single drop of her blood can make weathered wood bloom again. Anywhere it lands becomes rich with spiritual energy.”

“Let’s test it.”

Someone took out a silver needle and pricked Sanhua’s finger.

He carefully dropped the blood onto an old scar, and watched in awe as the wound vanished, replaced by smooth, unblemished skin.

He shouted, almost hysterically, “She is the True Immortal, she really is!”

“The True Immortal has descended into our world!”

At first, the major sects simply revered her. They laid her to rest on a cold jade bed, placed the five swords at her side, and waited for her to wake.

Three days passed. She remained unconscious.

But cultivators, after all, were human, and humans were greedy.

One sect leader claimed his disciple was gravely ill and took some of Sanhua’s blood. Others, unwilling to let him benefit alone, also took a few drops.

Gradually, Sanhua became a shared resource among the sects. Everyone wanted a piece.

To them, she was no longer a divine being sent to the mortal realm, but a fountain of spiritual power.

One day, the major sects fought over her blood.

Amid the chaos, someone cut flesh from her body and stared obsessively at the blood. “Just a drop of this, and the elders will accept me into the inner sect.”

Then came a second. A third. A fourth…

Until blood stained the entire ground.

Sanhua, or rather, Ji Rong, was still conscious.

She could feel pain. She could hear everything. She knew she was being carved apart, devoured alive. But she had violated the rules, and thus, could not move.

It was as if she were being punished.

The Hidden Records of Cultivation had it all wrong, Immortal Sanhua was not struck down by divine thunder.

The Administrator and 01 were the true gentle gods. It was humanity that was greedy.

Slowly, Ji Rong’s consciousness began to fade.

She seemed to hear Madam Mo weeping, lamenting the puppets Sanhua had never reclaimed, remembering the beautiful stories beneath the peach blossom tree.

Someone said, “The True Immortal is dying. What do we do? We were only thinking of our sects' glory, but if word of this gets out, we’ll be ruined.”

“Let’s write a book. Disciples love story books. If we spread it enough, the world will believe it.”

“We can call it The Hidden Records of Cultivation. Sounds like a distant legend. Didn’t Madam Mo say Sanhua once loved a woman from the Divine Sect? We can say she became a fallen immortal for her, bringing calamity to the world…”

“Yes, yes…”

Praises echoed through the crowd, while only the Demon Lord stood still, gazing at the blood-soaked earth, remembering the woman’s once peerless beauty.

Ji Rong listened in silence, knowing her chip had shattered.

Once the host was found, the remaining data fused into the four swords.

When the fragment belonging to Sanhua separated, Ji Rong felt as though she had regained control over her body.

Of course, control no longer mattered, because her body was already on the verge of extinction.

Before her demise, she detonated the energy within her body.

That energy came from her, and also from Sanhua. It far exceeded the maximum capacity the box could withstand.

She thought, maybe her chip would end up fused with the Qinghe Sword.

As she wished, this world would perish.

And then reset.

…

A girl woke up in a vast snowy field.

She sat up, gazing at the boundless white world around her, then looked down at the sword she cradled in her arms.

She stared at the sword, as if she somehow knew its name.

Yes, it was called Qinghe.

As for why it was called that, she had forgotten.

But since she had forgotten, she might as well move forward.

She walked for a long time, finally leaving the snowy expanse behind and arriving at a city.

It was a large, bustling city, vibrant and lively.

The girl saw round red balls, but didn’t know what they were called.

Not that it mattered to her.

She saw beautiful flowers, girls wearing hair pins adorned with pearls, but what were those things?

She didn’t know, and she didn’t care.

All she did was hold her sword and carefully observe this unfamiliar world.

She stood at the city gate, watching a vendor lift a shiny object with a small spatula. It shimmered with colorful light, it was very pretty.

Children nearby clapped and cheered, laughing, “It’s a phoenix! The most beautiful phoenix!”

The girl frowned slightly at the sight of the phoenix.

What was a phoenix? It certainly looked beautiful.

Then she looked up and saw two bold characters written above the city gate, 

Xuanji.

For some reason, the characters looked familiar to her. So she lifted her foot and stepped into Xuanji City.

…

She wandered for a long time and eventually came upon a magnificent palace.

At the palace steps stood a man.

He looked somewhat sorrowful, though the girl didn’t really understand what “sorrow” meant.

The man asked her, “Where did you come from?”

She answered honestly, “From the snowfield.”

“And do you know where you are now?”

The girl remembered the plaques and replied, “Xuanji City, the Taiping Hall.”

The man descended the steps and smiled at her. “Then do you remember your name?”

She shook her head and pointed at the sword. “I don’t remember my name, but I remember this sword is called Qinghe.”

Later, the girl learned the man’s name was Ji An, the lord of Xuanji City.

His daughter had died from illness, so he gave the girl his daughter’s name.

Ji An didn’t just give her a name, he also taught her many things.

She became quite skilled with the sword and played the zither well, but seemed to care for none of it.

Except for being very fond of cleanliness, liking white clothes, enjoying phoenix-shaped sugar art sold in the city, and loving the bright blossoms of the phoenix flower.

Beyond that, she had no idea what she was meant to do.

Until her coming-of-age ceremony. There, she saw Sect Master Mei and Elder Gong of the Wanjian Sect. They struck a chord of familiarity in her. For a fleeting moment, she thought, maybe she was meant to cultivate at Wanjian Sect.

By then, the girl had a name: Ji Rong.

Ji Rong looked at the blood jade bracelet on her wrist and said to Madam Ji, “Mother, I want to go cultivate at Wanjian Sect.”

Madam Ji seemed taken aback, pausing before replying, “Changqin wanted to go to Wanjian Sect too. Your father and I had just been discussing whether to send you to the Tianyin Division for training.”

Ji Rong recalled a dream from the night before. In the depths of her mind, a voice had spoken to her, faint, yet strangely familiar.

The voice said: When you reach Wanjian Sect and meet a certain person, you will remember everything.

Thinking of this, Ji Rong said to Madam Ji, “But I only want to go to Wanjian Sect.”

From the moment she came into this world, her memories had been a blank slate. But somehow, she had a deep, unshakable obsession with Wanjian Sect.

“I’ve never known who I am, why I’m here, or where I should go. But when I saw Sect Master Mei and Elder Gong, I felt like I had met them before.”

She smiled softly. “Mother, maybe once I’m there, I’ll finally know who I am.”

And so, Ji Rong got her wish, she entered Wanjian Sect.

Her residence was called Wantangju, where the subtle fragrance of plum blossoms lingered in the air. Every winter, vermilion plum blossoms blanketed the branches.

The flowers were beautiful, and the snowy landscape was beautiful too.

But after seeing them for a while, Ji Rong found them a bit dull.

It felt like something was missing.

That day marked the inner sect's master-disciple ceremony at Wanjian Sect.

Ji Rong sat just below the four revered elders, boredly playing with the blood jade bracelet on her wrist.

All around her, birds were singing and countless plum petals fluttered down like crimson rain.

Through that cascade of blossoms, her gaze met someone’s.

Ji Rong froze for a moment. She felt like she had seen that person before.

Maybe in another life, in a dream. In a grove of peach blossoms, under the bloom of phoenix flowers.

She had seen her.

Memories flooded Ji Rong’s mind, so many that she couldn’t tell what was real and what was illusion.

But as she stared into that person’s eyes, everything suddenly became simple and beautiful.

With the scent of blossoms in the air, the girl in purple robes stepped before her, bowed slightly, and greeted her.

“Inferior disciple Gu Baiyi greets Senior Sister Ji.”

When she looked up, she smiled gently, her eyes just as Ji Rong remembered.

This moment had replayed in Ji Rong’s mind a thousand times.

It was like waiting a thousand years, missing her a thousand times, just to catch that one falling petal.

When she wasn’t around, the mountains were just mountains, the river is just rivers.

The sun, moon, and stars moved on without her, things ancient and dull.

But when she appeared, even the dullest things seemed to come alive with meaning.

With her, Ji Rong’s world finally had light.

Ji Rong looked at the person standing before her.

She looked, and looked again, and the more she looked, the more beautiful she seemed. Ji Rong liked her very much.

So she nodded and smiled, saying, “Junior Sister Gu. A pleasure to meet you.”

---------

Note: Regarding Sanhua’s death, she died the same way both times.

As mentioned earlier, resetting the timeline adds a new “row” of events on top of the current one.

So Ji Rong reset the timeline atop the “correct” version, effectively overwriting it. But the original timeline still exists and continues on (for example, her sister finding the chip and launching her into the cultivation world via the game). It just has a lower priority.

Because the original timeline was overwritten in priority, the Ji Rong  that her sister sent entered the new, reset timeline, meaning the chip on the Qinghe Sword and modern Ji Rong = the original self.

So in the end, the timeline created by Ji Rong merges with the original self’s destiny.

And as previously mentioned, mutated beings aren’t affected by resets, which is why Baiyi retains her memories. The voice in Ji Rong’s mind was her sister, who will help her recover her memories. (And if that fails, there are still four swords to help out.)

The ending isn’t perfect, but it repeats with a twist. With Gu Baiyi and Ji Rong remembering everything, they’re basically max-level bosses returning to the beginner’s village.