When Li Xiuran saw Ji Chuling leading Gu Baiqing inside, he quickly rose to greet them but noticed Gu Baiqing was staring blankly at Half-Step Mad, completely dazed, nothing like the composed and noble Immortal Venerable he usually was. He looked utterly stunned.
Half-Step Mad also froze for a moment when he saw Gu Baiqing, then sighed, his face twisting with frustration.
“D*mn it all,” he muttered. “Everything’s such a bloody mess.”
“Elder Luofeng? You are…” Li Xiuran asked in confusion.
“He’s here for Half-Step Mad,” Ji Chuling replied.
Half-Step Mad froze, staring at Gu Baiqing. “Looking for me? What for?”
Gu Baiqing’s heartbeat went completely out of rhythm. His mind was a mess of excitement, and all those scenes of coded exchanges from transmigration novels flashed through his head.
“I… I want to invite you for a drink…”
“Drink?” Half-Step Mad looked utterly baffled.
“Palace Jade Liquor,” Gu Baiqing suddenly said.
Half-Step Mad blurted out reflexively, “One hundred and eighty a cup!”
Half-Step Mad: !!!
Gu Baiqing: !!!
Half-Step Mad gasped sharply, rushed forward, grabbed Gu Baiqing’s hand, and shook it hard. “You—you—you—!”
Gu Baiqing also clasped both hands, just as stirred. “You, I—”
So under Li Xiuran and Ji Chuling’s utterly confused gazes, the two were left space to talk privately.
“I knew something was off with Mo Xuanli’s plotline changing so much, turns out you’re transmigrated too!” Half-Step Mad said excitedly, clutching Gu Baiqing’s hand.
Gu Baiqing almost burst into tears. “You too? Dragged here by a system?”
“Of course!” Half-Step Mad almost jumped. “If you fail the mission, you die! And look, they stuck me in as some washed-up old man for background color! D*mn it, I used to be a bright, handsome young man!”
“Brother, that’s rough,” Gu Baiqing said in solidarity.
“You’ve got it worse,” Half-Step Mad said awkwardly. “Wait, are you here because you read the novel first?”
When Gu Baiqing heard him say “you’ve got it worse,” he felt his face twitch. “How could I possibly read that kind of novel? I’m a straight guy. I’m Gu Bai, a voice actor, I voiced the audio drama adaptation!”
Half-Step Mad instantly looked indignant. “What’s wrong with my novel? Lots of guys love it! So many wives, straight guys eat that up! Okay, sure, it got eunuch’d in the middle, but still—”
“Wait, what? You’re the original author? No, hold on, what did you just say? Wives? Guys love it? And eunuch’d?” Gu Baiqing’s eyes went wide.
“Huh? I never sold any audio drama rights…” Half-Step Mad looked equally puzzled.
They stared at each other then both blurted out at once:
“You mean The Boundless Path of Cultivation?”
“You mean My Master—” Gu Baiqing suddenly choked mid-sentence.
A terrible realization dawned on him, those nagging inconsistencies that had haunted him all this time suddenly connected into something horrifying.
“My Master what?” Half-Step Mad asked, clearly hearing a different title.
Gu Baiqing grabbed him by the arm, eyes wide with panic. “You, what kind of novel did you write, exactly?”
“A standard harem-style long-ao-tian power fantasy, obviously,” Half-Step Mad said.
“And the protagonist?”
“Li Xiuran, of course! The big final villain is that disciple of yours, Mo Xuanli, the one you’re playing!”
Gu Baiqing felt a mouthful of blood clog in his chest.
Seeing his face pale and contort, Half-Step Mad frowned. “What’s wrong? Didn’t you say you voiced the audio drama? You must’ve read the original, right? But when did anyone even sell the rights?”
Gu Baiqing could barely find the words. Still, if he didn’t confirm this, the confusion would only deepen.
“The title I voiced, it’s different. The genre too.”
“What title? What genre?”
Gu Baiqing…
Gu Baiqing covered his face, swallowed his shame, and painstakingly laid out everything he knew: the title, the genre, the character dynamics, the entire plot up to now.
Half-Step Mad sat there slack-jawed for a full minute, completely dumbstruck by the revelation.
“So, bro, you really thought you’d transmigrated into a BL novel? That you and your disciple were… a thing? Then right now….” Half-Step Mad gawked at him, disbelief in his eyes.
Gu Baiqing waved his hands frantically. “No! Nothing like that! We’re just a normal master and disciple, okay? I’m just completing the tasks the system gave me, that’s all!”
…Guilt.
“How can you be sure you didn’t end up in my world instead of yours?” Gu Baiqing asked, desperate.
Half-Step Mad hit him with the one answer he couldn’t refute.
“Because when the system yanked me in, it said so: this world is The Boundless Path of Cultivation. What about your system, did it ever tell you?”
Gu Baiqing’s pupils shrank; even his hands began to tremble.
His system had never once specified that. It never even called Mo Xuanli “the protagonist.” It only ever said “mission target” or used vague terms. He had been the one assuming Mo Xuanli was the main character all along.
Oh god, had he completely misunderstood everything? Mo Xuanli wasn’t part of a romance at all? This was a BG world from the start? Those “suggestive” interactions… had just been accidents? All the ambiguous moments, just coincidences born of demonic influence or traps?
And those bizarrely “gay-sounding” task cards, were they not intentional, but simply the system optimizing for emotional bonds, not romance?
Maybe… maybe he’d been projecting all along. The “corrupt lens” of a BL reader seeing what wasn’t there. Maybe the system had only wanted to deepen their teacher–student connection.
It was possible… wasn’t it?
Gu Baiqing’s brain completely crashed under the onslaught. Shame, anger, humiliation, disbelief, his thoughts tangled into chaos.
“Wait…” he suddenly said, mind spinning. “The people from Linxun Town: Hua En and Wen Jiang… and Ao Hang and Three Bean… and that Qian Yue with the incubus… and Xie Qingrong, wait, were there any male–male relationships in your novel at all?”
Half-Step Mad was stunned for a long moment. “Other than Hua En and Wen Jiang, I only made them ambiguous on purpose to build suspense so the readers wouldn’t see it coming. The rest? None at all. And all those people you mentioned? They were supposed to die early on in the original story. You must’ve changed their fates yourself… that’s got nothing to do with me. I wrote them as cannon fodder from the start, never gave them any special traits.”
Gu Baiqing’s lips trembled, he could no longer find a single reason left to question it.
Seeing the ever-changing expressions on Gu Baiqing’s face, Half-Step Mad patted him sympathetically. “Hey… isn’t this a good thing? It’s not a BL world after all. You don’t have to be afraid of being forcibly ‘bent’ anymore.”
Gu Baiqing froze. His mind went blank. It was like all the chaos in his head had been wiped clean, leaving only one thought, one he should’ve been happiest about all along.
“Right… right! We’re both straight men, hahaha! My integrity is intact, I don’t have to worry about those ‘master-disciple romance’ tropes anymore!”
As he spoke, his tone grew lighter and lighter, and before long he almost sounded genuinely overjoyed.
Half-Step Mad laughed too. “I’m guessing the story you dubbed was someone’s fanfic. There used to be tons of them, people pairing the protagonist with the villain, even weirder ‘evil cult CPs.’ Yours being a ‘master-disciple’ one isn’t surprising. You’ve really had it tough, man, being tormented by that misunderstanding for so long.”
Gu Baiqing let out a breath of relief but suddenly grew wary again. “Wait. My mission is to make sure Mo Xuanli doesn’t fall into demonic cultivation and reaches the tribulation stage safely. If he doesn’t turn, he won’t become the villain. What about your mission? They don’t conflict, do they?”
Half-Step Mad blinked. “Huh. Sounds like our missions actually fit together. Mine’s to help Li Xiuran ascend to godhood and bring stability to both the cultivation and demon realms.”
“You said just now that Mo Xuanli’s the final boss, didn’t you? That wouldn’t put him at odds with your mission, right? My disciple’s a good kid! Making him the villain was unreasonable to begin with!” Gu Baiqing said immediately. From protagonist to antagonist, his poor little disciple’s fate had been cruel enough already. No matter what, he would never allow Mo Xuanli to be treated as some villain.
Half-Step Mad grew serious then, and began explaining the true storyline of this world.
The male lead was Li Xiuran. The female lead was Ji Chuling. Of course, there were several female side characters too, all red-thread connections of Li Xiuran’s. He was an orphan who, as per classic formula, went through endless lucky encounters and adventures. He met Mo Xuanli by chance, found him kindred, and they became sworn brothers.
But because of Mo Xuanli’s background, he strayed further and further from the right path until he became the Demon Lord.
“Readers love the ‘brothers-turned-enemies’ trope. Two people growing up through hardship: one smooth sailing, one twisted by adversity, good and evil on opposite sides. In the end, it’s the head of the righteous realm versus the Demon Lord of the demonic realm. The reason I got sent here is because… I broke the story.”
“I made Mo Xuanli too powerful from the start. The balance of abilities collapsed. No matter how I tried to fix it, Li Xiuran just couldn’t beat him logically. I completely wrote myself into a corner, so the novel ended up unfinished.”
“Well, I can’t be blamed too much. When a story runs that long, it’s normal for settings to collapse, hahaha… Anyway, the system sent me here to repair the imbalance, to support Li Xiuran so he can complete his main arc. If the Demon Lord ends up the strongest, the world collapses. But when I was in Star-Stepping City, remember, that time I gave Mo Xuanli a prophecy, I noticed something. When I guided him away from demonic cultivation, Heaven’s Dao didn’t stop me. Back then I wasn’t sure, but now that I’ve heard about your mission, I get it. To keep the world balanced, there are only two ways: either make sure the protagonist stays the strongest, or make sure anyone powerful enough to threaten him never turns into an enemy. Don’t you see? Heaven’s Dao wants us to pick the second route! Then all we have to deal with are the real troublemakers from the demon race. Everyone wins!”
Half-Step Mad grew more and more animated as he analyzed.
Gu Baiqing listened and finally felt relieved, their missions didn’t interfere at all. In fact, they could cooperate.
He would ensure Mo Xuanli didn’t fall into darkness or oppose the protagonist; Half-Step Mad would make sure the world’s plot stayed on track.
“So that’s why you lied to Mo Xuanli, told him that if he went demonic, it would kill me?” Gu Baiqing asked, exasperated.
But Half-Step Mad’s expression suddenly turned serious. “Actually…”
Gu Baiqing instantly sensed something was off. “Wait, don’t tell me in the original story I actually died at this point?”
“Not died, ascended.” Half-Step Mad said awkwardly. “You successfully underwent tribulation and became an immortal. You couldn’t return after that, which… is basically the same thing. I saw how much Mo Xuanli cared about you, so I used that to scare him straight, hoping he’d stay on the righteous path. Compared to the original, the fact that he hasn’t started cultivating demonic arts yet is already way better than expected.”
Half-Step Mad laughed again, clapping Gu Baiqing’s shoulder. “And that’s all thanks to you, brother!”
Gu Baiqing frowned slightly. “I probably won’t ascend yet, my system’s task isn’t complete. But tell me, in the original story, what was my relationship with Mo Xuanli really like?”
Half-Step Mad thought for a moment. “Actually, Gu Baiqing and Mo Xuanli didn’t have much of a relationship. Gu Baiqing only took him in because he suspected Mo Xuanli’s identity might be problematic. But according to his principles, he couldn’t condemn someone before they’d done wrong, so he kept him close to watch over him. He only planned to teach him medicine, not swordsmanship. But over time, he saw that Mo Xuanli had a genuinely kind nature, and started teaching him more.”
Hearing this, Gu Baiqing felt a pang in his chest. So at the start, he really had only meant to monitor Mo Xuanli… even though back then the boy had been so pitiful, all because of his bloodline.
“Mo Xuanli feared him, but also respected him deeply. Gu Baiqing was just a typical strict, distant master. According to the original text, Mo Xuanli went on most of his training journeys alone or with other disciples. It was through those hardships that he gradually turned demonic.”
Half-Step Mad only knew the plot up through Star-Stepping City, after all, Linxun Town and the East Sea were arcs from the villain’s side of the story. As the author, he had a rough sense of the logic, character growth, and endings, but not the detailed events themselves.
Aside from the fact that, in the original plot, the real master shouldn’t have been by Mo Xuanli’s side in Star-Stepping City, everything else was mostly the same as what Gu Baiqing already knew.
In other words, that fanfiction had simply taken the foundation of the original story and stuffed in as many “master-disciple romance” tropes as possible, turning what was supposed to be a cultivation tale about the protagonist into a love story between the villain and his master. No wonder there were so many illogical parts.
As the two continued to compare plotlines, many things that had once made no sense were finally explained. Of course, there were still some awkward inconsistencies they couldn’t untangle; after all, this was a real world now. People’s thoughts and actions could shift at random, let alone Gu Baiqing’s; even the original author couldn’t guarantee every logic thread remained intact.
In the original text, after Xie Qingrong’s accident, they hadn’t caught the puppet master, Luo Yi. Qian Yue died young, and because no one had ventured into the demon realm early to deliver key information, the plotline of the Taixu Hall unfolded differently. There, Mo Xuanli was only troubled by the merfolk’s affair, while the hidden gods clan was attacked at the same time. He didn’t return with Li Xiuran, perhaps because in the original, Li Xiuran had gotten entangled with Yun Yue and the captured Gu-demon girl, making Ji Chuling unhappy, which led to tension between the hidden gods clan and Li Xiuran.
This time, however, Li Xiuran had kept his distance, so the hidden gods clan had come along.
In the original story, Li Xiuran had already sensed something wrong with the demons. When escorting Yun Yue and Nan Zhi to Taixu Hall, he’d intended to warn everyone. Seeing Mo Xuanli in trouble, he even spoke up in his defense. Just then, Gu Baiqing successfully transcended his tribulation and ascended. Out of fear of the Zixiao Sect, the others let Mo Xuanli go for the moment.
But once Gu Baiqing was gone, Mo Xuanli lost his only protection.
In the following two years, the demonic plots gradually surfaced, and only during the later Immortal Convention did they begin rounding up traitors.
Now, however, thanks to the butterfly effects caused by these two transmigrators, the entire plot had been compressed.
For both Half-Step Mad and Gu Baiqing, it had been an escape from disaster but Mo Xuanli’s fate had been completely rewritten. The trouble was, all later events were thrown into chaos. The timeline had been pushed forward by two years, leaving the protagonist without enough time to grow, which was exactly why Half-Step Mad had been complaining earlier.
“Didn’t expect you could help Mo Xuanli withstand the hidden gods clan’s formation, you’re awesome!” Half-Step Mad gave Gu Baiqing a big thumbs up.
Gu Baiqing’s face twitched awkwardly. “You don’t need to worry. In the original, they never made it to Constellation Island. Now that they’re going, everyone will get a power boost, it’ll make up for the lost two years.”
Half-Step Mad frowned. “What worries me is the demon clan’s next move. Originally, Mo Xuanli was supposed to fall into darkness, escape to the demon realm, and take power there. But now… it feels like the calm before the storm.”
“In the long run, what happens next?”
“After Mo Xuanli leaves, Li Xiuran grieves deeply. Once he regains clarity, he resolves to stop Mo Xuanli’s descent into evil. That’s when he begins his journey to gather the fragments of the God-Slaying Sword to thwart the demons’ grand plan.”
“I think the main plot will still head that way. Mo Xuanli also wants the sword, it can supposedly erase his demonic bloodline. That gives him a reason to cooperate with Li Xiuran.”
Half-Step Mad was stunned. “Erase it? How could that be possible?”
Gu Baiqing blinked. “Isn’t it? That’s what he believes, he’s been collecting the fragments because of that.”
Half-Step Mad hesitated, frowning. “Who told him that?”
“Your senior brother, Half-Step Immortal. You didn’t know?”
“‘Senior brother,’ huh. I’ve never met him. But yeah, he’s supposed to be the strongest person in this world, I set him up that way. If he said it, maybe it’s something the world itself filled in automatically, because I sure never wrote that. In my setting, the God-Slaying Sword was the only weapon capable of defeating the original Mo Xuanli. But since Mo Xuanli found many fragments early, Li Xiuran couldn’t gather them all later so he couldn’t win. Honestly, even if he did, he probably wouldn’t have been able to. I screwed up Li Xiuran’s setup from the start.”
Gu Baiqing couldn’t help sighing. “Was the demon-blooded Xuanli really that powerful?”
“Of course! Didn’t you know? He’s actually—”
A deafening crack of thunder tore through the sky, lightning striking Half-Step Mad squarely before he could finish.
The blinding flash forced Gu Baiqing to shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Half-Step Mad’s hair had turned into a full-on Afro, a wisp of smoke curling from his mouth.
“You okay?” Gu Baiqing asked in shock.
“I’m fine, haha. You get used to it after a while. Looks like I’m not allowed to spoil anything meant to be revealed later. I thought it’d be fine telling a fellow transmigrator,” Half-Step Mad muttered, shaking off the soot.
Gu Baiqing frowned and probed, “Actually, I have another suspicion. I keep feeling someone’s deliberately targeting Mo Xuanli, trying to push him into demonization. Could it be that the demon clan already knows about his mixed blood, and wants to recruit him before he becomes too powerful?”
“Exactly—it’s him—”
BOOM!
