Getting to Bai Zhan Peak wasn’t a problem. Five years of cultivation had made Li Hanyi superhuman and her shizun’s mandatory home visits had given her a general idea of where everything across the twelve peaks was. A Qian Cao disciple running from their peak like something was on fire had the pleasant side effect of more experienced cultivators stopping to ask questions. Those questions usually ended in said disciple being offered a ride on a magic flying sword.

Li Hanyi had no idea what or why this particular cultivator was even doing on Qian Cao, but she wasn’t going to question her good fortune. An Ding didn’t raise their disciples to ask questions of other peaks, only to fix their problems and gossip about them later. Shang Fenhua had kindly explained that to her once and she had just laughed and laughed.

And now there she was, taking advantage of An Ding’s cultivators like her own personal inter-peak taxi service.

“Shixiong, this humble disciple is going to be challenging Bai Zhan for the sake of Qian Cao’s honor. Honored shixiong is not obligated to remain.” She did at least try to give the poor man a way out. He wasn’t beholden to her just because she hitched a ride.

The dough-faced man gave her a thin smile. “Someone will need to take shidi back to Qian Cao when this is finished.”

Not when she won. Oh no, no one expected her to win.

But she was going to have her pound of flesh on her shidi’s behalf and make Bai Zhan think twice about cutting their teeth on her peak. Qian Cao was going to be solidly off-limits. If they wanted to test themselves, Bai Zhan could go fight one of the peaks that actually focused on sword skills as part of this cultivation. Qing Jing was particularly nice this time of year, perhaps they could try the disciples there.

Landing on Bai Zhan was the stead breath before the plunge. The disciples at the front gates perked up, saw An Ding and Qian Cao uniforms, and immediately grew bored. “State your business.”

Li Hanyi took a deep breath to steady herself. For a brief moment, she considered the merits of just… responding like a rational human being with words and requests to speak to the management. But Bai Zhan was populated entirely by muscle-headed morons who only wanted to fight, and no one with common sense was in charge.

She answered their question with a flick of both wrists and a twist of metallic qi.

Despite what science fiction would have one believe, no magic pressure point in the neck existed that could cause instant paralysis. There were no pointy-eared aliens running around performing death grips on poor unsuspecting humans. That would be silly. After all, this was fantasy China.

That pressure point was in the middle of the forehead.

Not because it made sense according to any school of Chinese medicine. That would have required Airplane to do actual research into how traditional Chinese medicine worked. No, Airplane had put the official humanoid body’s magical off button in the most dramatic spot possible according to some comic from Japan that he had read once and called it good.

The Rule of Cool was what mattered in PIDW, not common sense.

After five years of living with constant status pings about her character’s skills and complexity increases? Li Hanyi had figured out long ago that the Rule of Cool combined with any skill training that could be summarized in a two-minute-long montage was a winning strategy. She had spent an awful lot of time learning how to use tiny little bits of metal in very odd and precise configurations, and not nearly as much time on learning fancy sword tricks.

These poor, disposable gate guards never stood a chance.

The An Ding cultivator behind her gulped. “Ah, shidi? Was that necessary? Did you not need them to announce that you were challenging Bai Zhan?”

Well, shit. Was that what it looked like?

She paused in her righteous indignation and slowly turned back to look at the man. “Challenge Bai Zhan? As in, fight them all?”

He nodded back at her. “Was that not shidi’s plan?”

“Not really, no. If I did that, then they would want to duel. This disciple is not here to duel, just to put an unholy fear of this one’s peak into them by any means necessary.” She peered down at the immobile men and gave them a smile that could cut glass. “You’re still awake in there, shixiongs. So. This shidi will be clear. This shidi is looking for the Bai Zhan disciples who wronged this one’s own shidi. All the evils this one commits are because of this simple fact. Please remember that.” It was very important that they remembered that, because these three men were going to be her character witnesses at her trial later.

Li Hanyi pulled one of her shizun’s ridiculously long and gauzy scarves from her sleeve and began folding it over and over. She tied the fabric tube tightly over her face, made sure that the thin black silk covered her nose and chin, and took a deep breath to check that it wouldn’t get in her way. It was a shame that rubber gloves would be impossible for a fifteen-year-old disciple to acquire, what with their invention so completely beyond her scope. She could have used them.

Her preparations, as they were, were complete. Motive stated and witnessed, personal safety done, various drugs and needles at the ready, and Li Hanyi was as good as she ever would be.

The raid on Bai Zhan had begun.

***

Li Hanyi did not sneak. Sneaking would have implied that she had something to hide. This was the cultivation world, not some ninja show from Japan. She held her head high and walked through Bai Zhan like she belonged there, and not a single person thought to stop her.

That was their mistake.

The first disciples laughed when she asked where the brats who messed with her shidi’s garden were. They said he deserved it. Li Hanyi waited for them to walk away before dipping her needles in the first random bottle.

They’d be numb from the waist down for a good hour thanks to the paralytic, but they’d be puking their guts out for the next three thanks to her needles.

Li Hanyi was not here to play fair.

The next bunch were older than her, clearly further along on their cultivation journey. But Bai Zhan never bothered to learn how to resist monster toxins when they would rather learn how to kill the sources instead. A pinch of powdered Two-Headed Giant Moth wings right to the face? What was normally used as an ingredient in a very mild sleeping draught had her shixiongs seeing monsters that didn’t exist.

Who was she to get in the way of their efforts to battle their inner demons?

“Little Qian Cao shizhi, whatever are you doing?” The man leaned on a tree, his massive biceps bulging as he crossed his arms over his chest. He wore his ink-black hair in an impressively long ponytail that was held in place by a distinct silver crown.

Oh. Oh shit.

The Bai Zhan Peak Lord was trying very politely not to laugh. His scarred lips twitched, and he looked like he had just stepped out of an American kung-fu movie with his perfectly bronzed skin and face rugged with five o’clock shadow. “Well? An answer would be nice, or did you forget how to speak when you decided to raid my Bai Zhan peak?”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

She thought about her odds, had two poisoned needles balanced between her fingers as she stared mulishly up at the man.

He moved faster than she could keep up with, impossibly so for a man his size, the flat of his sword cold against her neck in the space of a breath. His smile didn’t reach his cold black eyes. “I won’t ask again.”

“This disciple has come to avenge a wrong done by Bai Zhan to this one’s shidi.”

She didn’t expect him to burst into laughter and sheathe his sword with a wave of his sleeves. “The strong protecting the weak by preying on the strong, huh. You would make a good Bai Zhan disciple.”

“I would rather eat molten glass.” Bai Zhan? Her? Absolutely not. Luo Binghe would carve his way through every Bai Zhan cultivator like they were prepackaged lunch meat, and she refused to be included in that body count. Her eyes widened as her mouth caught up to her brain and she realized the weight of her insult.

Luckily, her swift retort only made the man laugh darkly as he clutched his belly. He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with his immaculate white sleeve, and wheezed as he laughed. “Oh, oh that’s adorable. Go ahead, little shizhi. Go cut your teeth on something your own size.” He flapped his hand dismissively at her with another chuckle.

“Wait. Really?”

It was like she was a child being shooed off to play with her friends at a playground, not like she had raided his peak to commit unspeakable atrocities against his students. There was something very awkward and sad about knowing that the Bai Zhan Peak Lord was so willing to throw his own disciples under the bus like that.

“Why not?” He shrugged. “It isn’t like you’re going to do much damage.”

Not much damage? “This disciple hears and obeys, shibo.” Oh, she was going to make him regret that with every fiber of his being.

***

Ancient fantasy China was sorely lacking in many things that Li Hanyi had considered vital to her happiness and lifestyle choices. No longer did she have things like indoor plumbing, public transportation, supermarkets, and food delivery services. No more instant ramen, junk food, internet, or dedicated educational institutions. She’d probably kill Airplane for a Starbucks latte.

There was no Geneva Convention.

That would have required there to be a Geneva, Switzerland.

Sure, there were things Li Hanyi couldn’t do if she wanted to maintain her place as a disciple of a righteous cultivation sect. But the truly creative and awful ways people in her first life had discovered to wage a more efficient war on each other? Not a single one of those little evils was technically banned. As long as nobody died and nobody was irreparably injured? There was truly nothing she couldn’t do.

Li Hanyi did not consider herself to be a particularly violent individual. She had died of overwork, so dedicated to her job that one instance of rage had killed her. Before that, she had been a good little cog in the corporate machine, even-tempered and tolerant of a truly astronomical amount of abuse in the name of a paycheck.

She had no desire to ever be that accepting of the status quo again.

A whole other life had provided her with the creative capacity and inspirational sources to terrify some unsuspecting pre-mass media-consuming children into minding their manners any time they saw her peak’s colors. She picked her targets wisely: no brand new disciples who had never left Bai Zhan since they were accepted scant months ago, no going after anyone who was actually polite, and no biting off more than she could chew. Everything else was fair game.

Dramatic jumping down on her quarry like she was Batman? Oddly satisfying, making her sleeves flap like a bat was truly more fun than it should have been. Raining down qi-enhanced needles with incredible precision? Probably going to get her in trouble later when they were done trying to remember how their bodies were supposed to work. Mixing up her moves so that no one knew if they were going to get needles or drugs? Completely valid strategy.

The worst part about the whole thing was that it was, somehow, actually working. Li Hanyi was a singular point of calm in a sea of chaos as disciples either tried to flee or attacked. Those who bared steel ended up paralyzed on the ground while she poured more poison-laced needles out of her sleeve and cackled at their distress.

A hush fell over the peak as a single disciple bravely stepped forward with his sword bared. His ponytail fluttered in the wind, a few strands brushing against his unfairly beautiful face. He pointed his sword at her and growled. “Fight me.”

She blinked. This was clearly an older member of her own generation, one who lived and breathed Bai Zhan’s fighting principles. Good for him. “This one only came for those who have wronged this one’s peak. Unless shixiong messed with this one’s shidi, this one has no quarrel.”

His confusion was palpable even across the body-littered training ground. “Who? Just, you’re good. Fight me.”

“No thank you?” What kind of fight-obsessed maniac just walked up to the insane person raiding their peak just to fight them? Not to stop said raid, oh no. That would be sensible. Who even—

If anyone asked, Li Hanyi had no idea what happened or even how. One moment he was rushing at her with a sword, the next his feet had sprouted needles and he tripped as they stopped functioning. She had no clue how she had the accuracy and speed to throw an entire bottle of undiluted sleeping potion into his face. The potent medicine soaked into his robes, and she had the undeniable pleasure of watching a beautiful young man literally fall before her feet in a slump.

Whatever fight this young man was after? That anticlimactic thing wasn’t it.

[Mission “To Fight Fire With Fire” complete! You have been awarded 50 B-Points, +30 character complexity, and the title “Mad Doctor of Qian Cao.”]

That was lovely and all, but what about those optional goals? Did she clear enough of them? Had Li Hany managed to unlock the genre change option and free herself from the inevitable death or harem statuses?

[+10 character satisfaction points with “Liu Qingge.” Optional genre change objectives have been met. Would you like to change the genre to “Otome”?]

“Holy shit, nope.” Li Hanyi breathed out. There was just so much wrong with that. She picked up the various needles that had scattered at her feet in her panic over that insane disciple’s frontal assault and stuffed them back into her pouch. Which one of these Bai Zhan idiots was Liu Qingge and how in the hell did any of this work towards a satisfaction rating?

But none of that mattered when the worst thing was right there: the optional genre unlocked was for otome.

In theory, Li Hanyi had no issues with the otome genre. Why would she when she was literally the target audience. No, the problem she had was that otome was, at its worst, almost as bad as YY. Only, instead of harems of beautiful in the double digits, some poor woman was going to be forced to pick just one man out of anywhere from three to seven lucky candidates to have a Happily Ever After as her One True Love.

Was Luo Binghe supposed to be a capture target?

And who the hell was the new female protagonist supposed to be? Ning Yingying?

Li Hanyi didn’t want to be dead or a harem member. She didn’t want to be a background character on an otome hidden character’s route… even less than that. No, thank you, she would not be signing up for the role of the broken and mysterious older brother-type NPC either. Try again, System, with some other idiot who might enjoy fixing some idiot otome protagonist’s problems only to be cast aside the minute Luo Binghe crooked one blackened finger. She had seen the merch, she knew perfectly well what was under his robes.

Someone else could have that. From now on, any mission assigned by the System that involved Bai Zhan? Airplane could handle it. That lonely little virgin could use the opportunity to either try and get laid or finally leave the closet. She wasn’t going to judge.

[Conditions met. Genre change request denied. Would you like to spend 200 B-Points to continue guest account services?]

What. The. Fuck.

She’d only gotten fifty points out of clearing the mission in the first place, and now she had to give it all back plus an additional one hundred and fifty just to keep her account active. What kind of highway robbery was this?

Li Hanyi angrily poked at the ‘YES’ box floating in front of her face and watched as her hard-earned points rapidly dwindled. Through the box, she could see limbs twitching as some sturdier disciples gathered their wits about them and tried to move their qi against her needles and poisons.

She took a warped delight in jabbing more needles into important meridians on each and every one of them. It would take the likes of an Inner Disciple of Qian Cao to undo the damage, and Li Hanyi was prepared to make a passionate case for leaving the Bai Zhan cultivators like this for at least a week. That way, they would learn their lesson.

“That’s enough, little shizhi. You’ve made your point.” The Bai Zhan Peak Lord's smoky voice was loud enough to carry across the scattered moans of the fallen and suffering. “Any slight by Bai Zhan towards Qian Cao will be returned a hundredfold.”

Say whatever you wanted about cultivators, but they did give some truly grand ways to exit a situation. She made a show of fluttering out her sleeves and giving a picture-perfect bow. “This disciple thanks shibo for allowing this opportunity.”

Some evil harboring in her heart had Li Hanyi stepping on that pretty, drooling in his slumber, boy as she left with her head held high.

The Bai Zhan Peak Lord guffawed. “We’re always here if you change your mind, shizi.”