Murong Yun’s eyes widened, filled with unwillingness. Yet all she saw was the futilely churning clouds, every flash of lightning converging to one point, as if to forge the strongest heavenly thunder.
She could hear it—the consciousness above, gloating, as if saying: Look, at last it has seized the chance.
At last, they could completely erase her—the anomaly that had slipped free of the world’s plot.
Though heavenly thunder is meant to be the world’s purest justice, in Murong Yun’s eyes now it was nothing more than a biased creation.
With immense difficulty she turned her gaze, at last seeing the Bone Staff—the only thing that could save her life—lying just three steps away…
Farther away, Gong Liu saw Murong Yun gravely wounded and stripped of strength. Coveting the lightning‑summoning staff, he tried to hook it toward himself with water‑elemental qi.
Suddenly the sky thundered with a deafening crash, numbing the ears; then darkness fell, as though all things had lost their light…
The sky seemed bitten open, its only light the heaven‑thunder—falling at light speed, able to engulf a grown man whole…
Seeing this, Gong Liu scrambled away in panic, rolling and crawling to flee the scene. And not only him—everyone was frantically retreating, terrified of being tainted even slightly.
Only that thunderbolt struck true, leaving Murong Yun motionless, her blood soaking the snow beneath. In her pitch‑black eyes, the lightning was reflected.
Murong Yun thought: in truth, she still did not want to die. Yet it seemed… she could not go on. If this was to be her ending…
In the instant the thunder struck her, Murong Yun grew utterly calm. She even lost all sensation, aware only that she was enveloped by violet lightning.
There was none of the agony from last time when the Bone Staff broke and she was struck by thunder, nor the unbearable numbness of being charred into cinders.
It seemed that even death was not as painful as she had imagined…
Dimly, it felt as though she had returned to the night before entering the book… that sleepless night until dawn.
What had she been doing? Oh—she had stayed up all night binging that damned book. Its dog‑blood plot rubbed the reader’s intelligence into the dirt. She couldn’t bear it, felt as if she’d swallowed filth, and so she wrote a long review.
As for why she forced herself to read such an awful novel all the way to the latest chapter—simply because this book was written by “her.”
Thinking of it—both her lives ruined by the same person—Murong Yun felt a bitter irony stir within.
Perhaps in that dull and sorrowful life, her last joy before entering the book was this: after finishing her long review that night, she finally pulled an all‑nighter on her favorite mobile game and obtained the top‑tier divine plant she had always wanted.
That was—the Moon Rose, a divine plant nourished by the Elf Queen’s own blood.
She remembered the overwhelming ads for that mobile game, boasting of a top divine plant said to exist only once in the entire game. Even the game’s social media pushed it tirelessly—every player had heard the slogan…
Do you know the Rose of the Elven Forest? They say whoever obtains it can change their fate.
Back then she scoffed—what “uniqueness”? All that mystical talk, wasn’t it just data?
But now she could not stop herself from recalling it all—faintly, she even smelled a strange fragrance of flowers… and her consciousness gradually blurred.
..........
“Welcome to my legacy, fated one.”
In the distant void, as Murong Yun’s consciousness was about to vanish, a misty female voice sighed: “Although… due to unavoidable reasons, it came a little earlier.”
“But, fated one, trust me—this world has long been real. And you… you are…”
The voice faltered, breaking off. Murong Yun felt like a drowning soul, her whole body wrapped in viscous liquid, unable to escape, unable to hear the words clearly anymore.
Just as she reached her limit, fresh air suddenly rushed in. She inhaled greedily—only to realize her whole body ached, each breath searing with pain.
Her body ached everywhere, yet Murong Yun was indescribably happy. She knew—she was alive… she could still live.
Heaven’s Way—once again, it has failed!
When her consciousness gathered again, she saw that hateful heavenly thunder had not vanished. She watched helplessly as it struck her motionless body again and again, pain consuming flesh and even soul.
At the same time, she felt her body undergoing a transformation as swift as flight—yet the pain was a hundred, a thousand times worse than the medicinal bath she had endured while cultivating the Tai Su Technique!
And that seedling, which had always shrunk back as if it did not exist, finally appeared at her heart.
It did not, as when the Bone Staff was destroyed, turn into vines to shield her. Instead, it curled its leaves, glowing faintly, ceaselessly channeling vast life force into her—so that she was not slain by the thunder.
The sprout—no, rather, it was the Moon Rose, the sole legend of the Elven Forest, a being imbued with the Elf Queen’s bloodline.
Elf Queen? Bloodline? Murong Yun, half‑dreaming, wondered—could that ethereal voice just now have been the Elf Queen herself?
Had she been struck stupid by the lightning? Elves belonged to the Western world, didn’t they? This was clearly an Eastern fantasy setting—and even the book itself had been labeled as female‑oriented Xuanhuan!!
Soon, the pain in her body left Murong Yun no time to think of anything else. She clenched her teeth until blood spilled from her mouth, lightning crawling across her clothes, agony beyond measure.
What kind of torment was this? Murong Yun herself did not know. Lightning engulfed her, black hair flying with static, then fading inch by inch from the roots—her dark, lustrous strands transforming into silver.
Her ears, between her hair, gradually lengthened, thinning to sharp points. Even her eyes, veined with pain and blood, mutated into a vivid emerald green…
All of this, hidden beneath the thunder’s shroud, went unnoticed. When Murong Yun was struck, the enemy troops of Pingyun had already retreated a hundred meters away, fleeing without a backward glance.
On the vast plain, the earlier sight of enemy troops clustered like ants had vanished. Only Murong Yun remained, punished harshly by heavenly thunder in a great crater.
Beneath the city wall, Su Liu and the soldiers saw the thunderclouds unmoving, thick purple bolts gathering and falling. With the earlier darkness of heaven and earth, they could not help but worry for Murong Yun.
“Vice General Su Liu, this Thunder Lady… nothing bad will happen to her, right? Why are the clouds frozen still?”
The trusted aide stared in puzzlement at the unmoving thunderclouds, then at the enemies long fled—yet the War Goddess, Lady Thunder, was nowhere to be seen returning…
“It can’t be…” One of the younger soldiers was about to utter something ominous, when a comrade smacked the back of his head, cutting off the unlucky words.
Su Liu too sensed something was wrong. His face grew grave as he gripped his weapon, preparing to go see what was happening.
Unexpectedly, someone moved faster—a streak of azure shadow swept down from the city wall, darting straight toward the thunder’s heart.
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