WBICDPH Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Born as a Grain of Millet

What bad intentions could a puppy possibly have?

By September Strawberry

[“Han Ao. Male. Sixteen years old. Qi Refinement, Third Level?”]

[The white-robed disciple casually scribbled down a few sloppy symbols, then tossed the recording spirit stone back to Han Ao and told him to go inside and wait.]

[“Another delusional dreamer. A trash cultivator who’s only at Qi Refinement Level Three at sixteen actually dares to challenge the Inner Sect Trial of Misty Rain Mountain? Doesn’t know his own limits. Not afraid he’ll die in there.”]

[Mocking laughter rang out endlessly around him, frivolous words stabbing into the boy’s heart like sharp knives. He clenched his fists until his knuckles went white, grinding his teeth—but his face revealed nothing. He thanked them as usual and went inside.]

[So what if I’m trash? Cultivation is three parts talent and seven parts hard work. I, Han Ao, will step on everyone who looks down on me, one by one!]

[Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river! Never bully the poor youth!]

…

“Fellow cultivator? Fellow cultivator?”

“Huh?” The boy snapped back to his senses, hastily pulling his gaze away from the mocking little drama unfolding nearby.

He wore a weather-beaten gray cloth robe. His hair was messily tied together, his face smeared with dust and dirt so badly that his features were hard to make out—only a pair of clear, bright eyes stood out.

He looked exactly like a little beggar.

The white-robed disciple in front of him repeated impatiently,
“Please state your name, age, and cultivation level.”

“Oh—uh—Lin Jin. Eighteen. Cultivation… um, early Foundation Establishment.”

Hearing this, the disciple looked at him again in surprise, his expression visibly softening. Seeing the reaction, Lin Jin’s heart skipped a beat.

Crap. I reported it too high.

The recording spirit stone he received was still warm. Lin Jin held it in his hand, thanked the disciple, and quickly entered the gates of Misty Rain Mountain.

The boy named Han Ao from the neighboring line was already nowhere to be seen. Lin Jin jogged forward a few steps but still couldn’t catch up. This useless body of his started panting after just a short run, so he had no choice but to stop, reluctantly glancing toward the direction Han Ao had disappeared.

“Fellow cultivator?”

Someone called out again from nearby. Although Lin Jin had been here for ten days already, he still wasn’t used to being addressed that way.

He froze for a moment before realizing they were talking to him.
“Yes!”

The speaker was a young man in coarse hemp clothing, about sixteen or seventeen years old.

“Hi, my name’s Shen Bing. Seventeen years old, Qi Refinement Level Six. I was right behind you in line. You’re also here for the Inner Sect Trial of Misty Rain Mountain? I’ve heard the trial realm is extremely dangerous. Why don’t we team up and look out for each other?”

He paused, then added,
“I just heard you say you’re already at early Foundation Establishment at eighteen? That’s impressive. Unlike that Qi Refinement Level Three kid earlier—no self-awareness at all. Probably just came running over after hearing the name of Misty Rain Mountain. Serves him right to get laughed at.”

Upon hearing this, Lin Jin had exactly three thoughts:

Great. I definitely reported my cultivation too high.
Figures. Cannon fodder really is cannon fodder—raising death flags already.
Please don’t praise me to death. You have no idea that the kid you’re mocking will slaughter the entire cultivation world a few decades from now and grind NPCs like us into ants.

Lin Jin silently sighed and didn’t pick up Shen Bing’s conversational thread.

He had been in this godforsaken place for ten days already.

The whole thing started one night when he couldn’t sleep and, out of boredom, clicked on a recommended link in some app. He ended up reading a novel called Records of the Arrogant Immortal Overlord. It was a classic power-fantasy harem cultivation novel: the protagonist slapped faces, hacked his way through cheat-level upgrades, collected a harem, and dominated the cultivation world on his way to the peak of life.

It was just something to kill time. The plot was unoriginal, and Lin Jin finished it without much thought—until he closed his eyes and opened them again to find himself in another world.

At first, he didn’t know where he was. He could only piece things together from the names and locations people casually mentioned, eventually realizing he was inside Records of the Arrogant Immortal Overlord.

Lin Jin had lived over twenty years and read plenty of transmigration novels. Other people always transmigrated into the male lead or female lead—or at worst, a vicious supporting character. As for him? He landed straight into an eighteenth-tier, nameless cannon-fodder role.

Oh, except now the cannon fodder had a name: Lin Jin.

Given Lin Jin’s read-it-and-forget-it habits, he really shouldn’t have remembered the life of a background nobody—but there was no helping it. That nameless cannon fodder’s fate had left too deep an impression.

In the novel, this unnamed character was originally a disciple of the Ethereal Pavilion, one of the two great immortal sects. His physical constitution was too weak to cultivate, yet he possessed a once-in-ten-thousand-years Huaiyu Sacred Body—a physique born to be used as a cultivation furnace.

So the sect raised him from childhood like a gilded canary, feeding him pills. Later, when demonic cultivators stirred up trouble, they packaged him as a gift and sent him to the Demon Sovereign to seek peace.

Demonic, ghostly, and monstrous cultivators were all notoriously cruel. Anyone could imagine what kind of abuse a spiritual-energy-filled furnace would suffer when delivered into a den of demons.

But this cannon fodder had it even worse.

He was eaten alive by the Demon Lord.

Put plainly, he was literally devoured.

When Lin Jin read that part, he couldn’t even imagine how twisted the author’s mind must have been. What he never imagined even more was that he himself would become that soon-to-be-eaten cannon fodder.

And yet—open your eyes, and there he was, already on the road to becoming the Demon Lord’s snack.

As for Shen Bing’s suggestion to “team up,” Lin Jin neither refused nor agreed. He smiled and smoothly changed the topic, then parted ways with Shen Bing outside the residential area.

Misty Rain Mountain truly lived up to its reputation as an industry leader on par with the Ethereal Pavilion. The sect was enormous, wealthy, and generous—so much so that even temporary trial participants were each given a clean, tidy wooden cabin of their own.

Lin Jin used his recording spirit stone to unlock the barrier to his cabin, stepped inside, planted his hands on his hips, and looked around with satisfaction.

Heaven knew how much risk he had taken—and how much effort it had cost—to escape the surveillance of both the Ethereal Pavilion cultivators and the demonic cultivators.

He had originally been a peace-offering gift sent by the Ethereal Pavilion. Now that the “gift” had run away halfway, both the Pavilion and the demonic side wanted him dead. And dragging around a body that was nothing but a fragile, pill-soaked shell filled with unstable spiritual power, where could he even run?

After thinking it through, Misty Rain Mountain was still the best option. That was why he had spent ten days traveling day and night to get here.

First, sending a furnace cauldron as a peace offering was disgraceful business. No matter how arrogant the Ethereal Pavilion was, they wouldn’t dare publicize it—much less go stirring trouble at Misty Rain Mountain.

Second, Misty Rain Mountain was the sect of Han Ao, the novel’s male protagonist. If Lin Jin entered the sect alongside the protagonist and built a good relationship, tightly clinging to that golden thigh, he’d be set. Following the future mad immortal who would overturn the cultivation world, he’d be living the good life—why fear some minor Ethereal Pavilion or a group of demonic cultivators?

The plan was perfect. Even though he hadn’t managed to catch up with Han Ao during registration, Lin Jin still had a backup plan.

He stayed in his cabin for a while. When the sun set and dusk deepened, he quietly slipped out of the residential area and headed toward a small barren slope near the mountain gate.

Today, he and the protagonist had both signed up for the Inner Sect Trial of Misty Rain Mountain.

Misty Rain Mountain was one of the most resource-rich and powerful immortal sects in the current cultivation world—a dream destination for countless cultivators.

There were two ways into its Inner Sect. One was to be chosen by a visiting immortal elder at the age of five when one’s spiritual roots awakened, then brought into the Outer Sect. With diligence and talent, entering the Inner Sect would naturally follow. The second was the path the protagonist took: cultivators who missed the early selection and trained independently could enter the Inner Sect through the trial.

Compared to the first, the second was obviously far more dangerous. According to Lin Jin’s knowledge, life and death in the trial realm were left to fate. Anyone without solid cultivation or special skills wouldn’t dare attempt it lightly. No wonder Han Ao’s Qi Refinement Level Three cultivation had been met with ridicule.

But why was he the protagonist?

Because he was the chosen one—favored by fate, destined to obtain opportunities others never could.

Lin Jin squatted beneath a large tree on the barren slope, yawned, and waited boredly for the predetermined plot to unfold.

According to the original story, on the night Han Ao signed up for the trial and was mocked at rock bottom, he would come alone to this slope to train in secret. There, by pure coincidence, he would encounter his first great opportunity: the remnant soul of a fallen god.

That remnant soul would strap him onto a rocket, shooting him from Qi Refinement Level Three straight to mid–Foundation Establishment. During the trial, he would then roll up his sleeves and deliver a satisfying round of face-slapping to everyone who had mocked him.

Lin Jin was now quietly waiting for the protagonist to arrive. His plan was to squat there, stage a “chance encounter,” strike up a friendly conversation, and begin a beautiful revolutionary friendship.

Obviously, the plan wasn’t flawless. There were simply too many variables.

Unless absolutely necessary, no one wanted to entrust their life to someone else. Lin Jin also wanted to gamble on known plot opportunities and flip the script himself—but there was no choice. This body of his was just too, too, too broken.

The original body had been fed pills from childhood and subjected to countless forbidden techniques. Its cultivation had long since broken through to the Golden Core realm—high enough to terrify geniuses across the cultivation world if revealed. But because it had always been raised as a furnace cauldron, it had never undergone body refinement. Its meridians were a complete mess. It possessed massive spiritual power, yet the cultivation was dangerously hollow.

Forget sparring with cultivators of the same level—at this point, even a Qi Refinement Level One kid could knock him flat with a single kick.

Under these conditions, becoming the protagonist was out of the question. He’d be lucky if the protagonist’s opportunity didn’t blow him apart instead. So clinging tightly to the protagonist, muddling through the trial, entering the Inner Sect, and peacefully lying low in Misty Rain Mountain was his only option.

Lin Jin’s mindset was excellent. Humming a little tune, he sat beneath the tree waiting for the protagonist to appear, idly tossing pebbles to pass the time.

As evening fell, a cool wind suddenly swept through. Lin Jin shivered, belatedly realizing his legs had gone numb from sitting too long.

He cursed this lousy body for the ten-thousandth time in his head, then stood up like an old man bracing his lower back and did a set of elementary-school-style warm-up exercises in the clearing.

But just as he stretched, he sensed something unusual in the flowing air around him.

Spiritual energy originated from all things in the world. With the vast spiritual power inside his body, Lin Jin’s perception of his surroundings was far sharper than most.

Night had already fallen, and the temperature should have been dropping. Yet he clearly sensed it rising slightly—and unnaturally—in a short span of time.

Not only that, even the wind had inexplicably gained a sharp, cutting edge.

Lin Jin frowned slightly and instinctively looked up at the sky—then his eyes flew open in shock.

In the night sky, one “star” was glowing abnormally bright, and its size was rapidly increasing. Lin Jin quickly realized it wasn’t expanding at all—it was hurtling straight toward him at something like two hundred miles per hour.

Before he could react, a scorching blast wave and a thunderous boom sent him flying. He rolled across the ground several times, his mind filled with chaotic thoughts about whether this gust of wind might blow him straight to Oz for a Wizard of Oz adventure—when a sudden, searing pain shot through his back.

He had slammed into a rock, barely stopping his tumble.

The impact left him feeling like every bone in his body was about to fall apart. He nearly spat out a mouthful of blood on the spot.

He swallowed the metallic taste in his throat and squinted against the still-raging wind to look ahead.

The spot where he had been standing was now shrouded in a mass of semi-transparent black mist. Even from this distance, Lin Jin could feel the terrifying heat radiating from it.

Night had fully fallen, leaving only a faint streak of purplish-red lingering on the horizon.

Backlit by the fading glow, the inky mist writhed—sometimes dispersing, sometimes condensing—vaguely taking the shape of a colossal beast.

Lin Jin knew he shouldn’t stay and court death, yet he felt as though his mind had been seized by what he was seeing. He couldn’t tear his gaze away.

The next instant, the black mist opened its “eyes” toward Lin Jin—

In that single breath of time, the beast-shaped phantom seemed vast enough to contain heaven and earth, while the man facing it was filthy, battered, and insignificant as a speck of dust.

The night wind howled.

In the blink of an eye, all he saw was blinding green light.