I Just Wanted to Live, but I Somehow Became Better Than the Main Character

“You don’t want to cultivate today?” After breakfast, when Wu Xue made the request, Ye Yong didn’t even think before agreeing to it. After Wu Xue almost lost her life forging her physique, Ye Yong no longer thought of her as a martial goddess. He was content with just having her be by his side. Of course, they couldn’t just neglect cultivation since as time passed, many powerful villains would appear. Ye Yong couldn’t guarantee that he could always avoid all the dangers, so as his maid, Wu Xue needed to have the ability to protect herself.

As such, while Ye Yong would urge Wu Xue to cultivate, he would never force her to do it.

“Where do you want to go today? I’ll take you.” It had been a week since Ye Yong had joined the Heavenly Luo Sect. Except for going outside for a short while the previous day, Ye Yong spent most of his time cultivating or in the assessment house, interacting with Mu Qing Yin through Hua Ming and improving his art skills. He hadn’t had the chance to witness the magnificence and beauty of the top sect in the Eastern State.

Speaking of the Heavenly Luo Sect, the place Ye Yong wanted to visit the most was the Sword Pavilion Hall. After all, it was where Long Tian had stayed the longest. In the later stages of the novel, the Long Tian didn’t really have a fixed residence and was constantly either going on adventures or engaging in battles. After going to other dimensions, this place was never mentioned again.

The initial starting point always evoked nostalgia. However, novels were just novels- trying to create a world through imagination and description alone wasn’t going to capture the full beauty of it, so now that Ye Yong had the chance to see the world with his eyes, he didn’t want to miss the opportunity.

Besides, considering the time, it was about time for the intra-hall duel at Sword Pavilion Hall- the event that started the conflict between Ye Mao and Long Tian. Ye Yong didn’t trust Ye Mao, so he planned to go and watch the intra-hall duel. If Ye Mao tried to do anything stupid, Ye Yong would immediately rush up and give him a good beating to redirect the hatred.

The intra-hall duel was actually an event set up by the Sword Pavilion Hall managers to assess the strength of newly admitted disciples.

Long Tian wanted to keep a low profile, but he was prideful, so he couldn’t bring himself to fake losing. In the novel, he displayed his cultivation to be at the 3rd layer of the Foundation Establishment during the Heavenly Luo Sect assessment, which was at the level of an ordinary disciple.

In the intra-hall duels, the participants wouldn’t have more than a 3 layer difference between each other. In the novel, Long Tian was at the 7th layer of the Foundation Establishment Realm and also had the guidance of the Fallen Immortal Elder, so there was no way he could lose to his opponents, who were only at the 6th layer of the Foundation Establishment Realm. As such, he shone brightly and became the most outstanding figure in the duels.

Ye Mao was at the 5th level of Foundation Establishment in the novel, with decent talent and strength. However, he encountered Long Tian in the final match, and the result was obvious. Besides having a male lead halo, Long Tian had also concealed his cultivation, so Ye Mao didn’t have a chance against Long Tian. However, as a young master of the Ye family, losing to an unknown rogue cultivator was unacceptable to Ye Mao. Coincidentally, Ye Yong had already started targeting the Long Tian, so they colluded and walked the path of courting death.

A reader had once asked “Since Long Tian intentionally displayed his cultivation to only be at the 3rd layer of the Foundation Establishment Realm and didn’t want to attract attention, then why did he fight and defeat Ye Mao, who was at the 5th layer of the Foundation Establishment Realm? Wasn’t that very illogical?”

The author’s answer was “Long Tian was very prideful and couldn’t possibly intentionally lose to someone weaker than him.”

However, Ye Yong felt that it was just to add excitement to the plot. But it couldn’t be denied that it was precisely because of Long Tian’s pride that triggered a series of events in the future.

Besides, it was normal for novels to have some minor flaws- they couldn’t be perfect. Sometimes, some things that happened in real life were even more fantastical than novel plots. Novels at least impart some logic, reasoning, and information to the reader slowly, whereas real life just throws stuff at a person, regardless of whether or not they can take it in.

In short, having read so many novels and seen all kinds of plots, Ye Yong would never dwell on these issues. If he could stand it, he would continue reading, and if he couldn’t, he would drop it.

Now, he was in a cultivation world extremely similar to the novel Emperor Within New Emperors, and Ye Yong had never doubted that it was going in the general direction of the plot and Long Tian’s ability to cause trouble. Because on the day of the assessment, when Ye Yong saw Long Tian for the first time, he felt from his genes, the urge to pick a fight with Long Tian.

Actually, when thinking about it carefully, being picked on is also a kind of luck. If it weren’t for some idiots sending treasures, then Long Tian’s growth would definitely be much slower. It’s like in a battle royale game, where someone queues up to deliver a package. If that wasn’t luck, then what is?

“Young master?” Wu Xue shook Ye Yong’s arm.

“Oh, sorry, I was thinking about where to take you,” Ye Yong smiled, coming back to his senses

“No need to take me out. Let’s just stay at home. How about telling me a story, Young Master?” Wu Xue began to take away the dishes and chopsticks.

“Sure.” Ye Yong waved his hand and put everything on the table into his storage ring. He was going to give Wu Xue a day off and wasn’t going to let her do any chores, although there weren’t usually any chores. Ye Yong patted his thigh, Wu Xue went to sit on it and leaned against Ye Yong’s chest.

Ye Yong had already told almost all of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Fortunately, he had read many novels and seen many mangas. He began to consider whether to tell the story of a man wearing a straw hat who aspired to be the Pirate King, the story of a yellow-haired man with a nine-tailed fox sealed inside, or the story about a god of death with the mind of a high school student who brought death wherever he went and had spent over a dozen years in elementary school…

After thinking for a while, Ye Yong took out pen and paper. Under Wu Xue’s confused gaze, he drew grids and started drawing people in the grids.

With Ye Yong’s current art skills, drawing manga was extremely simple. There was no need for modifications at all. He could draw whatever he thought of. With each stroke, characters completely different from the style of the world of Emperor Within New Emperors appeared.

Wu Xue was very interested in the small people Ye Yong was drawing.

Even though Ye Yong didn’t speak and only drew the people and wrote dialogue in the boxes, Wu Xue could understand the content very well, and she found it to be way more exciting than listening to a story.

Ye Yong was drawing Pokexxx. Because of his excellent copyright awareness, he renamed the male lead to Dash, and the yellow mouse became a blue mouse. Since Emperor Within New Emperors included creatures like spirit beasts, the worldview of capturing monsters to fight wouldn’t seem too absurd.

During the morning, Wu Xue witnessed Ye Yong effortlessly creating a colorful story, and she enjoyed it while admiring Ye Yong, and her favorability toward him increased.

“Let’s stop here for today.” Ye Yong was already used to Wu Xue’s favorability increasing for every little thing. He was fine with it as long as he could guide her properly so she wouldn’t kill him for having too many girls. He looked at the sky outside and decided to go prepare lunch for Wu Xue. He usually went to the kitchen of the Music and Art Hall to get ingredients.

Each hall had its own back kitchen, and every half month, the Heavenly Luo Sect would distribute fresh ingredients to each hall. Disciples could receive a certain amount of ingredients every month according to their status. After all, some disciples were still in the Qi Refinement Realm, and mid-layer and below Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators still needed to eat.

Some halls even had chefs specialized in making spirit food. But anyone who wanted to eat spirit food needed to spend contribution points or spirit stones to buy them. The spirit chefs in the kitchens weren’t going to work for free.

Because the Music and Art Hall had too few people, with all of them being female cultivators with high cultivation levels and preferring to cook for themselves, they didn’t hire chefs. Sometimes, the ingredients left in the back kitchen were left untouched for a long period of time. After all, cultivating music and art didn’t tire out the body like swords and blades- it was more mental than physical.

For example, Yi Bai sometimes studied art techniques for months at a time and considered it a loss if she went out. There was no need to mention Mu Qing Yin, whom Lu Xiao Xiao had never seen in her 10 years at the Heavenly Luo Sect.

To put it simply, they were a bunch of shut-ins.

Ye Yong didn’t know about other halls, but he could get ingredients from the kitchen of the Music and Art Hall for free, so unless he needed special ingredients, he would freeload off the kitchen. He would freeload whenever he had the chance, except for when it involved books- he was very supportive of authors. After all, if everyone freeloaded, the authors wouldn’t have any motivation to write.

Translator’s Notes:

Lmao go support the author.