Sorcerer Wu Xin

This was an age of warlord chaos. Various factions fought endlessly across the Central Plains, taking turns rising to power as warlords carved up territories and battled one another.

Wen County, Zhili, was a wealthy and prosperous place. A railway station had recently been built, and one could take a train straight to Tianjin and Beijing.

A little over a month ago, Gu Xuanwu, now the commander of Wen County, had led his soldiers in driving out the county’s former official, becoming Wen County’s new master.

Lord Gu had seized this strategic location and was extremely pleased with himself. He had decided to settle here, so he moved his headquarters to Wen County and began purchasing property there.

That night, in a large, gray-brick, green-tiled courtyard somewhere in Wen County, the ground was paved with gray bricks and kept spotlessly clean. The inner residence was decorated with lanterns and colored banners, while waves of lively sounds came from the main hall. It was filled with the festive music of wind and string instruments.

A handsome man in a neat military uniform seemed to have drunk himself senseless. He was being supported toward the decorated room by another man who looked somewhat simple-minded and was about the same age.

"Old Zhang! Wake up. You’re going into the bridal chamber now! Ugh—the food in my stomach is really sloshing around!"

The commander of Wen County, Gu Xuanwu, shook the handsome man beside his shoulder. He was Zhang Xianzong, the protagonist of today’s wedding and his second-in-command.

"What’s wrong?"

Zhang Xianzong opened his eyes in confusion and looked at Gu Xuanwu in puzzlement.

"Into the, into the, into the bridal chamber! You’re supposed to go into the bridal chamber now!"

Gu Xuanwu supported Zhang Xianzong to the door, pushed it open, and sent him inside. Then he turned to the soldiers nearby and said, "Brothers, Colonel Zhang is taking another concubine tonight. You all have to show him some respect and make a good fuss over him!"

"Alright!"

"Don’t worry, Commander!"

"We’ll make sure the Colonel enjoys himself!"

The several soldiers were all emboldened by drink, shouting at the tops of their voices.

Zhang Xianzong was pushed into the room in a daze. He stumbled and nearly fell, barely managing to brace himself against a pillar with both hands before a stream of yellow liquor sprayed from his mouth.

"Urgh!"

A large puddle of liquor stained the floor, and Zhang Xianzong’s eyes gained a trace of clarity.

"Huff!"

Instead of continuing into the room, he sat directly down on the carpet, undid the buttons at his collar, and breathed heavily.

"Hiss!"

Zhang Xianzong suddenly clutched his head, his face twisting in extreme pain.

"Ah!"

Gu Sheng struggled to his feet and opened his eyes. Deep within his pitch-black pupils, a Whirlpool slowly unfurled, while countless memories surged into his mind like a tide.

"Hmph!"

Gu Sheng grunted. He had just lifted his head when he collapsed heavily again. After a long while, he finished sorting through all the memories. A bitter smile appeared on his face. "What kind of situation is this? Am I lucky or unlucky? I hold great power, yet I’m merely a mortal—and an important supporting character at that. I’m destined to have no good ending. This is just too much."

Gu Sheng complained helplessly. From the body’s memories, he learned that this was probably the television adaptation of the Sorcerer Wu Xin World. Comparing his own information with the man’s memories, he roughly pieced together the current timeline.

Zhang Xianzong was the colonel of Wen County and also Commander Gu Xuanwu’s deputy, a man second only to one and above thousands. In the original work, he seemed to be a minor, nearly invisible character with little screen time. The television adaptation had apparently combined the experiences of two supporting characters to create Zhang Xianzong, a classic character on the screen.

"There will never be another Zhang Xianzong in this world; no one loves me, Yue Qiluo!"

Gu Sheng thought of that line, and the corner of his mouth twitched repeatedly. "This style changed far too quickly! I came here looking for an opportunity to break through to the innate realm. Why have I gotten involved in some ridiculous romantic entanglement? And with a hundred-year-old ghost, no less—though she is quite beautiful.

"But if I remember correctly, Yue Qiluo’s gender was uncertain in the original work. She seemed to be the reincarnation of a man. In the television series, she should be a woman, but the truth is probably known only to Qingyunzi and Yue Qiluo.

"Could it be…"

Gu Sheng’s imagination ran wild. In his mind, the petite and adorable Yue Qiluo suddenly spoke in a deep male voice: "Husband!"

"Good grief! What am I thinking about?"

Gu Sheng had successfully disgusted himself, and most of the alcohol haze vanished at once.

"Sorcerer Wu Xin! Wen County—if I remember correctly, this is where the story begins!"

Gu Sheng sat on the carpet, leaning against a pillar. "Gu Xuanwu seized Wen County with his troops a month ago. Sorcerer Wu Xin and Yueya should have arrived in Wen County about two months after Gu Xuanwu took it. In other words, there’s still a month before the story begins.

"Zhang Xianzong has very little screen time in the early part of the story. His first appearance should be when he takes his eighth concubine, and Gu Xuanwu invites Wu Xin to his wedding. Yue Qiluo should appear after that.

"As for Wu Xin, after discovering the ‘evil spirit’ in Gu Xuanwu’s residence, he became interested in the seal protected by that evil spirit. As if his brain had short-circuited, he broke through the wall, opened the coffin, and lifted the yellow talisman covering Yue Qiluo’s forehead. That was what led to everything that followed.

"Why did I feel before that this world would be useful to me?"

This question flashed through Gu Sheng’s mind. Although the Sorcerer Wu Xin World was a B-grade scenario world, its destructive power was nowhere near that of martial-arts worlds of the same level.

One obvious difference was that martial artists in B-grade worlds possessed tremendous destructive power. They could project their palm force dozens of yards and sweep through entire armies by themselves.

Take some of the newer versions of Xiao Feng, for example. The power of a single Dragon-Subduing Palm was terrifying, far more powerful than described in the original novel, and he was completely unafraid of being surrounded by experts. Judging from his performance in the television series, he was a genuine Fourth Star Level innate expert.

But in Sorcerer Wu Xin, it was clear that Yue Qiluo, the adorable first-season villain, could only flee in panic when faced with the army led by Gu Xuanwu. She could not confront them head-on at all, which was completely inconsistent with the identity of a great Sorcerer.

Gu Sheng also noticed something else. In Sorcerer Wu Xin, Spiritual Qi did not seem particularly active. It wasn’t absent, and there was no shortage of it, but it lacked "vitality."

To put it this way: in The Nine Cauldrons World, an innate expert could send True Essence dozens of yards in an instant, with tremendous power and destructive force. But in the Sorcerer Wu Xin World, an innate expert’s True Essence had less than a tenth of that range and power, suffering a massive reduction. It wasn’t that innate experts had become weaker; the world itself simply wasn’t up to par.

Therefore, this world seemed to lack large-scale Five-Element techniques or other such battlefield-clearing attacks. Instead, it had more obscure arts such as Paper Dolls, talismans, and controlling ghosts and demons. Their direct lethality against large numbers of mortals was extremely limited.

Thus, even a freak like Yue Qiluo, whose soul could never perish, was powerless to resist when an army came knocking.

"Old Zhang, you’ve been inside for so long. Why haven’t we heard anything yet? Did you overdo it and lose your strength already? Hahahaha!"

Gu Sheng was deep in thought when a loud roar suddenly came from outside the door. It was followed by more shouts, drunken cries, and the laughter of many people. The teasing made his expression change again and again.