"No, no, no, oh no..."
If any of his fellow disciples found Han Xuhan in his current state, rambling to himself like a possessed man while trekking through the mountains aimlessly, they'd not understand a single thing coming out of his mouth.
"That degenerate, yuri-glazing, coomer-baiting, crapshot of a novel... that's the world I have transmigrated to? How? Why?
"Did that retarded writer sell his soul to some Lovecraftian monster to turn my sleep into an eternal hellscape shaped by his rotten imagination?"
His horror outshone his sorrow. Up till now, he had assumed that the fictional world he had transmigrated to had a sophisticated outline and worldbuilding. Surviving inside such a rationally built world would not be difficult for him.
But Mu Ran's appearance in this sect had ruined his fantasy. He couldn't bring himself to believe that the name was just a coincidence. Everything just fit together too perfectly.
Transmigration into a fictional world wasn't something he found unacceptable. After all, he had a system to rely on. He was familiar with the concept, too.
But transmigrating into a fictional world that he knew about carried a whole different feeling. Especially because he also knew how terribly written the story was.
As far as he had read into the manuscript, the female protagonist was using her brother, Mu Ran's identity to travel the world, her misadventures leading her into forming ambiguous relationships with several female leads.
The Mu Ran he had just met in the dining hall also claimed that he had many lovers. And now that Han Xuhan recalled his handsomeness, his androgynous features began to stand out to him one by one.
Sure enough, the likelihood of this Mu Ran being a crossdressing young lady was very high!
"Shit, shit, shit! I should've read a bit further into the story. If only I knew whether that crossdressing girl ever enters a sect named Crimson Snow Sect, I could've been absolutely sure where I am right now and what I must do!"
Regret, fury, frustration, and confusion—his heart was attacked by an entire mob of negative emotions at once. He wasn't even watching the road, lost deep inside his own churning mind.
"But if Mu Ran really is the protagonist of this fictional world, why did my system not respond when we're in such close proximity? Isn't he supposed to be a child of destiny as well?
"Or did I miss fulfilling some kind of hidden requirements for activating a quest related to the main storyline?"
At this moment, the sect's bells began to ring, giving him a temporary distraction to calm his chaotic sea of thoughts. The bell count reached fourteen before stopping, letting him know that the final lecture of the day was about to start in an hour.
Han Xuhan was forced to halt his panicking thoughts and rush towards the Heavenly Hailstorm Mountain Peak, where Xuanyuan Zhou said she'd be waiting.
Indeed, he found her right at the foot of the mountain, meditating under the shadow of a massive rock. She didn't seem aware of his approach as he placed her meal nearby and watched her intently.
If Mu Ran was the protagonist, what role could Xuanyuan Zhou possibly have in the storyline? She was too impactful a character in the outer court to be a random nobody!
Not to mention, it seemed a bit too convenient how she and Mu Ran had ended up on the same mountain peak...
Han Xuhan, a veteran reader of this genre, had no trouble trimming the possibilities down to a low number.
"One, she's the first 'serious' female lead of the story. Depending on the author's preferences, she could have two fates; being treated better than every other harem member; or being used for a tragic scene to develop the protagonist's character."
"Two, she could end up being one of those arrogant, ruined villainesses with a hellish fate. If she wasn't killed outright by the end of an arc, her fate would only keep getting worse and worse! Unless the author had exceptional skills and refined tastes, she'd never get a passable redemption arc!"
As Han Xuhan's analysis reached this nuanced metaphase, he inevitably recalled that the author of Mu Ran's story was an amateur with some distasteful kinks.
He could surmise easily that if the second route turned out to be true, Xuanyuan Zhou's fate would depend on how horny the author was feeling during writing that arc.
"The equation is simple enough. Horniness of the author is proportional to the strength of the plot device redeeming Xuanyuan Zhou into becoming a member of Mu Ran's ambiguous harem."
"What did you say, attendant Xuhan?"
"I said, if Mu Ran is feeling hor-cough, cough~"
Han Xuhan nearly choked on his own spit upon realizing that Xuanyuan Zhou had opened one of her eyes, directing a sharp look at him.
"What language were you speaking just now?" She spoke again, bringing an immense sense of relief to him.
Thankfully, he had been thinking about everything from the perspective of an Earthling.
Naturally, the fragments of his monologue that leaked out of his mouth unintentionally were in English. If Xuanyuan Zhou had truly understood his words, he wouldn't have been able to explain a single dimension of his meta-analysis.
"It's not a different tongue, just a far-off accent that my lady has never heard of, perhaps. I was saying that I got acquainted with a new disciple of our Salted Fish Peak in the dining hall, named Mu Ran. He invited both of us to his hut for tea this evening."
Xuanyuan Zhou's eyebrows jumped for a brief moment.
"Mu Ran, you say? Did he seem like an interesting fellow to you, attendant Xuhan?"
Han Xuhan didn't know how to describe the 'fellow'. He couldn't just tell Xuanyuan Zhou that Mu Ran's identity was actually fake and the person hiding under the disguise was a girl, could he?
As he was considering his options, his system became active by itself abruptly, putting up a short, transparent window in his vision.
[ Detected that the host has reached a pivot point of the main storyline. Any choices that you make at this moment will have considerable influence on it moving forward. This is the perfect time to utilize one of your Survival Tokens and head down a path that benefits you. ]
[ Warning: This hint has been issued as a part of the tutorial policy. In the future, the host must decide where to use the Survival Tokens himself. ]