I Grind My Way to Retirement and Renovate the Cultivation World

[Complete] Please follow and favorite the author's page. Please look forward to my next book, Look! I Really Am a Good Bird!

Blurb:

Ye Chi has a single wood spiritual root, excellent talent, and a tireless work ethic. She's the top overachiever among the young disciples of the Xuantian Sword Sect. But lately, everyone has noticed that something seems off about her.

Sister Ye, who used to study late into the night in the library, now goes to bed as soon as it gets dark. She still gets up early, before dawn, but instead of practicing her sword, she stretches, waters her flowers, and starts cooking. What's more, when Senior Brother and Second Senior Sister came to visit, they saw her dancing with a dozen or so immortal cranes: "The vast horizon is my love, flowers bloom beneath the rolling green hills~"

Second Senior Sister caught a crane feather and exchanged a speechless look with Senior Brother: ...

Does she have something seriously wrong with her?

*

After transmigrating, Ye Chi followed the crowd into a cultivation sect. Her overworked corporate-drone constitution drove her to push her fellow disciples until they had nothing left to push themselves toward. Who could have guessed that a "retirement and relaxation" System would drop from the sky?

Clutching the System, she howled at the heavens. The ultimate dream of a 996 corporate drone was to retire and relax. Had she really achieved that in one fell swoop?

The true peak of life!

Now she has a mansion and a car. Every day, she logs into the System to grow flowers and plants, slack off and walk the dog, and dance in the plaza. She even gets a big card-draw gift pack for completing missions.

It couldn't be better.

Until one day, the evil old cultivator Shifang, wanted by the four races of Daoists, demons, monsters, and humans, fled to the Xuantian Sword Sect. The entire sect set up an inescapable net to capture him.

Then Ye Chi was seen tossing the cultivator's corpse to the ground. "What a nuisance. He trampled my flowers. Was it really so wrong to kill him?"

Everyone: ...

Then they looked at the Cloud Ascension Rankings and the Top Ten Elite Rankings, both of which had the name "Ye Chi" at the very top.

As expected, even in retirement, an overachiever is still an overachiever!

-

1. Ancient-style xianxia setting. Cultivation levels: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation, Ascension.

2. The main plot drives the whole book, with a few episodic stories that include reveals and flashbacks. These are usually marked in the chapter titles, so feel free to skip them if you aren't interested.

Preorder 1: Here's a preorder for a story about a villain's darling, Look! I Really Am a Good Bird!, about a big white goose who turns into a little phoenix:

When Hua Li was still inside her egg, she often wondered what kind of creature she would be.

A mighty dragon that dominated the world? A spirit tortoise with a long life? An elegant azure bird?

At last, after waiting and waiting for so many years, she finally hatched.

All the birds of Queqi Mountain came to watch. Hua Li stood tall and proud. With such a grand audience, she had to be extraordinary. She gathered her strength and shouted three times: "Honk, honk, honk!"

Honk, honk, honk???

She'd turned into a big white goose?

So all these monsters had come to a village feast to eat roast goose?

Hua Li couldn't take such a blow and fainted on the spot.

As she grew up, she discovered that her eight older brothers were thunderbirds or azure luan, while she was the only big white goose in a family of eleven!

Alas, she must have been adopted.

Fortunately, life in the mountains was carefree and happy, and she came to accept that she was a big white goose. A goose was a goose. Better to live on, even if life was hard. Then the sword-forging master, renowned as the greatest under heaven, came to ask her for a phoenix feather.

Only then did she learn that her eight goofball brothers all had extraordinary skills, her irascible mother and overprotective father were both hidden powerhouses, and she herself... was the only phoenix in thirty thousand years!

Wait... no!

This setup seems familiar. Isn't it like an old novel she read ages ago?

Shock! Her whole family seems to be made up of villains?

And she's the biggest villain of all?

But I'm really a good bird!

Preorder 2: Infinite: I Became the World's Strongest to Go to School. Blurb:

To pay her exorbitant medical bills and tuition, Ling Sanqi rushed from one job to another without rest. After working herself to the bone, she finally saved enough for tuition the day before school started. It was then that the ground beneath her feet suddenly shook violently.

Outside the window, the fog was thick, so dense it swallowed all the city lights.

In the ruins left by the quake, the outline of a giant beast flickered in and out of view. The world had changed.

A System panel appeared before Ling Sanqi: [Welcome to the apocalypse world]

*

Scratching her head, Ling Sanqi made a wild guess. "This is such a pain. I guess I can't go to school anymore."

The System coaxed her: [Host's maximum lifespan detected: 19 years. Completing missions can eliminate your high medical expenses and extend your life. You can also get revenge.]

There was an offer like that? Ling Sanqi's expression finally changed: ...Go on.

And so, strange weather, abandoned laboratories, mysterious castles, mutated animals and plants, female ghosts competing in beauty contests, and deranged exam halls... each one led to the apocalypse.

A monster with eyeballs scattered all over the ground opened its mouth to eat her.

Ling Sanqi picked up the eyeballs with disgust. "Littering? You have no manners."

A sharp scalpel was about to slice open her stomach.

Ling Sanqi helpfully reminded it, "You know your way around human experiments, but that knife won't work. I'm tough-skinned. I bet the blade breaks first." Sure enough, as soon as she finished speaking, the scalpel snapped.

A gloomy, handsome young man wanted to date her.

As a vampire duchess, Ling Sanqi reflected on the situation and said, "Don't do this. To me, you're just a giant golden crispy chicken leg! There's no future between a diner and their food!"

The System was speechless: [Could you do something that matches your appearance for once?]

Ling Sanqi pressed a hand to her heart like a tragic beauty: I'm so scared... Just kidding!

The System: [...]

After traveling through countless worlds, she finally returned to the original one. The System was confused: [Are you back for revenge? By the way, did you know that in this world, you're the male lead's doomed white moonlight?]

Ling Sanqi rubbed her chin. "I really didn't know that. But what does the male lead or female lead have to do with me being the world's strongest?"

The System: [Then why did you come back?]

"To go to school!" Ling Sanqi wailed. "Who could have guessed that I'd become the world's strongest just to go to school?"

Theme: A sharp sword is forged through a thousand hammer blows, and iron is tempered into steel through a hundred refinings. Hard work is always rewarded.