Maxing Out the Demon Lord's Affection

Yin Nian played a xianxia MMORPG for ten years.

There was one NPC in the game she could never successfully win over. She greeted him every morning and said good night every evening, reminded him to take an umbrella when it rained and to bundle up when it snowed. She even gave him the single flower the System gave out for free each day, the only item that could raise an NPC's affection score.

But in all those ten years, Yin Nian never got a response. His affection score stayed at zero.

One day, she finally couldn't hold back and told a friend about it.

That's when she learned the NPC was just a decorative character: no story, no personality, written as someone players could win over but actually impossible to romance. Even if Yin Nian kept asking after him for another ten thousand years, his affection score would still be zero.

Yin Nian: ...

Sorry for being a lone wolf who never checks a guide, visits a forum, or adds friends, and can turn any online game into a single-player game.

But after ten years of perseverance, it had all been for nothing.

Yin Nian finally uninstalled the game.

-

Su Lishi discovered that the Immortal Alliance had come up with something new.

Using cultivators' spiritual consciousness as a bridge and “game consoles” as a medium, it took the form of an “online game.” Cultivators no longer needed to travel bodily between the two worlds. Instead, the game connected the cultivation world with a mortal world said to be obsessed with fictional characters. Cultivators could project their consciousness into the game as “NPCs,” form bonds of faith with “players,” and gain faith to aid their cultivation.

The Immortal Alliance had even dared to use him as the game's “poster boy” to draw in players...

After all, who could rival the Demon Lord Su Lishi in peerless beauty, perfect for a poster boy, and extraordinary strength, enough to silence any doubters?

Seeing that the Immortal Alliance at least had decent taste, the magnanimous Demon Lord decided to let it off the hook for using his likeness without permission, for now.

As for that game that supposedly harvested faith from mortals, the Demon Lord scoffed at it.

He would never behave like an ordinary cultivator, primping and posing, projecting his consciousness and responding to mortals for the sake of a little faith. Hah! That would happen only if every cultivator in the world died.

But as luck would have it, not long afterward, Su Lishi accidentally fell into the Riftspine Abyss.

With nothing to do at the bottom of the abyss, the Demon Lord cast a fleeting glance at that “game.”

That fleeting glance lasted ten years.

For ten years, he watched the “poster boy” go from being surrounded by visitors to having no one come by. Countless mortals came to admire his looks, then left disappointed when he didn't respond.

Except for one person.

She told him good morning at dawn and said goodbye at night, reminded him to take an umbrella when it rained and to bundle up when it snowed. She seemed completely unaware that he was the mighty Demon Lord and no longer needed to worry about the sun, clouds, rain, or snow like a mortal. Her daily copy-and-pasted greetings made her seem more like a System bot than he did.

Others gave him a precious Langyuan jade flower worth 99 mortal coins. She gave him a free weed every day.

Her indifference was plain as day.

But she had been indifferent to him for ten years.

Mortals lived for less than a hundred years, yet she had spent ten years of her life believing in him, never once receiving so much as a response, even if her devotion wasn't exactly sincere.

Until one day, her usual perfunctory greeting, always sent right on time, was a full fifteen minutes late.

The Demon Lord stared at the “Good night” that was still sitting there from the night before.

After a long silence, he tapped a long finger against the screen.

Given her persistence, the Demon Lord decided that perhaps he could give this halfhearted believer a tiny response.

Just a little. He didn't want her getting carried away.

And so...

Su Lishi: .

System: [Friendly reminder: This player's account has been deleted, so we can no longer provide you with faith. We recommend that you work hard to attract new believers!]

-

That day, after lying silent for a long time, the Riftspine Abyss suddenly blazed with light. An invisible giant tore open space.

Meanwhile, Yin Nian had quit the game and felt liberated. She would never again have to say good morning to a fictional character who never answered. The world spun around her. When she woke up, she discovered she had “transmigrated” into the world of the xianxia game she'd played for ten years.

Premise: Someone is always watching over you