Chapter 1: Like a Crimson Lotus

The life of the young man known as Li Wei was not an epic tragedy; it was, at best, a bad joke told in a convenience store at one in the morning.

A third-year university student with grades that barely reached mediocrity, Li Wei spent his days scanning barcodes and his nights immersed in virtual worlds where the bleak future didn't matter. 

Her recent breakup had been the final nail in the coffin of her self-esteem. It wasn't that she had lost the love of her life; she had discovered that he was nothing more than a stepping stone for a social climber. 

Lin Xiao, the girl who agreed to date him for three months, only did so to be close to who she considered her best friend, Zhang Xian, a guy who seemed to have been born with a permanent beauty filter and an enviable bank account that he boasted about by inviting the brothers in the male dormitory for drinks daily.

"You were a good bridge, Li Wei," she had told him, "that green tea bitch," with an elegant smile before leaving him with the restaurant bill. 

The only saving grace was that Zhang Xian told her to go to hell after discovering her true face, but things were never the same again.

Since then, Li Wei took refuge in the only thing that did not betray him: his character in Legend of the Jade Heavens, a cultivation MMORPG where he was the "Empress of the Crimson Lotus". 

Like many others, he preferred playing female characters. "If I'm going to stare at a back for ten hours a day, let it be a beautiful back," he used to say. 

Her character was a masterpiece of design: an immortal cultivator who blended Tang Dynasty aesthetics with spirit crystal technology.

That night, as the steam from her instant noodles fogged her glasses, Li Wei decided to look up that anime she'd seen several fanfics about without actually reading them. Date a à l'alm... Date a Live.

"Let's see what this 'Shido something' guy and his harem of natural disasters are all about," he muttered, clicking on the first episode. "They say he's a prince, so I'll enjoy imagining myself as the one who has them and takes them to bed...!"

While he was thinking about the future perverse things he would do to those girls (in his sad head) to feel better, suddenly, a crimson light shone inside his room, making him let out a pathetic scream full of bewilderment and fear.

Before his mind went blank, Li wei saw what faintly appeared to be the feminine silhouette of a woman extending her hand while holding what looked like a huge fan....

♦♦♦♦

When Li wei finally regained consciousness after that strange phenomenon, he did so with the weight of an atmosphere that felt very different from the less-than-healthy, poor bastard's room he lived in. There wasn't the typical smell of cheap noodles and moldy walls, but rather the smell of...smoke?

Li Wei opened his eyes in surprise... and the first thing he saw was disaster: He was in the center of a perfect crater. 

The asphalt in what appeared to be a Japanese residential area, judging by the words on the toilets, had melted and resolidified into a dark glass pattern, and in the distance, several areas had black smoke billowing from small fires of unknown origin.

There was no trace of his room, his noodles, or his mediocre life.

He stood up with an agility he had never possessed before. As he did so, the touch of a thin fabric against his legs made him freeze.

-That...?

To her surprise, her voice no longer sounded like her own. It was now a musical note, crystalline and cold.

He lowered his gaze and panic began to devour him from within, although his face remained strangely impassive on the outside.

He saw himself dressed in a red silk hanfu that defied any kind of modesty. 

The neckline was a deep "V" embroidered in gold that revealed milk-white skin, and the skirt, open to the hip, revealed thighs adorned with red silk garters and gold lace.

"It can't be," she whispered.

A few meters away, the remains of a clothing store window displayed a broken mirror—as if covered in cobwebs—but still functional. Li Wei walked toward it, each step echoing with the clinking of hidden jewels. 

Upon seeing her reflection, her heart skipped a beat.

That face... Those golden, almond-shaped eyes with crimson lashes, lightly covered by bangs. That jet-black hair gathered in an imperial hairstyle with gold pins that vibrated with a red energy.

"I'm... my character? I'm the Lotus Empress!? What the heck!? I'm in a game!? No... wait, there weren't any modern-looking Japanese cities..."

Li Wei didn't even have time for gender dysphoria or existential crisis. The sky above her roared.

Several figures descended from the sky toward him. They were young girls, but they didn't look like normal humans. They wore mechanical frames that encased their limbs and propulsion systems that emitted a deafening whirring sound.

He sensed something strange emanating from them... a sudden realization dawned on him—Qi—the most basic life energy of a living being. He could tell they were using this energy to fly... But he felt they were using an unnatural method to achieve it?

As if they were using external support to force the world to their will, instead of harmonizing with it...for someone whose Qi has been refined to the extreme in Spiritual Essence upon reaching the Yi Spirit Realm, whose Golden Core was of Perfect Level....

"Wait, wait! How the hell do I know that?! I don't remember learning to sense Qi or Spiritual Essence, much less to perceive whether its use is unnatural or not! And what I'm feeling is also murderous intent?! How do I know that too?!"

Li Wei wanted to grab her head and scream as she ran away from those menacing girls, but her body—or this strange body she was in—simply wouldn't obey her. And then...

"Target identified!" one of them shouted. "The scale of the Spacequake is almost insignificant, but the concentration of spiritual energy is High Class! It's a new Spirit, a level above the rest!"

"Deploy the Territory!" ordered a silver-haired girl with a dead look in her eyes.

Immediately, Li Wei felt an invisible pressure. The air around the girls seemed to solidify into a hexagonal membrane of light. It wasn't them who were suffering; it was them who were altering the laws of physics to be able to fly and fire weapons that no human should carry.

"What the hell is this? Extreme cosplay? Have I been put in a movie or am I having an out-of-body lucid dream?" 

Li Wei wanted to scream, wanted to ask where the hidden camera was, or hoped to wake up in her bed, but when she opened her mouth, only one arrogant sentence came out:

"Your presence is an affront to my dignity. Who gave you permission to fly over my head? And with such a dirty method that not even the lowest cultivator would use..."

"W-wait....! What am I saying! It's not the time to roleplay!" his mind screamed, but his body was already moving according to the behavior he tried to impose when he played, something unexpected and extremely disturbing.

Besides being problematic in this situation.

The silver-haired girl—who vaguely reminded him of a character from the posters of the series he never got to see—raised a sword that shone with a bluish light.

"Eliminating the Spirit," she said, diving down.

At that moment...the survival instinct of a top-level cultivator took over. Li Wei extended his right hand, feeling spiritual essence flow from his Golden Core to the extremity, and with a burst of crimson light, an object materialized in his palm.

The enemy tensed up upon seeing the "Angel" of the Spirit materializing, preparing for a tough battle.

They didn't know she wasn't a typical Angel... There were no Hebrew names in the mind of the fighting Spirit. What she had was something slightly different in origin, something that sprang from a different concept of existence...something that came from her game.

His weapon was a war fan, an oversized Tessen made of obsidian and fire silk. In his mind, the name came naturally, for this was the god-class weapon he used to dominate the battlefield against those who dared to enter his territory.

<Hónglián Fēngshàn> (Crimson Lotus Wind Fan).

Except that something told him that his 12 active skills and his three passive character skills could only be used with this thing, which was very different from the game, but he didn't pay attention to that, instead he released his spiritual essence.

—I will show you how a true cultivator fights...Crimson Lotus Territory— she murmured her empress voice.

Unlike the girls' technological "Territory", Li Wei's was an explosion of fire petals that created a zone of absolute distortion. 

When the silver-haired girl tried to strike, her sword bounced off a red energy barrier that vibrated like a gong.

"Impossible!" exclaimed one of the subordinates from the air. "This power... is incredibly similar to a territory?!"

—Covering fire! Don't let it move!

Missiles and energy blasts rained down on the crater. Li Wei, in a state of complete inner panic, began to move the fan as if he were following a choreographed routine from his game. With each fan, a gust of crimson wind deflected the projectiles, causing them to explode in mid-air.

"I'm dancing! I'm literally dancing so I don't die!" Li Wei thought as her body twirled with inhuman grace, revealing her legs and the swirl of her red dress amidst the explosions.

♦♦♦♦

While Li Wei continued to fight for her life (and to maintain her dignity in that short dress), in a modest Japanese house, the telephone rang urgently.

Shido Itsuka, a boy who just wanted to survive high school, answered the call with a sigh that carried the weariness of a thousand battles.

—Kotori? Yes, I heard the alarm... Again?

"This time it's different, Shido," his little sister's voice, usually playful but now icy, echoed in his ear. "It's not any of the ones we know. It's something new, and as strong as Princess... The AST is being humiliated in Sector 4. You need to get ready. The Fraxinus will pick you up in two minutes."

Shido hung up and ran a hand through his hair while sighing, somewhat exasperated and worried. 

He knew what was coming. Another heartbroken girl with a power that could erase cities, whom he would have to ask out to seal her power.

—Shidoooo! —a familiar and energetic voice boomed from the kitchen.

Tohka came out with a face of absolute anguish, holding an empty paper bag.

—Shido! The kinako bread reserves are gone! It's a catastrophic disaster! Even my stomach is growling!

Shido looked at Tohka, whose biggest concern was a sweet roll, and then looked out the window, where the sky was beginning to turn an unnatural red.

"I'm sorry, Tohka. The bread will have to wait. I think the world just got a lot more complicated...again."

As Shido ran towards the extraction point—Li Wei, trapped in the body of a cultivation goddess transformed into a Disaster Spirit—had just unleashed a burst of fire that reduced a wing of a nearby building to ashes, screaming in his heart:

"Someone get me out of here!"