1 Great Order Sect in Chaos

"Hm? It's turned quiet? Should I go outside?"

Liu Feng pondered for a minute before he decided--

"I should probably wait a few more days."

.....

Hours, days, weeks passed. Liu Feng didn't know exactly how long.

All that he knew was that, today needed to be the day. He couldn't postpone it any longer.

With a deep breath, he pushed the wardrobe doors open, his eyes closed in fear.

"Please let it be done. Please let it be done. Please let it be done."

When he opened his eyes, he saw the sun starting to set, searing into his eyes and nearly blinding him.

After being stuck in the darkness for so long, he was left breathless by the sight of the sun setting over the horizon.

In total, Liu Feng had hidden in the wooden wardrobe for an entire month. His cultivation was barely enough to sustain himself for that duration with only the spiritual energy in the air.

He felt famished by the lack of food and water, and lost as much as a third of his original weight.

He looked at the surroundings.

The roof and walls that had housed the wardrobe he hid in were long gone.

Wooden pieces and stone rubble scattered all over the field. Scorch marks and huge pits riddled the floor, while swords, axes, and other such weapons were half-buried in ash and dust.

Liu Feng bit his lip silently as he walked through the precarious battlefield. He started seeing corpses mixed in with everything else.

He closed his eyes and kneeled without words.

.....

It took Liu Feng another couple months to clean up most the litter and bury the corpses all by himself. In total, there were more than a thousand corpses that stretched across miles and miles of land.

By that time, nature started to crawl back and reclaim what once was the territory of Liu Feng's sect, the Great Order Sect.

Even then, he wasn't sure whether he had buried all of the dead disciples of the sect. He wasn't privy to the locations of some secret hidden places within the sect.

After all, Liu Feng was just a servant disciple, assigned to clean the mortal library for the rest of his life. After all, his spiritual roots were less than ordinary, and his talent was the same. He was destined to do the most menial of tasks.

Back then, he was bewildered. He had just transmigrated from Earth onto this place.

But he knew better. After all, he was an avid reader of webnovels, so after digesting the scenario, he was certain that he was going to get a system. And not just any system at that. He guessed that it would be the ultimate system for lazy people... the legendary Sign-In System.

Of course, what he thought would happen did not come true by any means.

Ten years passed. By that time, he had accepted the situation he was in, ready to inherit the position of the librarian of the mortal library. At the very least, he thought it better than living as a powerless commoner in a dangerous world like this.

Throughout the decade, his cultivation rose from mortal to achieving the very first realm.

Aside from the current head librarian of the mortal library, Liu Feng had been acquainted with and gotten close to a couple of bookworms that always visited the library.

For one, there was the cold and aloof beauty, Jiang Hua. She was a core sect disciple strangely interested in mortal things.

Liu Feng could remember her perfectly sculpted body and head clearly—he had to sew the two parts back together before burying her, just underneath where the mortal library used to be.

There was also the arrogant young master that liked to pick fights with everyone, Shi Ying. But as Liu Feng got to know him, he realized that Shi Ying just didn't know how else to interact with another person.

Liu Feng buried Shi Ying next to his long time crush, an outer sect disciple with no prospects. He wished for the two to get together in their next life.

There was also the kind and wise old man who Liu Feng assumed was the sect master.

Of course, he never confirmed the old man's true identity and never would, as his body was already beneath the burnt down orchard, where Liu Feng buried him along with the rest of the unrecognizably burnt corpses.

Other than those, there was Ren Ruan, who looked fragile but was one of the strongest, Hua Shui, who was enamored with nature, Nu Gaoxing, who was a tad bit bipolar...

As Liu Feng remembered each and everyone of them, a tear slowly drifted down his cheek.

"I'm sorry, Hua'er. I never got to finish telling you the story of One P*ece. I lied to you, I don't know the ending either..."

"I'm sorry, Senior Brother Shi. I wasn't able to protect your little flower like you told me to."

"I'm sorry, sect master. For hiding like a coward."

Liu Feng heaved a long sigh. Looking over the buried corpses of all his friends, acquaintances, and everyone else in the sect, he had a heavy feeling in his heart.

"For 10 years, this sect has sheltered me from harm, even though I am a talentless nothing. I swear this, I will rebuild this sect! I will make it rise from the ashes, and become a brilliant phoenix!"

[Determining that the host has become the leader of a sect... System conditions fulfilled.]

[Activating the system...]

"Huh? The system?"

Liu Feng flashed a bitter smile. Ten years, ten years too late.

He shook his head.

"It's not good to be ungrateful. Having a system is already a miracle in and of itself, how can I have the face to scorn it?"

Even with these thoughts, he still regretted it. If the system had come earlier, would he have had enough strength to save everyone?

"...Now's not the time for regrets. I need to focus."

Liu Feng hoped that this was one of those systems that were for lazy people. Unfortunately, once he saw the interface, what little hope he had was dashed.

The system was not a Sign-In System. Instead, it was a Sect Building System. It made sense, as the condition for activating the system was to become a sect leader.

[New Task: Recruit a disciple.]

As he read the task, Liu Feng wiped off all traces of melancholy on his face. He confidently smirked.

"Recruit a disciple? Sounds easy enough!"

.....

"Why won't anyone recognize me as their master?"

Liu Feng walked away, defeated as he sat on a rock along the outskirts of Kaojin Village, the nearest settlement from the Great Order Sect.

After fixing himself up and changing to a set of tidy clothes, he was confident in his appearance. Indeed, the ladies had paid special attention to him, mostly due to the fact that his tidiest set of clothes had burn holes all over it, the most notable one being right over his nipple.

He had also shown off his cultivation. Usually, what a cultivator could do would bewilder a mortal. However, with his low cultivation, his actions looked like mere party tricks, even the villagers—whose knowledge of cultivation was paltry—weren't impressed.

"I don't get it. How am I supposed to recruit disciples like this? I'm barely any stronger than a mortal, and my clothes look like it's been through multiple wars!"

Liu Feng's determination wavered.

"That's right. My mind was cloudy when I declared myself the sect leader of the Great Order Sect. I don't even have the ability to turn it into a chicken, much less a phoenix."

"Now that I'm really thinking things through, there's not even a tiny inkling of chance I can rebuild the sect."

[Warning: the system has detected that the sect leader position is being discarded. The system will deactivate after this action. Are you sure?]

Liu Feng pursed his lips. "The system will disappear once I give up?"

He glanced at the village. It was peaceful. Kids were running around and playing, adults were working to earn their keep... It seemed like a place easy to integrate himself into.

Suddenly, his mind flashed with thoughts of his friends, their mangled and destroyed bodies.

His eyes were filled with guilt. What was he to do in that situation but hide? There was no other option for a weakling like him.

Besides, even if he fought with them, he wouldn't have contributed anything meaningful. On the contrary, he would have gotten himself killed the second he joined.

He fell into contemplation for a while.

Liu Feng breathed in as he stood up with newfound determination.

There was no way he could let go of the system. This was his only path to success when every other dice his body rolled were all ones.

There was doubly no way he could let go of his friends. They were the ones that helped him get through the toughest times in his decade in this world.

In the end, it would be too pathetic of him to give up after getting a system of all things.