Dear Reader,
You can refer to the female protagonist as the embodiment of the institution in the Soviet Union responsible for reviewing and censoring cultural products and publications.
Also, there is no communist content whatsoever.
Alright, you don't need to read the content of the next two chapters. You can start directly from the third chapter.
...
...
I am confident that you must have found the first two chapters confusing. Actually, these chapters are not very important; the real story begins from Chapter Three. So, if you didn't understand the first two chapters, it's okay.
Let me make a few notes. The National Radio and Television Administration is an agency responsible for the censorship of all cultural works, such as movies, games, novels, and anime, especially those imported from foreign countries through official channels. All such works must undergo its scrutiny and modification, and it also has the power to ban any cultural work.
However, this is not a political satire novel. The main theme of this book remains swords and magic, and heroes battling the demon lord.
Additionally, the heroine's behavior in the first hundred chapters is quite strange and unlikable. After Chapter 100, the heroine becomes much more normal.
Okay, let our story begin.
...
It was late autumn, early in the morning, along the rugged mountain path halfway up Mount Hua.
The sun was just rising. Leaning against the railing on the mountain trail, one could gaze far into the distance, where a brilliant streak of dawn light pierced through the sea of clouds, stunningly beautiful.
A young couple leaned on the railing, snuggling close and whispering sweet nothings to each other. Their eyes were fixed on the sunrise amid the boundless sea of clouds, their hearts surging with emotion. Their interlocked hands gripped even tighter.
The warm glow of the morning sun bathed them, and as they locked eyes, brimming with affection, they couldn't help but close their eyes. Their lips drew closer… closer…
"Whoosh!"
Suddenly, an aged hand thrust between their almost-touching lips, interrupting their kiss. The young man's lips pressed against the palm, while the young woman's landed on the back of the hand.
"Pfft, pfft, pfft!" The young man had been about to slip out his tongue, only to kiss a wrinkled hand covered in age spots. He spat a few times in disgust, glaring furiously at the old man who had ruined their moment.
It was an old man with a square face and a straight back. His gray hair was neatly combed, and he wore a well-fitted Mao suit. Climbing halfway up the mountain had left him panting, with beads of sweat dotting his forehead, yet not a single button at his collar had been undone.
The old man shot them a stern look and barked with authority, "Public place! No kissing! Young people should not engage in such indecent behavior!"
"Mind your own business, old man!" The young man couldn't hold back and raised his fist as if to swing at him.
"Ugh." The old man shook his head, disappointed, like he was scolding a child who had failed to meet expectations. "Youngsters these days have forgotten even the basic virtues of respecting the elderly and caring for the young."
With that, he let out a sigh, stepped onto the stone path, and continued trudging up the steep trail.
At another rest platform nearby, he spotted a family of three taking a break from the climb. The parents leaned against the railing, chatting and laughing about something. Meanwhile, their child sat on the stone steps, brows furrowed, both hands rapidly tapping away at a handheld gaming console, completely absorbed in his own world.
"You're finished! My combo's about to come out!" The child's eyes were glued to the game screen, his thumbs darting back and forth across the buttons so quickly they left afterimages.
An old, wrinkled hand reached over and snatched the gaming console right out of his grip.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" The child jumped up from the stone steps in anger.
"Little children shouldn't be playing such violent games!" The old man caught sight of the "Street Fighter" logo on the screen and frowned in disapproval.
Then he noticed a character in a high-slit qipao, lifting a long leg on the screen, her thick thighs wrapped tight in black stockings and fully on display.
"And it is a pornographic game as well!" The old man's voice shot up an octave, his hands trembling as he clutched the console as if it were a lump of filth defiling his faith. If it had not belonged to someone else, he would already have smashed it against the ground.
"Mom! Dad! Some mean old grandpa stole my stuff!" the child screeched.
The two middle-aged parents turned around, looking at the old man in surprise. Before they could say a word, he cut them off with a lecture: "What kind of irresponsible parents are you? Letting a child play such a filthy, violent game! One can tell at a glance that this is some sugar-coated poison cooked up by foreign capitalists to corrupt our nation's youth!"
"Old man, you're interfering too much. He's not your child, so what does it have to do with you?" The father yanked the console out of the old man's hands and handed it back to the boy.
"What does it have to do with me? I am the director of the National Radio and Television Administration! Every cultural product in this country falls under my jurisdiction!" the old man bellowed, puffing out his chest with pride.
He thought back to the glorious days when he and his colleagues had pushed through laws—children under 12 could only play online games for one hour a day, and those between 12 and 18 got two hours at most.
They ordered the blood on screens to be turned green, forced skeleton monsters in games to become fleshy creatures, made criminals in foreign movies who got away scot-free turn themselves in at the end, demanded female characters pull up their collars to cover their chests and pull down their pant legs to hide their thighs, smeared thick mosaics over any gore or erotic scenes, and banned female streamers posing suggestively in tight yoga outfits… Their glorious achievements were too numerous to count.
What a golden age that was—every adult and child under their watchful protection, shielded from anything remotely "unhealthy."
"National Radio and Television Administration?" The woman let out a mocking snort. "Didn't that get shut down back in 2048?"
The old man's proud expression crumpled in an instant, and his back, which had been straight as a sword, bent down as if he had aged 20 years in a heartbeat.
She was right. The National Radio and Television Administration had been dissolved in 2048, vanishing into the river of history. And he, NyeRonpin, was its very last director.
NyeRonpin turned away in silence, his legs heavy as if weighed down by sandbags, and trudged up the stone steps, pressing on toward the peak of Mount Hua.
Behind him, whispers floated through the air. "Poor guy, still thinks he's an official even after retirement. Too addicted to power." "No clue if he's lying about being the director, but if it's true, kicking him off Mount Hua wouldn't even begin to repay the damage they did to Chinese culture…"
NyeRonpin didn't hear those voices; the hike up the mountain had worn him out. In a pavilion by the trail, a young Daoist apprentice was doing homework, pulling him into a flood of memories.
Over sixty years ago, he was just a wild child who didn't know the immensity of heaven and earth, with a kind mother, a strict father, and a little brother even more mischievous than him. The four of them lived carefree at the foot of the imperial city, happy and harmonious.
One day, a wandering Daoist showed up at their house. With one look, he took a fancy to NyeRonpin's younger brother, two years his junior, marveling at his natural talent and sturdy build. After displaying the wonders of his magic arts, the Daoist took the child away to Mount Hua to pursue immortality and seek the Dao.
From then on, the brothers went their separate ways. NyeRonpin clawed his way through the bureaucracy, step by step, until he reached the high position of director. Meanwhile, his brother, who had not come home in decades, was said to have encountered all sorts of extraordinary opportunities and mastered the arts of the Dao.
I've got to find my brother, NyeDepin! NyeRonpin made up his mind, and his steps up the stairs quickened with resolve.
Finally, he reached the peak of Mount Hua.
NyeRonpin weaved through the noisy tourists and pilgrims, slipping over to a weathered stone staircase tucked beneath some green pines.
Compared to the famous "Sky Ladder" of Mount Hua's main stone path, this staircase was short—barely more than ten steps—ending at a solid rock wall. It looked like a dead end.
NyeRonpin climbed the short stairs, moving deliberately: up nine steps, down three, back up six, then reversing seven. Without hesitation, he strode toward the end of the path—that hard stone wall.
Naturally, he passed right through the stone wall, stepping into a small courtyard. A young Daoist in green robes was sweeping up autumn leaves with a straw broom, not even blinking at NyeRonpin's sudden arrival.
NyeRonpin cupped his hands in a salute and asked, "Excuse me, is Master NyeDepin here?"
The young Daoist gave NyeRonpin a slight nod in return and said, "You've come at just the right time, sir. The Master is in his 'engagement with the world' phase right now, so he is willing to see outsiders. Normally, he would never meet people from the mundane world."
With that, he pointed a little hand toward a small house deep in the courtyard, his cheeks dimpling as he giggled in a childish voice, "The Master is busy with his 'engagement with the world,' so please don't disturb him, sir."
NyeRonpin had no idea what "engagement with the world" meant, but he stepped onto the green stone path anyway, heading toward the house the child had pointed out. A light mist hung in the air, wisps of smoke curling around him. As he breathed it in, he felt a rush of energy, his mood lifting, and all the exhaustion from the climb melted away.
He couldn't help but marvel to himself: no wonder a master of the Dao lives here. To him, this was probably the last patch of pure, uncorrupted land left in all of China.
He reached the quaint little house with its green bricks and clay tiles, rich with old-world charm, and pushed the door open, stepping inside quietly.
"Malphite, drop your ult already! ADC, keep up—I flashed in, I took all the damage! Oh no, we're going to lose!"
On a computer screen inside the house, the enemy LeBlanc unleashed a slick EWQR combo, instantly killing a low-health Garen. The League of Legends game interface flipped from vibrant color to a dull gray, and NyeRonpin's heart sank into a cold, bleak shade of ash.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! AAAARGH!!!" NyeRonpin grabbed at his neatly combed gray hair and yelled, his heart—once brimming with hope—plunging into a bottomless pit of despair, shock, and rage.
"Oh, hey, big bro, you actually showed up. I calculated three days ago that you would come."
A young man in a teal-black Daoist robe, wearing a flashy red over-ear headset, heard NyeRonpin's scream and turned around, flashing a big grin as he waved. He took off the headset, stood up, and threw his arms around NyeRonpin, who was still clutching his own hair like a madman.
As he rose from the chair, an identical copy of him stayed seated, hammering away at the keyboard and mouse with total focus, the "click-clack" filling the room.
NyeRonpin's eyes nearly popped out of his head as he stared at his little brother, utterly baffled by how a gaming Daoist could perform a cloning technique so effortlessly.
"Brother, I can't just let my teammates down, can I?" NyeDepin—NyeRonpin's Daoist brother—said, scratching his head with a sheepish grin.
A young man who looked to be only in his twenties calling a gray-haired old man "brother" might seem strange, but cultivators usually had a knack for preserving their youth. NyeRonpin wasn't shocked by his brother's fresh face.
What shocked—and infuriated—him were other things.
NyeRonpin pointed at the obviously expensive water-cooled PC tower and the massive 8K monitor, stammering until his words blurred together. "You… you… what is going on here?! Last time I came, it wasn't like this!"
"Brother, calm down!" NyeDepin, dressed in his old-fashioned Daoist robe, dragged over a bamboo chair and settled the trembling NyeRonpin into it. He explained, "I'm in the middle of engagement with the world right now. This was sent to me by a wealthy online friend I met while chatting around."
"Engagement with the world… what exactly does that mean?" NyeRonpin snapped out of it a little, locking eyes with NyeDepin as he asked.
"'Engagement with the world,' put simply, is pretending to be an ordinary mortal and experiencing life in the secular world, so as to temper my Dao heart. You were a high official—didn't you sometimes go down to the grassroots to experience the lives of ordinary people? This is simply the Daoist version of that."
NyeDepin steadied the still-shaking NyeRonpin as he explained, "Fortunately, technology is so advanced now. I can 'engage with the world' without leaving my room. In the past, I would have had to pretend to be a butcher in the marketplace, getting blood and meat on myself every day. How unpleasant."
"Alright, I understand." NyeRonpin, nearing seventy, had old bones that couldn't withstand shocks like this. He shakily gripped the bamboo chair's backrest to sit steady, fished a small bottle of breath-calming pills from his Mao suit pocket, and popped one into his mouth.
A few minutes later, his breathing evened out. Solemnly, he pulled a yellow silk drawstring pouch from his coat, untied it, and took out a heavy, cylindrical bronze seal, handing it to NyeDepin.
NyeDepin flipped the seal over, eyeing the carved inscription. He frowned and said, "Why are you giving me the National Radio and Television Administration's seal? What, you want me to take over as director?"
He couldn't understand why his brother NyeRonpin would carry this official seal all the way to Mount Hua, dragging his nearly seventy-year-old body from the base to the peak, just to hand it over.
The seal felt solid and weighty in his hand, with layer upon layer of faded red clay residue in the grooves. The handle gleamed from decades of wear, and every part of it bore the traces of time. This bronze seal had clearly been in use for many years.
"This is the seal of the director of the National Radio and Television Administration! The Administration has now passed into history, but its will must live on!"
NyeRonpin stared at the bronze seal in his Daoist brother's pale hands and said, "This seal is the official seal of every director in the bureau's history! It has stamped red marks onto countless official documents, banning wave after wave of monsters and demons! It has suppressed one poisonous ideological sprout after another before they could take root! It has blocked again and again the invasion of foreign decadent hedonistic literature, anime, and films into the minds of the people of this land!"
"Is that so?" NyeDepin flicked a glance at the flickering computer screen nearby. "That's not what people online seem to be saying. It sounds like the common people are rather… full of complaints about it."
"Hmph! A group of short-sighted fools—how could they ever understand the painstaking intentions of us old cadres who have weathered decades of storms?!"
NyeRonpin snorted, sitting up straighter, his old director's bearing returning.
"The way of heaven is collapsing, people's hearts are no longer what they once were, and public morals decline by the day! Take my climb up the mountain today—Mount Hua is supposed to be a pure place, yet all the way up, I lost count of how many young couples were hugging and clinging to each other in broad daylight, even embracing and kissing as if no one else were present!
"What difference is there between that and mindless beasts mating in public?! Out of the kindness of my heart, I tried to correct those young people and remind them to mind their behavior.
"But those little brats did not know what was good for them. Not only did they speak rudely to me, they even tried to lay hands on an elderly man like me!"
"Uh…" NyeDepin wasn't sure what to say to his fired-up brother.
"The National Radio and Television Administration may have passed into history, but our spirit must be carried on! This seal holds the will of every director before me. I want you to use your profound arts to materialize that will and conviction—the vow to sweep away all negative thought! Let it cleanse the filth from those vulgar literary works!"
NyeRonpin finally revealed his goal: he wanted NyeDepin to cast a spell and extract a spiritual entity embodying the old bureau's will from the seal, then infuse it into unhealthy works to change the world.
NyeDepin didn't answer the request. Instead, he asked, "Climbing all the way up Mount Hua, did you only see those shameless couples?"
"Of course—what else was there to see?" NyeRonpin's cloudy yellow eyes widened as he stared at his clear-eyed Daoist brother.
"Did you notice the porters hauling heavy loads on their shoulders, scrambling up and down the dangerous Sky Ladder of Mount Hua like ants?
"They are the bearers of Mount Hua. The tourists, pilgrims, temples, and Daoist monasteries on the mountain consume vast quantities of food, water, and all kinds of supplies every day—and all of it is carried up by them on their shoulders, from before dawn until after dark.
"Almost every panting tourist on the mountain path is stunned by the heavy burdens on the porters' shoulders and the speed of their steps. But you, brother, climbed all the way from the base to the peak, and only had eyes for those couples hugging and cuddling?"
"I…" NyeRonpin went quiet. For the first time, he felt that he—an official who had once believed he could not tolerate even a speck of sand in his eye—might have overlooked something during his decades in the bureaucracy.
After a long pause, he mumbled, head down, "That was not my duty…"
"But!" NyeRonpin snapped his head back up. He was not about to lose this debate between brothers—because if he did, the decades-long will of the old Administration would vanish like smoke!
"Our people wear their blue jeans and listen to foreign pop music. I am truly worried. Yes, some may say we went too far, but it cannot be denied that we kept many rotten ideas outside the country's gates!"
NyeDepin frowned. His brother's words reminded him of a recent game of Civilization VI. He had battled three players for a day and a night, only to be defeated in the end by a cultural victory.
In Civ VI, a game about nations contending against one another, a "cultural victory" means one country triumphs over the others by overwhelming them through culture.
After thinking it over, he tucked the bronze seal—loaded with decades of the bureau's willpower—into his robe. He nodded at NyeRonpin, who was preparing to launch into a long, impassioned speech, and promised, "I'll do my best. I will definitely extract a spiritual entity from this seal."