Qin Jinghan looked at Fu Mingxia beside him. “Do you still remember? The rainy season three years ago was just like this. In Zhengzhou City, Squire Zhao’s household was haunted by a Ghost Bride, and one Fuxi disciple lost their life. Originally, it was a job I could handle alone, but you insisted on coming along.”
Fu Mingxia naturally remembered. “The intelligence was wrong. That Ghost Woman was nearing the Origin Return level, while you and I were only at Foundation Establishment. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken us three extra days. If I hadn’t gone with you, you’d likely have fallen to her as well.”
Qin Jinghan said: “That day, you and I managed to deal with the Ghost Woman, so naturally, we don’t need to fear a Zhuyong from the same Evil Nightmare Temple. Just let me run into him. If I do, I’ll chop his legs off.”
Li Weiyi beside him shuddered.
Rechen chanted: “Amitabha. Benefactor Qin, your killing intent is too heavy.”
Qin Jinghan gave Rechen’s head a light smack. “Stop pretending, little brat.”
Rechen glared at him angrily but didn’t retaliate. Despite his young age, he understood the principle: he was at Foundation Establishment while the other was at Origin Return — a full major realm’s difference. Initiating a fight would mean a loss for him.
By the time the group reached the vicinity of the City Lord Mansion, it was pouring heavily. The city had no curfew, yet despite this, many stalls and shops had been forced to close by now.
Wails came from within the rain curtain. Night watch bailiffs were dragging someone into the distance. Li Weiyi heard the commotion and glanced over, but only saw blurred figures and didn’t know what had happened.
~
Usually, when an ordinary person emerged from the Ancestor Realm, regardless of their results, they’d need to lie in bed for months, nurtured by heavenly treasures, earthly essences, and Spirit Stones, unable to use Spiritual Power carelessly, before they could fully recover.
But the day Duan Nanyun came out of the Ancestor Realm, Fu Mingxia had returned to the mountain.
The youth on the bed pushed open the bamboo window and heard the bustling crowd outside.
“What kind of Demon creature could wound him this badly?!”
It was Song Ya’s voice. “This is just being too careless.”
A disciple answered: “They say it was a Ghost Woman from the Evil Nightmare Temple. One older Senior Brother had already died at her hands before. Who would have thought she’d nearly take Senior Brother Qin as well…”
“The hubris of youth, not knowing that life is the only thing that matters! If he wanted to die, fine, but he dragged Mingxia into it too! Did he even use his brain? If he ran into a Devil Cultivator at the Origin Return level, he should have requested reinforcements from the sect! Right, where is that girl, Fu Mingxia?!”
“Senior Sister… Senior Sister? She seems unharmed. She said to send Senior Brother Qin over first; she needed to return to the Bamboo Grove Residence for a bit…”
“Unharmed?! Qin Jinghan’s limbs were nearly corroded through, not to mention the difficulty of his Soul Spirit being eroded by the Devil Qi. Even he ended up like this, how much better could she be?”
Song Ya’s furious voice rang out again. “Go to the Bamboo Grove Residence and call her over! How can one underestimate wounds caused by a Devil Cultivator?”
“Yes, yes, Shishu, please calm down. I’ll go immediately.”
Duan Nanyun, who had been lying inside the house for recuperation, abruptly got up. Throwing on a plain white outer robe, he immediately left the Healing Arts Sect through a side door and headed straight for the Bamboo Grove Residence.
The Bamboo Grove Residence was a spiritual dwelling the Sect Leader had set up for his daughter, rich in mountain spirit and beautiful waters, surrounded by planted spiritual bamboo, brimming with Spiritual Power all year round. He moved quickly, even using his cultivation power, arriving several times faster than the disciple Song Ya had sent. Consequently, his Soul Spirit, already battered and weak, began to tear apart.
Anyone else would have cried out in pain long ago, but Duan Nanyun seemed utterly insensible to it.
Upon entering the Bamboo Grove, after only a few steps, he happened upon her.
The young girl had changed into a light-colored dress. Her thin lips were slightly pale, appearing normal at first glance. But having faced an Origin-Returning Cultivator with only a Foundation Establishment body, especially one as vicious and cunning as that Ghost Woman, how could she possibly be normal?
Seeing him arrive, Fu Mingxia was momentarily surprised, then said: “I was just about to go find you. What a coincidence.”
“Congratulations to Senior Sister for slaying the Devil Cultivator, ridding the people of a menace, and adding another achievement to your record,” Duan Nanyun smiled, but his eyes held no mirth.
Fu Mingxia found it strange. Such words from anyone else would be normal, but Duan Nanyun… surely he didn’t come all this way just to congratulate her?
But she also knew that the past few days should have been when his ailment acted up. “Is your illness better?”
He let out a few muffled chuckles, the smile on his handsome face deepening. “Senior Sister went down the mountain a few days ago; I thought you had already forgotten about this matter.”
Fu Mingxia thought for a moment. “With Uncle Song around, there shouldn’t be any problems.”
He slowly stepped closer to her, the corners of his eyes red. It was completely different from his usual expression when soaking in medicinal baths—as if he wanted to tear something apart and devour it.
But the next moment, that expression changed again.
It became innocent and gentle, even a little pitiful.
“Senior Sister,”
Back then, they hadn’t yet become peers. Fuxi Mountain’s rules dictated that without a master, seniority was determined by cultivation realm.
The youth’s face was pale, like an abandoned puppy, and he asked hoarsely: “Because Sect Leader Song is here, will you no longer care about my illness from now on?”
Fu Mingxia recalled Uncle Song’s heavy entrustment, worth forty thousand: “Of course not. If you unseal your Spiritual Light next month, by this time next year you’ll also need to enter the Ancestor Realm. I’ll apply for the lowest sect subsidy for you and save up a few more Spirit Stones to help you recover.”
She hadn’t expected that he had already gone through it.
Fu Mingxia continued, “Oh right, you don’t know yet? When we went down the mountain this time, we happened to go to Zhengzhou in Guangling Prefecture.”
The young girl lowered her head and took out an exquisite little box carved from redwood. “Look what I brought back for you.”
The small box opened to reveal three layers. The outer layer was ice, and the inner layer held several neatly arranged frosted hawthorns. The fruit bodies were vibrantly red, the frosting like snow.
Cultivators at the Origin Return level could practice Inedia, no longer needing to rely on mortal food to survive. Although some still indulged in culinary pleasures, on Fuxi Mountain, let alone frosting, there wasn’t even a hawthorn to be found. Getting a bite of this sweet treat, so common in the Mortal World, was truly no easy feat.
Fu Mingxia smiled: “Surprised, right?”
Without resting for a day and two nights, she had immediately ridden the wind back after slaying the Ghost Woman. She hadn’t even gone to the Healing Arts Sect with Qin Jinghan to check on his wounds, precisely so she could deliver these freshest frosted hawthorns.
Even after all this time, the ice hadn’t melted, not through any miracle of the mortal world, but because she had protected it with her cultivation power.
“Try it. Is it the taste of your hometown?”
Rain pattered on the bamboo grove, the wind rustling through.
The young girl looked up at him, her eyes like autumn water, gleaming like stars, anticipating his feedback.
The person who had been smiling just moments ago suddenly stopped smiling.
He had just made it up on the spot.
A person from Zhengzhou, Guangling Prefecture.
— He loved sweets, but due to the hatred stemming from his family’s extermination and the relentless pursuit, he had wandered the mortal world, unable to ever eat even an ordinary hometown snack again.
That was something he’d fabricated when someone asked him one day.
He had been born alone into this world. Cultivators wanted to kill him, Devils and Demons wanted to seize him. He had seen countless acts of hypocrisy and was a master of disguise and deception himself.
He had no name, no tragically deceased “family,” much less a hometown, and naturally, he didn’t know what the taste of home was.
A Malevolent Will hunted and reviled by everyone, a Devil Chief despised and feared by cultivators, had never eaten this kind of red fruit coated in frost.
Seeing him not move, she made to withdraw the red box, casually asking, “You don’t like it?”
The youth suddenly reached out, took one, and put it in his mouth.
The sweet frosting mixed with sourness dissolved on his lips and teeth.
He suddenly retreated a few steps, staring fixedly at her with an emotion in his eyes that no one could decipher.
The young girl asked, “How’s the taste?”
He said, “Too sour.”
“How can that be? Granny said they’re sweet.”
She tasted one herself. “Could your taste buds be off… Oh, right.”
Fu Mingxia remembered something and added, “You just ate one, that’ll be a fee of three low-grade Spirit Stones.”
Duan Nanyun: “Huh?”
How could this stuff be so expensive?
“Don’t play dumb. There’s no such thing as a free sweet treat.”
“…I’m poor.”
“I’ll put it on your tab.”
Duan Nanyun sighed, looking at her: “I just said that casually.”
So someone had actually taken it seriously.
Fu Mingxia thought he was talking about the hawthorns and earnestly educated him: “Reneging on debts is inadvisable.”
Duan Nanyun asked again, “My Dao Heart is vengeance. Their Dao Heart is Ascension. What is your Dao Heart?”
Fu Mingxia: “Subdue Demons, Exterminate Devils, protect the common people.”
The youth’s voice blended with the sound of rain: “Exterminate Devils, huh?”
“Yes. Exterminate Devils.”
In Xuzhou, the night rain poured in torrents.
An old woman with white hair stood. Her tears and the rain streamed down her deeply wrinkled face. She had fallen so many times in the mud while being chased away that her whole body was covered in filth, her clothes in tatters.
She came back, kowtowing with every step. “I beg the Immortals, save my son’s life!”
The old woman’s voice was hoarse, her throat nearly ruined from shouting, yet she still prostrated herself completely on the ground, kowtowing all the way towards the City Lord Mansion, simply because this was the greatest gesture of respect she could conceive.
“I told you, the Immortals aren’t here! Besides, the City Lord’s family was wiped out by monsters! That’s the most important matter now! You crazy old woman, stop talking nonsense here.”
The bailiff was displeased, having chased her away repeatedly. “If you delay the important people’s business, can you afford the consequences?”
“Just your good-for-nothing son, without even an official rank, and you dare bother the Immortals with such a trifle?”
“I’ve told you many times, coming here is useless! Even if you knelt for days and nights, it would be in vain! If you have a matter, go report it to the Government Office!”
But the old woman still crawled back, kneeling with every step.
“I beg the Immortals!”
“Mercy!”
“I beg the Immortals!”
“Save my son!”
The rain above her head suddenly vanished, and the bailiff trying to drive her away was also stopped. The old woman heard a young girl’s clear voice.
“Granny, please get up first.”
She said, “We will help you.”