The rain poured down in torrents, thunder and lightning ceaseless, their world-shaking force startling the Aberrant Beasts deep in the remote mountains into cowering in their dens, not daring to move.
Unfazed by thunder, lightning, wind, or rain, but having slipped and fallen several times on the muddy road, Qibao had no choice but to stop. She glanced around, walked over to a tree trunk that had been struck and split by lightning, and—ignoring the shallow rainwater pooled in the wrinkled bark—hopped up to sit on it.
Above her head floated a seven-story golden pagoda. From its body descended a transparent barrier radiating a faint golden light, completely shielding Qibao within. No matter how fierce the rain or how strong the lightning, it was all kept out by this barrier.
Any other Ability User who had awakened various Spiritual Entities after the apocalypse would be insanely envious of Qibao’s “Spiritual Entity,” but at this moment, Qibao was filled with nothing but irritation.
She stared at her feet. The embroidered shoes on them had slightly upturned toes, decorated with lifelike auspicious clouds and cranes. They still looked as beautiful as before, but these shoes had once been a Magic Treasure that could help their owner ride the clouds and travel a thousand miles a day. Now, due to prolonged lack of Spiritual Power nourishment, they were completely ruined, reduced to ordinary embroidered slippers that got wet, got dirty, and slipped!
The damp, soggy feeling was highly unpleasant. Qibao helplessly took off her shoes and set them aside, barefoot.
These feet, made to look fair and tender against the surrounding lush green jungle, felt strange to Qibao as well, because the pagoda above her head was her true body. According to those cultivation practitioners, her pagoda was an Innate Magic Treasure—capable of overcoming water and fire, blocking thunder and lightning, and impervious to blades and spears. Whoever obtained her would gain absolute defense.
Originally, Qibao had been purely a Magic Treasure in the hands of cultivators. After countless long years, she had developed her own consciousness.
Her last contractor had been a female cultivator. The woman’s cultivation was profound, and she rarely needed Qibao’s defensive abilities. She simply used Qibao as a Storage Treasure, stuffing a pile of Heavenly Treasures, Medicinal Pills, and Magic Tools into the space within the pagoda. From time to time, she would descend into the mortal world to uphold justice, successively subduing seven Millennial Great Demons and suppressing them within Qibao’s body.
Later, a great war between immortals and demons broke out in the cultivation world, and Qibao and the female cultivator were separately pulled into two spatial rifts. The moment she entered the rift, Qibao could no longer sense the contractual connection between her and the female cultivator. She drifted alone through a long, lonely journey through time and space—whether it was several hundred or several thousand years, she didn’t know. Her final memory was of being struck by some fragment and suddenly flying toward a blue planet.
When she was awakened tonight by the deafening thunder, she found herself in a deep pit in the ground. Her pagoda itself was unchanged, but the various Heavenly Treasures, Medicinal Pills, and Magic Tools inside had almost all turned to waste. They were all external possessions she had no use for, so it didn’t matter that they were ruined. What was terrifying was that the Suppression Array the female cultivator had carved into the pagoda’s body had also lost much of its power due to the lack of Spiritual Power nourishment—all seven Great Demons previously imprisoned had escaped!
Nourished by the righteous energy of heaven and earth, Qibao could not accept that the mortal world would be ravaged by seven Great Demons because of her negligence during her slumber.
She had to catch all seven Great Demons and bring them back!
But Qibao was merely a Magic Treasure pagoda. Even though she had given birth to a Tower Spirit, she couldn’t move on her own. To subdue the seven Great Demons, she either had to find herself a contractor first, letting the contractor carry her through the mortal world, or forge herself a physical body and walk the world herself.
Finding a contractor was too slow, because Qibao had the pride of an Innate Magic Treasure. She was willing to form a contract with someone because staying in one place for too long was dreadfully boring—she wanted to travel the world with her contractor. But a cultivator had to meet three conditions to be accepted by her: a righteous heart, no complete reliance on her formidable power, and a pleasing appearance that caught her eye.
Qibao’s Spiritual Sense had a limited range, but it was enough to tell her she was in a desolate wilderness. The contractor route wouldn’t work, so Qibao exhausted the remaining usable Heavenly Treasures, Medicinal Pills, spirit plants, and spirit water left by the female cultivator to forge herself a physical body—the one she had now.
Her Spiritual Sense merged into the body, and she truly became human. The pagoda once again became a mere Magic Treasure.
With a thought, Qibao took out a ruined mirror Magic Tool from within the pagoda. Though it was broken, the mirror surface reflected with perfect clarity.
In the mirror was a person with slender brows like crescent moons, clear, bright apricot eyes with slightly upturned corners. Smiling, she seemed approachable; not smiling, she carried a hint of righteousness and authority.
When condensing her physical form, Qibao hadn’t been able to control the structure of her features—perhaps this was simply how she was meant to look.
Qibao was very satisfied with this face. Unfortunately, the Spiritual Power contained in those Heavenly Treasures had run dry, meaning her physical body could maintain its youthful appearance for at most a hundred or two hundred years. Ordinarily, she was like an ordinary person—needing food to sustain her vitality, feeling discomfort when thirsty, hungry, or sick, and sustaining injury if she didn’t actively control the pagoda to protect her body.
Putting away the mirror, Qibao looked up at her true body, the pagoda.
After gaining a physical form, Qibao could sense that this world contained faint traces of Spiritual Power. The Suppression Array on the pagoda’s body could absorb it on its own—it might take over a hundred years to recover.
That’s fine—even if the Suppression Array failed, Qibao could still rely on her own strength to retrieve the seven Great Demons. Any that refused to obey, or had already committed great evils, she would simply smash to death, carrying out justice on heaven’s behalf!
.
A month later, relying on the pagoda to charge ahead and clear the path, and having worn through five sets of dresses and seven pairs of embroidered shoes, a hungry and thinner Qibao finally made it from the depths of that desolate mountain range to its outer edges. Though it was only the periphery, Qibao had climbed to the top of the pagoda to check—she still needed at least three to five more days to completely leave the mountains.
Near noon, Qibao grew hungry. She took a rabbit from inside the pagoda, skinned it and drained the blood, then used the True Incinerating Fire attached to the Demon-Suppressing Array to set up firewood and roast the meat. Unfortunately, this True Fire could only burn inside the pagoda—she had to place the firewood inside to draw it out, and its power was greatly diminished. If she could control it and release it freely, it would have given her another means of attack.
The scent of rabbit blood carried by the wind attracted a fox and a snake—both ordinary beasts, without any Demonic Aura.
Qibao would not kill indiscriminately. She released the pagoda to cover both herself and the campfire, roasting the meat while observing the two beasts through the protective barrier.
Qibao had long noticed that the forest beasts she encountered along the way were exceptionally aggressive. They couldn’t cultivate, and their strength was far inferior to the demonic beasts of the cultivation world, but they were extremely ugly—no beast had fur, and their bodies were covered in hard armor. And this rabbit in her hands, though it ate grass, was incredibly bold. When it saw her, it didn’t run—it actually lunged at her to bite.
What a strange world, filled with so many strange creatures.
The fox and snake outside couldn’t break through the faintly glowing golden protective barrier. After waiting for a while, they each ran off in different directions.
With no beasts disturbing her, Qibao put away the pagoda and continued roasting the meat.
Just as she was about to finish eating, Qibao suddenly sensed a familiar Demonic Aura rapidly approaching her!
It was the Snake Demon, Yin Mo!
Qibao quickly put away the remaining roasted rabbit meat and stood with the pagoda in hand, waiting for the snake.
Before she even saw the snake, a massive white egret swooped low across the distant sky. With a flap of its wings, it released a volley of wind blades toward the Snake Demon’s position, and then the man on the egret’s back hurled a fireball of astonishing power at the Snake Demon.
Qibao was stunned. What kind of spell was this—controlling wind and fire directly without any fluctuation of Spiritual Power?
And why were they hunting the Snake Demon? Had it harmed someone? Or were the two coveting the Snake Demon’s Demon Core, or its scales and fangs, hunting purely for profit?
Regardless, the Snake Demon was her prisoner—she had to intervene!
Sensing that the Snake Demon seemed trapped and no longer moving, Qibao took the initiative to run forward.
On the other side, a black snake as thick as an arm and over three meters long was first blocked by wind blades that carved several meters deep into the ground. Forced to turn in haste, it raised its head and spat out a stream of water to counter the fireball descending from above. Water and fire opposed each other, locked in a tug-of-war, sending up great clouds of white steam. Noticing the egret about to release new wind blades, Yin Mo endured a fireball blast that had already melted away most of its power, and continued fleeing forward, battered and wounded.
He fled in disgrace, his dark golden pupils burning with cold fury. If his power hadn’t been greatly diminished by thousands of years of suppression, if he were still at his peak, these two would have been killed by him long ago—how could they be so arrogant now?
Wind blades closed in again. Yin Mo accelerated at the last moment, barely slipping through the second before the blades struck the ground, only his tail getting slashed—nearly severed.
Yin Mo knew he couldn’t flee much longer, unless his plan to use others as weapons worked—if some A-rank or even S-rank Aberrant Beast deep in the mountains was drawn by the commotion, it might scare off those two Ability Users.
As he fled, hurried yet clumsy footsteps came from ahead, hidden behind the dense trees—signs that the newcomer either hadn’t been trained in proper technique, or was too preoccupied with other dangers to care.
But at this point, any variable worked in his favor. Yin Mo pressed on toward the approaching figure.
The Ability User flying low had a clearer view. Zhou Yu, momentarily withholding a wind blade, quickly said to his teammate, “I’ll sweep the woman away—you keep attacking!”
Lu Feng frowned slightly but didn’t object.
The wind gust, strong enough to sweep her away, came without warning—but Qibao reacted fast. Enlarging the pagoda to over three meters tall, she slammed it into the wind gust. The wind dispersed, and the pagoda continued forward, hovering above the stunned black snake’s head.
Though she had no confidence in the Suppression Array on the pagoda’s body, Qibao still shouted, “Seal!”
Yin Mo, who had lived for thousands of years, feared this pagoda more than anything. He instinctively gave up resisting, yet only a faint suction came from above—as if, had he wanted to escape, he could have broken free from the array’s hold.
But his serpentine gaze swept over the two Ability Users who had chased him all this way. Yin Mo, as if truly too weakened to fight, voluntarily shrank his body and flew into the first gate of the pagoda as it opened.
It actually worked?
Qibao delightedly shrank the miniature pagoda back into her hand. With a flick of her spiritual sense, she saw the familiar black serpent lying limp and dying in the first level of the tower. Several patches of scales had peeled off its body, exposing raw red flesh, and the thin tip of its tail was nearly severed. Its flattened head lay motionless against the tower floor, somehow radiating a sense of relief and attachment, as if it had finally returned home.
“Your spiritual entity can actually imprison an Aberrant Beast?”
Zhou Yu landed with Lu Feng on his back. Once Lu Feng jumped aside, Zhou Yu also reverted to human form and stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
Yin Mo could hear the outside world. Through divine thought, he communicated with the tower’s holder, who was dressed as a cultivator: “Are you the new master of the Qibao Tower? Let me tell you first—I haven’t harmed any common folk. The people of this world don’t cultivate, but they can awaken spiritual entities similar to Magic Treasures and wield abilities comparable to spells. The beasts here have also all turned into Aberrant Beasts that like to attack humans.”
“These two are Ability Users. They thought I was an Aberrant Beast and wanted to kill me to extract my crystal core—something like a Demon Core.”
Qibao believed his words, because killing would deepen the Demonic Aura on a demon beast, and Yin Mo’s already scant Demonic Aura had long been purified by her. Only the faint trace inherent to his demonic body remained, and it had not grown any heavier now.
After understanding the situation, Qibao met the Ability Users’ gaze with a calm expression and replied, “Yes, this serpent is my Aberrant Beast. He escaped from me before—thank you for helping me drive him back.”
Zhou Yu looked at Lu Feng.
Lu Feng studied the tower in the ancient-robed girl’s hand. A spiritual entity capable of easily imprisoning an A-level Aberrant Beast meant she was at least A-level, same as them.
Rather than making an enemy of an A-level Ability User over a not-so-rare A-level Aberrant Beast, it was better to do them a favor and gain a powerful friend.
“You’re welcome. We just happened to come across it.”
Next, the two sides exchanged brief introductions.
Following Yin Mo’s advice, Qibao claimed she had grown up deep in the mountains with her kin, had become separated from them, and was now heading out of the mountains to find them.
The Great Cataclysm had brought about the apocalypse, and survivors either flocked to the various bases that had been established over time or lived freely outside relying on their own strength, so Qibao’s story was not suspicious.
After agreeing to travel together, Lu Feng asked curiously, “Why did you keep that Aberrant Beast serpent alive? Does it serve some purpose?”
Unless they had a special reason, Ability Users would usually just kill any Aberrant Beast they hunted—safer and more convenient.
Qibao: “…I’m a bit unusual. I like catching Aberrant Beasts to keep as pets.”
Yin Mo, who already knew she was a Tower Spirit: “…”