When Xu Xianqing saw the name carved into the tombstone, it felt as though she had been struck in the head with a heavy club. Dizziness washed over her, and her mind dissolved into a disorienting haze of buzzing cicadas.
Taking a deep, stabilizing breath, she slowly stood up, walked to the front of the tombstone, and crouched down to stare closely at it.
Could the person buried inside really be Miss Ye?
Xu Xianqing didn’t know. Driven by a sudden, wild impulse, she pulled the dagger from her backpack. She was going to dig it up and see for herself.
“Amitabha…”
Just as Xu Xianqing scooped aside another handful of loose yellow soil, a soft Buddhist chant echoed through the air. She froze and looked around, but saw no one.
Then, off in the distance, she spotted a figure sprinting toward her. Xu Xianqing stood up quickly, but her legs…numb from crouching so long…gave way, causing her to stagger and nearly fall.
Ignoring the strange chant for the moment, she glanced back and forth between the half-dug grave and the rapidly approaching figure.
Holding her dagger in a tight grip, Xu Xianqing stood her ground. At the same time, she opened her system storage panel, ready to summon her Five Elements Puppets at a moment’s notice to defend herself.
However, as the runner drew closer and his face came into focus, Xu Xianqing froze in surprise.
The man was equally stunned when he caught sight of her.
“Senior Brother Zhao?”
“Xianqing?!”
Xu Xianqing didn’t immediately step forward. Zhao Xing, too, eyed her with open caution.
Out in the wild, you could never tell if an old acquaintance was human or ghost…especially in a world rife with illusions and unnatural encounters.
“Senior Brother Zhao, what happened to you?” Xu Xianqing could tell he was injured. The frantic way he had been running suggested he was desperately fleeing from something.
Zhao Xing snapped back to his senses and glanced nervously over his shoulder. Seeing no sign of pursuers, he finally let out a long breath of relief.
“Is it really you, Xianqing? What are you doing here? And what is this place…” Zhao Xing’s voice trailed off as his eyes landed on the tombstone. His eyes widened so far they looked ready to pop out of his head.
“T-This… This!” Zhao Xing pointed a trembling finger at the grave.
Xu Xianqing frowned slightly. Though she kept her guard up, down inside she was already convinced this was indeed Zhao Xing.
“I don’t know what’s going on either,” she said. “A series of mishaps brought me here, where I stumbled upon two very strange villages. I followed the people from one of the villages, and it led me right to this tomb.”
Zhao Xing nodded weakly. Unable to keep his footing, he leaned against the tombstone and slowly slid to the ground.
“Do you have anything to eat?” Zhao Xing hadn’t yet achieved fast-freeing, and running continuously to get here had pushed his body to the brink of total collapse.
Xu Xianqing rummaged through the pouch at her waist, pulling out a water skin and half a piece of flatbread.
Zhao Xing snatched them and began devouring the food like a starving wolf, gulping down the entire skin of water without taking a breath.
Relaxing slightly, Xu Xianqing asked, “How did you end up here, Senior Brother Zhao?”
“The Ye Family is gone.”
Zhao Xing went silent for a moment before speaking those five words.
A heavy, mournful tone hung in his voice. “I came looking for you. I only knew you wanted to head south, so I came this way to test my luck. I never expected…”
He went on to explain how he had been ambushed by bandits in Mount Bai’an, losing all his money and travel supplies. It was only when the bandits searched him and found his Ye Family disciple token that they dragged him off to meet their chief.
“Oh, right,” Zhao Xing added. “Song Erjiao told me that if I ran into you, I should pass along a message.”
Xu Xianqing was still reeling from the devastating news that the Ye Family was gone. Dazed, she asked, “What message?”
“‘The monkey wine is ready.'”
As soon as Zhao Xing uttered those words, Xu Xianqing’s last shred of doubt vanished. It really was him.
“What does that even mean?” Zhao Xing asked, puzzled.
Xu Xianqing didn’t elaborate, saying only that it was a promise between them.
“Senior Brother Zhao, did you run into trouble earlier?” she asked, changing the subject.
After taking a moment to catch his breath, Zhao Xing explained, “I ran into a gang of tomb raiders. I tried to stop them, but my cultivation fell short. After the raiders made off, the head of the local family…the deceased tomb owner’s husband’s family…found me. They thought I was with the thieves and sent a squad of guards after me.”
He quickly added, “Don’t worry, though. I cast an illusion spell back in the woods. I lost them completely. They shouldn’t be able to follow us here.”
Just as Zhao Xing tried to reassure her, a cold arrow came whistling through the air, piercing the silence. His words had been spoken entirely too soon.
Xu Xianqing immediately sprang to her feet. Having rested a bit, Zhao Xing felt some of his strength return. He drew his longsword…he wasn’t a sword cultivator, but it was the only weapon he had left.
“Xianqing, get out of here first! I’ll hold them off!” Zhao Xing stepped in front of her defensively.
Xu Xianqing held her ground. “I’ve had a few encounters of my own since we last met. I can handle myself.”
Zhao Xing glanced back at her. Seeing the absolute calm and conviction in her eyes, his anxiety eased slightly. “Be careful,” he warned.
“I will,” Xu Xianqing nodded. She didn’t reveal her trump cards just yet.
As the pursuers closed in, Xu Xianqing noticed that their overall strength wasn’t particularly high. The strongest among them was only at the second layer of the Foundation Establishment stage, while the rest were merely in the Qi Refining stage.
Although she lacked a traditional cultivation base, Zhao Xing was also a second-layer Foundation Establishment cultivator.
“Senior Brother Zhao, buy me some time.”
Xu Xianqing decided to use these men as live practice to test out a new formation. If it worked, she could level up her formation skills; if it failed, she still had her life-saving puppets to fall back on.
Zhao Xing nodded.
In truth, fighting wasn’t strictly necessary. Zhao Xing was an honorable cultivator, not a grave robber. It was just a stroke of terrible luck that he had fled into a region covered in graves. At this point, no matter what he said, these pursuers wouldn’t believe a word of it.
Rather than wasting his breath, it was easier to let his weapon do the talking. On the Tianyan Continent, settling disputes with fists first was practically the norm anyway.
“Hand over our young mistress!” shouted the leader, the second-layer Foundation Establishment cultivator. “Hand her over and I’ll spare your lives! Otherwise, once you offend our Liu Family, don’t think you can get away!”
Zhao Xing held his longsword out, keeping himself firmly between the attackers and Xu Xianqing.
He didn’t know how long Xu Xianqing needed him to hold them off, but seeing that the attackers hadn’t lunged forward instantly, he decided to drag things out as long as possible.
“I’m not a tomb robber!” Zhao Xing shouted back. “I saw those thieves robbing the grave and went to investigate! I was trying to help you! You’re turning on the wrong guy!”
“Lie! We saw you running right alongside those grave robbers! We followed the trail they left all the way here!”
Zhao Xing felt a surge of helplessness. He had no way to prove his innocence. “I was chasing them!”
Suddenly, Zhao Xing paused, a realization striking him. “Wait a minute… Tomb raiders usually steal buried treasures. What did you mean by ‘hand over our young mistress’?”
“Bah! You stole our young mistress’s corpse, and you have the nerve to play dumb? Get them!”
Just as Zhao Xing’s mind was piecing the puzzle together, the mob launched their attack, giving him no time to think further.
Meanwhile, Xu Xianqing listened intently to the exchange as she set up her formation. Zhao Xing’s confusion was entirely justified. Tomb raiders stole gold, silver, and relics…who on earth would steal a corpse?
This time, Xu Xianqing was deploying a specialized formation her master had taught her in her past life: a soul-trapping array designed to bind and purify restless spirits.
She wasn’t sure if it would work on living cultivators, but with an opportunity like this, she was eager to test it out.
As Zhao Xing traded fierce blows with the attackers, a few of them singled out Xu Xianqing. Noticing she had no cultivation base and was clearly a frail mortal whom Zhao Xing was protecting, they figured taking her hostage would immediately force Zhao Xing to surrender.
One of the men sneaked around and launched a hostile spell directly at her!
Even without a cultivation base, Xu Xianqing possessed vast reserves of spiritual energy within her body, allowing her to sense even the faintest shifts in the surrounding air.
As the spell surged toward her, her hands flew into a rapid series of mudra hand-signs, using the techniques she once used against vicious ghosts to intercept the incoming attack.
She was simply testing a theory. Since she lacked spiritual roots, her body relied solely on the passive spiritual energy she accumulated over time, and she wasn’t sure if a ghost-purifying technique would hold up against a cultivator’s magic.
To her surprise, the moment her hand-seal struck forward, it didn’t just neutralize the lethal spell…it triggered a system prompt in her mind!
[Ding! Congratulations, Host! You have unlocked a new skill.]
[Four Sacred Protection Technique – Tier 1: Energy Absorbing Palm]
[Reward: 500 System Points]
Host: Xu Xianqing
Initial Skills:
[Heaven and Earth Chessboard – Tier 1: Subduing Yin Array]
[Miraculous Touch – Tier 1: Spiritual Restoration]
[Four Sacred Protection Technique – Tier 1: Energy Absorbing Palm]
System Points: 1,100