Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
It was still June 8th and around ten o’clock in the morning.
Old Antique was still conducting class; elsewhere, after taking three days to adjust to the injuries caused by the backlash from the destruction of her spirit clay clone, Jiang Liuyue came out of seclusion earlier than she had planned.
When she stepped out of the apartment basement, the harsh light of the sun shone on her face.
She knew that that bunch of killers on the ranking list were now all looking for her… she had to be especially on guard against that One-Inch Gray. Once she was eliminated, all the killers below her on the list would move up one spot.
However, trying to track her down in a sea of people was going to be far from easy.
The basement she had been using for seclusion was in the heart of Jinghua city.
This was an underground carpark, while its innermost section housed a convenience mart that had already been abandoned. When the mart’s owner and his sister-in-law had run away with all the money, property management had rented out this space. After checking it out back then, Jiang Liuyue had decided to cultivate in seclusion here, and had directly rented the place by putting down a deposit and fifty years’ worth of rent in one go.
This was the perfect plan. Cultivators were very picky when it came to choosing a seclusion spot to cultivate in, and many cultivators who had researched them would choose a “spirit eye.” A spirit eye was where natural spiritual energy converged, and was equivalent to a natural spirit gathering array. It was far more effective than an artificially made spirit gathering array, as it could continually replenish the spiritual energy required when a person cultivated in seclusion.
Cultivators who were even more particular would, apart from looking for spirit eyes, even invite a Taoist diviner to assess the place… in short, it had to be a seclusion spot blessed with good feng shui. Once they had settled on one, these cultivators would put the necessary defense measures in place in case they were disturbed while in seclusion.
However, this abandoned convenience mart which Jiang Liuyue had chosen didn’t have a spirit eye, nor did it have anything to do with feng shui… she couldn’t get any more low-key than this, squeezed as she was into this inconspicuous, out-of-the-way nook; absolutely no one would have expected the grand Master of Shadow Stream to hole up in such a small corner.
What she needed to do now was to waste no time in regaining her realm.
…
On the outskirts of Jinghua city flowed a river of sewage; all the city’s waste water was ultimately channeled here, and then was filtered and purified in a recycling process to be reused once more.
By the time Jiang Liuyue hurried to this place, it was already noon. At this time, it was burning hot in Jinghua city and the river of sewage gave off an unbearably foul odor, so few people would come by here.
“This is the place…”
After she had originally taken out the stone ghost mask, she had gotten her younger sister Jiang Liuying to seal it in this river of sewage when she had had the opportunity to do so.
Her turtle-breathing skill in effect, Jiang Liuyue stood in front of this river and stared at it. It stank to high heaven here; if she had come unprepared, she definitely would have been knocked out by the stench, since a cultivator’s five senses were far more sensitive than a normal person’s.
She raised her hand, and with a hum, spirit light shot forth from the tip of her finger toward the water.
When her younger sister had sealed this stone ghost mask in this river back then, Jiang Liuyue had set up obstruction magic which worked using the same mechanism as for digital red packets (1) ; the seal would be activated after she injected her spirit energy into it.
After she pushed her spirit energy into the river of sewage, the river’s initially calm surface instantly started to ripple.
Water gurgled.
The water started to rise in waves like a fountain, and in its center, Jiang Liuyue plainly saw a spirit pouch, which still had the Band-aid waterproof talisman which she had stuck on before.
With a wave of her hand, the spirit pouch on top of the fountain instantly flew to her.
After so many years, this stone ghost mask that she had obtained from a gang of grave robbers back then was finally seeing the light of day again.
There were a lot of rumors about the stone ghost mask, but Jiang Liuyue acknowledged that she was a very cautious person, and she had never been tempted to use the mask as a so-called cultivation shortcut. But now that things had come to this point, she had no other way left of turning the tide in her favor.
Her eyebrows knitted slightly as she untied the spirit pouch. Immediately a cloud of black smoke escaped the pouch with a hiss. It hovered in the air and gave a cruel, sinister laugh. “Junior, after you dropped my venerable self into the water back then, I thought you had already forgotten me. It has been so many years… why is it that your stage has regressed? Has your life been so poor?”
“As things stand now, I’m at the end of my rope,” Jiang Liuyue said softly, her eyes dark.
“If that was going to be the case, you should have worked with my venerable self much earlier on. If you had made this decision back then, you definitely wouldn’t be in the position that you are in now…” The stone ghost mask in the black smoke laughed non-stop. “So, have you thought it through? You should know what it means to cooperate with me, right?”
Jiang Liuyue: “Back then, Lord Devil Emperor was researching a way to counter the Great Evil Containment Wave, but in the end you screwed it up and caused yourself to be sealed away. The cooperation you speak of is nothing more than your desire to be resurrected by drawing on external forces.”
Devil Emperor Gua Pi: “…F**k! How did you know?”
The stone ghost mask immediately blushed deeply; this was really too shameful!
Jiang Liuyue: “Lord Devil Emperor’s deeds are already recorded in our history books; they’re now compulsory test points every year.”
Devil Emperor Gua Pi: “…”
After a short period of silence, Jiang Liuyue raised her eyes. “There is just one thing that I don’t understand… in cultivation circles, countless people have attempted to obtain the stone ghost mask. Why didn’t senior try to work with them?”
“Hehe, so what if they attempted to obtain me? I’ll only work with someone whom I am compatible with. In the hundreds of years that I was sealed, you were the first person to find me. Unfortunately, before we could come to an agreement, you didn’t even want to listen to my venerable self, and you sealed me away in this foul-smelling river of sewage…”
Devil Emperor Gua Pi laughed slightly. “I can help you accomplish two tasks. However, the condition is that you must allow me to use your body for a period of time, during which your soul will be confined to the stone ghost mask.”
“Soul exchange?” Jiang Liuyue furrowed her brow.
“This is the only method I can think of for the time being,” this Devil Emperor Gua Pi in the stone ghost mask said. “Of course, you can rest assured that if you help me, I won’t toss you aside after everything is over. After I find a suitable body, I’ll return yours to you.”
“Of course this junior trusts Lord Devil Emperor.” Jiang Liuyue smiled bitterly; she had already lost everything, what did it matter? “Also, I believe that given Lord Devil Emperor’s glorious standing in the past, you won’t stay in a woman’s body for very long. Although, there is a particular community of cross-dressing men that is popular now…”
“Cross-dressing men? What is that?” Devil Emperor Gua Pi hadn’t had contact with the outside world for so long, and was a little derailed by this piece of information.
Jiang Liuyue: “It’s a group of men who like to dress up in women’s clothing, and who are even admired and pursued by many.”
Devil Emperor Gua Pi: “…” It had been more than a thousand years since he had been outside; had the world truly become that horrifying?