Chapter 28: Novice Mission

When Ding Ling went to accept the friend request, the other party had already retracted it.

She only had time to glance at the person’s profile picture, which showed two suns. This person had not spoken in the group.

Although there were many people in the group, only a few chatted regularly, and they were still discussing this mission.

【Mission Group One】

“It’s a long-term mission, too. The reward points have got to be the highest among D-rank missions.”

“The location is Jiangcheng. Are any of you in Jiangcheng? Why isn’t anyone taking it?”

“Finding a cat. Does it count dead or alive?”

“How would you find a dead one? What if it’s rotting away somewhere?”

Missions to find lost items or missing people always listed a location, and transactions were usually carried out in person.

Whether tracking down a person or an object, one always needed a “catalyst.” Clothes someone had worn, a comb they had used, or toys a pet had played with all served as catalysts.

Whether the person taking the mission used talismans or arrays, they couldn’t do without this.

“Where did that newcomer go, F? Is F in Jiangcheng?”

Were these people probing the newcomer’s location?

Ding Ling still didn’t show herself. Instead, she went through all the available D-rank missions in the group.

Some required low-tier spiritual plants, while others required low-tier pills. These missions could be completed by mail. Ding Ling checked the delivery deadlines and clicked to accept them.

“The rookie’s wild, taking three all at once?”

“Grinding points right after joining the group? Trying to rush into Group Two?”

“Tch. With these D-rank tasks adding only two or three points each, when could anyone make it to Group Two?”

Indeed. Ding Ling calculated that if she only took these kinds of missions, who knew how long it would take to trade for a soul-returning herb and refine a Soul-Nourishing Pill.

She glanced at the cat-finding mission again. Ten points. It was indeed the highest-reward D-rank mission.

“The rookie joined the group but hasn’t said a word yet.”

“Pretty aloof, isn’t she? Could she be a girl? Want big brother to write you a beginner tutorial? Guaranteed you’ll rush into Group Two in two months.”

“Are you even in Group Two yourself? You sure you can handle flirting?”

The two began arguing over a newcomer whose gender they had merely assumed was female.

Sister Hong sent Ding Ling a voice message: “Whatever you do, don’t pay any attention to these people. The crowd in here is a mixed bag; there are blue, yellow, orange, and red ones.”

Ding Ling knew about the blue, yellow, orange, and red ratings. They were the threat levels assigned to dangerous individuals by the military.

To make them easily understandable to the general public, they matched meteorological disaster warning levels.

Blue was the lowest, while orange and red indicated fugitives who had committed major crimes.

Ding Ling fumbled as she typed two words and sent them back: “Thank you.”

“Pay attention to the mission deadlines. You took so many at once; if your failure rate is too high, you’ll be kicked out.” After speaking, Sister Hong sent a “Go for it!” duck sticker^[1].

Ding Ling’s goal was to advance quickly to the next mission pool.

A ten-point mission. Completing this one was worth three or four ordinary ones.

She clicked on the 【Find Cat】 mission and pressed confirm.

The moment she accepted the mission, the highlighted mission bar in the group dimmed.

A line of small text scrolled beneath the group name: “F accepted D-rank mission 【Find Cat】”

“She really took it!”

“Is F really in Jiangcheng?”

“I’m in Jiangcheng too. If you’re a girl, say something!”

Ding Ling ignored them. The moment she pressed confirm, detailed lists for the missions were sent to her phone.

They contained addresses and contact persons.

Before she could say anything, the person with the two-sun profile picture sent another friend request.

This time, his message was far more intense: 【Abandon the mission immediately! Newcomers get one chance to back out!!!】

Ding Ling found the add button and sent a friend request: 【Why can’t I?】

The other party did not reply for a long time.

Was he deliberately acting mysterious?

Since he refused to explain, Ding Ling did not pursue it further. Putting her phone down, she leaped lightly off the bed.

That purple pill had strengthened her constitution. With the empowerment of the talisman array, its potency was far greater than any medicine or potion she had taken so far.

Having ingested it at the precisely calculated hour and circulated it using her taicang as a furnace, her entire body felt lucid and purified in qi.

If the medicines from the campus clinic barely had ten percent efficacy, the pills Ding Ling refined herself were at maximum potency.

Yao Beibei had just changed into a strawberry-patterned skirt and was looking in the mirror in front of the wardrobe. When she saw Ding Ling lift the curtain and land on her feet, her mouth fell open wide enough to fit a large duck egg: “Y-You…”

For a moment, Ding Ling had forgotten there was someone else in the dorm.

Ding Ling thought for a moment. “Back in Nanzhou, I used to climb trees a lot.”

She should believe that.

Sure enough, Yao Beibei nodded. “Oh.” That made complete sense.

“Are you feeling much better?” Ding Ling had never jumped down from bed like that before. Was her arm about to heal soon?

Ding Ling was somewhat surprised. “Yes, much better.”

“You took the medicine you refined yourself, didn’t you?” Beibei’s eyes sparkled. “Then you should have told me! I could have used my New Year’s money to help fund your pill refining first, so you wouldn’t have had to wait so long.”

That way, Ding Ling’s body could recover faster.

After saying that, Beibei muttered to herself, “Even Professor Song’s medicine wasn’t as effective as yours?”

“It’s an ancestral secret recipe.” Ding Ling recalled the charlatans in the market selling strength pills and vitality tonics; every single one of them claimed their medicine was an ancestral secret.

She should still believe this.

Sure enough, Beibei nodded again. “An ancestral secret recipe? That’s amazing! Do your ancestral recipes include skin-whitening pills? Slimming pills? Instant genius pills?”

“No.”

Beibei sighed. Everyone was cultivating immortality now, so why hadn’t anyone invented those things yet? Couldn’t the elites put in a little effort?

Ding Ling had indeed kept a few pills: purple, red, orange, green, cyan, white, and black. She had saved the orange one for Beibei, worried that if Beibei took a whole pill, her body wouldn’t be able to handle it.

She had even ground the small pill into powder and mixed it into the milk Beibei drank every night before bed.

Completely unaware, when Ding Ling brought her milk again, Beibei gulped it all down and said sweetly, “Thank you, Ding Lingling~”

Ding Lingling, the heavenly roommate.

“Have you felt any discomfort over the past couple of days?”

“No, just hungry all the time and eating way more. Does that count?” Her body felt quite hot too, but it was summer, so feeling hot was normal.

Her air conditioner at home was set to eighteen degrees. Her mother was cold enough to need long sleeves, while her father said it was just youthful vigor^[2].

Ding Ling nodded to herself. Good, the Grand Tonic Pill was working.

Beibei’s spiritual root had awakened late. Once she finished the entire bottle of orange medicine, her spiritual energy control would jump to a whole new level.

“Should I go on a diet? But Master Wang’s cooking is so delicious.” Missing even a single meal felt like a loss.

This was something Ding Ling did not understand. Once you pursued the Dao and sought immortality, why would beauty or ugliness matter?

“You’re still growing.”

“Right? That’s what my mom said too!”

“You have fair skin, and you’re not fat.”

“Really?” Beibei beamed with joy. Ding Ling never lied; saying this definitely wasn’t polite flattery for a friend, it had to come straight from the heart!

“You’re not unintelligent either. You just don’t work hard, give up easily, and lack focus.”

…

Beibei chanted silently to herself: Ding Ling means well. She’s doing this for my own good.

When classes started on Monday, Chen Li took sick leave. Beibei scoffed, “He definitely took sick leave because he has to read his self-criticism over the public broadcast today! How insidious!”

The Chen family calling in people from the military to investigate the school could not be kept under wraps. Objections arose from the parents’ committee, and Vice Principal Gao had personally stepped in to explain.

Beibei told Ding Ling, “I also heard that the talisman on Chen Li’s hand was drawn by Ye Yiqing.”

“A second-year senior told me, the one I met when helping you borrow books last time. They said that when Ye Yiqing participated in the Cultivation Competition, he drew this talisman for his teammate, and it even saved that teammate’s life.”

“The vice president of his fan club recognized it. They compared them, and they’re identical!”

Ding Ling was not particularly interested in the talisman, nor did she care whether Chen Li showed up to school.

Her schedule was packed.

During class breaks in the daytime, she tended to crops in the greenhouse spiritual fields; at night, she refined pills in the dormitory. Aside from these two daily routines, she ignored all trivial matters.

She even had Zhang Tianyu return the extra spirit stones credited to her campus card.

Zhang Tianyu grinned, tossing his professional ethics and client confidentiality completely out the window.

“How about this: you tell me what goods you sold when you went to Xuanyuan Street, and I’ll tell you who topped up your spirit stones. Aren’t you curious?”

“Not interested.”

Zhang Tianyu had no choice but to return the money he made from Ye Yibai. “Sister Ling refused it. There’s nothing I can do.”

Ye Yibai had assumed Ding Ling accepted it, never expecting her to send it back.

Then again, she hadn’t even taken the compensation offered by his family.

Why wouldn’t she take it? She was clearly so poor, and clearly in dire need of money.

Ding Ling, supposedly so poor and in dire need of money, packed up all her gear. It was still that same black tracksuit, that same black backpack, and that same black baseball cap.

Early Saturday morning, she left school and boarded a cross-river bus heading to Nancheng.

Once on the bus, Ding Ling opened Mission Group One again.

“That newcomer who joined last week hasn’t finished a single mission yet.”

“Who was the guarantor?”

“Call me big brother, girl, and I’ll do it for you.”

“It’s been a whole week, and not even one mission?”

“Then why take on so many? What a waste of missions.”

Ding Ling closed the group chat. Getting off at her stop, she packaged and mailed the spiritual plants and medicinal pills from a post office in Nancheng. After taking photos and tapping to submit the missions, the points for both orders were immediately credited to Ding Ling’s account.

The group mission leaderboard updated, her ranking unchanged.

F’s points changed from 0 to 5.

“The newcomer finished a mission?”

“Finally started doing missions?”

“Work one day, take six days off?”

【Tell me the address for the cat-finding mission!!!】

If that person hadn’t sent another friend request, Ding Ling wouldn’t have opened the group chat messages at all. She boarded that rickety bus once more, heading toward the location of the cat-finding mission.

This person kept pestering her, yet never said what they actually wanted.

Ding Ling muted the notifications and ignored them completely.

The old bus wound through the cramped, narrow streets of Nancheng. “Arriving at Daliao Street.”

The bus stop sign stood at the foot of a long flight of stairs. Flanking the stairs on both sides, residential houses rose tier upon tier, making it seem as though the people here lived in terraced fields.

Holding the address in hand, Ding Ling still had to exert some effort to find the house; the roads here coiled like a serpent’s belly.

Upon reaching the place, she knocked on the door.

It took a long time before someone came to answer. The door opened a crack. The person stood in the shadows, their face obscured; only the stench of raw fish wafting from inside could be detected.

Daliao Street was close to the fishing harbor. Turning around, one could see the coastline of the bay, where numerous fishing boats of various shapes and sizes were moored along the shore.

“I accepted the mission you posted.”

Only after Ding Ling spoke did the door open.

The backpack against her chest vibrated nonstop; the phone screen lit up, dimmed, and lit up again.

【I’m not lying to you, there’s real danger】

【Several newcomers in other groups who took pet-finding missions have already disappeared】

【Get out of there immediately!!!】

Ding Ling simply held down her backpack and stepped inside.

Inside was an elderly person so old their gender was impossible to tell, their back hunched and their eyes yellowed and clouded with age.

Though their appearance was decrepit, their voice was surprisingly youthful, sounding almost tender as they asked in a coquettish tone, “Are you a boy or a girl?”

Ding Ling remained silent.

After a moment, she let out a somewhat helpless sigh. “And you? Are you human, or a beast?”

The other party couldn’t help letting out a “Meow.”