Chapter 29

#Don’t Be a Soldier Anymore! Go Back and Farm While You Still Can!

In the end, I still abided by Kunlun’s and the cultivation world’s rules—I would not kill someone who slays evil spirits and monsters.

Xie Zhuo should be grateful I stripped his clothes and saw all his injuries. Otherwise, by this time next year, the grass on his grave would be taller than Mengmeng!

I rushed out of my immortal abode in a frenzy, heading straight for the garrison camp—I had to find Wu Cheng.

But I didn’t expect that as soon as I got near the camp, a few soldiers looked at me like they’d seen a ghost and immediately turned around and ran inside.

I was anxious to find Wu Cheng and didn’t think much of it. But the moment I stepped into the camp and got caught in a massive golden net woven from spellwork, I realized what was going on!

Yesterday, Wu Cheng received a secret report and mistakenly thought Xia Xia was practicing evil cultivation. Xia Xia had been in a rush, only had time to beat him up a bit, and then fled. That blockhead! He must really believe Xia Xia has gone down some demonic path!

He must’ve set up this formation today to catch Xia Xia! And I just happened to walk right into it!

“Let me out!” I yelled from inside the golden net. “Wu Cheng, you blockhead! You’ve been tricked! I haven’t been practicing any evil techniques! Let me out!”

“Boss!” Wu Cheng leapt out from the side. “Don’t struggle anymore. Just come clean!” He looked at me inside the net, his face full of pain and disappointment. “Why? Why would you walk this path? Tell us. We know the road of cultivation is long and hard. You must’ve had your reasons, something you couldn’t speak of, that made you fall for the temptation of evil!”

Behind him, all the soldiers looked at me with a mix of sympathy and wariness. Who knows how serious this fool made it sound to them.

I clenched my teeth, forcing down my frustration, trying to keep the veins on my forehead from bursting. I took two deep breaths to calm myself, then said as evenly as I could, “I’ll say this one last time—I. Did. Not. Practice. Any. Evil. Cultivation.”

“There isn’t a trace of evil qi on me. Can’t you see that?!”

Wu Cheng frowned and looked me over up and down. “That’s not enough. Some immortals who go down the demonic path can hide their evil qi. I can’t let you out.”

He turned around and said to the soldiers behind him, “Go report to the immortals. Have them send down a rotation-duty Immortal to take a look.”

Before I ascended, the garrison didn’t have any permanent Immortals. The commanders would take turns being on duty, and if something big came up, they’d call in one of the rotating Immortals. What Wu Cheng was doing was routine procedure.

But since I had been set up by Xie Zhuo, I couldn’t help feeling furious and resentful at this. Furious that Wu Cheng was wasting my time, resentful—well, obviously, that was all directed at Xie Zhuo!

Damn that Xie Zhuo, not even around, and still causing me trouble!

I bit back my temper, glared at Wu Cheng, and gritted out, “If I don’t have any evil qi on me, are you going to cut your stomach open and apologize?”

Wu Cheng tugged at the golden net and started dragging me along the ground. “If you really haven’t gone down the evil path, that’s great. But we can’t take this lightly, Boss. You have to understand.”

Understand your grandpa!

He dragged me into a tent and locked me up. To make sure I didn’t escape, he even dragged over a little stool, plopped down in front of me, arms crossed, and stared at me wide-eyed.

A burly two-hundred-pound man sitting on a tiny stool only made him look more like a big dumb oaf.

I rubbed my temples, trying to calm down. If I didn’t get an Immortal to check me out today, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to leave.

Well, since I’m stuck here…

“Let me ask you something,” I said. “Where exactly did you get the tip-off? Was the source trustworthy? You just believed it like that? What if I’m on a secret mission and someone’s trying to sabotage me, waste my time?”

Wu Cheng’s stern expression faltered, replaced by a bit of confusion.

He blinked his wide eyes a couple times. “Well…”

He scratched his head. “That’s not possible, right? When I got the letter, I didn’t believe it at first either. But it clearly said you’d be in the Snow Bamboo Grove the next morning, practicing demonic techniques. So I figured I’d go check it out. But then I saw you! You were standing there muttering weird stuff to yourself!”

I clenched my jaw.

The Snow Bamboo Grove is huge, but “Xia Xia” was scheduled to meet Xie Xuanqing there, so she would definitely be in the grove at that time. Wu Cheng had a waist token—he could sense where Xia Xia was. Combine that with his stubborn personality, even if he didn’t knock her out, he’d still pester her for ages and ruin her schedule.

Xie Zhuo had calculated it all perfectly.

“If you weren’t practicing demonic cultivation in the grove, what were you doing?”

“Digging bamboo shoots. Got a problem?”

“Your basket didn’t have any freshly dug shoots! I could tell you were faking it! They weren’t even fresh!”

Oh, now he chooses to be sharp!

I was furious but had nothing to refute him with, so I just shook my leg impatiently in the net and muttered, “Don’t be a soldier anymore. Go back and farm while you still can.”

I wasn’t saying it for nothing—I knew that three hundred years from now, Kunlun would be so peaceful it was boring, and Wu Cheng really would stop being a soldier. Not exactly retired, but he went back home, found himself a monster partner like I did.

They bought some land in northern Kunlun and became amazing farmers. His neighbor, an old tortoise spirit who’d farmed for eight hundred years, still wasn’t as good as him…

Being a soldier was a total waste of his talents.

I shook my leg for a while, then suddenly came up with a new lie!

“Listen, Wu Cheng. I’m on a secret mission. What you’re doing right now? You’re helping the enemy, got it?”

After five hundred years as an Immortal, when I turn on the authority, it’s way more intimidating than Xia Xia ever could be.

Wu Cheng actually looked a little shaken. He hesitated, then grit his teeth. “No. Even so, we still have to wait for the Immortal to arrive and check. I can’t let you go on my own! Boss, it’s just a little delay, it won’t kill you.”

“Fine.” I crossed my arms too. “I’ll wait. But you’ve got to answer a few questions.”

“Sure, that’s fine.” He nodded dumbly. “As long as you don’t run off, I’ll answer anything.”

“First—just now you said you got the tip-off the day before. Think carefully. Any details? Like what direction the letter came from, where the person might have been? What kind of paper was it written on?”

Wu Cheng frowned and thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No clue. The letter seemed to fall out of the sky. And after I read it, the paper just burned to ash on its own.”

Wow. Xie Zhuo. No wonder you were my fake husband. That was flawless execution!

“Second question—has there been any unusual fluctuation in spiritual power in Kunlun recently?”

“Oh, yeah!”

Wu Cheng’s quick reply made my eyes light up. “Where!?”

“Queen Mother of the West made a huge breakthrough in her cultivation! Just came out of seclusion two days ago! All of Kunlun’s spiritual energy surged—inside and out, everyone felt it! You forgot?”

I: “…”

Damn it. Been five hundred years—I did forget that…

“Also, the day before yesterday, the immortal in charge of Kunlun’s flowers and trees—Mengmeng’s superior—ascended. The tribulation lightning struck all night, and by sunrise the next day, that wood immortal Jing Nanshou had successfully ascended and become the Tengluo Immortal. Don’t you remember that either?”

No, I didn’t remember…

“And then there was yesterday,” Wu Cheng continued. “While we were in the Snow Bamboo Grove, outside the southern entrance of Kunlun, it was lively! Two great immortals from the Southern Wastes and Western Sea were traveling the world, and they just so happened to meet outside Kunlun. They ended up having a sparring match right at the gate! The spiritual energy waves from it were so strong, they made the barrier of our Pangu Axe tremble!”

Three days in a row… like some kind of grand festival—massive spiritual energy fluctuations every single day…

I held my forehead and sighed.

No wonder.

I lived through this five hundred years ago too, and I was stationed in the Defense Corps at the time. If there were such massive fluctuations in spiritual energy, how could I possibly not remember?

Turns out that during those three days, there were major events every day. Amidst such overwhelming spiritual activity, who could have noticed if something abnormal was mixed in?

“What about evil energy?” I clung to the last possibility and asked, “Has anyone detected any evil presence?”

Wu Cheng shook his head. “That I don’t know…”

“Evil energy?”

A low, slightly hoarse voice came from behind me. I turned my head and saw a thin figure lifting the tent flap and stepping in, backlit by sunlight. His complexion carried an unnatural grayish-blue hue. As I looked at him, my eyes widened slightly, and a chill shot up my spine.

It was him. That face—that Immortal—was the only one in Kunlun to have been executed by the Queen Mother of the West: the Flesh-Eating Immortal—

—Jing Nanshou!

He was the one who had just ascended two days ago, the immortal in charge of Kunlun’s flora, Mengmeng’s direct superior, and the one who, after my marriage to Xie Zhuo, falsely accused him.

He was also the Kunlun Immortal with the shortest tenure since the mountain’s founding.

In just over a year, the Queen Mother of the West discovered that he was consuming fellow immortals to absorb their spiritual energy. Just as he was about to fall into the path of demonic cultivation, she executed him.

“Tengluo Immortal,” Wu Cheng respectfully saluted Jing Nanshou. “We apologize for troubling you so soon after your ascension.” He pointed at me. “This is Commander Fu Jiuxia from our Defense Corps. We ask that you examine her for any signs of evil energy.”

Are you kidding me? You want him to check me for evil energy!? He’s probably the closest person to evil energy in all of Kunlun!

“No trouble at all,” Jing Nanshou replied politely. His voice was low and even a little weak.

But when he stood in front of me, silhouetted by light as he looked into the golden net, his eyes seemed utterly devoid of emotion—like he was staring at a corpse.

I hadn’t had much contact with him before, but I’d seen him once or twice. Back then, maybe because I didn’t know what he would become, I didn’t think much of him. I just thought he looked frail, and figured maybe his ascension had been a bit forced…

But now, looking at him, this condition—this damp, cold aura—was clearly a symptom of spiritual energy clashing with evil energy. And that symptom alone was enough to prove:

He had already consumed someone…

He ascended only two days ago, and he’s already eaten someone?!

As I was still processing this, Jing Nanshou bent down. His hair hung in front of my face, and a damp chill radiated from him. His pale, bony fingers slipped through the golden net and touched my wrist.

I shuddered and instinctively tried to pull my hand away.

But even with that brief touch, Jing Nanshou’s expression changed. His dull eyes seemed to light up with something—his lifeless gaze suddenly locked onto my face like a blade of cold light in the dark night.

He opened his mouth.

And I saw his ghost-white teeth…