Chapter 31
Chapter 31: Delivering a Fortune
Hu Qing left fast.
She didn’t even wait to see if anyone watched her go. She shot out of the city and fled into the wild like the wind, half-expecting someone to try to rob her the moment she slowed down.
Juan Bu sounded pleased. “Three thousand spirit crystals. Not bad.”
“Where are you getting three thousand?” Hu Qing snapped. “It’s two thousand nine hundred seventy. And just the fare from Qing Ting to A Nan Shang Realm is twenty thousand.”
Her face was grim.
“That’s still better than you pounding beef and fixing broken pots all day,” Juan Bu said.
Hu Qing spat the words back like they tasted bitter. “Back then I’d barely escaped alive, and I didn’t know the Immortal Realm at all. You think I dared ‘act wild’ up there?
“I was blind. If I’d exposed my trump cards in a place like that, it would’ve been suicide. Even now, what am I doing? Selling a little, then running. I’m a tiny Nascent Soul Stage cultivator—who exactly am I supposed to beat?”
If she was being shamelessly honest, joining the Gourmet Hall had been her way of finding protection.
Thank the heavens the Gourmet Hall had status in Deng Yun Realm. Thank the heavens she’d met decent people. Thank the heavens she’d been cautious and kept her secrets buried, because the Immortal Realm wasn’t some shining paradise where killing came with consequences. Up there, people died all the time—and no one paid for it.
“You’d be happy if I got myself killed,” she said flatly.
Juan Bu coughed. “You just make money too slowly.”
“And you don’t know how to save it,” Hu Qing shot back.
“I’m not a space,” Juan Bu said, sounding offended. “I can’t store physical things.”
“Then stop complaining,” Hu Qing said. “We’re even.”
She didn’t waste time after that.
She ran two more major cities back-to-back, dumping over four hundred blades in bulk. By the time she finished, she had more than ten thousand low-grade spirit crystals.
It was finally enough.
She headed for the teleportation formation—and the moment she did, her skin prickled.
Within her spiritual sense and within her sight, there was no one. No footprints, no aura, no shadow.
And yet she felt it constantly, like an unseen gaze pinned between her shoulder blades.
Not a feeling. Not imagination.
She was being tracked.
“You’ve been marked,” Juan Bu said. “There are a lot of ways to lock onto someone in the Immortal Realm without making a sound.”
Hu Qing checked herself for what felt like the hundredth time. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Maybe it isn’t on your body,” Juan Bu said. “Some people can follow you off a single thread of aura.”
Hu Qing’s face darkened. “So how do I defend against that?”
“By getting stronger,” Juan Bu said. “Deal with the problem first. Perfect timing, too—I can open the Immortal Realm sections of your techniques. And if we find an ascension pool on the way back, even better.”
Hu Qing thought quickly, then made her plan.
She kept flying for another full day, then dropped to the ground and chose a spot that felt safe. She set up a barrier, drew in spiritual qi, and started cultivating. Even if her body could only absorb a little, a little was better than nothing.
She’d just finished running her three techniques through a full cycle when the world exploded.
Her barrier shattered as if it were paper.
A three-pronged thrusting sword flashed straight for her throat.
Professional. One strike to kill.
Hu Qing snapped backward.
In front of her, a half-transparent thread uncoiled in the air. It wrapped the blade and crawled up it like something alive.
The attacker didn’t waste words. When the stab failed, he abandoned the sword without hesitation and flicked a talisman crackling with lightning.
It burst toward her in a blinding arc.
Hu Qing’s right hand shifted—scales, claws, the grip of a thunder dragon. She caught the talisman barehanded and let it explode in her palm.
The impact punched through the air. Heat and light tore outward.
But the talisman wasn’t an immortal talisman. It was only a high-grade spirit talisman—strong enough to kill a Nascent Soul Stage cultivator.
Not strong enough to break a thunder dragon arm.
The attacker’s eyes widened.
He didn’t even get the chance to form a third move before a chill swept through him. His face went gray, as if something inside him had suddenly been torn open.
Ruin his dantian first, Hu Qing thought viciously. If he self-destructs, what am I supposed to pick up?
The Xue Sha pearl dove in like a starving beast.
It slammed into the man’s dantian, spun, and in an instant it sucked him dry. Spiritual power drained away in a rush, leaving nothing but emptiness.
The masked man made a small, strangled sound. Then his body hit the ground with a dull thud—and went still.
Ambush, indeed.
Hu Qing was the bait. Emotionless Thread was the support.
The Xue Sha pearl was the real assassin.
If it wanted to eat that badly, then it could work for its meals.
Hu Qing retracted the thunder dragon arm and pulled Emotionless Thread back, then produced a basin of water and dripped in three drops of floral dew.
“Wash,” she ordered. “Clean yourself before you come back.”
The Xue Sha pearl hovered over the basin, defiant and unmoving.
Hu Qing bared her teeth.
The pearl plopped in with a sulky splash.
Hu Qing rolled her eyes. As if she couldn’t live without it.
Then her expression lit up.
She grabbed the corpse’s hand with both of hers. “Come on, come on, come on—”
“His outfit,” Juan Bu said. “Doesn’t it remind you of anything?”
Hu Qing let out a short laugh. “Black cloth, covered face. A masked serial-killer bandit.”
Her eyes gleamed. “If it’s really him, I’ve struck gold.”
The man’s hands were rough, but not neglected. Carefully maintained roughness. His fingers were stacked with rings—ten in total. The one on his thumb was especially thick.
Tch. Didn’t that dig into his skin?
Hu Qing started stripping rings, then froze.
Dead. He’s dead…
But in the Immortal Realm, death didn’t always mean the end.
Her spiritual sense surged into his mind palace.
Sure enough, inside the crumbling ruin of it, a soul had been hiding—already shaped into a faint human form.
The moment it realized it was exposed, it shouted, “Don’t push me too far! I’ll give you—”
Hu Qing crushed it.
No bargaining. No mercy. The soul shattered under the pressure.
Only after she combed through the remains to make sure nothing lingered did she pull her spiritual sense back. She patted her chest, shaken. “That was close. I forgot—an immortal’s body can die and the soul can still survive.”
Then she clicked her tongue. “His bound life artifact in his sea of consciousness got destroyed too.”
“At least it didn’t try to possess you,” Juan Bu said.
Hu Qing shot him a glare. “Why didn’t you remind me?”
“I did,” Juan Bu snapped. “Long ago.”
Hu Qing returned to her true calling and kept stripping rings, scanning each one with her spiritual sense. “Not much inside. These aren’t where he keeps the real stash.”
She checked his clothes next, one layer at a time. Over ten storage pouches were tucked into seams and hidden folds.
And that still wasn’t all.
Hu Qing turned her attention to his head. She pulled off the black cloth and found a half-mask beneath. When she lifted it, she froze.
The man’s face was ruined—scarred, warped, discolored.
“Even immortals can be disfigured?” she murmured.
“Of course,” Juan Bu said. “Heavy injuries. Poison. Devil qi. Or something wicked enough to cling to you. All of it can ruin a face.”
He paused, then added with a bitterness that sounded personal, “That’s why immortal alchemists make so much money. More than immortal artifact smiths.”
Hu Qing’s mouth twisted. “So he was killing people to buy pills to restore his face?”
Juan Bu sounded amused. “Are you sympathizing?”
“No,” Hu Qing said, flat. “I just hate that I can’t refine pills.”
The man’s hair was tied with a thin cord. Hu Qing drew a dagger and shaved it off close to the scalp, then shook the severed bundle.
Something dropped out with a dull plop.
A beetle—dead. It looked like a firefly, but uglier.
“That’s an unforgetting bug,” Juan Bu said. “It tracks people by aura. So that’s how he followed you.”
Hu Qing pinched it between her fingers, studied it, then crushed it into dust. “When did he get close enough to plant it? I didn’t notice anything.”
She shook the hair again. Nothing else fell out.
Hu Qing looked at the corpse—now stripped bare—and smiled a little too sweetly. She set her hand on his scalp and started feeling inch by inch.
If she couldn’t find his hiding spot outside, she’d find it inside.
If she had to cut him open to squeeze out the last drop of oil, she would.
Nearby, the Xue Sha pearl floated in the floral-scented basin like a sulking child: Save my bathwater for yourself.