Chapter 34
Chapter 34: Mobilize the Players
[Ding: The Sect Master has posted tasks. Please go to the spawn point to check immediately.]
[Ding: The Sect Master has issued material-selling tasks. Please go to the spawn point to check immediately.]
[Ding: The Sect Master has posted medicine-buying tasks. Please go to the spawn point to check immediately.]
[Ding: The Sect Master has posted…]
The rapid alerts startled the players mid-work.
Normally, tasks refreshed quietly. The System didn’t notify them. Players had to check the stone board at the spawn point themselves.
This sudden broadcast meant one thing: something was wrong.
“Why are there so many tasks all at once?”
“Since when does the System notify?”
Exactly because it didn’t, someone was always wandering by the spawn point to check. Free points were free points.
Now everyone sprinted.
They reached the stone board and stopped short.
A dense wall of tasks filled it—selling spirit herbs, selling spirit wood, selling demon beast materials, buying pills. So many that it made their eyes hurt.
“Holy crap, that’s a lot of demon beast materials.”
“How much can this sell for? Did the Sect Master go farming?”
“…No way.”
One player, too quick for their own good, grabbed a task to sell a demon beast corpse.
They instantly regretted it.
Song Jiu Lai didn’t have time to dissect. She sent whole corpses.
A full demon beast body appeared, heavy and dead and horrifyingly real.
The sect erupted into screams, gagging, and retching.
They’d been sheltered on the mountain, mostly seeing “safe” creatures. They might have read the demon beast encyclopedia, but words and images were nothing compared to this—smell, weight, texture, the obscene wrongness of a corpse in your hands.
Different demon beast were disgusting in different ways. Some players couldn’t take it and quit the task immediately, vomiting and swearing as they fled.
Others forced themselves to adapt. This was a cultivation game. Sooner or later, they’d have to face these things. With pale faces and clenched jaws, they tried carving materials out and hauling them down to sell.
Zhou Xiao, who worked with food, had slaughtered plenty of chickens, ducks, and geese before. Even she felt her stomach revolt.
She swallowed hard, then turned to Han Tian, who was online too. “The Sect Master pushed these tasks out fast. Does that mean she ran into something?”
Han Tian’s face looked tight. He stared at the corpses, fighting nausea. “I think so. I’ll record these demon beast details and put them on the website. With this many materials, I’ll have enough to write for a while.”
Zhou Xiao moved quickly. “These demon beast corpses are too big to carry down. I’ll pull out the materials and have other players sell them.”
Han Tian gave her a shaky thumbs-up. “Brave.”
He wasn’t being sarcastic. He genuinely couldn’t do it.
Then Mu Qiu stepped in to help.
She was the player with the second-best talent, and she looked almost disturbingly calm. “I’ll do it with you.”
Zhou Xiao stared. “What do you do in real life? How are you this hardcore?”
“Office worker,” Mu Qiu said. “I’m fine because I grew up watching zombie movies and horror as comfort food. And besides—this is a game.”
Zhou Xiao barked a laugh despite herself. “A woman among women.”
While the sect scrambled to fulfill tasks, Song Jiu Lai was still running for her life.
“Damn it!” she shouted, breath ragged. “This thing is so disgusting!”
The Devil Horn Snake was relentless. Even if she stalled, it closed the distance frighteningly fast.
Song Jiu Lai plunged deeper into the forest, using spirit qi to cut and shove at thick trees until they toppled across her path. She threw fireballs when she could, not to kill, but to slow.
Controlling objects with spirit qi drained her based on volume. The larger the object, the more it cost. And living things cost even more unless you had absolute level suppression.
That was why she couldn’t simply freeze the demon beast in place.
Even with everything she did, her spirit qi was burning down too fast.
The Devil Horn Snake spat pus that corroded the earth. The ground turned pitted and scarred. From the smoking green sludge, little snakes crawled into the underbrush, writhing and growing, spreading like a nightmare.
Song Jiu Lai’s only comfort was that she’d snatched the earth-bell ling zhi into her mustard seed pouch.
After all this, she refused to walk away empty-handed.
This was her first time fighting a second-rank demon beast—and it had to be a peak one.
It was nothing like first-rank demon beast. She hit it with multiple large fireballs and it still surged forward, hissing, even forcing out a sharp, terrible roar like something breaking through its own throat.
Trees crashed. Her spirit qi bled away with every breath.
The System tried again, almost mildly. “Why bother? You already got the earth-bell ling zhi.”
Song Jiu Lai snarled, “I’m not swallowing this!”
She was furious enough to shake. Furious enough to remember the man’s face, the toss of the spirit herb, the way he ran without looking back.
“If he were Foundation Establishment Stage, I’d swallow it for now,” she snapped. “But he’s just Qi Refining Stage and he still dared to set me up. Today your grandaunt is going to show you a cross-rank kill!”
The System sounded amused. “All right, brave words. So what do you plan to do about the Devil Horn Snake?”
Song Jiu Lai didn’t have time to answer.
The Devil Horn Snake suddenly sped up.
Its massive head surged into her vision, mouth gaping wide, fangs slick with filth. The stench swept over her scalp, thick enough to make her eyes water.
Song Jiu Lai’s scalp went numb.
She whipped around and flung two fireballs at point-blank range.
The blasts ripped a huge chunk of spirit qi out of her body in an instant. Her knees wobbled. Dizziness slammed into her like a wave.
Bad. Very bad.
The Devil Horn Snake recoiled, flesh finally charred and blistered.
She’d broken its defense.
And that only made it angrier.
“Hiss—hissssss—!”
It attacked with sound.
A piercing, violent noise ripped through Song Jiu Lai’s ears, vibrating in her skull until her vision wavered.
She grit her teeth, fished out the second-rank qi replenishing pill Lin Qian had given her, and swallowed it in one go.
Warmth spread through her, fast and fierce. Spirit qi rushed back like a tide, and she dragged in a deep breath.
Spirit qi reshaped a cultivator’s body over time. It made a mortal frame capable of carrying power, made it tougher, pushed it beyond normal limits. But that came with a cost: when you exhausted your spirit qi to the brink, your body reacted violently if it didn’t get replenished. Dizziness, pain, even unconsciousness.
In battle, that was a death sentence.
That was why qi replenishing pills mattered.