In the dead of night, Li Qiuchen suddenly opened his eyes and sat up.
Hearing the chaotic sound of footsteps in the distance, he felt his way to the temple entrance and looked outside, only to see a fire dragon winding through the mountains toward them. He quickly turned back and woke Hong Yang.
“The villagers are catching up!”
“Don’t they ever sleep?”
Hong Yang’s face was full of disbelief.
Traveling in the dark was already a major taboo; walking mountain roads in the dark was practically suicide.
Even if you carried torches, it wouldn’t help. The mountain road was full of twists and turns; one slip of the foot, and you wouldn’t even know where you’d tumble to.
Were they truly not afraid of death? Or could it be…
Only at this moment did Hong Yang truly believe Li Qiuchen’s words.
The Great Uncle had already turned the villagers into puppets. Otherwise, who would obediently come out chasing people in the middle of the night?
He and Li Qiuchen together couldn’t even scrape together half a set of parents. They had loafed around the village since they were children—what deep familial affection could make the villagers value them so much?
Even if they were chasing someone, they were after Yingcao.
After all, she was the village’s only spiritual root, the sole hope for the whole village to live in comfort.
Realizing this, Hong Yang was immediately filled with regret.
If they hadn’t brought Yingcao along, the two of them might actually have managed to escape.
Children had simple minds; when things really happened, how could they think so thoroughly?
It was too late for regret now.
“Let’s split up and run!”
At this critical moment, Hong Yang hesitated no longer. He whispered to Li Qiuchen, “I’ll lead them away. You run out the back.”
“Okay!”
Li Qiuchen nodded forcefully.
However, the two had just stood up and hadn’t yet reached the temple gate when they felt the ground tremble. Four or five tree roots suddenly sprouted from the earth, sealing the gate tightly shut.
Although the gate was sealed tight, the temple itself was not—it could be said to be drafty from all sides.
Li Qiuchen leaped out through a broken window. Relying on his memory from daytime, he tumbled and crawled until he reached the road.
The rustling sounds behind him were unceasing.
“You two little brats, where do you think you’re running?”
The Great Uncle’s sinister voice came from beside his ear.
Li Qiuchen ignored it. Using the strength he had recovered from his nap, he charged madly along the mountain road.
He hadn’t run a few steps when his feet suddenly gave way. A tree root had somehow grown from among the gravel beside the path, silently blocking the way. Caught off guard, Li Qiuchen was tripped headlong.
His knee was scraped open, bleeding unstoppably.
This utterly planless escape attempt met its failure that very night.
Although Li Qiuchen had exhausted all his strength, in the end he failed to escape the twenty-li radius of Songlin Village.
The next morning, Li Qiuchen and Hong Yang—tied up as tight as zongzi—were brought back to the village.
The Great Uncle’s expression was frighteningly gloomy.
To bring these two brats and the spiritual root back, the village had lost several more people.
Six legs were broken in one night, and one even more unlucky fellow had rolled off a cliff, bleeding from his head and left unconscious.
But none of those were problems.
Brats who ran could be caught again; injured people could be healed.
The problem was that the commotion in the village these past two days had drawn outsiders.
He had just returned to the ancestral hall, settled Hong Yang and Li Qiuchen, and hadn’t even sat down when a villager rushed to report that an immortal had fallen from the sky, frightening the Great Uncle until his hands and feet were cold and his scalp tingled.
The heavens didn’t drop pies for no reason, nor did they drop immortals for no reason.
The villagers were unworldly and their description was not very accurate.
It was a cultivator riding a flying sword.
Bai Yuheng steadied himself, reined in the sword qi behind him, and carefully sized up the village before him, his brows involuntarily furrowing slightly.
There were far too many trees in this village.
What proper village would have so many trees? They would have been chopped for firewood or cut to build houses.
This reminded him of some rather unpleasant things.
But he had no heart to pursue that now, because there were more pressing matters.
Glancing at the inn with its door open, he walked in.
The moment he entered, the innkeeper came forward to greet him warmly. “I did not know an immortal elder would grace us with his presence. Forgive me, forgive me.”
Bai Yuheng cupped his fists and saluted, smiling gently. “Forgive my abrupt visit and the disturbance. I wish to ask the innkeeper: have you recently seen any trace of my Bai family juniors in the vicinity?”
“The Bai family?”
The innkeeper froze, suddenly remembering something, his face drastically changing. “Could it be that…”
“Precisely.”
“Ah, so it was an immortal elder of the Bai family! This humble one failed to recognize Mount Tai. I deserve ten thousand deaths!”
“It’s not that serious. I’m just passing through and inquiring for news.”
“Ah, this…”
The innkeeper’s forehead broke out in a slight sweat; for a moment he didn’t know how to answer.
“You haven’t?”
Seeing his appearance, Bai Yuheng’s brows furrowed slightly.
“Immortal elder, please don’t worry. This humble shop truly has not heard any news of Bai family juniors. Please calm your impatience. I will go ask the clan elder to come and have him gather the villagers to inquire. Perhaps there will be some results.”
“Very well, then I will wait here.”
Watching the innkeeper leave in a hurry, Bai Yuheng frowned and examined the inn.
It looked like no one was staying here. Could it actually make money like this?
He instinctively felt something was off, yet couldn’t say exactly what.
After waiting for quite a while, he saw a crowd of villagers escorting a white-haired old man walking over. He had no choice but to temporarily set aside his doubts.
“Does the immortal elder mean to say that a minor junior of the Bai family has gone missing in the mountains nearby?”
“Precisely. I ask the elder to help me inquire among the village hunters. If there is definite news, I am willing to offer one hundred taels of silver or spirit stones as thanks.”
“Immortal elder, you are too polite. The Bai family has protected the northern border for generations, subduing demons and monsters. We common folk are deeply grateful. How could we be so presumptuous as to ask for reward from the immortal elder for such a trivial matter?”
After a round of pleasantries, the Great Uncle finally figured out this cultivator’s origins, and his heart relaxed at once.
So he was just passing through.
Then… that was simply wonderful!
“That old bastard has probably gone mad.”
Inside the ancestral hall, the Crayfish Spirit hanging from the roof beam suddenly spoke.
“Eating boys and girls isn’t enough for him; he actually dares set his sights on a Bai family cultivator, huh…”
Hong Yang grew excited upon hearing this. He pressed his face against the wall and wriggled, rubbing off the rag in his mouth, and whispered, “General Crayfish, is a Bai family cultivator an immortal?”
The Crayfish Spirit hesitated, not quite knowing how to explain.
“If we shout for help now, will the immortal come save us?”
“If you dare shout, I’ll kill you!”
“Why?”
“I have a grudge against the Bai family.”
“Grudge or not, look at how we are now. Could it get any worse?”
“It could.”
General Crayfish answered without hesitation. “The one who came is a junior of the Bai family. They might not be able to beat that old bastard.”
“‘Might not’ means there’s still a chance they could, right?”
“You brat don’t understand anything…”
General Crayfish swayed his body and nodded toward Li Qiuchen. “Let him speak.”
Hong Yang abruptly turned his head to look at Li Qiuchen sitting silently nearby.
“Little Chen… when did you two hook up?”
“Pah!”
Li Qiuchen spat out the rag in his mouth, along with the sour, stinking saliva.
“Last year. And it wasn’t hooking up.”
“How come I didn’t know?”
“You never asked.”
“So if I don’t ask, you won’t tell?”
Hong Yang’s eyes widened. “You knew early on that Yingcao would end up like that?”
“I didn’t know.”
Li Qiuchen said helplessly, “I told you yesterday. My eldest cousin’s spiritual root wouldn’t grow out of her mouth.”
Hong Yang was stunned for a moment.
These past few days, his worldview had been turned upside down.
The girl he was supposed to marry had sprouted grass, the Great Uncle had suddenly turned into a villain, and even the brother he had played with since childhood had become so unfamiliar.
So I was the only one who didn’t know anything?
“Your brain didn’t work well before,” Li Qiuchen comforted him good-heartedly. “You only recently came to your senses. The more you know, the more troubles you have. That’s how adults are.”
You call this comforting?
Hong Yang was on the verge of tears, feeling as though his little heart had suffered a ten-thousand-point critical blow.
“So, what do we do now?”
The Crayfish Spirit asked Li Qiuchen in a low voice. “This isn’t what we agreed on. With the Bai family entering to stir things up, once they discover the fishy business in this village, none of us will survive.”
“What other fishy business is there in the village?”
Hong Yang wanted to cry but couldn’t suppress his curiosity.
“Shout for help.”
Li Qiuchen thought for a moment and gave an objective, rational, and pertinent suggestion.
“Although he wasn’t in the plan, it’s not a bad thing for us. We can use him to test the Great Uncle’s true colors.”
“Just… shout for help directly?”
Hong Yang was made rather unconfident by him.
“Yes, shout loudly.”
Hong Yang nodded, climbed up and hopped to the window, taking a deep breath.
“Help! Help!”
His voice carried out of the ancestral hall and merged into the noisy clamor of chickens, ducks, geese, and dogs in the village, seeming insignificant. But even the tiniest bit of sound was enough for a cultivator with keen hearing.
Bai Yuheng, who had been sitting quietly in the inn waiting for news, his eyes slightly shifting, stood up and walked out.
He had just reached the door when tree roots burst from the ground one after another, winding toward him with extreme speed and agility.
“As expected, Apothecary remnants!”
Bai Yuheng let out a cold laugh. When he had ridden his sword here, he had realized there was something wrong with this village. It was just that he was anxious to find the whereabouts of his family’s juniors and didn’t want to entangle with them too much, so he had pretended nothing was wrong and dealt with them insincerely.
He hadn’t expected that seeing him alone, they would actually harbor evil intentions.
These Apothecary remnants truly had no brains.
“Break!”
Seeing the surrounding roots gather, he formed a sword seal with his hand and pointed forward. A sword shadow flew out from behind him. Wherever the sword light reached, all the roots snapped inch by inch, and in the blink of an eye they were cut into fragments.
“Die, monsters!”
Bai Yuheng walked out of the inn with his hands clasped behind his back. Just as he was about to swing his sword to exterminate the demons, he looked up and saw the large willow tree beside him uproot itself, its thick branches—each as thick as an adult’s arm—slapping savagely down toward him.