You Poisoned Me

After checking the System Store, Jiang Yiming took out the runestone he had just obtained.

After he poured Gu Essence into it, the stone quickly burst apart. A yellow talisman floated out, rather like the kind Taoist priests often used.

He reached out and grabbed it, and the talisman instantly merged into his palm.

"It doesn't seem to have done anything..."

Jiang Yiming didn't feel any different, but when he looked in the mirror, he was suddenly dumbfounded!

His reflection had vanished!

He quickly confirmed that he had turned invisible!

"Is this an invisibility talisman?"

Even stranger, after he successfully used the invisibility talisman, some talismans appeared in the System Store as well.

Red, yellow, black, purple—all kinds of strange talismans appeared on the fourth level of the System Store, alongside the manuals. They were cheaper than the manuals, though, costing between 500 and 2,000 Gu Refining Points.

As his strength increased, more and more things would appear in the System Store.

Jiang Yiming already knew this, so he wasn't too surprised to see talismans appear in the store.

It was their prices that caught him off guard.

"Talismans can only be used once. Why are they so expensive?! Are there talisman manuals? If I'm going to buy anything, I'll buy a talisman manual, learn how to make them, and make them myself."

[The talisman manuals are not on these levels. The host has not yet met the conditions to unlock them.]

"There really are talisman manuals! What conditions do I need to meet to unlock them?" Jiang Yiming asked hurriedly.

[When the conditions are met, the host will naturally find out.]

The system actually refused to tell him!

After leaving the System Store, Jiang Yiming glanced at the mirror again and discovered that he had become visible once more.

He looked at his palm. The talisman had already disappeared.

"Damn! The talisman lasted such a short time? By my count, it wasn't even five minutes!"

The talisman that had sold at auction for over two million was already gone.

Luckily, Jiang Yiming hadn't paid for it himself. Otherwise, he reckoned he would have slapped his thigh hard enough to break it.

"Looks like Yulan was right after all. Buying runestones is a bit of a gamble. It's easy to get a low-level talisman and lose every last cent."

He had just mentioned Yulan when a message arrived from her.

"Want to come out for a meal?"

Jiang Yiming looked out the window and saw that it was already lunchtime.

He was just about to go to Sunless Mountain to catch more Gu insects, so he typed out a refusal: "I've already eaten."

Before he could send it, another message came from her.

"I'll give you the money while we're at it."

As soon as Jiang Yiming saw the message, he deleted what he had just typed and wrote a new reply: "All right, where can I find you?"

Yulan replied, "I'll send you the location."

"All right."

With the location in hand, Jiang Yiming hurried out. It was over a million, after all. How could he not be eager?

Yulan had chosen a strange place: a pavilion beside the riverbank!

If he hadn't seen her sitting inside, Jiang Yiming would have wondered if he'd come to the wrong place.

After walking over, he smiled and said, "I thought you'd be waiting for me at a restaurant. I didn't expect it to be here."

"It's nice here. No one will bother us." Yulan leaned against the pavilion railing, watching the water flow below the riverbank.

Jiang Yiming sat down beside her and pointed at the bamboo lunch box on the stone bench. "The food's in here, right? You don't see lunch boxes woven from bamboo very often these days."

As he spoke, Jiang Yiming opened the bamboo box, only to find a single bowl of lotus seed soup and a spoon inside.

"This... there's no rice?" he said gloomily. "Just one bowl of soup isn't enough for two people."

"I've already eaten. The whole bowl is yours." Yulan turned around.

"Then I won't stand on ceremony." Jiang Yiming made no pretense of politeness and readily picked up the spoon.

Between eating and drinking, he quickly polished off the large bowl of lotus seed soup. Wiping his mouth, he smiled and said, "You didn't come all this way just to bring me money, did you?"

"Bringing you money is only one reason." As Yulan spoke, she took out a bankbook. "I just opened this account. There are two million in it. Part of it is your reward, and part is to make up for your losses. After all, you used up quite a few Gu insects dealing with Lu Yan yesterday."

Hearing this, Jiang Yiming felt she was being quite generous. He had indeed lost quite a few Gu insects, but they were all Primordial Gu and weren't worth that much. She had actually thought to compensate him.

He accepted the bankbook and smiled. "Thank you. You said bringing me money was only one reason. What's the other?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

No sooner had Yulan finished speaking than Jiang Yiming felt a sudden pain in his stomach.

"Ahh... sorry, my stomach's suddenly acting up. Excuse me." Thinking it was just an ordinary bout of diarrhea, he hurriedly cupped his hands and took his leave.

Before he could leave the pavilion, the scene before his eyes suddenly changed!

The entire pavilion vanished in an instant, and the riverbank abruptly became a desert!

Jiang Yiming turned around, only to find that Yulan and the river behind him had vanished too! It was as if he were in the middle of a desert; everywhere he looked, he saw nothing but sand.

His damned stomach started hurting again. This time it wasn't the kind of pain that sent him running to the toilet—it had become a wrenching pain.

He could only circulate his Gu Essence to ease it.

"This is an illusion technique! Could Yulan have used it on me?"

After crouching down, he understood his situation.

"No, this isn't an illusion! If someone trapped in an illusion knows they're trapped in one, the illusion around them will automatically disappear. Just like someone who knows they're dreaming will soon wake up!"

"Could I have been poisoned?"

Jiang Yiming had heard that some poisons could also cause powerful hallucinations.

The moment he thought of hallucinogenic poison, his stomach hurt even more, confirming his suspicion.

"The lotus seed soup was poisoned! So you asked me here to harm me!!"

Jiang Yiming roared the words aloud. He knew he was hallucinating and couldn't see Yulan, but she had to be right beside him.

"Why... why are you trying to harm me?!" He couldn't understand why.

Suddenly, the sand beneath him began to move. It all flowed toward the center like a funnel, threatening to suck him in!

Even though he knew it was a hallucination, he instinctively crawled outward. The more he crawled, the deeper he sank, and before long his entire body was buried in the sand.

Everything around him went pitch-black. The feeling of suffocation was so real that he even felt he was going to die.

As he lingered on the brink of death, he saw the System Store.

In the newly opened hidden section, talismans floated up and down.

One purple talisman caught his attention: the poison-expelling talisman, which could cure a hundred poisons, priced at 500 Gu Refining Points.

"I wonder if this talisman can cure my poison!"

The suffocating feeling grew stronger and stronger. Jiang Yiming hesitated no longer. "I'll take the gamble!"

With that thought, he exchanged his last 300 grams of gold for 300 Gu Refining Points. Added to the 200-odd points he already had, it was just enough to buy a poison-expelling talisman.

With a thought, 500 of the Gu Refining Points he had just scraped together were deducted in an instant. The poison-expelling talisman vanished from the System Store into thin air and was used directly on him.

The talisman entered his body, and the poison inside him was instantly wiped out. His internal organs no longer ached with wrenching pain.

Immediately afterward, the scene before his eyes slowly shifted back to the way it had been.

The pavilion was still the same pavilion, and the riverbank was still the same riverbank.