At a quarter past three in the morning, Lu Zheng was holding Si Lingxi as they slept when he suddenly opened his eyes.
"There's a ghost!"
Si Lingxi did not even open her eyes in his arms. She merely nestled deeper against him and said casually, "A mere little ghost with a thousand years of cultivation. Sister Ying can send it packing."
Lu Zheng nodded, though he was curious. "No ghost has dared covet the Peach Blossom Shrine in a long time. Where did this one come from?"
The corner of Si Lingxi's lips curled up. "The odds of it being a coincidence are low. It most likely came for Sister Ying. The Peach Blossom Shrine is out in the rural wilderness, yet it has gathered quite a bit of incense luck."
Where there was gain, there had to be loss.
Shen Ying had once been merely a Land God invested by the Yizhou authorities. Aside from someone like the Peach Mother of the Southern Frontier, whose identical true form gave her keen senses, no ordinary outsider knew that Shen Ying could gather so much incense luck.
Even if someone with ill intentions suspected something, the incense luck harmonized with "Peach Blossoms" crossed through the void. Unless one was a great power, it was difficult to sense it. Even if they coveted it, they could not find the true body of the Peach Blossom Fairy.
Even when the Peach Mother had dispatched experts under her command back then, and they had guidance to follow, they had still searched for a long time before finding Shen Ying.
But now that Shen Ying had received an imperial investiture and formally commanded Peach Blossom shrines across the realm, her whereabouts could no longer be concealed from those who truly cared to seek them.