What's So Bad About That?

"Do you want to wear a mask while livestreaming?"

After hearing Zhao Xing'er's idea, Yue Wen's first reaction was a little disappointment. After all, her looks were probably a big draw.

But since she'd said she'd run away from home and was worried her family might find her, Yue Wen couldn't really say anything more. He only said, "Then talk it over with the people at the media company. If there's no problem with signing you under those conditions, then you can keep participating in the project."

"Mm." Zhao Xing'er nodded. "I guess that's the only way."

Yue Wen ventured, "Sorry to ask, but what exactly happened between you and your family? Things are that bad? If it wasn't anything serious, wouldn't it be better to sit down and talk it out? They're still your family, after all."

"Boss, you don't have a family. You wouldn't understand." Zhao Xing'er shook her head solemnly.

"I shouldn't have bothered caring." Yue Wen rolled his eyes, thinking, Why is she still coming after me?

"I can't make things right with my father anymore," Zhao Xing'er said. "How should I put it? It's practically a blood feud."

"What happened?" Yue Wen asked. "Did your dad make you so mad you wanted to kill yourself?"

"Huh?" Zhao Xing'er blinked. "How did you know?"

Yue Wen shook his head. "If I were your dad, I'd probably have that thought several times a day."

"You don't know how awful he is." Zhao Xing'er looked indignant again as she brought it up.

"Back then, I was on a graduation trip with a few of my best friends. We were having a great time boating on the lake when a snake demon suddenly burst out of the water and scared them half to death. I caught it with my bare hands and tore out its tendons. That wasn't unreasonable, was it?"

"Hmm..." Yue Wen considered it cautiously. "It sounds a little gruesome, but killing an evil spirit doesn't seem wrong..."

"Later, we found out the snake demon had been released by a few cultivators on the boat next to us. They were from some small local clans, and they deliberately let the beast loose so they could scare us and come over to hit on us. After I killed the snake demon, they actually came over and demanded compensation, refusing to let us leave otherwise." Zhao Xing'er continued, "I broke all eight legs between the three of them. That wasn't unreasonable, was it?"

Yue Wen counted on his fingers, then looked a little frightened. "It was a bit brutal, but you were punishing the wicked."

"Their families went to mine, and my father actually told me to apologize. I refused, and he even scolded me!" Zhao Xing'er's brows drew together. "I got so angry that I smashed a bed. That wasn't unreasonable, was it?"

"Haha." Yue Wen laughed. "Considering what you did before, smashing a bed was nothing. Even trashing the whole bedroom wouldn't have been unreasonable."

"Well, it wasn't a bed in my family's house," Zhao Xing'er said. "It was a bed in the hospital room where those people were staying."

"?" Yue Wen fell silent for a moment, then asked slowly, "You didn't smash them along with the bed, did you?"

"Just bad luck, I guess." Zhao Xing'er shrugged.

"Would you look at that. People with both legs broken were lying in hospital beds. What a coincidence." Yue Wen covered his forehead. "Even gangsters in a shootout don't usually chase people to the hospital to hack them up, do they?"

"My father actually wanted to put me under house arrest over something so minor!" Zhao Xing'er said angrily.

"That really was too much," Yue Wen said. "It's not like the Supervision Bureau doesn't have a prison."

Zhao Xing'er said, "I had no choice. I had to cause a little chaos to escape."

"Basically, I detonated one of the demon-slaying talisman bombs from my family's weapons stockpile. It only brought down half a mountain... Then, while everyone was distracted, I quietly took a few weapons; I also blew up the barrier around the beast enclosure so they'd focus on catching the beasts; then I set fires around the residential area, hid a few of the younger kids in a cellar and told them to come out at night, and left a ransom note to throw everyone off... I got my third uncle drunk with spirit wine, then used his phone to call all the people he was cheating with and my third aunt over for a meeting... I switched the boy's urine my uncle used for alchemy with my fourth granduncle's ginseng liquor... I went back and kicked my third uncle right in the face... I chewed up and ate a few of the Spiritual Plants and flowers my second aunt was growing... Then I went back and slapped my third uncle a few times..."

"Hold on." Yue Wen raised a hand. "You did all that to cause chaos, but with your third uncle, it was pure hatred?"

Zhao Xing'er thought back over everything she'd done before leaving. She took a good half hour to finish listing it all. "That's probably everything. By the time I was done, the whole family was in chaos. They probably didn't even realize I'd run away for several days."

At last, she looked up at Yue Wen. "That wasn't unreasonable, was it?"

"Not unreasonable at all," Yue Wen replied with a nod. "You're right. We can never go home again. Even if your family goes on TV crying and looking for you, they're definitely just trying to trick you into coming back so they can torture you to death."

Good grief.

Just a couple days ago, Yue Wen had been wondering what the Demon Race was like. Now he could picture it pretty clearly. Even if the Demon King himself descended, he probably wouldn't be much worse.

Still, while Zhao Xing'er was telling him all that, something had occurred to him. He'd previously seen the Zhao Family Patriarch apologize to his runaway daughter on the Cultivation Chat forum, hoping she'd come home soon.

Now that he thought about it, Zhao Xing'er was a pretty likely candidate.

So he asked, "You wouldn't happen to be the Eldest Young Lady who ran away from the Tianfu Zhao Family, would you?"

"Oh, no!" Zhao Xing'er suddenly covered her face, stepping backward and stamping her foot. "How could you say that? What nonsense! I'm not some Zhao Family young lady!"

You silly girl!

Your accent changed and everything!

Zhao Xing'er fled downstairs as fast as she could.

So she really was that young lady from a major clan. That surprised Yue Wen a little.

His tiny, run-down office had somehow attracted someone famous enough to trend on Cultivation Chat. It felt pretty surreal. The Zhao Family was only a second-tier power in the cultivation world as a whole, but compared with the Immortal Gate clans in Jiang City, it was an absolute behemoth.

But after hearing her story, Yue Wen figured that her relationship with the Zhao Family might not be any closer than his was. He was a nobody to them, a complete stranger, but she was their sworn enemy.

From that perspective, it was a good thing she was keeping her face hidden.

After smiling, Yue Wen turned back, closed the door, and resumed comprehending the Visualization Diagram he'd just obtained.

Shadow Movement Talisman Art.

Once he sat cross-legged, he turned his hand over and summoned three palm-length shadow talismans. They felt heavy, their edges were cold and sharp, and a dangerous gleam flowed across their surfaces.

Compared with the images in the demonstration, holding them in real life made their keen edge all the more apparent. The talismans might be even more lethal than he'd imagined.

Yue Wen held a shadow talisman in his hand and summoned the Visualization Diagram in his mind, immersing himself in it at once.

Boom—

It was a grand hall formed from black and purple talismanic script, suspended high in the sky. Yue Wen was inside the hall, holding the three shadow talismans.

Beyond the hall, high in the sky, countless black-armored monsters charged toward him. They wore linked armor like ancient soldiers, had wings growing from their backs, and wielded spears and halberds!

He'd comprehended several Visualization Diagrams before, but this was the first time he'd encountered a scene like this. Everything seemed incredibly real. For one brief moment, he felt that if one of those black-armored monsters pierced him with a spear, his soul would truly be extinguished here!

He tried to summon the Sword Control Art to fight back, only to find there was no Flying Sword to call forth. It was as though the connection to it had vanished from this world.

In desperation, Yue Wen flipped his hand and hurled a shadow talisman spinning through the air. Whsh—

The talisman's sharp edge instantly cleaved through the black-armored monster flying straight at him. A moment later, it burst apart with a bang, and its armor scattered into black sand that fell through the air.

But that was only one of them. More than a dozen black-armored monsters attacked from every direction. Yue Wen could only throw the other two talismans, killing the first two to reach him. The rest swarmed closer. At the brink of life and death, Yue Wen sensed three strands of spiritual energy calling out to him from afar.

It was the three shadow talismans!

He instantly activated one of them. His figure flickered, and in the blink of an eye, he appeared in midair where the talisman was.

So that was how he switched places with the talisman.

But after he'd thrown it, the talisman was falling from high above and hadn't hit the ground yet. Yue Wen tried to rise into the air on a gust of wind, only to find that he couldn't even do something as simple as using his true energy to hover.

It seemed that the only thing he could use in this world was the shadow talisman technique.

Wait...

He flailed around, trying to grab hold of something, but all three talismans were falling from the sky. There was nothing he could do to save himself.

Bang!

The last thing he was aware of in that world was a muffled explosion beside his ear. It sounded suspiciously like his own body bursting apart.

"Ah." Yue Wen opened his eyes in the room and looked around, still shaken.

That feeling of falling from ten thousand meters up and dying on impact had been too real. He'd almost thought he was actually going to die there.

The Visualization Diagram for the Shadow Movement Talisman Art seemed a little different. It didn't have as many complicated principles of the Dao. Instead, it seemed to let him master how to use the shadow talismans through trial after trial.

Or perhaps...

The divine ability was built on the shadow talismans' mysteries, and wasn't particularly profound in itself.

Yue Wen stroked the heavy shadow talisman, sensing a profound essence within it, like the deep and weighty ice of the North Sea. The technique used to draw it was entirely different from that of talismans sold on the market.

The pills and talismans he could buy from Big Dragon were all like that. Their methods of refinement and effects were worlds apart from those of the present day, and they often had unexpected properties. If he wanted ordinary pills or talismans, on the other hand, Big Dragon didn't have any. Otherwise, Yue Wen wouldn't have had to go online to look for Blazing Flame Powder.

Sometimes Yue Wen even wondered if that dragon's true form was some kind of mysterious shop connected to another world, or perhaps an evil-spirit-slaying exchange system from some kind of... Well, it had just taken on that flashy appearance to meet him.

After all, history books said that only a handful of Dragon Blood People, descended from the union of the two races in ancient times, remained in the Four Seas Dragon Palace. They were the purest True Dragon bloodline still alive today.

There were no True Dragons living in the human world.

If it really was disguising itself, maybe next time he could ask it to change its appearance into a curvy, black-haired, black-stockinged woman in her thirties, wearing a tight skirt, about five foot seven.

What's so bad about that?