Want a Wife?

Shen Yue kept his guard up.

The old woman before him was so powerful that when he probed her with his divine sense, it vanished like a mud cow sinking into the sea. He couldn't see through her at all.

"Granny Withered Grass, this is a guest of my Black Soil Fortress." Long Ying bowed slightly, her tone respectful.

The old woman's murky eyes shifted. She seemed to recognize Long Ying, so she said nothing more and slowly walked away.

"It must be Fire Flowing Sand... A spirit treasure like this is rare in the Azure Ancient Forest." Granny Withered Grass murmured to herself. Her withered-branch fingers moved as she calculated inside her sleeve. "I wonder what this boy's background is..."

Suddenly, her expression changed drastically!

"Uncertain fate... A first-grade Dao foundation!" Granny Withered Grass shuddered. "Something major is happening in Fallen Leaf Valley. I can't stay here!"

She flashed away, wind rising beneath her feet as she raced toward the valley entrance.

"Granny Withered Grass, the entrance has been sealed. Wait a few days. You can't leave the valley right now."

A voice rang directly in the old woman's mind.

Granny Withered Grass abruptly stopped.

"A Dao Foundation expert!"

Whoever had spoken was at least a Dao Foundation expert. Otherwise, they couldn't have pierced the mental defenses of someone whose cultivation had reached the peak of the Qi Refining realm.

It seemed that something truly serious was happening in the valley.

If she didn't leave now, she'd have even less chance of escaping later!

Granny Withered Grass gritted her teeth. Her withered lips moved, and the robe woven from dried grass suddenly burst apart.

The grass fragments grew as they caught the wind, turning in the blink of an eye into countless thick, yellow withered vines that surged toward the valley entrance.

"Withered Vine Entwining Heaven! I'll borrow a path!" the old woman cried. Her figure merged with the vines as she attempted to force her way through.

But just as the vines were about to touch the restriction at the entrance, an intangible attack pierced through space and struck Granny Withered Grass's soul.

The old woman cried out in pain. The vines filling the sky shattered into powder with a clatter.

"Alas."

After the old woman's outburst, Shen Yue no longer felt like selling his spirit artifacts. He returned to the inn, planning to wait a couple of days and see how things went.

He had barely sat down in his room when Chehou Yan came looking for him with a grin.

"Brother Shen, want a wife?"

"...What?" Shen Yue stared at him, bewildered.

"Heh heh, don't play dumb, Brother Shen." Chehou Yan grinned mischievously. "Miss Long Ying is peerlessly beautiful, a beauty capable of toppling a kingdom. If I weren't already married, I'd never pass up the chance."

As he spoke, his smile was warm, but behind his back, he was secretly forming hand seals.

"Clear sky above, dark earth below, lend me a pair of Fate-Peering Eyes, so I may see this man's three lives, three worlds, and five-element fate..."

The fate-peering secret art of Wife-Swapping Life-Borrowing quietly began to turn.

This art required him to first peer into the target's outline of fate before he could transfer it.

But when the secret art touched Shen Yue, it was as if it had run into an invisible wall.

His fate was blurry, like flowers seen through mist. Chehou Yan could make out only a few wisps of fate energy, shifting unpredictably.

As expected, some expert had concealed it!

Rather than feeling alarmed, Chehou Yan was delighted.

The more mysterious a person's fate, the deeper the karma behind him—and the better he'd be as a target for fate-swapping.

His thoughts turned, and he came up with a plan. If he couldn't peer into Shen Yue's fate, then he'd simply marry off his luck to him.

"A fair maiden is a fine match for a gentleman." Shen Yue sensed something probing him, but it seemed unable to see through him because he existed in two realms. He smiled. "But I only want to cultivate immortality. I'm not interested in romance."

Chehou Yan felt a surge of contempt.

What was the point of cultivating immortality?

Longevity?

That was too distant, too illusory.

Women and power—those were the things truly worth pursuing on the road to immortality.

Don't pretend otherwise.

But he showed none of it on his face. Instead, he asked, "How are you getting on with the Heavenly Cauldron True Fire Hundred Refinement Scripture, Brother Shen? Have you started refining artifacts?"

"The Heavenly Cauldron True Fire Hundred Refinement Scripture is incredibly profound. It's obscure and difficult to make progress with." Shen Yue sighed.

Profound was exactly right!

Chehou Yan lifted his chin slightly, pride welling up inside him.

The scripture was the culmination of generations of his Chehou ancestors' efforts. Naturally, it was extraordinarily profound.

Even he, a man of Chehou blood, had needed two and a half years to understand it well enough to begin refining artifacts. Of course an outsider would find it obscure and difficult.

"Brother Shen is intelligent and resourceful. I'm sure you'll grasp it sooner or later."

Chehou Yan offered a feigned word of comfort, then tapped his storage pouch and took out several materials and a booklet. "It's just a few materials, but I hope they'll be of help."

It was a full batch of artifact-refining materials, along with notes on the craft.

When he had refined artifacts himself, he'd struggled to gather five batches of materials.

But to use the fate-shifting art of Wife-Swapping Life-Borrowing, he had no choice but to use these materials as a vessel and secretly hide his fate energy inside them.

As long as Shen Yue kept the materials on him for two days, Chehou Yan's fate energy would absorb Shen Yue's.

Once Shen Yue and Long Ying developed feelings for each other, Chehou Yan would use Grafting Flowers onto Trees Technique and Wife-Swapping Life-Borrowing to switch their fates.

Then Shen Yue would marry Black Longyu, the woman with the enormous buck teeth, while he would get the beauty!

Hahaha!

"Brother Chehou, wipe your drool?"

Chehou Yan snapped out of it and wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. Unable to stop himself from smiling, he said, "May you soon succeed in refining artifacts and ascend to the Great Dao, Brother Shen."

With that, he left, perfectly satisfied.

Shen Yue looked at the artifact-refining materials and shook his head...

They were only enough to make a low-grade spirit artifact.

What a miser. Zhou Chongwen had given him enough for three batches.

The artifact-refining notes, though, were rather interesting.

Shen Yue picked up the booklet, focused his mind, and began to study it.

Two days passed in the blink of an eye.

Shen Yue had read most of the notes and gained quite a lot.

For example, the "kindling and tempering" step was described in the scripture as a method that called for simmering over a low flame, prioritizing stability.

But Chehou Yan had refined the method in his notes, replacing it with "quench with a fierce flame, then nurture with a gentle one." The success rate stayed the same, but the finished spirit artifacts had greater sentience.

The section on spirit patterns was another example. The Heavenly Cauldron Scripture only provided the method for inscribing them, not any specific array diagrams, so Shen Yue had gone to the Mystic Array Pavilion to study formations.

But Chehou Yan's notes contained two complete arrays.

One was the "Stacked Pattern Array," which could stack multiple spirit patterns to increase a spirit artifact's power.

The other was the "Spirit-Returning Array," which could speed up a spirit artifact's recovery of spiritual energy.

Neither array was especially sophisticated, but both complemented the formations he'd studied at the Mystic Array Pavilion.

Shen Yue memorized them one by one, then put the notes away.

"That old woman hasn't shown up for two days... It's time to head out."

The marketplace was still bustling, with cultivators coming and going in a steady stream.

Shen Yue knew his way around now. He found several stallholders who bought spirit artifacts and sold three of them for thirty, thirty-five, and thirty-eight spirit stones.

With the spirit stones in his pouch, he planned to buy a Barrier Breaking Pill...

"Young man."

A hoarse voice suddenly sounded beside his ear.

"There's great danger in this valley. You must leave at once. If you don't, it'll be too late!"

Shen Yue's heart stirred. From the corner of his eye, he glanced toward the shadow to his left.

A hunched figure was huddled beneath the eaves, hidden in the gloom, her gray hair hanging loose like dried grass.

When Granny Withered Grass saw Shen Yue look her way, her dull eyes suddenly blazed with an unusual light.

Her lips moved as her thin fingers rapidly formed hand seals inside her sleeve.

"Fate is fickle, but the earth's veins are constant. Lend me a thread of Heaven and Earth, to turn seven spirits and six souls from yin to yang. Three souls exchanged, seven spirits shifted—your fate and mine, made one..."

She was now performing the ancient art of the Universe Fate-Swapping Technique.

This art was used only as a last resort. Once activated, there was no turning back: the fates of the caster and the target would be exchanged.

Granny Withered Grass knew full well that she had no chance of escaping the Dao Foundation expert's grasp. But the young man before her had an uncertain fate. If they switched fates, she could use his luck to escape this place of trouble.

An intangible fate emerged from the top of her head, fine as a thread, and raced toward Shen Yue.

But at the instant they collided, Granny Withered Grass suddenly froze.

Why did this man's fate feel... wrong?

It was both real and unreal, drifting and wavering, as if another layer of protection stood guard around it.

But she had no time to think. The two threads of fate had already intertwined like two maddened pythons, slipping out of her control. They plunged into the unseen River of Fate, streaked through the void, and rushed off in another direction...

Inside the inn room.

Chehou Yan lay on the bed, his cheekbones jutting out, his eyes sunken, his lips pale. He looked utterly hopeless.

Black Longyu displayed her enormous buck teeth as she happily drained his essence, though a look of disdain crossed her face.

He'd dared to use a fate art right in front of her. Did he think she was blind?

So he liked playing with fate? Then she'd play along.

"Fate has roots, luck has sources. I'll borrow your fate to mend what I lack. One swallow, one gain—your fate and mine, no longer apart..."

A dark gray strand of fate energy emerged from her. It opened its buck-toothed mouth, drool pouring down like a waterfall, and lunged at Chehou Yan.

The next instant.

Two strands of fate shot out of the River of Fate and collided with the one Black Longyu had released.