Experience and knowledge always had their limits.
For instance, no matter how carefully someone planned, they could never account for things beyond their understanding.
Lin Shu stared intently at the girl before him.
Clearly, this humanoid creature was something beyond his comprehension.
She had delicate, sweet features and wore strange yet gorgeous clothes, like a young miss from a wealthy family.
But the feathers stirring faintly on her cheeks and arms had grown straight out of her flesh, sending an inexplicable chill through him.
A shrill screech rang out across the courtyard.
A thought that did not belong to him abruptly appeared in Lin Shu's mind.
It was as if someone had pried open his skull with a knife and forcibly stuffed an emotion of protectiveness and tenderness inside!
"..."
Lin Shu suddenly let down his guard, feeling an urge to hide this monster away and care for her tenderly.
When he realized this, the chill in his heart grew even stronger.
She could actually influence his thoughts!
He gradually thought of the Old Woman.
That was probably how she had come to mistake this monster for her grandson.
"Ah!!!"
The shriek continued, growing higher and higher. Along with its fury, it now carried a menacing power that demanded submission!
It was an air of natural superiority, as if she had been born nobler than everyone else.
At the doorway.
Yun Niang wasn't the target of the shriek, but even the shock waves made her knees instinctively buckle toward the ground.
She bit through the tip of her tongue. Only the sting of pain managed to dispel the daze in her eyes.
In her field of vision, the young man and the girl faced each other.
The child who had slept for many years now radiated such an imposing air of nobility that no one dared look directly at her.
Her eyes remained shut, her chin raised slightly.
As if she didn't need to do a thing; simply standing there quietly was enough to make the young man bow down before her!
"Hah!"
Lin Shu pressed his lips together, his mouth dry.
Perhaps because his thoughts had already been affected, he could actually understand the piercing noise.
Protect my cultivation!!
The terse, unyielding command slammed into his mind like a heavy hammer!
Lin Shu slowly closed his eyes, his thoughts growing hazy.
He had struggled for over twenty years since childhood, finally achieving a little success in life—only to have it abruptly snatched away for no reason, then be given a walking corpse of a body with a defective heart.
It was as if a rope had been looped around his neck, dragging him around in search of ways to stay alive.
No one could accept such a drastic change.
What counterbalanced that feeling were the fascinating things in This World that he had never encountered before.
There were martial arts and Immortal Methods here, and rumors spoke of real Immortals.
After exhausting himself for days, he had finally managed to extend his life.
Lin Shu had thought he could at last have a little time to himself, catch his breath, and explore these fascinating novelties.
But now, something had suddenly popped out of nowhere.
Without a word, she was trying to slip another leash around his neck!
At that thought, a surge of restlessness suddenly welled up in Lin Shu's heart.
It was both a lingering consequence of the Evil Coin and a mix of grievances he'd had nowhere to vent, though he had kept them buried all along.
But now he suddenly didn't want to keep them buried anymore.
Lin Shu wanted to use this surging murderous intent to dispel the instinctive fear this body felt toward the girl.
In truth, her identity wasn't hard to guess.
If something looked like gold and weighed like gold, it was most likely gold.
Likewise.
If something was alive and moving, so arrogant, and overflowing with Immortal Aura, then what else could it be?
Lin Shu abruptly opened his eyes, his pupils awash with roiling red mist.
His breathing grew hot and ragged again.
The girl realized Lin Shu had guessed her identity, so she confidently raised her chin a little higher.
However, instead of a servant prostrating himself in reverence as she'd imagined, she got a filthy taunt.
"You goddamn... hah... call yourself an Immortal?"
With an utterly hoarse, contemptuous snicker, black qi suddenly surged from Lin Shu's fingertips.
Like blazing flames, it raced up his arm and swept over half his body in the blink of an eye.
He swung his arm with ferocious force, slapping at the delicate face the Green Feather Maiden had lifted high.
Smack!
Under that terrifying force, the Green Feather Maiden didn't even have a chance to react. Her small body flew straight backward and slammed into the ground like a torn sack.
Her eyes were closed, her face incapable of expression.
But her shoulders twitched and trembled, betraying unmistakable confusion.
The Green Feather Maiden moved sluggishly, struggling to get up from the ground.
But the slender figure in the long robe had already appeared before her, cloaked in roiling black mist.
Lin Shu bent down expressionlessly, seized her by the throat, slammed her back to the ground, and pinned her there.
His other hand curled into a fist. Without the slightest hesitation, he hammered it into the girl's feather-strewn face like a violent storm!
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The Ghost Moon Bone-Splitting Hand had already reached the fifth rank, and with Spiritual Power bolstering it without regard for the cost—
Every punch could easily shatter a Great Martial Master's skull!
The shrieks in the courtyard turned thin and frantic, almost breaking into sobs.
Protect my cultivation... protect my cultivation...
It was as if she didn't know how to fight at all. Her influence over people's minds was the only trick she had.
Amid the shrill noise, Lin Shu raised his hand, the image of that torn sack surfacing in his mind, along with the faintly visible blood-smeared old face at its opening.
"Take her place, let you have your way with her, and then get her killed?"
His handsome face gave no hint of his feelings. His right fist crashed down, a muffled boom erupting as half the girl's head sank into the ground.
But at the same time as he heard those words,
the whimpering, tearful cries in the courtyard suddenly stopped, then turned into a furious shriek once more.
"Ah!!"
The shriek shifted again and again. Along with the rage, there was now a note of urgency.
At last, it became an awkward but understandable childish roar.
"You shameless bastard! You have no decency!"
For some reason, she was clearly frantic—so frantic that she had started speaking like a human.
"I killed her? Had my way with her?"
"Her son died, and she was left alone. She'd already gone mad and senile."
"If I hadn't used Immortal Power to nourish her body and steady her mind, a crazy old woman like her, with money in her hands, would have been stripped to the bone long ago. How else could she have lived another seven or eight years in this city?"
The Bluebird Maiden completely ignored the black-mist-covered fists raining down on her face.
She looked as though she'd suffered a tremendous injustice and was determined to make Lin Shu understand.
"I even found her a daughter-in-law to tend to her every need!"
"Besides, I'm an Immortal Scion. I breathe in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth; I don't need to eat or drink. Even that useless medicinal broth was only because she saw me sleeping and mistakenly thought I was ill."
"But it was because my body hadn't finished maturing. I couldn't get up! I couldn't get up!!"
The childlike voice in the courtyard grew more and more indignant, as if it wanted to carve out the other person's heart with a steel knife.
"You're the murderers!"
From the girl's perspective, Lin Shu and the others had first tricked and killed the Old Woman she had raised.
Then they had barged into this courtyard and violently torn apart the Breath Concealment Array she had painstakingly woven.
Knowing she couldn't win against them,
she could only grit her teeth and endure it all, doing her best to hide herself despite her grievances.
But today, they had even tried to scare off the last remaining Little Widow, and they had grown more and more reckless, destroying most of the array.
It was as if bandits had come to the door, killing for money, burning down her home, and leaving her no path to survive!
She had been driven to the brink.
She had been forced to expend most of the reserves she'd accumulated over the years to nurture her Immortal body, just to awaken this once.
But even if she still couldn't beat them, that would have been bad enough. For this cruel, despicable bandit to slander her as well—!
Before you continue