Xian Qing'er!

The wind blew across the riverbank, carrying a faint fishy tang of water.

After the terrifying scene yesterday, when that big Azure Ox had turned into the city lord's wife, Qin Mu could only rely on his own two feet when he went out to gather herbs today.

The little fellow carried a battered bamboo basket half as tall as he was on his back, and held a wooden stick in his hand for testing the path.

He walked quickly up ahead, stopping from time to time to bend down and dig a few oddly shaped herbs out of the grass, then carefully toss them into the basket on his back.

Hu Liena followed behind him, so exhausted she was panting for breath.

The gorgeous clothes she had worn as the Holy Maiden of Spirit Hall were now covered in mud and bits of grass.

Without soul power to support her, after walking for most of the morning along the rugged mountain roads of the Great Ruins, her legs felt as heavy as if they had been filled with lead.

"Big sister, hurry up and keep up."

Qin Mu stopped, turned around, and waved at Hu Liena.

"Grandpa Pharmacist said we have to reach that Pheasant Ridge up ahead today to pick a kind of red mushroom. If we get there too late, those mushrooms will burrow underground, and we won't be able to find them."

Hu Liena wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and could only grit her teeth as she quickened her pace.

After what had happened yesterday, she now felt an indescribable dependence on this ten-year-old boy.

In these man-eating Great Ruins, if she left Qin Mu's sight, she felt she would not survive even half an hour.

One in front and one behind, the two of them followed an ancient road overgrown with weeds and slowly walked deeper into the Great Ruins.

The trees around them grew taller and taller.

Some old trees had trunks so thick it would take a dozen people holding hands to encircle them.

Green vines as thick as wrists twined around the branches, hanging in midair like giant pythons.

The farther in they went, the heavier the fog around them became.

The fog was a vast white haze, carrying a chill that made the skin feel cold when it blew over them.

As they walked, Qin Mu suddenly stopped up ahead.

Hu Liena was not paying attention and almost bumped into the herb basket on Qin Mu's back.

"What is it, little brother?" Hu Liena lowered her voice and asked nervously.

Qin Mu did not speak. He merely stretched out a small hand and pointed into the depths of the fog ahead.

Hu Liena looked in the direction he was pointing.

Within the dense white fog, a massive outline could be faintly made out.

The two of them slowed their steps and drew a little closer. Only then did they see it clearly.

It was a dilapidated ancient temple, more than half of it already collapsed.

The temple walls had long since fallen, and many broken blue-green bricks were scattered across the ground.

Several thick stone pillars stood there crookedly, covered in a heavy layer of moss.

At the very center of the temple sat a Buddha statue carved from stone.

The Buddha statue was very large, but its head was already gone.

What made it strangest of all was that the statue was missing its right arm. The break was extremely smooth, looking as though someone had sliced it off in one stroke with a sharp weapon.

"Why would there be a ruined temple here?"

Hu Liena muttered inwardly, feeling as if the temperature around her had dropped by several degrees.

Just then.

A faint sound suddenly came from behind the severed-arm Buddha statue.

"Wuwu... wu..."

It was the sound of a woman crying.

The sobs were very soft, intermittent, and carried an indescribable misery and weakness that made the heart ache to hear.

Deep in these desolate Great Ruins, a woman's crying suddenly rang out. No matter how one thought about it, there was something sinister about it.

All the hairs on Hu Liena's body stood on end at once.

She subconsciously reached out and grabbed the corner of Qin Mu's clothes, her voice trembling.

"Little brother, don't go over there. Let's hurry and go around."

After the lesson with that ox yesterday, Hu Liena now held the highest possible vigilance toward any living thing in the Great Ruins.

In this place, even livestock could have been transformed from humans. A woman crying in a ruined temple might very well be some man-eating monster.

Qin Mu blinked his clear, large eyes, but there was not much fear on his face.

He stretched out his small hand and gently patted the back of Hu Liena's hand.

"It's all right, big sister. Let's go over and take a look."

With that, Qin Mu carried the herb basket on his back, stepped over the broken stones on the ground, and carefully circled around the severed-arm Buddha statue.

Hu Liena did not dare stay where she was alone, so she could only steel herself and follow him.

They walked around to the back of the Buddha statue.

In a pile of weeds in the corner, a woman in white was curled up.

The woman was very beautiful, her features delicate and well-proportioned. It was just that she looked rather miserable right now.

The white clothes on her body had been slashed open in several places, revealing the fair skin beneath.

On her right calf, there was also a wound so deep the bone could be seen, and blood had already dyed the hem of her skirt red.

Hearing footsteps, the woman slowly raised her head.

When she saw that the ones walking over were a ten-year-old child and a young girl, a glimmer of hope immediately appeared in her watery eyes.

"Little brother, save me..."

The woman's voice was extremely frail, carrying pained gasps.

"I came out with my family to gather herbs, but we ran into a pack of wild wolves, and I got separated from them."

"My leg is broken. I can't walk."

"Please, help me up and take me away from here, all right?"

As the woman spoke, she stretched out a slender hand stained with dirt, straining somewhat as she reached in Qin Mu's direction.

Seeing the woman's pitiful, helpless appearance, outside the light screen, on Douluo Continent, many people felt a trace of sympathy stir in their hearts.

Heaven Dou Imperial City, Shrek Academy.

Ma Hongjun scratched the back of his head and muttered softly, "That woman looks pretty pitiful. She's injured so badly, so she should be an ordinary person, right?"

Zhao Wuji glared at him from the side and slapped the fatty on the back of the head.

"You don't know shit!"

"What kind of place is this? This is the Great Ruins! A damned place where even a Title Douluo would lose a layer of skin if he went in!"

"Could an ordinary woman survive in a place like this? And she ran into wild wolves? The wolves here could probably swallow an elephant in one bite!"

Yu Xiaogang also nodded in agreement.

"Wuji is right."

"In the Great Ruins, the more harmless something looks, the more deadly it often is."

"Although Qin Mu was born with divine strength, his mind is still simple after all."

"If he really goes over to help that woman up, I'm afraid he'll be in big trouble."

Everyone stared fixedly at the Sky Screen, breaking into a cold sweat for Qin Mu.

In the image on the Sky Screen, Qin Mu stood where he was, looking at the woman reaching out for help, his big eyes filled with innocence.

"Auntie, you're hurt that badly?"

Qin Mu took a step forward, the expression on his face looking extremely concerned.

"Wait there. I happen to have some wound medicine that Grandpa Pharmacist mixed in my medicine basket. I'll take it out and put it on for you."

As he spoke, Qin Mu prepared to take off the bamboo basket on his back.

When the woman in white heard him call her "auntie," a barely perceptible flash of resentment crossed the depths of her eyes.

But the expression on her face remained one of tearful gratitude.

"Thank you, little brother. You really are a kind person."

As the woman thanked him, she propped herself against the ground with her hand and quietly shifted half a foot forward.

Her beautiful eyes fixed tightly on Qin Mu's fair, tender neck, and the corner of her mouth curved into a strange arc.

Just as Qin Mu lowered his head to search for the medicine bottle, the woman suddenly moved!

Her originally frail and powerless appearance vanished without a trace in an instant.

Her entire body was like a poisonous spider that had been lying in wait for a long time, suddenly springing up from the ground.

That slender hand of hers, which had originally been stained with dirt, actually swelled up by a full size in midair, and the nails on her fingers shot out more than three inches, as sharp as little knives.

Carrying a foul, fishy gust of wind, the woman's sharp claws went straight for Qin Mu's throat.

"Careful!"

Hu Liena, standing behind him, was so frightened that she cried out in alarm, her face instantly turning deathly pale.

Everything happened too quickly, so quickly that she had no time to react at all.

Yet just as the woman's claws were less than an inch from Qin Mu's throat—

Qin Mu, who had kept his head lowered the whole time, suddenly split his mouth into a bright smile.

"Grandpa Ma said that when you run into a pretty woman crying for help in a ruined temple, most of the time she's a White Bone Spirit who wants to eat people."

The moment Qin Mu finished speaking, the feet in his straw sandals lightly tapped the gravel-strewn ground.

He did not use any immense power, nor was there any earth-shaking momentum.

His body was like a fallen leaf swept up by a gale, drifting lightly three feet backward.

That seemingly simple retreat happened to avoid the woman's fatal strike, one that could have slit him open from chest to belly.

The woman's sharp nails almost scraped past the tip of Qin Mu's nose, stirring up a sickening, bloody stench.

"Grandpa Blind Man's footwork really is useful."

Qin Mu landed steadily on a broken brick, his face not red and his breath not labored. He even had the leisure to pat his chest and mutter softly.

As for the woman in white who had lunged at empty air, when her strike missed, a vicious glint flashed in her eyes. She let out an ear-piercing shriek, her legs suddenly exerting force as she tried to continue pouncing at Qin Mu to kill him.

But her body had only just risen into the air.

Clang!

A muffled sound of metal colliding suddenly rang out from the ruins of the broken temple.

On the base of the armless, headless Buddha statue, a ring of intricate golden runes suddenly lit up.

Immediately afterward, a chain as thick as a baby's arm, completely condensed from golden Buddhist light, appeared out of nowhere from beneath the ground without the slightest warning.

One end of the chain was connected to the Buddha statue, while the other end was actually locked tightly around the woman in white's waist.

The woman's forward-pouncing motion instantly froze in midair.

The golden chain instantly pulled taut, bursting out with an overwhelming force that yanked the woman in midair brutally back.

Bang!

The woman smashed heavily into the muddy ground behind the Buddha statue, falling so hard she was left dizzy and disoriented, and a large mouthful of dark-green blood sprayed from her mouth.

With that fall, the already tattered white dress on her body split apart completely.

Hu Liena hid not far away and fixed her eyes on the scene. Her stomach immediately churned violently, and she could not help covering her mouth.

Beneath that white dress, how could there be any fair skin?

It was clearly layer upon layer of glossy, hard black carapace.

Beneath her ribs and along both sides of her back, dozens of densely packed, furry insect legs grew out. At this moment, because of the pain, they were flailing wildly in the air.

This was a Centipede Spirit through and through!

"Oh my, so it's a big bug with this many legs."

Leaning on the wooden staff in his hand, Qin Mu stood exactly half a step beyond the limit of that golden chain's reach, looking curiously at the Centipede Spirit on the ground.

That Centipede Spirit, which was to say Xian Qing'er, could no longer care about disguising herself.

Her originally beautiful face had become twisted and hideous. The corners of her mouth had split all the way to her ears, revealing two rows of fine, sharp venomous fangs inside.

"You little bastard! I'm going to eat you! I'll chew you up until not even bone scraps are left!"

Xian Qing'er struggled madly, waving her sharp claws as she desperately tried to reach Qin Mu standing before her.

But the golden chain around her waist restricted her tightly in place. As long as she dared take one step forward, the chain would radiate a burst of scorching Buddhist light, burning her until her skin split and her flesh tore.

Qin Mu looked at the flustered and furious Xian Qing'er, but he was not afraid at all.

Not only did he not retreat, he instead plopped down on a large rock beside him, propped his cheeks in both hands, and let his gaze circle back and forth twice between the armless Buddha statue and Xian Qing'er.

A moment later, Qin Mu seemed to have seen through something amusing, and a sly smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"You plague-ridden dead bald donkey!"

Xian Qing'er lay on the muddy ground. Though she could not move, the mouth split to her ears was still cursing madly.

"You suppressed me for hundreds of years! Made me suffer in this broken temple every single day! One day, I'll capture all your disciples and descendants and swallow them alive one by one!"

As she cursed, she clawed wildly at the ground with her sharp talons, her dark-yellow vertical pupils filled with undissolvable hatred.

Qin Mu watched her enraged and frustrated appearance, but not only did he show no sympathy, he even shook his head somewhat amusedly.

"Big bug, you're really stupid."

Qin Mu used the wooden staff in his hand to draw circles on the ground. His voice was clear and crisp, yet carried a maturity completely at odds with his age.

"You curse that big monk here every day, but you don't know that you've been helping him work this whole time."

Hearing this, Xian Qing'er's curses abruptly stopped.

She suddenly raised her head, her vertical pupils fixing tightly on Qin Mu as she shrieked harshly.

"You little bastard, what nonsense are you spouting! That bald donkey couldn't kill me back then and could only trap me here. How could I possibly be helping him work?"

Qin Mu sighed, as though he were looking at a hopeless fool.

"Grandpa Cripple said that when you look at things, you can't just look at the surface."

Qin Mu stood up, walked over to the armless Buddha statue, and reached out to pat the cold stone base.

"If that great monk could make such a powerful chain to lock you up, killing you would've been as easy as a slap, wouldn't it?"

"The reason he kept you alive was because he deliberately treated you like a field that could produce treasures."

Qin Mu's words echoed through the ruined temple.

Not only Xian Qing'er—even Hu Liena, who was standing in the distance, and everyone on the Douluo Continent outside the light screen all pricked up their ears, their faces full of confusion.

"Think about it carefully."

Qin Mu turned his head, his big eyes fixed on the Centipede Spirit on the ground.

"Every time you pretended to be pitiful and tricked passersby over to eat them, you were committing evil."

"As long as you committed evil, this golden chain would glow, and the Buddha statue would send down power to suppress you."

Qin Mu paused, his tone turning especially serious.

"Grandpa Pharmacist taught me that when monks cultivate, they value compassion and saving all living beings."

"You commit evil, and he suppresses you. Back and forth like that, this Buddha statue could continuously gain the power of merit."

"Every person you ate gave this Buddha statue another share of merit.

"That great monk tied you up here so you'd be an endlessly working laborer, using the sins of slaughter you created to perfect his so-called boundless Buddhist dharma."

After Qin Mu made that casual-sounding deduction, Xian Qing'er instantly flew into an uncontrollable rage.

Xian Qing'er lay blankly on the ground, all the insect legs on her body drooping weakly.

She lowered her head and looked at the chain around her waist that gave off a faint golden light, then thought back over all these years. To fill her stomach and raise her cultivation, she had eaten countless passersby, but in the end, not only had her strength failed to improve at all, she had instead been viciously tormented by the Buddha statue's spiritual light every single time.

So all her brutality and effort over the past few centuries...

In the eyes of that high-and-mighty monk, she had been nothing more than crops in a field fertilized on schedule, a tool specially used to farm merit!

"No... impossible... this is impossible!"

"You old bald donkey! You're sinister! You're vicious! Even as a ghost, I won't let you off!"

Watching Xian Qing'er's Dao heart shatter as she fell into hysterics, the entire Douluo Continent outside the light screen sank into a long silence.

Heaven Dou Imperial City, inside Shrek Academy.

Yu Xiaogang's mouth hung open. A chill ran down his back, and cold sweat streamed down his forehead.

"This... this is way too scheming, isn't it?"