Real Mortal or Fake Immortal

The fine drizzle had already continued for five days, and all of Water Mouth City was shrouded in damp, chilling mist.

"Cough, cough, cough."

Dou Sangu curled up beneath an eave, only daring to show himself in the sparsely populated districts.

Two days and two nights without rest had drained every last bit of his strength. Even maintaining human form had become difficult, leaving his limbs abnormally uncoordinated.

Dou Sangu trembled as he chewed on wild grass, but before he could swallow, the hoarse cry of a bird rang out beside his ear.

His expression changed drastically, and just as he staggered toward the corner ahead—

A scattering of footsteps sounded behind him, mixed with whimpering. Clearly, another demon had blocked off his retreat.

"Damn it!"

Dou Sangu did not dare hesitate in the slightest. He transformed into a field mouse and burrowed into a crack in the wall beside him.

The next instant.

A tiger-headed, human-bodied figure appeared, a hint of disdain at the corner of its mouth.

At the same time, Yan Jing stood atop the eaves opposite, sweeping his gaze around with an ugly expression.

The two demons' eyes met, yet they exchanged no unnecessary words, tacitly splitting up and leaving in different directions.

Dou Sangu held his breath and took the chance to flee the street.

"Damn it! Damn it! I'm only a minor demon—what the hell did I do wrong?!"

He cursed under his breath, knowing full well that these people had never intended to leave him a way to live.

If there had been even a sliver of hope, he would have revealed everything about the great medicine. But his innate divine ability constantly warned him that whether he spoke or not, it was a dead end.

Dou Sangu only felt that his plight was even more miserable than that of the Immortal Ascension Sect disciples.

At least before the Provincial Examination began, the demons still did not dare slaughter them all. Even after Black Lady's death, the Fuyang Chamber of Commerce could remain peaceful for a while.

"Puff, puff, puff."

Guided by instinct, Dou Sangu darted left and right through the narrow gaps between streets and alleys. After circling around and around, he unknowingly arrived at a familiar place.

He stopped, staring blankly at the mouth of an alley through the curtain of rain.

The bluestone slabs had been washed gleaming by the rain, yet they could not conceal the faint treasure radiance seeping through—the very alley where the culprit lay.

It seemed that hiding here was his only chance to escape the demons' pursuit.

"To hell with it. I want to see just what kind of god or demon can ripen forty or fifty years' worth of great medicine into over five hundred years in only a few days!!"

Dou Sangu gritted his teeth, pulled out a pill from his clothes, and swallowed it.

The moment the pill entered his stomach, excruciating pain swept through his entire body. His limbs convulsed without stop, and the cultivation within him rapidly dissipated like a receding tide.

"The Self-Dissolution Pill will scatter all my cultivation, and I won't be able to use my innate divine ability either. But as long as I can cling to life, there's still hope!"

"At worst, I'll miss this Provincial Examination. With a dozen years or so of work, I can always restore my cultivation."

He turned into an utterly ordinary, plump field mouse, with dull gray fur and short little limbs.

Dou Sangu slipped into the alley. Since he could no longer sense the treasure radiance, he could only rely on the instinct etched into his mind to venture deeper step by step.

Before long, the rear gate of a coffin shop came into view.

The gate was half-open. Dou Sangu slowly approached it as though on a pilgrimage, too soaked to care that his entire body was drenched.

Yet the sight before him left him utterly bewildered.

The backyard was silent. With the Imperial Court Scroll quietly blanketing the area, everything appeared utterly unremarkable.

The banyan's branches twisted crookedly. Beside it, a patch of newly grown bamboo flourished, its leaves gently swaying in the rain. Several unfinished coffins lay covered with straw mats.

A middle-aged martial artist practiced his saber forms, every movement cutting through the air with a whoosh.

Under the eaves along the corridor, a woman lowered her head and washed a basket of fruits and vegetables.

"How could this be..."

There was no great medicine as Dou Sangu had imagined, nor were there any demons with profound cultivation. There was not even the slightest trace of anything unusual. It was just like the backyard of any ordinary household.

"No, there's still one person."

Dou Sangu rolled his tiny eyes, his gaze settling by the well.

Ren Qing made no effort to shelter from the rain. Leaning against the banyan tree, he whittled bamboo poles at an unhurried pace. At his feet stood three gray-black mice, motionless, each wearing a tiny Daoist robe. They looked utterly bizarre.

Dou Sangu's heart jolted. Could they be Demon Cultivators too?

He cautiously slipped into the backyard, trying not to make the slightest sound. But when he got closer, he discovered—

The three mice in Daoist robes were merely ordinary house mice. The robes looked ludicrous on them, and from time to time they let out squeaks. Listening carefully, their meaning was more or less the same phrase repeated over and over: "Work."

What demons? They were plainly just mice being manipulated by someone—a mere street performer's trick.

Dou Sangu collapsed into the corner by the wall, feeling the world spin around him.

How did I end up like this?!

Could Black Lady have died after angering another Demon Cultivator? Had it all been someone else's setup from beginning to end, making his innate divine ability mistake it for a great medicine?

As he watched the three figures in the courtyard each carrying out their duties, an indescribable sense of absurdity rose in his heart.

While distracted, one Black Rat Dao Child noticed Dou Sangu. It scurried over and sniffed him, then, upon discovering that the field mouse posed no threat whatsoever, turned and ran away.

Dou Sangu lay in the sodden mud, without even the strength to move.

The injuries to his body and soul caused by dispersing all his cultivation were even more severe than he had imagined. After barely digging a shallow hole by the wall, he swiftly passed out.

Ren Qing glanced at the corner of the wall. Because the Black Rat Dao Children had gathered there, the coffin shop's vicinity was teeming with rats, so he paid it no mind.

"Hmm, it seems I can finally give Staff Dissolution a try."

Holding a bamboo staff, he continuously poured his divine sense into it.

Crack.

Only after eighty percent of his divine sense had been infused into it did a faint crack appear in the bamboo staff.

"There must have been some unforeseen complication on the Tiger Demon Prefect's journey, delaying him for several days. If I can't take this chance to complete Staff Dissolution, the risks ahead will only grow greater."

After pondering for a long while, Ren Qing finally made up his mind and directly uprooted a stalk of verdant bamboo.

While a trace of life still remained in it, he split it in two. He then enclosed the bamboo staff within it, used a little blood-water to heal the bamboo's body, and replanted it in the medicinal field.

"Perfect. Once the bamboo staff has been scorched at high temperatures, its volume will shrink."

"An ordinary bamboo staff definitely won't do. This poor Daoist needs to wrap the staff layer upon layer, until its final structure resembles a devil-worked puzzle ball. That will ensure nothing can go wrong."

Having figured out how to perform Staff Dissolution, Ren Qing felt incomparably invigorated.

"A-Qing, have some cucumber."

Ren Qing accepted the cucumber Ren Shanshi handed him and looked at the incomparably dense fog.

As he chewed the cucumber, he opened his mouth and swallowed.

A fierce wind suddenly rose throughout the entire rear courtyard. The nearby fog howled as though drawn by an invisible giant hand, transforming into a vast white tide that came pouring down.

The spectacle was magnificent, as if heaven and earth had been turned upside down. Wherever the fog passed, green bamboo bent low, banyan trees bowed, and even raindrops were swept into the vortex, becoming tiny silver pearls.

Ren Shanshi's perception had been affected, so he could not see it. Yun Niang's vision was blurred, so she could not see it either.

Dou Sangu had fainted, so naturally he could not see it either.

"Boundless Heavenly Venerable. The Imperial Court Scroll has absorbed a fourth kind of heaven-and-earth aura; its coloring is already fifty percent complete."

The scenery within the Sunrise Diagram stirred up mist, answering one another with rosy light, water vapor, and cloud vapor.