A Visit at the Door

Jiang Jiuyao left as soon as she finished speaking, but as Mo Chen watched her retreating figure, he felt no relief at all.

An old cultivator on the verge of passing away, clinging to her last shred of hope as she searched for a way to extend her life, had suddenly encountered a mortal who should have died ninety years ago yet was still alive.

Had Mo Chen not been that very person, even he would never have believed it!

Immortality—wasn't that precisely what Jiang Jiuyao wanted most?

She would never let him off easily.

The reason Jiang Jiuyao hadn't attacked him on the spot was probably that she wanted to prepare more bargaining chips before returning.

Mo Chen sat back down behind the counter and sipped his tea, sighing inwardly.

He had hidden for ninety years, only to be recognized in the end.

As the saying went: meet soldiers with generals, and stem floodwaters with earth.

If he really couldn't hold her off, he could always move somewhere else and work as a librarian.

He could do this job anywhere, after all.

Run!

There was nothing to hesitate over.

Mo Chen had worked in the Twin Crane Sect's Outer Sect Scripture Pavilion for a full forty years. At three Low-Grade Spirit Stones a month, even if he hadn't eaten or drunk anything, those forty years would only have netted him a little over two thousand.

And that paltry sum was only fucking enough to buy an incomplete cultivation manual and two low-grade spirit artifacts!

He couldn't afford even one decent expense.

An honest man's time was always the cheapest thing around.

For forty years, he had organized shelves and repaired damaged scrolls day after day. All he had gotten in return was an exhausting job where disciples hurled Jade Slips at his head and stewards ordered him around, and in the end, his salary wasn't even enough to buy his everyday cultivation supplies.

Who wouldn't laugh at that?

Even his enemies would have let go of their grudges after seeing it.

After mocking himself inwardly for a while, Mo Chen stood up and began packing.

He didn't have much to his name here, and he could easily count the contents of his Storage Bag: one Red-Tailed Sword, one Azure Mystic Protective Talisman, a scroll of the Flame-Drinking Art, and several dozen Spirit Stones.

Once he finished sorting everything, Mo Chen couldn't bear to look at his own belongings.

He really was... so broke his pockets rattled!

Beyond Flowing Cloud Immortal City lay vast forests and mountains. Wherever he went, Spirit Stones did the talking; without money, he wouldn't get anywhere.

That night, after closing and locking the Scripture Pavilion, Mo Chen didn't return to his cramped side room to cultivate as usual. Instead, he used the Wind-Riding Technique to swoop up and down through the pavilion, sweeping every sought-after item off the shelves.

Since he was leaving anyway, he'd be losing out badly if he didn't help himself to a few things.

The cultivation world had never lacked geniuses. What it lacked was access to the basic knowledge monopolized by the sects. For instance, no one had ever told Mo Chen that Spiritual Roots were actually the Favorable and Useful Gods in a person's Eight Characters, or that the water-aspect cultivation method he'd practiced for fifty years had actually been damaging his foundations.

Mo Chen packed the Scripture Pavilion's valuable Jade Slips and books into his Storage Bag, then changed into a dark brown, close-fitting outfit that covered him tightly from head to toe.

The instant Mo Chen took his first step out of the Scripture Pavilion, he noticed something wrong.

Divine Sense!

Another cultivator was scanning me with Divine Sense!

Mo Chen still remembered that chilling sensation clearly, as though he had been stripped bare from head to toe and examined inside and out.

Ninety years ago, at the Great Qian Academy of Letters, that female cultivator had swept the same kind of gaze over him before giving him the Black Turtle Breathing Method. In that instant, too, he had felt as though an invisible blade had sliced open his skin, flesh, sinews, and bones.

Back then, Mo Chen had knelt on the ground, not daring to raise his head, his heart almost stopping.

Now... that sensation had come surging back!

Mo Chen whipped around, his gaze flashing like lightning, and swept every corner of the courtyard with his Divine Sense.

The moonlight was cold and clear, the shadows of the trees swayed, and not a soul was in sight.

The only explanation was that the other person's Divine Sense far surpassed his own, allowing them to evade his perception easily.

I can't wait any longer!

He just had to reach the woods on the mountain behind the Scripture Pavilion. Over these forty years, Mo Chen had known this day would come and had long since laid numerous restrictions throughout the rear mountain.

They were crude things he had worked out himself, but their sheer number made up for that. He had also hidden several stacks of talismans there. As long as he could rush into the woods, he would have room to maneuver.

At that thought, Mo Chen lightly tapped the ground with his toes, channeled his Dharma Power into the Wind-Riding Technique, and flew toward the woods.

Yet the moment he rose thirty feet off the ground, Mo Chen spotted a figure standing on the third-floor eaves of the Scripture Pavilion.

Mo Chen planted his feet on a mass of wind and pressed a hand against his storage pouch, ready to defend himself, while actually inching closer to the woods.

"Where are you going at this hour, Manager Mo?"

Jiang Jiuyao!

Mo Chen was secretly alarmed, but he still forced a smile uglier than a grimace onto his face.

"Oh, it's you, Fellow Daoist Jiang. You gave me a fright, appearing in the middle of the night like that. I didn't take a fasting pill today and ate something that upset my stomach instead, so I came out to find somewhere to relieve myself. What brings you here, Fellow Daoist Jiang?"

"Relieve yourself?"

Jiang Jiuyao chuckled. "Does relieving yourself require a change into fighting clothes? Does it require taking every valuable Jade Slip in the Scripture Pavilion?"

Mo Chen's expression darkened instantly.

Damn it, when did she start watching me? How did I not notice at all? Could she have stayed nearby ever since leaving the Scripture Pavilion?

If so, this old woman's patience and methods were far more troublesome than Mo Chen had expected.

"Ninety years have passed. Even I, a cultivator, am about to pass away, yet you, a mortal, are still alive!"

Jiang Jiuyao paused briefly. "Don't you think that's terribly unfair?"

"You've mistaken me for someone else, Senior. There are so many people in this world that some are bound to look alike..."

Before he finished speaking, Jiang Jiuyao struck.

Jiang Jiuyao stamped her foot lightly, and the branches all around them rapidly transformed into green vines as thick as arms. Every vine bristled with inch-long barbs as they surged toward Mo Chen from every direction to strangle him.

Mo Chen drew his newly purchased sword. Swords and sabers shared common principles, so he should be able to use the various blade techniques of the Vast Sea Blade Intent with it.

The flying sword circled Mo Chen, then unleashed dozens of streaks of Blade Qi with a series of humming sounds, slashing at the surrounding green vines.

Before the Blade Qi could cut through many vines, Jiang Jiuyao formed an odd hand seal, then thrust both hands toward Mo Chen from afar. The swath of Blade Qi he had painstakingly built up, along with the blade techniques he had yet to unleash, was interrupted.

Fuck.

Looks like martial artists really can't fight cultivators.

Martial techniques could only catch cultivators off guard when they weren't expecting them. When used openly, they simply couldn't stand up against cultivators' spells.

Wrapped in swirling air, Mo Chen hurtled backward. At the same time, the Azure Mystic Protective Talisman on his chest flashed, and a pale azure barrier appeared out of thin air to meet the first two attacking green vines.

With a bang, the barrier trembled slightly and bounced the vines several feet away.

Using the time that block had bought him, Mo Chen formed hand seals. Spiritual light flashed beneath his feet, and he flew into the woods. When he reappeared, he was beside an ancient pine a hundred feet away.

Wood Escape, a branch of the basic Five Elements Evasion Techniques, allowed him to travel from one place containing something of the wood aspect to another such place nearby.

Jiang Jiuyao sneered and pursued him, her body enveloped in azure light.

In the blink of an eye, the two swept over the high outer wall of the Scripture Pavilion and flew deep into the dense forest on the rear mountain.

Mo Chen's Evasion Techniques were indeed exquisite. Over the past several decades, he had hardly practiced any offensive techniques, pouring almost all his time and energy into basic Evasion Techniques instead.

Because Mo Chen knew better than anyone that once someone discovered his secret, being hunted would become as commonplace as eating meals.

The ability to escape was a hundred times more important than the ability to fight!

Just as Mo Chen was about to catch his breath, his Divine Sense detected another golden Flying Sword hurtling straight toward the back of his head. Its quality wasn't bad—it was probably a mid-grade Flying Sword. He couldn't take it head-on.

Mo Chen immediately dropped down and used Water Escape to cross a stream. His toes lightly touched the water's surface, and before the ripples faded, he had followed the current to reappear fifty feet downstream.

Jiang Jiuyao pursued relentlessly, but although her cultivation was higher, her Evasion Techniques lacked Mo Chen's versatility. After attacking two or three times, she hadn't even brushed the hem of his clothes, and the distance between them had widened from a hundred feet to two hundred.

Just as Mo Chen was rejoicing inwardly, thinking he could make his getaway this time, he heard Jiang Jiuyao burst into uninhibited laughter behind him.

"You fell for it! Hahaha! Let's see how you run now, you slippery little brat!"

Doubt immediately stirred in Mo Chen's heart, but his feet never stopped moving as he continued combining the Wind-Riding Technique with his Evasion Technique.

Fell for it?

What a joke. It's still too early to say who's fallen into whose trap.

Mo Chen believed he had prepared enough, as long as the whole sect didn't put out a warrant for him and send a mob to capture him.

Yet after escaping just another hundred feet, Mo Chen saw a grim-faced old man emerge from the dense woods ahead. His cultivation was actually at the seventh level of Qi Refining.

Behind him, Jiang Jiuyao's azure light also stopped a hundred feet away, cutting off his retreat.

One ahead and one behind, one at the eighth level and the other at the seventh, they sandwiched Mo Chen, a fifth-level Qi Refining cultivator, between them.

Moonlight flowed like water over the mountainside, and the wind sent waves through the pine needles. Below the mountain, Flowing Cloud Immortal City blazed with lights. With all three standing in silence, they could even hear the cries of street vendors drifting up the mountain.

Beautiful scenery, but this was a deathtrap.

Mo Chen raised his head to glance at the night sky. The bright moon hung overhead, and a thin layer of blue radiance was visible to the naked eye. Flowing Cloud Immortal City's City-Guarding Grand Formation kept the marketplace and the Twin Crane Sect safely protected.

"Did you think I really couldn't catch you? What a joke. I guessed long ago that anyone who'd scraped by for this many years must have some tricks up his sleeve. I already called someone to help. Why don't you guess who he is?"

Jiang Jiuyao's expression grew more sinister, while the middle-aged man opposite her stared at Mo Chen and threatened, "You'd never guess, so I'll tell you outright. I'm the prince Fellow Daoist Jiang took away from the Great Qian Kingdom all those years ago!"

"I didn't believe it at first, either, until I deliberately had Fellow Daoist Jiang draw out the pursuit so I could study your expressions and your gait. And with that face of yours being almost exactly the same, how can you deny it? You're clearly the bastard who used to copy books at the Great Qian Academy of Letters!"

Mo Chen sneered, not particularly surprised inwardly. He had already laid no fewer than a hundred pre-trigger restrictions throughout the rear mountain.

Mo Chen had a clear idea of how many people were lying in ambush.

But he truly hadn't expected this familiar face.

"Since we've torn off all pretense, why keep acting? When you were recommended to the Twin Crane Sect's inner sect back then, I thought you'd amount to something. Yet aren't you still only at the seventh level of Qi Refining?"

Having confirmed Mo Chen's identity, Jiang Jiuyao and her companion spoke bluntly. "Have you been scared stupid? I don't know what you're so pleased about. Two late-stage Qi Refining cultivators capturing one mid-stage cultivator is a sure thing. If you want a painful death, obediently hand over whatever miraculous elixir let you live for over a century!"

With that, both formed sword seals and flicked their hands, sending two Flying Swords stabbing toward Mo Chen from the front and rear!