Back among the living (revised)

"Get out! Out! Come back again and I'll beat you to death!"

Amid furious shouts, a handsome boy of sixteen or seventeen fled with his hands over his head, driven out of the house by a flurry of blows from an old man in coarse hemp clothes.

"Hiss... ow, ow, ow... failed again... this virtual reality game is so hard. Ugh."

He peered into the courtyard a few times, unwilling to give up, but when he saw the old man wave his stick, he quickly ducked his head and scurried away.

Only after watching him leave did the gray-haired old man angrily throw his fire poker into a corner of the courtyard and return inside, his anger still lingering.

"Where on earth did that boy come from? A man, yet he insists on playing matchmaker! It's been seven or eight whole days. He comes to propose at least twice a day, sometimes even five times! If he dares come again..."

"Dad, don't be angry." Along with a girl's clear voice, a pair of small, jade-white hands gently took the old man's arm and guided him to a seat.

The girl wore no makeup and was dressed only in coarse hemp clothes, but her skin was smooth as cream and her face as fair as white jade. The longsword at her waist lent a touch of valor to her very pretty appearance.

Her dark eyes darted about. "How about... I go find Brother Lizhu and ask him to persuade that boy not to come again?"

"You want to see Lizhu? Hmph, you think your father doesn't know what you're thinking? Pack your things. You're going back to the Holy Academy to study tomorrow!" the old man snapped.

"Dad! Classes don't start for another week. Are you that eager to get rid of me? I wanted to spend more time with you!"

"Is spending time with me really what you have in mind?"

"Yes," the girl said. "Of course, if I could..."

"Enough, enough. I know." The old man interrupted with a long sigh. "You and Lizhu grew up together, and you're close. I watched him grow up too. If you hadn't awakened your Saint Soul, I wouldn't object to you marrying him. But now? Absolutely! Not!"

"Dad! Could you stop being so..."

"What, you think I despise the poor and favor the rich?"

The girl faltered. "No, I know you want what's best for me. Brother Lizhu can't cultivate, while I'm already almost at the Two-Star level. Whether it's our lifespans or anything else, it's hard for a cultivator and an ordinary person to be happy together. I've actually always seen Brother Lizhu as an older brother, but he's already sent someone to propose. I have to explain things to him, don't I? What good does keeping me at home do?"

"At least you have some sense, but I know your temperament better than anyone. You're easily swayed. I'm afraid that once you see Lizhu, you won't have the heart to turn him down and will only hold him back instead. You'll listen to me on this. No arguments!"

"Dad!" Zhou Xiaoxian pouted, grumbling inwardly, Old stick-in-the-mud. Stubborn old man. Then a sly gleam flashed through her eyes. "Dad, did you ever propose to Mom? I wonder how an ordinary man like you managed to marry a cultivator like her?"

Old Zhou's stern face instantly stiffened. Precisely because your father was a toad who got to eat swan meat, he doesn't want another toad getting his daughter. And besides... He stammered, "That was different. Your mother and I grew up together... wait! How did you know your mother was a cultivator?"

"Did you really think you could keep it from me? I'm all grown up. I figured out ages ago that our family has secrets," Zhou Xiaoxian said with a smile. "A lot of what you've taught me isn't covered nearly as thoroughly in the Holy Academy's textbooks. Besides, every year around this time, you take some yellow paper up the back mountain by yourself to pay respects at an abandoned grave, and you never let me come along. Is our family a fallen cultivation family?"

"Yellow paper? The back mountain? Oh no!"

At this, Old Zhou's expression suddenly changed and he stood up. "What's the date today, Xiao Xian?" he asked urgently.

Zhou Xiaoxian blinked. "The eighteenth... I think."

"The eighteenth?!"

"Damn it, I missed the day to burn paper offerings for the ancestor! It's all that boy matchmaker's fault!"

He ran to a corner of the room, dug out a stack of yellow paper, put on the bamboo hat hanging by the door, and hurried out, leaving only a single instruction. "Stay home! Don't go looking for Lizhu!"

Instead, those words made Zhou Xiaoxian's eyes dart about again. She crept to the doorway and poked her head outside, tentatively taking half a step out on tiptoe before stopping in hesitation.

"Dad's never been this flustered before. Yellow paper... the back mountain... what's this ancestor?"

"But Brother Lizhu... oh!"

On the mountain behind Zhou Family Village, Old Zhou strode swiftly along with the stack of yellow paper. In just a few minutes, he climbed halfway up the mountain, passed through a patch of golden pears, and reached the village's communal graveyard.

As he turned into the middle of the graveyard, his anxious expression suddenly froze. He rubbed his eyes and hurried forward a few steps, stammering, "This? What is this?! What godforsaken bastard dug up the ancestor's grave?!"

The grave he had come to pay respects at looked as though it had been blasted open, with earth scattered around its edges and a huge hole gaping in its center! One look inside, at the coffin lid broken in the middle and the empty coffin beneath it, left Old Zhou thunderstruck. "The burial goods are one thing, but even the ancestor's remains... they even stole his remains! How am I supposed to face Xia Lan?! How am I supposed to face Xia Lan..."

Muttering a few words, he fell to his knees with a thud, tears streaming down his aged face!

"Xia Lan, I, Zhou Feng, have let you down! Not only did that boy matchmaker make me miss the time to burn paper offerings for the ancestor, but now... no! I have to at least recover the ancestor's remains! Recover them..."

Just then, a sinister breeze suddenly brushed the back of Old Zhou's head.

An eerie chill pierced him to the core!

A sinister, ghostly voice sounded right beside his ear!

"Hee~ ha~ no~ need~ to~ look~"

"I'm~ right~ behind~ you~"

??!

Old Zhou's gaze swept over the nearby graves, and he turned stiffly.

Tattered cloth shoes, rotted beyond recognition.

A filthy burial robe covered in large flowers.

Withered hands curled before a chest.

A face hidden behind disheveled white hair.

Blood-red eyes faintly showing through!

A ghost, a ghost?!!

"Gah-"

Old Zhou's eyes rolled back, and he toppled onto his back.

"Huh? Hey! Having a fit?"

"Hahahahaha..." Xia Yi pushed aside the white hair covering his face and laughed uproariously at the old man he had frightened unconscious. "What a chicken... whoa, hey!"

With a nimble little hop to the side, Xia Yi turned to look at the coldly gleaming longsword that had swept past his shoulder, then at the girl holding it, trembling with fear yet struggling to muster her courage. The smile never left his face.

"Little girl, you're decisive enough. What's your name?"

Zhou Xiaoxian tightened her grip on the sword and demanded, "Burial-robe monster! Are you human or a ghost?"

Heh, burial-robe monster? Xia Yi's smile grew wider, but he feigned displeasure. "Of course I'm human. Are you trying to kill me? Rude little girl. What's your name?"

"Human..." Zhou Xiaoxian asked angrily, "Why are you dressed like that to scare my dad?!"

"Scare him?"

Xia Yi shook his head and lowered his voice as though sharing some secret. "I've always worn this. Speaking of which, I have to ask: why has my luxurious underground mausoleum become a solitary grave in the wilderness, and why was my coffin lid, which used to open with a push, nailed down tight? I almost couldn't get out."

Zhou Xiaoxian: ?

"You didn't understand?" Xia Yi leaped back into the opened grave and lay smoothly down in the perfectly sized coffin, closing his eyes. "Your father was late bringing my paper offerings, so I climbed out to hurry him along. All right, I'm lying down now. Go ahead and burn them."

-?→╭(°A°`)╮!

Clang!

Zhou Xiaoxian's sword fell to the ground!

"Burial-robe monster! And you said you were human?!"

A little while later.

Thick, acrid smoke woke Old Zhou.

Through his blurred vision, he caught sight of a fire. Behind it, his daughter Zhou Xiaoxian was feeding yellow paper into the flames, her little face taut. Tapping his head, Old Zhou gradually recalled what he had seen before fainting. The ancestor's grave was dug up, his remains were stolen, and then I saw a...

"Hiss..." Drawing a sharp breath, Old Zhou looked around and murmured, "Still in the graveyard, but that monster's gone. An illusion? Huh, the ancestor's corpse is here too... the ancestor's corpse... is here too... here?"

"Gah-"

Her little face taut, Zhou Xiaoxian actually failed to notice her father abruptly sit up and fall back down. With her eyes closed, she burned the last handful of yellow paper, silently counted to three, then opened her eyes wide and looked into the grave. "Begone, demons!"

But.

The burial-robe monster still lay in the coffin, smiling at her.

Revealing his white front teeth.

Very white.

"Waaah!"

Her little mouth crumpled, and Zhou Xiaoxian gave a soft cry, turned, hoisted Old Zhou onto her shoulder, and ran! The tiny girl weighed only eighty jin, yet her strength was extraordinary. Carrying a hundred-and-twenty-jin man did not slow her flight in the slightest!

In the blink of an eye, she vanished down the mountain path.

Only then did Xia Yi leap out of the grave. He picked up the longsword Zhou Xiaoxian had dropped in her panic, drew it halfway to take a look, then picked up Old Zhou's fallen bamboo hat and put it on. An illusory screen of light appeared before his eyes, then vanished.

"Cute little girl."

"Eight hundred years already?"

"Back among the living, and the sky is still blue."

"The Xia Family's bloodline hasn't died out either."

"How wonderful."

His burial robe and white hair swayed in the breeze as Xia Yi closed his eyes and greedily breathed in the air.

A wisp of unlit ash drifted into his nostrils.

"Huh, huh, hss-achoo!!"