How Could My Brilliant Plan Fail?

"Senior Xie, did the Immortal Master send you to show me the way?"

Moonlight poured down like flowing water, bathing the mountain path until it looked like white jade. A figure walked along it, and a closer look revealed a tiny figure at her feet, all four legs moving at a furious pace.

Yunzhi had a vague suspicion that the Immortal Master still couldn't put his mind at ease about her. Perhaps he feared she would expose her magic before mortals or use demon-slaying as a pretext to do as she pleased, so he had sent Senior Xie to keep an eye on her.

Considering that humans and demons were different, and that she had only recently met the Immortal Master, she felt she could understand.

The cat, however, turned and gave her a puzzled look without answering.

"Senior Xie, can you find the way?"

"I can!"

"Do you go there often?"

"Often!"

"Did the Immortal Master make any other arrangements?"

"..."

The cat continued along in little steps, then turned to give her another puzzled look. His voice was soft and clear, but firm.

"I'm going to eat meat!"

"Huh?"

Yunzhi froze, then realized she had been overthinking things.

She felt around on her person, then looked at Senior Xie, who didn't have a stitch of clothing on him. "But I didn't ask the Immortal Master for any money," she said, at a loss. "Senior Xie, did you bring any?"

"Someone gives out meat!"

"What?"

Yunzhi's eyes widened.

People were giving out meat these days?

Back in the Great Ming, in particularly hard years, charitable people would open their grain sacks wide to help the poor. But they only handed out thin porridge made from old grain, some of it mixed with bits of debris. She had never heard of anyone giving out meat outright.

"Doesn't it cost money?"

"Just go and eat! I eat there all the time, and every time I eat until my belly's full!"

Yunzhi was so shocked that, for a moment, she didn't know what to say.

The woman and cat walked in silence for a while.

By the time they left the mountain path and passed through the alleys, the sky had gone completely dark. But Yunzhi now saw the night the Immortal Master had spoken of, lit up as brightly as day. It was no less lively than daytime, and beneath the glow of neon, its dreamlike splendor was even greater.

"This..."

She stood there in a daze, unable to take another step.

Fortunately, she still remembered her task.

There was only one main road outside the temple. She headed right and found that Senior Xie's little figure had already gone on ahead.

They made their way through the bustling traffic and gradually left the prosperous stretch behind. At last, she saw the darkness of night she knew, as well as the meat shop the Immortal Master had mentioned, its red light glowing.

Several dogs of very different appearances stood on guard over there.

Senior Xie paid them no mind. He walked over at his leisure and, without a word, sat down in front of the butcher's shop.

"Oh, you're back? You haven't been here for days. Where have you been?"

A fat shopkeeper spotted Senior Xie and immediately beamed. He cut off a small piece of lean meat and tossed it over.

Senior Xie caught it neatly and began eating at once.

"Come earlier next time."

The butcher gave him the reminder, but Senior Xie paid no attention.

So that was what was going on!

Only then did Yunzhi understand.

"Senior Xie, you stay here and eat. I'll go take a look over there," Yunzhi said to him in a low voice. "The Immortal Master said the temple isn't far from here."

The little temple stood outside the town. As she walked toward it, the bright yellow streetlights gave way to the dim white glow of solar lamps, which faintly illuminated its outline.

Yunzhi gathered her courage and slowly approached.

When she had attained the Dao and gained intelligence, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth had already been extremely thin, and there were very few demons in the world to begin with. Afterward, she had spent a long time feeling her way toward a method of cultivation, and decades more had passed before she took human form. Thus, in her travels across the world, she had actually dealt with very few demons and ghosts.

Fortunately, her true form wasn't docile either.

Yunzhi walked up to the temple and looked up.

It was an unusually large earth god temple. The horizontal plaque read "Temple of Lord Linji, True God of Fortune and Virtue." There was a door in the middle, with false windows painted on either side. In the dim light, it looked like a human face: the door was its mouth, and the two false windows were its eyes, watching passersby from the dark in silence.

Creak! She pushed the temple door open!

Yunzhi entered, keeping close to the wall, and stepped into the temple.

Although it was the Temple of Lord Linji, True God of Fortune and Virtue, the Heavenly Emperor, the Heavenly Venerable, and the Buddha still occupied the center as a mark of respect. Lord Linji stood alone on the right, and there were many small statues as well as statues of gods she didn't recognize.

Dim light filtered in, revealing the brightly painted statues in indistinct outlines. For some reason, though they were gods, they often inspired fear.

That did seem to be the case. It wasn't just because she was a demon, or because something had happened at this temple. Even with someone else at another temple, unless they were an exceptionally devout cultivator, statues of gods in the dimness at night would still make their heart tremble.

Some people said it was because they had something on their conscience.

Yunzhi turned to look at Lord Linji's statue, and several tiny, pitch-black eyes emerged from her thick black hair.

A faint divine light could be seen on Lord Linji's statue.

"Huh?"

Yunzhi was surprised and disappointed.

This was the kind of divine light she had seen most often before. It meant that a "deity" really had manifested there.

"Did this deity not completely dissipate, then revive when spiritual energy returned?" Yunzhi speculated. "Did he sleep so long that his brain stopped working? Or was he affected by some evil or baleful energy, making him do things so out of keeping with the identity and precepts of a deity?"

It was a pity. She had already decided that if it really was that demon, she would do everything she could to send him straight to the mountain and turn her image around.

"Now..."

Yunzhi thought it over. All she could do was go back and report to the Immortal Master.

No matter how weak a deity was or how low his rank, he was still a deity. Even if his brain had stopped working, he was still a deity, with the entire Heavenly Palace behind him. Although she had never seen any of the great gods of the Heavenly Palace, she still didn't dare show him disrespect.

The mortal court could do such things, and so could certain sects that specialized in razing mountains and destroying temples. Demons absolutely could not.

The Immortal Master? The Immortal Master probably could too!

She was just about to leave the temple when a fierce wind suddenly sprang up around her.

"Whoosh..."

Incense ash and paper money rose together, making her instinctively narrow her eyes. The air filled with the strong smell of incense ash and candle wax.

Though Yunzhi was a demon, she wasn't afraid in the least.

"Honored one, please wait! I'm no ordinary demon. I now live at the Earth Sage Temple on the mountain, and the master of the Earth Sage Temple asked me to come investigate the strange happenings here!"

With the Immortal Master backing her, what did she have to fear from an earth god?

But the fierce wind in the temple only kept howling!

Something was wrong! Yunzhi suddenly caught the faintest traces of a rank smell hidden in the wind. There was also something a little familiar about it.

"A demon?

"One of my own kind?"

Yunzhi shielded her eyes with her hand and forced them open, only to see that the main doors had shut tight at some point.

"Goats! Give me goats to eat!"

A clumsy, thick, raspy voice rang out, sounding extremely impatient as it echoed endlessly through the little temple.

"So it really is you!"

Without any visible movement from Yunzhi, her whole body drifted backward. She landed on the altar behind her, almost shoulder to shoulder with the Heavenly Emperor's statue.

Her eyes remained fixed on the main doors ahead.

Fortunately, her senses were sharp. Had someone else encountered such a strange occurrence, they could easily have thought the demon was hiding inside the temple and instinctively fled for the exit. How could they have known the demon was hiding in the doors themselves? Trying to put distance between them would have sent them straight into the tiger's jaws.

"So you fled here, took over someone else's temple, and demanded livestock as blood sacrifices."

In her eyes, heavy black smoke now shrouded the doors, and a coin-shaped mark sat in their very center like an ornament.

The demonic aura was strong. This demon's cultivation far surpassed her own.

Yunzhi went on full alert and forced herself to remain calm, so she could steadily carry out the plan to persuade him to surrender that she had prepared long ago.

"You've occupied a temple and posed as a god. Your audacity reaches the heavens!"

After that opening threat, she continued:

"Now that you've seen me, you must know that the Immortal Master on the mountain already knows you came down!

"It's just that the Immortal Master's cultivation is profound and his magical power boundless. A mere gesture from him would make the earth quake and the mountains shake. You aren't worthy of having the Immortal Master come down the mountain to catch you himself, nor is his mighty power worth using on you!

"However, the Immortal Master is compassionate by nature. He issued a decree ordering me to bring you back. If you come back obediently and properly admit your mistakes, you might receive a lighter punishment!"

Yunzhi was fairly confident.

The Immortal Master's magic was powerful-that was a fact. This demon couldn't escape-that was also a fact. Now that she had come to his door, all she had to do was make him see the facts and offer a little guidance and persuasion. With her own example before him, someone who had made a mistake and been forgiven by the Immortal Master, he would surely come back with her as long as he wasn't stupid.

That was how people were persuaded to surrender in books.

But the wind in the temple only grew fiercer, the rank smell stronger, and the clumsy, raspy voice thundered in her ears:

"I am a door god! I am a door god!"

"Why must you be so blind to the times? Everyone knows that true gods neither possess people nor demand sacrifices. Haven't you heard how Wang Lingguan once demanded sacrifices in the mortal world, only for Celestial Master Sa to raze his mountain and destroy his temple? Even the chief of the heavenly spirit officials met that fate, let alone you."

Yunzhi paused, then continued:

"Cultivation isn't easy. Why seek a path that ends in death and the destruction of your Dao? To tell you the truth, I once made a mistake too. Later, I honestly admitted my wrongdoing, and not only did the Immortal Master forgive me, he now lets me cultivate and learn at his side. He helped me swiftly recover the cultivation I had lost, and he even gave me a treasure that advanced both my cultivation and my potential."

"Goats! I want to eat goats!"

"Your wicked nature won't change!"

Yunzhi frowned and spoke more sternly:

"Impersonating a true god is already a grave crime, yet you've also demanded sacrifices in the mortal world and caused panic. Taken together, your crimes are unforgivable! You've only just woken up, so you don't know how vast the Immortal Master's divine powers are, much less that missiles have limitless might. There's still time to repent!"

"I am a door god!"

"Wait! You're not a fool, are you?"

"I am a door god!"

"..."

This is bad! Yunzhi suddenly realized that there seemed to be something wrong with his intelligence.

Her carefully prepared strategy had run into a fool!

Now she was in trouble.

With her best plan having failed, she had no choice but to resort to the lesser one.

Seeing the fierce wind bearing down on her, Yunzhi didn't hesitate. She blew a breath forward with a whoosh:

Like a Dream!

This was an illusion technique with countless marvelous uses. It could be used to please the powerful at a night banquet, to show mortals the wondrous delights of magic out in the streets, or to fight an enemy, making them wear themselves out in an illusion.

But then the clumsy voice spoke:

"This door is impassable!"

The illusion had reached the doorway, only to be blocked and thrown back.