The Strange Jade Pendant

Looking at the jade pendant before him, Qin Fei fell into thought.

The person from earlier should have realized by now that the pendant had changed owners, but his reaction had been strange. He did not seem to care.

For a moment, Qin Fei could not make heads or tails of it.

He turned it over in his mind, but he had too little information to make any sense of it.

He slowly sent his Divine Sense inside, watching the pendant carefully for any changes.

Suddenly, the pendant glowed again, projecting a pillar of light into the air.

[Codename: Seventy-Seven]

[Position: Underworld Bureau]

[Exterminate Rogue Cultivator Chen Youdao: completed. Employer's reward received: Ice Soul Shield (First-Tier Middle-Grade)

[Collect one Mother-and-Child Flower, five hundred years old: completed. Employer's reward received: Still Water Sword (First-Tier Superior-Grade)]

[Exterminate the cultivator in charge of the Star Radiance Merchant Association: failed. The task has been reassigned. Automatically disappears after three failures]

Below this information was a list of more than a hundred tasks, all viewable with a touch of Divine Sense.

[Luoping Mountain Range: capture a Black Water Flood Dragon hatchling. Reward: three hundred low-grade Spirit Stones]

[Exterminate Li Peiyuan, an outer disciple of the Azure Wood Palace. Reward: five bottles of Origin Restoration Pills]

[Pick Earth Luo Grass seeds. Reward: Ice and Fire Two Aspects Array]

Cultivators could also post tasks through the pendant. For a small handling fee, they could become employers.

Once Qin Fei understood how to use the pendant, he was stunned.

It was an outsourcing platform.

No wonder the man did not care that the pendant had changed hands. Everyone was just a beast of burden working for the platform anyway; it made no difference who did the work.

Qin Fei had finally figured out the reason for the attack, too.

His earlier guess had been right: those two had not been Bandit Cultivators.

Someone had posted a task on the pendant to exterminate the cultivators in charge of the Star Radiance Merchant Association.

He had read the task in detail. The targets were limited to members of the association itself, namely Tang Zhan, Tiezhu, and the others.

As for why they had attacked him and Old Zhang, the two of them had probably been too close to the association lately and had been mistaken for its members.

It really was a calamity out of nowhere.

Still, an attack on Tiezhu and the others was not something Qin Fei wanted to see either.

He needed to inform the association as soon as possible so they could prepare.

Qin Fei pondered for a while, then took the pendant outside.

He found the thing too sinister and thought it best to have as little to do with it as possible.

Especially the mandatory tasks the man had mentioned: if one was refused or failed, Impermanence would come calling.

Ghosts knew what Impermanence was, but "come calling" did not sound good.

Though the tasks on the pendant were extremely tempting, he had too little control over the situation. It was better to get rid of it.

Qin Fei had already been a beast of burden in his previous life. Asking him to work for a platform in this life too? Not a chance.

After all, he already had the Heavenly Craft Creation Pavilion. He only needed to develop steadily; there was no need to take this risk.

Qin Fei walked a long way to a secluded spot, dug a deep hole, and buried the pendant.

He dusted off his hands and smiled in satisfaction.

"You dare threaten this young master? Impermanence will come calling? I wouldn't do it even if you paid me."

After that complaint, Qin Fei turned and left without the slightest reluctance.

Back home, he sent voice transmissions to Tang Zhan and the others. He did not mention the pendant, saying only that his analysis suggested the attack was connected to the merchant association.

He told them to be careful. Since their attackers had not achieved their goal, they would probably strike again.

Having done that, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He took out a Spirit Ascension Pill, popped it into his mouth, and slowly circulated the Everlasting Spring Art.

All pursuits were lowly; only cultivation stood above them.

Putting those other matters aside, he began to cultivate.

Speaking of Spirit Ascension Pills, they really were good things.

Qin Fei had kept himself supplied with pills lately, eating them almost as if they were candy.

No matter how poor he was, he set aside some Spirit Stones to buy Spirit Ascension Pills.

That was also why Qin Fei had broken through from the Qi Refining Third Layer to the fifth in less than half a year.

This method of cultivation had one drawback, though: it cost far too much.

Without a steady source of funds, an ordinary Rogue Cultivator could never keep it up.

At the thought, Qin Fei could not help feeling fortunate.

Fortunately, he had adopted an agency model and automated the crafting of puppets. Otherwise, even he could not have sustained such expenditure.

Qin Fei cultivated until early the next morning, then stopped circulating his cultivation method and immediately began crafting puppets.

This was just one part of his busy routine. He had spent every day this way.

Earn money sooner, pay off his debts sooner.

That was Qin Fei's goal.

But when he reached into his Storage Bag for materials, his eyes suddenly widened.

"Fuck, how did it get back here?"

There, unmistakably, lay a jade pendant in his Storage Bag.

The Yama Pendant!

Hadn't he gotten rid of it last night?

Qin Fei was plunged into deep doubt.

Had it been a dream?

Impossible. He could still tell reality from a dream.

"No, I have to go take a look."

Qin Fei rushed out like a madman and soon arrived at the place where he had buried the pendant.

The traces of last night's digging were still there, and the mark he had left was undisturbed.

Qin Fei refused to believe it and dug up the ground himself, but what he found left him dumbfounded.

There was no pendant in the hole. It seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Qin Fei did his best to calm himself.

Anything could happen in the cultivation world.

He buried the pendant in the hole once more.

On his way home, he carefully checked whether anyone was following him.

After confirming that everything was normal, he activated the Black Tortoise Breath-Concealing Array and opened all the restrictions. Only then did he relax a little.

But the result left him dumbfounded.

As soon as the early morning hours arrived, a sudden change occurred in his Storage Bag.

A jade pendant slowly materialized from top to bottom, as if being born anew.

The process made no disturbance whatsoever. If Qin Fei had not kept his Divine Sense fixed on the Storage Bag, he would never have noticed it.

"What in the world is this thing?"

The pendant's strangeness did not make him panic. Instead, he became unusually calm.

He did not like having things forced on him.

Since he could not get rid of it, he would seal it away for now.

As for the tasks on it, he had no intention of accepting them either, at least not until he learned where the pendant came from.

Qin Fei took out the pendant, placed several restrictions on it in succession, then put it in a jade box.

He took out several talismans and plastered them over the jade box until it was sealed tight, then put it back in the Storage Bag.

After all that, his interest in cultivation had vanished like smoke.

Qin Fei took it in stride. He simply picked up a jug of wine and went to find Tiezhu and the others for some diversion.

Though it was early morning, the Gathering Immortals Pavilion was still brightly lit.

Cultivators could replace sleep with cultivation, and many who had come to drink their fill stayed here drinking through the night.

In their usual private room on the fourth floor, the clink of wine cups sounded again and again.

The difference was that this time they had invited Wang Hu.

"Fellow Daoist Wang, everyone calls you Brother Hu, but I'm an old man, so I'll call you Fellow Daoist. Thank you for saving my life. If not for you, I'm afraid I wouldn't have made it to this gathering."

Old Zhang was full of emotion. He raised his cup and drained it.

It was the first time he had come so close to death.

Back when he had taken the wrong pill and lost any hope of advancing his cultivation, he had thought he had long since come to terms with life and death. Only now, after experiencing it, did he know that he wanted to live.

He had squandered half his life without accomplishing a thing. That truly should not have been.

This brush with death had not only shown him his true feelings, but also awakened his desire to cultivate.

This cup deserved a toast!

One cup to tomorrow, one cup to death.

Everyone present raised their cups and drained them.

No one mocked Old Zhang for having accomplished nothing.

They were all cultivators at the bottom, laughing and joking their days away, prosperous on the surface.

But who among those raised on this frontier did not live a humble life?