You Have an Affinity with Immortals

It was late at night, and few people were out on the streets. Apart from the red gauze lanterns hanging outside the homes of a few wealthy families, there was hardly any light.

Xu Chunliang paid it no mind and walked slowly east along the wall at the side of the road.

After just two steps, Xu Chunliang instinctively felt a chill. He wrapped his arms around himself, trying to hold in his body heat.

The lantern beneath the gatehouse to his left suddenly dimmed, and the area illuminated by its light began to shrink.

Xu Chunliang looked up and saw a mass of dense darkness in an alley in the distance. With it at the center, darkness poured out like flowing water and flooded the alley.

Xu Chunliang's surroundings began to fade, like a photograph aging rapidly.

White mold grew over the gray brick wall behind him, which then began to flake and peel like human faces shedding their skin.

A damp, gloomy, rotten smell tinged with something ominous drifted over from the end of the road.

"Against the wall. Press yourself close."

A voice came from his left. Startled, Xu Chunliang turned and saw a blind man holding a white banner.

The blind man turned to face the wall, pressing his black-clad body tightly against the moldy bricks. Standing there, he raised the index and middle fingers of his right hand and bit them hard between his teeth.

Blood spurted out as he immediately began drawing talismans on the wall at great speed, muttering an incantation under his breath.

The moment he finished drawing the intricate incantation, he said quietly, "Put out that candle."

Without hesitation, Xu Chunliang flicked his fingers, sending out two invisible streams of air that snuffed out the candle overhead, whose flame had already almost vanished into the darkness.

Everything around them went completely dark.

In the darkness, the sound of the blind man's fingers tracing the wall continued, and Xu Chunliang heard him reciting an incantation he had never heard before.

A Daoist? This is the first time I've heard one. Xu Chunliang speculated about the blind man's origins.

"Don't think, don't speak, and don't breathe." The blind man stopped moving his hand and fell silent, becoming completely still and quiet.

Xu Chunliang hurriedly held his breath as well, pressing himself tightly against the cold wall behind him and looking into the darkness.

An icy, ominous aura kept coming from the end of the road, washing over Xu Chunliang. But the gray brick wall behind him, where the blind man had drawn his talismans, had turned from cold to faintly warm, helping Xu Chunliang resist the icy aura.

This blind man is a good person, Xu Chunliang thought approvingly.

Xu Chunliang turned to glance at the blind man and saw that he was trembling nonstop. Clearly, he was terrified.

The ground trembled slightly, as though a herd of elephants were approaching from afar.

Xu Chunliang looked curiously into the darkness.

Within it were figures of varying heights. With heavy, mechanical steps, they swayed as they walked toward them from the end of the alley.

A chilling wind blew, and Xu Chunliang saw what they looked like.

They were giants, three meters tall and as thin as sticks.

Their bodies and limbs were tightly wrapped in coarse, bluish-black cloth, making them look like four bluish-black chopsticks bound together with rags. They were tall and grotesque.

Coarse cloth in alternating purple and blue-green was tightly wrapped like mummy bandages around their long, narrow heads, each shaped like a large jujube pit,

and a long, narrow strip of white cloth was pasted over each face. The cloth was as long as a snake's tongue and hung straight down in front of them, with the character [immortal] written on it.

Above their heads were black paper cranes that blotted out the sky.

Every one of those paper cranes was as big as a Santana sedan. Crowding and overlapping one another, they flew above the giants' heads.

What kind of monsters are these? Xu Chunliang could not help wondering.

Then his hair stood on end!

Whoosh!

The character [immortal] appeared in front of Xu Chunliang, staring at him from behind the cloth and a face covered in rags.

Xu Chunliang could see nothing at all, yet he seemed to sense a profound face formed from a black-and-white vortex before him.

The moment he drew his blade, he remembered what the blind man had just told him...

"Don't think, don't speak, and don't breathe."

Squelch!

Dozens of strips of rag shot into Xu Chunliang's body like arrows. His Moon Glow Grade true qi instantly collapsed, and a strip that pierced his forehead shattered his consciousness in an instant.

Shh...

Late at night, the living rested, and the dead awakened.

Don't think, don't speak, and don't breathe.

Think, and you die!!!

Xu Chunliang, deceased.

"Against the wall. Press yourself close."

"Don't think, don't speak, and don't breathe."

Xu Chunliang hurriedly turned around and stared silently at the gray bricks in front of him.

He tried hard not to think about those things.

Drawing his blade just now had already proven that he was no match for that thing.

He could only hide.

He tried hard to recall the suggestive videos he had watched in his previous life, the study materials on his hard drive, Teacher Chen's photography, and the leaked influencer videos in the veteran drivers' group.

His attention was finally diverted...

In the darkness, Xu Chunliang and the blind man did not speak or breathe, letting the heavy footsteps pass behind them.

Thud, thud, thud...

The two stood there like stone statues, every day feeling like a year.

He did not know how much time had passed before the heavy footsteps finally disappeared, the chill behind them completely dissipated, and starlight fell from the sky once more. Only then did the blind man's voice reach him.

"All right, it's safe. Relax."

Yu Chunliang hurriedly turned and loosened his neck. Only then did he see the words written on the white banner in the blind man's hand.

Instead of the [uncanny predictions] Xu Chunliang had imagined, four large characters had been written on the banner in black ink:

[Heaven on Earth]

Heaven on Earth? Xu Chunliang murmured to himself.

"You're not bad, kid. You're reasonably obedient. I told you not to look, think, or breathe, and you really did it." Not bad, not bad.

With his eyes closed, the blind man "sized up" Xu Chunliang.

"Hmm... very good. You've already reached Moon Glow Grade at such a young age, and you even carry a strange artifact. What a pity... what a pity..."

After sighing twice, the blind man extended his fingers toward Xu Chunliang.

Xu Chunliang dodged backward, avoiding the blind man's withered hand. Then he cupped his fists in salute. "I am Xu Chunliang, a minor flag officer of the Demon-Slaying Bureau. Thank you, senior. May I ask who you are...?"

"Call me Blind Chen."

The blind man withdrew his hand without getting angry.

He casually stuck a filthy fingernail into his nostril and picked at it, then flicked out a black booger with a blissful expression before saying softly:

"Meeting like this is fate, young man. While you can still leave, hurry and go."

Xu Chunliang hurriedly cupped his fists and asked, "What do you mean, senior...? And what were those things just now?"

"They were so strange, tall and slender. Why was the character [immortal] written on the white cloth covering their faces? Is that what immortals look like?"

Blind Chen "looked" at Xu Chunliang in surprise and asked in astonishment:

"You saw what they looked like?"

"And you saw the immortal clouds on their faces?"

"You actually didn't die. Did you only look without thinking?"

"Strange, strange. Young man, you have an affinity with immortals."