A crowd had gathered around the entrance—mortals and cultivators alike, all craning their necks to look down.
“I heard there are hundreds of Bone-devouring Rats down there. Dense as ants. Just one look and your scalp goes numb.”
“Hundreds? I heard thousands!”
“Whatever it is, I’m not going down.”
Luo Qingci pushed through the crowd and reached the entrance.
The sewer opening was a square well made of stone, with iron climbing rungs embedded in the walls.
It was pitch black, the bottom impossible to see.
A current of putrid air surged up from below, making her feel queasy.
Just finish the mission quickly and get back to cultivation…
Without hesitation, she gripped the iron rungs and climbed down step by step.
“That’s another cultivator…”
“Such a pretty girl. What a waste to go down there…”
“Keep it down, will you? She’s a Foundation Establishment powerhouse, and from the Azure Cloud Sect. How could she be like you?”
After descending about three or four zhang, her feet touched solid ground.
She pulled a Moonlight Stone from her storage pouch and held it in her palm.
Its soft white light illuminated a small area.
The sewer was more spacious than she had expected.
The passage was about a zhang wide, with rough stone walls on both sides.
The floor was slick stone slabs covered in a layer of black sludge, soft and sticky underfoot.
Overhead, the vaulted stone ceiling had cast iron drainage openings every few zhang.
Occasionally, water would fall from above with a splash, striking the ground and echoing loudly in the silent sewer.
A thick stench of decay hung in the air, mixed with the smell of blood and an unidentifiable animal musk.
She walked forward along the passage.
Her footsteps were swallowed by the sludge.
The glow of the Moonlight Stone moved slowly through the darkness, casting her shadow on the stone walls like a solitary ghost.
After walking for about the time it takes to burn a joss stick, she heard the first rat squeak.
Sharp, tiny, chittering sounds coming from deeper in the passage.
Not just one—many, overlapping densely, like someone scraping their fingernails repeatedly on glass.
Luo Qingci slowed her pace and tightened her grip on her sword hilt.
In the light of the Moonlight Stone, the first pair of eyes appeared.
Green.
Small.
Glowing in the dark.
Then a second pair, a third, a fourth… dozens, hundreds, packed tightly together like two rows of ghostly flames suspended in midair.
Bone-devouring Rats.
Each one was as big as a house cat.
Their gray-black fur gleamed with an oily sheen in the Moonlight Stone’s light.
Dark red bloodstains clung to their pointed mouths.
Their sharp teeth jutted out from their lips, shining in the light.
Luo Qingci didn’t wait for them to charge.
She drew her sword.
Ice-blue spiritual power surged from her palm, condensing a thin layer of frost on the blade.
Her figure flickered in the darkness, and the sword light swept through the rat swarm like a ribbon of silk.
After killing for the time it takes to burn a joss stick, she had nearly wiped them out.
Just as she was about to head back and rest, she discovered that the passage she had come from was blocked.
Not blocked by the Bone-devouring Rats.
By something far stronger.
A person.
In the darkness, a vague figure stood there, blocking her retreat.
The figure was some distance away, making it hard to see clearly.
She could only make out a thin, elongated silhouette wrapped in a dark cloak, with a hood pulled low, hiding most of its face.
Luo Qingci extended her spiritual sense toward it.
The moment it touched the figure, it bounced back as if hitting a wall.
Golden Core?
A Golden Core Stage cultivator, appearing in the sewer of a mortal city, blocking the path of a small Foundation Establishment cultivator.
She didn’t need to think twice.
This couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Heh heh… I was just looking for some entertainment.”
The figure spoke.
The voice was low, carrying a kind of grin that made one’s skin crawl.
“Supreme Yin Profound Body… to think I’d encounter such a physique in a backwater place like this.”
Luo Qingci looked around.
No one.
Supreme Yin Profound Body?
Me?
She had no idea what that was, but the moment that term came out of the Golden Core cultivator’s mouth, she turned and ran.
She was at Foundation Establishment early stage.
Fighting a Golden Core?
And almost out of spiritual power to boot?
What a joke!?
A Golden Core True Person staring at her with a humanoid sneer—was she supposed to stay and let him treat her to dinner?
That bastard definitely wanted to beat her to her knees, capture her, and do unspeakable things!
The figure stepped out of the darkness.
The movement caused his hood to slip slightly, revealing a pale, gaunt face.
His features were deeply set, his eye sockets sunken.
His pupils were gray, lifeless, like two stones left to soak in water for too long.
A smile twisted his lips—not a friendly one, but the smug smile of a hunter who had found his prey.
“Don’t be in a hurry to run. I won’t kill you,” he said.
“If I killed you, this physique would go to waste. I’ll keep you alive. Use you slowly. But since you want to play hide-and-seek with me, I’ll play along.”
Luo Qingci’s mouth twitched.
‘Who wants to play hide-and-seek with some old geezer like you! You’re one foot in the grave and still acting like a child. If you find me, are you going to give me a reward?’
She ran deeper into the sewer.
The entrance was blocked by a Golden Core freak.
How was she, at Qi Condensation Third Layer, supposed to fight him?
The man laughed.
The sound echoed through the sewer, stabbing painfully at her eardrums, like the grating noise of nails on a chalkboard.
“Where are you? Where are you? Hee-hee, I’ll find you soon.”
‘Freaking lunatic!’
Footsteps followed behind her—unhurried, like a cat toying with a mouse.
“I’ve been stuck at Golden Core for centuries…”
His voice floated over from behind, tinged with a disgusting sense of appreciation.
“Today, I finally found a chance to form a Nascent Soul. Heaven’s blessing.”
Luo Qingci gritted her teeth, cursing him in her mind as she ran deeper.
‘Worthless old man. Hundreds of years old and still at Golden Core. If you’ve got guts, wait until I break through to Golden Core!’
The sewer passage stretched ahead, growing narrower and lower.
Her forehead hit a crossbeam, stars exploding before her eyes from the pain, but she didn’t stop.
She hunched over and kept running.
She didn’t know how far she could run.
She didn’t know where she could escape to.
But she knew one thing—if that man caught her, her life was over.
She understood exactly what “use you slowly” meant.
The passage ended at a dead end.
A stone wall blocked the way completely.
Luo Qingci stood before the wall.
The Moonlight Stone’s glow illuminated the cold stone surface, revealing no cracks.
She pushed against it—the wall didn’t budge.
She hacked at it with her sword.
Stone chips flew, but the wall’s thickness far exceeded what she could breach in such a short time.
Footsteps approached from behind.
The man walked unhurriedly, stopping at the edge of the Moonlight Stone’s glow.
His gray pupils gave off a faint light in the darkness, like two lamps about to go out.
“Can’t run anymore?” he asked.
Luo Qingci turned around, her back against the stone wall.
She held her sword horizontally in front of her, a barrier between her and the man.
She stared at that pale, gaunt face, at that smug, self-satisfied smile, at those emotionless gray eyes.
She thought to herself—how could she be so unlucky?
The accident at age seven.
She lost her identity.
Became a woman.
Abandoned by her clan.
Coveted by her fellow disciples.
Now she was being targeted by a Golden Core Stage old man.
It seemed like ever since she turned seven, her life had been one accident after another, one streak of bad luck after another.
“This physique of yours isn’t fully awakened yet, which is why your cultivation is so low.”
The man slowly approached.
“When I help you awaken it, you’ll be able to fully unleash the power of the Supreme Yin Profound Body. By then, I’ll break through to Nascent Soul and step into Divine Transformation. You’ll be my number one meritorious officer.”
He reached out a hand toward her.
That hand was pale, bloodless.
The nails were long, the knuckles protruding.
Just as that hand was about to touch her shoulder, Luo Qingci made her final move.
She held the iron sword across her body.
Frost condensed on the blade.
Since she couldn’t escape, she would fight to the last moment and then fall on her own sword.
[Ding — Your fiancée is experiencing a life-and-death crisis in Muyun City.]
“What the hell?”