Chapter 59 This Must Be My Tribulation!

The sun blazed high in the sky, right in the middle of the afternoon. At home, Feng Xi was happily enjoying the soul-nourishing dish prepared by Liu Yunxi, replenishing nutrients for his frail modern body. Meanwhile, however, the uninitiated practitioners of Lucheng County were having a terribly rough time.

If the previous night had been a full mobilization of all fully enlightened practitioners, then now, as the exhausted masters who had stayed up all night began to grow drowsy, these junior disciples were forced to take over the burden and begin their work.

"Search thoroughly!" Daoist Priest Chen knew full well that this matter was of paramount importance. He had gone so far as to slap a refreshing talisman onto himself, forcing his weary mind to stay awake and supervise these unreliable youngsters.

Facing one of the top five grandmasters in the county, the junior disciples sent by various families did not dare to utter even half a word of complaint. They could only hold compasses, clutch tortoise shells, grasp divination cylinder tubes, and summon paper dolls, searching all the way along the city's perimeter.

Daoist Priest Chen sat on a bamboo chair and couldn't help but yawn, pondering the surrounding geomantic omens in his heart.

Having achieved enlightenment over a century ago, he had read feng shui for the surrounding areas quite a few times. He knew the Kunshan region like the back of his hand, and naturally had a crystal-clear understanding of where auspicious energy veins converged.

However, he was all too aware that time changes the world. A feng shui treasure spot of a century ago might not be so two hundred years prior, and a good meridian point from two hundred years ago might not retain its original appearance today.

"Still, Lucheng has been built for at least a thousand years, so the environment within the city should be fine. Earlier, I also asked the county magistrate to check the local gazetteers. If there are no major ancient tombs in the surrounding area, the ones carrying the most risk are probably Crab Lake and Saddle Mountain."

Daoist Priest Chen sighed. The so-called Saddle Mountain was not the famous Saddle Mountain five hundred miles away, but rather a small hill not far from Crab Lake—a body of water twice the size of Lucheng. Less than a hundred meters tall, it earned its name because its shape resembled a horse saddle. Despite its tiny size, it possessed several auspicious feng shui meridians, and the ancestral tombs of several families in the county were located there. Three of those spots had even been chosen by him.

"If there really is something wrong with an ancestral tomb, though, this is going to be troublesome..." Daoist Priest Chen pinched the bridge of his nose. The exhaustion of staying up all night combined with the stimulation of the refreshing talisman gave him a mild headache. Just then, however, he caught sight of a familiar figure, and immediately stood up.

"Miss Deng! What brings you here?"

"Daoist Priest Chen, please don't get up! You are a senior, just rest. I don't have much experience in magical duels, so I couldn't help earlier, but tracking objects and people happens to be my specialty. There's no reason for me to just sit by and watch everyone else busy!"

The speaker was a young woman, looking barely over twenty with decent facial features, except for her long hair which shimmered with a pale gray hue, giving her a somewhat unnatural, aged appearance.

This person was one of the five grandmasters of Lucheng County. Although she was barely twenty—younger even than the grand-disciples of some other masters—the household spirit she served had a heritage of several hundred years. However, this school of animal-immortal mediumship was, after all, a heterodox path of worshiping demonic spirits. Neither the City God Temple nor Daoist or Buddhist monasteries would allow them near, which was why she had not participated in the daytime ritual for placing the suppressing artifacts.

Yet, as a registered practitioner of Lucheng County, she could not simply sit idly by. Therefore, upon hearing that Daoist Priest Chen was making a massive fuss looking for something, she volunteered herself and hurried over.

In truth, Daoist Priest Chen was somewhat reluctant to rely on a medium of animal immortals, but since Miss Deng had taken the initiative to show up, that was a completely different matter.

After pondering for a moment in his mind, he said:

"Very well. I searched the entire night yesterday and am indeed exhausted. To tell you the truth, this matter is rather complicated. Let me explain the details to you..."

With that, Daoist Priest Chen recounted his suspicions. Miss Deng had originally thought they were merely tracking a stray ghost—at worst, a red-robed vengeful spirit that Great-Grandpa Gray Nine could easily handle. But upon hearing that it might involve the remnant soul of a demonic cultivator, her expression turned solemn instantly. She nodded heavily and said:

"When it comes to reading the dragon veins and locating meridian spots, I am naturally inferior to Senior Chen. But when it comes to hunting down ancient tombs and rotting corpses, I do have some expertise."

With that, Miss Deng formed hand seals with both hands and tapped a single foot on the ground. Given her connection with her household immortal, such actions were no longer strictly necessary, but a habit formed since childhood still made her shake her head vigorously.

Seeing her gray tresses sway with the motion of her body, her posture slowly turned somewhat bizarre. Daoist Priest Chen silently stepped back a few paces, a realization dawning upon him:

*So you're planning to use treasure-hunting methods to find a massive tomb? Makes sense. If there really is some elusive ancient tomb or rotting corpse, its status probably isn't low, so burial treasures are bound to be plentiful... It's a pity those grave robbers we caught at the beginning of the month were already executed; otherwise, finding them might have made this even faster!*

...

While the practitioners were bustling about anxiously, deep beneath a pile of rubble on Saddle Mountain—which appeared just as withered and desolate as its surroundings—a pair of murky eyes suddenly snapped open. Crimson radiance illuminated the cramped space. After several minutes of silence, as if finally adapting, a fingertip lightly calculated the qi—

"The fourteenth day of the twelfth month of the Jiachen year... Much earlier than expected. Is this the 【Rise of Dragons and Serpents】? No, that's not it. The malignant qi of this meridian point is still abundant. But if not, why would I awaken prematurely?"

The figure continued to calculate with its knuckles, and a faint, ethereal premonition emerged accordingly—

"The manifestation of the 【Heavenly Punishment】? Conflicting with the Rat? You've got to be kidding me! This isn't even the Grand Commander's position. Even if it were a rat demon..."

The figure's movements suddenly paused. The cognitive sluggishness caused by over a century of slumber slowly receded as it recalled certain matters—

"Ah, that's right. Lucheng does have a Gray Immortal... But I've been asleep for nearly two full sexagenary cycles; how could I possibly conflict with it?"

The more the figure thought about it, the more wrong it felt. It simply crawled out from the white jade bed and instinctively lowered its gaze. Oh well, it understood now!

"This timing is too coincidental! If I had just slept for seven more months, I would have achieved perfection. Even entering the Yisi year would have allowed me to shed this demonic fetus. Yet I am startled awake right at the end of the Jiachen year... Indeed, this must be my mortal tribulation!"

As if finally coming to a realization, the figure stood up from the white jade bed, and then immediately lowered its head again—

For no other reason than that it had bumped its head.

It looked up at the low "ceiling" of the tomb chamber, sighed slightly, and then climbed down from the jade bed with its stiff body. While using its own magic power to replace the earthly malignant qi and recharge the heaven-potting pouch that had not been used in two hundred years, it pondered its next strategy.

Cultivators always faced tribulations in their practice, but unlike in storybooks, these tribulations were not simply sudden bolts of heavenly lightning or earthly fire. Instead, they often manifested through various coincidences—such as a snake suddenly darting out and devouring your precious elixir right before you achieve perfection, or encountering an invading army in the city just as your spiritual soul is transitioning into a yang spirit. Since demonic practitioners were already heavily burdened with karmic retribution, their tribulations tended to be even more troublesome.

Two centuries ago, it had already attained the realm of a Grandmaster. Realizing that there was no further path for demonic cultivators, it had searched through ancient texts until it devised the method of refining genuine qi into malignant qi and turning clarity into turbidity. After another century of deduction, it calculated that on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the Yisi year (the Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open and yin energy is densest) a solar eclipse would precisely occur. Seizing the exact moment, it split its spirit and flesh into two, casting aside centuries of cultivation and paying the price of two sexagenary cycles of deep sleep to shed its demonic fetus, condense a yin-malignant ghostly body, and retrain as a corpse demon.

But now...

"There are still seventeen days left until the Yisi year. Should I hide?"

The demonic cultivator frowned, yet promptly abandoned the thought. If karma were that easy to evade, it wouldn't have had to resort to such a nearly suicidal method of retraining. In its centuries of cultivation, it had witnessed far too many negative examples—individuals who harbored thoughts like "just endure a few more days," "hold out for a few more hours," or "as long as I last until dawn." Yet invariably, the closer one got to the limit, the more likely one was to fall short of success at the very last moment.

"So be it. Let me go out and take a look at the scenery of this post-century world!"