Chapter 59: This Must Be My Calamity!

The sun blazed high, it was afternoon; Feng Xue was happily eating Liu Yunxi's Peiyuan meal at home, replenishing nutrients for his frail modern body, while at the same time, the non-initiated xuan cultivators of Lu City were suffering greatly.

If last night had been a full-city mobilization of all initiated xuan cultivators, then now, as the seasoned experts who hadn't slept all night began to grow drowsy, these young apprentices were forced to take up the task and begin their work.

"Check everything thoroughly!" Master Chen knew this matter was of utmost gravity; he had slapped a Wakefulness Talisman on himself and forced himself to stay alert while supervising these unreliable youngsters.

For this top-five master of the county, the young apprentices sent by various families dared not utter a single word, merely carrying compasses, holding tortoise shells, clutching divination rods, summoning paper figures, and searching along the city's perimeter.

Master Chen sat on a bamboo chair and couldn't help yawning, yet his mind was pondering the feng shui around him.

He had been initiated for over a hundred years and had surveyed feng shui for the surrounding areas many times; he knew the Kunshan region inside and out, and exactly where the auspicious spots lay.

But he also understood the truth of沧海桑田—what was a feng shui treasure spot a century ago was未必 so two centuries ago, and what was an auspicious burial site two centuries ago might no longer resemble its original form.

"Still, Lu City has stood for at least a thousand years; the city's environment should be fine. I already asked the County Magistrate to check the county annals—if there are no major tombs nearby, the risky spots are probably Xie Lake and Ma'an Mountain."

Master Chen sighed. The so-called Ma'an Mountain was not the Ma'an Mountain five hundred li away, but a small hill not far from Xie Lake, which was twice the size of Lu City. It stood less than a hundred meters tall, named for its resemblance to a horse saddle—a tiny place, yet home to several auspicious feng shui spots, where the ancestral graves of several local families lay, three of which he himself had selected.

"But if the problem truly stems from ancestral graves, this will be hard to handle…" Master Chen pinched the bridge of his nose; the fatigue from sleeplessness and the stimulant of the Wakefulness Talisman gave him a headache, but just then, he spotted a familiar figure and immediately rose to his feet:

"Deng Gu Niang! What are you doing here?"

"Master Chen, no need to rise! You're my elder, rest easy. I have little experience in spell duels and couldn't help before, but searching for lost objects or people is my specialty—I can't just stand by while everyone else works."

The speaker was a young woman, no more than early twenties, with a proper face, yet her long hair bore a faint gray tint, giving her an unnatural air of age.

She was one of Lu City's five top masters. Though her age—barely over twenty—was even younger than the disciples' disciples of the other masters, her family's ancestral spirit had been passed down for hundreds of years. But since the Outriding Immortal path involved venerating demonic spirits, it was considered a heretical sect; neither the City God Temple nor any Daoist or Buddhist monastery would allow her near, which was why she hadn't participated in the daytime ritual to install protective talismans.

Yet as an officially registered xuan cultivator of Lu City, she couldn't do nothing; upon hearing Master Chen was making a major search, she volunteered to come over.

In truth, Master Chen had preferred not to involve an Outriding Immortal, but now that Deng Gu Niang had come to him of her own accord, it was a different matter.

He weighed it in his mind, then said:

"Very well. I searched all night yesterday and am truly exhausted. This matter is complicated—I'll explain it to you in detail…"

Master Chen laid out his suspicions. Deng Gu Niang had initially thought this was merely about tracking a runaway ghost, perhaps a Red-Clothed Wrathful Spirit at worst, easily handled by her Gray Ninth Grandfather. But now she heard it might involve a demonic cultivator's residual soul—she immediately grew serious and nodded firmly:

"As for locating dragons and selecting burial spots, I'm no match for Master Chen, but if we're searching for ancient tombs and old corpses, I do have some experience."

With that, Deng Gu Niang formed a hand seal, stood on one foot. In truth, through her bond with her ancestral spirit, she no longer needed such gestures—but habits formed since childhood still made her shake her head vigorously.

As her gray hair swayed with her motion, her posture gradually grew strange. Master Chen, seeing this, silently stepped back several paces, and it suddenly dawned on him:

"So you're planning to use treasure-hunting methods to find a grand tomb? That makes sense—if there truly is some hard-to-detect ancient corpse, its identity likely wasn't low; Grave Goods would be plentiful… Too bad those tomb robbers I caught last month were already beheaded—if I'd kept them, we might've found it faster!"

…

While the xuan cultivators were busy and tense, beneath a patch of seemingly ordinary withered rocks on Ma'an Mountain, a pair of cloudy eyes suddenly opened, illuminating the cramped space with crimson light. After several minutes of silence, it finally seemed to adapt, and its fingertip twitched gently—

"Jia Chen year, 12th month, 14th day… Much earlier than expected. Is this the 【Dragon-Snake Rises from Land】? No, no—this spot's malevolent energy remains fully charged. But if not this, why did I awaken prematurely?"

The figure continued to manipulate its fingers, and a faint metaphysical sensation arose—

"Heavenly Punishment manifests malevolence? In conflict with the Rat? What nonsense! This isn't even the Tai Sui position—even if it were a Rat Demon…"

The figure suddenly froze. Its sluggish thinking, dulled by over a century of slumber, began to recover—and it suddenly remembered something—

"Ah yes, Lu City had a Gray Immortal… But I've slept nearly two Jiazi cycles—how could I possibly be in conflict with it?"

The more it thought, the more wrong it felt. It finally climbed off the Bai Yu bed, instinctively looked down—and oh, it understood!

"This is too coincidental! I was supposed to sleep seven more months to complete my cultivation; even if I entered Yi Si year, I could shed my demonic embryo. Yet I was awakened at the end of Jia Chen year… Yes, this must be my personal calamity!"

The figure, as if finally awakening, rose from the Bai Yu bed—then immediately lowered its head again—

No reason other than it hit its head.

Looking up at the low "ceiling" of the tomb, it sighed faintly, then pushed itself off the jade bed with its stiff body, using its own Qi to replace the earth's sha energy and recharge the Hu Tian Bag that hadn't been used in two hundred years, all while contemplating its next move.

Cultivators always face calamities, but unlike in novels, these aren't simple thunder and fire—they arise from countless coincidences: a snake suddenly slithering out to swallow your treasure pill just before completion, or a military invasion striking the city precisely as your yin spirit transforms into yang. Demonic cultivators carry heavy karmic debts, so their calamities are often more troublesome.

Two hundred years ago, he had already reached Grand Master level. Seeing no future for demonic cultivators, he scoured ancient texts and developed this method of refining Qi into sha, transforming purity into turbidity. After a century of refinement, he calculated that on the 15th day of the seventh month of Yi Si year (Zhongyuan Festival, when the Ghost Gate opens and yin energy peaks), a lunar eclipse would occur. He timed it perfectly, splitting his spirit and body, sacrificing his centuries of cultivation, paying the price of two Jiazi cycles of slumber, shedding his demonic embryo, forming a yin-sha ghost body, and switching to corpse-ghost cultivation.

But now…

"Seventeen days remain until Yi Si year. Should I hide?"

The demonic cultivator frowned, then decisively discarded the idea. If karmic causes could be so easily avoided, he wouldn't have resorted to this near-suicidal method of transformation. In his centuries of cultivation, he'd seen too many counterexamples—each one thinking, "Just a few more days," "Just a few more hours," "Just hold on till dawn"—yet the closer they got to the limit, the more they failed at the final moment.

"Enough. Let's go see what the world looks like after a hundred years!"

(End of Chapter)