Translator: kiribold
editor: sarah
The sun was shining brightly at noon, but a bone-chilling coldness and darkness swallowed the sky and the earth, completely shrouding Chi Xiaochi and the others.
Chi Xiaochi shouldn’t have been surprised, but the development of the situation was slightly beyond Chi Xiaochi’s expectations.
As the initial boss of a novel, in terms of scientific and rational reason, the mountain ghost’s strength shouldn’t be too high. It was to let the protagonist gain experience and reputation value. The main reason so many cultivators fell in was that the mountain ghosts had a geographical advantage. Someone had set up certain formations in the Mountain of Time and Rain in advance that was difficult for ordinary cultivators to crack so that they could win battles repeatedly.
But it wasn’t until the cold reached his body that Chi Xiaochi realized that the mountain ghost’s power was too pure and strong.
If he didn’t have the inherited thousand-year-old sword intent and only had the basics of cultivation, he wouldn’t be an opponent to this mountain ghost.
Since the purpose of this trip was to find out the intentions of the mountain ghost and rescue their fellow cultivators and the innocent people trapped here, Chi Xiaochi gave up his resistance, closed his eyes, and let his consciousness be wrapped in the chill.
However, before the cold air entered his body, a warm white glow covered him.
Amid the rapidly decreasing temperature, a wide robe, which still had body heat, gently closed around Chi Xiaochi from behind. He wrapped him up properly in his arms but with great care and restraint, did not touch his skin.
A layer of frost quickly formed outside the robe, while the temperature inside was slightly higher than Chi Xiaochi’s body temperature, so it seemed extra warm.
Chi Xiaochi noticed something was wrong, and just as he was about to open his eyes, a piece of a long-sleeve waved in the air, blocking his eyes.
Although Chi Xiaochi’s vision was obscured, the darkness was particularly reassuring.
He paused and called out tentatively, “…Shifu?”
Wen Yujing’s voice came concisely and firmly to his ears, “Yes.”
It was pitch black before their eyes, and when the light reappeared, they were already in a small pit more than a thousand feet deep.
Wen Yujing and Chi Xiaochi were unharmed. Ye Jiming secretly mobilized his inner alchemy to keep out the cold. Therefore, only his eyebrows and eyes hung some frost, but he didn’t suffer from the cold. As for Yan Jinhua, due to his usual laziness and lack of spiritual power, he was still frozen into a third grandson despite his efforts to keep out the cold.
When the surrounding temperature returned to normal, Wen Yujing took a step back, flicked his sleeve to hold his sword, and looked around.
Judging from the exposed rock formations and soil quality, they were still in the Mountain of Time and Rain, but they were transferred here by a transfiguration method.
When the cold darkness descended, Ye Jiming wanted to protect Duan Shujue, but Wen Yujing moved first. He was already annoyed, and now that he saw him safely retreat and then deliberately look for trouble again, he lost his temperament.
If the previous Ye Jiming saw that his little fish was taken advantage of, even if he didn’t immediately grab Wen Yujing unforgivingly, he would have to say three or two bad words to ease his anger.
As for the Ye Jiming, who had died once, he only pulled back into his pants the snake tail wrapped around Duan Shujue’s ankle. He reached out to catch a drop of cold water falling from the cliff’s edge that was about to enter the back of Duan Shujue’s collar. Then he turned away silently as if nothing had happened, only secretly jotting this down in his heart.
After Yan Jinhua calmed down, in this situation where everyone’s eyes were smeared, he finally profited from his prophetic advantage and waved his hand firmly. “Everyone, don’t be impatient. Don’t move rashly. There is a Tai Chi array here.”
This time, they followed the original plot. They were captured by the mountain ghost and were thrown into the sinkhole.
Chi Xiaochi tried to transfer spiritual power into his body and found that it wasn’t locked. His sword in the stone, Wen Yujing’s umbrella, and Yan Jinhua’s saber weren’t taken away either.
Just like Yan Jinhua’s information, about three feet above their heads, the mountain ghost had laid down a three-tiered Tai Chi formation.
The so-called Tai Chi array was about borrowing force to fight force, which had the effect of transforming one force into a thousand forces. Pure spiritual power was cut into silk streams in the formation, which ran endlessly in an eight-trigrams formation.
This formation was harmless to ordinary people, and even if you touched it, it wouldn’t harm your life. As for cultivators, there wouldn’t be any significant problems as long as they didn’t use spiritual power. In this formation, if you hit the air with an open-palm strike, it was easy to have an embarrassing situation where after your palm was pushed out, the force would be dissipated by the formation and finally slammed into the back of your head.
This eight-trigrams array was set up to prevent cultivators from escaping the sinkhole with their swords.
As for ordinary people…
There might be ordinary people in the world who could climb a thousand-foot cliff with their bare hands, but it was by no means common.
The information provided by Yan Jinhua was valuable. But the people present, except for Yan Jinhua, two had read the original book, and the other knew that Yan Jinhua had read the original text. After Yan Jinhua forced his deep pretense, except for Ye Jiming, who maintained his weak scholar personality and stuck to Duan Shujue’s side, asking for advice on the Tai Chi formation, the other two were calm.
After understanding the current situation, Ye Jiming said curiously, “You guys know a lot.”
“We are cultivators, naturally we have some understanding of the five elements of Feng Shui.” Chi Xiaochi swiftly adjusted his role as the plot required. He singled out the identities of the three of them and briefly informed Ye Jiming of the purpose of their trip. Then he pointed to Yan Jinhua and said, “This is my shixiong, Yan Jinhua, who is the most knowledgeable in the art of the five elements.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Ye Jiming nodded and turned to him with full admiration. “It turns out you’re an immortal. This one has been too disrespectful. This student pays his respects.”
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Who would have thought that Ye Jiming would shift the conversation and ask sincerely, “But this is really strange. The mountain ghost caught us but didn’t kill or hurt us, only imprisoned us. Immortal Yan, why is this?”
Yan Jinhua froze.
…Motherfucker, this wasn’t written in the book.
When The Mermaid Immortal reached this plotline in its serialization, it was heavily blasted. The author cut the outline, and much of the foreshadowing never got its returns and was just thrown in there.
The reason why the mountain ghost captured people was reduced to wanting to cultivate an elixir. The reason for the mountain ghost and Duan Shujue’s friendship became admiration for Duan Shujue’s noble personality and absolute power. Even breaking the formation was changed to a more straightforward violent demolition that felt more refreshing. Although the meeting between the two arch-enemies in prison was a bit of a joke, the sword fight that followed was pretty good and even directly overpowered the mountain ghost’s presence.
It was a little sloppy, but it had to be said that The Mermaid Immortal did rely on this reckless operation to recover some of its readers and subscriptions.
Everyone expressed that playing mind games was too dull, don’t BB, do it directly like a real man.
Yan Jinhua also held this view.
However, as a reader, he could point and tell the author what to do. As a person in the story, he could no longer guide the rivers and lakes, inspiring the text with God’s perspective. All plot development had to follow some form of logic.
Facing Ye Jiming’s question, he faltered for a long time and said, “Probably the mountain ghost wants to raise them and eat slowly…it’s the same as raising sheep in captivity.”
Ye Jiming tilted his head and continued to question, “But why didn’t she take away Immortal Yan and the other’s swords?”
…Not only their swords but even their spiritual powers weren’t sealed off.
Who would leave a shovel that can dig an escape tunnel for the sheep in the pen?
Yan Jinhua was a little embarrassed, “…Maybe she forgot to take it?”
Ye Jiming let out an ‘ah’ and said meaningfully, “Then she really is careless.”
Yan Jinhua gritted his teeth.
He figured out Ye Jiming’s narrow-minded nature. Calling him “Immortal Yan” was just him deliberately teasing him. But why did he have to make things difficult in front of Wen Yujing?
He was even a little annoyed at the author of The Mermaid Immortal, who was far away in the sky. Why didn’t the author complete the logic of this story? Now, the confusing jumble caused him to look ridiculous.
Yan Jinhua only hoped that Ye Jiming could be tactful. Stop asking questions and quit while he was ahead.
Evidently, Ye Jiming didn’t have any tact.
He threw out a very practical question, “Immortal Yan, since you are proficient in formations, can you take us out?”
…Yan Jinhua now deeply understood the feeling of playing a role until the whole thing collapsed.
Recognizing the formation at a glance but not being able to break it. It was the same as identifying the type of math problem at a glance but as useless as not being able to force out anything apart from the single word, ‘解 (T/N: solve)’ in flamboyant, cursive calligraphy.
Chi Xiaochi coughed lightly and came at the right moment to smooth things out, “Ming-xiong, don’t make things difficult for shixiong.”
Ye Jiming turned his head and rolled his eyes where Yan Jinhua couldn’t see.
Yan Jinhua smiled sheepishly but found that no one paid him any attention and felt like a blade was in his back.
Now he was getting exactly the supporting character treatment he had read about in those books. Even worse, he was the kind that didn’t know but pretended to know and was ultimately a passerby the protagonist taught to behave. He wasn’t even worth having a name.
When Yan Jinhua was so suffocated that he was about to vomit blood, Chi Xiaochi turned around and asked Wen Yujing, “Shifu, can we get out?”
Wen Yujing looked up.
In his eyes, the crisscrossing Tai Chi formation and the web of spiritual energy buried between them formed a functional equation in a three-dimensional model.
He pondered and said, “It’s not difficult.”
Hearing this, Yan Jinhua secretly cursed: What are you pretending to be? Isn’t it just taking the script in advance and fooling people with a gold finger?
But his gold finger was temporarily overdue, unable to use the protagonist’s halo to astonish the audience and teach Wen Yujing to behave. He could only force himself to shut up and be angry secretly.
Chi Xiaochi couldn’t care less what Yan Jinhua was thinking.
This person belonged to the same lineage as Lou Sifan, whom he met in the third world. They both felt excellent about themselves. Lou Sifan loved to portray himself as a saint and a gentleman and took pleasure in being sought after by others. Yan Jinhua was prideful, self-important, had a clear goal, and some cleverness. But he couldn’t keep his composure, and compared to Lou Sifan, he was three points less capable and seven points less diligent.
For this kind of person, if you mercilessly and directly stepped on him a few times, he would be able to develop a vibrant brain supplement in his mind and anger himself half to death.
Chi Xiaochi wasn’t interested in the self-produced and self-sold garbage emotions in this person’s brain. He looked up thoughtfully at the rays of sunlight penetrating from above the sinkhole.
061 asked him, “Have you found anything?”
“Not much, also not a little.” Chi Xiaochi pressed his fingers to his lips as he spoke, “Shh.”
The rest of the people quieted in unison.
They were all cultivators, so their hearing wasn’t comparable with mortals.
They all heard footsteps coming from the top of the pit.
After a while, a human face appeared at the edge of the sinkhole above.
The face disappeared in a flash from the pit’s edge, but everyone recognized her with their eyesight. It was the woman who had poured tea and offered them hospitality at the roadside to persuade them to go down the mountain.
Ye Jiming was surprised. “Hey!”
But the woman just glanced at them, then stepped on the rocks and walked away again.
Familiar with Journey to the West, Yan Jinhua, who had long been suspicious of the identity of the tea girl, immediately made a categorical conclusion, “It’s her! She’s the mountain ghost!”
However, as soon as the words fell, the clear and helpless voice of the tea girl came from above, “Didn’t I tell you not to capture people again?”
Yan Jinhua, who was slapped in the face within seconds, “…”
It was quiet before a female voice replied weakly, “…not caught.”
“Imprisoning people in a different place doesn’t count as not capturing.” The tea-pouring woman said, “These are new people locked up at the bottom. I poured tea for them an hour ago.”
The other woman didn’t speak.
The woman who poured the tea coaxed her, “They’re going to catch the exam, let them go.”
The other woman speaking opposite her had a soft voice, but the logic sounded a little out of place. One could hear that she had some mental problems as she said, “Just–it’s just tomorrow. If they stay for one more day, the time will come.”
“But you promised me no more captives, right?”
The people in the pit were carefully listening to what sounded like the classroom conversation of elementary school girls outside. They were trying to gather more information when suddenly their eyes collectively went dark.
When they opened their eyes again, they were moved into another pit.
The voices were a little farther away, but it was still audible.
The weak woman’s voice sounded much more relaxed. “I’m not hiding anyone. If you don’t believe me, look again.”
The tea-pouring girl sighed. “…Did you change the place of the people again?”
The other side simply lied and denied it, “No.”
The tea-pouring woman asked, “Then promise me you won’t capture anybody today?”
The other party was determined to lie till the end, “No means no. Let’s go, I want to eat. Yesterday, we agreed to eat beans, did you prepare it?”
The two walked away, leaving the people thrown in the pit to look at each other.
Yan Jinhua was the first to come back to his senses. “They’re gone, let’s quickly kill our way out.”
But Wen Yujing replied, “Let’s do the rescue quietly. With great fanfare, aren’t you afraid of attracting the mountain ghost? All the formations in the mountains are set up by her. If she gets beaten and uses her magic in a moment of hurry, it would be a trivial matter if we hit the grass to startle the snake and return empty-handed, but what if we hurt those imprisoned cultivators?”
…What Yan Jinhua feared was that there wouldn’t be a fight.
If there wasn’t a battle, how could he profit?
He deliberately provoked, “There are so many of us, it can’t be that we’re afraid of that little mountain ghost?”
Wen Yujing narrowed his eyes slightly. His usually calm demeanor subtly took on a cat-like arrogance. “Oh? Why don’t we ask you to attack the mountain ghost while Shujue and I go ahead and save people? How about that?”
If there were anyone here who could unscrupulously overpower Yan Jinhua in status and position, it would be Wen Yujing.
Yan Jinhua was instantly dumbfounded and reluctantly arched his hands to salute, “Little Shishu, this disciple was momentarily impulsive and thoughtless. Little shishu, please don’t blame this one.”
Wen Yujing retracted his gaze, “It’s good to know when you’re wrong.”
Yan Jinhua admitted his mistake, but he still felt dissatisfied in his heart. “But what if we let this mountain ghost escape for nothing? She captures people, only to conspire to take their eyes or to absorb their essence! Such evil things! If we let her go, the consequences would be disastrous!”
Chi Xiaochi said, “It’s not the mountain ghost who set up the formations.”
Yan Jinhua almost choked on his saliva, “…Ah?”
Ye Jiming glanced at Chi Xiaochi with approval.
Wen Yujing faintly glanced at Yan Jinhua, “Can’t you tell that there’s no ghost energy in the eight-trigrams array buried here?”
After this reminder, Yan Jinhua, who was eager to kill his way out delightedly, realized that the eight-trigrams array buried in this place didn’t have an evil feeling. On the contrary, it was the purest Dao energy.
Now even he didn’t know how this unrestrained plot would develop. “…How?”
Was the mountain ghost not a ghost?
What was wrong with the legend?
Or…
During Yan Jinhua’s brainstorming, Wen Yujing had already solved the equation to develop a preliminary answer. He used his spiritual power to fine-tune the trajectory of the countless recoiling spiritual power waves, trying to open up a passage for one person to pass through by modifying the course of the entire function diagram.
Chi Xiaochi and Ye Jiming sat side by side.
Ye Jiming sent a secret voice transmission and laughed. “Surname Chi, not bad. You didn’t embarass my family’s little fish.”
Chi Xiaochi shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t regard this trip as any significant experience. “It’s only taking him out to see the world.”
Because he witnessed different things in the world, the real merman immortal had a more compassionate heart. The more he saw, the more his horizons broadened, and his broken heart could heal faster.
And Yan Jinhua wasn’t idle either.
His system recorded Wen Yujing’s entire process of cracking the formation, prepared the data, and was ready to report it.
Who would have thought that when Wen Yujing reached the top level of the formation, footsteps would come from above?
When the tea-pouring girl appeared again, Chi Xiaochi stood up and quietly watched her.
She didn’t say a word, raised her skirt slightly, knelt on the edge of the cliff, and bowed three times.
Wen Yujing stopped moving to break the formation. “Miss, please get up.”
She still insisted on bowing three times before standing up. “I coaxed her to sleep before coming out to you. I wanted to request one thing from you all.”
Chi Xiaochi interrupted her, “To ensure that what we’re hearing is the real story, can you answer a question for me first?”
The tea-pouring girl was startled.
Chi Xiaochi raised his head and asked, “Your name is Su Ji, so what’s her name?”
Everyone present froze, including the woman above.
After a long while, she smiled gently and said in a very nostalgic tone, “Cheng Wuyun.”
Thanks for the chapter ♥️♥️
Gracias por el capitulo
Thanks for the chapter ~
Slap him more~
Thx for the ch ٩(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )و
Thx for the chappy
now that took a turn i didnt expect
Whoa, wasn’t expecting that.
Thanks for the chapter ❤
It took me quite a while to remember who Lou Sihan was..
Wow, they’re actually pretty cute