Chapter 5

A plump orange tomcat ran past along the roadside. It was so fat that it resembled a barrel lying on its side, yet it was still remarkably agile.

Long Qi called out to stop it and asked, “Where’s the nearest bridge underpass where a person can sleep? Take me there.”

“Meow, meow!”

The orange cat was very shrewd: 【There is one, but what do I get for taking you there?】

Long Qi calmly replied, “If it can shelter me from the wind and rain, I’ll treat you to something delicious.”

The orange cat agreed and took off running. It led Long Qi several hundred meters to an underpass beneath an abandoned railway. The underpass was four meters wide, two meters high, and five or six meters deep. The other end was blocked by several collapsed concrete slabs. On one side outside the underpass was a patch of wild grass and shrubbery, while on the other stood an abandoned factory complex. The entire area was deserted. It truly was an excellent place for her to stay temporarily.

The orange cat declared proudly: 【This is the place. Someone used to sleep here. I stole his meat before.】

The corner of Long Qi’s mouth twitched. Not a single ounce of fat on this cat had been obtained honestly—it even stole food from homeless people. But the place it had found for her was genuinely good. The terrain was elevated, it offered shelter from the wind and rain, and although the surroundings were desolate, they were quite clean. She walked around to inspect the area, then praised the orange cat. “This is a good place. I’ll give you your reward later.”

She moved a relatively clean concrete slab to the entrance and sat down. Opening the ordering page for a nearby warehouse supermarket, she set the delivery location to the nearest point along the road and rapidly ordered a large pile of items, including various daily necessities, food, clothing, and medicine. She spent the few pitiful thousand yuan in her account until only one yuan remained.

This world’s industrial production capabilities were even more advanced than those of Long Qi’s former world, and its logistics and delivery systems were highly developed. Soon after she placed the order, its status changed to out for delivery.

“I accidentally spent all my money and ended up living beneath a bridge. I’m so sad and heartbroken that I can hardly breathe.” Long Qi once again began talking to herself with a completely expressionless face.

She had reluctantly carried out the plot. The blackish-red plot text that had been floating constantly within her vision gradually faded, seemingly unwilling unauthorized copy to disappear. However, the excruciating pain in her head continued. Long Qi’s face was pale; the pain had consumed far too much of her strength and vital energy. She suddenly felt something warm at the corners of her eyes and beneath her nose. When she wiped it away with her hand, she discovered that it was blood.

The ancients said that when someone bled from all seven orifices, death was not far away. The excessive strain of enduring the pain had caused her orifices to bleed, and her soul had weakened somewhat. A single attempt to challenge the plot had already severely damaged her vital energy.

Sitting at the entrance to the underpass, Long Qi wore a gloomy expression. However, she merely used the hem of her T-shirt to slowly wipe away the blood flowing from her eyes and nose. She did not care that the blood stained her white clothes and left them filthy.

The orange cat crouched on another concrete slab and meowed: 【Is the human going to die? You haven’t given me my food yet!】

“What’s the hurry? I’m not dead yet. You’ll definitely receive what I promised you,” Long Qi said.

【Then I’ll stay and play here for a while.】 The orange cat refused to leave. It sprawled comfortably on the slab and began licking its fur.

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Night had already fallen by the time Long Qi’s order arrived. The delivery worker was a short-haired Beta woman driving a medium-sized truck. After reaching the delivery location, she leaned out the window and looked around at the desolate terrain, muttering, “The end of West Mountain Road… Is the address wrong? There’s nowhere around here where anyone could live.”

“Hello. You can unload the goods I ordered beside the road.”

Hearing someone speak, the delivery worker turned her head and saw Long Qi standing outside the window with bloodstained clothes, long black hair, and a deathly pale face. With dusk fading and night descending, the sight gave her a tremendous fright.

Only after realizing that Long Qi appeared to be a living person did she collect herself and say, “Miss, what kind of place are you living in? You scared me half to death.”

Long Qi smiled. “I’m sorry for frightening you. You can unload everything beside the road.”

The delivery worker was quick and efficient. She hurriedly opened the truck’s rear cargo compartment and worked with Long Qi to unload the goods. There read the original at bailiantales.comwere five enormous cardboard boxes in total, each of them extremely heavy.

Long Qi signed the delivery receipt. The worker asked with concern, “These things are very heavy. Won’t it be difficult for you to move them? You should call your family and ask them to help.”

“It’s fine. I can move them.” Long Qi lifted one of the boxes and walked several steps. Cultivators were skilled at tempering their muscles and bones, so moving heavy objects was not difficult for her.

“All right. You’re pretty strong, miss!” The delivery worker gave her a thumbs-up. In the delivery business, all she needed to do was bring the goods to the location specified by the customer. Every kind of eccentric customer imaginable existed. She yawned as she walked back toward the truck and said, “Once I finish your delivery, I can finally get off work, go home, and sleep! I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I was even afraid I might get into an accident while driving today.”

Hearing this, Long Qi turned and looked at her twice before her gaze paused. The area between the delivery worker’s brows and her eyes had darkened, a horizontal line crossed her forehead, and she appeared exhausted. These were signs that she was about to suffer misfortune—a calamity involving bloodshed. She drove a vehicle for a living. If she were involved in an accident, the consequences could range from minor to disastrous.

Long Qi thought for a moment, then said, “Thank you for delivering my order today. Do you have any yellow paper and a pen?”

“I do. Why?” The delivery worker was good-natured. She took a small pad of yellow sticky notes and a black pen from her pocket.

Long Qi calmed her heart and focused her mind, then lowered her head and wrote the character “除” on the first sticky note. She returned the pad and pen to the delivery worker. “Keep this in your pocket. You can tear it off once you get home if you want.”

“Haha! Did you write me a character as a keepsake?” The delivery worker glanced at the writing and decided this was yet another strange customer. Paying it no particular attention, she stuffed the sticky-note pad into her pocket, climbed into the truck, and drove away.

The delivery worker lived in the suburbs, quite a long distance away. By the time she neared home in her truck, it was already late at night. She failed to notice a fallen utility pole jutting diagonally into the road ahead. She yawned as she drove, and her hand suddenly brushed against the sticky-note pad in her pocket. Her mind instantly cleared, and she immediately noticed the utility pole beside the road. She slammed on the brakes, bringing the truck to a stop barely ten centimeters from the pole.

Cold sweat broke out across the delivery worker’s back. The utility pole had snapped halfway through at its base, with the other half still connected to its foundation. Its pointed end happened to be angled directly toward the front of her truck and tilted upward. If the truck had not stopped and had crashed into it, the pole might have pierced straight through the driver’s cab and killed her!

The delivery worker burst into frightened tears. Instinctively, she pulled the sticky-note pad from her pocket and looked at it. The first yellow note had turned a strange, scorched yellowish-brown, while the elegant character “除” remained clearly visible upon it.

Simply holding the pad made her feel somewhat calmer. The stolen content delivery worker knew enough to recognize its value. She carefully tucked the treasured sticky notes back into her pocket, cautiously drove around the utility pole, and returned home.

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Long Qi made several trips to carry the boxes back to the entrance of the underpass. No one had entered the abandoned place for a very long time, and a thick layer of dust covered everything.

The orange cat was remarkably persistent. It was still rolling around on the concrete slab at the entrance, waiting for the promised food.

Long Qi walked to the innermost part of the underpass, determined the directions, and stood facing southeast. The southeast corresponded to Xun. Xun represented wind. Following the instructions in the fragmentary Daoist scripture, she calmed her heart and concentrated. Her left hand formed the seal for the Wind Incantation, and a gentle breeze arose from nowhere, lifting a cloud of dust from the underpass and carrying it outside.

Long Qi relaxed slightly. Once the underpass was clean, she could settle in. The fragmentary Daoist scripture contained more than a dozen one-character incantations and claimed that their wondrous applications were limitless. However, despite studying it for a long time, Long Qi could currently use only two characters: “除” and “风”—“Remove” and “Wind.”

She used the Wind Incantation three times to clear all the dust from the underpass, then hung up a camping lantern. After choosing a clean, level patch of ground, she laid out an inflatable mattress and unfolded a camping table and chairs. She sat down comfortably, set up a portable butane stove to boil water, and added two packets of instant noodles, some sliced boneless fish, and leafy green vegetables. Within ten minutes, she had prepared a nutritious meal.

Long Qi took a sip of the noodle broth and narrowed her eyes in happiness. In her former resource-scarce world, eating a meal like this had not been easy. Her current life was already quite good.

The orange cat meowed hungrily beside her. Only after eating several bites of noodles did Long Qi leisurely open a can of salmon and chicken-breast cat food for it. The cat ate without lifting its head, meowing between bites: 【So delicious! Human good!】

After dinner, Long Qi’s headache had completely disappeared, and some of her energy had gradually returned. From among the items she had purchased, she found a box of Go stones. She set aside the white pieces, which were obviously made of white glass, then took out several black stones and examined them carefully, confirming that they had been polished from black chalcedony. Although it was cheap chalcedony containing many impurities, it was still a gemstone naturally formed within the earth. It contained a tiny trace of pure spiritual qi and naturally possessed faint abilities to purify, ward off evil, and gather qi.

Anything capable of concealing wind and gathering qi could serve as the most basic formation node. These pieces would barely suffice to establish the simplest concealment formation.

Long Qi took a handful of black chalcedony stones and pressed them into the soil outside the underpass according to the positions of the Eight Trigrams, activating the spiritual qi within the chalcedony. When she looked back, the true entrance to the underpass had already been concealed.

The entrance naturally remained where it had always been. However, the black chalcedony stones arranged in stolen content those specific positions formed a faint, unusual, but clean magnetic field. Even if ordinary living creatures entered this area, they would instinctively overlook the space occupied by the field.

This was equivalent to adding a door to her temporary bedroom. Ordinary people would be unable to find the place, and unclean entities would be unable to enter. Furthermore, because black chalcedony naturally possessed faint purifying and qi-gathering properties, the air in the area became slightly cleaner and fresher once the simple formation took effect. Long Qi was reasonably satisfied.

She thoughtfully glanced toward the abandoned factory buildings on the other side of the underpass. A group of several people had entered the area moments ago. The aura over there was extremely chaotic, so there were probably some unclean entities present. But that had nothing to do with her. As long as they did not disturb her, she had no interest in what either the people or the ghosts were doing over there.

Long Qi returned to the underpass, washed her hands and face, attended to her personal hygiene, and changed into clean clothes. She then lay on the mattress, closed her eyes, settled her heart, and calmly recalled the scripture from the fragmentary scroll. Her consciousness gradually sank into the lake of her heart. She cultivated her heart into a mirror that reflected the outside world, and her awareness passed through that mind-mirror until she could gradually “see” the faint spiritual qi outside. It resembled tiny specks of dim fluorescent light scattered throughout the natural world.

She breathed slowly and deeply. With each inhalation and exhalation, she naturally drew in faint traces of spiritual qi. The spiritual qi she absorbed flowed into the lake of her heart and transformed into an almost imperceptible sliver of growing power.

The spiritual resources in this world were slightly more abundant than those in the apocalypse Long Qi had experienced, but in an ordinary urban environment like this, the amount of spiritual qi she could absorb remained pitifully small, making her cultivation progress extremely slow. Long Qi did not mind. Her path of cultivation had been difficult from the very beginning. Even now, she had cultivated only a single mind-mirror and two one-character incantations. But the mind-mirror alone had already brought her limitless benefits.

She cultivated until late at night. Her soul, which had felt faintly obstructed after being injured, gradually began to recover and felt slightly more comfortable. However, at this rate of cultivation, it would take at least another week to restore her soul to its original stable and robust condition.

At midnight, Long Qi ended her cultivation and slowly exhaled the final trace of turbid qi.

With a shift of thought, she carefully searched and sensed every inch inside and outside the lake of her heart but discovered no trace of any soul that did not belong to her.

The unknown entity could project crimson plot text into her vision, force her to play the role of Zhu Qi and follow the plot, and immediately punish her whenever she deviated from it. Could it be a god of this world? Was that why it possessed such vast supernatural power, appearing and disappearing without leaving the slightest trace?