Sixth Senior Brother had barely returned when Eldest Senior Brother left again.
Ling Wu's days turned miserable. With Eldest Senior Brother around, she'd at least had someone to chat with.
He knew so much—especially immortal gossip. One day it was a female immortal who bravely made a move for love, got rejected, and nearly threw herself off the Immortal Execution Platform. The next, a male immortal was ready to sacrifice his immortal bones for love, only to be force-fed a dozen cups of the water of forgetting. He woke up practically simple-minded. And there was plenty more where that came from.
The most tragic one in her book was the immortal who went through a mortal tribulation, only for the reincarnation officer to be napping on the job and dump him straight into the beast realm. In the end, the Ghost Sovereign came in person to apologize, and promised to make the negligent soul-official reincarnate as a beast ten times over. Only then was the matter settled.
This world really was one giant slapdash operation.
She lay under the tree by the gate, sighing at the sky.
Ah, how lonely.
Her master was away, the other senior brothers were off catching demons, and Sixth Senior Brother was still laid up. Kunlun Mountain truly didn't have a spark of life in it.
After the Trial Assembly, Ling Wu had decided the immortal realm was boring too. The mortal realm was where the fun was.
The storyteller always had endless tales to spin, the teahouse refreshed its pastries every so often—something new every visit.
And last time she'd gone down, with Master there the plague had been no trouble at all, and they'd come back so fast she hadn't even had her fill of fun.
She'd meant to buy some new trinkets to amuse herself with, too. Never got the chance.
Another sigh.
Staring up at the peach tree overhead, a thought suddenly struck her—
Wait! With no one watching her right now, wasn't this the perfect chance to slip down to the mortal realm?
Ling Wu bolted upright, almond eyes whirling, schemes multiplying by the second.
Count the days: Master still had a dozen or so before he returned.
Sixth Senior Brother's injuries wouldn't heal for at least ten days to half a month.
The others were all busy with their own affairs—no way they'd drop everything and rush back.
And she wasn't moving to the mortal realm. Just one day out, then straight home. What could they possibly notice in that little bit of time?
...
After a spirited left-brain-versus-right-brain debate, Ling Wu formed a hand seal and rode a cloud straight down to the lower realm. Quick about it, too.
She refused to believe she'd get caught a second time.
That promise she'd made to Qingchen? Long gone from her mind.
The moment her feet touched ground, she took a huge breath of air.
Ah, the familiar smell!
Peach blossom wine, osmanthus cakes, almond crisps, big meat buns, little meat pies—here she come!
Walking down the street, the aromas had her cravings flaring like a starved pig.
Too bad her purse was pathetically light. She could afford exactly one of those things.
In the end, Ling Wu picked the cheapest stall she could find and violently cleared out several trays of buns. Only then was she satisfied.
"Buurp—"
Full at last.
She handed over the money and walked off without so much as a backward glance.
She never saw the stall owner staring at the stack of empty trays, half as tall as a person, eyes bugged out like bronze bells.
If he wasn't mistaken... all of that... had been eaten by that young woman. Alone!
What an appetite! She could eat her money's worth at any banquet, no question.
If Ling Wu had heard that, she'd have told him he'd seen nothing yet.
Her senior brothers were the true reincarnations of Taotie, the Glutton.
With them around, no food in the whole town lived to see today's sunset.
The streets were packed, vendors hawking at full volume on both sides, the teahouse overflowing with people. Prosperity on every corner.
There we go. This was what the mortal realm should look like.
Ling Wu gravitated to wherever the crowd was thickest. No particular reason—she simply loved a spectacle by nature.
But there was no squeezing into a crowd that dense. Listening to the commotion bubbling up from inside, she nearly died of impatience!
What was going on in there? She wanted to see too!
She glanced left, glanced right. Nobody was paying her any attention. She formed a seal and produced a talisman—a painless hop straight to the front three rows. And honestly? Up close, the view was excellent.
Ahead of her stood two rich young lords in fine brocade. Before one of them sat a gilded cricket cage, and inside, two crickets were baring their mandibles and rattling the door, for all the world ready to burst out and murder each other.
No wonder the crowd. Those two crickets were clearly not cheap. A fight between them would be quite the show.
And it was.
The young lord in azure had the better cricket, plainly. The moment it left its cage, it locked its jaws onto the white-robed lord's cricket and pinned it flat—not a hope of turning over.
The white-robed lord kept shouting encouragement at his cricket, trying to rouse its fighting spirit.
Ling Wu was invested now. Fists clenched, eyes locked on the white cricket, she chanted under her breath: "Get up! Get up and get him!"
The scene before her was a perfect replay of her and her senior brothers going at it. She was the white cricket: outmatched, flattened, pinned for eternity.
But in recent years, she had turned the tables. And what did that prove? Even little people got their moment to shine!
So this cricket had to win!
The stalemate dragged on, and the crowd went quiet.
Then, suddenly, the white cricket broke free and scrambled back a few steps. While its opponent wasn't looking, it twisted its body and heaved—the azure cricket flipped clean onto its back. The shift came so fast that nobody reacted. By the next glance, it had already bitten a chunk out of its rival.
At last, the azure-robed lord's face changed. The white-robed lord's cloud lifted. And Ling Wu very nearly applauded.
Good cricket. Worthy of her support.
In the end, the match was called a draw.
The show over, the crowd melted away. Only Ling Wu stayed rooted to the spot.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
She frowned, staring after the departing crowd, her expression turning grave.
Just now, she'd caught a wisp of demonic aura. But with that many people around, she couldn't trace where it came from.
She wrestled with herself for a while, then let go of the demon-hunting idea. Where there were demons, there were Daoists. And if not Daoists, immortals. A talisman cultivator who could only fight at range had no business joining that pileup.
Besides, who knew how strong this demon was? If it was anything like that fox demon last time, Ling Wu would be finished.
And she couldn't count on bumping into the head honcho of the demon realm twice. Survival first. Survival first.
She headed for the teahouse next—but the moment she reached the door, she ran straight into that azure-robed lord again.
His hands were empty; presumably a servant had taken the cricket home. Having failed to win, the young lord still wore a rather melancholy look.
But thicker than his melancholy was the demonic aura hanging off him.
Ling Wu was done for. She wasn't hunting demons, and demons came hunting her.
All she wanted was one peaceful day of fun in the mortal realm. Was that really too much to ask?
She rubbed her temples in silent exasperation, then formed another talisman, ready to probe what the demon's true form actually was.
But before she could throw it, the young lord strolled into the teahouse and melted into the deeper crowd.
Ling Wu hesitated to make a move.
Too many eyes around, and unlike the packed square earlier, it was broad daylight now. How was she supposed to hide the gesture?
After a moment's thought, she followed him inside. She could still afford a cup of tea.
At the very least, she needed to learn this azure-robed man's name. It would make it easier to bring people in for the hunt later.
But the storyteller's tale hooked her clean. Whatever reason she'd walked in with evaporated—her whole heart and mind shrank to the story spilling out of the storyteller's mouth.
And of course, he stopped right at a cliffhanger. Ling Wu stared at the abandoned storytelling desk, itching to sprint to the man's house and shake the ending out of him.
She thumped the table a few times in frustration—and finally remembered the entire point of this trip.
She turned her head. Not a trace of the azure-robed lord.
Oh no, oh no. Wonderful. The one thing she'd come to do, and she'd gone and forgotten it!