In the end, Yun Shen’s attempt to play stupid resulted in the great villain cruelly soaking him in a jar of wine again. This time he had learned his lesson and deliberately restrained his roots from instinctively absorbing the liquid and nutrients.
Sui Jian did not meditate this time. Instead, he lay comfortably on a chaise lounge with his eyes closed.
Yun Shen dared to be angry but not to speak, so he could only curse him silently and stab imaginary dolls of him in his heart.
“What are you cursing me for?”
A deep, slightly hoarse male voice entered his ears. The ginseng spirit, who had been cursing with great enthusiasm, trembled in fright. Several claw-shaped leaves on his head curled inward from guilt.
Yun Shen carefully turned around. “Nothing. How would I dare?”
His voice carried an ingratiating note. Sui Jian pursed his lips in amusement and did not comment. In the end, he did not continue investigating and merely raised his eyelids to glance at the sky outside.
A dark moon hung high overhead. It was midnight, when the moon stood at its zenith.
“Go back to the flowerpot and stay there. We need to leave.”
As he spoke, he had already stood, put on his boots, and pulled on his outer robe. He gave Yun Shen no explanation for why they had to travel in the middle of the night. Yun Shen did not have the courage to ask. He obediently nodded, said “Okay,” climbed out of the wine jar, then up onto the windowsill. He buried himself thoroughly in the soil, leaving only a pair of curious, confused little eyes blinking outside.
“Heh.”
Sui Jian could not help laughing at the sight. It was so amusing that his fingers itched to tease the little thing. Unfortunately, important business came first. He could only suppress the urge for now and save it for later.
.
“Why are we staying out here in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?”
Yun Shen looked at Sui Jian not far away. After drawing incomprehensible runes, the man was tossing stones everywhere. There was not a single human shadow near this remote foot of the mountain, not even the chirp of an insect or cry of a bird. At some point, clouds had swallowed the dark moon high in the sky, and the entire valley had become eerily silent and frightening.
The ginseng spirit was timid. He inevitably remembered scenes from horror movies in his previous life and frightened himself half to death. His leaves lowered, trembling as they covered his eyes.
“Look at how little courage you have.”
Sui Jian was both annoyed and amused. He held the last spirit stone in his hand, turned around, bent down, and tugged the ginseng spirit’s leaves. Yun Shen immediately squealed and begged him to be gentler so they would not be pulled off.
Those leaves had taken Yun Shen a great deal of effort to grow. There were only a few of them. Losing even one would break his heart.
While the two bickered, a streak of light tore through the night in the distance. The faint sound of something cutting through the air followed. Someone was clearly approaching.
Sui Jian’s amusement vanished. His lips flattened, and he narrowed his eyes with a light smile. “Finally.”
The top-grade spirit stone in his hand shot out and embedded itself heavily in the formation’s central eye. The obscure runes seemed to come alive. Brilliant golden light erupted, then flowed like water before vanishing into the ground in an instant.
“All right, ugly thing. It’s time for you to prove your value. Help me with something small.”
Moonlight poured down. Sui Jian stood beneath the shadows of the trees, mottled darkness falling across him. His expression looked gentle and amiable, yet his smile never reached his eyes, and his tone contained an unquestionable force.
Yun Shen instinctively shuddered. Only then did he remember that, as the greatest villain in the entire story, Sui Jian had never truly been as easy to get along with as he usually pretended.
Beneath that magnificent and beautiful exterior was an evil spirit wearing human skin.
Yun Shen swallowed and asked shakily, “What… can I do?”
He was such a weak little ginseng spirit. Other than brewing ginseng tea, what could he possibly do for the great villain?
Sui Jian curved his lips. “Cultivate as you normally do.”
Yun Shen: “?”
Cultivate here, at this time?
He could not understand what Sui Jian intended, but he was obedient enough. If the great villain told him to cultivate, then he would cultivate with all his might. It was not as though the great villain had given him any room to refuse.
Resigned, Yun Shen crawled out of the earthenware pot and scampered toward the small patch of ground Sui Jian had marked. He dug a hole, jumped in, and rooted himself.
The essence of the sun and moon was enormously nourishing to spirits and demons, especially while cultivating, when it could multiply the effectiveness of practice.
Bathed in silver moonlight, Yun Shen quickly discarded all distracting thoughts and entered a meditative state. As he absorbed spiritual energy from heaven and earth into his body, moonlight gathered above his head, forming a beam so concentrated it seemed almost liquid. Within the beam floated wood-element energy condensed into visible globes of light.
Moonlight and glowing spheres affectionately circled the oblivious ginseng spirit, wrapping him gently as they slowly seeped into his body. Excess moonlight that he could not absorb in time condensed into milky-white droplets on his leaves. They fell from the tips of the claw-shaped leaves and sank into the soil, nourishing his roots.
Sui Jian watched the ginseng spirit grow increasingly luminous and translucent in the moonlight, his eyes dark and unreadable.
Beginning with his first life, Sui Jian had reincarnated dozens of times. Never had he seen a demon cultivator so favored by heaven and earth while cultivating.
Yes. Favored.
The state Yun Shen entered while cultivating looked as though heaven and earth themselves were holding him in their palms, doting on and protecting him, unwilling to let him suffer even the slightest discomfort.
A vague intuition told Sui Jian that this ginseng spirit was probably not as simple as he appeared.
As Yun Shen’s cultivation accelerated, a rich medicinal fragrance spread through the air. Waves of spiritual power rippled outward, carrying the fragrance farther and farther away.
About five kilometers away, more than a dozen cultivators dressed in identical indigo cultivation robes and standing on flying spiritual treasures all stopped at once.
“What smells so good? What is that?”
One person in the group asked. The old cultivator at the front sniffed carefully, pondered for a while, then finally confirmed, “It’s ginseng. With a fragrance this strong, it must be at least a thousand-year-old ginseng that has cultivated into a spirit.”
Ordinary ginseng was easy to find, but thousand-year-old ginseng that had become a spirit was an extremely precious medicinal treasure, almost impossible to buy at any price.
The old cultivator made an immediate decision. “Go. Let’s dig up that ginseng spirit.”
If they obtained that thousand-year-old ginseng spirit, whether they refined it into medicine or sold it at auction, it would be enormously beneficial to the Jade Spirit Sect.
Everyone present understood the stakes. No one opposed the old cultivator’s decision. They immediately changed direction and flew toward the source of the fragrance.
At the center of the formation, Sui Jian seemed to sense them. His figure melted into the darkness like a ghost.
A few breaths later, figures descended from the air one after another. When the cultivators landed and saw the scene in front of them, they all widened their eyes in shock, followed immediately by uncontrollable delight.
This thousand-year-old ginseng spirit could actually trigger a phenomenon of condensed moon essence while cultivating!
Moon essence was not merely beneficial to demon cultivators. It was also a precious material for pill refining and artifact forging. If they could obtain this spiritual plant, it would be equivalent to gaining an inexhaustible source of moon essence.
How could the Jade Spirit Sect fail to flourish after that?
Without exception, greed appeared on the faces of all the cultivators. Every one of them was determined to possess the ginseng spirit in front of them.
“The spiritual plant is cultivating, and there’s no guardian spirit beast around it. This is the best time to act.”
The only pill refiner in the group took a small jade digging shovel from his storage pouch, eager to begin.
The old cultivator warned him, “We should still be careful.”
This valley was extremely ordinary. Its only notable feature was that it lay on the necessary route away from Gourd Mountain. The appearance of a ginseng spirit here was too convenient. Spiritual plants that had gained intelligence treasured their lives enormously. They would normally only be found in places untouched by people and would never cultivate so openly somewhere they could easily be discovered.
After being reminded, the pill refiner also suspected there might be a trap. But moon essence and a ginseng spirit were simply too valuable. If they missed this opportunity, finding another one in the future would be almost impossible.
Fortune favored the bold. Besides, they had the advantage of numbers and were all experts at the Nascent Soul or Mahayana realms. The old cultivator himself had reached the peak of Mahayana and was only half a step from the Integration realm. Even if there was a trap, they should be able to handle it.
After discussing it, the cultivators decided the benefits still outweighed the risks. In the end, they agreed to send five Mahayana experts ahead to scout. Once they confirmed there was no danger, the old cultivator and the pill refiner would dig up the spiritual plant together.
Hidden in the darkness, Sui Jian watched them with mocking amusement and gave a contemptuous laugh. “As expected, human nature is greedy.”
Knowing there were tigers in the mountain yet insisting on walking toward them—if misfortune befell them, they could only blame themselves.
The instant the final two cultivators entered the formation’s range, a streak of spiritual power struck the spirit stone at its center. The formation activated at once. Stones that had looked carelessly scattered transformed into barriers blocking every path and trapped the intruders inside.
Sui Jian raised a loosely clenched fist to his lips and coughed up blood. Activating the formation had consumed a significant amount of spiritual power, aggravating the body he had only managed to nurse back slightly.
Yun Shen happened to finish one cultivation session and woke. He stretched his branches and leaves in satisfaction, then saw the cultivators wandering in circles like headless flies. He could not help exclaiming repeatedly, “So this is a formation? Amazing!”
Sui Jian wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. When he was done, he used spiritual power to ignite a spiritual flame and burn it away before turning around with a calm expression. “Stay here and don’t run around. Be careful not to get lost and never find your way out.”
Yun Shen was also inside the formation. Without Sui Jian watching him, he could easily lose his direction just like those cultivators.
Yun Shen did not really understand but was suitably impressed. He blankly said “Oh,” then watched Sui Jian somehow produce an iron shovel.
It was an ordinary farm shovel.
“Where did you get that thing?”
It was completely incompatible with Sui Jian’s aura. Yun Shen curiously extended a root and mischievously poked the wooden handle.
Sui Jian lowered his eyes to him. “Picked it up on the way.”
Yun Shen: “…”
Didn’t that mean he had stolen it?
Yun Shen muttered silently but did not dare voice the thought. He could not help asking again, “Then what are you going to use it for?”
His little eyes drifted toward the cultivators trapped in the formation and unable to find a way out. Surely he was not going to use it to bury people?
Sui Jian offered no explanation. He merely lifted the shovel, weighed it in his hand, and said evenly, “You’ll know in a moment.”
The shovel was not for burying people, but…
Yun Shen watched helplessly as the great villain used the formation to sneak up on people and whack each one over the head with the shovel. After knocking them unconscious, he efficiently stripped off their storage pouches and seized their spiritual artifacts, tossed the stolen goods into his storage ring, then turned to smack the next head.
The motions were smooth and seamless, clearly the work of a habitual offender who had done this countless times.
Yun Shen stared with numb, rounded eyes, feeling as though the entire world had become surreal.
Who would have guessed? So this was the kind of great villain you were!
