Chapter 152| Chapter 153| Chapter 154
Chapter 152: Talisman
Lu Yunxi scanned the mob assembled in front of her and quickly gauged their parameters.
It was a ragtag group with an average level ranging from 8 to 10. They gripped large blades in their hands and tried to look incredibly menacing, but upon closer inspection, their “weapons” were actually just basic woodcutting hatchets and common kitchen cleavers.
“Why wouldn’t I dare face you? It’s not as if I have any reason to hide,” she said, her lips curving into a slow smile as she strolled forward at a leisurely pace. “But my goodness, Auntie, bringing this many men straight to my quarters… Has a thief managed to infiltrate the building?”
The hairs on the back of the madam’s neck stood straight up.
Seeing his mother falter, the young master’s entitlement immediately flared. “I am standing right here, yet you still dare to intimidate my mother! You truly deserve to die!”
With a dramatic wave of his arm, he signaled the wall of mercenaries behind him. The brawny thugs raised their weapons and began aggressively closing ranks around Lu Yunxi.
Lu Yunxi’s lips twitched with amusement. She didn’t even need to bother drawing her bow from her inventory; dealing with a low-level mob like this would be entirely effortless… Wait, what?
“Ahhhhh!”
A chorus of furious, high-pitched battle cries suddenly shattered the tension. Before the mercenaries could execute their advance, a massive wave of hostesses and kitchen maids came charging down the corridor. Some brandished burning torches, others wielded sharp sewing scissors, and every single one of them lunged forward with a reckless, desperate courage burning in their eyes.
Lu Yunxi: ???
Terrified that the innocent civilians would get themselves slaughtered by a stray swing, she couldn’t simply stand back and watch the chaos unfold. Her body shifted into a seamless blur; with a succession of blindingly fast, precision kicks, she systematically swept the brawny mercenaries off their feet, snapping the weapons cleanly out of their grips as they crashed to the floorboards.
In a matter of seconds, the entire security detail was completely incapacitated, stripped of any ability to mount an attack.
Only then did she finally exhale a sigh of relief. Turning her gaze toward the bewildered, breathless girls, she rubbed her temples in sheer, helpless exasperation.
“What on earth are you all doing here?”
The girls didn’t offer a logical explanation. Instead, their eyes lit up with profound adoration, staring at her in absolute shock and euphoria.
“Qing’er, you are absolutely magnificent!!”
Having effortlessly vaporized the threat, Lu Yunxi tried to adopt a stern, authoritative facial expression, looking exactly like a strict school principal delivering a lecture. “Are you all completely insane?! Do you not comprehend how dangerous this sector is right now…?”
But before she could even finish reprimanding them, the crowd of hostesses erupted into boisterous cheers, completely drowning out her lecture.
“Qing’er is incredible!”
“Qing’er is the greatest!”
“…”
The girls swarmed her, their eyes sparkling with unbridled worship as they chanted her name in a continuous loop. Before she could process the shift, a dozen hands gripped her robes, and they began gleefully tossing her up into the air over and over again.
Lu Yunxi’s lingering frustration evaporated instantly, deflating exactly like a balloon poked with a pin. She looked at the celebrating crowd with complete helplessness, ultimately deciding to just warn them to be more cautious in the future, dropping any further discipline.
While the girls were entirely swept up in their celebration, the group of mercenaries sprawled across the floorboards—nursing their broken bones and groaning through gritted teeth—quietly hauled each other to their feet. Even though they walked with severe, painful limps, their escape parameters were exceptionally high, and they vanished down the stairwell in the blink of an eye.
Lu Yunxi tracked their retreat out of the corner of her eye but made no move to intercept them. The monk can flee, but the monastery remains. The hired muscle could run as far as they liked, but the brothel owner and her delusional son had nowhere to hide.
The hostesses were so entirely elated by the victory that they pooled their pocket silver together, bribing the kitchen staff to procure an enormous feast of roasted duck, barbecued meats, and premium wine, initiating a rowdy house celebration that lasted for two consecutive days.
Granted, Lu Yunxi didn’t have the slightest clue what specific milestone they were actually celebrating.
A few days later, a sharp rap echoed against her bedroom door.
Opening the latch, she was thoroughly surprised to find the madam and her son standing on her threshold entirely of their own volition.
“Miss Qing’er,” the madam cooed, her face a mask of tight, sycophantic smiles as she presented two elaborately decorated gift boxes. “My son and I have come to formally offer our deepest apologies.”
“An apology?” Lu Yunxi arched an eyebrow, her skepticism flaring.
The madam was pathologically treacherous, and her son was a textbook, low-level villain. Neither of them possessed a single shred of moral integrity. But leaving their base personalities aside, characters of their archetype simply didn’t volunteer an apology for their transgressions. For them to suddenly initiate a peace offering meant a hidden variable was at play.
Masking her thoughts, she stepped back and gestured for them to enter the quarters.
The mother and son took their seats on the stools, their eyes frantically darting around the interior. The madam forced a high-pitched chuckle, attempting to break the ice. “My word, Miss Qing’er truly possesses exquisite, peerless taste! The structural arrangement of this chamber is simply magnificent! Just stepping through the threshold fills one’s soul with absolute serenity!”
Lu Yunxi: “…”
This was literally the dilapidated communal dormitory assigned to the low-level kitchen handymen. She hadn’t altered a single piece of furniture since she spawned here.
“Every single servant’s quarters in this building looks exactly like this,” she stated flatly.
The madam instantly choked on her own saliva, breaking into a rapid series of coughs as her face flushed. Desperate to smooth over the logistical blunder, she hastily pivoted the conversation.
“Ah, well, Miss Qing’er, the truth of the matter is quite simple. Regarding that massive security detail we mobilized the other morning… In reality, it was all due to a professional consultation we held with a feng shui master. The elder explicitly stated that if we systematically purged the courtyard layouts every few weeks, the spiritual alignment of the property would reset, and the Fengyue Tower’s nightly revenue would skyrocket.” The madam straightened her spine, her expression shifting into a picture of profound, tragic guilt. “Who could have possibly foreseen that those hired mercenaries would act with such unmitigated disrespect toward you!”
“We were completely blindsided by their volatile behavior,” the madam continued, her brow furrowing with theatrical sorrow. “On paper, every single one of those men carried an immaculate, honest reference. Who could have guessed that beneath their pleasant exteriors, they were nothing but ruthless bullies?”
However, despite her master-class performance, a fleeting glint of deep disgust and latent malice inadvertently leaked from her eyes.
Lu Yunxi offered a placid, entirely unbothered smile, acting exactly as though she hadn’t detected the hostility. “Ah, I see. In that case, I certainly cannot hold you accountable for the incident. After all, management can never fully control the internal thoughts of external contractors.”
The madam let out a long, internal breath of relief. Qing’er’s combat stats were simply too monstrous; if the girl harbored a genuine, active grudge against them, neither she nor her son would ever be able to sleep peacefully again.
Lu Yunxi lowered her eyes, utilizing her peripheral vision to monitor the young master. The boy had been shifting restlessly on his stool since the moment he sat down, uncharacteristically maintaining absolute silence.
Her brow arched subtly. Given his historical behavior, the teenager was notoriously boastful and high-profile; why was he suddenly acting like a mute prop?
Deciding to test the waters, she smoothly directed a casual question straight at him.
To her immense amusement, the simple prompt caused the pupils of both mother and son to violently contract. Though they desperately maintained their facades and clumsily steered the dialogue toward mundane, regional topics, their physical vessels remained visibly rigid, their muscles wound tight with anxiety.
Lu Yunxi’s eyes narrowed into a dangerous focus. Rather than pressing the issue and breaking their guard, she smoothly played along, engaging them in light, empty banter.
Noticing that the young master was squirming so intensely it looked as though his trousers were filled with worms, she casually offered to brew a fresh pot of tea, standing up and turning her back to them as she approached the counter.
The exact moment she reseated herself, she felt the oppressive tension in the room instantly evaporate. The mother and son relaxed their postures, looking exactly like operatives who had successfully executed a high-stakes extraction mission.
“As long as Miss Qing’er has graciously granted us her forgiveness, we shall no longer intrude upon your well-deserved rest,” the madam said smoothly. Without so much as touching the freshly poured tea, she rose in a hurry and ushered her son out of the dormitory.
Lu Yunxi tracked their retreating figures down the corridor, a sharp, calculated glint flaring in her eyes.
Turning back to her bed, she systematically stripped away the thin sheets and began running her fingers along the wooden slats underneath. Within seconds, her grip locked onto a strange, structured object wedged deep beneath the mattress.
Pulling it out into the light, she unfurled the parchment, her eyebrows rising in instant recognition.
“Well, well. A talisman?”
The madam had deliberately amplified her vocal output to command her full attention, creating the perfect distraction for her foolish son to plant a ward beneath her mattress.
Lu Yunxi didn’t hesitate. She conjured a localized spark, incinerating the original curse into ash. Retrieving a fresh sheet of high-grade talisman paper and a vial of premium cinnabar from her spatial inventory, she fluidly sketched a highly advanced counter-array across the parchment. Folding it into the exact geometric shape of the original ward, she slid it precisely back into the slot beneath the bed.
The following morning.
A critical piece of intelligence swept through the corridors of the Fengyue Tower: The terrifying kitchen maid, Qing’er, has suddenly fallen critically ill.
The news plunged the hostesses and support staff into a state of intense panic. Deeply worried for her safety, the maids and waitresses formed a continuous queue, visiting her room one by one to shower her with get-well gifts and premium remedies.
Concurrently, deep within the private master quarters, the madam and her son let out an absolute, joyous sigh of relief the moment the report was delivered.
“Mother, I told you so!” the young master boasted, a smug sneer returning to his face. “A common woman could never possess that level of monstrous combat prowess; she had to be an unholy entity! I have no idea what kind of demonic creature she truly is, or how she managed to infiltrate our establishment. But thank heavens for the master’s divine talisman! It successfully neutralized her parameters before she could slaughter us!”
Then, his brow furrowed with lingering anxiety. “Though, now that she’s incapacitated, we face a new dilemma—we don’t dare attempt to evict her from the premises!”
“Why on earth can’t we evict her?! I’ll establish contact with my slave-trading channels and have her fenced out of the province immediately!” the madam shrieked, pacing back and forth across her rugs in a frenzy of excitement.
If Qing’er was permanently purged from the server, she could finally re-establish her absolute corporate dominance over the rest of the handymen! Ever since that kitchen maid had broken her nerve, the lower-level staff had been enjoying structured rest hours and regular pay—an absolute waste of company resources! Once the threat was liquidated, she would force every single one of those wretches back to a non-stop, grueling work schedule to maximize profits!
“It’s not that simple, Mother,” the young master explained anxiously. “The mercenaries I hired for the ambush have already leaked the data regarding her strength across the entire underground network. Now, not only the security guilds but even the human trafficking syndicates refuse to touch the case. No one is willing to take custody of a literal monster.”
The madam froze mid-stride, her face contorting. “How can they be so cowardly?! What about the original trafficking crew who fenced her to us in the first place? The rest of the market might fold, but those low-lifes wouldn’t dare refuse our silver, correct?”
“That channel is completely dead, Mother. I did some digging, and it appears that entire crew abruptly left the city to seek specialized medical treatment in some remote province. They’ve completely vanished off the grid!”
The mother and son slumped onto their respective chairs, letting out a synchronized, heavy sigh of frustration.
Even though their status panels indicated that Qing’er was officially sidelined with a “critical illness,” the psychological trauma she had inflicted upon them was simply too severe. They lacked the courage to even step into her dormitory to verify her condition, let alone personally drag her out. They were caught in an absolute tactical deadlock.
“What about the master?” the young master suddenly blurted out, a spark of inspiration hitting him. “Let’s track down the master immediately! Since his basic talisman possessed the parameters to weaken the demon, his high-tier magic can undoubtedly bind and control her permanently!”
The madam’s eyes lit up with absolute greed. “A brilliant strategy!”
Chapter 153: The “Old Man” Treats Illness
The Madam and her son rolled out of the Fengyue Tower in a carriage early that morning.
Meanwhile, Lu Yunxi lay comfortably in her bed. Listening to the latest updates the kitchen maids had brought her, she couldn’t help but widen her eyes in disbelief.
She had originally assumed the mother and son were cooking up some grand, hidden conspiracy, which was why she had feigned illness to see how they would react. But they hadn’t actually done anything to her! Instead, the Madam had rushed out of the district because of a rumor that some legendary master was looking for her.
Thinking of this, Lu Yunxi burst out laughing.
“How can you possibly laugh right now?!” Ling’er huffed, pacing anxiously beside the mattress before giving her a sharp nudge. “What are you going to do when that master actually gets here?!”
“Relax, I’ll be fine,” Lu Yunxi waved a dismissive hand, sitting up with complete nonchalance.
She had just finished a delicious, premium lunch and was settling back down for a nap when the bedroom door creaked open. The Madam and her son had returned, reverently escorting an “old man” into the dormitory.
They guided him straight to Lu Yunxi’s bedside.
“Qing’er, look at how much I care about you. I have personally invited a renowned physician to examine you,” the Madam took a deep breath, forcing a gentle, maternal expression onto her face. “This master is exceptionally skilled in the medical arts. With his guidance, you will be back on your feet in no time!”
Lu Yunxi plastered a weak, frail smile onto her face. “Understood. My thanks to you, Physician.”
The “old man” stroked his long, flowing white beard, nodding with a haughty, reserved air. He stepped forward, assuming a grave, solemn expression as he reached out to take her pulse.
Lu Yunxi subtly peeked at the age marker displayed above his head on her system interface, and the corners of her lips curled into a barely perceptible smirk.
A nineteen-year-old old man?
To make matters worse, not only was his pulse-reading technique completely flawed, but his fingers were actively pressing down on the wrong part of her wrist! Yet, even though his physical execution was a disaster, the theatrical expression on his face was flawless. He looked completely confident, furrowing his brow and letting out a heavy, tragic sigh every few seconds.
Finally, he withdrew his hand and declared, “Your affliction is deeply rooted… It will not be easy to mend.”
Lu Yunxi stared at the teenager, her face a perfect, deadpan mask.
“This maiden’s spiritual essence has been severely compromised,” the fake old man continued, shaking his head as he spouted absolute gibberish. “To facilitate her recovery, she must be systematically exposed to the raw essence of heaven and earth.”
Before Lu Yunxi could even decipher his words, his hand blurred, and he whipped out a familiar paper talisman, slapping it directly onto her forehead.
Lu Yunxi: “…”
Are you kidding me?!
Did this fraud mistake her for a literal zombie?! To actually paste a paper ward right over her eyes!
Just as her muscles tensed to rip the absolute garbage off her face, a sudden rush of movement disrupted her radius. Four burly guards lunged forward, grabbing her securely by her wrists and ankles. Moving in perfect sync, they hoisted her off the mattress and carried her out of the dormitory like a heavy piece of oak furniture.
Ling’er watched the abduction unfold, her round eyes wide with absolute, speechless horror.
The guards marched Lu Yunxi straight into the dead center of the Fengyue Tower’s main courtyard, dropping her onto the cobblestones.
Up on the second-floor balconies and behind the corridor tapestries, the rest of the hostesses peeked out to monitor the drama. Seeing Lu Yunxi’s perfectly calm, unbothered expression, their anxiety evaporated instantly. Realizing she was entirely safe, they happily settled in to watch the entertainment, many of them hiding their giggles behind silk handkerchiefs.
The sweltering noon sun beat down on the courtyard, raising waves of heat that could make a mortal break into a violent sweat within seconds.
Lu Yunxi, possessing Grandmaster-level physical stats, barely registered the warmth. She casually reached up, tore the sticky talisman off her forehead, and tossed it onto the dirt before lightly wiping a bead of condensation from her brow.
“Why must we conduct this consultation out in the open? Can I not return indoors?” she asked, thoroughly speechless.
Were these NPCs simple-minded? Why on earth were they standing directly in the blazing sun when there were perfectly good pockets of shade scattered along the pavilion?
The Madam was already sweating through her heavy makeup. She turned anxiously toward her consultant. “Master, look at her… The ward didn’t seem to bind her.”
The master offered a subtle, warning shake of his head. Catching her sleeve, he pulled her toward the edge of the courtyard, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“You do not understand the mechanics. Evil entities harbor a mortal dread of intense sunlight, which represents the ultimate refinement of Yang energy,” the master stated with absolute gravity. “The fact that she is squirming right now proves the sun is actively fracturing her core parameters. If you permit her to retreat to a cool sanctuary now, our entire ritual will suffer a catastrophic system failure.”
“But Master, how long must we maintain this exposure? If Qing’er loses her patience and launches an attack, my guards lack the parameters to restrain her!” The Madam’s nervousness flared, her eyes darting fearfully toward the girl.
“Do not panic. Under the unyielding light of the true sun, no matter what breed of demon she may be, her camouflage will eventually disintegrate,” the master replied smoothly, tilting his head with a sagely look as he stroked his fake beard. “If her underlying monster level is weak, the kinetic heat will vaporize her avatar entirely.”
The Madam’s eyes lit up with absolute greed. “A brilliant strategy, Master! I will ensure she remains anchored to the cobblestones.”
Having concluded their high-level strategy meeting, the two scurried back to their positions, completely oblivious to the sheer, deadpan resignation written all over Lu Yunxi’s face.
“Hold on! Qing’er, where do you think you’re going?!” the Madam shrieked in a panic as Lu Yunxi suddenly turned on her heel and marched back toward the main pavilion.
Lu Yunxi ignored the shouting entirely. She checked her internal interface, noting the localized server temperature had spiked to 45°C. Standing out in that heat was a textbook definition of foolishness! She had zero intention of letting her clean clothes get sticky with sweat.
“Qing’er, please, return to the courtyard! The master is on the verge of purging your affliction!” the Madam hollered, desperately wanting to physically grab her but lacking the courage to touch her arm.
Lu Yunxi paused, her mind blanking for a moment before she finally recalled her current roleplay constraints: Right, I am technically supposed to be incapacitated by a magical illness.
Her eye twitched. Roleplay or not, she refused to stand blindly under a scorching sky like an idiot. Ignoring their protests, she strode through the doors, forcing the master and his entourage to trail miserably behind her.
The interior of the pavilion was heavily lined with massive blocks of ice, creating a refreshing, cool sanctuary. The lower-level kitchen maids immediately paraded out, setting down pots of iced tea, fresh water, and delicate platters of pastries.
However—
The fake master looked down at his table, staring at a chipped bowl of lukewarm water that hosted nothing but two sad, floating tea stalks. Meanwhile, his target sat directly across from him, elegantly sampling an array of premium, melt-in-your-mouth pastries while sipping a cup of crystal-clear, top-grade green tea.
A sudden wave of intense professional jealousy surged within his chest. His eyes narrowed, and a brilliant, malicious scheme formed in his mind.
“What on earth is that supposed to be?!”
Lu Yunxi stared down at the massive trench cutting through her private courtyard, her speech slightly slurred by the premium hard candy tucked into her cheek.
For reasons that completely defied logic, the Madam had actually authorized a major infrastructure project overnight, ordering her workers to completely drain the scenic courtyard pond. Every single pristine lotus flower and elegant lily pad had been violently uprooted and discarded. Now, the excavated basin was filled to the brim with a thick, pitch-black sewage sludge that had been hauled in from parts unknown.
Initially, she had been able to tolerate the sight from a distance, but as the noon heat baked the trench, a suffocating, rancid stench began to blanket the entire sector. The sweet candy in her mouth suddenly tasted foul.
Thoroughly disgusted, she turned to evacuate the area.
However—
“Qing’er, you cannot abandon the ritual site! This specialized pool was constructed exclusively for your benefit!” the Madam cried out, throwing her physical body into her path to block the exit.
Lu Yunxi: ???
Constructed for my benefit? A literal open cesspool? She was profoundly touched by their corporate generosity!
“The Madam speaks the absolute truth,” the master chimed in. He tilted his chin up with an air of supreme authority, stepping forward with slow, rhythmic strides. “To thoroughly purge the demonic rot contaminating your system, you must fully submerge your physical vessel within this basin for one full day and night. Concurrently, I shall deploy the legendary Seven Killing Talismans I personally crafted to finalize the purification.”
“One full day and night?” Lu Yunxi arched a delicate eyebrow.
“The Seven Killing Talismans?!” The word expensive instantly flashed in the Madam’s mind, her internal greed overriding her fear.
“Indeed, the Seven Killing Talismans,” the master stated, deliberately ignoring Lu Yunxi to focus his sales pitch entirely on his primary investor. “I spent decades harvesting thousand-year-old spiritual herbs, combining them with top-grade, magically altered hound’s blood. Utilizing the most expensive, gold-flecked parchment paper available on the server, I gathered the raw essence of heaven and earth, enduring forty-nine days of continuous refinement to forge this single ward. It possesses the hard-coded parameters to permanently delete any demon or monster under heaven.”
To his mind, Lu Yunxi was already a walking corpse whose contract was about to be liquidated; she didn’t warrant a single shred of his cognitive energy.
The Madam’s heart skipped a beat. The item description sounded incredibly high-tier. A supreme relic of that caliber had to cost an absolute fortune.
“What is the exact… baseline price?” she asked, swallowing hard as her tight-fisted nature flared.
“Do not fret, old friend. For you, I will waive the standard premium. It will only require… this much,” the master replied, flashing a specific hand gesture.
The Madam let out a sharp gasp, her face draining of color. The silver required to purchase that single slip of paper was equivalent to the Fengyue Tower’s total net revenue for a half-year fiscal cycle!
She wavered, her intense reluctance written all over her face.
Sensing the investor was about to back out of the transaction, the master immediately pivoted, turning on his heel to fake an immediate departure. “Very well. If you find the capital investment too steep, I shall take my services to the capital. My schedule is entirely booked; a dozen noble houses are currently begging me to execute cleansing rituals for their estates.”
The Madam panicked. Terrified of losing her ultimate weapon, she lunged forward to intercept him, her face a mask of groveling apologies. “Wait, Master! Please, do not depart! We shall initiate the transaction immediately!”
Lu Yunxi leaned casually against a nearby willow tree, watching the two of them bartering back and forth as if she were nothing more than a background prop. After whispering and calculating their accounts for a few more minutes, the duo simultaneously snapped their gazes back to her.
“Alright, the parameters have been established. Jump into the basin immediately,” the master commanded. He spread his feet, bending his knees slightly as he pressed his palms flat against the air, sinking his inner Qi down into his Dantian to assume a defensive posture. Locking a stern focus onto Lu Yunxi, he boomed, “Begin! My defensive arrays are fully operational. Execute the submersion now!”
Lu Yunxi’s expression turned remarkably subtle.
She scanned his physical alignment from head to toe, her brow arching in sheer, professional disdain. His horse stance is completely flawed! His center of gravity is entirely off-balance!
Stepping away from the willow tree, she walked slowly toward the edge of the rancid trench. The fake master offered a tight nod and a cold smile, gesturing with his eyes for her to plunge into the sludge.
The next microsecond.
SPLASH! PLOP!
A pair of heavy, synchronized impacts shattered the surface of the sludge as Lu Yunxi casually delivered two swift kicks, sending both the Madam and the master flying straight into the center of the cesspool.
Chapter 154: Hand It Over
The moment the Madam and her self-proclaimed master collapsed into the sludge, a massive geyser of foul sewage threatened to erupt upward.
Lu Yunxi launched herself backward in a seamless blur, retreating behind a thick willow tree several hundred meters away.
The two victims flailed and splashed frantically in the muck for several frantic seconds before it finally registered that the basin wasn’t even deep enough to clear a mortal’s thigh. Only then did their panic subside, and they began the grueling, humiliating process of dragging themselves out of the mire.
Once the ripples in the open trench quieted down, Lu Yunxi sauntered back to the edge of the pit.
The moment their eyes locked onto her, their features twisted with unbridled fury.
“Qing’er! We approached your condition with nothing but absolute benevolence! How dare you execute such a vile assault?!” the Madam shrieked, her voice cracking with such raw rage that she completely forgot to be terrified of the girl’s parameters.
The master’s gaze burned with pure, unadulterated venom. If looks possessed hard-coded damage values, Lu Yunxi would have been vaporized on the spot.
“Oh, it’s nothing personal,” Lu Yunxi replied with a bright, pleasant smile. She took a deliberate few steps back, wrinkling her nose and dramatically throwing a hand over her face to telegraph her intense disgust. “I simply noticed a severe cognitive defect in your processing units and concluded your brains required a thorough cleansing. Didn’t you state the Seven Killing Talismans possessed peerless, heaven-defying power? Why didn’t they patch up your mental parameters? My goodness, please don’t let this highly effective medicine go to waste—stay in there a bit longer!”
Offering them a cheerful wave, she turned and strolled out of the courtyard in plain sight.
The Madam and the Master stood frozen, their minds completely short-circuiting.
Detestable wretch!
The sheer humiliation pushed them to the brink of insanity. Exchanging a wild, bloodshot glance, the two of them unified their hatred and charged toward the bank of the pit, fully intending to smear hands full of the sludge straight into Lu Yunxi’s hair. But they had barely covered a few paces when their wet garments tangled, and they violently tripped each other up.
In the ensuing tumble, both of them inadvertently swallowed a hefty mouthful of the mire.
“Pfft! Cough, hack! Are you blind?! Why did you trip me?!” the Madam roared, planting her hands on her hips as she glared at her accomplice.
The master was in no mood to play submissively either. He let out a harsh, spitting sneer. “Talk about the thief crying thief! Your clumsy footing is the sole reason my array failed! If your massive robes hadn’t pinned my leg, I would have permanently deleted that demon by now!”
Completely losing sight of their primary target, the two of them entered a vicious, relentless shouting match right there in the sludge.
Lu Yunxi lingered just outside the courtyard wall for a few moments, listening to the muffled screaming. Shaking her head at the sheer absurdity of the AI’s local pathfinding, she walked away.
The Madam and the master continued their toxic debate inside the trench until the continuous exposure to the suffocating fumes caused both of them to faint dead away. Had it not been for a few fiercely loyal guards who risked the stench to drag them out, the two of them would have suffocated on the spot.
By the time they regained consciousness in the medical ward, their tempers had cooled, and they offered each other stiff, mutual apologies to smooth over the corporate blunder. After all, one of them was severely short on silver, and the other needed an investor to help neutralize Lu Yunxi. With their business models heavily codependent, a permanent falling out was out of the question.
“Master, that kitchen wench is far too volatile to contain. What is our secondary strategy?” the Madam lamented, looking thoroughly drained by the continuous stress. If it weren’t for that absolute monster policing the estate, why on earth would she be wasting her hard-earned silver distributing structured monthly salaries to a bunch of low-level handymen?! The overhead was bleeding her dry! The Fengyue Tower’s quarterly profit margins were plummeting to historic lows!
The master’s brow furrowed into a deep, calculating knot. He had spent the last forty-eight hours reviewing the data.
This particular target’s parameters were astronomically high! Standard, low-tier street ambushes weren’t going to make a dent in her armor.
He closed his eyes, centering his stance as a sudden, dramatic gust of wind swept through the pavilion, causing his scholar’s robes to rustle with intense, cinematic gravity.
The Madam immediately held her breath, her eyes widening with reverence. The Master truly radiates an entirely different spiritual caliber! She wondered if he was actively channeling some secret, ancient cultivation art in real time. She must remain perfectly silent so as not to disrupt his focus.
Suddenly, the master’s eyes snapped open. He thrust a rigid finger toward the western corridor, his voice dropping into a booming register. “Behold! The demonic entity has exposed its trajectory! Follow me, we shall bind the fiend this instant!”
With that declaration, he burst into a full sprint.
The Madam lifted her gaze and spotted Lu Yunxi casually walking down the parallel hallway. Her heart leaped into her throat. Terrified of a direct confrontation, she instinctively reached out to pull the master back, but a sudden gleam of ruthless ambition flared in her chest, and she held her ground.
The master unsheathed a shimmering silver sword mid-stride, closing the distance like a bolt of lightning as he drove the tip of the blade directly toward Lu Yunxi’s throat with an aggression that looked capable of shattering steel.
Lu Yunxi was merely enjoying an afternoon stroll; she certainly hadn’t anticipated an unprovoked assassination attempt. Her gaze turned ice-cold. Executing a minor, fluid twist of her torso, she melted out of the weapon’s tracking line. Before the master could recover his momentum or adjust his stance, her hand shot out like an iron vice, gripping his wrist and violently twisting downward.
The master’s face drained of color, a sharp shriek of agony tearing from his throat. His fingers instantly went limp, and his premium silver blade clattered harmlessly onto the floorboards.
Lu Yunxi casually kicked the weapon down the hall, maintained her leverage on his arm, and pinned the screaming man face-first onto the floor.
The Madam’s expression shifted rapidly through a comical carousel of emotions—from triumphant glee, to absolute horror, settling finally into a state of numb, hollow resignation.
Of course, she thought miserably. A master might command the mystical arrays to exorcise spirits, but that doesn’t mean his raw physical parameters are optimized for a fistfight!
Realizing Lu Yunxi was a permanent fixture under her roof, the Madam’s face contorted into a mask of pure agony. No! I have to intervene! If the girl deletes the Master permanently, who else am I supposed to hire to neutralize her?!
Gritting her teeth, she prepared to step forward to beg for mercy when she froze. Lu Yunxi’s fingers had suddenly locked onto the master’s long white hair, giving it a sharp, testing tug.
With a soft ripping sound, the entire mane of pristine white hair was cleanly pulled away.
But instead of exposing a bald skull, the removal revealed a dense, thick head of youthful black hair.
Amused by the discovery, Lu Yunxi’s curiosity peaked. Her hands moved in a blur, systematically ripping away the long flowing beard and peeling a specialized liquid latex mask straight off his neck.
Once the outer layer of cosmetics was thoroughly stripped away, a perfectly smooth, youthful face was exposed to the light.
The Madam stood paralyzed, her jaw dropping.
“Master…? Aren’t you supposed to be a venerable sage of sixty winters…?” The words died in her throat, her voice sounding exactly like a duck being slowly strangled.
The grandmaster’s ancient features had completely regressed into a teenager’s visage. Furthermore, once the artificial wrinkles were peeled from his neck and hands, his skin appeared remarkably smooth, pristine, and entirely pale.
The Madam’s face turned a violent shade of mottled blue and purple, looking exactly like a painter’s palette had been violently upturned over her head.
“You are nothing but a common scammer?!” she screamed, her blood pressure skyrocketing to lethal levels.
To expedite the exorcism of Qing’er, she had poured an astronomical fortune into this fraud’s accounts over the past week. Running the numbers in her head, the capital she had invested was equivalent to the Fengyue Tower’s total net revenue for three consecutive fiscal years!
And the entire thing had been an insurance scam!
Pure, unbridled fury ignited her gaze. Snatching a heavy utility broom from a nearby cleaning cart, she charged forward like an unhinged demon.
“You miserable, deceitful parasite! To think you managed to subvert my accounting department! Today, I shall execute justice on behalf of heaven and beat you into digital particles!” She rained down a frantic, relentless volley of blows, the rough bristles tearing into his face until deep streaks of blood marred his skin.
Lu Yunxi hadn’t anticipated the Madam going completely berserk. Even though the older woman’s arms were visibly trembling from the physical exertion, her raw anger kept her swinging without a single pause for breath.
It took a full thirty minutes of non-stop bludgeoning before the fraud was beaten into a bloodied, half-dead pulp, at which point the furious brothel owner ordered her guards to throw his limp body out into the gutters.
“Can you believe the sheer audacity of that wretched con artist?! Squeezing that much gold out of my personal reserves…” The Madam’s wrath only intensified as the hours passed. She violently slammed her fist onto her vanity table, bolting toward the door. “That does it! I am marching straight to his residential sector to wait for that parasite and balance the ledgers!”
Watching her storm off, the young master panicked and scrambled to intercept her path.
“Mother, please, calm your nerves!” he pleaded, wrapping his arms around her waist to check her momentum. “I have already dispatched our scouts to map out the scammer’s secondary hideouts. We will liquidate his assets and recover the silver in no time! You must remember your age—what if you run into his brawny co-conspirators and take structural damage?!”
After a relentless barrage of frantic persuasion, the older woman finally relented, huffing back onto her lounge.
The young master let out a massive breath of relief. “Look, Mother, I know you are entirely desperate to terminate this Qing’er anomaly, but you cannot rush a high-level operation. We must exercise patience… I have already engineered a flawless secondary solution.”
“What specific strategy?!”
He leaned in close, dropping his voice to a low, sinister whisper against her ear…
Within a matter of days, a highly coordinated, viral rumor began to saturate the most populated avenues of Taohua City.
“Hey, have you caught the latest bulletin? Word on the street is that a maid servant named Qing’er down on the flower street is easily the most volatile, terrifying demon in the province.”
“I intercepted the same data! They say this Qing’er creature isn’t a human avatar at all. Her raw strength parameters allow her to lift a bronze tripod with a casual grip, and she possesses a rotting green face and massive fangs—it’s an absolute nightmare.”
“Oh, that’s just baseline flavor text! Her appearance and strength aren’t the real issue. The critical threat is that this Qing’er is a hard-coded, man-eating monster!”
“…”
The local demographic was discussing the narrative with manic intensity across every public square.
Lu Yunxi sat comfortably inside a high-traffic tavern, sipping her tea as she listened to the surrounding tables enthusiastically dissect her fictional lore. A broad, thoroughly amused smile split her face.
She had to hand it to the Madam—using a weaponized PR campaign to resolve a high-level security threat was a brilliant logistical move! As expected of an NPC who had successfully established an independent commercial enterprise in an ancient setting; her cognitive parameters were exceptionally sharp!
She lingered for another hour until her network had harvested enough public data before quietly returning to the Fengyue Tower.
Initially, she didn’t pay the rumors much mind. But a few days later—
“Hand her over! Surrender the man-eating witch!”
BOOM! BANG! CRASH!
A deafening chorus of frantic pounding, heavy rocks, and furious roars erupted against the main gates of the Fengyue Tower, threatening to shatter the wood.
Inside the pavilion, the hostesses and support staff stared at the violently vibrating doors in a state of absolute, paralyzed panic before simultaneously turning their terrified gazes onto her.
“Qing’er…” one of the young waitresses whimpered, tears streaming down her cheeks as she wrung her hands. “What are we supposed to do?!”
