The torrential rain poured down, mixed with acidic corrosion and chaotic spiritual energy. That cloud mass hung behind the motorcycle's wake like a persistent predator, unhurried. It had retracted its fangs, no longer sending down thunder—seemingly enjoying the prey's struggle before exhaustion.

  Ling was drenched to the bone by this rust-tasting rain, her lenses smeared with greasy water stains. She could only squint, barely relying on Ghost-Eye's guidance lines and the mountain road's reflective markers to discern direction.

  The good news was that the young Master Lei behind her had finally stabilized. Apparently this cloud could only barely maintain "full-speed pursuit" at the expense of "precise elimination."

  Teon had been jolted senseless. Rainwater hung from his thick lashes, blurring the world into smeared spots of light. The burning throughout his body had drained his strength. He instinctively pressed his scorching chest against Ling's back.

  Amid the world's reeking rain-smell, he caught Ling's cold scent—like some lotus-heart fragrance that inexplicably calmed him in this desperate situation.

  "That damn Dax… we're almost at the summit, where the hell is he!"

  Ling gritted her teeth, staring at the fuel gauge needle approaching empty—red as a death warrant, trembling against the last tick mark.

  "Really gonna get screwed over here."

  The rearview mirror was a blur of flying dust and twisted tree shadows. Ling turned her head to check for any sign of Dax—

  But ahead, a deadly sharp U-turn suddenly appeared.

  "Fuck—"

  She whipped her head back, pupils contracting sharply.

  Just as she leaned into the curve, two pale high-beam lights stabbed out from the darkness without warning—like two blades slicing straight into her eyes.

  Ling was instantly blinded, everything turning snow-white, seeing nothing.

  She instinctively tried to brake—

  But it was too late.

  The front wheel hit a slick patch of moss. The tire instantly lost traction. The entire bike screamed like a wild beast going out of control, swinging sideways.

  In that instant of skidding out, Ghost-Eye was quick enough, frantically calculating landing coordinates.

  Mid-air, she forcibly twisted her waist and activated Celestial Maiden's Heavenly Dance. The gorgeous moves meant for blessing ceremonies now became her attitude control engine on the edge of life and death. Her body spun and tumbled through the air, arms spread like bird wings, hair exploding behind her into a black fan. The system's built-in motion optimization worked overtime, precisely controlling every muscle, forcibly redirecting the out-of-control falling trajectory.

  Like a wounded swan, she barely managed to roll and land inside the guardrail's edge—shoulder slamming hard against a protruding thick branch. Pain exploded instantly, but at least she didn't fall off.

  Teon wasn't so graceful in comparison. He shot out like a runaway cannonball, straight through the mountain road's guardrail. Beyond the rail wasn't a bottomless abyss, but still a three-story drop, with jagged rocks in the ravine below pointing skyward like fangs.

  Teon thought he was dead for sure.

  Just as he was about to smash onto a boulder's sharp protrusion—his mind had already flashed the image of being impaled—

  At the last possible moment, countless pink petals appeared from nowhere.

  They surged out like living things, gathering, weaving, rapidly forming a soft downy blanket beneath him, precise and flexible. Layer upon layer of petals created a slanted cushioning slope, cleverly dispersing the impact force, converting his fall into a decelerating forward tumble.

  Even so, Teon was still thrown around like a ragdoll.

  He tumbled several times through the gravel, organs feeling like they were in a blender, bones nearly falling apart. Finally he slammed into a broken wooden stake—

  "AHHH—!"

  The stake's sharp broken end pierced straight through his right leg. Blood gushed out instantly.

  Teon nearly fainted from the pain, collapsing on the ground face-up. He watched the bright moon slowly being obscured by that eerie dark cloud, the reeking rain pouring down again.

  Consciousness scattered in pain. The world before his eyes grew blurry, distorted. Rain struck his face—impossible to tell if it was rain or tears. Only a buzzing tinnitus remained in his ears, like his soul was being pulled from his body.

  Yet just as his vision blurred, a faint ray of moonlight pierced through a gap in the clouds.

  In that light, something was slowly descending.

  A white dress, billowing like clouds in the wind.

  Beneath her feet bloomed lotus flowers—each radiating a soft halo, like dreams floating in midair. Lotus after lotus generated, bloomed, and dissipated beneath her feet, carrying her gently down.

  Long hair flew behind her. The white skirt's hem lifted in cascading waves. Countless pink petals swirled and danced around her.

  That face in the moonlight was hazy yet holy, like a deity stepping out of a mural.

  Teon stared blankly, mind completely empty.

  Could there really… be angels?

  Ling, however, was heartbroken.

  This "Step-by-Step Lotus" was the only anti-gravity function, an important accessory to Heavenly Dance. But this whole sequence was way too expensive.

  First was "Scatters Flowers" with parameters adjusted by Moye—no longer a performative blessing of scattered petals, but following specific biomechanical structures, trading density for load-bearing petal clusters. Even fragile as cicada wings, they could adjust their direction and overlapping arrangement in real-time based on weight changes. Every single petal was burning through budget.

  Originally designed specifically as Ling's own crash mat—after all, she really didn't want to get sent flying again.

  But Teon's weight was still too much. Couldn't completely offset that intense gravitational acceleration.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "Major loss…"

  Ling descended on her Step-by-Step Lotus from above, but the last meter couldn't hold. She stumbled and collapsed beside Teon. No need to check his breathing—one Ghost-Eye scan told her things were bad.

  Teon had entered deep coma. His soul and body had severely decoupled in frequency. A mass of black karma clung tightly around his neck like a noose, desperately trying to drag his soul out.

  And Ling herself wasn't much better. That extreme maneuver sequence had completely emptied her power gauge. Her joints made dry friction sounds; even raising her hand was exhausting.

  But Ling wasn't that penniless outsider anymore. "At least I'm a small business owner with startup capital and a team now. This bit of repair cost is nothing—"

  She habitually reached for her waist. "Let me pop a Qi Restoration Pill first to recover…"

  Her hand grasped empty air.

  "Huh? Where's my Pouch?"

  Ling froze. That interspatial pouch containing all her important possessions, pills, and spirit stones had vanished somewhere during the tumbling.

  "Fuck! Is bad luck contagious or something?!"

  She finally understood why Master Bai had sewn his Pouch tightly into his underwear.

  A scarlet warning popped up on her retina:

  [Hibernation countdown. Send location to emergency contact (Wei Xu)? 10… 9…]

  "Go fuck yourself!"

  Ling used her last bit of strength to forcibly terminate that command.

  Trembling, she pulled out her phone to send Dax her location, only to find the signal bar had turned into a useless brick under that weird cloud's interference. The circle on the screen spun and spun, finally freezing on "Send Failed."

  Crackle—

  Without warning, Ling collapsed stiff as a board onto the rocks. Only her consciousness remained clear, but like sleep paralysis, she'd lost all five senses, trapped inside her body unable to move.

  Then footsteps sounded from above.

  The car that had caused the accident stopped not far away. The driver got out, standing at the broken guardrail, expressionlessly peering down.

  The Cleaning Cloud overhead hovered steadily above the ravine, its "thunder-eye" at the center slowly rotating, seemingly brewing for a new round of hunting.

  Ling steeled herself—whatever, get out first!

  A semi-transparent black shadow struggled to break free from its shell. But the instant she left her body, she heard a bizarre sound.

  The driver who had been standing by the roadside suddenly let out an inhuman shriek toward the sky—sharp and piercing, mixed with frequencies beyond human hearing. Answering him came rustling sounds from the pitch-black bushes, along with several sharp, gleeful laughs.

  Then the driver actually jumped straight down from the three-story-high guardrail!

  Crack.

  His knees bent backward on impact, making a crisp snap. But like a zombie without pain receptors, he hobbled toward the unconscious pair, dragging his broken legs.

  Without any unnecessary movements, he grabbed Teon's ankle in one hand and "Ling's" in the other, dragging them like dead pigs into the depths of the dense forest.

  Ling's spirit form stealthily trailed behind. Seeing the driver show no reaction, she floated closer to examine this strange man.

  The more she looked, the more familiar he seemed—wasn't this the muscleman who'd gone crazy after losing his treasure at the Lei house?

  In spirit-vision, this man's soul was grotesquely swollen, like a plastic bag stuffed with kitchen waste, ready to burst any moment. Recalling the various anomalies she'd seen on him that day, connecting them to her recent discoveries, Ling's heart skipped:

  Could this guy have failed to repay his "Merit loan" and been seized by creditors, turned into a living puppet?

  Just then, Ling noticed the muscleman's pants pocket was bulging, revealing a corner of familiar fabric.

  That was her Pouch!

  "I knew it!" Ling's teeth itched with anger. She immediately stuck close to him like a haunting spirit, trying to reach in and pull out the bag.

  But without a physical body, her soul could only watch helplessly, unable to touch the Pouch at all. Worse, without flesh to protect her, soon—just like that first day she'd arrived—her soul began to ache terribly under the friction, as if being ground by coarse sandpaper.

  "No good. Gotta find a body fast and get my bag back."

  But besides this undead driver and the unconscious Teon, where were there any living people?

  Dive into the driver's body? That thing was already stuffed full of garbage. Squeezing in there would probably just create another ruined corpse and get her covered in filth. Possess Teon? This guy was full of noble energy—forced possession would definitely trigger severe rejection, might even kill him.

  Just as Ling was caught in a dilemma, a dim yellow glow suddenly appeared in the dense forest ahead. Then, a cheerful yet eerie suona melody approached from the distance, piercing the rainy night's silence.

  Activities in a godforsaken place like this? Ling endured the scraping pain and decided to follow a bit longer.

  Passing through a patch of mist, her view suddenly opened up.

  Before her stood an impressive ancestral hall—green bricks, black tiles, the entrance hung with red silk lanterns swaying in the wind and rain. Inside and out, crowds bustled, celebrating a joyous Chinese wedding.

  Seeing the muscleman drag in two people, the crowd showed no alarm. Instead, they burst into delighted exclamations:

  "Hey! Jin's back!"

  "More outsiders!"

  "This newcomer's really lucky—caught two more! Now it's a party!"

  "My, what a good-looking pair! Village Chief, every household's already got one. It's our old Lin family's turn, right?"

  Ling listened to their excited chatter, heart turning cold. These villagers' words reeked of something sinister. Looked like tonight was going to be rough.

  The muscleman Jin dragged the two to the hall's entrance and dropped "Ling" and Teon like garbage in front of all the villagers. He said nothing, just stared straight at a hunched old man sitting in a grand chair in the main hall.

  The old man wore a Tang suit with longevity patterns, a thumb-sized greenish birthmark on his right cheek. That birthmark seemed alive, slowly squirming on his withered skin.

  The old man's voice was unusually loud, clearly in excellent spirits:

  "Jin, you've worked hard."

  He reached out and patted Jin's broken knee. "Crack." Jin numbly shook his leg, and the bone automatically reset, as if nothing had happened.

  Suddenly, the birthmark on the old man's face darted to his right eyelid, causing it to twitch frantically. His body hunched even lower. That eye, darkened by the birthmark, suddenly blazed with sharp light, bellowing toward the shadows where Ling's spirit hid:

  "Which young friend has stumbled here? Show yourself!"

  Ling startled. This old ghost could see her?

  Since she'd been discovered, she stopped hiding.

  She drifted out from the darkness openly, arms crossed, smiling:

  "Sorry, just passing through. Quick question—are there any living people here? Need to borrow one."

  The moment she spoke, the noisy crowd fell silent for a second. Then erupted in curses:

  "Damn it, bad luck! Where'd this crazy woman come from?"

  "Exactly! Today's a big celebration for the village—looking for trouble?"

  "So many living people standing right here—you blind?"

  A flash of viciousness crossed the old man's eyes as he sized up Ling's spirit form. But he quickly changed his expression, laughing heartily:

  "My my, what young friend makes such jokes in the middle of the night? Today's a big day for our village. Please don't violate everyone's taboos. Otherwise—don't blame the folks here for family punishment."

  As his words fell, the surrounding villagers closed in, faces dark, eyes hollow.

  Ling sneered coldly and floated forward.

  To her eyes, every single one of them was as ghostly as could be. Playing living people in front of her? Putting on a shadow puppet show? She wanted to see exactly what this ghost village was up to.

  Ignoring the surrounding threats, she slowly approached the old man. Her soul's pressure made him feel bone-deep cold from head to toe.

  The old man instinctively sensed danger. That arrogant green birthmark on his face went "whoosh" and slid behind his ear to hide.

  Ling leaned close to the old man's ear, whispering like a demon to that trembling birthmark:

  "What are you hiding for, little mudfish? If you can't find me a living person… I'll just have to swallow you all one… by… one… to fill my stomach."

  She extended a thread of divine consciousness, lightly poking that birthmark like a needle tip.

  "Eek!"

  A tiny shriek. The hunched old man shook like a sieve, all his village chief's presence vanishing. He didn't know what he'd encountered, but he knew this thing before him could easily pierce his soul and tear him apart.

  The old man swallowed, lowering his trembling voice:

  "Um… Great Immortal, I should warn you. I'm just the caretaker watching the place. The 'big boss' here has serious backing. Best not make too big a scene. Leave now, and I'll pretend nothing happened…"

  Just then, Teon on the ground miraculously came to.

  He groggily opened his eyes, saw the motionless woman's body beside him, and startled.

  "Hey! Wake up!"

  He struggled to sit up and shook her, only to find she wasn't even breathing—body cold as iron.

  Teon was clearly confused. He shook his head, not knowing why he was here. Looking up at the bustling crowd and red lanterns, he thought he'd ended up in some remote mountain village.

  Survival instinct made him stumble into the crowd, hoarsely shouting:

  "Is there a doctor? Please… help call 120… save her…"

  Watching this clueless muggle blunder straight into a ghost nest, Ling facepalmed helplessly and could only float after him.

  "This young master really has a death wish."

  Without Ling's in-your-face pressure, the old man breathed a huge sigh of relief. His mouth twitched, fear instantly transforming into cunning. He shouted toward the shadows behind him:

  "Quick… go tell Brother Zhang! Someone's here to wreck the party!"

  Before his words finished, the black mole on his face slid down his neck like a black snake, vanishing into the shadowy depths of the forest.