Incense.
“I am Ling Wanbai, priestess in service of the Sacred Temple under the seat of the Great Spirit Sovereign.”
Her voice was like Jade-Cold Sound gently striking, calm as she announced her identity, without the slightest ripple.
“Can you turn me back!”
Lu Qiancha clutched her head as she spoke.
“Yes.”
At the tip of Ling Wanbai’s finger, a faint, cold light gathered, and she gently tapped Lu Qiancha’s forehead.
A flicker of spectral light.
Lu Qiancha instantly returned to the appearance of a soft, adorable young girl wearing her little wool jacket.
Lu Qiancha nervously patted her own cheeks and let out a sigh of relief. She was finally back to normal.
“Since you have entered the Sacred Temple, it is fate.” Ling Wanbai turned toward the offering table and gestured at the neatly arranged incense sticks: “Please, for the Great Spirit Sovereign, offer a stick.”
Ling Wanbai’s tone was bland, yet there was an undercurrent that brooked no refusal.
Lu Qiancha pursed her lips at these words. She didn’t even believe in this deity, so why should she offer worship?
Besides, she was now a Mountain God; random worship might draw karmic entanglements.
The gaze from Ling Wanbai at her side made Lu Qiancha’s hair stand on end.
In the end, Lu Qiancha was defeated and unwillingly shuffled to the offering table.
She pinched up a stick of Incense with her claws, half-heartedly waving it through the flame of the Everlasting Lamp nearby.
She couldn’t even be bothered to put on the proper respectful posture, just about to shove the incense into the censer any old way.
Ling Wanbai’s gaze instantly dropped to freezing point.
Lu Qiancha’s hand, holding the incense, froze in mid-air. She could feel that deathly stare that nearly burned through her, and after a moment of inner struggle, she let out a helpless sigh.
With a hint of reluctance, she reached out with a wisp of faintly purple-gold Lunar Fortune incense, placing it upon the offering table.
“Hiss—!”
The moment that purple-gold incense flame touched the table—
The Giant Divine Statue worshipped within suddenly trembled, like a glutton catching a whiff of a delicacy from ten thousand years past.
A scorching, greedy, terrifying suction erupted all at once.
In an instant, the incense flame was utterly devoured.
A hint of surprise flickered in Ling Wanbai’s eyes.
Just now, she had actually felt a craving and greed welling up from within the long-silent statue.
“Don’t be too greedy. I don’t have much.”
Lu Qiancha frowned; she, too, could sense that hunger from the other side, so she sent out another wisp of Lunar Fortune incense.
“Buzz—!” The instant the second flame was devoured—
The enormous Celestial Wolf Divine Statue, the ghostly blue crystal at its brow suddenly burst into dazzling white light.
As if a giant dormant for ages had opened His eyes.
***
The next moment.
A pillar of blazing light, brimming with boundless majesty, thundered down from the top of the statue.
When the light faded—
A tall, upright woman with gray hair, tied in a neat silver ponytail, features cold and striking, dressed in an ancient, robust frost-patterned gray robe, with an aura of eternal icy majesty flowing from head to toe, stood quietly before Lu Qiancha.
Those eyes, like cold stars, carried a faint smile as they settled on Lu Qiancha.
“G-Great Spirit Sovereign—!!!”
Ling Wanbai’s voice trembled so violently in her excitement that her body, overcome with utmost devotion, collapsed to the ground, prostrate in full obeisance.
Then, she urgently barked at the still-stunned Lu Qiancha, “What are you standing there for?! Hurry and salute! You must not profane the divine visage of the Sovereign!”
“No need for excessive courtesy.”
The gray-haired woman brushed her wide sleeve, and a gentle power lifted Ling Wanbai up.
Her gaze, still smiling, fell on Lu Qiancha’s little face, which still showed a hint of pain from her loss, and her voice was mellow and warm:
“My name is Suoming Celestial Wolf, Great Spirit Sovereign. My common name is Ling Shuang, an Earth Immortal of Fifth Rank. Today…”
She paused, her smile carrying a touch of apology: “Because my senses were dulled, I failed to realize in time that the esteemed Fortune God had graced this humble, cold place. I am deeply ashamed.”
“So you’re the Great Spirit Sovereign?”
Lu Qiancha tilted up her little face, looking at the deity before her whose presence was as deep as the sea.
“I am.” Ling Shuang nodded, utterly forthright: “My common name is indeed Ling Shuang. The esteemed Fortune God may address me so, if you please.”
However, the moment Ling Shuang admitted it—
A fierce light flashed in Lu Qiancha’s eyes.
“Whoosh—!”
She leaped up, executing her Moonshadow Escape technique to the limit, her little head darting out like lightning, “Awooo—” she took a solid bite on Ling Shuang’s right hand, hanging at her side.
“?”
“Hm?”
Ling Shuang stood there in confusion, not quite understanding as she looked at Lu Qiancha.
“Insolent child!”
Ling Wanbai erupted in fury, like a lit bomb—“Bang!”—and lunged viciously.
In an instant, the “culprit” Lu Qiancha, who hadn’t even managed to retreat after her bite, was completely pinned down, her arms and body firmly locked beneath her.
“To profane the Divine Sovereign—your crime deserves a thousand deaths!”
Gritting her teeth, Ling Wanbai glared fiercely at Lu Qiancha, pinned beneath her.
Lu Qiancha struggled in vain, but Ling Wanbai’s strength far surpassed hers.
“Wanbai! Release her!”
Ling Shuang’s voice was tinged with urgency and authority. “Rise at once! You must not treat our honored guest so rudely!”
“Yes, Great Spir…”
Although Ling Wanbai was gnashing her teeth, she dared not disobey the divine command and could only rise, albeit resentfully.
However, her pale gray eyes still locked tightly onto Lu Qiancha, who was rubbing her wrist red from being gripped.
Taking out a handkerchief and wiping away the sparkling drool on her hand, Ling Shuang’s eyes were full of puzzlement: “Esteemed Fortune God, what meaning lies behind your action just now?”
“Huh? You’re asking me why?”
At those words, Lu Qiancha bounced up, arms akimbo, pointing angrily at Ling Shuang, her little face full of bitter grievance.
“Just now! You’re the one who turned me into a dog, and made me tumble all over the place!”
She bore grudges.
After finishing, Lu Qiancha bared her teeth at Ling Shuang, bristling with anger.
Ling Shuang fell into an even longer silence.
After a while, she spoke, with a hint of helplessness: “That was a wolf… Besides, it was not my intention—I did not mean to toy with you, honored guest.”
Looking at the fierce little Lu Qiancha before her, she sighed, as if resigned to fate: “Very well, it was my fault. Whatever here catches your eye, Fortune God, you may take it as compensation.”
“Nothing.”
Lu Qiancha’s little head turned as she glanced around the interior of the temple with undisguised disdain.
It was indeed lavish, but all mundane items at best, only worth a few taels of silver in the mortal realm. Nothing of use.
“Indeed, these things do not suit the esteemed Fortune God.” Ling Shuang’s brow furrowed slightly.
“How about I teach you a secret wolf clan art—the Heaven-Splitting Howl to the Moon Formula? Master it, and you could shatter the stars, pluck the moon, and look down on the universe.”
Ling Shuang steadied her thoughts, her voice full of allure.
“Not learning, not learning.”
Lu Qiancha shook her head like a rattle-drum, arms crossed before her chest.
Cultivate a combat art? What a joke.
She was, after all, famed for her “Three Years Tempering – Yellow-Grade Palm Art” and “Combat Technique Talent Comparable to Rotten Wood”.
That talent, if not the worst in the world, was close enough.
She remembered the dark years of practicing the “Wind and Thunder Palm” until she doubted life itself—the pain was something she’d never want to revisit.
She had once dreamed of being a Sword Cultivator whose blade chilled all nineteen provinces, but alas, that dream had been dashed at the starting line by her abysmal talent.
“Then let me teach you our clan’s secret movement art—Profound Soul Transforming Snow. Master it, and you could become as the northern snows, leaving no trace, traversing a thousand miles in an instant.”
Ling Shuang’s frown deepened as she pondered aloud.
“Not learning, not learning.”
Lu Qiancha rejected her even faster and more firmly than before.
She had just learned an escape technique; she understood well enough that biting off more than you can chew leads nowhere.