“Thank you, Elder Sister Yuanjun.”
Lu Qiancha hurriedly accepted it and spread it out.
From right to left, the prices of the items on the bamboo slip decreased in order from highest to lowest.
The first name that caught her eye carried a majestic and awe-inspiring air—Taiyin Slaughter Immortal Banner.
Not only the name, but its price shocked Lu Qiancha even more.
Three hundred million sticks of Taoyin Incense.
She could save until the end of the universe and probably still not afford it!
Just then, Huang Hua’s slightly teasing voice floated down with a leisurely air:
“The items on the first few pages are merely displayed here for ornamentation. Even if you could bring out the incense, I have no intention of trading them.”
Lu Qiancha:
Lu Qiancha couldn’t help but mutter inwardly: So it’s just pure showing off, huh…
This Yuanjun’s personality is truly terrible.
She decisively lowered her head, her paws quickly flipping the scroll to the left with a rustling motion, skipping over those treasures that were like mirages—beautiful, but unattainable.
Lu Qiancha’s gaze locked precisely at the end of the scroll, upon the cheapest item—Moonlight Powder, only one wisp of incense for a portion.
This was a healing powder made by those moon rabbits who ground herbs. In her memory, Xun Xue had mentioned this item.
Selling it so cheaply, she definitely had to exchange for some. The only question was how effective it really was.
Lu Qiancha decisively stretched out her paw and tapped the Moonlight Powder: “Elder Sister Yuanjun, I’d like ten portions of this.”
Huang Hua nodded slightly, signaling with a glance.
The Moon Palace Attendant who stood by faded away like mist, soundlessly retreating.
In no time, ten packets of powder as fine as dust, flowing with a gentle moon-white glow, were presented.
Lu Qiancha neatly drew out ten wisps of Taoyin Incense from the Moon God Token and transferred them into the jade cup before Huang Hua. With a slight flash of light, the transaction was complete.
Ten packets of powder fell into her paws.
Once she received them, Lu Qiancha did not put them away immediately.
Instead, under Huang Hua’s slightly puzzled gaze, she aimed her sharp claw at her own smooth, fair forearm.
She slashed down forcefully.
“Hiss—!”
With a soft tearing sound, a clear line of blood instantly appeared on Lu Qiancha’s arm, beads of blood seeping out.
“Ow~ That hurts!”
Lu Qiancha let out a miserable wail, tears almost welling up beyond control.
Her paw trembled as she clumsily pinched a bit of the Moonlight Powder and pressed it hard onto the bloody line.
A miraculous effect was immediately revealed.
The moment the powder touched the wound, the torn flesh knit together, healing at a speed visible to the naked eye until it was as good as new.
Not even a red mark was left. Smooth as before, as if it had never been injured.
The medicine—
“…?”
Huang Hua’s previously lazy posture changed for the first time, her voice tinged with an indescribable confusion: “Why would you use yourself as a test subject?”
She found Xun Xue’s little daughter to be a bit adorably silly.
“……There weren’t any suitable small animals around.”
Lu Qiancha wiped away the tears caused by the pain, sniffed, and her paw still guarded her forearm anxiously.
She tilted her head, blue eyes pure with obvious reasoning: “So…I could only test it on myself.”
She’d tested medicine on herself plenty of times before, but this body’s tolerance for pain was much lower than her original one. Just a little scratch almost brought her to tears.
It seemed she shouldn’t use herself for testing medicine in the future.
After experiencing the effects of the Moonlight Powder, Lu Qiancha’s verdict was—an excellent wound medicine, and very cheap.
Now, Taoyuan Village could produce one hundred sticks of incense a day, so that was one hundred portions a day.
Plentiful and filling, with superb results.
Looking at the scroll before her, the little wolf cub’s mind was working fast. She finally traded a thousand wisps of incense for a copy of the Moon Shadow Escape Art.
Lu Qiancha was not good at direct combat; the more ways she had to run, the greater her chances of survival.
“Good choice.”
Huang Hua took a casual sip of Jade Nectar, a faint trace of approval at the corner of her lips. Her empty hand pointed through the air.
“Whoosh!”
A refined stream of moonlight, like smoke and water, shot from her fingertip and instantly entered Lu Qiancha’s brow, sinking into her sea of consciousness.
A profound, elusive, yet lively and mysterious escape art was engraved deep in her soul.
Huang Hua’s cool, lazy voice echoed in Lu Qiancha’s mind: “This escape art does not rely on the Five Elements, nor wind or thunder.”
“It forges its own path, guided by your cultivator’s divine sense, connecting to the luminous moon above, gathering Taiyin essence as its foundation. Your body becomes a shadow, form following intent, merging with the moonlight that fills the heavens.”
“At mastery, beneath the light of the moon, you will be invisible and traceless.”
She paused, then added meaningfully: “You already have a wisp of Taiyin in your fate. Cultivating this art should be as a fish returning to the sea, advancing a thousand miles in a day.”
Lu Qiancha was overjoyed: “Thank you, Elder Sister Yuanjun, for the impartation.”
Having spent most of her incense, Lu Qiancha had gained plenty, and now she was ready to slip away.
At that moment, a slender, icy-cool jade hand suddenly reached out and precisely caught Lu Qiancha’s delicate collar from behind.
Like lifting a kitten who’d just finished stealing food and was trying to sneak away.
“Little thing…” Huang Hua’s voice carried a playful tone, like a ghostly flower blooming in the night, holding her back: “Are you really in such a hurry to leave?”
“Elder Sister Yuanjun, is there something else?”
Lu Qiancha struggled twice, but seeing no use, she looked helplessly at the queen and asked.
“Long years of sitting in the Moon Palace bring inevitable boredom. Sometimes, I miss the bustling mortal world.”
Huang Hua pulled Lu Qiancha into her embrace, her breath fragrant as orchids, “Keep elder sister company for a while, and tell me stories of the mortal world, how about it?”
“Tell stories……”
Lu Qiancha’s head swelled at these words. Normally, she was either cultivating or reading medicinal books. How could she have any elegant tales in her stomach…
“What, you can’t even fulfill this trivial little wish of elder sister’s?”
Huang Hua’s voice immediately took on a hint of loneliness and grievance.
Lu Qiancha:
This is too much!
Left with no choice, Lu Qiancha braced herself and began recounting a few little stories from her previous life.
But it had already been sixty or seventy years, and most of those stories had long faded from her mind. She could only piece together fragments of memory and tell them slowly.
“A long, long time ago, there was a ruthless queen who obtained a magical…uh, a spiritual Magic Mirror. Every day, she would ask the wondrous Magic Mirror who was the most beautiful woman in the world.
“Every time, the Magic Mirror replied, ‘Queen, it is you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world.’”
The more Lu Qiancha spoke, the more flustered she became. She snuck a glance at Huang Hua. Not only was there no impatience in those moon-white eyes, but instead, they shimmered with increasing interest.
So Lu Qiancha took a deep breath, forced herself to steady, and continued: “In the palace was the Ministry of Works Minister’s Daughter, who spent her days in the workshops crafting ingenious devices, always surrounded by bricks and mortar, so everyone called her—Ash Cinderella.”
“One day, Ash Cinderella grew up. When the queen asked the Magic Mirror again, the Magic Mirror replied, ‘It is Ash Cinderella. Ash Cinderella is now the most beautiful woman in the world.’”
“The queen went mad with rage and wanted to get rid of Ash Cinderella, so she…she…”
Lu Qiancha’s mind was in complete chaos; she really couldn’t make up any more.
A sudden flash of inspiration!
Lu Qiancha abruptly raised her voice: “If you want to know what happens next, stay tuned for the next chapter!”
Her voice was loud and flustered.
Before she even finished speaking, Lu Qiancha’s paw tip had secretly gathered all her divine sense to communicate with the Moon God Token. In that split second before Huang Hua could react—
“Whoosh!!”
Lu Qiancha’s small figure vanished completely into the dissipating moonlight.