After the eldest brother left, Jin Ni found a well-hidden spot with a good view near Old Man Zhao’s house to lie in wait.
But whether Old Man Zhao was too cautious or too good at disguising himself, Jin Ni’s eyes grew sore from staring, yet he saw nothing suspicious.
After returning home, Old Man Zhao locked the doors and windows, then started a fire to cook dinner.
By the time he finished eating, the sky had darkened.
Too afraid to sleep inside, he sat on the threshold with the basket holding his “grandson,” weaving bamboo baskets under the dim light while murmuring old stories and amusing anecdotes to the child.
The swaddled baby, likely too young to understand, gave no reaction.
But Jin Ni, hidden in the shadows, listened with great interest, thinking that if Old Man Zhao became a storyteller at a teahouse, business would surely boom.
Time passed in the old man’s rambling tales.
When night fell completely, Jin Ni watched as Old Man Zhao lit a lantern, sitting in the warm glow of the candlelight while gently rocking the swaddled bundle.
For a moment, he even wondered if his eldest brother had been mistaken.
But he quickly dismissed the thought like swatting a fly.
The eldest brother could never be wrong.
Taking a deep breath, Jin Ni steeled himself and focused all his attention back on Old Man Zhao, determined to find even the slightest flaw.
After staring unblinkingly for a quarter of an hour, though he found nothing amiss with Old Man Zhao himself, he did notice something odd.
-The swaddling cloth wrapped around the “grandson” was far too tight, not even revealing the child’s face.
Though Jin Ni had never cared for an infant, he knew that covering a baby like this could suffocate it.
Moreover, now that he thought about it, though they had known since their first night here that Old Man Zhao had a “grandson,” the child had always been tightly swaddled inside the basket.
Though the old man carried it with him at all times, they had never actually seen the “grandson’s” face-nor had they ever heard the child cry.
It was eerily well-behaved.
Could there be something wrong with this “grandson”?
Was there really a baby inside that bundle?
All sorts of ghost stories he had heard before flooded his mind.
Jin Ni craned his neck, trying to get a better look at what was inside the swaddling cloth.
Now he only regretted not practicing his cultivation diligently—he was still only at the Mortal Shedding Realm.
If he had reached the Dust- Forgotten Realm, he wouldn’t be straining his eyes like this, unable to see clearly.
Just as he was stretching his neck and squinting hard, the lantern hanging under the eaves suddenly went out.
Plunged into pitch-black darkness, Jin Ni was startled.
After blinking to adjust his eyes, he looked again—only to find that Old Man Zhao, who had been sitting on the threshold, had vanished without a trace.
Only the lone bamboo basket remained by the doorstep.
This was starting to feel more and more like a supernatural tale…
Hesitating for only a second, Jin Ni leaped from his hiding spot and crept toward the basket.
He was determined to see whether the thing inside that bundle was human or ghost.
Pinching the edge of the dark red patterned swaddling cloth with two fingers, he slowly peeled it back—
Revealing a tightly wrapped wooden statue inside.
The statue depicted a child of about three or four, its features lifelike, with painted eyes that should have made it appear lively and adorable.
But in this eerie setting, even the cutest statue took on an unsettling, sinister air.
Goosebumps rose on Jin Ni’s arms.
Not daring to alert the enemy, he prepared to restore the swaddling clothes and leave.
But just as he lowered his head to rearrange the bundle, the statue suddenly grinned at him and called his name in a clear, childlike voice: “Jin Ni.”
The voice drilled into his ears, and Jin Ni felt as if he had been struck by a hammer.
His thoughts and movements slowed, as though he had been thrown into thick, viscous water-his mind remained clear, but he could no longer control his sluggish body.
He had been caught.
His first instinct was to pull out a Thunder Summoning Talisman to break free, but his sluggish mind delayed his reaction.
His hand moved as if in slow motion, failing to reach the talisman in time.
Footsteps echoed from inside the house-Old Man Zhao must have returned after leaving earlier.
After encountering that eerie wooden statue, Jin Ni didn’t even want to imagine what might be hiding beneath Old Man Zhao’s kindly, benevolent facade.
Sweat beaded on his forehead as he frantically searched for a way out, his nerves stretched taut.
The footsteps grew closer, and Old Man Zhao’s voice carried over, sounding as if it were right beside his ear: “Lingshan, Grandpa brought you the rattle drum.”
Warm candlelight spilled forward as Old Man Zhao, holding a new lantern, paused in his steps.
He sighed deeply when he saw Jin Ni frozen in that unnatural posture.
Jin Ni: “…”
Had his true identity been exposed?
Was this the part where the act dropped and he got silenced for knowing too much?!
I’m done for.
He stared wide-eyed at the old man, his heart pounding in panic as he struggled to move his right hand toward the Thunder Summoning Talisman at his waist.
Hurry, hurry-just a little more!
Just as Jin Ni was screaming internally, Old Man Zhao moved.
He set the lantern down, walked to the basket, and picked up the wooden statue, patting it gently as if soothing a child.
“The immortal master isn’t a bad person. Let him go.”
The statue’s face took on a human-like expression, its eyes shifting to Jin Ni before blinking.
The paralysis instantly lifted.
Jin Ni gripped the talisman at his waist and leaped back, putting distance between them as he glared warily at Old Man Zhao. “Just what are you?”
“I’m just a hunter from Nanhuai Town. My ancestors lived off these mountains, and I’ve been here for decades.”
Old Man Zhao carefully wrapped the statue in the swaddling clothes and placed it back in the basket.
“My son and daughter-in-law are gone. It’s just this old man and his grandson left. We’ve never harmed anyone. We don’t want trouble with you, immortal master, and we ask that you don’t trouble us either.”
He slung the basket onto his back, picked up the lantern, and walked past Jin Ni toward the courtyard gate.
Watching the old man’s hunched figure, Jin Ni hesitated but still called after him, “What about the disappearances in the old forest and the town? Are they connected to you?”
Old Man Zhao paused, turning his head slightly.
“We hunters have a saying passed down through generations: Every tree on the mountain is a soul. Don’t take what isn’t yours. If you do, sooner or later, you’ll have to pay it back.”
With that, he walked into the darkness without another glance back.
Jin Ni stared after him, torn, but in the end, he didn’t give chase. He stayed where he was, waiting for his senior brother to return.
*
When Mu Congyun arrived, he found Jin Ni sitting on the roof of the Zhao residence, sighing heavily.
The house was dark and empty-Old Man Zhao and his family were already gone.
“Where are they?”
Mu Congyun hadn’t expected that, in less than a single night, they would have already lost track of their target.
Seeing him return, Jin Ni perked up and recounted the earlier incident.
Frowning in confusion, he wondered, “What exactly does Uncle Zhao mean? What did the townspeople take that they shouldn’t have?”
“But Senior Brother Fang Ming and the others only arrived in town recently-that doesn’t make sense either?”
Mu Congyun also had many unresolved questions swirling in his mind.
Since they couldn’t figure it out, it might be better to revisit the old forest-perhaps they could find answers there.
Handing his sword sheath to Jin Ni to hold, the two took advantage of the night to fly by sword back to the old forest.
Most of the corrosive mist had been absorbed by that mysterious dragon, and the remaining traces had been nearly purified by the Ten Directions Formation over time.
Without the gray mist shrouding it, the forest was unusually clear under the night sky.
However, large swaths of the once-dense trees had fallen, leaving deep pits where roots had been torn from the ground.
Jin Ni volunteered to lead the way.
Though his cultivation was lacking, his strength was considerable.
As he bent to lift a fallen tree to move it aside, his arm was suddenly grabbed, and a faint voice drifted out: “H-help… save me…”
Jin Ni instinctively wanted to throw the tree away, but the voice sounded vaguely familiar.
Hesitantly, he asked, “Junior Brother Xu?”
“Yes, yes! Is that Senior Brother Jin?”
The grip on his arm tightened noticeably, clearly excited.
Jin Ni, however, stared silently at the hand that seemed to have grown out of the tree trunk before drawing his sword.
“Hold on, Junior Brother! I’ll chop it open to get you out!”
Just as he raised his sword to strike, Mu Congyun pressed the sheath against his shoulder to stop him.
“Let me.”
He remembered that when he’d previously cut open those strange trees, what emerged weren’t human bodies but new, grotesque branches.
Though the mutations had stopped, the fused trees and people hadn’t separated. A misplaced strike could easily be fatal.
“Restrain your energy,” Mu Congyun cautioned.
Beitian only slayed demons-not people.
With a single swing, the trunk split cleanly down the middle, revealing a contorted figure barely clothed within.
Xu Yao, having narrowly escaped death, froze momentarily before erupting into ecstatic relief. Scrambling up from the ground, he lunged forward to embrace his savior in gratitude-
His upper body was already mid-leap when Mu Congyun’s cool, detached gaze met his.
A sudden jolt of clarity struck him, and he twisted at the last second to hug Jin Ni instead.
“I really thought I was going to die here… wuwuwu…”
He alternated between laughter and sobs, smearing Jin Ni with snot and tears.
Xu Yao was an outer disciple of the Tianji Palace, his cultivation three minor realms below Jin Ni’s.
With the Ten Directions Barrier destabilized, anomalies had been cropping up along the borders of Central and Eastern Provinces.
Disciples of the Xuanling Nine Palaces who had reached the Minor Achievement stage of the Transcendent Shell Realm or higher had all been dispatched to handle the disturbances.
Disciples like Xu Yao, still in the mid-stage of the Transcendent Shell Realm with insufficient cultivation, should have remained at the sect.
But with Mu Congyun’s sudden assignment to support Nanhuai Town and the severe shortage of personnel, even outer disciples like Xu Yao had been brought along to fill the ranks.
Watching the two youths clinging to each other, the slight furrow in Mu Congyun’s brow smoothed out.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too late.
He had spent years in secluded cultivation at Moonlight Hidden in Reeds, never once leaving the Xuanling Mountain gates before this. His master, knowing his temperament, had never forced the issue.
Only this time, after the successive incidents in Nanhuai Town, the master had unusually come to seek him out, asking him and Jin Ni to lead a team to support Nanhuai Town.
He recalled that before descending Xuanling, the master had asked him, “Do you know what it means to be human?”
He admitted to himself that he wasn’t particularly enlightened and could only answer truthfully, “Master and I—we are human.”
But the master shook his head.
“I am, but you are not yet.”
Had Mu Congyun not known his master’s temperament, he might have thought the master was insulting him.
He didn’t understand.
The master only sighed.
“If you can feel pain, it means you’re alive. But only when you can feel the pain of others can you truly be called human.”
He said, “Congyun, you must learn to step out. Take a look at the myriad facets of this human world.”