【Cultivator Leveled Up】
【Cultivator: Nan Zhi】
【Bone Age: 18】
【Level: 17】
【Cultivation: Qi Refinement level 5】
【Constitution: 18 (+1+1) (You can wrestle a wild wolf and hold your own)】
【Combat Power: 31 (+1+15) (Even if you run into an evil ghost, you seem to stand a fighting chance)】
【Reputation: 86 (+2) (No matter which world it is, you seem to be making a name for yourself. Is this a good thing?)】
【Planting: 5 (Perhaps you could try raising a pot of cactus)】
【Gathering: 8 (You're beginning to tell leeks apart from wheat sprouts)】
【Currently Equipped: “Butcher’s Daughter”, “Nan Village Slaughtering Knife”】
【Skill: Five Thunder Protection Curse (Chanting the lightning incantation summons heavenly thunder to protect the body, expelling evil and shielding against harm; impervious to a hundred ghosts)
(This skill has a certain suppressing effect on ghosts and demons. When activated, there is a 10% chance to induce an intimidation effect on enemies)】
【Heavenly Treasure Tree Lottery Tickets: 17】
Hearing the system prompt chime to indicate the quest was complete, Nan Zhi’s hand trembled, almost tossing the stinky tofu out of its paper box.
Hadn't it only been four days?
The national team moved remarkably fast.
It seemed they hadn't just contacted Chen Ping, but had also inadvertently completed her random quest for her.
In essence, without having to lift a finger, Nan Zhi had leveled up twice in a row and gained a rather valuable blue-grade technique.
No, to be fair, she had accomplished some real things.
At the very least, she had learned quite a lot of new tricks from Master He and Wanniang.
Most importantly, she had accumulated seventeen lottery tickets, enough for a ten-pull.
Nan Zhi looked around. People bustled past in every direction, tourists wearing bright smiles as they vied for prime spots to take photos in front of the waterfall behind them.
Right now, she wasn't in the city center.
She was standing within Guangfu Temple, the most popular and incense-rich temple in the city.
Built along the mountain contours and beside the water, it sat nestled inside the national 4A scenic forest park.
Every year in the early hours of New Year’s Eve, the road leading into the forest park would be jammed tight as a sausage.
—Packed with wealthy folks rushing to snatch the very first stick of incense on New Year's morning.
The majority of those who came here were pilgrims offering incense and worshiping Buddha, while most of the rest were tourists drawn by its fame from out of town.
Only a tiny fraction were ordinary Qianli City residents simply strolling through the park.
Ever since the company announced a week of paid leave for all employees, Nan Zhi had hopped onto a tour bus without a second thought.
Her first stop had been Taisu Monastery.
Nan Zhi had specifically looked up information online. Taisu Monastery boasted a long history, reportedly built back in the Ming Dynasty and preserved to this day.
Yet compared to Guangfu Temple, Taisu Monastery was unmistakably desolate.
Never mind large crowds of tourists—even the ticket booth at the entrance merely had a sign hanging haphazardly, acting as nothing more than a decoration.
When she went to tour the main hall, the young Daoist priest doing fortune-telling looked completely listless. He told Nan Zhi that the abbot, Taoist Master Dingyi, had gone out to catch ghosts.
Utterly bewildered, Nan Zhi asked in return, “And what does that have to do with me going inside to look around?”
The young Daoist let out a lazy yawn and replied with full conviction, “The abbot took the hall keys with him. Even if you wanted to go in, you couldn't.”
Just how broke are you people?
The abbot even had to carry the keys to the main hall on his person.
Were they afraid she’d sneak in to steal the patriarch's golden body, or that she’d pinch the paper bills from the merit box?
The young Daoist kindly suggested:
“You can't get in without the keys anyway, so you might as well wander down to the food street at the base of the mountain. There are lots of people down there, very lively.”
Nan Zhi couldn't argue with that.
The next day, she showed up at Guangfu Temple.
Looking at the gleaming, resplendent temple grounds and the neatly paved parking lot as vast as a small park, Nan Zhi felt a pang of pity for Taisu Monastery:
“Compared to this, isn't that place a bit too tragic? Taisu Monastery at least counts as a historical relic, whereas this is completely a commercialized park.”
Guangfu Temple occupied an exceptional location, perched halfway up the mountainside, built against the ridge right beside an artificial waterfall.
Water cascaded and splashed down while dense plumes of incense smoke within the temple were visible to the naked eye, drifting gracefully up with the mountain breeze. It genuinely gave off the illusion of an immortal wonderland or a cave heaven blessed land.
Tourists were greeted by this magnificent sight the moment they stepped through the gates, so it was no wonder Guangfu Temple enjoyed such thriving incense offerings.
—These days, even worshiping gods required clever marketing.
Moral standards were declining by the day.
She wondered if it really worked. Should she go over and purchase a couple of fortune-drawing sachet charms later?
Nan Zhi chewed on the stinky tofu in her mouth, pushed up her sunglasses, and scanned the crowd once again.
Nothing.
Not a single thing.
Let alone deities—there wasn't even a single ghost.
She did spot large clumps of Yin energy on several individuals, but those Yin energies were as thin as wisps of ash, easily dispersed with a wave of the hand.
Spiritual energy was present, but extremely sparse, floating hazily in midair, always on the verge of scattering.
What truly caught Nan Zhi’s eye was the carmine glow suspended in the sky above the temple.
At first, she thought it was just the evening sunset, but later realized that the crimson cloud showed no sign of dissipating. As the crowds surged, the red cloud expanded even further.
Eventually, the entire sky above the temple was dyed a soft pink.
That pink haze hung distant in the sky, drifting sluggishly like someone painting across the heavens, extraordinarily gorgeous.
Yet she seemed to be the only person aware of this bizarre spectacle.
The people beneath the red cloud remained completely oblivious.
Nan Zhi decided to ask the Big Bellied Ghost at the City God Temple when she got the chance.
He had lived a long time and witnessed plenty of strange people and occurrences, so he would likely know what it was.
As for completing the quest, that was purely an unexpected windfall.
...
Nan Zhi's original plan had been to use the yellow paper to clear the path, lure Chen Ping up to the twenty-seventh floor, blow the matter up, and draw the attention of metaphysical figures from the government level.
She had not expected the state to be so efficient. In just a few days, Chen Ping’s cause of death had been thoroughly investigated, and her quest had been completed in the process.
That Master He I ran into that day must have a pretty high cultivation level.
Qi Refinement level 4? No, it's possible his cultivation is even higher than mine. Otherwise, there's no reason I couldn't sense any spiritual energy from him.
And the authorities resolved Chen Ping's case so quickly, which proves they definitely have practitioners among them whose cultivation far exceeds my own.
Nan Zhi carefully reviewed her memories, checking whether she had left behind any flaws:
The only people who saw me that day should be Chen Ping, the delivery courier, and the employees on the seventeenth floor.
Plus, I was wearing the 【Paper Skin Garment】. Even if someone took a photo of me, nobody would suspect me for the time being.
Even if Chen Ping shared information about me with the officials, he wouldn't recognize me anyway, so there's no need to worry.
As for the yellow paper and the yellow chicken she had used back then?
Naturally, those were brought out from the game. Even if people in the real world investigated, they wouldn't find the slightest trace or clue.
Although it was a bit risky, if any real-world quests popped up in the future, she could totally let the national team strike first while she hid in the shadows to reap the benefits.
The more Nan Zhi thought about it, the more feasible the plan seemed.
In a way, this counted as riding the coattails of Mother Country, right?
Riding them covertly was still riding them!
...
The joy of jumping two levels in a row was something outsiders certainly couldn't fathom.
When Nan Zhi returned home, what greeted her was Corn, the treasure-seeking mouse, its eyes brimming with tears as it squeaked in endless accusation.
“All right, all right. It's not that I didn't want to take you out, but you're just too easy to spot.
What if someone takes a photo of you, posts it online, and somebody recognizes what you are and snatches you away?”
Nan Zhi earnestly began recounting tropes from cultivation novels about murdering people for treasures:
“Right now, I'm just a rookie at the Qi Refinement stage who can't beat anyone. What if someone catches you and makes you their spirit pet?”
This was, of course, a genuine worry of hers.
After all, in cultivation novels and television dramas, instances of killing people to seize their treasures and snatching opportunities were too numerous to count.
Nan Zhi was merely a minor cultivator at Qi Refinement level 5. In the cultivation world, she would probably just be there to make up the numbers.
Although she had never encountered any cultivators in modern times, since she was able to cultivate, there were bound to be others out there.
Therefore, keeping a low profile and developing steadily was the best course of action.
“Squeak, squeak, squeak! Squeak, squeak!”
Corn puffed out its chest and flicked its large ears, putting on an air of unwavering loyalty toward Nan Zhi:
“Squeak, squeak, squeak!”
Nan Zhi didn't even need to guess to know what the little mouse was saying.
In high spirits, she showed Corn the new spell she had learned: “I secretly tested it out, but the power seems a bit small, kind of like an electric flyswatter.”
Nan Zhi held out her palm and began chanting toward a withered potted plant in her home:
“Wind stirs first, thunder follows fast; three thousand heavenly thunders descend, a million soldiers of lightning and fire. Fire burns the world; demons turn to dust!”
As the incantation fell, a sudden gust stirred within the room.
A swirl of wind revolved around Nan Zhi. Immediately afterward, lightning seemed to brew in her palm, electric sparks crackling—
Crackle!
A slender arc of lightning danced across Nan Zhi’s index finger like a living silver serpent.
If typical thunderbolts during a storm were as thick as lightning dragons...
Then the one on Nan Zhi’s hand was a tiny lightning snake.
No, at most, it could only be called an earthworm.
Yet Nan Zhi was thrilled. Holding up her index finger, she turned to share this joy with her pet:
“It worked! Corn, look—huh?”
When she turned around, she saw Corn had already scrambled inside its hamster ball, trembling like a sieve, adamantly refusing to poke its head out.
“Squeak, squeak, squeak!”
“Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak!!”
The treasure-seeking mouse shrieked at the top of its lungs, squeezing frantically into the hamster ball with only half its bottom sticking out.
Although it didn't understand what its owner had done, it could still sense a power emanating from that arc of lightning that made its rodent courage wither.
It was a power that struck terror deep into the soul of any living creature.
It felt as if its ancestors, and its ancestors' ancestors, when confronted with such might, could only huddle in pitch-black caves and wait for the storm to pass.
Not a single shred of resistance could muster within it.
“Oh no, I forgot that you count as a demon beast too, Corn. Sorry, sorry!”
Nan Zhi had no choice but to double its ration of rat food and open a bottle of Qi-Supplementing Pills as an apology.
Still...
With lightning this thin, even in a real fight, its power would probably be as pitiful as an electric flyswatter, right?
In TV dramas, female leads always wielded things like the “Green Phoenix Fire Feather Fan” or the “Seven-Apertures Exquisite Pendant.”
Their spells were each flashier than the last.
Why was it that when it came to her, all she got was a puny little thread of lightning?
Imagine fighting an enemy in the future. Everyone else would charge forward wielding swords.
Only she would stand there like a fool, pointing a single finger, sneering malevolently at the enemy:
“Believe it or not, I'll poke you to death with one finger!”
At that point, she'd basically already win.
—Because the opponent would be rolling on the ground laughing.
Nan Zhi felt a mild ache in her stomach.
Rate on N.U.
