My Secret Cultivator Spouse Is the Demon Lord - Chapter 9

When Xu Xianqing reached her room, her feet froze right at the threshold. She turned back to look at the inn attendant who was leading the way.

The attendant stopped in his tracks, looking at her with a puzzled expression. “Is something wrong, customer?”

Xu Xianqing wanted to ask if he had heard that strange voice, but one look at his clueless face told her everything…he hadn’t heard a thing.

It immediately reminded her of that night at the Ye family residence when she had heard a similar sound.

“It’s nothing,” Xu Xianqing said softly, lifting the cloth curtain to enter.

me wall, the attendant stepped inside after her and used a fire striker to light the oil lamp. The room flickered to life with a dim, faint glow…just enough to make out the rough outlines of the furniture.

“You rest up now, ma’am. I’ll go fetch some hot tea,” the attendant offered.

Once he left, Xu Xianqing set her cloth sack down beside her and sat cross-legged on the bed. Even though she couldn’t cultivate, her pseudo-spiritual roots still allowed her body to hold a small amount of spiritual energy.

However, accumulating this energy day after day without properly channeling it carried the risk of severe internal shock over time. On top of that, her Heart-Bonding Pact was causing a dull, throbbing pain in her chest, and she hoped that channeling her internal energy might offer some relief.

Suddenly, a voice echoed inside her mind: Greetings, respected Host. I am your Upgrade System, Unit 001.

“Who’s there?!” Xu Xianqing instantly tightened her grip on the dagger hidden at her waist. “Who is speaking?”

Your Upgrade System, Designation 001.

“What on earth is an ‘Upgrade System’?” Xu Xianqing grew increasingly vigilant. The voice sounded unnaturally strange…it belonged neither to a human nor a spirit beast. It was like nothing she had ever heard before.

You do not belong to this world. When we arrived here, spatial turbulence caused your memories to be lost from your soul body. However, do not worry…I have a complete backup on file. Would you like to restore it now?

Xu Xianqing paused to think.

Her mind held memories of only the past three years. According to what the old patriarch of the Ye family and Zhao Xing had told her, she had materialized out of nowhere three years ago in Pingkou Alley…a miserable slum in Solitary City filled with displaced refugees. In a place like that, no one noticed a newcomer, and no one cared if someone vanished. A human life there wasn’t worth two plain mantou buns.

So, her known story began in Pingkou Alley, with only a few scattered details provided by Zhao Xing.

She had suddenly appeared, tumbling into a ruined temple before collapsing unconscious. A clever young street urchin had dragged her out and brought her to the Ye family’s soup kitchen, falsely claiming that Xu Xianqing was her sister who had fainted from sheer starvation. Thanks to that ruse, the kid managed to score an extra bowl of porridge and two buns.

The kid wasn’t completely heartless, either…she pried Xu Xianqing’s mouth open and poured two gulps of hot porridge down her throat. If she survived, great; if she died, well, at least she wouldn’t go to the underworld on an empty stomach.

Against all odds, Xu Xianqing clung to life through those two gulps of porridge.

After that, she carved out an existence in Pingkou Alley. She met Zhao Xing and survived by begging alongside him. They had tried looking for odd jobs, but no one was willing to hire desperate refugees. All they could do was drift through the streets, praying for a kind soul to toss them a bite to eat.

That was until Patriarch Ye found her and took her in…and true to her word, Xu Xianqing made sure to bring Zhao Xing along with her.

She had never possessed any memories prior to that point and had always assumed she suffered from amnesia. She certainly hadn’t expected to learn that she was from an entirely different world.

Still…

Xu Xianqing hesitated. How much can I actually trust this mysterious entity?

Do you still have lingering concerns? the voice asked.

“No. Give me back my memories,” Xu Xianqing said. She had been doubtful, but a sudden realization struck her, and a faint smile touched her lips.

What did she even have left for anyone to trick her out of?

She was completely alone. The only thing keeping her alive was the gold core left behind by her deceased wife. Who would possibly target someone like her?

Request received. Initiating transfer. The process may cause severe pain…please prepare yourself.

The moment the system finished speaking, an agonizing pain ripped through Xu Xianqing’s body. Moments later, the pain concentrated inside her head. It felt as if her skull was splitting open, as though a massive rock had been forced into her mind…only to shatter and burst, sending violent shockwaves through every nerve in her brain.

In her agony, Xu Xianqing absurdly wondered if this was what Sun Wukong felt like whenever Tang Sanzang recited the Tight-Fillet Spell.

Before she could even recall who Tang Sanzang and Sun Wukong actually were, the excruciating pain dragged her into total darkness.

A short while later, the inn attendant stood outside her door, holding a bucket of water and knocking.

“Guest! I’ve brought you some water! Could you open the door?”

There was complete silence from inside.

The attendant paused, set the bucket down, and knocked again, calling out louder this time. Still, there was no reply. Growing uneasy, he hurried off to fetch the lady proprietor.

“Boss, there’s no sound coming from inside at all,” the attendant muttered as he led her back toward the room. “You don’t think she died in there, do you?”

His words sounded like worry, but his tone lacked any genuine concern…he was mostly annoyed at the potential hassle. If she really had died, he’d be the one forced to dig a hole to bury her.

The proprietor didn’t reply. She was a cultivator at the second tier of the Core Formation Realm. While that wasn’t particularly impressive across the vast expanse of the Tianyan Continent, it gave her plenty of authority in a small backwater place like Solitary City.

If someone died in a regular shop, the owner would be wringing their hands with anxiety, but she remained entirely unbothered. Even the City Lord’s Manor wouldn’t give her a hard time over it.

Reaching the room, the attendant knocked once more. When silence met them again, he turned to her. “Boss… what should we do?”

With a flick of her hand, the proprietor used a wave of spiritual energy to unlatch the door. The two stepped inside.

They found Xu Xianqing sprawled across the bed, looking as though she had suddenly passed out mid-meditation.

The attendant rushed over and placed a finger beneath her nose. “Boss! She’s still breathing!”

The proprietor walked over, pressing her fingers against Xu Xianqing’s wrist to check her pulse. After a moment, she said, “She’s fine. She just fainted.”

“Tsk. Liu Da nearly had the daylight scared out of him,” the attendant grumbled, wiping his brow.

“Stop acting up,” she said with a sharp look. “Take the water back. Once she wakes up, bring her a fresh batch of boiling hot water.”

“Such a hassle…” Liu Da muttered under his breath, though his actions were prompt as he picked up the bucket and headed out.

The proprietor didn’t leave immediately. Her eyes lingered thoughtfully on the cloth sack Xu Xianqing had left beside the bed.

More than an hour after the proprietor left, Xu Xianqing finally opened her eyes.

Slowly, she began sorting through the memories flooding her mind.

Her name was Xu Xianqing. She hailed from a completely different world where she had been a young Taoist master. In that world, spiritual energy was scarce; most people spent their entire lives without ever stepping onto the path of cultivation. Even the supposed grandmasters barely scraped past the Qi Refining stage, while true Foundation Establishment cultivators were practically unheard of.

Growing up as an orphan in that world, she had practiced Taoism alongside her master. Unlike the cultivation paths of this realm, Taoism there was a religious philosophy and a discipline for self-cultivation.

She had learned a few practical skills, and after her master passed away, she went down the mountain to earn a modest living by reading feng shui, casting fortunes, and analyzing faces.

As a practitioner of the Dao, she possessed a naturally chivalrous heart. One late night, on her way home after evaluating a property’s feng shui, she spotted two thugs tailing a young woman. She immediately called the police and followed them into an alley.

When the thugs attempted to attack the woman, Xu Xianqing stepped in. Relying on her martial arts training, she managed to hold her own at first. But she hadn’t anticipated that the men carried knives. No matter how good her footwork was, she was still flesh and blood.

A blade sank into her, and she collapsed weakly into a pool of her own blood.

After that, her vision had blurred. She faintly remembered the sound of a woman crying out, the distant wail of police sirens, and the feeling of someone lifting her up…before everything faded into nothingness.

By the time she regained consciousness, she had arrived in this new, completely unfamiliar world alongside the system.

And she hadn’t arrived three years ago…she had arrived nineteen years ago, reincarnated as a newborn baby.

Three years ago, you likely suffered a severe trauma that caused you to lose your memory, the system explained. Because the system was in a dormant state at the time and unable to monitor your actions, I have no records of anything that occurred during your first nineteen years in this world.

My sincerest apologies!

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