Please, Don’t Die - Chapter 8

A whole river of black-haired Tuan fish!

The fish swarmed densely together, their black bristles twisting and contorting, most still smeared with strands of flesh and mud, exuding a nauseating stench of decay. Layer upon layer, with no gaps to speak of, the Tuan fish formed a massive serpent winding for miles in the river, sealing off the western side of Jimo Town without a single drop of water escaping.

Not a trace of clear water remained in the river, it had become nothing but a breeding ground for monsters.

Yesterday, there hadn’t been a single Tuan fish in the river, yet now it was a horrifying blockade.

Ying Qujie had never seen such a disgusting sight before, his face paling slightly. “Is this the work of the Wood Demon?”

Tuan fish laid eggs and reproduced quickly, but this terrifying scene couldn’t have appeared overnight.

The Wood Demon blocking the path, it wasn’t impossible.

“Find a place to hide.”

He Qingsheng instructed tersely before abruptly detaching from the wooden puppet. Like a sharp sword’s gleam, he plunged straight into the belly of the serpent.

Like water hitting boiling oil, the Tuan fish erupted into chaos. Piercing pig-like squeals rose one after another, and the entire swarm was once again submerged in bloody water.

Ying Qujie didn’t hesitate either, immediately searching for cover.

But the riverbank was lower than the town, and no matter where he stood, the word “exposed” perfectly described his situation.

Ying Qujie glanced at the churning blood mist in the river, then at the vines closing in behind him. He very much wanted to shout at He Qingsheng to pause for a moment and prioritize his survival.

“So, it’s you.” The Wood Demon’s voice drew near as she gracefully descended along the vines.

Ying Qujie turned and saw a girl who looked about sixteen or seventeen.

Her deathly pale face bore a wooden sheen, and withered yellow vines tangled in her hair. Her unnaturally large eyes, pupils contracted to pinpricks from excitement, gave her a deranged and frenzied appearance.

Ying Qujie didn’t recall ever meeting the Wood Demon, nor had he ever harvested vines for medicinal use.

A chill ran down his spine.

If he couldn’t even recognize the Wood Demon, then the deeper, more sinister schemes hidden behind her would be even harder to counter.

The Wood Demon seemed to recall something amusing and suddenly burst into laughter, trembling like a flower in the wind. “Sending you early into reincarnation, you should thank me.”

In an instant, every vine tensed like swords, lunging from all directions with overwhelming killing intent, the sound of splitting air relentless. The sheer number and speed made Ying Qujie feel like he was already on his way to join He Qingsheng in the afterlife.

“Did I allow you to touch him?”

He Qingsheng’s voice spread ominously, like the thick, nearly corporeal red-black miasma around her, carrying a bone-chilling coldness.

The blood bracelet burned hot, yet his entire body was frozen. Ying Qujie was forcefully pulled into the miasma.

The alternating heat and cold made him sneeze involuntarily.

The miasma paused, retreating slightly to form a protective barrier around him, immediately lessening the biting cold.

The Wood Demon’s vines withered en masse upon contact with the miasma. Snarling, she channeled her demonic energy, and thousands of branches erupted from the ground.

But whether it was dozens, hundreds, or thousands of vines and branches, the moment they touched the miasma, they all became nourishment for He Qingsheng in the blink of an eye.

On top of that, the Tuan fish swarm that was supposed to block their escape had now completely turned into He Qingsheng’s power source. The miasma she harvested from slaughtering the fish surged endlessly, redirected straight toward the architect of this calamity.

The outcome was already clear.

“What are you?” The Wood Demon gritted her teeth, hatred plain on her pale face.

“The vengeful ghost who’s come for your life!”

He Qingsheng was barely a foot away from the wood demon, who dodged her attack in a flustered manner. “You are not of this realm, with no ties or karma here. Why obstruct me?”

“Good sister, be reasonable. Wasn’t it you who struck first?” He Qingsheng laughed playfully as she sidestepped the vine-like sword the wood demon thrust toward her heart.

She didn’t know if ghosts could get hurt, but she instinctively avoided it.

Maybe she should let the wood demon stab her once to test it out.

“Miss He, watch your back!” Ying Qujie’s voice carried an unusual hint of urgency.

He Qingsheng twisted aside again, narrowly avoiding the wooden spike aimed at the back of her neck.

Never mind. She’d test it out secretly next time.

Her killing intent coalesced into a sharp blade, driving straight for the wood demon’s face.

“Wood demon Ming Shu, a century to sprout, a millennium to grow, ten thousand years to take form. Your transformation was hard-won, why create such sin?”

“None of your concern.” The wood demon barely managed to block He Qingsheng’s strike.

Her once-smooth face cracked like a spider’s web.

“You’re right.” He Qingsheng nodded solemnly, fully agreeing with the wood demon’s words. Fuliu’s teachings about acting with reason were hard to shake off, she’d have to be more mindful next time.

She nodded again in acknowledgment, gathering bloodthirsty energy at her fingertips, ready to deliver the final blow. “Then farewell.”

The wood demon stared in shock at He Qingsheng’s sudden shift in demeanor, but before she could react, a blade pierced through her.

Her wooden body stiffened and collapsed, bursting into roaring flames with a series of crackling pops. As she hit the ground with a thunderous crash, faint green demonic spirits scattered like glowing embers.

He Qingsheng’s instincts screamed danger. With a flick of her fingers, she gathered her killing intent, trapping all the demonic spirits in an isolated barrier.

Boom!

Boom! Boom!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Each tiny spirit acted like a miniature bomb.

The relentless explosions churned up dust within the barrier of killing intent.

A tree demon who cultivated fire-based techniques, clearly, she had planned to take others down with her in a final explosion.

In the Twelve Regions, cultivators were divided into seven stages: Qi Refining, Foundation Building, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, Great Ascension, Tribulation Transcendence, and Divine Transformation. Each stage had three layers: early, middle, and peak. Based on the wood demon’s unleashed power, He Qingsheng estimated her cultivation was around the peak of Nascent Soul.

Even in the Twelve Regions, only a few thousand cultivators reached the Nascent Soul stage, with many sect elders barely reaching Nascent Soul peak. If not for He Qingsheng’s killing intent containing the explosion, thousands of miles of the Jimo Mountain Range would have been flattened.

The mortal realm truly hid dragons and crouched tigers.

He Qingsheng felt the fight with the wood demon hadn’t been particularly strenuous. Converting her ability to manipulate malice into cultivation terms, she figured she was at least at the early stage of Great Ascension. As long as she had enough killing intent, she shouldn’t be defenseless against the mortal realm’s strongest.

But this time, her power had relied on the massive school of Tuan fish. She needed a stable source of killing intent, she couldn’t always count on conveniently stumbling upon a swarm of Tuan fish or other monsters to serve as blood bags.

As the smoke cleared, the riverside fell silent. The Tuan fish in the river had been completely depleted, leaving only scattered traces of blood.

Qi Wan, dragging Shangguan Ding’an, scrambled toward Ying Qujie, their cries of “Physician Ying!” echoing from afar.

“Are you alright?”

He Qingsheng dispelled the protective barrier around Ying Qujie.

Oblivious to the two fleeing toward the town’s outskirts, he took a few quick steps and stood right in front of her.

“Miss He, are you alright?” Why does she look so normal? Ying Qujie silently swallowed the rest of that sentence.

He Qingsheng glanced at Ying Qujie but didn’t answer.

The accumulated resentment had dissipated again, and she wasn’t in the mood to engage with anyone.

Right! The wood demon was dead, now was the perfect time to go devour whatever that thing the wood demon had been nurturing!

Qi Wan was, after all, the disciple of the Imperial Preceptor, and it was possible she had some treasures or talismans. To be safe, He Qingsheng opened her golden mouth and began to deceive Ying Qujie: “Physician Ying, haven’t you noticed that the little wooden doll in your hand is missing?”

Ying Qujie looked down, there was no trace of the wooden doll on the ground either. It was truly gone.

He Qingsheng spoke with an air of profound mystery: “When a spirit tree becomes a demon, as long as its true form remains, even a wisp of its demonic spirit can eventually return. You should discuss with Shangguan Ding’an and the others how to locate the wood demon’s true form within this vast, thousand-mile mountain range.”

“Alright,” Ying Qujie agreed. “And what about you?”

“I’m a bit tired and need to rest.”

With that, He Qingsheng rode the east wind and drifted straight back toward the town.

Not a single word she had just spoken was false. Even if Ying Qujie found it strange, he had no immediate way to question her.

It was only while speaking to Ying Qujie that He Qingsheng had noticed the little wooden doll had vanished. That thing, neither human, demon, nor ghost, had actually dared to pull a switcheroo right under her nose.

Heh, no matter.

What of the wood demon’s true form? None of them could escape.

…

“Physician Ying? Who were you talking to?” Shangguan Ding’an called out to Ying Qujie several times but was ignored. Finally, he couldn’t resist reaching out to pat his shoulder.

“Lord Shangguan,” Ying Qujie snapped back to attention, considering how best to describe the wood demon’s appearance to make it easier to locate its true form. “Lord Shangguan and Miss Qi, have either of you ever seen an ancient tree, completely black, covered in knots, resembling a weeping willow?”

“Never heard of it. Is it a clue about the drought?” Shangguan Ding’an suggested. “If it’s a creature from the Jimo mountain range, we could gather the local people for inquiries. They might know something.”

“It sounds like the Mi Gu tree.”

Both men turned their gazes toward her. Qi Wan smiled sheepishly. “My master told me many strange tales of spirits and monsters when I was young. I don’t remember them very clearly.”

Ying Qujie nodded to show he understood.

But his thoughts weren’t entirely following He Qingsheng’s lead.

He was thinking: If she’s sending them to investigate the wood demon, what is He Qingsheng planning to do? Did she really need to return to town just to rest?

Or was she going to deal with that thing under the wood demon’s control alone?

He had woken from his sleep with a sharp pain in his chest, and after chasing after He Qingsheng, he’d arrived at the magistrate’s residence. There, he’d found her lurking in the shadows. When his warnings fell on deaf ears, she had pursued Mr. Ming, the wood demon. She was discovered, and the two of them had been chased all the way here.

He Qingsheng’s suggestion to search for the wood demon’s true form was leading them to explore the Jimo mountain range. Regardless of anything else, this would consume a significant amount of time and manpower.

No matter how he looked at it, it seemed like she was trying to get rid of them.

Tracing it back to the source, Ying Qujie suddenly realized, everything had started with He Qingsheng targeting the magistrate’s residence.

The magistrate’s residence!

She would definitely double back there.

Ying Qujie: “Let’s go to the magistrate’s residence!”

Qi Wan: “Huh? What about the Mi Gu tree?”

Shangguan Ding’an and Qi Wan were baffled, but they obediently followed behind Ying Qujie. Despite his youthful and gentle appearance, he carried an aura that made people instinctively defer to him.

Shangguan Ding’an felt they should just kidnap a physician, occasionally, it would be more convenient than being at the emperor’s beck and call.

Yet, he found himself instinctively obeying the man’s orders.

How strange.

Qi Wan shared the same sentiment, though she secretly counted her blessings that Physician Ying was, at least, a decent person.

…

Over at the magistrate’s residence, the wood demon’s barrier had already dissipated.

A surge of sinister energy shot straight into the heavens.

Above, layers of dark clouds piled upon one another, the sky seeming to buckle under their weight as violet-gold lightning flickered within.

He Qingsheng had heard from her master that cultivators could move mountains, fill seas, and even bring about the destruction of heaven and earth. Such things were of little consequence in the Twelve Realms, but for mortals, they spelled utter catastrophe. And because mortals often revered the gods of heaven and earth, they received divine protection in turn, thus, the heavenly laws of the mortal realm were far stricter than those of the Twelve Realms.

The power of this violet lightning was not to be underestimated.

And yet, the thing the wood demon had been nurturing wasn’t even fully formed, yet it could already provoke heavenly thunder of this magnitude.

So, the wood demon’s barrier hadn’t been meant to keep outsiders from entering, but to prevent what was inside from leaking out.

Considering Jimo’s circumstances, He Qingsheng had a vague guess as to what could emit such overwhelming sinister energy, a drought demon.

A corpse turned into a malevolent spirit, fed with human flesh, and after ten years, it becomes a drought demon.

Wherever a drought demon goes, the land turns barren for thousands of miles, and it attracts all manner of evil and filth. Creatures like the Feiyi or the Tuan fish, they didn’t appear because the world was suffering a great drought, but rather, the drought drew them out to wreak havoc. After all, with a drought demon in the world, even if there was heavenly retribution, the lightning would strike the demon first, giving lesser evils like them a chance to flee.

He Qingsheng frowned slightly, not out of fear of the drought demon, for it was nothing more than a mindless blood corpse.

Her only real concern at the moment was, would this heavenly retribution, by any chance, strike her down as well?