The more he thought about it, the more he liked the plan. Sure, it required him to finish the quest, but that wasn’t an impossibility. After all, it said nothing about value and he bet that he could find something small he’d be able to snag from each of his targets.

The harder part was to fake his own death so that even the higher-ranking cultivators didn’t notice his rouse. He needed to strategize, and he had someone with him that could help without a doubt.

He raised his head out of the water after his impromptu diving meditation.

“Mo Li Bei, Mo Li Bei, Mo Li Bei.”

The green head rose from the water as if it had been submerged. He was already slightly scowling.

“Why do you say my name like that?”

Joseph just smirked and skipped right to the topic. “How can I fake my own death?”

“Wha-“ The dead cultivator gave him a confused look. “What are you planning?”

“Well, my dear uncle wants to marry me off. I’m not sure if I can manage to stay hidden with all the attention, since the bride is the sect master’s daughter. I bet it’ll be a giant event, with literally everyone from Jing Bao’s past attending. I’m sure I’ll slip up. I’d love to simply walk away, but my uncle is sure to search for Jing Bao if that happens. So my only way is to hide.”

The old cultivator fell into contemplation. “Well, there are certain pills that can temporarily stop your heart, making you seem dead to most senses. It’ll trick anyone up to and including the core realms, but those beyond will be able to detect the presence of your soul. And that is basically impossible to hide without having active control over your own soul. But it’s unlikely you’ll find anyone with such an advanced level of cultivation nearby. Even the sect master of the Azure Sky sect is only in the later stages of the core realms.

“Your larger issue is both staging a scene that is convincing enough, and then you’ll still need to disappear without notice. An absent body would raise nearly as many flags as you just disappearing. They’d assume foul play and their first guess would be demonic cultivators. The whole thing is way too risky, in my opinion.”

Joseph smirked. “Let the disappearing act be my problem, old man. Are there any other options besides those pills?”

“There are a lot of options, talismans and tools to create temporary body doubles, illusion techniques, spirit mimicry... the list has no end, but basically all of them require a higher rank of cultivation. Your best bet is to either get some body illusion talisman from somewhere or stage a large explosion or fire that wouldn’t leave any remains.”

The bathtub had gone cold in the meantime. Joseph exited the water, drying his tired body with a nearby towel. The day had been long enough. He’d started back in the valley with a completely different set of issues, and now he was here. He wished to go back. Hiding for a few more months sounded like a better deal than what he’d planned.

There were still so many open questions, but he’d need to fulfill the quest first anyway.

---

Joseph was following his uncle through the compound. They were on the way to meet his future wife and her father. He’d need to be on his best behavior. Even if he didn’t want to marry, he couldn’t disappoint his uncle.

He’d gotten a new pair of robes in the morning. They’d been a lot fancier than the ones he’d worn before, even if the blue was the same. The cloth felt closer to silk than the rough spun linen of the outer sect disciples’s robes. The sleeves were richly decorated with gold detailing, making him feel like a proper young master instead of the scrappy woodsman he’d been larping as in the last few weeks.

Maids had fussed over him all morning, fixing his hair, outfit and a lot of other details. They’d given him a main- and pedicure, cleaning up any hint that he’d spent weeks without civilization. The end result was a full transformation.

When he’d looked in the mirror, it was the first time he really seen his own new body. Sure, he’d seen Jing Bao before, but it was a unique feeling to look in the mirror and see a new face staring back. He’d touched his skin, unsure if it was even real.

Then he’d started to play with his posture. Joseph realized that he didn’t project the right kind of aura. Jing Bao had been a proud young man, with his head raised so high that everyone else was automatically beneath him.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Joseph held himself more like a servant. His back was crouched, a habit from his past years as a gamer back on earth, where normal posture was as rare as a peaceful cultivator was here. His eyes had a hesitancy to them. As his natural reaction was wait and see, he rarely acted on instinct.

He pushed his shoulders back and raised his chin. It still wasn’t right. He knew he wasn’t a good actor. His face was somewhat wrong. It lacked that sure confidence that’d he’d come out on top in every situation that only someone with backing could have.

He added an arrogant smirk. That was already slightly better. He narrowed his eyes. There. That might work. He just hoped that he wouldn’t forget it.

Now Joseph was walking into what felt his certain doom, flanked by his uncle and Elder Te Hao. He was trying to remind himself to play his role and not be too subservient. He knew his uncle was strong. He needed to project that strength, that backing.

They finally arrived at a pavilion. As soon as they had sat down, a servant brought tea over. Their counterparts were still absent.

Joseph felt anxious. He was still squeezed between elder and uncle, and he felt like he had no way out. This whole thing felt awkward. He wished he could just curl into himself and vanish.

He was surrounded by another garden, but he could barely register it. He focused on the wood grains of the table instead, as if they were letters that could spell out the answer to his dilemma.

When he heard the scratching of a chair being moved, he finally looked up. Two people stood in front of him.

A blue-haired young woman was scowling at him, her azure eyes already stabbing him with daggers of displeasure. She looked worse than before, as she’d probably gained the same kind of makeover he’d gotten.

While her hair framed her face perfectly, drawing his attention to her heart-shaped lips, they’d been painted with such an aggressive red that their currently down-turned shape of disgust looked comical instead of beautiful. Her skin had been powdered and creamed to remove any and all texture. She looked like they’d replaced her pores with bright white wall paint. He wondered if her face would have blinded him if they’d been outside.

Her hair was put into such a complicated updo that the preparations must’ve started yesterday. Jewellery, hair pins and all kinds of chains were stuck, weaved, bound and placed between a careful arrangement of hair that made her hair look more like a three-tiered wedding cake than an elegant hairstyle. It looked like removing everything was a puzzle on the level of a Rubik’s cube.

It took him seconds to notice the older woman standing next to her. She didn’t look like her mother, but rather her grandmother. Her face was full of wrinkles and her teeth had already fallen out. Crouched over and with her hands clasped behind her back, eyes with an intensity that bordered on madness, she looked like a woman with one leg in the grave wanting to check off every item on her bucket list.

He wondered what had happened. And his uncle could’ve warned him. Not only was the sect master not a man like he’d expected - that was on him -, but how was this granny supposed to be his uncle’s “good buddy”!

“No, I will not marry that guy.”

His prospective bride turned around, but before she could leave, a wrinkled hand clamped her arm like an industrial log gripper.

“You stay, young lady. Even if it costs me my life, I’ll see you off.”

Joseph started to sweat. That granny was on a mission, and nothing would stop her.

“Well, let me introduce you two,” Elder Te Hao interjected. “Here we have Jing Bao, heir to Jing Do, visiting elder of our sect.” He gestured to the blue-haired woman. “And this is the flower of our sect, Su Li An, daughter of our very own Sect Master Su Chi Fen.”

“Mom, this is unacceptable. That perverted farm boy lecherously watched me while training! He was climbing the walls, not even having a basic respect for privacy. And when I caught him staring, he ran away like a common thief. I’m not falling for this act he’s putting on. He’s a pervert with no tact! Just like his uncle! Who comes half naked to a marriage intervi-“

Her whole body dropped to the floor, as if all strings had been cut loose.

“Well, I accept the gal complaining about my lil’ Bao-zi. He’s a bit rough around the edges, but I’m perfect the way I am. That was needless slander.” His uncle was rubbing his head as if embarrassed.

Joseph gulped. The audacity of a man that was probably hundreds of years older than the girl to use some kind of cultivation technique when all she said was what they’d all been thinking.

The sect elder sighed. “Stop that, you old meanie. She’s just a kid and doesn’t know you.”

Su Li Ans blue-haired mop in the shape of grandma’s messy jewelry box rose from the floor. She looked groggy, as she had woken up hungover and slowly made her way to a seat.

“I’m not that old! You are barely a hundred years younger. And you were the one that told me I looked good this way, you lecherous old granny.”

The sect elder’s face got red. “This- This isn’t about us. You missed your chance a few hundred years ago.”

The old woman tried to compose herself, squaring her shoulders and straightening her back. It made Joseph realize that he’d crouched up again. And he was too self conscious to do anything about it.

Su Chi Fen turned to her daughter. “He might not be that bad. I’ve known Jing Do for nearly a thousand years, and he’s a very upstanding man. If his nephew is anything like him, you’d be the happiest woman on the planet.”

The red tint had come back with the last sentence.

His uncle stretched over the table and grabbed the sect master’s hand.

“Fenfen, you know I’d marry you in a heartbeat. I don’t care about looks, you know that. Stop trying to fulfill your responsibilities until the end. We can elope and leave all this sect business behind you.”

Like a young maiden, the old woman turned her head away. “I can’t. You know that what I swore on my husband’s deathbed. I’ll lead this sect, even if it kills me.”

Joseph sighed. Great. Now he had front row seats to some romantic B Plot on top of everything else.