Qingge did her hardest to keep all her muscles fully relaxed, no matter how uncomfortable. It was made extremely difficult by all of the adrenaline pumping through her body, but a single twitch might be enough for the old woman to realize that she was still conscious.

When realized that she had been poisoned, her brain went into overdrive and she made the split-second decision not to try and fight back. In the state she was in, she wouldn’t have stood any chance of winning regardless, so wasting strength and time on trying was a bad idea.

Instead, when she had been hit, she had used all the strength she had left to throw herself along with the attack, weakening the impact while making it appear stronger. Then she had played unconscious.

So far so good. Well, at least as good as the situation could turn out after she had already let herself be poisoned. Her head still pulsed with a searing hot pain where she had been hit and her thoughts were hazy. That and she was still poisoned.

Oh yeah, and she was currently being carried deep underground by a violent grandmother. She had heard the basement door being opened, and then another door and since then they had been descending some kind of stone stairway, as far as she could tell from the sounds. What was for sure was that they weren’t in the basement anymore.

On second thought, maybe her situation really wasn’t that great.

At least there was one front she could try to improve on, namely the poison. She had quickly noticed that it acted much stronger in her chest region than anywhere else and closer inspection had shown that it did so specifically in proximity to her core. This had led her to theorize that it reacted to her Qi, which was much denser in that region.

And while the poison paralyzed her body, she could move her Qi just fine.

Her ability to manipulate Qi had always been one of Qingge’s biggest strong suits. It had in fact been the very reason she had been accepted as an inner disciple by the Enforcement Hall back in the day despite her lackluster talent for combat. It had always helped her cultivation immensely and it also came in handy right now.

Qingge started by pushing all the Qi that wasn’t in her core out of the body, making sure not to send any of it towards the old lady. As a body cultivator she had no way of sensing Qi outside of her body but if an excess amount entered her, she could feel it.

Immediately, Qingge could feel the effects of the poison easing up. Her core itself didn’t seem to cause any issue, since the Qi inside was already in its liquified state. Sadly, this alone didn’t seem to suffice, as the effects stabilized rather quickly, still with most of their strength intact.

If only it’d be so easy…

Qingge took a moment to think. Once the poison was activated, it seemed like it didn’t need a continued reaction with Qi to sustain its effects. Luckily, there was another thing she could try because while she had pushed out her Qi, Qingge had felt the poison slowly being pulled along with it.

Carefully, she converted a miniscule amount of the Qi in her core back into its raw form and pushed it outwards in a quick burst through a specific part of her body. The poison moved outwards as well. She repeated the action several times and sure enough, soon several small drops of poison were pushed through her skin and quickly evaporated.

It wasn’t an easy process, and it wasn’t quick by any measures, but if she kept doing this, she’d eventually be able to remove the poison from her body. So she went at it.

Meanwhile, the part of her mind that wasn’t occupied moving Qi in repetitive motions turned outwards again and noticed that they had long stopped descending and were now just moving horizontally. The air around them was cold and damp, the old woman’s steps echoing through the air like they were in some kind of long hallway.

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Maybe the canalization? In a massive city like this, that might make for a decent hiding place. Were they located this deep though? Qingge hadn’t paid exact attention but with how long they had descended, they had to be at least forty to fifty meters underground right now.

Eventually, Qingge started hearing distant voices that slowly grew louder as they progressed. It was a group of three or four men and from the sounds of it they were playing some kind of game. Once they had come close, the woman stopped and called out to them.

“Hey there, you useless lot! You know you’re not supposed to play cards while on guard-duty.”

One of the men answered, his deep and rough voice sounding apologetic.

“Granny! We… Well, we need to pass the time somehow, don’t we? It’s not like anything ever happens in these blasted catacombs anyway.”

Catacombs? Qingge had heard in passing that there was a massive net of ancient mineshafts below the city and that parts of it were being used to store the dead. Was that where they were? She wished she had listened more closely back then.

Also, was Granny just how they called the woman? There was no way this was specifically her grandson.

“And you better hope it stays that way you disobedient brat!”

“Who you got there?”

“This girl was snooping around in our business. I knocked her out with poison. Before you get any terrible ideas, she’s a soul cultivator and probably belongs to one of the major families.”

“Oh shit, don’t want nothing to do with that. I assume you’re gonna get her to the big man?”

“In a cell, that’s where I’m gonna bring her. I’ll talk to the boss about it later.”

So there was a boss, and he was down here. Qingge had just basically solved the case. Now, if that was of any use to her right now.

“Got it, got it. While you’re there, could you tell him we could use a case of liquor here?”

“Ha! You better hope I don’t tell him what you’ve been up to, otherwise he might send you his dogs instead.”

With that, ‘Granny’ continued on, soon leaving the guards behind.

From now on, they ran into more and more people, many of whom exchanged a quick word with the old woman. There was not a lot of relevant information, but Qingge managed to glean that the grandma was apparently a rather high-ranking member of this organization.

Meanwhile, she had finally managed to expel all of the poison from her body and could already feel her strength returning. That was good news, even though her chances of fighting her way out were probably close to nonexistent. She was stronger than her capturer, if she correctly assessed the old woman, but against several trained body-cultivators she’d be helpless.

If she had already gone through soul realization, this would be an entirely different story before that, a soul cultivator had basically no advantage over a body cultivator. Even after it, taking on a whole group of them was completely out of question before at least the high stages of the realm.

Her major advantage right now, however, was the element of surprise. They didn’t know she was conscious, let alone ready to fight. As long as that stayed true, she might be able to figure something out.

After walking for a while longer, the old woman stopped again.

“Hey, you there. I need you.”

“How can I help you, Granny?”

“I need this girl locked up. She’s a soul cultivator that was snooping around.”

“A soul cultivator?”

“Don’t worry, she’s powerless right now. I’ll talk to the boss about what to do with her, but I need your guys to keep her secured.”

“I’m not sure if we’re able to handle a proper prisoner. We usually only handle the occasional drunkard who forgot their place.”

“As I said, she’s powerless. Give her some of this here every couple hour’s and she won’t even be able to fight a child, much less your drunkards. How do you think I beat her?”

“I see. How much exactly?”

“Five or six drops, diluted with water every six hours should more than do the trick. Not more, the stuff is expensive.”

“Got it. Anything else you need, Granny?”

“We’ll see about that once I’m back from the boss. Actually, wake her up until then, he might want to speak with her.”

With that, Qingge was unceremoniously dumped on the floor. She almost tried to cushion her fall, only barely managing to keep up her act. The landing on the stone floor was hard, but she luckily didn’t hit anything important.

After a moment, she heard a door slam shut and then she just lay there, feeling the cold stone beneath her as the adrenaline finally wore off. She didn’t dare to move but could at least open her eyes. From what little she saw through the darkness she was in a small empty room with uneven walls of stone.

And entirely alone.