The false goddess, Wei Xian, chuckled. "You're handsome yourself. But sadly, you're not my type."

Her playful and flirtatious laugh escaped her lips, but her eyes remained distant. The flirtatious tone in her voice seemed more like a well-rehearsed performance than genuine affection. She tossed her hair back in a practiced motion, but the usual warmth that might accompany such a gesture was missing. Even her perfectly placed smile felt thin like her heart wasn't in it.

Despite her teasing words, she obviously had no genuine interest in me.

"That's for the best," I nodded. "I have a fiancée. Despite any fleeting distractions, I keep my vows."

I wasn't about to mention that what made her attractive wasn't her emotional or physical beauty. No matter how I spun those words, they would still come off as an insult.

She tilted her head slightly, her fake smile dimming. "What brings you here? I can't imagine someone like you wandering into a place like this."

"Curiosity, mostly," I replied, keeping my tone casual. There was no need to lie about something so trivial, and I was trying to gauge her reaction.

"What else does that—'mostly'—imply?" she asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"There's been some trouble back home, so I needed to get away," I shrugged.

"Is that trouble going to follow you?" she pressed.

"No," I said, though the truth was more like 'unlikely.' But no one wanted to hear uncertain answers. Though I constantly ran real calculations in my head, no one liked facing the uncertainty of reality. For all I knew, the sky could fall on us at any moment.

She nodded, taking my answer at face value. Whether she believed me or not was impossible to tell.

With a sigh, Wei Xian wandered to the corner of the temple and sat in an old, shadowed chair. Despite its age and the dust coating the rest of the place, it was the only clean spot in the temple.

Judging by the neglect around us, I doubted she lived here. This was likely just a meeting place for those she didn't trust.

Before she finally spoke, Wei Xian's eyes lingered on me, studying me. "Your Qi is strange. Are you sure you're not killing yourself by using it like that?"

I'd read tomes warning that absorbing Qi before the body was ready could be painful. But once your body was strong enough, the Qi would flow seamlessly.

What struck me most was that she could sense my Qi. By all rights, she shouldn't have enough Qi within herself to see someone else's, and yet she could somehow feel it.

Qi sensing worked like a sixth sense, akin to radar or echolocation. But she managed it without the Qi to support such an ability.

Perhaps the change in every cultivator when they sensed Qi was more profound than I realized.

"You've got good senses," I said carefully, unwilling to reveal my hand so easily. "You must be able to sense Qi from quite a distance."

A part of me itched to interrogate her, to unravel how she cultivated in this way. But I still had my manners, and sanity won out. I wasn't about to strap someone to an experiment table just to satisfy my curiosity.

"Really now?"

I nodded. "Yes, I'm curious if you can sense Qi further than I can."

She smiled, and this time, the smile reached her eyes. "Only a boring woman reveals all her secrets at a first meeting. Passion fades without a little mystery."

Did she not understand what I hinted at by saying 'sensing'? It hinted that I sensed what she had initially done and broke her rhythm by making her embarrassed. But perhaps I had been spending too much time around old foxes who could see underneath pleasant words.

"The secretive type," I sighed in mock disappointment. "That's not my kind of lady. No matter how beautiful you are, I don't think we'd get along."

"Well, I don't like insecure men," she replied, shaking her head. "What a shame—seems like beautiful people just can't get along."

What I disliked most was the verbal sparring. While I enjoyed learning new things, this felt like dancing around a chessboard with words. I usually reserved this kind of back-and-forth for friends. With strangers, it was a waste of time.

Still, I was in the dark about what was happening in the region, and she was one of the few who knew.

"Well, we can still be friends," I suggested.

"But friends share their secrets," she teased. "Don't you want to know mine?"

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This was getting tedious.

"How about we cut to the chase?" I said.

"Straightforward? I like that too," she responded.

I kept a polite smile, but I was growing tired of this endless banter. She talked a lot but said nothing. When I mentioned not liking secretive women, it was half in jest. But truthfully, I disliked secretive people in general. A troubling realization, considering I was engaged to a woman like that.

Why couldn't more women be like Song Song—open with their intentions… just less psychopathic?

I decided to try to rattle her calm facade.

"Do you know what's happening with the Silent Harvest Sect around here? I heard your relationship with them isn't great."

The moment I said that, her gaze flicked toward the hunter. For a split second, her mask cracked, and I saw her true emotions. The look she gave him—it was the same look an angry wife gives her husband when he says something foolish.

Unable to resist, I glanced at the hunter. He wore a solemn expression but was even worse at hiding his thoughts than the false goddess.

Aha, so that's how it is!

These two were not merely associates. Their silent communication and shared looks hinted at a deeper connection.

They were in a relationship.

That changed everything. How much of what she had said was really directed at me? Which parts of the conversation were coded messages meant for her secret lover?

It was impossible to decipher what she might have communicated to him. Only they knew their inside jokes or hidden innuendos, likely built over years of intimacy.

This was an interesting little secret I had stumbled upon. Now the question was: did the hunter know that beneath her illusion, this "goddess" was likely old enough to be his mother?

Despite her youthful appearance and demeanor, this so-called goddess was essentially a granny. Though clearly, her mind was still filled with rather youthful thoughts.

Now, I wasn’t the type to blackmail someone out of the blue. So far, despite her caution, she hadn’t done anything to harm me. Her wariness was expected. After all, we were strangers. She could have played her cards more carefully, but her initial blunder worked in my favor.

Still, having leverage was a nice feeling, even if I had no intention of using it. Sticking my nose into other people’s relationships wasn’t my goal here. Who cared what they did in their private time? It wasn’t any of my business.

“Do you know who leads the Silent Harvest Sect?” I asked, cutting into her thoughts before she could recover.

“Yes,” she replied quickly, almost too quickly. “His name is Jing Shi. But why do you want to know that?”

I walked up the stone stairs leading to the statue platform and sat on one of the steps. Dust swirled in the air, catching the dim light filtering through the cracks in the temple walls.

Leaning my elbow on my knee, I smiled. “What’s their cultivation technique like? I wonder if it’s similar to yours.”

“Well, you don’t need to wonder anymore,” she said, her voice regaining its confidence. “The Silent Harvest Sect cultivates by feeding their corpses Qi as they gather it. They also feed the corpses strange stones infused with Qi.”

“Hm?” I raised an eyebrow, surprised.

Cultivators who fed their gathered Qi to corpses that couldn’t even regenerate Qi on their own? That was… inefficient. But intriguing.

This wasn’t something any sensible sect would do in the usual cultivator world. The process seemed like an enormous waste of resources.

Still, I couldn’t deny the curiosity stirring within me. Seeing the results of such a method would be worth it.

“And where can I find the Silent Harvest Sect?” I asked, my interest growing.

This journey was starting to pay off for the first time since I began my travels. Who knew what other strange practices waited to be discovered in this remote place? The thought of it made my pulse quicken. This was like stepping into a new world full of cultivators with bizarre techniques. Who knew what other mysteries lay ahead?

…

After that, we continued to converse, both of us carefully dodging any revelations that might give away too much about ourselves. Speaking in such veiled terms was tiresome, but by the end of it, I had a rough idea of where the Silent Harvest Sect operated. She claimed not to know the exact location, though I couldn't tell if she was lying.

With that uncomfortable conversation behind me, I summoned my flying sword. Stepping onto its gleaming surface, I shifted my weight, and the sword lifted smoothly off the ground. I began to descend the mountain.

As I continued on foot, the forest blurred as I ran, the canopy above becoming a smudge of fading green and brown. Soon, the trees began to change—their naked trunks taking on an unsettling crimson hue as if stained with old, dried blood. The sight made me pause, but I pressed forward.

By the time the sun dipped low on the horizon, casting long, eerie shadows through the trees, I caught sight of a village in the distance. This one was smaller than the last but had a distinct feature: a large, sprawling graveyard just outside its borders. Wooden and stone tombstones jutted from the earth, many so ancient that moss and grass had overtaken them, merging with the ground in quiet, forgotten decay.

In stark contrast to the ancient graveyard, the village's buildings were made from the same crimson wood as the surrounding trees. Though the structures themselves were modest, the blood-red hue of the wood gave the entire village a sinister, foreboding atmosphere. Each house seemed bathed in an eerie light, making the place feel more like a haunted outpost than a home.

Wei Xian, the false goddess, had mentioned that this village used to be larger. It had been abandoned after a monstrous beast attack. Most villagers had migrated, and even now, they left whenever winter approached.

I leaned against one of the trees far from the graveyard, hidden in the shadows. It would be difficult for anyone to spot me in the dark, but with my enhanced sight, I could easily watch the graveyard from a distance.

Even in this situation, I didn't waste time. The Qi inside me began to spin as my spiritual roots absorbed and refined it. Waiting idly would have been a waste.

...

Night fell, the sky draped in a starry dark cloak. My spiritual roots began to strain from the constant refinement. Usually, I would have pushed through a bit longer, but it was better to stay in peak form with a potential fight looming.

Finally, I saw movement near the graveyard—a man sneaking through the shadows of the trees, approaching the tombstones with careful, deliberate steps.

So far, everything Wei Xian had told me was accurate.