I lay on the ground in a piled heap, breathing heavily while my vision faded in and out. I could literally feel my meridians wilting with the oversucking of qi from my body to my fingertips.

I was like a giant sack of potatoes.

All the villagers stumbled to their feet around me and started cheering once they realized they were no longer stuck in the creepy abyss of the Demon Realm under the mountain.

Urgh.

Their cheering sounded like a bunch of buffaloes pounding the ground with their feet. And I just happened to be lying with my head on the ground. This was just giving me a big ol' splitting headache.

As my vision blurred and the qi in my body calmed to sleeping levels, I saw Xu Yun's blurry face appear above me, looking very concerned.

I coughed.

"You, student...I need you to do something."

Xu Yun's face swam above me, looking kind of like a blob of slime changing shape.

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"Yes!" His voice came from somewhere far away. "Yes, Immortal Laoshi Xia! What is it? Are you going to be all right? What should I do..."

"Doesn't matter right now!" I barked. I blacked out for a second, and when I came to again, Xu Yun looked like he wanted to cry. I coughed, and grabbed him by the shoulders, missing at first and grabbing the air, and then finally succeeding. "I need to you to fix the Demonic Containment Array. Otherwise, it's possible that Fong Jue will tunnel up through the mountain. In addition, I need you to fortify it by replacing all of the skulls. The reason..." I hacked up a cough, my vision blurring again. Shit. This was not good. Anyways, I had to finish, and ASAP! Otherwise, I might've done all that sacrificial shit for nothing! "The reason why Fong Jue could curse the village of Yingxuan Shan is because the array had rotted and lost power! You need to replace the four array skulls. You'll find them in secluded places in the shade, and you'll feel a weird demonic energy in the area around the skulls. Got it? Cough, cough—replace them, all right? Got it?!"

"Yes!" Damn, I couldn't even see Xu Yun's face anymore. It was just a blur of colors, like he was a fried egg gooping across my vision. My breath started slowing down. In a last-ditch attempt to heal myself, I sent out healing qi to my drained meridians, and felt a tiny bit better—but not enough to move. "But, Immortal Laoshi Xia! What should we replace the skulls with? They villagers probably won't want us to dig up dead bodies..."

"I don't know!" I barked again. "Find something! Anything round, white, around the size of a skull, and previously living. All right? This immortal is officially out of business! I'm on vacation!"

With that, I went limp and allowed the blurriness to take over, drifting into unconsciousness.