I spat.

Yeah, that's right.

I spat.

Like a cool, angry person.

Right at Zhao Yaoyao's vengeful ghost feet!

The Cool and Angry Spitting Immortal Xia—that's me.

"So basically," I summed up, feeling very cool and angry, "You're jealous."

Zhao Yaoyao shrieked with rage and stomped on the spit, glaring at me like she wanted to tear my face off.

"Don't make it sound so simple!" she screeched. "It's a deep grudge! I'm full of vengeance! You stole my life, Xia Yue! You're just a poser! I should be standing where you are!!!"

"The poser part's not wrong. But me stealing your life...heh, to be honest, shijie, I don't think you would've ever ascended to immortality. You don't have enough qi in your meridians for that. They're too clogged. By the way, have you ever gotten that checked out? Feels like it might be a medical problem looking at you now, though it's now ghost qi, so it's a little different."

"YOU!" Zhao Yaoyao raged, stamping her feet. "YOU IMBECILE OF A SHIMEI! How dare you speak to me like this? Don't you know you're helpless right now? I'm about to suck out all of your qi! We'll see who's easygoing then!"

I raised an immortal eyebrow interestedly.

"Suck out all my qi? Seriously, how do you plan on doing that? Don't you know how hard it is to suck someone's qi out? Unless you have something crazy like a demonic altar that hundreds of people have been killed on, you can't..."

Me and the two scholar-kids behind me stared as Zhao Yaoyao cackled and ripped off her necklace with an obsidian figurine at the bottom. She shoved it in my face.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Do you recognize this precious item, my precious shimei? You must've seen it before."

Huh...so that's where I'd seen it! It was the ugly-ass necklace that my shijie Zhao Yaoyao had worn every single day. A small obsidian figurine of a beautiful woman, which she'd always said was a rare treasure she'd bought because it complemented her stunning beauty.

"I kept this necklace even in death, and I made it into my very own demonic altar. I traveled around the cultivation world, killing people in each village I passed and infusing it with their rage and suffering. Now...my precious demonic altar will be the end of your immortal life! MWAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHHAHA! Altar, enlarge!"

She threw the necklace onto the ground at my feet, and began to walk away. The necklace started to get bigger and bigger, and shinier and shiner, until it was even bigger than a life-size person. A dank, demonic aura of suffering and hatred filled the cave. Li Cheng and Xu Yun trembled behind me.

Dang. That face was hideous when it was blown up this big. Was she sure she wanted it to complement her beauty?

"I'll return in half an hour's time to see it sucking the last remnants of qi from your dead body!" Zhao Yaoyao cackled as she left. "For now, I'm going to go and vandalize your cave!"

Shit!

"Hey, you fucker! That's going too far! You can try and suck the qi out of my body, but you can't vandalize my cave!!! Stop right there!!!"

Zhao Yaoyao only shrieked with laughter and left.

Shit! Shit, shit, shittiest shits!

I was so enraged that I felt like I could break out of this Motion Restricting Array just from pure rage.

Maybe I could have, since the rage was making my qi surge — the only problem was, as soon as my qi surged, that demonic altar statue started to suck it away. Literal golden wisps of my immortal qi could be seen threading from my body to the statue like clouds.

I gasped.

This was not good.

I felt like I was going to barf.

And my legs were shaking.

And worst of all...

This was fucking embarrassing. I got beaten so easily in front of my precious temporary-student-kids!

There was no telling how much resentment Zhao Yaoyao had fused this statue altar with for it to be this strong. Years of her own resentment, and hundreds of wrongfully taken lives of others. I could almost hear the voices of the dead cursing and weeping in my ears!

"You two...my students..." I muttered, breathing heavily. This thing was sucking away my qi, but I wouldn't be going down easily. Zhao Yaoyao definitely underestimated the amount of overflowing qi in my body. I was just experiencing the shock of having my meridians altered.

"Y-yes, Immortal Laoshi Xia?" Xu Yun stammered, his bright eyes wide. "What is it? You're being hurt! What should we do?"

"Y-yeah," Li Cheng gulped, trying to look brave but mostly looking terrified. "I-Immortal Laoshi Xia, what i-is it? We're your s-s-students! W-we'll d-do whatever y-you n-need us t-t-t-t-to..."