"All right. Here's what we're gonna do..."

After I explained the plan to them, Li Cheng and Xu Yun scurried off—well, Xu Yun determinedly scurried off while dragging a scared-out-of-his-pants Li Cheng—and I got to work.

First, I took a shard of shattered obsidian and carved it...into a potato with a smiley face. I put it on the ground.

Then, I used qi sharpened like a blade to cut open a spot on my arm. I put some blood on my fingers and got to work.

----------------------------------------

About ten minutes, later, Zhao Yaoyao burst back into the cave, followed by a terrified Xu Yun and Li Cheng.

She gazed around with bright red eyes of triumph, cackling with glee when she saw my lifeless body lying on the ground by the lake.

"Xia Yue! You, the High and Mighty Immortal Xia of the Glittering Mountains! I've defeated you! You went down, just like that! Pathetic! A HA HA, HA HA HA HA HA AH AH! AHAHAHAHHAA! What kind of immortal are you? I mean... WERE you? AHAHAHAEHEHEHEHHEHAHHAHAHAHHHAHHAEHHEHEEHEEHEE! TEEHEE! This is just too good!"

She stalked up to my limp body while Xu Yu and Li Cheng trembled behind her.

"Look at you! Who's powerful now? You're just a shell, and I'm Zhao Yaoyao, the eternally beautiful, powerful, vengeful ghost who destroyed you! HEE HEE! Maybe I should give a speech at your funeral...Ahem, 'Xia Yue was arrogant, a fool, and unfortunately divinely talented. But that's all in the past! Now, she's lower-down on the totem pole than I am! Heh! You hear that? I've pushed her down all the way to the bottom! AHAHA HEE HEE TEE HEE HEHEH!"

"That's literally the worst eulogy I've ever heard."

Zhao Yaoyao froze. Her already ghost-white face turned even paler somehow.

Had Xia Yue's body...just talked?!

"Impossible! How are you alive? I must be imagining things!"

Suddenly, Xia Yue's body glowed, and qi began to flow through it again.

Okay, I'm getting too confused here, talking about myself in the third person and everything. It's giving me an immortal headache.

Qi began to flow again through my body. Super slowly to get that cool suspenseful effect, I turned over and grinned up at my former shijie, Zhao Yaoyao.

"It's not hard for an immortal like me to pause the qi from flowing through my body for a minute or two. Seriously, shijie — were you too distracted to notice that your creepy demonic altar disappeared? You were so excited to see me dead, heh!"

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Zhao Yaoyao whipped around, looking for her precious, creepy demonic altar.

"Impossible! That altar was infused with the suffering of thousands of murdered spirits! Together with the array, you shouldn't have been able to do a single thing! How can this be? Xia Yue, you must have cheated! You bitch!"

I sat up, scoffing.

"Seriously, shijie. Are you gonna keep pinning my natural talent on cheating?"

Cough, cough, it wasn't all natural talent. More like system + rats + ratshit demon + some talent. Plus, apparently some of my awesomeness came from this Easy Mode setting. But, whatever. She didn't need to know that.

Zhao Yaoyao growled. Her eyes flared scarlet, and she curled her long nails at me.

"You poser! You fake! You dog! I'll kill you, Xia Yue! I'll kill you!"

Screaming, she lunged forward, her claws aimed at my beautiful jade immortal face.

I sighed. This shijie had never really been good at noticing things, heh. She hadn't even bothered to take a look at the ground.

At least she was making it easy for me for once.

"Hold!"

Suddenly, the blood array beneath me glowed gold. In midair, Zhao Yaoyao skidded to a stop, totally frozen with a furious look on her face.

Only her mouth could move, and even that was stiff.

"Xia Yue! What did you do? How — how did you turn my Movement Restricting Array against me? This shouldn't be happening! It was only directed towards humans!"

"Shijie, the Movement Restricting Array is super similar to the Ghostly Restriction Array. Remember? Your favorite Master Li taught us all about it! I just had to add a couple circles and lines, and then, bam! Ghostly Restriction Array. Kind of backfired on you, right? Now it just catches you, and not us! Heh. Arrays be like that sometimes."

Zhao Yaoyao howled in fury, which looked kind of funny because she couldn't move an inch. She was literally standing on one tiptoe with her claws right in front of my face.

"You bitch! You dog-fucked cheater! I'm going to kill you, I swear! And if I can't do that, I'll steal your immortality! I'll make your immortal life a living hell! You — You!!!"

I yawned. "You already said that. All right, now for the real purpose of this array — seal!"

The array glowed blue. The little obsidian smiling potato figurine that no one had noticed before started to shake. Meanwhile, Zhao Yaoyao started to howl in distress.

"What are you doing, you fool? Why is my ghostly qi — why is it being pulled into that tiny lumpy smiling thing? What have you done?!"

"It's a happy potato! I'm sealing you in it so you won't bother anyone anymore. You get to be sealed in a happy potato, with a ratshit demon for company! And I get peace and quiet. Everyone's happy!"

"NOOOOO!" Zhao Yaoyao howled. Her physical form was slowly fading as her essence was sucked into that happy little potayto. "NOT ME! I'M NOT HAPPY, YOU WRETCHED IMMORTAL! YOU TERRIBLE SHIMEI! IS THIS HOW YOU TREAT YOUR SHIJIE?! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

With a pop, she was sucked into the happy little potato, and safely sealed away.

The potato shrieked in a high-pitched voice.

"Hey! Hey! Undo this, right now! Free this shijie! Get me out of this strange, lumpy figurine with a ghastly smile! Now!!!!!!"

I plucked up potato-shijie and grinned down at that cute little potato-face.

"I think you look cute like this! Shijie, don't worry. I'll give you a nice, sparkly cave to stay in with my friend/sworn servant, Wu Zai. You two will have so much fun together, heh!"

"Wu Zai? Rat thief?! You're locking me up with a rat thief? You dog-fucked shimei! You're no shimei of mine! AAAAAAAAAAAH — "

With that, I sealed off her sound for a bit. It was really hurting my ears.

I sent the potato shijie and ratshit Wu Zai figurines flying back to their own sparkly cave, patched up the hole in the wall with the Earth Reforming technique, and then turned around to Li Cheng and Xu Yun.

"So! How are my students doing?"

They stared at me wide-eyed, looking extremely traumatized.