Chapter One Hundred and Two: The Carpenter

Looking at Yan Mengdie and Juhua, Xu Cheng felt that he was the only one who looked normal. Was he really expected to make his own appearance look just as bizarre?

Juhua whispered, "Right Envoy, your appearance looks more like a pale-faced actor in a play than someone from the Underworld. You really should change it."

"A pale-faced actor? A pretty boy?" Xu Cheng blurted out, then cursed inwardly: *You ghost judge, how dare you call this envoy a pretty boy!*

Yan Mengdie nodded vigorously, clearly in total agreement. Annoyed, he used the Lesser Five Elements Creation Technique to modify his appearance.

His black hair turned white, and two thin, curved white sheep horns sprouted from his forehead, with a black flame-shaped mark appearing between his brows. His skin shifted to a deep crimson, his eyes became pale gold, the whites of his eyes turned black, and the corners of his mouth stretched all the way to his ears as if they could no longer close, revealing four sharp canine teeth about a finger's length. His nose grew slightly larger, with nostrils flared outward. A multitude of wrinkles formed on his dark red skin, especially on his exposed fingers, which looked like the gnarled roots of an old tree, while his fingernails grew three inches long and looked incredibly sharp.

"Right Envoy, this look is simply magnificent!" Juhua immediately clapped and cheered.

"Magnificent? This is called dashing!" Xu Cheng corrected him immediately, unable to help himself from using a term for men from his past life.

"Dashing, indeed dashing!" Juhua praised, giving him a thumbs-up.

"Insincere," Xu Cheng snorted coldly.

Just then, the room door was knocked, and the voice of the innkeeper came from outside: "Everyone, you've finally woken up. Could you please pay the room rent? It's been a whole month!"

It turned out they had been cultivating for a month without realizing it. Xu Cheng, having forgotten to change his appearance back, went straight to open the door.

The anxious innkeeper, seeing the door open, was about to step inside when he saw a terrifying monster with sheep horns. His vision went black, and he fainted on the spot.

"Am I that terrifying?" Xu Cheng asked, touching his cheek.

"Not at all, not at all. It must be that your dashiness scared him into fainting!" Yan Mengdie said hurriedly, a smile on her face.

"Exactly, exactly!" With the two of them singing in harmony, Xu Cheng felt the urge to scold them.

"Let's go. We're going to track that mysterious person. This time, we only need to tail him from a distance!" After tossing down three hundred taels of silver, Xu Cheng said.

Although the three of them were at the Spirit Manifestation stage, to that person, they were still like three little bugs that could be easily crushed. Tailing him from afar without being detected, they could collect ghosts and spirits to gain merit-based golden light while accelerating their own cultivation, until the day they could face him head-on.

The plan was sound. Yan Mengdie and Juhua agreed, and they left the place together with Xu Cheng. The snow had stopped, but the chill was even more intense, despite the appearance of a sliver of sunlight.

The three traveled using evasion techniques for two hours, exiting the borders of Luzhou and entering Antai Prefecture. Not far ahead was Xijiang City. With their drastically changed appearances, if they appeared in the city in such a high-profile manner, they would surely be treated like monsters by the common folk.

"How are we supposed to enter the city like this?" Xu Cheng asked, looking at the few sparse guards standing at the city gate.

"That's easy. Fortunately, I didn't sacrifice the magical artifacts I carry to you!" Yan Mengdie took three emerald leaves from her bosom and said, "As the saying goes, 'a single leaf blinds the eye'; this magical artifact can hide our forms."

With that, she handed two jade leaves to Xu Cheng and Juhua. Xu Cheng looked closely at the jade leaf in his hand. The leaf was made of emerald, and the veins looked like inlaid gold threads; it was exquisitely carved. The gold threads were actually attached magical patterns; one only needed to channel magic power along the veins to achieve the effect of invisibility.

Using these, the three of them swaggered into the city without anyone noticing. After patrolling a few times, they found that there wasn't a single cultivator from the Xia Dynasty left in the city; they had presumably all been killed by that mysterious person.

"Should we summon the local spirits here to inquire, or...?" Standing on the street, Xu Cheng asked.

Just as he was speaking, he heard a voice: "You clumsy carpenter, the carving on this furniture is so poor, and you still want payment? Get out of here!"

Hearing the argument, Xu Cheng couldn't help but look over. A man in his thirties was lying on the ground covered in wood shavings. Beside him was a newly opened inn, and the innkeeper was pointing at the carpenter on the ground, spewing insults. The man on the ground listened to the angry curses without fighting back.

"Get out! Don't disturb my business!" the innkeeper shouted.

Expanding his spiritual sense, Xu Cheng discovered that the tables and chairs inside the inn were exceptionally beautiful, like pieces of art. It seemed the innkeeper was merely feigning this anger to avoid paying for the work.

Just as he was about to teach the innkeeper a lesson, the carpenter on the ground emitted a wisp of black energy that seeped into the entire inn. In the next moment, the inn's appearance changed in Xu Cheng's eyes; it looked like a ferocious beast with a gaping maw, the inside filled with a sea of blood and corpses, like an Asura field. This scene was invisible to ordinary people; it was a type of formation.

Looking at the carpenter again, a few strands of white hair had suddenly appeared among his locks, as if he had aged several years in an instant. The carpenter, having finished this, brushed the dust off his clothes and walked away as if nothing had happened. It was clear that this carpenter was also a cultivator, though his techniques were filled with an uncanny air.

Not long after the carpenter left, a scream rang out, and the innkeeper came running out of the inn, covered in blood, in a blind panic. Under such a formation, even a cultivator at the Dharma Seal stage would be affected, let alone an ordinary person.

"I, I've killed someone! Help me! There's a monster inside! There's a monster!"

Many passersby quickly gathered around. The innkeeper, who had been smug and triumphant just moments ago, was now a murderer, babbling incessantly to the onlookers, but no one wanted to pay him any mind.

"I told you long ago not to provoke Carpenter Chu, but you wouldn't listen! I advise you to take money, good wine, and fine food to offer Carpenter Chu an apology. If he's in a good mood, he might let you off; otherwise, having your family ruined is only a matter of days!"

The onlookers remained unmoved, save for one person who patted the innkeeper's cheek as he spoke.

"I..." Before he could finish the word, the innkeeper seemed to remember something. He quickly locked the inn door and ran off frantically, buying wine and food, and withdrawing a large amount of silver from the money shop.

He then went to find the Carpenter Chu mentioned by the onlooker. Xu Cheng, suspecting that the carpenter might be a member of the Five Pecks of Rice Sect and finding the situation quite interesting, followed closely behind the innkeeper.

They finally found the man at a small farmhouse on the outskirts of the city.

"Master Chu, I only wanted to test your esteemed techniques; I truly meant nothing else. Here is your payment, along with some food and wine. I only beg you to spare my life!" the innkeeper said with great sincerity.