A thin gray mist clung to the Servant Quarters in the early morning, the air still carrying the lingering bite of night's chill.
Mo Fan stood at Old Lü's doorstep with a packed travel bag slung over his shoulder. He didn't knock—just quietly set down a large bundle of herbs tied with grass rope on the stone steps.
Three days' worth of work quotas. Paid in advance.
But before he could slip away, the weathered wooden door creaked open on its own.
Old Lü shuffled out wearing a gray coat more patches than original fabric, an unlit tobacco pipe dangling from his gnarled fingers. His rheumy eyes took in the dew-damp herb bundle and Mo Fan's travel-ready appearance. Something complicated flickered in those clouded depths, but no real surprise.
"Heading out?" His voice came out scratchy, rough as gravel.
"Yeah."
Mo Fan jerked his thumb toward the silent, tower-like figure in black standing behind him.
"My cousin just got here. Can't have him cooped up inside all day—bad for morale. Figured I'd take him to Qingmu Town, maybe pick up some odd jobs on the side. You know how it is. Extra mouth to feed, expenses add up."
Old Lü's gaze drifted past Mo Fan to settle on Mo Yan.
The skeletal guardian stood in full black combat attire, an enormous pack strapped to its back—nearly half a person's height. Inside that pack lay the disassembled bones of Summon No. 003, the Shadowpanther skeleton.
The weight was immense, angular bone segments pressing against the rough cloth in jagged shapes. Yet the burden sat on those shoulders like it weighed nothing at all. Like carrying a bundle of cotton.
Mo Yan stood motionless. A stone guardian lion stripped of all emotion, all vitality, radiating that familiar stay-away chill that made living things instinctively recoil.
"Getting out will do him good."
Old Lü pulled his gaze back. He didn't ask why "going for a stroll" required such a massive, oddly-shaped pack. Didn't ask why a supposedly mute cousin who'd just arrived possessed inhuman strength. Didn't mention how the figure didn't seem to breathe.
A lifetime spent surviving at the bottom of this man-eating cultivation world had taught Old Lü the most important rule of all:
The less you know, the longer you live.
He didn't need to understand what fortuitous encounters "Little Seven" had stumbled into. Didn't need to know whether that "cousin" was human or ghost.
He only needed to confirm one thing—Little Seven was still the same person who bought candy for Er Ya, who gifted him ginseng, who stood up for this courtyard when trouble came knocking. Still family.
That was enough.
"Be careful out there."
Old Lü tapped his pipe against the doorframe, knocking loose a small avalanche of ash. "I'll handle things here. Make sure your herb quotas get turned in. Don't worry about the homestead."
"Thanks, Uncle Lü."
Mo Fan nodded. No sentimental speeches. No dramatic promises.
This kind of unspoken understanding between adults—sometimes it meant more than any guarantee. At the brutal bottom rungs of the cultivation world, trust that asked no questions was the most expensive luxury of all.
"I'm off."
Mo Fan turned and walked into the pale light of dawn, his silent shadow following close behind.
With the home front secured, he could finally face whatever storms waited beyond with a clear mind.
Qingmu Town wasn't far from Azure Cloud Sect.
With Mo Fan's current physical capabilities—comparable to a mid-stage Qi Condensation body cultivator—even holding back to avoid drawing too much attention, the town's silhouette appeared on the horizon by midday.
But as the distance closed, his frown deepened.
In his imagination, Qingmu Town should have been... comfortable. A mortal settlement under sect protection. Maybe not as prosperous as the market district, but at least the picture of rural peace—cooking smoke curling from chimneys, chickens clucking, dogs barking, farmers working the fields.
What he found instead was a scene of devastation bordering on abandonment.
The fields that should have been bustling with harvest-season activity stood empty. Only a few crows circled overhead, their harsh caws scraping against the silence like rusted knives.
The spirit-grain paddies lining the road—specialized plots cultivated exclusively to grow low-grade spiritual crops for the sect—looked like shredded rags dragged through mud.
Vast swaths of crops lay flattened, yellowed, dead. The exposed root systems were covered in dense gnaw marks, soil churned and pockmarked with fist-sized holes. It looked like something had been tunneling beneath the earth in a frenzy, hollowing out the land from below.
What made Mo Fan's blood run cold: refugees on the main road leading to town.
Families dragging bundles of bedding. Pushing rickety wheelbarrows piled with meager possessions. Their faces wore that particular blend of numbness and terror that only came from fleeing something wrong. Children clung to adults, not daring to cry out loud.
"This is supposed to be the 'prosperous' Qingmu Town? The Outer Sect's breadbasket?"
Mo Fan tugged his bamboo hat lower and walked against the flow of fleeing bodies, Mo Yan trailing behind.
Inside the town walls, the atmosphere pressed down even heavier.
Streets carpeted with dead leaves and refuse. More than half the shops were shuttered. Even the usually bustling tavern had hung a "CLOSED" sign. The few establishments still operating kept their doors and windows nearly sealed, conducting business through narrow gaps. Shopkeepers watched every passerby with the wary eyes of cornered animals.
Passing a mortal clinic marked "Spring Revival Hall," a child's shriek pierced through the walls—raw, agonized, the kind of sound that made scalps prickle and stomachs clench.
Mo Fan stopped.
Without changing expression, he activated [ Death Vision ].
The world bled into grayscale.
Through the thick walls, he saw the clinic's main hall packed with casualties. Mostly elderly. Mostly children. Their arms and legs bore horrific lacerations—torn flesh, ragged edges.
In his gray-white sight, those wounds pulsed with an eerie purple-black luminescence. An expanding corona of corruption. The surrounding tissue was grotesquely swollen, already beginning to necrotize. Some kind of virulent toxin eating away at fragile mortal vitality.
Mo Fan's jaw tightened.
The poison concentration was nowhere near as potent as the Rotbone Ant venom he'd been using for training. But for mortals without cultivation? This was lethal. Maybe amputation-requiring if they were lucky.
"This isn't a rat problem. This is a plague."
He deactivated the skill and turned away, choosing not to enter. Instead, he walked toward a nearby field embankment where an old farmer sat in a defeated squat, mechanically puffing an unlit pipe, staring at the ruined cropland with hollow despair.
The only person around who looked like he might actually talk.
"Old timer."
Mo Fan approached, pulling a cheap sesame cake from his robe—something he'd bought at the market district. He held it out. "What happened here? These crops... how did they end up like this?"
The old man raised his head. Clouded eyes took in Mo Fan, then locked onto the pastry. His throat bobbed violently. He snatched the cake without checking if his hands were clean and bit down hard, chewing like a man who hadn't eaten in days.
"Ruined... all ruined..."
Words tumbled out between mouthfuls, tears cutting tracks through the dirt caked on his weathered face. "These ain't mice. These are hungry ghosts reborn! Heaven's punishment fallen on us!"
"Used to have rats around here, sure. They'd nibble some grain ears, we'd set traps, life went on. But this batch..."
He choked. "They eat the roots."
A trembling finger pointed at the honeycomb of holes pitting the field. "They chew the spirit-grain roots down to nothing. Not a single strand left alive. And the damn things are strong. Night before last, my cat—raised her three years, good mouser—she hissed once. Once. By morning, there was nothing left but a puddle of blood. Not even bones."
"They target the roots specifically?"
Mo Fan's eyes sharpened.
Spirit-grain roots were where the plant's accumulated spiritual energy was most concentrated. The essence of the whole crop.
Normal scavengers ate for sustenance—grain kernels would suffice. But these rats were ignoring easily digestible seeds to gnaw at the roots instead. They weren't feeding to fill their bellies.
They were feeding on Qi.
"There's worse."
The old farmer's voice dropped to a terrified whisper, as if he feared the creatures might be listening. "Past few nights... them rats started climbing into beds. Neighbor's boy—Er Gou's kid—woke up middle of the night with teeth in his arm. Opened his eyes and there it was, sitting on his chest, gnawing the edge of his sleeping mat. Eyes red as blood..."
The farmer shuddered violently.
"That ain't vermin. That's demons."
Mo Fan said nothing.
He straightened, surveying the broken town—the wounded streets, the panicked faces, the faint but unmistakable tang of demonic energy still lingering in the air.
This was no simple "exterminate mutated Spirit-Devouring Rats" task.
"Looks like those 5 Spirit Stones per bounty aren't going to be easy money after all."
His gaze drifted toward the chain of barren hills rising behind the town.
There. His sharpened senses caught something familiar on the wind.
The smell of corpses.
And beneath it—the scent of conspiracy.