After Faking Her Death and Fleeing, the Emotionless Daoist Master Regretted It - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Ill-Fated Star. Cliff Fall and Wonderful Encounter

Qingxuan Continent, Huanyue Mountain.

As the daylight gradually broke, a thin girl wearing coarse linen clothes and carrying a tattered bundle left the village she had lived in for fourteen years.

Due to years of malnutrition and having skipped breakfast, Su Lingqing felt exhausted and dizzy after walking for less than an hour.

She intended to pick some wild fruit to stave off her hunger, but in her daze, she missed a step and tumbled down the cliff…

When consciousness returned, Su Lingqing’s head was splitting. She hugged her head in pain and slowly sat up. After resting for a while, she opened her eyes, her vision shifting from blurry to clear.

“I… I’m alive? Am I in a… a cave?”

She spread open the hands that had been covering her head. A splash of bl00d immediately came into view.

Su Lingqing laboriously turned her head and saw a bl00d-stained bluestone behind her.

After a moment of shock, a bitter smile spread across her lips.

“Falling from such a high cliff and hitting my head on a stone, yet I didn’t die… My aunt was right, bad luck is preserved for a thousand years…”

Recalling her past fourteen years, Su Lingqing had survived multiple near-death experiences.

When she was young, her parents died in a natural disaster, and she narrowly survived.

When she was eight, living with her aunt, she went up the mountain daily to gather medicinal herbs, giving all her earnings to her aunt so as not to be a burden. One day while gathering herbs, she was accidentally bitten by a poisonous snake. Just as her consciousness was fading, she instinctively grabbed a handful of random herbs and swallowed them, which coincidentally neutralized the potent venom…

When she was ten, she encountered a group of men in black chasing a disgraced noble while gathering herbs. She became an innocent casualty, shot by an arrow, and instantly passed out.

The men in black didn’t deliver a finishing blow, and she survived…

When she was twelve, two wild bears broke into the village.

Su Lingqing should have been eaten, but perhaps the wild bears found her too skinny and bony to chew, so they let her go at the crucial moment.

That day, her aunt was out on an errand and escaped the disaster, but all of her aunt’s close relatives were killed.

It was from that point on that her aunt’s attitude toward her changed dramatically…

Su Lingqing didn’t resent her aunt. If her aunt hadn’t taken her in, she would have been homeless long ago.

She continued to gather herbs on the mountain, helping her aunt with household expenses, until last night, on her fourteenth birthday. After eating the longevity noodles she cooked herself and cleaning the dishes, her aunt told her to leave at dawn today and fend for herself…

As the memories reached this point, two lines of clear tears fell on Su Lingqing’s face.

From now on, in this world, she had no family left…

Her injuries hadn’t healed yet. Not wanting to just sit and wait, she tried to slowly get up and leave the cave.

Her bloody hands supported her on the ground, inadvertently touching the bluestone behind her again.

It was at this instant that a sudden change occurred. A wisp of cyan light instantly glowed, enveloping her entire body.

Because the light was blinding, Su Lingqing subconsciously closed her eyes. Immediately after, her fragile body suddenly lifted into the air and disappeared from the spot in a flash…

At the same moment, within the Heaven’s Secret Sect, the leading sect of the righteous path on the Qingxuan Continent, a woman in a plain, long dress, with jade-like skin and a cold aura, walked out of the cave where she had been in seclusion for years and flew away from the sect.

The woman’s lips were extremely pale. Her dark hair was simply tied up with an exquisite jade hairpin. The loose strands spilled like ink, draping over her shoulders and back.

The direction of her escape light pointed precisely toward Huanyue Mountain…

Enveloped by the cyan light, Su Lingqing appeared in an unfamiliar space.

She was surrounded by green bamboo. A delicate bamboo fragrance drifted to her nose.

The air here seemed somewhat unusual. Su Lingqing couldn’t pinpoint the exact difference, only knowing that after arriving here, much of the pain in her body miraculously vanished.

Not only that, her hunger also disappeared, and she no longer felt tired or dizzy.

A gurgling sound, like spring water bubbling, reached her ears. Following the source of the sound, she slowly walked forward.

Before long, a well came into view. It was about half a zhang (approx. 1.6 meters) in diameter, entirely cyan, and seemed to be made of jade carved with the Eight Trigrams.

Su Lingqing had encountered a Daoist priest before and had seen the Eight Trigrams mirror in his hand. Thus, when she saw the pattern carved on the well, she immediately thought of that person.

Back then, shortly after her parents died, the Daoist priest saw her and blurted out an eight-character phrase: “Born with the Sha Body, the destiny of an Ill-Fated Star.”

Afterward, the Daoist priest simply flew away…

Su Lingqing gazed at the Eight Trigrams Well in the distance, slowly approached, and saw the endlessly churning well water, some of which constantly overflowed, forming a small puddle next to the well.

She crouched down and used the extra water to wash her bl00d-stained hands.

Since it was summer, she expected the well water to be very cold. However, to her surprise, the water temperature was quite warm, even warmer than well water in winter.

Rather than well water, it felt more like a hot spring.

After cleaning her hands, Su Lingqing made an unexpected discovery.

Due to years of sun exposure from gathering herbs on the mountain, her skin was slightly rough.

Now, after contact with the spring water, it became much fairer and softer.

Su Lingqing didn’t pay too much attention, but tried cupping her hands and drank some of the clear water to quench her thirst.

Her cracked lips, dry from dehydration, gradually became moist.

The spring water was sweet upon entering her mouth, carrying a hint of elegant bamboo fragrance, likely due to its proximity to the bamboo forest.

The instant the water entered her stomach, Su Lingqing only felt a slight warmth in the injured area on the back of her head. Apart from that, she felt no other discomfort.

She tried touching the area with her hand, finding no more bloodstains. She carefully touched it but felt no hardened scab, which made her feel puzzled.

“What’s going on? This sensation… it’s like I was never injured? Could the spring water have healing effects?”

This discovery filled her with pleasant surprise.

“Nowhere to go… If I could stay here forever and not starve, it wouldn’t be bad…”

Su Lingqing leaned back against the well, imagining her future life. Suddenly, some information appeared in her mind.

For her, who had always lived in the wilderness and never encountered the wider world, the new information was too shocking. It took her a long time to slowly accept it.

It turned out that there were cultivators in the world she lived in.

They were incredibly powerful. High-level cultivators could fly through the sky and burrow into the earth. They possessed Spirit Roots and could cultivate by absorbing the spiritual energy between heaven and earth, using it to cast powerful spells.

And the space she was currently in was called the Mustard Seed World, an independently existing realm and a treasure many cultivators dreamed of possessing.

This space had now recognized her as its master.

Only people with Spirit Roots could make such a treasure their own. In other words, she also had the opportunity to cultivate, embark on the path to immortality, and pursue eternal life.

Slowly accepting the new information, Su Lingqing felt an infinite longing for the future.

She wanted to cultivate, to see the wider world outside, and to explore the mountains and rivers.

However, she did not know the method of cultivation. The information she received just now gave no relevant instructions, only stating that cultivators formed many large and small organizations, and by joining them, one could obtain the necessary methods.

Su Lingqing thought for a long time and gradually made a decision.

She had to leave this place, venture out, and see if she could find those cultivation sects and obtain the method of cultivation.

Since the space recognized her as its master, leaving was free and dependent on her will.

Su Lingqing closed her eyes and silently chanted “leave” in her heart. The next moment, the familiar cyan light enveloped her body. Her feet lifted off the ground. In a flash, her figure disappeared from the realm.

A slight sense of dizziness came over her. She instinctively closed her eyes. After a moment, she opened them again, finding that she had returned to the cave.

The bl00d-stained bluestone was gone. A slight coolness radiated from her right wrist. She lifted her sleeve and saw a faint, crescent-shaped cyan mark.

This was the marker of the space’s existence. To enter again, she just needed to touch it with her hand and silently chant “enter.”

Su Lingqing knew she had obtained an extremely rare treasure. If the news leaked, it could very likely lead to her death. She secretly decided that from now on, she would never mention this matter to anyone.

She wanted to leave this place as quickly as possible, but when she walked out of the cave and saw the surroundings, her heart suddenly sank.

All she saw were sheer cliffs and precipitous walls. There was simply no way out.

How could she leave?

Just as Su Lingqing felt lost and helpless, a streak of escape light descended from the sky, instantly capturing all her attention.