Moon Shadow Step

“Thank you, Sister Yuanjun.”

Lu Qiancha hurriedly took it and spread it open.

From right to left, the prices of the items on the bamboo slip decreased in order.

The first name that caught her eye carried a majestic aura—the Taiyin Immortal Slaying Banner.

Not only the name, but its price also shocked Lu Qiancha.

Three hundred million wisps of incense.

‘I probably couldn’t afford it even if I saved until the heat death of the universe!’

At that moment, Huang Hua’s slightly teasing voice floated down leisurely: “The items on the first few pages are merely displayed here for decoration.
Even if you could produce the incense, this Monarch has no intention of trading.”

Lu Qiancha: “…”

Lu Qiancha couldn’t help but complain in her heart: ‘So you’re just showing off…’

‘This Yuanjun has such a terrible personality.’

She decisively lowered her head, and her paw quickly flicked the scroll to the left, directly skipping over the treasures that were like flowers in a mirror and the moon in the water, only to be admired from afar.

Lu Qiancha’s gaze precisely locked onto the end of the scroll, and also the cheapest item—Moon Essence Powder, one wisp of incense per serving.

This was the healing medicinal powder made by those medicine-pounding Moon Rabbits.
She remembered that Xun Xue had mentioned it.

‘Since it’s so cheap, I have to get some.
I just don’t know how effective it is.’

Lu Qiancha decisively extended the tip of her paw and pointed at the Moon Essence Powder: “Sister Yuanjun, I want ten servings of this.”

Huang Hua nodded slightly and gave a look.

The Moon Palace maidservant standing by the side, her figure like smoke, silently retreated.

Not long after, ten packets of powder, as fine as dust and flowing with a soft, moon-white halo, were presented.

Lu Qiancha deftly drew ten wisps of Taiyin incense from her Peach Blossom Talismanic Edict and sent them into the jade cup in front of Huang Hua.
With a faint flash of light, the transaction was complete.

The ten packets of medicinal powder fell into her paw.

After getting them, Lu Qiancha did not immediately put them away.

Instead, under Huang Hua’s slightly puzzled gaze, she aimed the sharp tip of her paw at her own smooth, fair forearm.

She swiped down forcefully.

“Tear—!”

After a slight tearing sound, a clear line of blood instantly appeared on Lu Qiancha’s arm, seeping with tiny beads of blood.

“Wuu~ It hurts!”

Lu Qiancha let out a cry of pain, tears almost bursting from her eyes.

With trembling paws, she clumsily pinched a little of the Moon Essence Powder and pressed it firmly onto the bloody line.

The miraculous effect was immediate.

The moment the powder touched the wound, the torn flesh was stitched together and healed at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Not even a single red mark was left.
It was as smooth as new, as if it had never been injured.

“…?”

Huang Hua’s originally lazy posture showed a clear change for the first time.
Her voice was tinged with an indescribable confusion: “Why did you test the medicine on yourself?”

She felt that this little daughter of Xun Xue’s was a bit silly and cute.

“…There are no suitable small animals around.”

Lu Qiancha wiped away the tears that had been brought out by the pain, sniffed, her paw still protectively covering her forearm with lingering fear.

She tilted her head, her blue eyes filled with a pure, matter-of-fact look: “So I could only… test it on myself.”

She had often tested medicinal ointments on herself in the past, but this body’s tolerance for pain was much weaker than her original body.

A small cut almost made her cry.

‘It seems I can’t test medicine on myself anymore in the future.’

After experiencing the effect of the Moon Essence Powder, Lu Qiancha’s evaluation of it was—a good medicinal ointment, and very cheap.

Now, the Peach Blossom Spring could produce a hundred wisps of incense a day, which meant she could exchange for a hundred servings a day.

‘Large quantity, satisfying, and very effective.’

Looking at the scroll in front of her.

The little wolf cub’s little abacus clattered in her heart.
Finally, she spent a thousand wisps of incense in exchange for a copy of the Moon Shadow Evasion Art.

Lu Qiancha was not good at frontal combat.
One more escape method meant one more chance to live.

“Not bad taste.”

Huang Hua sipped her nectar nonchalantly, a faint hint of praise on her lips.
Her empty fair hand pointed in the air.

“Whoosh!”

A wisp of condensed moonlight, like smoke and water, shot from her fingertip and instantly entered Lu Qiancha’s sea of consciousness.

A profound, obscure, yet agile and strange evasion art was deeply imprinted in the depths of her soul.

Huang Hua’s cool, lazy voice also echoed in Lu Qiancha’s mind: “This evasion art does not rely on the five elements, nor does it borrow from wind and thunder.
It carves its own path, using a cultivator’s spiritual sense as a guide to connect with the bright moon of the ninth heaven, taking the essence of the Taiyin as its foundation, transforming the body into a shadow, moving with the will, and merging with the vast moonlight.

“When you reach the state of transformation, under the moonlight, you will be formless and shadowless.”

She paused and added meaningfully, “You have already absorbed a wisp of the Taiyin into your fate.
Cultivating this art should be like a fish returning to the sea, making a thousand li of progress in a day.”

Lu Qiancha was overjoyed: “Thank you, Sister Yuanjun, for bestowing this art.”

Having spent most of her incense, Lu Qiancha had gained a lot and was thinking of slipping away.

At that moment, a slender, jade-like hand, carrying a bone-chilling coolness, suddenly reached out and precisely hooked the back of Lu Qiancha’s slender collar.

Like lifting a little cat that had just finished stealing food and wanted to run away.

“You little thing…” Huang Hua’s voice was tinged with a playful retention, like a night-blooming cereus in the dark: “In such a hurry to leave?”

“Is there anything else, Sister Yuanjun?”

Lu Qiancha struggled a couple of times, but helplessly, she could only look at the queen and ask.

“Sitting alone in the Moon Palace for years and days, one can’t help but feel a little bored.
Sometimes, I also miss the hustle and bustle of the mortal world.”

Huang Hua held Lu Qiancha in her arms, her breath like a secluded orchid, “Keep your sister company for a while, and tell me a story about the mortal world, how about it?”

“Tell a story…”

Lu Qiancha’s head instantly felt as big as a bushel.
She usually spent her time either cultivating or reading pharmacopoeias.
How could she have such literary talent…

“What, you’re not even willing to fulfill your sister’s small, insignificant wish?”

Huang Hua’s voice was instantly tinged with a hint of loneliness and grievance.

Lu Qiancha: “…”

‘This is killing me!’

Lu Qiancha could only bite the bullet and tell Huang Hua some little stories from her previous life.

But it had been sixty or seventy years, and her memories of these stories were almost completely gone.
She could only recount them slowly based on a few fragments of memory.

“A long, long time ago, there was a ruthless queen who got a magical… uh, a spiritual conch shell.
Every day, she would ask the magical conch shell who was the most beautiful woman in the world.

“And every time, the conch shell would answer, ‘Queen, it is you.
You are the most beautiful woman in the world.'”

The more Lu Qiancha spoke, the more flustered she became.
She secretly glanced at Huang Hua.
In those moon-white eyes, there was no impatience, but rather a glimmer of interest.

So Lu Qiancha took a deep breath, forced herself to calm down, and continued, “In the royal palace, there was a daughter of the Minister of Works.
She spent all year in the workshops studying strange and ingenious mechanisms, spending all day with bricks and mortar, so everyone called her—Cinderella.”

“One day, Cinderella grew up.
When the queen asked the conch shell again, the conch shell answered, ‘It is Cinderella.
Cinderella is the most beautiful woman in the world.'”

“The queen was furious and wanted to get rid of Cinderella, so she… she just…”

Lu Qiancha’s brain completely overloaded.
She really couldn’t make it up anymore.

In a flash of inspiration!

Lu Qiancha suddenly raised her voice: “If you want to know what happened next, you’ll have to wait until the next chapter!”

Her voice was loud and flustered.

Before her voice had even fallen, the tip of Lu Qiancha’s paw had already secretly condensed all her spiritual sense to communicate with the Moon Divine Token.
In the microsecond gap just as the last syllable fell and before Huang Hua could react—

“Swoosh!!”

Lu Qiancha’s small figure completely disappeared in the diffusing stream of moonlight.