The Shadow Sect’s Return and a Master’s Peculiarities

When he thought about how he had been tricked by a woman and had nearly lost face, he became red with shame.

He secretly vowed to keep his mouth shut and never let his master or junior sister know a single thing.

‘This Yao Qing’er,’ he mused, ‘she truly was underestimated.’

Dragging his utterly exhausted body, he sought out a secluded spot in the outskirts, nestled between the borders of the Pill Sect and other various sects.

Overgrown with wild grasses and studded with jagged rocks, the area exuded a damp, decaying aroma.

Locating a relatively flat stone, he slowly settled down.

Gazing at the lingering vestiges of the setting sun on the horizon, his heart swirled with a complex mix of emotions, a hundred feelings converging.

He waited in silence for the toxins within his body to be fully expelled.

At last, as night’s embrace fully enveloped the land and the poisons gradually dissipated from his system, he slowly rose, then hastened without pause towards the Shadow Sect.

Lin Xingjian remained blissfully unaware that, while he concealed himself within the shadows, a slender, silver-white longsword was silently trailing him, hundreds of meters away.

The sword shimmered faintly in the darkness, emanating a bone-chilling, icy glow.

It was deep into the latter half of the night when Lin Xingjian, hidden within the shadows cast by the clear moonlight, finally reached a desolate, abandoned area on the easternmost edge of the Xuantian Dao Sect.

This place, once a bustling town filled with lively villages, had been reduced to an uninhabited wasteland of ruins, ravaged by the great war between the Xuantian Dao Sect and other cultivators.

Under the moon’s illumination, the broken walls and crumbling ruins cast eerie, terrifying shadows.

Nimble of limb, Lin Xingjian cautiously crept forward through the shadows, constantly alert to his surroundings, until he was certain no unusual aura lingered behind him before slipping into a long-abandoned house.

An acrid, musty odor permeated the interior, and dust motes danced freely in the moonlight.

With practiced ease, he fumbled along the dust-laden wall, precisely locating a hidden mechanism.

He pressed the mechanism in a sequence of three long and one short.

In an instant, a secret passage materialized behind him.

The passage reeked of a damp, putrid stench, sickening to the senses.

Like a nimble water snake, he swiftly slipped inside; the secret passage closed, and everything returned to its former state.

Lin Xingjian arduously moved forward through the narrow, damp passage for a considerable time.

The passage was pitch-black, so dark he couldn’t see his own hand, forcing him to rely on years of cultivation experience and keen senses to grope his way forward.

Finally, his vision cleared as he emerged into a relatively open area.

Here, dense vegetation thrived, its branches and leaves intricately interwoven to form a natural green barrier.

Human footsteps were rare, with only a single dilapidated, cramped courtyard in sight.

More than half of the courtyard’s perimeter wall had collapsed, revealing uneven, broken sections.

The moonlight, soft as water, gently spilled across the ground.

“Senior Brother has returned!”

Suddenly, a clear and melodious young girl’s voice drifted from inside the house.

Like an oriole emerging from a valley, it shattered the night’s stillness.

There was no movement at the door, yet Lin Xingjian felt a sudden tightening in his back as a soft, warm sensation pressed against him.

“Duang~” a sound echoed!

“Junior Sister, stop teasing me.”

“Haven’t I already told you not to cling so closely to your Senior Brother?”

Lin Xingjian quickly sprang away, speaking with a helpless tone.

Before him, standing gracefully beneath the moonlight, was a beautiful woman clad in tight black attire.

The young girl, barely sixteen, wore her raven-black hair in a high ponytail, her skin as fair as snow, radiating a soft glow under the moon’s light.

Her vermillion lips were thin, curving into a gentle arc when she smiled.

Lin Xingjian’s gaze found no easy resting place.

Years of cultivation and training had sculpted the young girl’s figure into a graceful, curvaceous form, ample in all the right places.

What was most exasperating was that, for an assassin, his Junior Sister was simply too well-developed; even an oversized chest wrap struggled to restrain her impressive figure.

She was Li Xingtong.

One of the Shadow Sect disciples, and also Lin Xingjian’s Junior Sister.

Li Xingtong had been coaxed into the Shadow Sect by their unreliable master not long after Lin Xingjian had joined.

She had originally yearned for a Confucian sect, aspiring to become a quiet and gentle woman.

Instead, through a series of deceptions and coincidences orchestrated by their master, she had become a Shadow Sect cultivator.

Sharing a similar plight, Lin Xingjian took special care of his Junior Sister.

Having been drenched in the rain himself, he naturally felt compelled to hold an umbrella for others.

“No way! I just love being affectionate with Senior Brother!”

Li Xingtong blinked her watery eyes, gazing at Lin Xingjian with an innocent expression, as she pulled a pill from the cleavage of her chest.

“Senior Brother, this is your Foundation Establishment Pill. Junior Sister has kept it in the safest place.”

Lin Xingjian took the pill, which still carried a faint warmth and a subtle fragrance, and he thought…

This must be the pill’s aroma.

“Junior Sister, where is Master?”

Lin Xingjian inquired.

“Oh, Master? That old dear was just throwing a tantrum. I advise you not to provoke her for now, or she’ll definitely make things difficult for you.”

Li Xingtong covered her mouth, stifling a giggle.

“What do you mean by that?”

“When I went to buy your Foundation Establishment Pill, I ran out of spirit stones, so I didn’t get Master any candied hawthorns. She’s bawling her eyes out right now.”

“How did she know I was going to buy her candied hawthorns?”

Lin Xingjian raised an eyebrow slightly.

He had only mentioned this to his Junior Sister, and this Master…

“Oh, Senior Brother, you know how Master is with her little schemes; she overheard our entire conversation from the side.”

Li Xingtong shrugged helplessly, spreading her hands.

“That old hag is truly incorrigible, spending all her life’s knowledge on eavesdropping and peeping. You wouldn’t believe it, she even complained it was too cold before and snuck into my bed.”

Lin Xingjian complained, a dark line appearing on his forehead.

“Nonsense!”

Suddenly, a slightly childish voice piped up from behind them.

“I was clearly just confused for a moment and got into the wrong bed! How could I possibly sneak into a little brat’s bed like yours!”

The two turned around to see a young girl, less than 1.6 meters tall, slowly approaching with light steps.

Her white hair shimmered with a silvery glow under the moonlight, like a dazzling, flowing river of stars.

“Master, I’m back.”

Lin Xingjian smiled faintly, looking at the whimsical woman before him.

She was Yao Guang, the current Sect Master of the Shadow Sect, and also the master of both him and Li Xingtong.

“It’s good that you’ve returned, indeed it’s good.”

Yao Guang, feigning a mature demeanor with an expression like a little adult, extended a fair and delicate hand.

“My good disciple, I know you went out to earn money.”

“Since you used the skills your master taught you, shouldn’t your master get a share?”

“Master, you taught me assassination skills, but I was doing manual labor. Did you teach me these things too?”

“As I recall, you once forbade me from acting in such a manner.”

A faint smile played on Lin Xingjian’s lips, and a hint of cunning flickered in his eyes.

“I don’t care! Give me money, I want to buy candied hawthorns.”

Yao Guang suddenly began to act spoiled, pouncing on Lin Xingjian like a child, rubbing and fussing in his arms.

Lin Xingjian remained unmoving, his hands wide open, allowing Yao Guang to search and grope him.

After a while, Yao Guang stopped her fussing, looking at Lin Xingjian in surprise.

“You rascal, where has your storage bag gone?”

“And the spirit stones? How can your master not find any spirit stones on you? Impossible! Your master’s Ghost Shadow Hand is practiced to perfection; I can stealthily steal the storage bags of Nascent Soul cultivators without them ever knowing.”

“When did you learn Ghost Shadow Hand?”

Seeing Yao Guang’s expression of shock and disbelief, Lin Xingjian gave a cold smile.

“Master, are you perhaps confused? If I simply don’t carry any spirit stones on me, what good is it even if you can ‘feel’ a Nascent Soul cultivator’s storage bag?”

Facing this master who loved to steal, Lin Xingjian had always been caught off guard before.

Now that he had learned the Ghost Shadow Hand, his mind opened up, and he simply hid his spirit stones elsewhere.

He carried not a single coin on him, curious to see how his master would steal now.

“Senior Brother, how clever.”

“Disciple, how outrageous.”

Li Xingtong and Yao Guang spoke almost simultaneously.

“Disciple, you truly have a tough mouth but a soft heart. Didn’t you say before that Ghost Shadow Hand was an incomplete fragment, and practicing it would only make you a half-baked practitioner? Yet, you still diligently practiced it.”

Yao Guang wore a mischievous smile, a hint of teasing in her expression.

Lin Xingjian felt helpless in his heart.

It wasn’t that he was willing to spend time practicing it; the system had clearly given it to him for free.

Why refuse a free gift?

Resigned, he retrieved two spirit stones from behind Li Xingtong’s hair and tossed them to Yao Guang.

“Here, take them.”

“Go buy your candied hawthorns, but this is a one-time thing, Master. Now that I’ve earned some money, I need to lay low for a while. Besides official Shadow Sect commissions, I won’t be taking on any illicit side jobs.”

“Splendid!”

“I knew my disciple was the best to me! Master loves you!”

Yao Guang cheered, skipped joyfully with the spirit stones, and vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye.

Such was the power of Yao Guang of the Shadow Sect.

“Senior Brother, why is this?”

“Before, our Shadow Sect’s business was dismal, with few missions. Didn’t you say you’d take on tasks whenever you had free time? Why are you suddenly not accepting them anymore?”

Li Xingtong stared at her Senior Brother, puzzled.

In her impression, her Senior Brother had always been diligent and hardworking.

Whenever the Shadow Sect had a mission, he was always the first to bravely rush out and complete it with the utmost speed.

Afterward, he would even take on personal commissions, never seeming to rest.

“Let’s not speak of it anymore, Junior Sister.”

Lin Xingjian shrank his neck, explaining.

“Senior Brother has been completing missions too frequently lately; I need to take a break for a while and won’t go out scamming people for now.”

Just as Lin Xingjian intended to rest properly and savor this rare period of leisure, an unfamiliar sound transmission secret art suddenly arrived.

Lin Xingjian opened it, instantly freezing in place.

[Where are you?]

[You cannot escape; I always keep my word.]

[I will certainly find you. No one can escape Bai Qingxue’s grasp.]

[You already belong to me.]

[You’d best appear quickly, or else… I might come looking for you myself.]

Another barrage of inexplicable threats from that neurotic Bai Qingxue.

Before, she had ignored him completely, but now she was using a different secret art to verbally assault him.

“Absurd.”

Lin Xingjian scoffed, curling his lip in disdain, and casually blocked the three unfamiliar sound transmission secret arts.

He had already decided: however many came, he would block them all.

Anyway, Bai Qingxue didn’t know his true identity.

Want to “open an account” on him?

Sorry, but he was an unregistered resident of the Xuantian Dao Sect.