Immortality Cultivation: Fellow Daoists, please live for two more episodes!

Inside the shared dormitory, the servants around him were already fast asleep, but Zhou Youyuan couldn't help but hum a little tune to himself.

His plan was successful; Daoji was about to make a move.

From Chen Changsheng to Li Xiaoyu, and from Li Xiaoyu to Zhao Donglai, the fourth step is about to begin.

Step by step, one step after another, until the waters were completely muddied, he no longer needed to be involved in the planning.

So-called opportunities are those that are easily obtained but met with suspicion, while those that are snatched into one's hands are met with unwavering faith.

Once more people have handled this foundation, even if someone tells others that it's bait, a ticking time bomb, no one will be willing to let it go so easily.

……

On the screen, Zhao Donglai's actions continued.

Zhou Youyuan originally thought that this guy would go straight to the big shot behind him, but Zhao Donglai did not take the path leading into the courtyard after leaving the stone building.

Instead, he turned onto a secluded side road, and besides the Daoji jade pendant and the Jiang-character brocade pouch, he also had a small porcelain bottle tucked away from somewhere.

Dingzi Herb Garden is the smallest of the four herb gardens, and it is planted with some low-class weeds and spiritual plants. Its only advantage is that it is the farthest from the main courtyard and the quietest.

His daughter, Zhao Nianqing, works here as an ordinary herb grower and servant.

Although she was called his daughter, she was actually just a karmic entanglement left behind by his drunken affair in the foot of the mountain years ago.

The woman was an ordinary person who could not endure the harsh cold of the far west. Her child died of illness at the foot of the mountain when he was three years old.

Zhao Donglai took the child up the mountain, but didn't arrange a good job for her or publicly acknowledge her as his daughter. He only secretly bribed the foreman of the Dingzi Medicinal Herb Garden to ensure she received less whipping and more food rations.

His position as the person in charge was prestigious in the eyes of the servants.

But in reality, in front of those high and mighty cultivators, he was still nothing more than a lowly animal living in a slightly less filthy place.

If people find out that he has a daughter hidden in the Dingzi herb garden, it won't give her an extra layer of protection, but rather another handle that others can use against her.

He understood this principle, and so did Zhao Nianqing.

But as long as they understand each other, the rift between father and daughter caused by their differing beliefs is something that understanding alone cannot bridge.

……

The servants' dormitory at Dingzi Medicinal Garden was located in a shady mountain hollow, damp and cold, with a layer of green moss hanging on the walls year-round.

When Zhao Dong arrived, Zhao Nianqing was squatting by the ditch outside the shop washing clothes.

He rolled up his coarse cloth shirt to his elbows, revealing a section of his slightly tanned forearm, and his ten fingers were white from being soaked in alkaline water.

She didn't look as gloomy and cold as Zhao Donglai; instead, her features resembled those of her deceased mother.

Gentle and serene, yet there always seemed to be a faint, unspoken sadness in her eyes.

"Nianqing, your father has come to see you."

The girl ignored her and continued washing the coarse cloth clothes in her hands.

"Dad brought you some spirit dew, the newest one from Granny Lin's shop. It's best for applying to your face, and this too."

Zhao Donglai stopped three steps away, took out an oiled paper package from his sleeve, and placed it, along with the porcelain bottle he was carrying, on the stone slab beside the ditch:

"There are two broken spirit stones, a bottle of Qi-stabilizing pills, and three hundred gold beans inside."

"Keep the spirit stones close to your body, and spend the gold beans in several installments. Don't spend them all at once and attract attention."

Seeing that his daughter remained silent, Zhao Donglai didn't mind and continued speaking to himself:

"If anything happens on the mountain later, take these things to a man in the market nicknamed Garlic Li and show him this."

He then took out a broken bamboo plaque and tossed it next to the oil paper package.

"He owes me a favor. I can arrange for you to sneak out of the mountains through the waste disposal area of ​​the Dingzi Medicinal Garden. Once you're out of the mountains, head south to the Lingjiang Ferry. There, you can buy a boat ticket for twenty gold beans and go to Nanling."

"The market town of independent cultivators in Nanling is a mixed bag, but it is not under the jurisdiction of the Shuiyue Branch. Once you get there, no one will care what your surname is or who your father is."

Zhao Nianqing finally stopped what she was doing:

"What have you done now?"

"The last time you brought me something, it was because you killed that servant with connections in the Bingzi Herb Garden, and swallowed his spirit stones, fearing his brother would retaliate."

"The time before last, you withheld the rations of the six servants in the Jia-class dormitory for three months, and exchanged them for half a pill of that... pill, saying you wanted to try to break through."

"And this time?"

Zhao Nianqing stood up, wrung out the half-washed clothes, and tossed them onto the rope. Water droplets splashed down, pattering against the stone slab, as if scolding her for something:

"Is it about those female servants?"

Zhao Donglai's eyelid twitched.

"Do you think the people at Dingzi Herb Garden can't hear the whispers?"

Zhao Nianqing sneered, a smile somewhat similar to the one Li Xiaoyu had sneered at when she discovered Zhao Donglai was only at the second level of Qi Refining.

"The whole back mountain is buzzing with rumors that a manager took female servants into the stone building, and none of them ever came out again. Guess what everyone's saying about you behind your back right now?"

Zhao Donglai was speechless. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but after a moment of silence, he couldn't utter a single word.

Because he himself knew that some of his words were no different in essence from the dying pleas of the servants he had pinned to the stone bed.

They're all just excuses.

"I don't want the stuff."

Zhao Nianqing turned around, squatted back down by the ditch with her back to him, and continued washing her coarse cloth dress, which she had already scrubbed countless times.

"You can leave now, and don't come back again."

"Also, don't call me Nianqing anymore. My name is Yunniang, which is the name my mother gave me."

Zhao Donglai stood there, staring at his daughter's thin back for a long time.

He recalled the year he first entered the Shuiyue Branch School.

At that time, he was also a handyman, carrying manure, farming, and supplying blood in the medicinal herb garden.

He had his bottom line back then. He remembered saying to an old handyman in the dormitory:

"Even if I die in this herb garden, I will never harm my own people for the sake of cultivation."

The old handyman smiled and said something he still remembers to this day:

"Little Zhao, you're saying this now because you haven't had the chance to cultivate yet."

and after?

Later, he really got his chance. A big shot recognized his loyalty and gave him a path to advancement.

He vomited all night after the first time he killed someone, his hands trembled for half an hour the second time, and only trembled for a short while the third time.

By the tenth time, he was already able to kill people while simultaneously calculating whether there would be any ginseng soup left in the cookhouse that night.

He didn't turn into a beast overnight.

It was this demonic sect that spent decades extracting every last bit of humanity from his bones.

It's no different from the array plate in that herb garden.

……

Zhao Donglai bent down and pushed the oil paper package and bamboo plaque forward again, until they were at Zhao Nianqing's feet.

Then he turned around and left.

As the figure disappeared around the corner of the mountain valley, Zhao Nianqing stopped washing clothes.

She didn't turn around, but her eyes were red.

After a while, she reached out and grabbed the oil paper package, along with the half-baked bamboo plaque, and threw it into the laundry basin as if in a fit of rage.

He was muttering curses loudly, but no one could hear him clearly.