This celestial master cultivates both physical and magical arts; why did you provoke him?

Three o'clock in the morning, on the back of Longhu Mountain, at a mass grave.

Xia En squatted in front of a grave, holding a half-smoked cigarette in his hand, with three trembling men kneeling in front of him.

"Big brother, we were wrong! We were so wrong!"

The bald man in the middle pressed his forehead to the ground, not daring to look up. "We just wanted to rob a tomb, we didn't know this was your territory..."

Xia En flicked his cigarette butt into the grass, stood up, and patted the dew off the hem of his Taoist robe.

He wasn't wearing the kind of ceremonial robes with wide sleeves; he was just wearing a plain dark blue short jacket with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, revealing his strong forearms.

If it weren't for that palm-sized Tai Chi symbol embroidered on its chest, it would look no different from a fishmonger in the market.

"An elderly person?"

Xia En touched his face. "I'm twenty-three this year. Who are you calling an old man?"

The bald man paused for a moment, then cautiously looked up.

By the moonlight, he saw a face that was too young, with sharp eyebrows and bright eyes, and regular features, but the expression was a bit irritating.

With a blade of grass dangling from the corner of his mouth, his eyes seemed to say, "Are you guys crazy?"

"No...Master, we really don't know..."

The skinny man next to him chimed in, his voice trembling violently, "We just heard there was treasure in this grave, and we were thinking of taking a few items to exchange for money. We really didn't know we'd disturbed you... no, disturbed your presence..."

Xia En ignored him and turned to look at the last person.

He was a young man in his early twenties wearing glasses, fair-skinned and clean-cut, huddled at the back, trembling like a leaf.

Seeing Xia En looking at him, he burst into tears.

"I was tricked into coming here! They said we were just digging for something! I didn't want to come! They beat me up!"

The bald man and the skinny man turned their heads simultaneously: "You fucking—!!!"

"Alright, alright."

Xia En waved his hand, interrupting their infighting, "What are you crying about? I didn't say I wanted to kill you."

The three of them were stunned at the same time.

"Really?" The bespectacled man wiped his nose.

"Really." Shane nodded, pointing to the side, "See that?"

The three of them looked in the direction he was pointing.

At the edge of the mass grave, under a crooked locust tree, stood a white figure.

In the moonlight, the outline of that thing was excessively clear.

It was a woman, dressed in a funeral shroud, her face as white as if it had been plastered with lime, her eyes like two black holes, staring straight at them.

"...!!!"

The three people gasped simultaneously, and the bald man went from kneeling to paralyzed.

"This this this this..." The skinny man's teeth chattered, and he could barely speak.

"What's this?" Xia En said calmly, as if he were describing the weather. "The grave you dug up belongs to her. You tore off her roof while you were digging. She followed me all the way here and just wanted to ask how you plan to compensate her."

"..."

Dead silence.

Three seconds later, the bespectacled man's eyes rolled back and he fainted.

The bald man and the skinny man tried to run, but their legs were as weak as noodles, and they struggled on the ground for a long time without being able to stand up.

"Alright, stop scaring them."

Xia En waved to the white figure, "Go back to sleep. I'll have someone fix your grave tomorrow."

The white figure didn't move, its black, hole-like eyes fixed on the three people.

"I said I'd fix it tomorrow," Xia En emphasized. "When have I, Xia En, ever gone back on my word?"

The white figure remained silent for a few seconds, then slowly nodded, its form gradually fading away until it disappeared behind the locust tree.

A gust of cold wind blew by, and the mass grave returned to its deathly silence.

The bald man and the skinny man collapsed on the ground, panting heavily, looking at Xia En as if he were a god.

"Master Dao..."

The bald man stammered as he spoke.

"Don't call me Taoist priest, my name is Xia En."

Xia En walked over, squatted down in front of the bald man, and patted his face. "I said, don't you guys scout the place before you start tomb raiding? The Celestial Master's Mansion is just ten miles away, and you came all the way here to dig up graves?"

The bald man was on the verge of tears: "We...we just wanted to find a secluded place..."

"Remote?" Xia En laughed. "You call the back mountain of the Celestial Master's Mansion remote? Do you guys have some kind of misunderstanding about the word 'remote'?"

The skinny man interjected, trembling, "Master Xia... that female ghost... just left like that?"

"What else? Let you stay overnight?"

"No... I mean... what if she... what if she comes looking for us in the middle of the night...?"

Xia En glanced at him: "Scared?"

The skinny man nodded vigorously.

"It's good that you're afraid."

Xia En stood up. "If you know fear, then don't do such a despicable thing next time. Get out of here. Come back with your tools before noon tomorrow and fix the grave. After you're done, come to the Celestial Master's Mansion, pay some incense money, and this matter will be over."

"How much?" the bald man asked.

"Let it be."

Xia En said, "One thousand or two thousand is not too little, ten thousand or twenty thousand is not too much."

Bald man: "..."

Skinny guy: "..."

Is this what they call "going with the flow"?

"What, you have a problem with that?"

"No, no, no!" the two said in unison.

Xia En nodded in satisfaction and turned to leave.

He took a few steps, then stopped and looked back at the still-dazed man with glasses: "You guys handle this yourselves, just don't leave it here, or the stray dogs will cause trouble."

After saying that, he disappeared at the end of the mountain road without looking back.

About fifteen minutes later, Xia En's phone rang.

He pulled out his old smartphone with its screen shattered like a spiderweb from his pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and answered.

"Feed?"

"Xia En! Where are you?!" A strong voice came from the other end of the phone; it was his senior brother, Zhang Jingqing.

"The back mountain."

"Where is the back mountain?"

"Over there at the mass grave."

"What are you doing running to a mass grave in the middle of the night?"

"A few clueless grave robbers dug up someone's grave, and the family owner followed me all the way here complaining. I'm here to deal with this."

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone: "...Why don't you just use a palm strike? Why bother with all that?"

"They didn't commit a capital crime, why are you making such a fuss?" Xia En said as he walked. "Besides, palm lightning consumes a lot of mana, and I have to get up early to practice tomorrow."

"...You call lightning magic a mana bar?"

"Otherwise what?"

Zhang Jingqing remained silent for two seconds before deciding not to discuss academic matters with her junior brother: "Alright, come back quickly, Master is looking for you."

"What is it?"

"I don't know, I just told you to come back."

"Okay, right away."