The fairies I flirted with in the game became real?!

Ice-cold mud submerged the body.

An intensely strong scent of earth assaulted the nostrils.

When Li Muyang opened his eyes, he found only pitch darkness, not a hint of light to be seen.

And a weight, extremely heavy, pressed upon his face and body.

After a slight struggle, he confirmed that what was pressing on his face and body was soil.

“…It really is a corpse.”

“A buried corpse at that.”

Li Muyang murmured to himself.

He wasn’t surprised by this situation; after all, the system had made it clear from the start that this was about inhabiting a corpse, bringing back a soul to a dead body.

Lying calmly in the cold earth, Li Muyang’s Primordial Spirit gradually fused with this icy corpse.

And as the soul merged with the body, the originally cold and stiff corpse began to show signs of revival.

Within the slender chest, the sound of a heartbeat began to emerge.

Subsequently, Li Muyang felt Mana circulating within his Dantian.

After closing his eyes, he could even access the system interface as usual.

The reward item given by the system was indeed powerful; it was said to be bringing back a soul to a dead body, but it was almost no different from Li Muyang’s own body descending.

All the cultivation, magical items, even the system tools, were transferred over.

It was countless times more powerful than a regular resurrection.

At a thought from Li Muyang, the Spiritual Artifact, Miefa Wheel, floating in the Dantian, immediately flew out of his hand.

This artifact, which could grow infinitely, had been continuously fed with resources from the Refinement Demon Sect in the past and had now become a mid-grade Spiritual Artifact with considerable prowess.

As the Miefa Wheel took flight, a blinding blue light exploded underground.

In the next moment, all the mud pressing on Li Muyang’s body was blasted away.

In the moonlit, cold mountain forest, a small grass-covered grave burst open, and a thin, short figure crawled out from the blown-open grave.

“…Is this what I looked like as a child?”

Li Muyang took out a mirror to look at himself; under the chilling moonlight, the reflection showed a gaunt, pale, frail face.

A two-year-old child should appear pitiable and fragile.

Yet for some reason, looking at this face in the mirror, Li Muyang always felt it was rather sinister.

—It was like that dead child from a curse.

“…Was the original owner of this body so unlovable as a child?”

He pinched the cheeks of the sour-faced brat in the mirror and said, “With this face, if you go out at night, you could probably faint a bunch of the fainthearted.”

After putting away the mirror and moving his body on the spot to fully adapt to this frail, young body, Li Muyang then left.

The clothes on the young corpse that crawled out of the soil had already rotted away, and while the Qiankun Ring contained clothing, none would fit a child’s frame.

He had no choice but to dash under the moonlight, drifting towards the city at the foot of the mountain, planning to “steal” some children’s clothes to wear.

As Li Muyang floated out of the forest, under the cold moonlight, a dilapidated and old city came into view.

His hometown, Jiuyuan City, was all too familiar in the memory of his former self.

Even the small grave mound that Li Muyang had crawled out of had appeared in his original self’s memories.

In those memories, his parents would bring him and his siblings to this small desolate mountain every year to pay respects and offer meals to the graves of several relatives.

This world had no legends of an underworld or reincarnation.

People believed that after death, one’s spirit would hide within the grave until the ghostly lifespan also ended, disappearing from the world.

So, on major holidays, people would go to the mountain to make offerings to their relatives’ graves, providing the fragrance of food for their kin who had become ghostly spirits.

The graves that Li Damu and his wife offered meals to every year included several of Li Damu’s own ancestors, as well as a small grave mound without a headstone.

In his original self’s memories, his mother’s eyes would always redden when she offered meals at this small grave mound, sometimes she would even cry softly.

When Li Muyang and his siblings were young and asked who lay in that small mound, their mother would only cry harder, while the martial Li Damu would simply sigh.

He had never imagined that this small grave contained the two-year-old Li Muyang…

Drifting into Jiuyuan City, Li Muyang quietly changed into a set of damp children’s clothes hanging outside to dry, then proceeded to a few of the city’s family manors.

He hid in the shadows, eavesdropping on the conversations these smaller family clans had deep into the night.

Then he visited the bustling and brightly-lit city inns, still noisy with chatter; hiding in a corner, he listened to the loud discussions of out-of-towners in the inn’s main hall.

“…It’s said that the Li siblings have been missing for such a long time, and truly no one has seen them, right?”

“Vanished from the face of the earth.”

“Some say that not even the people from the Parish of Lost Souls have seen the Li siblings.”

“Exactly, the whole cultivation world is searching for them, and these siblings, if they’re not fools, should hide and not show their faces.”

“It’s the relatives from the Li family of Jiuyuan City, no one knows where they ran off to, we’ve come from so far only to catch nothing.”

“Isn’t that the truth…”

“I heard it was Yan Xiaoru, the Law Enforcement Elder of the Refinement Demon Sect, who did it; she’s hidden all of the Li siblings’ relatives and friends. Recently, someone spotted her personal maid lurking in Jiuyuan City.”

“Ts… The Refinement Demon Sect is crumbling to dust, and this Elder Yan still finds time to meddle in the Li family’s affairs? I heard she’s been running around lately trying to consolidate the remnants of the Demon Sect.”

“Hah… It’s all in vain, the Sect Master of the Refinement Demon Sect has gone mad, and almost all the Purple Mansion experts within the sect have perished. Now they’ve been divided up by the major sects from both the Immortal and Demon paths, Refinement Demon Sect’s downfall is a matter of time. She, Yan Xiaoru, as a Purple Mansion Elder, simply cannot oppose the overwhelming tide.”

“I heard that many great cultivators have appeared near the Parish of Lost Souls, intent on seizing Li Muyang’s parents.”

“I’ve heard about this as well; it’s said that the Parish of Lost Souls can hardly withstand the pressure and is thinking of handing over Li Muyang’s parents.”

“Ts… It’s quite normal, whoever controls Li Muyang’s parents controls the Ancient Immortal Sword. Other sects won’t sit back and watch the Parish of Lost Souls grow more powerful.”

In the shadow of the corner, Li Muyang frowned as he listened to the cultivators inside discuss.

These foreign cultivators, they had all come to Jiuyuan City to seek their fortunes.

From their discussion, it seemed that after the news that Li Muyang had an Ancient Immortal Sword spread, the entire cultivation world had erupted into a frenzy.

Immortal Artifacts of such level had always existed only in legends, but no one had truly seen them before.

Now that Li Muyang had brought forth an Ancient Immortal Artifact, the entire world of cultivation went mad, and sects from both Immortal and Demon paths came up with various excuses to search for the missing Li siblings.

Anyone with discerning eyes could see this was all for the Immortal Sword in Li Muyang’s possession.

At this moment, the Li siblings might well be considered to have the whole world as their enemy.

Should the siblings reveal themselves, they would inadvertently invite the collective wrath of the cultivation world.

After all, wealth stirs people’s hearts.

Not to mention an Ancient Immortal Sword, which is perhaps a thousand times more powerful than wealth itself.