The two of them arrived at the entrance of the Jiufang Thirteen Inn, where the Ox-head and Horse-face demons on either side blocked their way.
Under Liu Yiyi's amused gaze, Tang Li pulled out a token. Liu Yiyi deftly reached out and shoved the token back into her clothes.
Dragged off to a corner, Tang Li impatiently shook off her hand.
"How could you—how do you have that thing?" Liu Yiyi stammered in shock.
"What's it to you?" Tang Li looked at her listlessly, waiting for her to continue.
Liu Yiyi hesitated, words failing her, before finally offering some advice: "Don't just take that out. Find somewhere and throw it away secretly."
Tang Li pulled the token out again, waving it with deliberate provocation.
Liu Yiyi was so exasperated she laughed. True to her modern roots, that maddening, rebellious streak was something only a modern person could possess.
Her expression shifted in a second, and she asked gravely, "What is your relationship with the great battle from a year ago?"
She leaned close to Tang Li's ear, her voice dropping to a low, hoarse whisper: "Are you the person the four clans have issued bounties to find?"
Tang Li put the token away, stared fixedly at her for two minutes, and then said, "What battle?"
Liu Yiyi cast a seemingly casual glance around and noticed several people secretly observing them in the dark. Among them, some wore clothes unlike those of the city's residents, which suggested someone had been tailing Tang Li all along.
She turned her gaze back to Tang Li, sizing her up for two minutes, and noticing how composed Tang Li was, she guessed that Tang Li was purposely making a spectacle of herself to lead those people right to her.
What on earth was her goal in doing this?
"Follow me." Fearing that Tang Li's rebellious streak would flare up again, she grabbed Tang Li's cloak directly and led her to the nearest book workshop.
The workshop manager acted as though he didn't see them, ushering them straight into a private study room in broad daylight.
"A year ago, the Master of the Demon Palace and his subordinates clashed with the Yunyan Sect without warning. Both sides suffered heavy casualties, and almost no one survived. A month after the incident, rumors inexplicably spread that someone had survived that battle."
"The four clans all have their own speculations about this, but without a doubt, they share one common view: the person who survived possesses some form of immortality or an immortal body."
"The token you just took out belongs to the Demon Palace Master's right commander. How do you have something like that? Do you know people are watching you? Why did you lead them here? Can you take me... home?"
Liu Yiyi spoke the last two words very softly, so lightly her lips barely parted.
Tang Li fell silent, lost in thought. She was now certain that the world had not been reset, and that the female protagonist had already been reincarnated.
Since the grand mountain-admitting ceremony—the opening event of the story—had yet to take place, she figured it would probably be held when the female protagonist reached a few years old or early adolescence.
There was another reason as well: someone, or some force, had covered up the crimes she committed a year ago, twisting the facts, and out of spite, had leaked the news that she possessed an immortal body simply to cause her a little trouble.
A bell chimed. Puzzled, the workshop manager glanced out at the sky and noticed that the city gates were closing nearly half an hour earlier than usual today.
The manager returned to the outside of the study, knocked three times, and hurried away.
Taking the manager's hint, Liu Yiyi explained to Tang Li, "The people tailing you must have rendezvoused with their own faction. That bell means the city gates close in half a quarter-hour. You deliberately let them follow you—what is your goal?"
"Are you confident you can deal with them? The Four Young Masters of Devil City will probably get involved too. Do you have a way out of this right now? Tell me."
The more she spoke, the more agitated she became. Having cycled through the reincarnation loops of this world for far too long, this was the first time she had encountered someone from her own world. Naturally, she didn't want this person to die—even if just to serve as a mental anchor so she wouldn't be left alone again.
Being alone was truly too difficult, too exhausting.
"No goal, I just don't want to live anymore. I advise you to get out of the city right now," Tang Li said calmly, having a strong intuition that the book workshop outside was already surrounded.
Hearing this, Liu Yiyi completely lost her composure: "What the fuck? You die and you get to go back? Why aren't I? Why, why? Do you have any other way to go back?"
Her eyes flickered, tears welling up in the corners, and she looked at Tang Li like a drowning person clutching at the final straw.
Tang Li gazed at her with deep eyes, shook her head, and sighed, "There's no way. You should go quickly."
Liu Yiyi's complexion turned instantly ashen. She lowered her head in silence and did not leave.
Tang Li sighed softly, stood up, and left the workshop.
Long before coming to Devil City, she had discovered that she was being watched, and by no small number of people. Though she didn't know when she had been exposed, she had no desire to deal with them one by one, so she had come to Devil City intending to wipe out all those who coveted her in the shadows in one fell swoop.
There were no pedestrians left on the streets, and the market stalls had not even been packed away. Tang Li strolled leisurely, lingering at each stall for a few minutes to inspect the trinkets, pocketing whatever she liked outright, just as if she were out for a casual walk.
Suddenly, heaven and earth darkened, growing so black that only things within five or six meters could be seen.
A strange burst of laughter echoed from the west city gate, and at the same time, a bridal sedan chair that required eight people to carry appeared in midair.
The laughter was coming from inside the sedan chair.
Tang Li rubbed her nose in annoyance. Not only was she afraid of heights, but she was also afraid of ghosts, having slept with her older sister until she entered middle school.
Though she had long anticipated running into ghost enemies, her physiological terror could not be suppressed.
On the surface, she wore a calm expression, but inwardly her legs were already trembling uncontrollably.
Feeling a dangerous aura behind her, she whirled around and quickly dodged a ball of purple Qi lunging at her.
Finding that it missed its target, the purple Qi slithered up a pillar and materialized on the edge of the eaves.
It was a woman in purple, bearing a three-to-four-tenths resemblance to Bai Niao, the Demon Palace Master.
Accompanied by a long howl, a giant roc that had been lurking in the vicinity flew out, landed quietly on the roof, and shifted into its true form—a bird-headed human body.
A pale cough sounded. Following the sound, Tang Li looked toward the person who had suddenly appeared beside her: a woman dressed like a scholar. This was the only person who genuinely surprised her.
Because the scholar's speed was so terrifyingly fast, Tang Li couldn't tell whether she had used a teleportation technique or an invisibility art.
If it was an invisibility art, her cultivation level had to be at least two tiers higher than her own, since Tang Li hadn't sensed her presence from the very beginning.
The demons, ghosts, monsters, and humans appearing from the four cardinal directions of north, south, east, and west were all staring fixedly at the "prey" trapped in the center.
"Cough, cough. Let's make this clear first: I want her internal organs," the scholar spoke up first.
"I want her soul," the ghost bridegroom in the bridal sedan chair declared.
The bird-headed roc stretched its neck and rasped in a harsh, grating voice, "I want her blood."
"You're so annoying!" The purple-robed woman covered her ears and roared at the roc. In the blink of an eye, her expression shifted as she looked at Tang Li, her voice turning seductive: "I want her virginity."
Hearing that final demand, Tang Li completely broke down. In her eyes, these fiends and monsters were nothing more than a bunch of morons.
Without waiting for them to make a move, she summoned her sword and struck at the scholar closest to her.
The scholar dodged twice, appearing behind Tang Li, while the three monsters watching the show from the roof attacked Tang Li simultaneously.
Though Tang Li's cultivation was lacking, her combat techniques were formidable. Combined with her innate electrical currents, fighting one-on-one was completely effortless for her.
However, fighting three at once made things rather strenuous.
Most importantly, while she couldn't die, she could still get hurt and experience the sensation of nearing death.
After observing Tang Li for half a quarter-hour, the scholar suddenly called out, "Block her mouth! Her lightning magic is summoned through her mouth."
Knowing that the scholar possessed the ability to see through everything, the three fiends and monsters followed her instructions, concentrating their firepower on attacking Tang Li's head.
The next second, a rope dart intercepted the wings the roc was flapping. Liu Yiyi flew to Tang Li's side. She didn't speak; she simply focused on helping Tang Li counterattack.
A few minutes later, Liu Yiyi sustained injuries. As if finding an outlet for her pent-up frustration, she cursed at Tang Li, "After all this time, this is all the strength you've got?"
"We're both Golden Core, so nobody gets to talk about anyone else," Tang Li retorted coolly.
Liu Yiyi was ambushed by the purple-robed woman and blasted flying five or six meters away.
She climbed up from the ground, wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, flipped the middle finger at the purple-robed woman, and charged back in with her rope dart swinging.
"Can a dog that keeps crawling on the ground actually bite?" The scholar remained outside the battlefield, her voice desolate yet ringing with such impact that everyone present could hear it.
Hearing the mockery, Liu Yiyi completely snapped.
"I fuckin' can't stand this bird world anymore! Every single one of you is a fake, a lowlife. You're the one playing the sickly, delicate young lord all day long. Who in Devil City doesn't know that the bullshit Young Lord Beili is a woman? Acting, acting, whose dad are you acting for? If you don't want to be a woman so badly, go get a sex change, you stupid dog."
"And you, you stupid bird, calling yourself Young Lord Fuyao, looking like a kappa—ugly as hell and completely disgusting. Just looking at you makes me want to puke. I suggest you put a pixelation filter on yourself before you go out instead of flying around polluting the environment all day."
"And you, you stupid bitch of a Purple-robed Young Lord, playing at homosexuality every day, acting more butch than any man, constantly luring innocent women over for dual cultivation without even looking in a mirror at what you look like—you old hag, have you no shame? You're a human trafficker, a rapist, disgusting."
"The one I want to roast the most is you, sitting in a sedan chair all day playing spooky and mysterious. What, is nobody willing to marry you, so you keep getting returned, or are you just too ugly to show your face? I really can't stand the tone you use when you talk—a genderless dead sissy who goes around preaching that her ghosts are the cleanest in the world. Are you a moron? Damn it."
Though the four fiends and monsters couldn't understand most of what she was saying, they could tell she was cursing viciously, so they unanimously attacked her, wanting to take care of her first.
Liu Yiyi didn't flinch at all, because she wanted to die.
The scholar looked at Liu Yiyi with mockery in her eyes, viewing all her resistance as nothing more than the final death throes before the end.
Before Liu Yiyi died, she deliberately struck at her psychological weak point, sneering loftily:
"The Workshop Master of Jiufang is guilty of treason. Do you think your workshop subordinates will live to see your seventh-day post-mortem rites?"
"You moron, what century is it and you're still pulling family-implication executions? Your grand-aunt can live to ninety-nine, you'd better worry about whether anyone will hold memorial rites for you on your seventh day!" Liu Yiyi gritted her teeth and shot back. When it came to a shouting match, she absolutely refused to lose.
The two sides remained locked in a stalemate. The three fiends and monsters were miserable from Tang Li's bizarre electric current sword; every time they tried to gather their breath to unleash a finishing move to wipe her out, they would be interrupted by currents surging through their entire bodies.
The scholar covered her mouth with a handkerchief, gave a light cough, and suddenly launched an offensive, hurling hidden weapons at Tang Li.
Tang Li noticed, but she didn't dodge.
Catching sight of the flying hidden weapons from the corner of her eye, Liu Yiyi burned with fury. She kicked Tang Li away and shouted harshly, "Watch and learn."
The situation changed in the blink of an eye. Liu Yiyi burst out with strength surpassing the Golden Core stage, trapped the three fiends and monsters with her rope dart, landed beside the scholar, self-destructed her Golden Core, and went down together with all four of them.
Having unleashed her hidden weapon, the sickly woman was left defenseless, directly surrounded by the four of them at close range, only to be knocked flat by a sudden wave of powerful Spiritual Power.
Liu Yiyi's breath grew faint, her form gradually dissolving.
The four fiends and monsters weren't dead, but they had sustained varying degrees of heavy injuries.
Tang Li's reactions were always fast. The moment they were blasted back, she flew forward, sliced through their throats with her sword, and then stabbed them in the heart several more times until she had thoroughly shredded them.
She had always believed that letting a near-death enemy escape was a foolish move. Every time she saw a novel written that way, she wished she could crawl through the internet cable and slap the author a few times—it was clearly just a matter of a few extra stabs, yet they insisted on dragging out the filler.
"Ugh..." Liu Yiyi's sigh pulled Tang Li back from her deep thoughts.
With reddened eyes, Tang Li didn't dare turn around to look at Liu Yiyi kneeling on the ground.
Because they came from the same place and had both endured varying degrees of mental torment, the moment they recognized each other—even though they weren't yet familiar with one another—they had both made each other their spiritual anchor for going home.
Having finally found someone from her own world, only to part ways before even spending a single day together, Tang Li couldn't accept becoming alone again.
Walking the path alone and lonely in this unfamiliar world.
Unable to open her eyes, Liu Yiyi spoke through the stagnant blood in her throat, her words slurred:
"My name is... Liu Yiyi... twenty-third century... Yuncheng... university... Chinese literature... mother Liu Fang... ugh... long ago when I left... the willows were green... Liu Yiyi... wait for me, let's go home..."
She turned into pale green stardays drifting into the air, scattering away with the wind.