Chapter 5: The Female Lead is Poisonous
With a single kick, Jiang Qing sent Goodwife Liu flying across the room to crash against the outer door panel.
"Pfft!"
Goodwife Liu spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, scrambled unsteadily to her feet, and stared at Jiang Qing with wide-eyed terror and bewilderment.
The two women outside the door reacted the same way, their eyes and mouths wide open in sheer shock.
"Am… am I seeing things?"
They had practically watched Jiang Qing grow up and knew her temperament inside and out.
With that delicate, frail young miss, let alone kicking someone flying, even hitting someone would likely just hurt her own hand.
"Could she be cultivating…?" muttered a short, plump woman in a low voice. This was an immortal cultivation family after all, so they knew a thing or two about cultivation.
"No way, her spiritual root is severely damaged; the whole Jiang Family knows that. How can someone with useless spiritual roots cultivate?" retorted another round-faced woman.
"Then what is going on here?" the short, plump woman asked, looking utterly confused.
The round-faced woman shook her head. Try as she might, she simply couldn't figure out how this formerly weak and fragile little girl had suddenly turned so tough and formidable.
Just as Qin Lingtian stepped into the laundry room, he ran right into this scene.
"Tsk… What is he even worrying about? With this tough, unyielding temperament of hers, it'd be a miracle if she ever let herself get bullied."
Qin Lingtian didn't even know why he had come here. Clearly, the Jiang Qing he had taken a fancy to was the old, frail one who needed his protection.
Yet for some reason, this little girl's figure kept popping into his mind, and worrying that she might get bullied, he had rushed over like a fool.
"Tsk tsk tsk, this girl is poisonous…"
If Jiang Qing knew what Qin Lingtian was thinking, she would realize that the plot machinery was at work.
Even though Jiang Qing wasn't the type Qin Lingtian usually liked, she was the male lead's moonlight in the original book, so it was almost impossible for him not to fall for her.
Fortunately, Jiang Qing had read the original novel and had the system backing her up, keeping her immune to the plot's influence.
If she had been the original owner, she probably would have given her heart to Qin Lingtian long ago. Unfortunately, she wasn't the original owner, and naturally, she had no regard for a polygamous male lead like Qin Lingtian.
Seeing that Jiang Qing wasn't being bullied, Qin Lingtian felt relieved. After standing there watching for a moment, he turned and left.
Meanwhile, the two women outside spent a long time racking their brains without coming up with any rational explanation, finally concluding that Jiang Qing must have been possessed by a ghost.
The two exchanged glances, both seeing stark terror in each other's eyes.
Then, they let out shrieks of "Ghost!" and bolted without once looking back.
As for Goodwife Liu, who had been kicked flying, she had already been scared out of her wits. Her body trembled like a sieve as she sat slumped on the ground, looking thoroughly terrified.
"You… you're not Jiang Qing…"
Too lazy to bother with Goodwife Liu, Jiang Qing gave her a look of utter disgust and said coldly, "Get out of my sight."
"Yes, yes, yes, I'm going right now, I'm going right now…" Realizing Jiang Qing was letting her go, Goodwife Liu felt as if she had received a royal pardon and scurried away in a panic.
Naturally, there was no way today's events could be kept under wraps.
Such a sudden, drastic change in a person would inevitably invite suspicion. To avoid trouble, Jiang Qing decided that leaving sooner rather than later was the best course of action.
Besides, there was nothing here worth getting attached to.
Jiang Qing dumped all of the original owner's clothes and daily necessities into the System Warehouse in one go.
Afterwards, she dug an earthenware jar out from under the bed, discovering that it contained some spirit pearls, a scattering of loose silver taels, and a few decently crafted hairpins.
There were about forty or fifty spirit pearls, while the silver, all told, added up to just over a hundred taels. The hairpins had been left behind by the original owner's mother. These constituted the entirety of the original owner's worldly possessions.
"Talk about poor; put it all together and it doesn't even amount to a single low-grade spirit stone," Jiang Qing muttered mentally, though she still silently stored them away in the System Warehouse.
In the Canglan Continent, a hundred taels of silver could buy one spirit pearl. A hundred spirit pearls equaled one low-grade spirit stone, and so on.
Once she had packed up everything, Jiang Qing strode out of the laundry room.
Just as she stepped out and prepared to leave the Jiang Family estate, she bumped right into someone as she passed the garden.
Jiang Qing looked up and, seeing that it was Qin Lingtian, furrowed her delicate brows and asked coldly, "What is it?"
Instead of answering, Qin Lingtian turned the question back on her: "Are you planning to leave?"
Jiang Qing glanced at him, her voice dropping a few degrees, "That's none of your business!"
With that, she walked around Qin Lingtian and prepared to leave.
Qin Lingtian didn't try to stop her. Instead, he called out to her retreating back, "In that case, I'll go with you!"
He had already obtained his release papers from servitude, and the only reason he had stayed in the Jiang Family estate was because he felt his cultivation was still too low and wanted to bide his time here for a while.
Hearing this, Jiang Qing paused her steps, turned back to look at him, and frowned, "What did you say?"
"I said since you're leaving, we might as well go together. Staying in the Jiang Family estate makes no difference to me one way or the other," Qin Lingtian said without the slightest hesitation.
Jiang Qing had no desire to get too entangled with the male lead.
"No need!" Leaving behind those words, Jiang Qing walked away without looking back.
Although Jiang Qing was unpopular in the household, fortunately, there was no rule forbidding her from going outside, and she smoothly made her way out of the Jiang Family estate.
Once outside, Jiang Qing found herself momentarily at a loss for where to go.
Then, recalling the recent turning point on Qin Lingtian's system panel that she had seen in the dining hall this morning, she instantly formed a plan.
If she remembered correctly, Qin Lingtian's first stroke of good fortune would happen in five days. She needed to get her hands on it before Qin Lingtian claimed it.
All opportunities had no fixed owners. Whatever you could get was your fortune.
If you couldn't get it, it had nothing to do with you and wasn't yours.
If opportunities had fixed owners and had to belong to a specific person, then they weren't opportunities; they were inheritances.
Besides, the cultivation world was governed by the law of the jungle, where the strong were supreme.
Scrambling for resources, killing people, and seizing treasures were everyday occurrences.
The world of immortal cultivation was unimaginably cruel.
Jiang Qing wouldn't let pass anything that could enhance her own strength.
However, now wasn't the right time yet; it would be best to go after nightfall.
Once night fell and things grew quiet, there would be far fewer people about, and Jiang Qing had no desire to run into any trouble.
After mulling it over, Jiang Qing headed straight to the market to browse.
She hadn't forgotten that in ten days, Qin Lingtian would acquire a black iron piece at the market, which contained the Five Elements Escape Technique.
Not knowing its exact location in the market, she would have to search carefully.
Whether she was too early and the vendor hadn't brought it out yet, or for some other reason, Jiang Qing wandered back and forth through the market all day without making any discoveries.
Time flew by. In the blink of an eye, night descended. The sky gradually darkened, dotted with twinkling stars that looked quite breathtaking.
Seeing that the dusk had deepened, Jiang Qing didn't linger in the market. Instead, under the cover of night, she quietly made her way toward the back mountains of the Jiang Family.
Upon arriving at the back mountains, she found them overgrown with weeds and completely untrodden by humans.
Clearly, the area had been abandoned for a long time. Savage beasts frequented these back mountains from time to time, posing a mortal threat to any ordinary person who wandered here.
For Jiang Qing, possessing merely a mortal body and venturing into the back mountains at night was extremely dangerous.
Fortunately, Jiang Qing had good luck and didn't run into any savage beasts along the way.
After searching around the back mountains for a long time, she finally discovered a small cave in a rather secluded spot.