Chapter 50: Jinguan
By the time Kian bought everything in Mia’s list, he had a trolley’s worth of products in his hand.
Thankfully, he was rich enough to buy a trolley for himself, and didn’t have to carry it in multiple packets. That made Kian slightly emotional.
He had always wanted to go on shopping sprees without caring about a spending cap. And in this place that they called a ’mortal’ shopping district, he was basically too rich to care about money.
Pushing his trolley, Kian hummed as he walked back home.
...
The lightning fell, bright enough to blind a god.
Su Chen did not scream as the Heavenly Tribulation tore his Soul Lord body apart. He looked past the blinding white radiance and met her eyes.
The fairy of a woman stood on the ritual altar, safe behind the barrier he had forged for her. She held the Jade Core he had spent three centuries bleeding for, her expression as calm as a frozen lake.
"You were always too predictable, Brother Chen," she whispered.
"Why?" he screamed.
"You are too selfish!"
She looked away.
The lightning consumed him.
Cough!
Cold mud pressed against Su Chen’s cheek.
He opened his eyes and coughed up stagnant rainwater. He wasn’t in the Celestial Realm. The air tasted foul, thick with the stench of cheap manure and rotting straw.
Where am I?
He sat up, his joints popping like dry twigs.
He looked at his hands—thin, calloused, and covered in faint scars from skinning rabbits.
This body belonged to a low-tier servant.
A smile crept across Su Chen’s face.
’My Myriad Soul Artifact worked! I reincarnated in another body!’
The smile died on Su Chen’s face as his new body protested the movement.
Every joint cracked, every muscle screamed with the ache of days-old labor.
"Hateful woman! How dare she betray me!" he muttered.
He punched the ground in anger.
In his past life, he was a Soul Lord. Now, he didn’t even know who he was.
A heavy wooden bucket sat near the well, half-full of scum-covered water.
Su Chen dragged himself over, leaned over the rim, and looked at his reflection. The face staring back was barely seventeen, pale and hollow-cheeked, with dirt smeared across the jaw.
He sneered at his own reflection.
"This body might be weak and fragile, but this is enough!"
"Hey! Trash!"
A thick-set man in a padded leather vest stomped out from the servant quarters, a horsewhip coiled in his right hand. Steward Zhang, Su Chen remembered for some reason.
"The kitchen fires need wood," Zhang barked, flicking the whip against his boot. "Why are you staring into a bucket like a brainless toad? Move, before I flay the skin off your back!"
Su Chen slowly turned his head.
In his past life, a mortal speaking to him in that tone would have had his bloodline erased for ten generations. He narrowed his eyes, examining the steward’s stance, the weak alignment of his shoulders, and the total lack of spirit energy in his spine.
A worthless ant playing at being a tyrant.
"Did you hear me?" Zhang took a step forward, raising the whip.
Su Chen caught the whip on its downstroke.
His thin fingers closed around the leather and wrenched—not with strength, nothing in this body had strength—but with angle, a twist of the wrist that redirected the force into Zhang’s own shoulder and sent the steward stumbling into the well’s stone rim.
The whip clattered to the mud.
"You dare?" Zhang’s voice went shrill as he scrambled backward, one hand clutching his shoulder where the joint had wrenched wrong.
Su Chen didn’t answer. He just looked at the man the way a butcher looks at a steer—weighing cuts, calculating effort, finding it beneath him.
"I’ll tell my brother," Zhang spat, crab-walking away through the straw.
His back hit the servant quarters’ wall and he used it to claw himself upright, eyes wide and wet.
"He’s a cultivator, you rotten piece of filth! He’ll peel your skin himself!"
He ran, tripping once on his own feet, and Su Chen stood there holding the whip.
...
Meanwhile, Kian was just about to go home when he noticed a young man standing outside a shop with two girls behind him.
The girls were both mediocre in looks.
The young man, though, was exceptionally handsome, and he had a pretty robust figure.
Currently, he stood calmly leaning against the shop’s desk. As Kian walked past him, he beckoned Kian.
"Hey, wait, come here!"
"What is it?" Kian asked, his eyes shining.
[A Chosen One of Fortune has been detected near the host.]
[Initializing Auto Target Feature.]
"I wanted to ask you a question," the handsome young man said. "Do you believe in fortune telling?"
Kian shook his head. "The world is vast. Who knows? I do not believe, I do not disbelieve. I simply see for myself."
"Well, this shop tells fortune, do you want to see your fortune?"
"No."
Kian looked at the youth, wondering if he was the Chosen One of Fortune.
The youth shrugged, finding it a pity. "If you don’t want to, then there is no use telling you about it. You can go!"
"Now I am curious," Kian said.
"Well, this fortune teller says that I am gay. I don’t believe I am gay. Look at the two girls behind me, they are my lovers."
Kian listened seriously, then asked: "Do you find men attractive?"
"Depends which man you are talking about."
Kian burst out laughing. "You, friend, are definitely not gay. This fortune teller is lying to you!"
Kian turned to look at the fortune teller, who was just a little girl wearing a black hood. She had a few cards in her hand.
Listening to him, she scoffed.
Smiling, Kian shook his head and walked away from them.
The handsome man said once Kian was far away: "He is pretty attractive, don’t you think?"
The girls were speechless.
Meanwhile, Kian looked at his system.
This had never happened before!
He had looked at the handsome young man for a while, but if he were the target, a screen should have popped up above him showing his Fortune.
But that never happened.
Didn’t that mean he was not the target?
Then who was the target? Where was he?
The screen flickered.
[Target: Su Chen, Reincarnated Soul Lord, Mortal of the Jinguan Sect.]