Chapter 905: Completing The Ten Stages (1)

“Oh? Great misfortune? Just how bad is it?” Li Xiaofei asked calmly, his expression unmoved.

The blind fortune-teller’s head swayed from side to side as he said, “A single step forward leads to the Asura Hell; a single step back, a bottomless abyss.”

“Then am I not already trapped in a hopeless dead end?” Li Xiaofei responded lightly.

The fortune-teller nodded and grinned. “Exactly. One wrong step leads to another. You’re already beyond salvation. You might as well end it here and now; slice your own throat where you stand. That way, perhaps you can avoid the endless torment of heavenly thunder, hellfire, blood blades, and bone swords.”

“Bullshit!” Li Yiyun could no longer hold back as he cursed, “You old bastard! Tired of living, are you? How dare you curse our teacher like that... Damn it, you want me to smash your filthy little fortune-telling stall?”

He started stepping forward. But the old monster quickly grabbed him.

“Hold your temper,” the old monster said quietly, “This man is Mo Wenli, elder of the Douling Sect, one of the Sixteen Immortal Sects. His title is Burial-Immortal Hex Divination. He’s not telling fortunes; he’s casting curses. Anyone who falls under his curse will have their fate manipulated like a puppet. Our teacher naturally has a way to resist him. You must not step into the fortune stall, or you’ll not only interfere with him, you’ll be caught in the curse yourself.”

Li Yiyun struggled and growled, “Are we just supposed to watch as our teacher gets hexed?!”

The old monster replied, “When have you ever seen Master act without full confidence?”

Li Yiyun froze. Kou Zhengyang also held him back and gave a subtle shake of the head. Now was not the time to let emotion cloud reason.

Within the stall, Li Xiaofei picked up the fortune stick and smiled faintly. “You’re blind, and yet you insist on pretending to divine the heavens. Now you can’t even read your own stick properly. This doesn’t say ominous at all, it clearly reads,

Supremely Auspicious

.”

The blind fortune-teller sneered and replied, “My sticks are life-bound artifacts, cultivated over decades. Regardless of fortune or misfortune, they always display only one word. There’s never been anything like Supremely Auspicious... Wait, what?”

He froze before he could finish his sentence. The moment his fingers had brushed across the fortune stick again, he unmistakably felt two engraved words,

Supremely Auspicious

.

The fortune-teller's expression changed drastically. His wrinkled old face twisted like a dried orange peel being squeezed.

“How... how is this possible!?” He stared in disbelief, as if he’d seen a ghost in broad daylight.

Every item on this fortune table, each stick, ingot, and tool, was a carefully refined magical artifact, painstakingly cultivated through rituals over many years. He had used them to cast curses through the guise of fortune-telling, and until now, they had never failed him.

The moment anyone stepped into his stall and drew a fortune, they were already caught in his spell. Once the curse took effect, their life and death would be under his complete control.

These two fortune sticks in particular were his most precise tools. They were only ever able to display a single word, either auspicious, or ominous. And in truth, that word had nothing to do with fate or luck.

It was entirely controlled by his will. There had never been, and should never have been two words.

Could Li Xiaofei have tampered with the fortune sticks?

No, impossible. These are life-bound artifacts. Even the slightest damage or change, and I, as their master, would have sensed it immediately. There was no way one extra word could have appeared without my notice.

In that moment, the blind fortune-teller’s heart was thrown into chaos.

Li Xiaofei retrieved the stick, casually spinning it between his fingers. He smiled and said, “Let me share a little secret. It turns out that I also know a thing or two about divination. Tell you what, I’ll give you a free reading today. Why don’t you give the tube a shake yourself?”

The blind fortune-teller forced himself to stay calm. He picked up the bamboo container and sneered, “Heh, even if you know how to divine, using my tools... I’m afraid they won’t be quite so obedient...”

Clack.

A fortune stick dropped onto the table. The blind fortune-teller froze. What was going on? He hadn’t shaken the tube at all, how had the stick jumped out on its own?

Li Xiaofei glanced at it casually and said, “Oh my, great misfortune. Tsk tsk. Looks like your luck is even worse than mine. This fortune... is far too ominous. I’d say you don’t have long to live.”

The fortune-teller sneered and said, “Ridiculous fearmongering. I’m sitting right here, if there were some deadly misfortune, wouldn’t I know about it? You—”

Before he could finish, his body suddenly trembled, and then went completely rigid. Li Xiaofei stood up, calmly left the fortune stall, and led the old long-haired horse around the blind man.

Crack. Snap.

The fortune stick container shattered as artifacts burst apart. Even the old wooden table split cleanly down the middle with a loud crack. In that instant, the strange and eerie pressure that had surrounded the stall disappeared completely.

To Li Yiyun, the old monster, and the rest, the once-mysterious divination stand now looked no different from the cheap street-side scams run by swindlers in a small town.

“What are you standing around for?” The old monster gave Li Yiyun a nudge and said, “It’s over.”

“Huh?” Li Yiyun blinked, still stunned. He said, “That’s... it?”

Thud!

The blind fortune-teller suddenly toppled from his chair, slamming face-first into the ground with a heavy thud. His thick, lustrous black hair suddenly writhed like it was alive, strand after strand twisting and struggling like a nest of tiny black snakes, as if trying to escape from his body.

But in the very next moment, flames erupted. Every strand of hair was incinerated into ash with a sharp hiss and a series of shrill, screeching cries. At the same time, the blind fortune-teller’s corpse began to emit a wisp of green smoke, and instantly disintegrated into a skeleton.

The sheer suddenness of it all left Li Yiyun wide-eyed. In truth, he hadn’t understood a thing about what just happened. The group followed Li Xiaofei as he continued toward the next mountain peak.

Still dazed, Li Yiyun sidled up beside the old monster and whispered, “What exactly happened back there at the fortune stall? Did Master... talk that blind guy to death?”

He hadn’t seen the two exchange a single move. But his question made everyone around prick up their ears in curiosity.

The old monster replied, “To be honest, I didn’t fully understand it either. That blind man was using fortune-telling as a front to cast curses. It was a cruel and sinister method. All the poison and venom he cultivated was concentrated in that head of long black hair. It had drained nearly all the energy from his body. It’s a terrifying form of dark sorcery, lethal and invisible. But unfortunately for him, he ran into our master.”

He paused, then added, “His so-called curse and venom technique was actually reflected back by Master’s Words Become Law art. That’s why he died. Master wasn’t truly telling fortunes... but his words? They can kill.”

Li Yiyun’s eyes lit up with admiration and said, “Master really is incredible.”

The crowd nodded in deep agreement. Just last night, they had all been solemn and prepared to die. They had resolved to follow Li Xiaofei, even if it meant sacrificing themselves for the immortal Dao and for their teacher.

But now, they realized... they had overthought everything. They hadn’t even had the chance to act along this journey. They had faced no real danger at all. With the slightest movement, their teacher had already reached the limit of what this stage could challenge. A multitude of fervent, awestruck gazes landed on Li Xiaofei.

The white-robed figure atop the old long-haired horse had his back to them. He appeared towering, almost godlike. As the group disappeared from the narrow, solitary peak, a flicker of purple light flashed through the air.

The elder with the long purple beard appeared. He looked at the shattered fortune stall, then at the pile of white bones, which was all that remained of the blind fortune-teller. A look of visible shock crossed his face.

The ten checkpoints and ten battle platforms from the base of the mountain to Heaven Drum Mountain had never truly been designed to stop Li Xiaofei. The immortal sects already made their judgment.

Li Xiaofei’s strength was, indeed, extraordinary. They had never stood a chance of stopping him with just those ten challengers. The true purpose of the ten checkpoints was never to block Li Xiaofei. Instead, they were designed to force him to reveal some of his trump cards, to exhaust his strength and spirit, and in doing so, cause him to unintentionally expose weaknesses in his cultivation techniques.

Moreover, among the ten stationed cultivators, people like Zhuo Jing and the blind fortune-teller possessed special divine abilities. Through chess games and fortune-telling, they could peer into their opponent’s very nature and extract insights that even the target themselves might be unaware of.

In essence, these ten stages were meant to help the immortal sects better understand Li Xiaofei. As the saying goes,

Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will never lose a hundred battles.

But no one had expected that, even after Li Xiaofei passed the seventh checkpoint, they would not see a single flaw or gap in his techniques.

On the contrary, the casual ease with which he dispatched every challenger left the sects stunned. The experts stationed at each stage appeared as feeble as toddlers who hadn’t even learned to walk before Li Xiaofei.

The entire ordeal left the long-bearded elder in purple deeply unsettled. He was beginning to feel fear. How could they possibly defeat an enemy of such unfathomable depth?

“There are still three checkpoints left. Let’s hope they’ll be of some use,” he muttered to himself.

He paused for a moment before the shattered divination stall, then soon received a message. Without hesitation, he rushed toward the eighth checkpoint atop the next peak.

By the time he arrived, the elder stationed there, Qiao Xiaonuo of the Flying Sound Sect, titled Blood Zither Guanyin, was already collapsed in front of her Blood Zither, her breath weak and unsteady. Thankfully, she was still alive.

“So... Li Xiaofei is not someone who blindly shows mercy. I had assumed him to be a gentleman, and a gentleman can be deceived by righteousness. But who would’ve guessed? Once enraged, his strikes are utterly merciless. Someone like that... is even harder to deal with.”

Thinking of the slain Blood Demon, the blind fortune-teller, and the others who had already perished, the long-bearded elder in purple sighed. He stepped forward and gently placed a pill in Qiao Xiaonuo’s mouth.

***

The elder of the Flying Sound Sect slowly regained consciousness.

When she saw the long-bearded elder in purple, her heart skipped a beat and asked, “Envoy Zou? Why are you here...? What about the others? Wait... just now. Did they already pass the checkpoint?”

From the look on her face, it was clear she had no idea what had happened. Li Xiaofei had broken past her without her without even realizing it.

“What exactly happened to you?” sighed the purple-bearded elder.

Qiao Xiaonuo replied, “I followed the plan. I proposed a wager where he could pass if he could endure my Blood Robe World-Washing Melody. He agreed and stepped into the range of the zither. I was playing, and then... all of a sudden, I lost consciousness. I only woke up because you revived me just now.”

“He only stood there, and you fainted?” The elder’s brow furrowed.

Qiao Xiaonuo said uncertainly, “I think... he hummed something, a little tune. It had a really strange rhythm...”

“Hm? Think carefully.”

“I think it went something like...‘Eat one more grain of rice a day, and you must say sorry, or something. There was also something about... calories? It didn’t make any sense.”