Little Pink Starfish

On Saturday, Yao Ji updated right on time. Currently, the male lead Fa Ning had successfully entered the Daoist arts tournament and performed excellently in the first round.

In this chapter, Fa Ning finally showcased his solid abilities. To be honest, although Fa Ning was said to be the most talented among the current “Demon Exorcists,” he had always been struggling at the bottom. Reportedly, he had no parents, and no one in his sect looked after him, so he figured out most of what he knew by himself.

This made him far from a traditional “Demon Exorcist.” He had more of a rogue vibe. Still, readers quite enjoyed his offbeat style. These days, if your origin is too normal, you can’t even be a proper protagonist.

Just look at the Big Three shounen comics—every protagonist has something special going on. Fa Ning too—his thing is that he’s bad at chanting spells or drawing talismans, which are typical exorcist skills. Instead, he’s great at obscure techniques and especially loves using swords.

Ever since Yuan Yuanyuan found out that the characters in Yao Ji were based on real people, looking at the male lead gave her a strange feeling. In theory, a comic’s protagonist should be a chosen one. Even if he were dumb, people would expect him to become great eventually. But Fa Ning felt unusually miserable. No parents, no love—it was weird.

Then she thought about it again and laughed at herself for being nosy. Whatever the truth, it had nothing to do with her. Besides, knowing Ji Qiu’s style, who even knew if Fa Ning’s name or face was real?

Even if they were real, given the rocky relationship between humans and demons, no way would humans let demons learn Fa Ning’s true location. Even though he was operating in C City, Yuan Yuanyuan suspected the humans hadn’t been paying attention. Now that even the demons were noticing, surely the humans had figured it out too.

Yuan Yuanyuan even suspected that Fa Ning being poisoned by Tong Xin and forced to return to his sect was actually the humans realizing who he was. They probably called him back for protection. Tong Xin had said she had no choice but to poison him—which now seemed… suspicious.

Trying to match a 2D character to a 3D real-world person was like finding a needle in a haystack. The humans likely spent time investigating before figuring out who the real Fa Ning was. If she was right, Fa Ning had probably been hidden away already. There was no way the general public—much less the demon world—would know where he was.

Today was the 19th. Twenty-six days remained until the 15th of next month.

In twenty-six days, how could she turn a total rookie into a legendary expert?

Yuan Yuanyuan sat on her bed, pondering. The Blood Jade Technique had several categories: basic spells, combat techniques, and support techniques.

Normally, she followed the learning steps in order. But in recent days, she had poured all her training time into one support technique from the Blood Jade scroll.

Honestly, it was a bold move. At a time like this, learning attack spells would probably increase her chances of survival more.

But Yuan Yuanyuan was afraid—if she did that, Ji Qiu might not let her off the hook.

The spell she was practicing had only a single line of instruction. After going through the entire Blood Jade scroll, she was convinced that if she could master this one technique before the duel, she might just survive.

So what was this mysterious technique?

Well… it was basically the legendary Earth Escape Technique—the one Tu Xingsun used in The Investiture of the Gods.

From the literal meaning, it clearly referred to a form of subterranean travel:

“To roam freely among the sands, like a fish swimming through water; to merge into it and move without a trace.”

It was one of only two stealth-type techniques in the Blood Jade scroll. But it had a dramatically grand name:
“Heavenly Gang Freedom Art.”

Yuan Yuanyuan didn’t know why, but when she first flipped through the scroll, this was the very first spell she noticed—despite it being right in the middle of the book. Not the beginning. Not the end. It wasn’t even highlighted. But her eyes were just drawn to it.

You could call it fate. And as she read through the entire scroll, she slowly realized—this spell might actually be the most useful one for her.

She still thought the name was super cringe. But since she was the only one seeing it, she wasn’t too embarrassed. Then she looked at the other stealth technique, and the Heavenly Gang one didn’t seem so bad anymore.

Because the other one? Its name was even worse:
“Earth Fiend Freedom Art.”

Based on her understanding, it probably involved tunneling through the air…

Anyway, the scroll said:

“Those who master both techniques can go anywhere—in the sky or on the ground.”

Heavenly Gang comes first, Earth Fiend later—meaning the former was simpler, the latter harder.

Since Earth Fiend sounded tougher, she decided to try the Heavenly Gang spell first. But even this one was insanely hard. It only had one line of instruction, and she had no idea how to begin.

Now all she could do was gamble. If she could master it by the 15th, she’d call it a half-success. If not… GG.

She packed up her stuff, then suddenly remembered something. Sitting in front of the mirror, she quietly bit her tongue, gathered some blood in her mouth—and began practicing blood vomiting.

“Pfft…”

After a while, she grabbed a tissue and wiped the blood droplets off her face with a pained expression.

Why does my blood vomiting look like that guy from Flirting Scholar who sprays blood in a 360-degree arc?!

She licked the blood off her hand—waste not, want not—and sighed. Maybe if she couldn’t win, she could at least look sickly, like a severely wounded survivor with diminished power. That would be tragic enough for Ji Qiu to stop drawing her.

But looking at her current blood-vomiting form… it was straight out of a horror film. If Ji Qiu did draw it, it’d be nightmare fuel.

She grabbed some money, asked Li Zi Jie for time off, and caught the bus to the end of the line—an isolated suburban nursery. Then she borrowed a shovel from the shop nearby, and once night fell, she snuck into the nursery under cover of darkness…

While the demon world buzzed with chaos and the Daoists stayed tight-lipped, the ordinary human world went on—eating, drinking, playing under colorful neon lights and the noisy but safe city life.

In an ordinary apartment complex, a girl had just gotten home. She had dinner, did her homework, brushed her teeth, and lay in bed reading comics with the last bit of her personal time.

“This week’s chapter… hmm, pretty exciting,” she thought, seeing Fa Ning narrowly win his match.

Ji Qiu had drawn the sequence with style. He didn’t like the whole “total domination” trope. He preferred coincidences, things that felt like fate stepping in.

In this chapter, Fa Ning shouldn’t have won—but he did, thanks to one tiny detail.

[Yang Fan, you there?]

[Yeah, what’s up?] she replied to a private message in a chat group.

[Er Dan says she’s writing Yao Ji fanfiction. Can you believe it?]

[Huh? Her?] Yang Fan sat up. [She’s really doing it? Not to be mean, but with her three-days-on, four-days-off writing schedule, everyone will be gone by the time she updates again.]

[I know, right? But she says she’s totally in love with that Yuan guy. Thinks he’s super hot—exactly her type.]

[I don’t get her definition of “hot”… I mean, he’s pretty, sure, but I wouldn’t say handsome.]

[Let her dream. Did she say what kind of fic?]

[She didn’t, but I bet it’s self-insert. You know, like pretending you live in the Hunter x Hunter world or whatever… that’s how you write believable fanfic. Gotta immerse yourself.]

[Yeah, only when you’re fully invested can you write genuine feelings—only then can you create a character who really wants a girlfriend. Ahem.]

[Anyway, Er Dan’s spiraling again. Now she’s ranting that if someone like Yuan really existed, she’d totally marry him. Like, girl… he’d eat you alive.]

[That’s your sister. Why should I deal with her?] Yang Fan rolled her eyes and turned off her phone.

There really are people like that in real life…

She remembered how, when she was a kid, she truly believed Ultraman existed. She only figured out the truth in elementary school—that those were actors on TV, part of a thing called “drama series.”

Ah, those were some dark, cringey memories.

As she reminisced about her childhood crush, Yang Fan turned off the lights and went to sleep.

She didn’t see the shadow that drifted past her window—just like something out of the comics.

—

In the nursery, Yuan Yuanyuan carefully turned on a flashlight, placed it on the ground, and stepped onto a flat patch of soil, ready to practice Earth Escape—er, the Heavenly Gang Freedom Art.

She couldn’t practice it at home. One, there wasn’t enough space. Two, even if she succeeded, what if she fell through the ceiling into the apartment below?

Or worse… got stuck in the ceiling.

She placed the shovel beside her, recited the incantation a few times, and then suddenly felt the ground shift beneath her feet—like she’d stepped off a stair and missed.

“Ahhh!” she screamed, eyes flying open.

Birds in the area scattered in fright.

The spell broke. The feeling of falling vanished.

She looked down and found her legs buried up to the knees in the earth—completely stuck.

…

Yuan Yuanyuan grabbed the nearby shovel and started digging herself out.

Well… guess bringing the shovel was the smartest move I’ve made all week.