The Great Wilderness: A Commoner in the Ghost Realm

To survive, Chen Qiuyan cultivated the Ghost Domain Body. Its yang side shone with golden light to break evil, while its yin side bound souls and slew demons. But every extra incense stick’s worth of use cost him a year of life. He had meant to face death alone, but two brothers who feared nothing joined him: one wielded thunder arts to split the heavens, the other used golden light to subdue demons. Five years later, the baleful fetus would break free; twenty years later, a catastrophe would descend. The three swore an oath: together, they would slay the beast.

The world had rotted through and through. White bones lay exposed in the wilderness, and for a thousand miles there was not a single chicken’s crow.

If you were him, and given the chance to choose, what would you do? “He had wanted nothing more than to live an ordinary life. Until that night, when the thing in his dream tried to kill him. He had no choice but to leave. If he didn’t go now, he wouldn’t make it out alive.”

With half a sack of millet slung over his shoulder, Chen Qiuyan thought about the Three Pure Ones’ Commoner Heavenly Text in his mind and trudged east.

He was greedy for money, keeping his silver tucked close to his body. He hated wasting food and wouldn’t spill even half a grain of millet. He was stingy, and every time he used the Ghost Domain Body, he watched the seconds and cursed, “Damn it, I nearly took a loss.” A half-baked backwoods practitioner with no teacher or sect, all he wanted was to stay alive.

Along the way, he picked up two equally unreliable companions: Chen Mo, a smooth-talking miser who could wring three flowers out of a single baleful-energy needle, and the simple, kindhearted Zhang Yun, who was always ready to save people. They beat up bandits who blocked the road, wiped out wild zombies in a mass grave, and even tricked the defending general and county magistrate into opening the city gates in the middle of the night.

He wanted nothing to do with the rotten mess of officialdom, and he didn’t want to get close to anyone. Something in his dreams was urging him east. That was where death awaited, and every extra person meant one more person in danger with him.

But the road was long, and for now he couldn’t shake these two idiots. He might as well travel with them and see how far they got.

Anyway, anyone who got in the way of his meals or his journey was getting a beating first.