Su Bai soared through the sea of clouds for the entire day and well into the night.

Normally, flying for twenty-four hours straight would completely drain a Foundation Establishment cultivator’s Qi reserves and leave them mentally exhausted.

However, thanks to the Wraith-Slumber Manacle, Su Bai never felt a drop of mental fatigue. Coupled with his frictionless, massive Qi reserves, he was essentially operating on infinite mileage.

If there was one thing that frustrated him during the flight, it was his daily attendance reward.

While flying through a dense, high-altitude slipstream, he had mentally triggered the system.

[Ding! Signed in at the Cloud Lane (Public Airway).]

[Reward: Heavy-Air Sludge]

Heavy-Air Sludge was the dense, oppressive atmospheric pressure that accumulated in the sky during massive storms. It caused severe altitude sickness, weighed down limbs, and actively forced weaker cultivators to land because the downward pressure was simply too heavy to bear.

It was an environmental hazard.

So, naturally, Su Bai swallowed it immediately.

The moment the sludge hit his stomach, the Reversal Body kicked in. It violently inverted the concept of "downward atmospheric pressure" into "upward buoyancy."

It acted as a permanent, passive anti-gravity upgrade.

Su Bai suddenly felt as light as a feather. He no longer needed to actively spend his Qi to fight gravity. His physical body naturally wanted to float. Aerial movement became completely effortless, boosting his overall cruising speed by a significant margin.

However, as the night wore on, a new, highly concerning problem arose.

Su Bai’s stomach growled.

He paused in mid-air, looking down at his abdomen in sheer disbelief. ’Hungry? How is that possible?’

When a cultivator reached the Foundation Establishment realm, they entered a state known as Bigu. The cessation of mortal eating. Their bodies were sustained entirely by ambient spiritual energy. They literally did not need calories anymore.

But Su Bai’s body was a bizarre. He had an infinite void for a Dantian, a terrifying Reversal Body, and a mutated Sapling Root that acted like a parasite demanding constant nutrients to grow.

His "hardware" was so incredibly demanding that ambient Qi alone couldn’t keep the engine running.

He was burning more fuel than his Wi-Fi could download.

’I am the only Foundation Establishment cultivator in history who still needs a lunch break,’ Su Bai sighed in exasperation.

To stave off the hunger, Su Bai would often activate his Devouring Maw. He aggressively vacuumed up the ambient Qi as he flew, then let his spirit root passively digest the atmosphere. It barely helped, but it took the edge off.

...

When the morning sun finally crested over the horizon, Su Bai looked down. The landscape had changed drastically. The vibrant green forests had given way to withered, grayish-brown plains. He had crossed into the borders of the mortal kingdom approaching Blackwater City.

As he scanned the desolate roads below, his enhanced eyesight caught a subtle movement.

It was a mother and child.

The young mother, wearing ragged, dirt-stained clothes, was sprinting down the cracked dirt road. She was desperately clutching a small, unconscious six-year-old girl to her chest.

Su Bai’s eyes narrowed. This was a perfect opportunity to gather localized intelligence.

He killed his momentum and dropped silently from the sky, then landed lightly on the road a few dozen yards ahead of them. His Moon-Shadow Cloak billowed softly.

When the young mother saw a dark figure suddenly appear on the desolate road, she gasped and froze in absolute terror. She tightened her grip on her sick daughter, taking a terrified step backward. Mortals knew that wandering figures in the wilderness were either bandits or beasts.

But as the morning light caught Su Bai’s face, her terror suddenly dissolved into a heavy sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank the heavens," the young mother panted as she wiped the sweat from her brow. She looked at him with sympathetic eyes. "Are... are you also heading to the next village to get cured, mister?"

Su Bai blinked. ’Cured?’

The mother hadn’t recognized him as a majestic, immortal cultivator. Su Bai’s skin was sickly, morbidly pale, and he looked incredibly tired. To this desperate mortal woman, he just looked like another plague victim.

Instead of correcting her, Su Bai seamlessly leaned into the misunderstanding. He looked at the little girl in her arms. The child was terribly thin and her breathing was shallow and labored. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Su Bai didn’t answer directly. "Can you tell me what happened to her? Why are you running alone on this road?"

Seeing that he meant no harm, the mother’s shoulders slumped. The exhaustion of her journey finally caught up to her.

Su Bai stepped forward and gently offered to carry the child. The mother hesitated, but her arms were trembling from carrying the weight for miles. She carefully transferred the girl into Su Bai’s arms.

As they walked together down the dirt road, the mother poured her heart out.

Their village had been peaceful and abundant. But a few weeks ago, a terrifying famine had struck out of nowhere. The crops withered into black ash overnight. Then, the plague followed. It was unannounced, brutal, and targeted the weak.

"I heard a rumor that a healer in the next village over has a cure," the mother said as tears welled in her eyes. "I had to try. My little Yan’er caught the sickness three days ago. She won’t wake up."

Su Bai fell silent.

As he carried the child, he carefully extended a tiny, frictionless thread of Spiritual Sense into her fragile body. He had to be incredibly gentle. A mortal’s meridians were like wet paper. A single violent fluctuation of Qi would kill her instantly.

When his sense swept through her, Su Bai’s eyes turned completely frigid.

It wasn’t a natural disease. It was miasma. Thick, rotting, Demonic Qi was latched onto the child’s heart.

He also noticed a tiny, flickering spark within her. The girl possessed a Spiritual Root. It was an incredibly muddy, low-grade mixed root (absolute trash by cultivation standards) but its mere existence was the only reason her body had passively resisted the demonic miasma long enough to survive this journey.

’It is a man-made plague,’ Su Bai confirmed internally.

If this had been a natural sickness, Su Bai wouldn’t have dared to interfere. Meddling with mortal fates generated massive Karmic Debt. But since this was explicitly the work of Demonic Cultivators, the corporate rules changed.

’Exorcising Demons and Defending the Dao.’

Without missing a beat, Su Bai subtly activated the Devouring Maw in the palm of his hand resting against the girl’s back.

The thick, rotting miasma inside the girl was violently ripped out of her meridians and sucked directly into Su Bai’s body.

To the little girl, the deadly poison was a plague. To Su Bai’s Reversal Body, it was a shot of pure, highly nutritious espresso. His hunger slightly abated.

Almost instantly, the child’s pained, furrowed brow relaxed. Her shallow breathing deepened into a comfortable, healthy rhythm. Her pale cheeks regained a rosy hue.

Su Bai then casually placed his other hand on the mother’s shoulder to "comfort" her. In truth, he was secretly vacuuming the latent miasma out of her system as well. The mother, who had been feeling dizzy and nauseous seconds ago, suddenly felt as light as a feather.

Su Bai gently handed the sleeping child back to her mother.

"Your child is no longer sick," Su Bai said calmly. "The fever has broken. You should return home."

The mother looked down. Her eyes widened in absolute shock. Yan’er was breathing normally! The terrifying black veins on her neck had completely vanished!

She fell to her knees, weeping tears of pure joy, bowing her head toward Su Bai. She didn’t understand what had just happened, but she wasn’t stupid. This pale, quiet man was no plague victim.

"Thank you... thank you, mister!" she sobbed.

"Go home," Su Bai repeated, offering a hand to help her up.

But the mother shook her head, clutching her cured daughter tightly. "We can’t return, Mister. The village is dead. The soil is poisoned, and those who stayed behind have no future. We have to keep migrating to the next town to survive."

Su Bai sighed internally. ’Of course. The macroeconomic infrastructure of the region is destroyed. Curing the symptom doesn’t fix the supply chain.’

"Fine," Su Bai said. "I will walk with you to the next village."

It was a logical decision. He needed a guide to navigate the local geography, and escorting refugees was a perfect cover to gather clues about the Demonic Cultivators’ stronghold.

Just then, the little girl stirred.

She slowly opened her large, bright eyes. Seeing her mother crying, she reached up with a tiny hand to wipe her mother’s tears. So young, yet so considerate.

Then, Yan’er’s eyes landed on Su Bai.

Su Bai offered a small, awkward smile.

The six-year-old girl beamed radiantly at him. "Big Brother! Are you walking with us?"

Su Bai flinched slightly.

In his past life, Su Bai was terrible with children. Children were loud, chaotic, and terrible for a corporate employee’s productivity metrics.

But as the little girl insisted on walking on her own two feet to spare her exhausted mother the burden, constantly looking back to smile and call him "Big Brother," Su Bai felt a strange, unfamiliar softness in his chest. She wasn’t annoying or rowdy. She was just a brave little survivor.

He stepped forward and gently ruffled her hair.

As he looked at the mother and daughter chatting happily on the dirt road, Su Bai let out a long mental sigh.

’This is exactly why orthodox cultivators avoid mortals,’ Su Bai realized, feeling the invisible, heavy weight settling onto his shoulders. ’I just saved their lives. Now, I am officially invested in their survival. I just co-signed a massive Karmic Debt.’