Chapter 63: Chapter 63 - The Executive Disguise and the Accidental Philanthropist

Su Bai stood at the entrance of the cavern. The cold northern wind caught the hem of his robes.

He looked back at Ning Shuang.

"I need to leave first," Su Bai said softly. "But before I go, I promise you, I will not do anything that brings harm to you. Your cooperation today was an immense contribution."

Ning Shuang nodded profusely. Her dark eyes were filled with an emotion she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years: hope.

"If fate allows us to meet again," Su Bai continued, offering a warm smile, "I hope we can sit down and have a conversation like this again. Even though we stand on opposite sides, perhaps one day, the world might be fair enough for everyone to just breathe."

Ning Shuang’s breath hitched. She truly believed him. A righteous cultivator who treated a demonic cultivator not as a monster to be slain, but as a person worthy of respect. That was definitely a first in the history. She desperately wanted to meet him again.

Before turning to leave, Su Bai reached into his storage ring. He pulled out the remaining pouches of Withered Weeds Ash and placed them gently in her hands.

"The Gu worm’s coma is only temporary," Su Bai explained. "This ash will put it back to sleep. Use it whenever you need to be free, or if the Sect Master tries to trigger the kill-switch."

"Thank you, brother Su Bai," Ning Shuang whispered as she clutched the pouches tightly to her chest.

With a final nod, Su Bai summoned his flying sword, stepped onto the blade, and shot into the sky, disappearing into the clouds.

The moment Su Bai’s figure vanished over the horizon, the atmosphere inside the cavern violently shifted.

The soft, blushing, vulnerable girl evaporated like mist. Ning Shuang’s posture straightened perfectly.

Her eyes, which had just been shimmering with warmth, frosted over into an expressionless, dead stare. The terrifying, heavy aura of a Stage 4 Foundation Establishment Demonic Cultivator rolled off her shoulders.

With her cultivation stabilized and her frostbite cured, she had to return to the Abyssal Lotus Sect. And to survive, she had to flawlessly act like the brainwashed, emotionally numb weapon she was trained to be. No one could ever suspect that she had awakened.

She stared in the direction Su Bai had flown for a long, silent moment.

With a heavy sigh, the cold-blooded demonic cultivator stepped onto her own sword and flew into the abyss.

...

High above the clouds, Su Bai didn’t immediately return to the Radiant Sky Sect.

He still had a contract to fulfill. He had promised the chief of the village that he would return to check on Yan’er and the other orphans. He needed to bring them supplies.

Su Bai didn’t wore his scorched Moon-Shadow Cloak this time. The cloak was heavily damaged by Elder Han’s Dan Fire, and wearing it now might actually act as a tracking beacon if the Righteous Bureau was actively searching for him.

Without the cloak, Su Bai looked exactly like what he was. An incredibly pale, exhausted young man.

He scanned the snowy plains below and spotted a massive, bustling mortal settlement. It was located deep enough in the north that it seemed completely untouched by the Demonic Sect’s miasma operations.

Before descending, Su Bai checked the storage rings he had looted from the two Qi Refining guards back at the Bureau.

Inside the rings were hundreds of mortal Silver Taels. To a cultivator, mortal silver was practically useless rocks, but down in a mortal city, it was a massive fortune.

He landed a mile away, hid his sword, and walked toward the city gates. The guards didn’t stop him, assuming he was just a traveling scholar.

The moment he crossed the threshold into the City, he signed in.

[Ding! Signed in at Snowspire City.]

[Reward: Glacier-Lung Bone Mask]

[Description: A physical half-mask carved from the skull of an ancient ice-beast, designed to cover the lower half of the face. It is an execution device designed to instantly crystallize the moisture in the user’s breath. The moment the user exhales, it forces razor-sharp ice shards back down their windpipe, intending to shred their lungs and suffocate them on their own blood.]

Su Bai blinked.

Well, he needed a disguise anyway, and his Reversal Body was practically begging for a test run. He summoned the mask from his inventory.

Aesthetically, it didn’t look like a gruesome skull. It was smooth, pale, and elegantly carved. It fits perfectly over his nose and mouth like a piece of high-end porcelain armor.

He secured it to his face and took a breath.

Whoosh.

The fatal execution flaw instantly activated. But his Reversal Body violently inverted the mechanism.

Instead of solidifying the air inside his lungs, the mask acted as a hyper-aggressive, premium HVAC filter for the air outside.

It violently vacuumed in the freezing, biting blizzards of the city, instantly melted and purified the icy wind, and pumped it directly into his lungs as highly compressed, warm, spiritual oxygen.

Su Bai took a deep, shuddering breath. His eyes fluttered shut in sheer, unadulterated bliss.

’This is incredible,’ Su Bai thought. He was completely addicted to the rush of premium oxygen. ’It’s like breathing pure espresso.’

Soon, he walked deeper into the bustling marketplace.

To the mortal citizens of Snowspire City, however, the scene looked entirely different.

They saw a young nobleman with morbidly pale skin, wearing a strange bone mask, stumbling slightly as he took deep, shuddering, heavy breaths.

’Oh, the poor young master,’ a vendor whispered. Her eyes watered with sympathy. ’He looks like he’s clinging to his last breaths!’

Completely oblivious to the fact that he looked like a tragic hospice patient, Su Bai happily approached the market stalls.

"I need rice, dried meats, and blankets," Su Bai’s voice was slightly muffled by the mask. He took another deep, euphoric breath that sounded like a painful wheeze to everyone else. "A lot of them."

"O-Of course, Young Master!" the vendor stammered. "I’ll give you a fifty percent discount! Please, save your money for a healer!"

"No need," Su Bai insisted politely. He dropped a heavy stack of Silver Taels onto the counter. "Keep the change as a tip."

Su Bai’s logic was flawless. First, he was using embezzled funds from corrupt guards, so it wasn’t his money anyway. Second, he has no other uses for these silver taels.

He moved from stall to stall, buying massive quantities of food and supplies. Because he didn’t want to expose his spatial storage ring in a crowded mortal market, he even bought a sturdy wooden wagon and two horses to pull it.

After the wagon was fully loaded, Su Bai paused. He turned to the crowd of sympathetic onlookers who had gathered to watch the sickly, generous noble.

"Excuse me," Su Bai asked politely, taking another deep breath. "Which direction is Blackwater City from here?"

The entire marketplace fell dead silent.

The mortals stared at him in utter shock. Blackwater City was currently dealing with a deadly plague. No one in their right mind would go near it.

And then, the realization hit them.

This terminally ill nobleman... he was buying all this food and gear not for himself, but for the plague victims. He was spending his final days, and his entire fortune, to drag a wagon of salvation into the abyss!

Several women burst into tears. Grown men took off their hats and bowed their heads in profound respect. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"It’s... it’s directly south, Young Master," a burly butcher said. His voice cracked with emotion. He stepped forward. "Please, let us help you drive the wagon! The journey is arduous!"

"I appreciate the offer, but I must travel alone," Su Bai declined politely. He didn’t want mortals slowing him down, nor did he want to accidentally drag them into a Demonic Sect conflict.

He grabbed the reins of the horses and slowly led the wagon out of the city gates. The entire marketplace watched him leave. Their eyes were filled with absolute, overwhelming admiration.

Su Bai had absolutely no idea that his simple grocery run had just accidentally solidified his reputation as a peerless, tragic saint.

Nor did he realize that he had attracted the attention of some very special people.

When Su Bai was about a mile away from Snowspire City, he promptly unhitched the horses and set them free into the wild

Then, he waved his hand.

The wagon, and all the supplies instantly vanished into his storage ring.

He also finally removed his Glacier-Lung Bone Mask.

Soon, he hopped onto his flying sword, instantly accelerating to a terrifying speed as he shot south toward the distant village where Yan’er and the orphans were.

And from a high, snowy vantage point overlooking the road... two pair of sharp, calculating eyes tracked his flight path.

"Did you see that, Aunt?" a young female voice whispered. "That ’sickly mortal’ just put an entire wagon into a spatial ring and flew away on a sword. He was a cultivator in disguise."

"I saw," the older lady replied. The figure stepped out of the shadows, revealing dark violet robes woven with metallic threads that shimmered with a faint, venomous sheen. "A cultivator spending silver to buy food for a plague zone... How fascinating. Let us follow him and see what this ’saint’ is really up to."