"Shi Ming, why are you dressed like that?" Deng Jun was both surprised and delighted as he rushed over to the carriage.
"I heard you've been holing up in your den of comfort every day and not coming out, so I wanted to drag you out to catch bugs. And if we're catching bugs, naturally I need this outfit."
Shi Ming said this matter-of-factly, proudly pushing up the brim of his bamboo hat with the handle of his horse whip.
Deng Jun suddenly felt a pang of shame.
Ever since they arrived at the Unreturning Place, it felt like he was the only one who had let himself go.
Everyone else remained exactly as they had always been.
Priest Ban had become the fastest-promoted priest in the Myriad Ancient Pagoda.
Shi Ming, despite having no hope of cultivating, continued to work diligently.
Cat Girl had even separated from them for the sake of her advancement, only recently returning alongside Li Ban—and she had indeed advanced a Tier.
But him? After seeing the end of his path ahead, he had simply allowed himself to wallow in decadence.
Occasionally, a trace of guilt would surface, but once it passed, he would just go right back to his old ways.
His initial excitement at seeing Shi Ming gradually faded. Deng Jun sighed. "I still have to work at the Myriad Ancient Pagoda. I can't just go messing around with you."
Shi Ming shook his head. "I went to Li Ban and had him ask for a long leave of absence on your behalf. Come catch bugs with me."
"What? You actually went to find Priest Ban on your own?" Deng Jun's jaw dropped. He felt a mix of envy and frustration. "And you didn't even take me with you!"
"Take you for what? To watch you try to curry favor with Li Ban, or to watch you mope around?"
It turned out Shi Ming knew everything.
Deng Jun opened his mouth, completely lost for words.
Feigning impatience, Shi Ming tapped his whip against the carriage shaft, making a crisp clack-clack sound.
"Just tell me if you're coming or not. You don't have to work right now anyway. You can either get in the carriage, or go back inside and keep dreaming your golden dreams in your soft little den."
Deng Jun looked down at his own luxurious robes, then at his skin, which had grown increasingly pale from spending so much time out of the sun.
He looked up again at Shi Ming's plain, martial attire. For some reason, a surge of hot blood reignited in his chest.
He knew this burst of passion might only last for the time it took to drink a cup of tea, but he still wanted to ride that momentum and go out for a spin with his friend.
"Alright. Wait for me to change clothes."
Terrified that he might back out or change his mind, Deng Jun didn't give himself any time to think as he sprinted back to his bedroom.
Deep at the very bottom of his trunk, he found the black martial outfit he used to wear back when he was still a 2nd Tier spirit practitioner.
Though the clothes were old, they were incredibly durable and lightweight.
Since he was heading out to catch bugs, he obviously couldn't wear fine silks and satins.
After changing, Deng Jun stretched his limbs.
He found that despite his recent neglect of martial practice, his physical reflexes hadn't dulled at all.
This was one of the benefits of cultivating spiritual rhinoceros.
The spiritual rhinoceros passively nourished the body.
It allowed spirit practitioners to maintain their physical condition without needing to train constantly.
However, this very trait also made it easy for them to become lazy and slack off.
Returning to the main gate, Deng Jun hopped onto the carriage with a smile.
"Let's go. We're off to catch bugs. It's been a long time since I went out with you."
Before Deng Jun advanced to the 3rd Tier, they used to go out frequently to do missions and accumulate merit.
As a mortal corpse severed by a Great Wizard, Shi Ming was never targeted by the bugs, nor did they react to his approach.
Because of this, bug-hunting teams in Yanzhou always loved having Shi Ming join them, putting him in charge of search operations during missions.
The rest of the team would then handle the encirclement and the killing.
That was when Shi Ming was at his most popular.
Back then, because of his association with Shi Ming, Deng Jun never lacked a good team to join.
It was only after he broke through to the 3rd Tier and took up his job at the Myriad Ancient Pagoda that Deng Jun stopped going out with him.
Once on board, Deng Jun skillfully took over the reins.
Sitting on the driver's bench, he easily guided the horses forward, with Shi Ming lounging leisurely beside him.
For a moment, it felt as though they had returned to the days when they followed Li Ban on the journey from Yu Province to Yanzhou.
The carriage gradually left the Unreturning Place, venturing into the vast, desolate wilderness.
"Are there a lot of bugs in Yanzhou right now?" Deng Jun asked.
"A lot fewer than before. Because of the black-robed priest's sneak attack last time, many priests from other areas came to the Myriad Ancient Pagoda. They strengthened the defenses, so fewer bugs have managed to escape into the wild. But because of that, the ones that do make it out are either excellent at hiding or incredibly hard to kill."
"Sigh, they always wait until something goes wrong to strengthen the defenses. Two priests died back then. And Priest Ban—if it weren't for his good luck, he might have..."
Deng Jun had limited knowledge of the priests' affairs. He only knew that several people had died and that Li Ban had gone missing for a time.
But he had no idea what had actually happened.
Shi Ming wasn't very clear on the details either.
Both of them were excluded from the inner circle of the priests.
Without Li Ban sharing things with them, the information they were allowed to access was strictly limited.
If Shi Ming hadn't helped Priest Qian Que call out to Li Ban at the bottom of the pool in the Unreturning Place, he wouldn't have known any extra details either.
The two chatted as they traveled, quickly leaving the vicinity of the Unreturning Place and entering a stretch of barren mountains and wild ridges.
Since catching bugs often required spending a massive amount of time tracking them down all across Yanzhou, they had stocked the carriage with several days' worth of dry rations and a change of clothes.
It wasn't until dusk was approaching that Shi Ming finally spotted the trail of a bug.
First, he found a gruesomely mangled corpse by the side of the road.
The two immediately jumped down from the carriage to investigate.
The corpse's face looked as though it had been mauled by a cat, covered in long, thin scratch marks that left it a bloody mess.
Its body, however, was relatively intact.
Looking closer, they found a large hole in the back of the corpse's head.
The edges of the wound were jagged; it definitely hadn't been caused by a sharp weapon.
Shi Ming twitched his nose and made his judgment. "It should be a bug."
Deng Jun trusted Shi Ming's call. He quickly did a sweep of the perimeter and spotted a few drops of blood in a patch of tall grass near the dense forest.
Following the trail closer to the woods, he found even more blood.
"It looks like it ran this way. Are we going into the woods?"
With just the two of them, it really wasn't a good idea to enter the dense forest.
The bugs weren't large, and once they fled into the trees, it was like a fish darting into the ocean—incredibly hard to track down.
Meanwhile, Shi Ming and Deng Jun would be glaringly obvious targets in the woods.
"I'll go in and scout ahead. If I find anything, I'll call you." Without hesitation, Shi Ming pushed his way into the thicket.
After all, he wouldn't be attacked by the bugs, nor would he face any lethal danger.
His Undying Halo allowed him to deliberately take on the most dangerous tasks.
But who could have guessed that after taking just a few steps into the trees, he would let out an "Ouch!" and trip over something.
When he got up, he realized he had actually tripped over a person.
The person lay motionless on the ground, their fate unknown.
Shi Ming hurriedly moved closer to check on them.
Their body was ice-cold and covered in blood, with long, cat-like scratch marks acting as the primary wounds.
Shi Ming reached out to check the person's skull, only to find that there was no fatal hole in their head.
The person seemed to have used both hands to protect their face. There were no wounds on their features, though the backs of their hands were a bloody mess.
'This guy isn't even that good-looking. Was he really so worried about his appearance during a life-or-death crisis?' Shi Ming muttered in his heart.
Checking the person's breathing, he discovered that they were actually still breathing.
They weren't completely dead.