"Glug-glug..." Su Min took a long pull from her treasured gourd, the strong liquor warming her throat. "How long are you going to keep praying? When a person dies, it is over. What is the point?"
On a stretch of desolate wasteland, she sat atop a small pile of rubble, watching her companion. It had been a full week since they left the coastal city. Their progress was not exactly swift. How fast could one move when their traveling partner, a young monk, insisted on stopping to chant sutras and recite prayers at every roadside grave and forgotten burial mound they passed?
Of course, he was not doing it without reason. Though these places were called wastelands, they were, in truth, mass graves. Fugitives, refugees, and victims of banditry who had perished in the wild were buried hastily and without proper rites, so naturally, their unsettled spirits could not find peace.
Do not be fooled by the barren silence during the day. Once night fell, these lands would transform into active ghost markets, haunted by wailing apparitions. Within a radius of tens of kilometers, no living soul dared to venture close after dark.
"Buddha-friend, how did the world come to this?"
Hearing Su Min's casual, almost cynical remark, the young monk let out a long, weary sigh. Restricted by the Boundary Formation and his own vows, he had been doing his best to avoid deep contact with the secular world. Were it not for Su Min traveling with him, providing a certain cover, he would not have dared even this much intervention. Thus, he knew very little of how the once-great Wei Dynasty had fallen into such a state of decay and despair.
"It is like this..."
Su Min, hearing his genuine question, did not hold anything back. She calmly recounted all the causes and consequences from beginning to end, the foolish emperor's desperation for immortality, the Demon Queen's manipulation, the purges, the famine, and the collapse of order. As for the term "Buddha-friend," it had been informally adopted after Su Min had formally begun cultivating the Great Sun Tathāgata Sutra. By that point, the monk had tacitly acknowledged her as something of a fellow traveler on the path.
"This..."
As Su Min finished her blunt summary, the young monk's face darkened, a rare, suppressed fury burning in his usually serene eyes.
"A ruler of the mortal world, to believe the whispers of demons and commit such heaven-defying acts...!"
"What else could he do?" Su Min replied, her tone flat and unimpressed. "That damned emperor is already over seventy. Only sorcery and forbidden arts could offer him the longevity he craves. Fear is a powerful motivator."
Su Min could not even summon fresh anger anymore. If this had been back when she first crossed into this world, she would have been stomping her feet in rage. Now, it just felt like a tiresome, predictable tragedy.
"You are right, to truly save the people, the rot must be cut from the root. Since that is the case, why not simply... overthrow the dynasty itself?"
"Uh..."
The young monk, who had moments ago been burning with a monk's righteous indignation, now turned to stare at her in utter disbelief. His mind had been racing toward a solution, finding a way into the imperial capital, exposing the demon queen's true face to the court, and persuading the emperor to repent and return to the right path. Yet this woman's thoughts had leapt somewhere entirely different, far more radical. Cut it off at the root? Overthrow the entire dynasty?!
"Amitabha, the Demon Queen has truly sown chaos..." he murmured, trying to process the idea.
"Chaos my ass," Su Min cut him off bluntly. "It is just an old fool who is greedy for immortality and a witch who is happy to exploit that. Do not overcomplicate it."
"..."
The monk opened his mouth to retort, to argue for nuance, but Su Min's brutal simplicity left him speechless. The more he thought about it, the more he realized she was fundamentally right. Human desire knew no bounds. Even he, a monk, was not entirely free from its temptations. So, to prevent future rulers from falling into the same trap, was it not indeed better to take charge, to reshape the dynasty from its very foundation, and guide the next sovereign onto a righteous path from the start?
In that moment, the young monk found himself deeply admiring Su Min's terrifying foresight. With just a few casual, almost offhand words, she had already mapped out a political future that looked beyond the mere fall of a single corrupt emperor.
"Buddha-friend, your wisdom is profound. This humble monk is enlightened." He pressed his palms together and bowed deeply to her. "To save the masses, one must not focus on saving individuals, but on healing the world as a whole. The roots must be treated, not just the leaves and branches."
"Huh?"
Seeing the monk suddenly cast aside his beads and cease his chanting, a look of decisive resolve on his face, Su Min blinked in confusion. What had she said that was so revolutionary?
"Buddha-friend, you have awakened my heart. Today, we part ways." His form began to glow with a soft golden light. "I shall go and seek a destined sovereign, a true Dragon's Heir. You, continue your path to power. We shall meet again at our journey's end." With that, the monk's figure dissolved into motes of light and then into thin air, leaving Su Min standing alone, utterly unable to react.
"What the hell did he just comprehend?" she muttered to the empty air. "And wait, did he just dump all the spiritual power of this incarnated body into movement speed because he could not fight effectively here anyway?" She stared into the empty space where he had vanished, genuinely puzzled. But after a moment, she simply shrugged. It was not her problem.
Clearly, the monk's true cultivation base back in Lingxi Prefecture was profound. Unlike her, who had to constantly strive and fight for every ounce of progress, he had the leisure and the power to pursue broader, world shaping missions. Even if this mortal incarnation of his shattered entirely, it would not matter much in the long run.
"Wait," she said aloud, a thought striking her. "He is not actually planning to start a rebellion, is he? I was just venting!"
After all, Su Min was a modern person at heart. Her thought patterns differed greatly from those of ancient people, who took talk of overthrowing dynasties much more seriously. And considering the very personal grievances she had suffered upon arriving in this world, venting a bit about the emperor was only natural. It was not as if that damned old man could actually do anything to her now.
"Heh... well, this is not so bad."
Su Min chuckled to herself, a mischievous glint in her eye. At the end of the day, it cost her nothing. In fact, she now suspected the monk's true goal, to find and mentor a legitimate, virtuous future Son of Heaven.
She had no objections. She would settle her own account with the dog emperor eventually. But killing him without securing the aftermath, leaving the entire land to fracture into endless, bloody warlord battles, was absolutely out of the question. It would create more suffering than it solved. If someone else handled the messy business of succession and establishing a new, stable order, that was just perfect. Besides, she only had one primary enemy. The rest of the world, its politics and its people, had nothing to do with her.
"Well then... the journey continues," she announced to the silent wasteland. "About eight hundred kilometers to go."
Glancing at the map in her hand, Su Min fell into deep thought. Naturally, she had no intention of following the twisting, winding merchant roads. She drew a straight, mental line to her destination, willing to circle around a few major cities if necessary. As for any so called towering mountains or deep ravines that stood in her way, before her current abilities, they might as well have been flat ground.
Not to mention, she could fly now. Though she could not maintain flight over vast distances without exhausting herself, crossing any single terrain obstacle was no major problem. Even if a mountain like Everest stood before her, she was confident she could scale and cross it within a dozen minutes.
At her current level in the Qi Refining Stage, she was already far beyond the physical and spiritual capabilities of any ordinary human. Fortunately, her cultivation did not seem to be making her more "grand-minded" or burdened by lofty morals, which was great news. She could act freely, according to her own conscience and interests, without getting bogged down by abstract philosophical dilemmas.
Two Weeks Later, The Windswept Desert
When Su Min finally gazed out across the endless, rolling dunes of the western desert, her face darkened slightly. She was not overly fastidious by nature, nor was she obsessed with cleanliness. She could travel for days without rest or a proper bed if the situation demanded it. But even she felt a wave of pure misery looking at the ocean of sand. Her once loose, flowing hair was whipped into a tangled, dusty mess by the constant desert winds, every strand caked in grit.
Still, it was not the worst. Thanks to her spatial ring's vast capacity, she was prepared. Inside, she stored not just countless supplies of food, but even an entire prefabricated small house and abundant reserves of clean water. She could easily dig a hole in a dune, deploy her shelter, and take a proper bath whenever she wished. No, the real issue was more serious. The frequent, blinding sandstorms severely disrupted her spiritual sensory perception. She could not sense presences more than a few hundred meters away anymore.
For someone like her, who specialized in detection and long range perception, it was like being struck blind. And that was especially troubling, considering the specific, powerful creature she was here to find.
"The map says there are three major oasis cities around here," she muttered, wiping sand from her lips. "Looks like I will have to enter one and gather information the old fashioned way."
She flipped her hand to store the map away in her ring. However, she knew that even back in the heyday of the Wei Dynasty, these remote desert cities had been semi autonomous and largely beyond the central government's control.
Now, with the empire crumbling, they were practically lawless territories, ruled by local strongmen and the harsh logic of survival.