Street performing, of course, wasn’t so easy to do.

First, they had to have exceptional skills that could be displayed in public, either amazing people or making them burst into laughter.

Meng Ruji didn’t expect Mu Sui to make people laugh, so she could only have him amaze people.

Second, if these amazing skills required props, Meng Ruji didn’t have the capital to support that either.

Things like music, chess, calligraphy, and painting—Meng Ruji immediately crossed them off. She didn’t expect Mu Sui to know them, because even if he did, she had no money to buy instruments, chess sets, or painting supplies.

Then there were opera and variety shows. Ventriloquism, monkey shows…

Meng Ruji looked at Mu Sui and shook her head repeatedly.

What remained were various spectacular performances.

Sword swallowing?

Borrowing a passerby’s sword—if Mu Sui swallowed it and something went wrong, that wouldn’t work either.

Breaking stones on the chest?

Meng Ruji could go find some big stones in the forest, but she currently had no spiritual power and was just an ordinary woman who couldn’t smash stones. Mu Sui looked like he could smash stones, but Meng Ruji couldn’t provide the “chest”—if Mu Sui brought the hammer down, what would break wouldn’t just be the stone, but also her ribs…

Besides, she had no money to buy a hammer.

“Do you… Know any martial arts techniques?” After standing by the roadside watching pedestrians for a long while, Meng Ruji finally had to ask Mu Sui this way. “Something that looks good when fighting.”

Mu Sui thought for a moment and shook his head: “I don’t remember learning any martial arts.”

An expected answer. Meng Ruji raised her hand: “No problem. Earlier, by the Nai River, I saw that your evasive movements were all very methodical. Your body still has memory.” Meng Ruji gently struck Mu Sui’s neck with her palm: “Try to think—if I attacked you with this hand, how would you counterattack?”

Mu Sui let Meng Ruji place her hand on his neck. The skin touched by the edge of her palm felt tingly and numb, making him not want to counterattack at all.

Mu Sui shook his head and said honestly, “You’re not trying to attack me. I don’t want to counterattack.”

Being stared at by those pure and sincere eyes, Meng Ruji was speechless for a while: “I’m asking you to imagine if I weren’t me.” Meng Ruji put on a serious expression, pretending to be stern as she stared into Mu Sui’s eyes and made another feint to guide him: “If I were a villain and wanted to kill you…”

Listening to her words, Mu Sui’s expression also gradually became serious.

“If I strike at your neck with this palm, you would…”

Before she could finish, Mu Sui reached out to block her extended hand, then, almost instinctively, he raised his hands to Meng Ruji’s ears.

Meng Ruji was startled. When she reacted, her head was already held between Mu Sui’s hands, and with a gentle twist, her head was turned to the side.

If his movements hadn’t been slow and without killing intent, she would probably already have dislocated cervical vertebrae, stopped breathing, and died on the street.

Meng Ruji looked at Mu Sui and sighed helplessly: “What you learned… are killing techniques…”

Seeing her worry, Mu Sui also began to worry: “Killing techniques can’t be used for street performing?”

“Killing techniques are effective but not pretty to watch. You kill someone in one move—where’s the entertainment value? We can’t just kill someone on the street for everyone’s amusement, can we?”

After hearing this, Mu Sui looked thoughtfully at the people coming and going on the street.

Not hearing his response, Meng Ruji looked up at him and saw his gaze wandering among the crowd on the street, as if selecting something…

Meng Ruji immediately slapped his chest and stopped him: “No!”

Mu Sui lowered his head: “Oh.”

“We’re street performing, not killing and robbing! It’s not worth it! You don’t want to eat unsatisfying prison meals in that yamen for the rest of your life, do you?”

“Would you be in prison?”

“Of course not!”

Meng Ruji was speechless. This silly boy wanted to drag her into jail with him?

Mu Sui murmured: “Then I won’t go.”

Meng Ruji sighed. Seeing his wild nature, she had even less hope that he would know any fancy fighting moves.

As for Meng Ruji herself, external martial arts had never been her strong suit. After all, she had previously obtained an Inner Core with heaven-defying spiritual power. Not taking the opportunity to cultivate spiritual power and internal cultivation, but instead learning external martial arts—wouldn’t that be picking up sesame seeds and losing watermelons?

So until now, her spells had reached great mastery, but her external martial arts were barely enough for a few moves in crucial moments.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have fought to a draw with a severely injured young man on Xuejing Cliff.

Without capital or skills, Meng Ruji’s street performing business reached an impasse.

However, just as she was sighing, Meng Ruji suddenly saw a man sneakily following a girl wearing a fur collar among the bustling crowd.

Meng Ruji’s eyes narrowed slightly. She crossed her arms and observed the man.

Of course, when Meng Ruji made any movement, Mu Sui noticed. Seeing her previously wandering and thoughtful gaze suddenly fix on a particular spot, Mu Sui immediately followed her gaze.

In the crowd, the man reached toward the shoulder bag of the girl in front. Between his fingers was a thin blade—with just a gentle slide, the fur-collared girl’s cloth bag could be easily pilfered.

Meng Ruji snorted coldly: “Half-dead people still acting like thieves here.”

Meng Ruji spoke without thinking, but the listener took it to heart.

Mu Sui immediately felt as if he’d been slapped, his face stinging.

It was all that thief’s fault!

How dare he steal in front of Meng Ruji, making her unhappy?

Truly detestable…

But Meng Ruji was considering with her arms crossed: Should she catch the thief and drag him to that yamen for money? Or catch the thief, threaten to send him to the yamen, then extort money from him, which would be more profitable…

Before Meng Ruji could decide, suddenly there was a “whoosh” beside her. A familiar wind lifted Meng Ruji’s temple hair, and she saw a black shadow rush out.

Meng Ruji was stunned for a moment, then immediately lifted her legs to follow.

Mu Sui ran fast, attracting attention in the crowd. The thief was already guilty, and when he turned to see an eight-foot man with a murderous expression and tremendous momentum charging straight at him as if to take his head—

The thief panicked immediately. No more hiding, no more sneaking. Seeing the wealth about to be in his hands, he directly yanked the bag from the girl’s arm. Amid the girl’s screams, the thief clutched the bag to his chest and fled frantically.

Would Mu Sui tolerate this?

He directly gave chase.

What could Meng Ruji do?

She could only be dragged along like a dog on a leash, shouting all the way:

“Don’t run! Stop! Wait!”

Her voice reached the ears of the two men ahead. Mu Sui didn’t think she was calling him, but the thief consciously assumed she was calling him, so naturally, he ran even more desperately.

In a flash, they ran two li away, already reaching Meng Ruji’s limit. Her panting breath seemed to carry a bloody taste. The market had long disappeared, surrounded by earthen walls with dirt roads underfoot that raised dust clouds with each step.

For Meng Ruji, the situation was even worse because the two men ahead had also disappeared. The earthen houses around blocked her view, and she couldn’t see where they had run.

She could only use her last bit of willpower and intuition to shout: “The crime doesn’t warrant death! Don’t kill anyone!”

Not knowing if Mu Sui had heard, Meng Ruji finally collapsed weakly in the middle of the dirt road.

Then fate’s claws didn’t spare Meng Ruji. Soon her chest began transmitting tearing pain.

She thought Mu Sui must have already run a hundred steps away from her.

Meng Ruji felt both pain and hatred in her heart—hating that thief, and even more hating the little thief who had stolen her core and gotten her into this mess!

The tearing pain intensified. Suddenly, she heard a woman’s exclamation:

“My goodness! You didn’t forget to take your medicine, did you!”

This woman’s astonished voice also contained panting breaths.

In her pain, Meng Ruji looked up hazily and saw the fur-collared girl bending over, breathing heavily while looking at her with concern.

So the victim, whose bag was stolen, had followed and caught up, though she ran even slower than Meng Ruji and only just arrived.

The victim crouched beside Meng Ruji, pulling out a medicine bottle from her small personal pouch. She poured a green bean-sized pill into her palm and fed it to Meng Ruji:

“Quick, quick, swallow it and the pain will stop, or you’ll pass away.”

Tormented by pain, Meng Ruji couldn’t distinguish what medicine this was and could only desperately take any remedy, swallowing the pill in one gulp.

The pill went down her throat like eating candy, sweet from mouth to heart. As the sweetness spread, the pain in her body melted away like winter snow under warm sun.

After a while, her body returned to normal, and Meng Ruji’s breathing gradually became steady.

Having survived the ordeal, Meng Ruji wiped cold sweat from her forehead and looked at the fur-collared girl: “Thank you so much…”

“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it. I should thank you for helping me chase the thief. I just got my wages today—they’re all in that bag.” The girl looked around anxiously. “I wonder where they ran off to…”

“Let’s wait here for now. Maybe they’ll come back soon.”

Meng Ruji thought that if they were far away, she didn’t know if Mu Sui would feel pain. If he didn’t, then catching a pickpocket should be easy for someone with his physical condition.

During this idle moment, Meng Ruji didn’t expect that she and this girl could catch up and help anyway, so she inquired:

“Excuse me for asking, I just arrived in the Land of No Lingering and don’t understand the situation here. What medicine did you just give me, and why could it relieve that pain in my body? From your earlier words, you seem to know why I was in such agony.”

“You just arrived—no wonder.” The fur-collared girl patiently explained: “We’re all half-dead from the mortal world. To stay in the Land of No Lingering, we need life-sustaining objects.”

“Life-sustaining objects. What do you mean?”

“Well… for example, we’re like lonely ghosts, but with only half a soul left. Originally, we should have dissipated in the world, but by chance, we came to this place called the Land of No Lingering. This place temporarily shelters us, but to live here long-term, we must tie our half-soul to something in this place. That thing becomes our medium with this world, which we call a life-sustaining object.”

The girl explained clearly. Meng Ruji understood and nodded, then, thinking of her situation, couldn’t help rubbing her forehead with a headache.

“I want to ask… is there any possibility that the life-sustaining object could be… a person?”

“Anything’s possible!” the girl answered definitively. “Some people’s life-sustaining objects are even pigs.”

“…”

“Like my neighbor, his life-sustaining object is even more ridiculous—it’s his house. He treasures it so much that when I visit, he won’t even let me knock on the door. I can only call him over the courtyard wall.”

Indeed, these situations sounded more ridiculous than having your life tied to a person…

For a moment, Meng Ruji didn’t know whether to be glad or miserable about her current situation.

“These things are very strange, depending on fate. Like me…”

The girl pointed to the fluffy collar around her neck. “This is my life-sustaining object. I wear it all the time. I can’t leave it more than three steps, or I’ll be in pain like you just were, unable to even breathe.”

“Three steps?” Meng Ruji was puzzled. “So close?”

“Yes, everyone can be at different distances from their life-sustaining object. I can only leave mine three steps, my neighbor can’t even leave one step—he can only move within his house’s courtyard walls. But some people can leave ten zhang away.”

Meng Ruji frowned at this.

“But don’t worry too much. For everyone’s convenience, merchants in the Land of No Lingering developed this medicine.” The fur-collared girl handed the medicine bottle to Meng Ruji for her to examine:

“This is called Little Green Bean.”

“Little Green Bean?”

“Right, named by the yamen.”

“Official name?”

“Right.”

“…Okay, your yamen here is really… quite interesting…”

Miaomiao smiled: “One pill works for a day. Within twelve hours, you can leave your life-sustaining object.”

Meng Ruji rubbed her chest—indeed, the painful feeling was completely gone.

“Like this fur collar of mine, it’s fine in winter, but in summer it’s deadly hot. I can’t wear it while working either. Sometimes I remember to put it in my pocket, sometimes when I’m busy, I put it down and forget. I found it troublesome, so I bought this medicine. On working days, I take one pill and never worry about forgetting my collar again. Very convenient.”

Meng Ruji blinked and asked the girl, “Is it expensive?”

“Not expensive at all. Everyone needs this medicine, so the yamen controls the price. Five wen for a bottle, thirty pills per bottle.”

Five wen was astronomical for Meng Ruji, who didn’t have a single wen.

Meng Ruji looked longingly at the medicine bottle in her hands, then returned it to the fur-collared girl:

“Thank you for the explanation. And thank you for your generous help in giving me medicine.”

“No problem, no problem. We’re all people who came to the Land of No Lingering…”

Before the girl finished speaking, footsteps came from a nearby alley. Meng Ruji looked toward the sound and, sure enough, saw Mu Sui bringing the pickpocket over.

The pickpocket’s face was black and blue—he’d been thoroughly beaten.

Mu Sui held the bag in one hand and the thief in the other, walking easily without any sign of pain.

Meng Ruji understood now. As the life-sustaining object, he wouldn’t feel pain—only she, the “half-dead person” whose life was sustained, would suffer.

Meng Ruji let out a long sigh. She could only say fate was unpredictable. They’d been struck by the same lightning and awakened in the same place, yet some people moved freely and only needed to eat voraciously, while others had to worry about where food came from, get dragged around like a dog, and endure excruciating pain when they couldn’t keep up…

Heaven was simply biased, giving different rewards and punishments to everyone.

Before, she had been fortune’s favored daughter—gaining the Inner Core, becoming Demon Lord, reaching the pinnacle.

Now, she might be fortune’s abandoned daughter, coming to this Land of No Lingering to toil like an ox or horse…