The Immortal Species - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“What are you doing?! The coffin-opening ceremony can’t be interrupted! Are you trying to get us all killed?!”

A shrill, furious scream immediately rang in my ears.

It came from a woman wearing heavy makeup. In my head, I called her Big Beauty.

Supposedly, she was in here for murder. After killing her husband, she had dismembered him and made soup out of the pieces.

With a blank face, I lied, “There’s yin energy. This is a trap.”

“Hey, hey! What exactly was written on that Jade Register? Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

The one shouting this time was a man with glasses. I called him Little Glasses.

Supposedly, he was in for corruption. He had embezzled an entire village’s poverty relief funds.

Still expressionless, I clutched the Jade Register and said, “No idea. I can’t read.”

With that, I turned and ran.

The others were already guilty and on edge, so they instinctively started running after me.

The comments floating overhead were sparse.

[Heh. With guts like that, how did they dare commit crimes?]

[Bet this squad gets wiped in their very first instance.]

Finally, the muscular man with tattooed arms in our group lost his temper.

“Stop fucking running! So what if it’s something weird? You might be scared, but I’m not!”

I called him Tattooed Guy, though I still didn’t know what crime he’d committed before.

Going along with it, I stopped in front of another earthen grave and leaned against the tombstone, pretending to pant from exhaustion.

Tattooed Guy glared at me. “Woman, state your name! And the crime that got you arrested!”

My name.

In the three thousand three hundred and thirty-three years I’d been alive, I’d had many names in order to hide my identity.

But maybe because I’d only just dug up the grave of an archenemy from a thousand years ago, I remembered the name I’d given him back then.

“Gu Gu.”

As for my crimes…

Leaning against the tombstone, I counted them off on my fingers.

“Bigamy, grave robbing, destruction of cultural relics, identity forgery, giving birth to myself, sobbing uncontrollably in a museum and smearing snot on the glass…”

After all, the moment I entered that museum and looked up…

Well, damn.

My table, my bed, my grandma, my granny, my chamber pot being used as a vase, and even the private savings I’d kept from the Zhenguan era all the way to the reform and opening-up.

And I’d paid for a ticket to go in and look around. So basically, I paid admission to enter my own house.

I still remembered how, before I turned one thousand, I treated money like dirt.

If bandits robbed me, I’d empty my pockets. If thieves picked my lock, I’d open the door for them.

I would watch them leave with a blank face, one step away from saying, “Please come again.”

But times were different now. At the ripe old age of three thousand, I had become outrageously greedy for money.

The stranger my list got, the stranger the other three people’s expressions became.

Tattooed Guy laughed in anger and snatched the Jade Register from my hand. “You think I’m a fucking idiot?! Give me that!”

However, the moment Tattooed Guy grabbed the Jade Register, he suddenly cried out, “Ow!” and clutched his head.

The back of his skull was bleeding, and the Jade Register fell to the ground, rolling down the hillside with a clatter.

When we turned around, we saw two people.

One of them was a woman in black with a high ponytail. Her expression was indifferent as she tossed aside the rest of the stones in her hand.

Then she bent down, picked up the Jade Register from the ground, and tucked it into the pouch at her waist.

Behind her stood a man in an expensive black suit, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, his aura cold and aloof.

At first glance, the two of them didn’t look like criminals who had been thrown into a horror game. They looked more like they were on their way to walk a fashion week runway.

At that moment, the floating comments in the air suddenly exploded in number.

[Aaaahhh, it’s Sister Jian and God Yu!!]

[I remember this is already Sister Jian’s ninth instance, right? She’s a max-level boss.]

[What exactly was written in that Jade Register? It has to be the key to clearing this dungeon, right?]

The woman with the high ponytail swept a cool glance over the comments. “Don’t call me sis. Call me Master. I hate it when people treat me like a woman.”

[Master Jian! Master Jian is so cool!]

[Master Jian is so alpha, flirting with girls left and right. Careful Jing Yuzhou gets jealous.]

Sure enough, the man they called “God Yu” looked even gloomier, and he shot me a warning glare.

I looked back at him, only feeling that his name sounded a little familiar, as if I’d heard it somewhere before…

[Huh? Why is this Gu Gu staring at God Yu? Don’t tell me she’s fallen for him.]

Big Beauty beside me lit up at once.

Beaming, she leaned toward Jing Yuzhou. “Handsome! How come there are only two of you? Aren’t dungeon squads supposed to have four people? Why don’t you join us?”

Jing Yuzhou frowned and said coldly, “Filthy. Stay away from me.”

Big Beauty’s smile froze, embarrassment flashing across her face.

The corner of Jian Yi’s mouth lifted slightly. “Auntie, only rookies and dead weight need teams. As for me, I’m strong.”

[Legend says you can be pardoned after clearing ten dungeons. Will Jian Yi become the first person in history to succeed?]

[Badass. Then doesn’t this newbie squad just have to cling to her thigh and win for free?]

[First time watching a stream. Can someone tell me what crimes Jian Yi and Jing Yuzhou committed? They don’t look like bad people.]

Oh. I remembered now.

That Jing Yuzhou-I had even held him when he was little.

It must have been over twenty years ago. Back then, my identity was a mountain-dwelling immortal maiden.

The Jing family was rich and powerful in the city, and Jing Yuzhou’s grandmother had spent a fortune to invite me down the mountain.

She said Jing Yuzhou’s mother had died young, his father was always busy with work, and at her age, she didn’t know how much longer she could stay with him.

She begged me to read the face of her infant grandson in swaddling clothes and calculate his fate.

But the moment I took Jing Yuzhou in my arms, he had diarrhea. He even kept letting out milky baby farts.

Loud ones. Long ones.

After that, I never worked as an immortal maiden again.

So now, looking at the Jing Yuzhou before me, I could almost see him as he had been back then, unable to keep his back door shut.

Seeing me stare at Jing Yuzhou for so long, Jian Yi’s mouth flattened. “Hey, lady, are you done looking? Some people will never be yours, even if you stare at them for a hundred years.”

Mm. I really could stare for a hundred years, but could he live that long?

With that fragile stomach of his?

Seeing that my expression didn’t change at all, Jian Yi grew even more disdainful. “What, scared stupid? I’m so sick of delicate little schemers like you, always waiting for men to solve your problems for you-move!”

Little Glasses beside me asked nervously, “W-what are you going to do?”

Jing Yuzhou looked at Jian Yi’s back, admiration hard to hide in his eyes. “Dig up the grave. Understand? Take the burial goods, exchange them for money, and buy supplies.”

Then he swept a contemptuous glance over the four of us. “Of course, you won’t get a single cent.”

By then, Jian Yi had reached me as well. She said impatiently, “Lady, do you seriously not know even the most basic rules? Before opening a grave, I have to make an offering to the owner. Don’t stand here getting in the way.”

Hearing her say that, and since I wasn’t actually tired, I stopped leaning against the tombstone and took one step to the right.

Only then did Jian Yi roll her eyes. She casually took out a few sheets of paper money and bent down, about to burn them.

But on the tombstone, written in stark characters, were the words-

[The Grave of Gu Gu]