What if I don't want to ascend to immortality?

Chapter 8 Change of appearance
"How could I possibly have such thoughts?" Han Jie's words of rebuttal were barely out of his mouth when he realized that Meng Qingtong was actually deliberately changing the subject. He then said seriously, "That might be related to your constitution that attracts demons, but I will investigate the specific connection in detail in the future. So, if I agree to cooperate with you, it's mostly for this purpose..."

"Alright, alright, you just want to say that your motives aren't pure, and that I shouldn't rush to open up," Meng Qingtong waved her hand to interrupt him. "The fact that you can put everything on the table like this shows that you're the most suitable one. Anyway, I won't change my mind easily. You can decide whenever you want and agree. I'll be waiting for you."

"Cooperation, cooperation, mutual benefit, there has to be something in it. If you really don't care about anything, then I'll panic. If you're being overly attentive for no reason, and it's all about... you know... I don't have much money, I'll just end up being taken advantage of." Her voice was crisp and fast, just like her steps, exuding the vitality that should be in a person of her age, and it was indeed a bit overwhelming.

Han Jie didn't know what to say, so he could only silently follow her.

The scorching sun shone at their feet, and the cool mountain breeze brushed their cheeks. It was just an ordinary summer day, but for him, who used to cherish every moment, it felt terrifyingly unfamiliar.

But he didn't have much time to overthink. Meng Qingtong kept trying to engage him in conversation, rambling on and on about this and that.

It wasn't annoying because she kept her boundaries well. After confirming Han Jie's identity, no matter how curious she was, she didn't pry into his privacy. She just kept reminding him of things that someone with experience should pay attention to.

As they were talking, Meng Qingtong suddenly turned around, grabbed Han Jie's arm to help him stand still, looked him up and down for a moment, then took out her phone and swiped around a few times. Her expression suddenly became serious, as if she were facing some major life decision.

Han Jie, who had been concentrating on his studies and only responding with "uh-huh" and "oh," had to stop thinking and ask, "What's wrong?"

Meng Qingtong pouted, looking a little aggrieved, and said, "If only I had a way to make you blend into society without revealing your identity while dressed like this. The thought of having to dress up such a handsome young man in ancient style, who perfectly matches my aesthetic, as an ordinary and vulgar person makes my heart ache."

Han Jie remained silent, feeling slightly uneasy. All the minor modifications to his reconstructed body were for the convenience of cultivation, and his appearance should not have changed much from his previous life. He had never been praised so repeatedly before. The closest he had come was when his senior sister from Sanxing Guayue Mountain pinched his cheek and praised him for being a beautifully sculpted doll after washing.

Meng Qingtong then pulled out her phone again, "No, naturally handsome men with classic features are too rare. I must leave a beautiful memory. Han Jie, can you let me take a few photos as a souvenir?"

Han Jie hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

"If you could pose a little more... well, that's a bit too much, isn't it? Never mind, let's just take the picture like this. Uh... Brother Han, could you... um... smile a little? You look better when you smile in photos."

In this mortal world, things are mostly just these kinds of trivial matters. He sighed softly, and was just about to force a smile when he saw her eyes suddenly light up as she pressed the screen several times.

Han Jie was puzzled, but since they would be dealing with each other for a long time to come, he was willing to go along with her wishes on small matters. He simply smiled at her with a slight upturn of his lips.

Meng Qingtong stared wide-eyed and took several more photos. As she looked at them, she clutched her heart and muttered, "My God, I don't even need a filter. She looks good when she's melancholy, and she looks even better when she smiles after she's been melancholy... I'm starting to waver. Why don't you try to fool me with your charm? I suddenly feel like I'm very easy to fool."

Han Jie said helplessly, "Miss Meng, I'm not good at lying."

"I can tell you're not good at joking." She shook her head with a smile. "By the way, stop calling me 'Miss Meng,' that's been a thing for ages. You look about my age, so call me by my name or 'Little Meng.' If anyone asks... just say we met at the orphanage. Ninety-nine percent of the orphans in the whole region have to go through Dongding City, and I'm just seeing if I can pull some strings to get you an ID card."

He didn't understand this at all, so he just nodded and silently focused on absorbing the chaotic information in his mind.

"Okay, we're almost at the mountain road. I'll call a car. If the driver asks, just say you're here to film a period drama short. We'll head straight to town and get you properly groomed first."

Han Jie remained silent. His inner thoughts were busy organizing his consciousness, while his outward divine sense was focused on observing this unfamiliar world. The remaining thoughts drove his already familiar body to follow the girl he trusted for the time being and obey her arrangements.

Although Han Jie had already learned about cars beforehand, he was still greatly shocked when he actually saw and rode in one.

His divine sense enveloped the vehicle and seeped inside. Even a simple scan revealed the terrifying amount of craftsmanship and dedication embodied in this massive and complex metalwork. What surprised him even more was the presence of spirit runes and long-lasting spirit arrays in many places. This meant that many spiritual practitioners were no longer focused on individual cultivation, but instead were investing their energy in what were once considered "unorthodox" practices, and with remarkable results.

Ordinary mortals who lack the talent to mobilize spiritual energy and cultivate spiritual power can still wield and enjoy such a "magical treasure." Is this... the way Meng Qingtong spoke of for making the world a better place?

Before the driver could even ask a question, Meng Qingtong took the initiative to strike up a conversation, easily steer the topic to the news being broadcast in the car, such as "Special effects production companies jointly protest against unfair competition from spiritual practitioners in the film and television industry," "The Bingding District Joint Court makes a ruling on a geothermal energy allocation dispute," "The Actors Guild declares that spiritual practitioners who use divine sense to act as paparazzi should be considered evil cultivators," and so on.

The car stopped directly in front of the town's largest hair salon. Meng Qingtong went in, pressed Han Jie into a seat, called over the stylist with his colorful hair, muttered a bunch of instructions, went out and bought two ice creams, sat down next to him and handed him one, happily eating it.

"Beautiful lady, we've just received a new hair mask with 3% added spiritual energy. Would you like to get a treatment together? We're having a promotion to celebrate our 75th anniversary. If you top up your membership card with 5,000 yuan, you'll receive 2,000 yuan free, plus a free spiritual stone moisturizing treatment..."

Meng Qingtong licked her ice cream little by little, only paying attention to the stylist's sales pitch, while her free hand rummaged through her bag. After a while, she pulled out a card that a customer had dropped earlier and said to the hair salon owner, who was sitting in the corner playing on his phone, "By the way, don't you have a girl named Sun Xiangru in your shop?"

The boss immediately looked up, signaling the stylist to shut up and temporarily stop the sales pitch. "Yes, that's my niece. Do you know her?"

Meng Qingtong shook her head. "There have been a lot of thieves around here lately. Has anything been stolen from your house too?"

The boss immediately got off the comfortable sofa, stared at her, and walked over, examining the small, frosted card in her hand. "Yes, yes, she went to the academy for freshman training, left something at home, and then inexplicably couldn't find it. Is it... this thing?"

Meng Qingtong clenched the card in her palm and placed it on her lap. "Did your niece say she lost anything?"

"She said it was a very important contact card, and she was afraid it would get lost at school, so she specifically left it at home." The shopkeeper looked extremely regretful. "And I didn't even keep an eye on this little thing properly, how embarrassing. I don't even know when it disappeared." Seeing that Meng Qingtong neither intended to keep it nor return it to the owner on the spot, she said a few kind words and finally realized something, smiling and saying, "Girl, you went to so much trouble to bring my niece's things over, so I won't say much more. I'll give you your boyfriend's whole haircut, just to be friends. Come on, come on, Tony, not you, but the tall Tony in the back, come and give this beautiful lady a full treatment, with the best hair mask."

"No need, just let my friend take care of it." Meng Qingtong emphasized the word "friend" and handed over the card between her fingers. "The card is from the Spirit Alliance. Remember to keep it safe this time, otherwise your niece will miss a chance to join the Spirit Alliance when she comes back, and she'll have nowhere to cry."

The boss clearly didn't understand what the Spirit Alliance was, but he didn't care. He thanked him repeatedly, took the contact card, and hurriedly went to the back room.

Instead, Han Jie was exhausted and didn't want to search for answers in his mind anymore. He asked curiously, "What is that contact card? Is it different from a mobile phone?"

"Different. Cell phones are ordinary communication tools, and even exclusive signals encrypted with spiritual energy are still subject to the supervision of the spiritual security department. Establishing a spiritual channel is too mentally taxing and cannot be done for a long time. Communication cards are secure communication tools with many restrictions and a relatively short range of use. Only spiritualists who have imprinted their personal information can use them... However, they are too inconvenient. Currently, only some old-fashioned organizations like to use this thing. Sooner or later, it will be phased out like landline phones."

He pondered for a moment and said, "Is the Spirit Alliance you just mentioned such an organization?"

Meng Qingtong considered the matter carefully, hesitated for more than ten seconds, and then said, "They tried to recruit me when I was a freshman, but I didn't agree. So I don't know the specifics. All I know is... their officially registered organization name is the Spiritual Power Deep Research Alliance, but according to rumors, the official name they use internally is the Spiritual Power Liberation Alliance."

Perhaps misunderstanding that he wanted to find his past sects, and fearing that he might accidentally reveal something, Meng Qingtong immediately added, "Actually, it's quite poignant to think about. The Spirit Alliance, a new generation with only a few decades of history, is already considered the largest and oldest folk organization for spirit masters. The Nine Cauldrons War wiped out all those old cave sects and such in one fell swoop."

"That's good news," the stylist chimed in. "Otherwise, how could ordinary people like us have the good life we ​​have now?"

“Who’s an ordinary person like you? I’m a genius spiritual cultivator.” Meng Qingtong joked with a laugh. “If this were a few hundred years ago, I might have been the last disciple of some famous sect.”

Han Jie endured the stylist fiddling with his head, sighed softly, and muttered to himself, "I am my master's last disciple. It's a pity that... I will never see them again."

The final gift from the celestial maiden transported him across countless dimensions. In this completely unfamiliar and bustling world, he couldn't help but feel an empty loneliness, and even the sword "Desolation" within his soul began to stir restlessly.

Seeing the stylist glance at Han Jie with a hint of curiosity, Meng Qingtong quickly changed the subject, saying, "By the way, I haven't asked yet, what do you like to eat? Noodles, rice, or steamed buns and dumplings?"

Han Jie thought about it carefully for a moment, and finally said helplessly, "It's fine, you can arrange it."

Even bread was nothing more than convenient dry rations, and he felt that his distant memories of food from the past had no value for reference in this world.

But the boss, who happened to come out at that moment, clearly misunderstood his way of speaking. When the stylist took him to wash his hair, he leaned over and whispered to Meng Qingtong, "Your boyfriend's attitude is a bit perfunctory, girl. Being too eager isn't a good deal. Don't spoil him too much. Being handsome can't put food on the table. Besides, you're quite pretty too. Take care of yourself and you'll be just as good as those TV stars."

“He’s not my boyfriend.” Meng Qingtong sized up Han Jie after he washed his hair—his neatly trimmed hair hung wet, and his seemingly lazy and indifferent expression actually revealed a subtle sense of bewilderment and helplessness. It was a perfect sight that could both appeal to his aesthetic sense and evoke maternal instincts. She took out her phone and snapped a couple of pictures, muttering in a somewhat subtle tone, “He can’t even afford a motorcycle, so supercars are just something he can only look at…”

Han Jie was in a daze, but his hearing was still sharp. He had simple thoughts, only that he would need to trouble this girl a lot in the future, so he smiled slightly and said softly, "It's alright, if you can't afford it, I'll buy it for you in the future."

"Still saying he's not your boyfriend!" The hair salon owner burst out laughing, his suggestive gaze sweeping back and forth between the two of them like a brush.

Meng Qingtong was taken aback, and her face immediately flushed a faint red, like a few drops of tomato juice added to honey water. She waved her hand, quickly put on a smile, and said jokingly, "Come on, you're a pampered young master who never lifts a finger. How would you know how much hardship there is in making money?"

Feeling embarrassed to continue the conversation, she picked up her phone, glanced at it, and exclaimed, "Oh dear, the client asked again. Let's go over there as soon as we're done and return the things, okay?"

Han Jie nodded, raised his eyes, looked at his new self in the mirror, and fell silent again.

Once his styling was completely done, Meng Qingtong took his picture as usual, and even set it as wallpaper. She admired it for a while with great satisfaction, then took him to the car she had called and headed to the client's house.

She used coupons on ride-hailing apps and spent over ten minutes fiddling with them, finally saving 7.58 yuan. She smiled broadly.

Seeing her like this, Han Jie finally became certain that she went to the hair salon not because it was big and upscale, but because she had that contact card that could get her a free styling session. As for why she didn't also get a free beauty treatment, she probably felt that simply delivering something wasn't worth the expense.

Perhaps only by carefully calculating and taking advantage within one's own moral boundaries, as she does, can one avoid creating more followers.

Upon arriving at the location, standing beneath the old, dilapidated apartment building, Meng Qingtong looked directly at Han Jie and said earnestly, "You must promise me that when we go upstairs, you absolutely will not attack the demon you see. Unless you are certain that it intends to attack someone. Okay?"

In the past, such a request would never have reached Han Jie's ears.

But now, he simply nodded slightly, a thoughtful expression on his face.

Soon, he knew why.

After the doorbell rang a few times, the one who opened the door for the two of them was none other than a demon!
(End of this chapter)