by Gore, A. P.
“What are you planning here, kid?”
“I’m going to use an Essence Engulfing Array to raise my cultivation in the next fourteen days, but I need pills for that, and I can’t waste my time learning alchemy right now.”
Although learning alchemy was one of his goals, he had more important goals at the moment. First, he had to master his Basic Movement Art, One Sword Strike, and Dragon Swallowing Pain Fist. In his previous fights, he had come to understand his limitations, and using half-assed martial skills was a glaring weakness. If he wanted to win against the Du clan, he couldn’t just rely on his physical body and attack blindly. He had to learn powerful martial skills, and a movement skill was at the top of the list. It couldn’t be avoided anymore.
“Essence Engulfing Array . . .” Xue Qi mumbled to herself. “Wait, are you trying to use an Energy Explosion Cultivation Array to increase your cultivation? Are you nuts, kid? That’s a dangerous method, and you might end up dead if you fail.”
Wei tapped his fingertip on the table. “Yes, that’s the ancient name of the Essence Engulfing Array.”
“What’s that?” Sun Nuan asked.
“It’s madness. He is using the medical essence to convert blood qi into pure qi, skipping the qi revolutions all together. If he wants to jump to layer nine of the Foundation Realm using this activity, it will consume all his blood.”
“What?” Sun Nuan’s hands shook. “He really is suicidal.”
“Suicidal?” Wei arched his brows. “Senior, you don’t have to worry about my blood. I have a profound body cultivation art that helps me regenerate my blood quicker than anyone else, and then I still have remnants of the Seven-Tailed Fox’s Essence Blood that will help me accelerate the whole process.”
“But your body cultivation is locked, isn’t it?” Sun Nuan asked.
“It is, but my blood regeneration speed is still faster than a Bone Baptization Realm cultivator.” He hadn’t been able to measure it before, but after regaining his divine sense he had looked into his body and felt that the lock on his Physical Cultivation had loosened a bit after drinking the Seven-Tailed Fox’s Essence Blood. It wasn’t enough to make him heal his injuries like he had previously, but he could now feel movement from his blood pearls. “So, will you help Nuan concoct Foundation Refirming Pills?”
“I have a better option for you.”
Wei arched his brows.
“You haven’t even looked at the inheritance you received from me, did you?”
Wei smiled sheepishly.
“This is frustrating. You’re treating me like a fart.”
Wei lacked any words to refute that.
“You stupid kid. Read about the Foundation Expanding Pill, and then come back to me.”
Wei shrugged and moved toward the inner chambers of the palace. He was going to use the Martial Comprehension Chamber to work on his martial skills.
Chapter 72
Reinforcement
Du Tenjua shifted his weight on his left leg as sweat continued trickling down his face. The more, elder Wen looked at him with that probing gaze, the more he wanted to piss his pants. Elder Wen was an existing that defied his knowledge, and he suspected him to be a Marrow Cleansing Realm expert. Sitting on the patriarch’s chair in the Du compound’s main hall, he exuded an unfathomable pressure that made everyone want to prostrate in front of him. There were many people in the main hall, but other than elder Wen and his disciple Tiang Fu no one dared to utter a single word.
When the pressure became unbearable, Du Tenjua lowered his head and asked, “Elder Wen, please give orders to this servant.” Although he hadn’t announced himself, but Du Tenjua knew who he was. He was elder Wen from the Destiny Mirror Sect. Du Tenjua had spotted the sect emblem the elder had accidentally dropped last night when he arrived.
The handsome young man sitting on the chair next to elder Wen sighed and opened his dark brown eyes. One look, and Du Tenjua felt like his soul had left his body. He couldn’t breathe. One look in his eyes, and Du Tenjua regretted looking in them. Although Du Tenjua could sense the young man’s peak Bone Baptization Realm cultivation, he had a strange aura that was no less than elder Wen.
They both were dangerous, and he didn’t know why they had come to the Du clan last night and demanded the most luxurious guest rooms.
“Give me all the information you have about Li Wei,” the young man said, closing his eyes.
Du Tenjua could finally breathe again. If they wanted information about Li Wei, he could give them that. But . . . “Li Wei?” Why were they asking about that impudent brat?
“Du Tenjua, are your balls stuck in your throat? Why aren’t you answering senior Tiang’s question?” the third man, who stood behind elder Wen’s chair, shouted.
Du Tenjua’s knees went weak. Even their attendant was at layer six of the Bone Baptization Realm. Who were these people?
“Li Wei is a grandson of Li Shua, a Foundation Realm cultivator and patriarch of the Li family. Li Wei is his daughter Li Min’s son. One day Li Min appeared with this child. No one knows who or where his biological father is.” He stopped only after blurting out everything he knew about Li Wei. Well, almost everything. “But he should be dead,” he quickly added. “I sent one of the Du clan’s assassin after him.”
“What nonsense. He was alive only a few days back.” The young man glared.
Du Tenjua shuddered. Did that mean Du Sung was dead?
“What more do you know about him? Tell me everything.” Elder Wen tapped on the blue ceramic teacup in his hand.
“That’s all I know, elder Wen.”
“Is that all?” Elder Wen asked.
“Where did he learn alchemy? Tell me about his achievements,” the young master asked without opening his eyes.
“Alchemy?” Du Tenjua looked at the handsome man with bewildered eyes. “Reporting to young master, that person is trash. He can’t cultivate because he has a leaky dantian. He used to roam the streets, meddling in everyone’s business. But I heard he gained a mysterious master who killed a Bone Baptization Elder from my clan, so I’ve initiated a Devil Cicada Challenge against his clan.”
“Elder Wen, I think this is not the same person,” the third person said. “The boy I know is a sly fox, and he fought against the Crouching Dragon Group’s gravity martial skill. And they were all in the Foundation Realm.”
“Du Tenjua, is this the same person we are talking about?” Elder Wen handed him a hand-drawn picture of Li Wei, and Du Tanuja’s blood boiled with rage. This impudent brat had hurled insults at him and City Lord Dan Kuang. He’d even forced them to delay their plan to destroy the Li clan by a whole month.
“Elder Wen. Yes, this is Li Wei. But a few days ago, he only had a layer three Refinement Realm cultivation base.” But if they had Li Wei’s picture, did that mean Li Wei could fight against Foundation Realm cultivators? That was impossible.
“Tell me about his master,” the young man said.
Du Tenjua lowered his head. “We know nothing about his master, but he easily killed a Bone Baptization Realm elder from our clan who had a broken spirit artifact.” He had hidden this news from the world, but the artifact was in the Divine Fragrance Palace elder’s hand, so it wasn’t hidden from others anymore. That spirit artifact was broken, but one could feed it Qi Stones and send an ice attack that could kill any Foundation Realm cultivators in a large area. They had tried to repair it but failed, so they’d kept it as a family heirloom, only to be used in large-scale battles as it required precious Qi Stones to activate, but that bastard Du Su had gotten himself killed and lost it.
“A spirit artifact?” The young master stared at him; shock visible in his brown eyes.
“Patriarch, bad news.” Someone rushed through the door, and when he saw elder Wen, he halted and looked at Du Tenjua with a puzzled expression.
Du Tenjua spotted the young master’s lips twitching and couldn’t restrain his anger. He slapped his informant. “You bastard. Can’t you see we h
ave guests, and you dare to open your mouth in front of them?” He slapped him again. “I’ll slap you to death today.” In doing so, he was begging for mercy from elder Wen. These people were dangerous, and Du Tenjua didn’t want to provoke them and bring calamity on the clan.
“Patriarch, Li—” Another slap echoed in the main hall and the informant sprawled on the ground.
“Wait, are you talking about the Li clan?” The young master opened his eyes and looked at the informant.
The informant looked up at Du Tenjua with pitiful eyes and nodded.
Du Tenjua couldn’t control his anger and kicked the man in the stomach. “Bastard, why didn’t you say this earlier?”
The informant tried to cry, but only blood came out of his mouth.
“Du Tenjua, stop. Let him speak. If he dies because of your mistake, the Du clan might not survive the calamity.”
Du Tenjua halted his half-raised kick and stepped backward. “Speak, bastard.”
“Patriarch,” he sobbed, dribbling more blood on the red carpet that was spread across the main hall. “Master Wu is staying with the Li clan. He is helping the Li clan carve array weapons.”
“Master Wu? Array Apprentice Master Wu?”
When the informant nodded, Du Tenjua’s scalp tickled with fury. This was bad news. Even City Lord Dan Kuang had to give face to master Wu, and then they had the support of Li Wei’s mysterious master. Maybe he should just withdraw from the challenge and forget about it.
“Patriarch Du, how about I help you to win your challenge?” The young master rose from his seat and pulled out a bottle filled with bunch of pills from his clothes and showed it to Du Tenjua. “But you cannot expose our identity.”
Seeing that many pills, Du Tanuja’s mood suddenly lifted. With elder Wen and young master Tiang on his side, there was no one who could defeat the Du clan. It was time to exterminate the Li clan once for all.
Chapter 73
Inheritance
Li Wei stepped into an empty metal chamber that had no end in sight. It smelled like a recently polished sword, reminding him of the Ancient Ruins he had visited with Fei’er and its sewage system.
A few Lightning Stones lit the initial part quite well, and there was a green prayer mat placed in a corner. Tapping his fingers to the metal wall next to the prayer mat, he listened to the sound it made and realized it wasn’t just metal. The dull thump was unlike the sound of a metal wall. When the sound didn’t tell him anything more, he spread his divine sense out, trying to pass through the wall, but his divine sense bounced backward as if an energy field had stopped his advance.
This room was like the few comprehension chambers he had seen in his previous life. Only some ancient sites had these special rooms; the current era did not build them. One of the Firmament Sect branches in the Martial Realm had a Martial Comprehension Chamber, but one had to book it well in advance—as much as a year or two. It was a mystical chamber that helped one accelerate their martial skill comprehension, and it worked especially well for martial skills that required comprehension.
And he had two martial skills that required comprehension to reach the next level.
His One Sword Strike was stuck at mid completion, and his Basic Movement Art was . . . nada. He hadn’t even grasped the initial completion of the first level. Looking at his own progress, he was ashamed to call himself reincarnated. Now that he thought about it, he had failed to achieve many things: remaining fat, earning a huge load of money, practicing martial skills . . .
Damn! All his knowledge was useless, and he kept getting into trouble. He wished he’d focused on some martial skills—okay, any martial skills—in his previous life. He should have at least learned tea making. Senior brother Jiang from Firmament Sect kept pestering him about tea making, but he never acted on it.
He could have enjoyed a nice cup of tea here.
Sighing inwardly, he sat on the soft prayer mat in the lotus position.
“System, show me all the inheritance information.”
Suddenly, a lot of information flew through his mind, and sweat broke out over his whole body. It was too much information, and he couldn’t make anything out of it.
System: Information indexing is in progress. Estimated time of completion: 2 months 5 days with 0.0000001% capacity.
What? Wei was flabbergasted by that message. The last time he’d accessed this information, he only got a list of Silver Grade recipes. Wait, he’d wished to see only Silver Grade recipes, and the system had given him a warning about incomplete information, so he’d asked it to index it.
“Give me a list of indexed information. Partial information is fine.”
Four cards floated in his mind with a bunch of information written under the topic names.
The first was Pill Recipes.
Damn, it contained pill recipes from Bronze Grade to Earth Grade, and since it wasn’t completely indexed, he might have higher grade pill recipes as well. This was the effect of downloading seventy-nine percent of an inheritance. This was a huge amount, and he’d gotten a severe headache when he received it. The system had stored it in a storage function, and only then had his headache vanished.
So, he was too weak to store that much information. If it had been merely ten to twenty percent of the inheritance, it should have been fine.
His gaze moved to the next index card, which contained information about Alchemy Arrays. The tool spirit had told him about Xue Qi’s specialization in alchemy arrays, so he’d been looking forward to this information. This might enhance his own knowledge. The next index card had information on Poison Pills, and there was a lot of information on poison pills. Strange. Was she an evil person?
Ignoring that card, he looked at the fourth card. Alchemy Cultivation Art. There was only one thing on that card: Pill Clone Alchemy Art. It seemed like something he would never try since he had two of the best cultivation arts already.
Wait, why was he wasting time? Reining in his greedy mind, he moved back to the first card and looked for Foundation Expanding Pill information.
Foundation Expanding Pill
Grade: Mid-tier Silver Grade
Used for a clean breakthrough through the Foundation Realm. Average human doesn’t need to wait between consuming two pills. No restriction on number of pills consumed.
Ingredients:
Five Feet Grass Blades
Small Qlin Grass
Qi-Enhancing Fruit Seeds
. . .
Wei’s jaw almost hit the floor when he scanned the information on the card. What kind of heaven-defying pill was this? How could there be a pill that didn’t need a dormant period and didn’t care about pill toxin?
Every pill had a dormant period. It was the period between which a cultivator could safely eat the same pill. In this period, he would absorb a pill’s efficacy and excrete the pill toxin that came with the pill. It also put a time limit on a cultivator’s advancement through minor layers.
A cultivator could advance through four main paths.
The first and simplest was the one that almost everyone used: to absorb essence energy from nature and convert it into their own qi.
This method was the slowest.
The second one was accomplished by eating pills, and it was for rich young masters supported by their fathers. These young masters would eat Foundation Refirming Pill like candy to advance their cultivation. But this method was slow as well. After eating one pill, there would be a dormant period for efficacy absorption, and one couldn’t eat another similar pill in that time. For Foundation Refirming Pills, one had to spend three months in between, and one could only eat a maximum of five Foundation Refirming Pills in their whole life. Of course, there were some exceptions like the Essence Burning Art where one could eat Foundation Refirming Pills like cabbages and advance.
This method was costliest.
The third method was using natural treasures like the Chilly Dragon Fruit. This was the safest method. There were no side effects. But
these treasures were uncommon and might require dozens of years to grow to maturity.
This method was rarest.
Then there was the fourth way to advance. An Essence Engulfing Array was a tyrannical solution. It allowed one to sacrifice many Foundation Refirming Pills, absorb the efficacy in one’s blood, and then convert it into their own qi. But for to this work, one would need an enormous amount of blood, and they would suffer from the pill toxin absorbed into the blood. It could be deadly.
This method was the most dangerous.
But Wei had just discovered a fifth method. A pill with no pill toxin. A pill with no dormant period. A pill with no limits.
Fuck! How could a heaven-defying pill like this exist in this world? He could just eat one, absorb, and eat the next one. And when he looked at the ingredients and the recipe—well, he quickly compared it with the Foundation Refirming Pill recipe he had, and it was ten times easier than a Foundation Refirming Pill.
Why the heck wasn’t anyone selling this pill? Or was there foul play in the Martial Realm?
No, he had looked for pills used in the Foundation Realm for his junior brothers a couple of times, and there had been no other pill than the Foundation Refirming Pill.
That meant this pill recipe was either lost to time or a secret recipe used by some powerful families. Only those secret families could own a recipe like this.
He sighed glumly. This inheritance had proved there was one thing he knew very little about: the world outside of arrays.
But this was exciting as well. If he didn’t know something, he could always learn and explore. He’d wasted his last life on a bitch and drowned himself in cultivation. In this life, he should search for things like this pill. This pill was a godsend.
That’s it. This pill would be his first lazy method.
A smug smile appeared on his face as he stepped out of the chamber.