Xia Yunzhao was silent for a moment, then said, “This cultivation method is too evil. We can’t leave it around. Burn it.”
Shang Shuangze handed the cultivation method to him without the slightest hesitation.
Smiling, Xia Yunzhao flicked a finger. A scarlet spark landed on the pages and instantly ignited. In the space of a single breath, the cultivation method had become a handful of ash.
A cultivation method that could have stirred up bloodshed and slaughter if released into the outside world was destroyed without hesitation by the two of them.
Xia Yunzhao brushed ash from his hands. “The Fang family has been unusually quiet lately. Let’s keep watching and see what they’re planning. Anyway, over the next two days, we should inspect the area around our home first. Don’t forget.”
Naturally, Shang Shuangze would not forget. Even if Xia Yunzhao did, Shang Shuangze would remember.
Early the next morning, before even the birds had begun calling, the two were already packed and ready to leave. The puppets dutifully watered and weeded the spirit herbs and watched the two depart.
They first circled the valley and found nothing unusual, so they gradually expanded their search. Surprisingly, they really did find something.
Xia Yunzhao stared at the slaughter beast ahead, with spines covering its back, blood-red eyes, and the obvious desire to lunge forward and gnaw his flesh. “Is that… a Spined Porcupine?”
His hand instinctively reached for the Compendium of Liancui Mountain Spirit Items. “Didn’t it say Spined Porcupines were like hedgehogs? Why is it so huge?!”
Liancui Mountain was enormous. Even now, he frequently encountered slaughter beasts he had never seen before, and the Spined Porcupine was one of them.
“…Right. It said they had spines like hedgehogs. It never said they were the same size as hedgehogs…” Xia Yunzhao awkwardly closed the book, then looked eager. “Those six are yours. Leave these two for me. I want to test the results of my body tempering lately!”
Shang Shuangze smiled without speaking. He raised his sword to block the other six and deliberately let two through toward Xia Yunzhao.
The spines on the Spined Porcupines’ backs could be fired like hidden weapons. Xia Yunzhao deliberately did not block them. The moment one struck his skin, there was a sharp clang, yet it did not even break the surface.
Those Low-Tier Body-Tempering Essentials truly were impressive. The author himself had only reached Foundation Establishment, yet the method was extremely effective. Xia Yunzhao had cultivated it for only half a month and already achieved results like this.
He tested it twice more and finally confirmed that although his current physical defenses were still inferior to the Thousand-Mechanism Bamboo Armor, they were already considerably stronger than some ordinary low-tier protective magical artifacts.
Having reached his conclusion, he swiftly killed the two Spined Porcupines. On the other side, Shang Shuangze had long since finished his own battle and was waiting.
Xia Yunzhao stored all eight porcupines and laughed. “Not bad, not bad. While alive, they helped me test my cultivation method. After death, they can become body-tempering materials. Good pigs. Very good pigs.”
Shang Shuangze laughed helplessly.
The two continued inspecting the surroundings. If they encountered small low-tier slaughter beasts, they ignored them and left them as food for the little civet. If they found large slaughter beasts or ones with greater combat strength, they killed and collected them.
They searched until noon. Xia Yunzhao glanced at the sky, then suddenly made a surprised sound. “Look. That mountain collapsed.”
Apart from the entrance, mountains surrounded their valley on three sides. Two sides had remained intact. Only from Xia Yunzhao’s current position did he discover that the third mountain had also collapsed, although only half of it. It looked as though something had sliced straight down through it, and the damage could not be seen from inside the valley.
Xia Yunzhao immediately ran over. “Come on, let’s climb up and take a look.”
That mountain was the highest peak nearby. Even cultivators would have needed some effort to reach the summit.
The two of them, however, were not worried. Xia Yunzhao possessed the Lightness Technique and Flowing Cloud Leg Art, making his body light and fast. Shang Shuangze appeared to be at Foundation Establishment but possessed the physical strength of a Golden Core cultivator. Both reached the summit easily.
Xia Yunzhao first looked downward. Sure enough, the mountain seemed to have been split vertically. Half had collapsed while the other half had become a sheer cliff. The cliff face still looked very “fresh,” without enough time for vegetation to grow and with the interior rock exposed.
He found the sight fascinating, then raised his head. His mouth fell open. The sight before him could only be described as fantastical!
From this angle on the mountaintop, he could see an enormous transparent bowl-shaped canopy, boundless and vast, inverted over the entire Liancui Mountain Range.
This particular mountain had suffered the bad luck of standing right at the edge of the Liancui Mountain Range. The barrier’s rim had sliced it vertically in half as cleanly as the edge of a bowl cutting through tofu.
He could not see the end of Liancui Mountain, so naturally he could not see the end of the enormous barrier either. Mist filled the inside, while outside the sky was brilliantly clear. The barrier did not stop cultivators from entering or leaving, nor did it stop slaughter beasts. Astonishingly, it blocked only the mist.
Xia Yunzhao blinked, and the barrier slowly vanished from sight. It still existed, but he could no longer see it. He shifted his angle, then moved to another place, but it remained invisible.
He could only lower his head regretfully and sigh. “A barrier this huge… how high would the cultivation of whoever created it have to be?”
Shang Shuangze shook his head. “This is not something human power could accomplish.”
“True.” Xia Yunzhao thought it over. “So the mountains that collapsed were all cut apart by this barrier? I wonder what the barrier actually does. If that mist escaped, would it cause some kind of disaster?”
No one could answer questions like that. These vast mountains held far too many secrets.
Xia Yunzhao was optimistic. “Anyway, the Mist-Barrier Period will be over in a few months. The barrier will probably disappear then too. It shouldn’t matter much!”
“Oh, look down there! There’s a village!” He pointed below so Shang Shuangze could see. “The mountain used to block our view, so we never knew it was there.”
Shang Shuangze followed his gaze. Sure enough, there was a village at the foot of the mountain. It was not large, with perhaps a hundred or so residents. Neat farmland surrounded it, and from their distant vantage point the villagers looked like tiny ants moving around between houses.
Some carried farming tools and were heading out to the fields, elderly people walked with canes, and children ran everywhere.
Whether through luck or some other reason, the collapsed half of the mountain had not affected the village at all. The falling rocks had stopped not far from its edge. A day had passed, and the villagers had clearly adjusted to the enormous change. Only occasionally would someone point toward the ruined mountain and say something.
Looking at the lively little village, Xia Yunzhao unconsciously smiled. “The people in this village seem to live pretty well.”
Shang Shuangze turned slightly toward him. “How can you tell?”
Xia Yunzhao pointed below. “Look. Their crops are extremely well cared for, and the elderly people and children are smiling. If the elderly and children live well, everyone else probably does too.”
Shang Shuangze looked at him and nodded. “I see.”
*
Xia Yunzhao was naturally someone who enjoyed lively surroundings. Ever since discovering that they had a small village for a neighbor, he would sit on the mountaintop and watch it whenever he had nothing else to do.
Just as he had said, although the village was small, its people truly lived quite well. In the mornings, the villagers went together to the fields. Once the noon sun grew hot, they returned home to eat.
There was more activity in the afternoon. Some villagers washed clothes by the river, others repaired the village roads, and a man who looked like a scholar gathered a group of children and taught them to read. Lessons never lasted long, only about an hour, after which the children scattered to play.
Watching them every day made Xia Yunzhao feel a little as though he were playing an idle simulation game.
Shang Shuangze always accompanied him.
For some reason, ever since the mountains collapsed, Shang Shuangze insisted on staying with him no matter what he did. Perhaps he was still worried there was a danger of another collapse.
Sometimes Xia Yunzhao could not help thinking how incredibly fortunate he was to have met a friend like Shang Shuangze after transmigrating.
That afternoon, Xia Yunzhao returned from gathering spirit herbs and once again leaped onto the mountaintop, sorting his harvest while watching the little animated scene below.
Shang Shuangze sat beside him and helped sort the bloody slaughter-beast corpses. He had become very professional at killing slaughter beasts. Since their pelts were valuable too, he could now pierce a slaughter beast cleanly through the throat with a single sword strike, leaving the entire hide intact apart from one bloody hole.
Suddenly, Xia Yunzhao shouted urgently, “Quick! Save them!” Then he threw himself forward and leaped directly off the cliff.
Shang Shuangze instantly chased after him, caught him in midair, and formed spiritual-power orbs beneath their feet so the two landed safely.
Without a moment of hesitation, Xia Yunzhao tapped the spiritual-power orb beneath his toes. The orb cooperatively boosted him forward, sending him floating nearly ten zhang away. After several leaps, he reached the pond at the village entrance.
Several villagers were already running toward the pond with ropes. Though they were much closer, they still could not move as fast as Xia Yunzhao.
Xia Yunzhao stepped onto the surface of the water and glided across it, scooped up a child who was struggling in the pond, then turned and returned to shore.
He checked the child’s pulse and slapped his back several times. The child coughed up several mouthfuls of water and burst into loud sobs.
Xia Yunzhao immediately relaxed. He rummaged inside the Hundred-Compartment Pouch, took out a Lingwei Pill, split it in half, and pushed one half into the child’s mouth.
Mortals could take Lingwei Pills, but this child was too young, so Xia Yunzhao did not dare give him too much.
The pill dissolved into a warm current the moment it entered his mouth. The child, who had not been seriously harmed to begin with, visibly regained color. He froze, his face crumpled, and then he began wailing even louder.
This time, he was crying because of the bitterness. The clean, bitter medicinal flavor of a Lingwei Pill was unpleasant enough for an adult, never mind a child with sensitive taste buds.
Xia Yunzhao held back his laughter and handed the child to his parents, who had hurried over. The mother immediately tried to kneel before him, but Xia Yunzhao had anticipated it. He flicked a finger, and she found herself unable to bend her knees. “No need, no need. Really, there’s no need. It was nothing.”
Unable to kneel, the mother could only stand there with red-rimmed eyes. “It may have been nothing to you, but to us, you saved the life of our entire family!”
The surrounding villagers did not dare speak either. Although they had been frantic to rescue the child, they had also seen the two cultivators jump directly from the cliff. Without these two Revered Ones, the child might have drowned before the villagers ever reached him.
Seeing how nervous everyone was, Xia Yunzhao took another two steps backward. “Really, it’s fine. The child is so young. Anyone who saw him would have pulled him out. All right, since he’s safe, I’ll just…”
Before he could finish, the child’s mother gritted her teeth. “Even if you won’t accept a kowtow, you must at least accept a gift of thanks! I’ll bring you some fresh fruits and vegetables. We grew them ourselves. Take them home and enjoy them.”
The child’s father nodded furiously from behind her. “Yes, yes. Please try some.”
Xia Yunzhao glanced back at Shang Shuangze and thought for a moment. “Then… I’ll gladly accept.”
The moment he agreed, all the villagers relaxed. The people in this village were simple and rarely interacted with outsiders, so they did not have many complicated thoughts. They were certainly afraid of cultivators, but they were even more stubborn about properly repaying someone who had saved a life.
The parents hurried away to prepare the gift, while other villagers quietly slipped off, intending to help.
Xia Yunzhao was afraid they would feel uncomfortable if he wandered around, so he simply pulled Shang Shuangze over to sit on a rock beside the pond.
Before long, the village teacher arrived and respectfully bowed to the two of them. The village chief followed behind him. Presumably, the chief was worried that he was not good with words and had therefore brought an educated man along.
Xia Yunzhao remained gentle and friendly while speaking with the teacher. The villagers saw his attitude and realized he was not displeased, allowing them to relax a little more.
Xia Yunzhao himself secretly relaxed too. Having everyone treat him this way was stressful, all right? He did not even dare whisper privately to Shang Shuangze.
He chatted idly with the teacher. “Your village is so close to Liancui Mountain. Has anyone here ever become a cultivator?”
The teacher smiled. “Revered One may not know, but our village consists of mountain guardians. None of us can cultivate.”
Xia Yunzhao froze. “Your village is a Mountain Guardian Village too? I thought there was only one.”
The teacher said, “You jest. Liancui Mountain is enormous. How could one village guard the entire thing? According to what our ancestors passed down, there were once eighteen Mountain Guardian Villages around Liancui Mountain. Unfortunately, perhaps only seven or eight still remain today.”
“I see…” Xia Yunzhao had learned something new again. “What do mountain guardians actually do? And why can’t you cultivate?”
The teacher thought about it. “We cannot cultivate because we possess no spirit roots. That is inherited through our bloodline, and there is no solution. As for what we must do… there is not really much. We record changes in Liancui Mountain and learn knowledge passed down orally from generation to generation. For example, it is true that the Mist-Barrier Period occurs approximately once every hundred years, but the last few have all arrived earlier than expected. This year’s Mist-Barrier Period came only ninety-eight years after the previous one. Yet the barrier itself appeared later…”
The teacher spoke earnestly, and Xia Yunzhao listened just as seriously. Eventually the teacher’s enthusiasm took over completely, and he began teaching Xia Yunzhao how many stages the Mist-Barrier Period had, how to determine when each stage began and ended, and so on. There was no rule forbidding this knowledge from being taught to outsiders. It was simply that cultivators had never bothered asking before.
As expected of a Mountain Guardian Village, they understood the Mist-Barrier Period better than cultivators themselves. In all of Qingxi City, perhaps only the Fang family possessed comparable knowledge.
One taught while the other learned, and after chatting for a long time, their forms of address somehow changed from “Revered One” and “Teacher” to “Second Brother Li” and “Xiao Xia.”
Shang Shuangze beside them: “…”
The teacher’s name was Li Jinxing, and he was the second son in his family. Calling him Second Brother Li was perfectly reasonable. He was more than ten years older than Xiao Xia.
By the end of their conversation, Li Jinxing invited Xia Yunzhao to visit his home, and Xia Yunzhao agreed immediately. He dragged Shang Shuangze along to visit his newly made friend and even took out two spirit herbs as a visiting gift.
The villagers were dumbfounded. Never mind that they rarely saw cultivators. Even adding together all the encounters of their ancestors, none had ever met a cultivator this approachable. Weren’t cultivators supposed to be aloof and high above ordinary people? How could there be someone so down-to-earth that he could actually be invited home for a meal?
The parents of the child who had fallen into the water finished preparing their gift and came looking for Xia Yunzhao, only to find him gone. After asking around, they heard he had gone to Teacher Li’s house to eat. After thinking briefly, they simply carried their gift there. They had brought fresh fruit, fish, and meat anyway, so it could all be cooked and served to their two benefactors.
Then the news spread from one person to ten and ten to a hundred. Soon the entire village knew that the cultivators who had saved the child were guests at Teacher Li’s home. More villagers began bringing food from their own homes.
The villagers had no idea what cultivators liked to eat, but they all wanted to contribute something and make the two Revered Ones happy.
There was far too much food for Teacher Li’s family, Xia Yunzhao, and Shang Shuangze to finish, so after asking Li Jinxing’s permission, Xia Yunzhao simply invited the villagers bringing vegetables and meat to stay and eat too.
By the time Xia Yunzhao realized what had happened, it was already evening. Several banquet tables had been set up in Li Jinxing’s large courtyard, and the entire village had gathered to drink, eat, and chat amid lively noise.
A half-grown boy beside Xia Yunzhao tugged at him. “Brother Xiao Xia, keep telling us! You ran into Spined Porcupines today, and then what happened? Did you and Revered One Shang kill them all?!”
“Obviously!” A little girl shouted from the other side. “Brother Xiao Xia and Revered One Shang are so strong. Forget a few Spined Porcupines, even if they ran into tigers, wild boars, huge dogs… they could kill all of them!”
Xia Yunzhao blinked, then leaned close to Shang Shuangze’s ear. “How did things develop into this?”
Shang Shuangze slowly drank his tea. The moment you leaped off that mountaintop, I knew this would happen.
When the two children saw Xia Yunzhao was not answering, they both came to tug on him. “Brother Xiao Xia, talk! Did you kill all the Spined Porcupines? Did you sell them? How much money can a Spined Porcupine sell for?”
“All right, all right.” Xia Yunzhao could do nothing against children. “Sit properly, and I’ll tell you…”
The gathering continued until the moon reached the middle of the sky, and only then did everyone finally disperse.
Xia Yunzhao was too lazy to climb by himself, so he let Shang Shuangze pull him up the mountain. Holding a wine jar in his arms, he tipped back his head and drank. “Refreshing!” Then he tried to make Shang Shuangze drink too.
The wine was rice wine brewed by an older woman in the village. When she heard that Xia Yunzhao liked it, she happily found the largest jar she owned and filled it to the brim for him.
Ordinary wine like this barely affected him. His excitement now came purely from happiness.
Some people were simply like that. Seeing other people living well made them happy too.
Unable to refuse him, Shang Shuangze lowered his head and took a sip of the wine. The sweet fragrance of rice wine floated in the air as he steadied Xia Yunzhao’s back and guided him up the mountain.
The mountain path was bright beneath the full moon, whose light shone over every living creature in the night.
*
Early the next morning, after spending an entire evening in high spirits, Xiao Xia got up early and went gathering.
He had always wanted to learn every pill recipe contained in Ten Basic Pill Recipes, and collecting the ingredients was a major undertaking.
After last night, however, the pill he most wanted to learn was the Clearheart Pill.
“Second Brother Li said yesterday that the Mist-Barrier Period has five stages. The first three are the same every cycle: Spirit-Nurturing, Heart-Illusion, and Astral-Wind. Spirit-Nurturing means the spiritual energy inside the mist increases, spirit herbs grow faster, rare spirit herbs appear, and sometimes mutations occur. The number of slaughter beasts increases too. That’s the stage immediately after the Mist-Barrier Period begins.”
“The second stage is Heart-Illusion. The mist turns pale gray, and anyone inside it has their distracting thoughts magnified. People become restless and agitated and are more likely to suffer qi deviation. That’s the stage coming next. As for the Astral-Wind stage, astral winds randomly appear inside the mist. Those winds are freezing and bone-eroding, but they only affect cultivators. If your body isn’t strong enough, you can easily be torn apart. The final two stages differ every Mist-Barrier Period and follow no fixed pattern.” Xia Yunzhao continued, “We can ignore the Astral-Wind stage for now, but Heart-Illusion is probably coming soon. We need to prepare plenty of Clearheart Pills.”
Shang Shuangze had been present last night and naturally heard everything Li Jinxing said, but he still quietly listened as Xia Yunzhao repeated it. “The main ingredient of a Clearheart Pill is Clearheart Flower. We may have to travel farther to find some.”
Xia Yunzhao nodded. Both of them knew that the Fang family had gone mad some time ago and destroyed every spirit herb they could find that cleared the heart or calmed the soul. If the two wanted to find any now, they would naturally need to travel farther, beyond the Fang family’s sphere of influence.
Sure enough, they found no Clearheart Flowers along the way. However, with the Spirit-Seeking Compass in hand, they discovered plenty of other spirit herbs. Among them were several Ghost-Face Lantern Mushrooms, which were likewise Level-Two spirit plants.
Those things looked hideous, like ghostly faces pressed against the ground. Xia Yunzhao still had no idea what they were useful for and possessed no relevant pill recipe… but whenever he saw one, he could not resist gathering it. It was a Level-Two spirit plant, after all.
For the first time, Xia Yunzhao experienced the suffering that came with too much harvest.
Suddenly, his nose twitched. “Shang Shuangze, do you smell bamboo? I think I can hear wind blowing through a bamboo forest too. Right?”
Shang Shuangze’s senses were sharper than his. He nodded. “Indeed.”
“Great!” Xia Yunzhao brightened. “It must be Thousand-Jointed Bamboo! Hurry, I finally found a Thousand-Jointed Bamboo forest!”
Shang Shuangze watched helplessly as he abandoned a half-dug Ghost-Face Lantern Mushroom on the ground, shook his head, and finished digging it up for him.
Xia Yunzhao ran quickly ahead. After circling a hillside, he indeed found a vast grove of Thousand-Jointed Bamboo below.
He cheered and rushed toward it, only to spot someone’s back. The person looked up and turned out to be an acquaintance: Xu Ziyu!
The moment Xu Ziyu saw him, his expression changed. He threw down the bamboo in his hand. “Since you’re here, dig it yourself!”
Xia Yunzhao looked surprised. “Huh? You were digging it for me?”
Xu Ziyu refused to admit it. “Who was digging it for you? I came out to gather medicine. This was just on the way!”
“On the way is fine too! You even remembered that I need Thousand-Jointed Bamboo, while I don’t know what spirit herbs you need.” Xia Yunzhao picked up the bamboo Xu Ziyu had thrown away and placed it into his storage pouch. “Tell me what you need. When I go gathering in the future, I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
Xu Ziyu looked at him and seemed about to ask something, but then Shang Shuangze slowly caught up and stopped behind Xia Yunzhao. Xu Ziyu curled his lip. “What could I possibly lack? I’m a pill cultivator. Whatever I want, I have.”
Xia Yunzhao: …
He sighed heavily. They were both pill cultivators. Why was this guy so rich?
Still, it did not matter. He was rich now too! The pills and magical artifacts he had sold at the underground market, the slaughter-beast corpses sold at the information shop, and the reward Shang Shuangze had earned by being hired, supposedly, to kill the one-eyed cultivator… altogether, they had made nearly three hundred thousand spirit pearls.
Then, after Xia Yunzhao’s diligent cultivation lately, that amount had rapidly fallen to a little over two hundred thousand… What did that prove? It was not that he earned too little. He simply spent too much!
Seeing Xia Yunzhao sigh, Xu Ziyu’s expression changed again. “What’s wrong with you? You’re out of money? You’re a pill cultivator and you can still be poor?” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Don’t tell me you spent all your money on this sword cultivator. I’m telling you, pill cultivators need to treat themselves better. These sword cultivators and spell cultivators might look like they’re running around serving you right now, but who knows when they’ll suddenly turn around and disappear? None of them are reliable!” He paused, then added, “Even if you’re Dao companions, that still applies!”
Xia Yunzhao: “…”
He waved his hands. “No, no, it’s not what you think.” Looking utterly world-weary, he said, “I spent all the money I earned on myself…” Even the money Shang Shuangze earned was spent by him, since Shang Shuangze could not spend money even when he wanted to.
He had calculated before that one hundred thousand spirit pearls really was enough to cultivate all the way to Foundation Establishment. But besides his cultivation level, he had to refine pills, artifacts, cultivate body techniques, train the Earthfire Art… and now he had added the Low-Tier Body-Tempering Essentials and Little Cloud Rain. When everything was counted together, even one million spirit pearls would not be enough!
Inside his robe, the creature that had been asleep for days seemed to wake up and shifted.
Expressionlessly, Xia Yunzhao stuffed it back down. Right. He was also raising a round-bellied bronze pig.