Essence Absorption and Qi Intake Art
Watching his Gu insects cultivate so diligently, Jiang Yiming felt the itch to do the same. He sat cross-legged and joined them in cultivation.
The "Essence Absorption and Qi Intake Art" he had just obtained could refine the Gu Essential Essence accumulated in his sea of qi. This was his method of cultivation.
He had refined Gu so many times that a vast amount of Gu Essential Essence had entered his sea of qi. Refining it would take time.
He sat until daybreak, but had refined less than a tenth of it.
Although he had only refined that little bit of Gu Essence, he still felt a slight change in his body.
He threw a casual punch and heard it whistle through the air. A casual kick shattered a bed plank.
"My strength and speed have both increased a little, but the effect doesn't seem that obvious... Why?"
Puzzled, he threw a few more punches and discovered that whenever he swung his fist, most of the Gu Essence in his sea of qi remained unmoved. Only a tiny amount drifted out and flowed into his meridians.
"So it's because I don't know how to mobilize Gu Essence."
"If I can find a way to use Gu Essence, I believe my strength will increase a lot. If I run into a leopard like that again, I'll be able to take it down barehanded!"
With the bed, table and chairs all gone, the room had suddenly become much more spacious. On a whim, Jiang Yiming started throwing wild punches.
When he was done, he changed his clothes and left the residential complex.
At a breakfast shop, Jiang Yiming bought a large bowl of noodles and eight steamed buns.
The buns were small, so he popped them into his mouth whole, then gulped down the soup.
A little girl beside him was frightened by the way he ate and kept edging closer to her mother.
Just then, two men behind him began talking.
"There's been one piece of news after another these past two days! Yesterday, a teenager beat a leopard to death, and today a pork processing plant got busted, the whole lot of them."
"I saw today's news too. We really have to thank our police for intercepting more than ten tons of diseased pork!"
Jiang Yiming had just swallowed a steamed bun when the conversation behind him caught his attention.
He checked his phone, and sure enough, there it was in the local news.
"On the evening of July 26, the city's food safety department successfully investigated and shut down a pork processing plant in the southern industrial park. Eighteen tons of meat from pigs that had died of disease were seized... The plant has been completely sealed off... The three people involved could face sentences of between three and seven years in prison..."
After skimming the report, Jiang Yiming put away his phone and continued shoveling down his noodles.
He was happy that Fatty Hu had been sentenced.
He should have smiled to show it, at least a little. Strangely, though, ever since he had become able to refine Gu Essence, all his attention had been drawn to the path of Gu cultivation!
By comparison, refining a Yellow Rank Gu insect now would make him happier than knowing Fatty Hu was going to prison.
News about Gu masters interested him far more than news about ordinary people.
If he didn't still have a promise to keep, Jiang Yiming reckoned he wouldn't stay here any longer. He would go to remote Xiangxi to search for the mysteries of Gu.
Take a man's money, and rid him of his troubles. Now that I have a certain amount of strength, it's time to keep my promise and avenge the uncle who died!
After lunch, Jiang Yiming went to Rainbow Shopping Mall to familiarize himself with the place.
As soon as he entered, a cool breeze from the air conditioning hit him in the face and perked him up.
There was a large supermarket in the basement. The first floor mainly sold affordable shoes, the second sold women's clothing, and the third sold men's clothing... The entire mall was laid out in good order.
The mall had a decent number of visitors, with people strolling along almost every aisle.
Whether adults or children, beautiful women or ugly men, their attention was fixed on the dazzling array of merchandise.
Jiang Yiming was different from them. He paid attention to only one thing—the surveillance network!
That was because his main means were his Gu insects, and Gu insects couldn't stand the light of day. He couldn't let anyone discover them! So he had to map out the surveillance layout of the entire building!
After spending over two hours working out the mall's surveillance layout, he went to the basement supermarket and bought five jin of duck intestines.
Leaving the mall, he hung the duck intestines on either side of his bicycle's handlebars, climbed onto the seat and began pedaling hard.
The duck intestines swayed from the handlebars, and before long he arrived at the foot of the mountain.
After hiding his bicycle, Jiang Yiming carried the duck intestines up the mountain beneath the blazing sun.
He picked a few nearby spots, dug shallow holes and buried the duck intestines in separate places, marking each one with a branch.
"I've only ever set traps for eels and shrimp before. This is my first time setting traps for venomous creatures. Hope I catch something!"
Once he had finished setting everything up, Jiang Yiming didn't go back down the mountain. Instead, he found a shady, breezy spot, sat cross-legged on a rock and began cultivating the Essence Absorption and Qi Intake Art.
Bit by bit, he converted the Gu Essential Essence in his sea of qi into his own Gu Essence.
Gradually, a thin layer of white mist formed around his body, blocking the mosquitoes and other insects that flew toward him and keeping them from getting close.
After an unknown length of time, a tenth of the Gu Essential Essence in his sea of qi had been refined.
He opened his eyes to find that the sky had already gone dark.
"No wonder books always say cultivation knows no passing years. It felt like I just closed my eyes and opened them again. I didn't expect it to be dark already."
Jiang Yiming stood up. Despite sitting cross-legged for so long, his legs weren't numb in the slightest, and his steps were still light.
That was the benefit of Gu Essence automatically nourishing his meridians.
He patted the dust off his pants, switched on his phone's flashlight and began looking for the markers he had left earlier.
He soon found the first one. Picking up the branch on the ground, he used it to pry open the soil.
The remains of the duck intestines were covered in centipedes. A rough count showed more than thirty of them!
Before venomous creatures evolved into Gu insects, they didn't eat much, so plenty of duck intestines remained.
After collecting all the centipedes, Jiang Yiming covered the remaining duck intestines back up and went looking for the next marker. This time, the catch was smaller, with only a little over twenty centipedes.
Like a fisherman, he happily enjoyed the pleasure of the harvest in the mountains.
After checking all the traps, he had caught over 150 centipedes and more than 110 scorpions in total. Along the way, he had also caught over 300 spiders among the branches, as well as five venomous snakes and eight toads in the dead leaves on the ground.
All told, today's catch was actually smaller than yesterday's!
Using food to lure venomous creatures into traps seemed to have major limitations. The five kinds of Gu insects all had different habits, so one kind of food could lure only one kind.
Moreover, the mountain was too small. If he kept catching Gu, there would only be fewer and fewer Gu insects.
"Looks like it's about time to change locations. I really need to go to a large mountain range!"
Around midnight, Jiang Yiming headed down the mountain in disappointment. He didn't go home, instead hiding directly in an alley beside Rainbow Shopping Mall. There were no surveillance cameras anywhere nearby.
After making sure no one was around, he released the Red Tail Centipede, which burrowed underground.
It had to be said that although Red Tail's talent for cultivation wasn't much, the Earth Escape skill it had awakened truly counted as a divine skill!
Next, it was time for its solo performance.
First, more than a dozen surveillance cameras on the first floor suddenly lost power for no apparent reason. Immediately afterward, the cameras in the basement supermarket also broke down inexplicably. Finally, all the cameras around the outside of the mall were cleared away as well.
Red Tail took only half an hour to do all that.
"With the surveillance gone, I can finally do whatever I want!"
After muttering to himself, Jiang Yiming walked toward Rainbow Shopping Mall, one step at a time.