That Boar in the Mountains, Do You Still Remember Me?

It was not until the fifth batch that all the ingredients were exhausted.

He had failed to produce a single Qi-Replenishing Pill.

The ingredients for five batches of Qi-Replenishing Pills were the limit of what the Black Tiger Gang could currently gather.

Without Spiritual Qi in the surroundings, the things he refined could at most temper Qi and Blood. They could not truly replenish what a Qi Refining cultivator expended.

Body Tempering Pills were already the limit.

Anything beyond that required more than technique could make up for.

Lu Ping put the pill back on the porcelain plate and let out a soft breath.

"Just as I thought. This place can't support a cultivator."

Still unwilling to give up, Lu Ping tried for another two days.

Here, Body Tempering Pills were the most he could consistently refine.

If he forced the refinement of a Qi-Replenishing Pill, its medicinal power would dissipate into the world before it could take shape.

Lu Ping could use his spiritual power to make up part of the shortfall, but that was the same as feeding his own cultivation into the Pill Furnace.

The losses went all the way to Grandma's house.

Lu Ping abandoned all thought of lying low and cultivating in the Black Tiger Gang.

Without Qi-Replenishing Pills and Spirit Stones to replenish him, he could not even sustain his daily cultivation.

That night, Lu Ping called Hu Dayou to the rear courtyard.

Lu Ping casually arranged ten Body Tempering Pills on a porcelain plate on the table, pointed to one of them, and said to Hu Dayou,

"Eat it."

Hu Dayou froze, unable to react for a moment.

"Master Lu, this is..."

Lu Ping thought nothing of it and said calmly,

"It's a Body Tempering Pill, for you."

Hu Dayou's breath caught.

Of course he knew about Body Tempering Pills.

The former Gang Leader had relied on them to advance to the Late Body Tempering Realm.

Hu Dayou looked at the ten pills and swallowed, but did not reach for them.

What virtue or ability did he, Hu Dayou, have to deserve such treasures?

Lu Ping glanced at him.

"What, afraid it's poisoned?"

Hu Dayou dropped to his knees with a thud.

"I wouldn't dare!"

Hu Dayou cupped a Body Tempering Pill in both hands and carefully placed it in his mouth, as though he were holding an ancestral tablet.

The pill went down. A few breaths later, Hu Dayou's face flushed red.

A current of heat burst from his lower abdomen and surged through all his limbs and bones.

Half an hour later, he sat slumped on the ground, gasping for breath.

He had broken through to the Middle Stage of the Body Tempering Realm!

Lu Ping pointed to the nine remaining Body Tempering Pills and said,

"These are enough to get you to the Late Stage."

Hu Dayou's lips trembled, but he could not get a word out.

He, Hu Dayou, had finally received a fortuitous opportunity.

Hu Dayou fell to his knees again, his forehead striking the ground.

"I, Hu Dayou, am willing to acknowledge you as my master. From this day forth, I'll go through mountains of blades and seas of fire for you, without regret in life or death."

Lu Ping looked at him, his expression unchanged.

"Get up. I don't need that."

Hu Dayou obediently stood, but the way he addressed Lu Ping had already changed.

"Yes, my lord."

Lu Ping frowned slightly. Although he had lived two lives in this world in the simulations, where the hierarchy was rigid and the strong preyed on the weak as a matter of course,

Lu Ping still wished to retain that trace of compassion he had brought from Blue Star.

"If you truly mean it, then keep the people of the Black Tiger Gang alive."

Hu Dayou was stunned again. His lord had only ever said this one thing, and it was no empty platitude.

"Yes, my lord."

Hu Dayou kowtowed again.

Lu Ping did not give Uncle Sun any Body Tempering Pills.

Uncle Sun's Qi and Blood had waned, and Body Tempering Pills were no different from poison to him.

Lu Ping refined some ordinary pills to nourish his body.

A month later, Lu Ping quietly left the Black Tiger Gang with a bundle on his back.

The bundle contained banknotes worth more than ten thousand taels of silver, dozens of pieces of Mineral Essence, and dozens of hundred-year-old herbs.

There was also a copy of "Thousand-Hand Guanyin," a short blade, twelve flying knives, and several packets of poison.

On top of that, there was a Demonic Spirit Stone, a strange token, and an Ascension Token from the Greenwood Sect, one of each.

When Lu Ping left the Black Tiger Gang, he did not alert anyone.

In the rear courtyard, Hu Dayou knelt in the shadows, his forehead pressed to the ground, not daring to raise it for a long time.

Uncle Sun stood quietly, watching the direction Lu Ping had gone.

His leg injury had nearly healed, and his complexion was much better than it had been in the mine.

Lu Ping plunged into the mountains to the north.

As soon as he entered the forest, Lu Ping sensed a difference.

The mountain breeze carried a faint trace of Spiritual Qi.

The place where the Black Tiger Gang was based did not even count as part of the Eight Hundred Borderlands; it was merely the Savage Wilderness Expanse.

The Greenwood Sect's mountain gate, however, lay within the Eight Hundred Borderlands.

Only one boundary separated them, yet the concentration of Spiritual Qi was different.

Lu Ping circulated the Greenwood Art, and Spiritual Qi completed a circuit through his meridians.

There was still almost no increase, but it was a little better than at the Black Tiger Gang.

It was roughly like his bank balance at the end of the month in his previous life rising from 1.2 to 1.3 yuan.

It had gone up a little, but that tiny increase would not change his life.

Lu Ping quickly snuffed out the thought of cultivating in the mountains for a while.

"I still have to go to the Greenwood Sect."

Over the next few days, Lu Ping did not rush his journey.

He steadily intensified his practice of "Thousand-Hand Guanyin."

[Artisan Spirit activated.]

[Cost Reduction and Efficiency Improvement activated.]

The same number of repetitions produced twice the results.

The same expenditure of spiritual power yielded greater power.

On the first day, Lu Ping stood ten zhang away and threw his knives at an old tree.

Twelve flying knives shot out one after another, all embedding themselves in the trunk.

On the second day, he coated the flying knives in spiritual power.

The first knife shot out and pierced straight through the trunk, then, without losing its remaining force, embedded itself in the rock face behind it.

On the third day, Lu Ping smeared poison powder on the edges of the flying knives.

After the knives struck the trunk, the surrounding bark quickly blackened, and the residual spiritual power spread along the grain of the wood.

Lu Ping looked at the patch of blackened wood grain and nodded.

Over the following days, Lu Ping began practicing throwing knives with both hands at once.

By the seventh day, the twelve flying knives in his hands were no longer merely concealed weapons.

Spiritual power as the thread, poison powder as the edge, and technique as the track.

Once ordinary martial arts had been repackaged with a cultivator's spiritual power, they finally began to look a little like an offensive method from the cultivation world.

Lu Ping sat on a rock, lightly tossing a flying knife.

The blade flipped between his fingers, its path almost invisible.

Early on the morning of the eighth day.

Lu Ping raised his head and looked toward the far end of the slope.

A Spirit-Maned Wild Boar, nearly one zhang tall at the shoulder, slowly emerged from behind the bushes.

The boar's tusks curved outward, the mane along its back was like iron, and white vapor puffed from its nostrils.

There was even a faint flow of Spiritual Qi within its body.

It had clearly spotted Lu Ping too.

Man and boar stared silently at each other on the slope.

Lu Ping's gaze gradually grew complicated.

"It's you."

The Spirit-Maned Wild Boar pawed at the ground, sending dirt flying two zhang.

The next instant, the Spirit-Maned Wild Boar charged.

The ground shook, bushes were knocked aside, and a gust of wind carrying a rank stench rushed at him.

In the second simulation, this was the thing that had chased Lu Ping for half an hour.

It had snapped seven trees and nearly driven Lu Ping into a swamp to become pickled vegetables.

Now, Lu Ping stood where he was, completely motionless.

The Spirit-Maned Wild Boar charged closer and closer.

Three zhang, two zhang, one zhang.

Lu Ping raised his right hand and extended his index finger.

Spiritual power condensed into a point at his fingertip.

The Spirit-Maned Wild Boar's tusks had almost reached his chest.

Lu Ping lightly tapped his finger forward.

"Smack..."

The sound was very soft, like a tap on a tabletop.

The Spirit-Maned Wild Boar's massive body went rigid.

The next breath, its forehead split down the middle.

Spiritual power pierced its skull and shattered its brain.

The mountain beast that had once chased Lu Ping until he questioned his life crashed to the ground, dirt flying.

Lu Ping withdrew his finger.

"See?"

"People still have to make progress."

As soon as Lu Ping said it, even he thought it sounded a bit like something a boss from his previous life would say.

So he immediately shut up.

There was not much Spiritual Qi in the Spirit-Maned Wild Boar, but its flesh had been nourished to a sturdy state.

This was ready-made Spirit Cuisine and spiritual materials.

Lu Ping began skinning it, cutting up the meat, and taking its tusks.

After finishing all that, Lu Ping did not leave immediately.

He stood beside the boar's carcass and looked southwest.

There was a stretch of mountain cliffs there.

That was the direction where Jiang Mutian had met with trouble in the simulation.

The time was a year from now.

Lu Ping silently watched the cliffs.