"This is going against the heavens... No matter how much true qi you have, you can recover simply by eating grass. It seems to... defy the laws of nature?" Shen Leling looked dazed.
Yan Nu asked with a strange expression, "Didn't Elder Sister know? If not for the water talisman given by Elder Sister, I wouldn't have been cultivating this fast."
Shen Leling said with a peculiar expression, "You can't call this cultivation at all..."
Although she had taught Yan Nu to use this method, she had actually felt unsure in her heart because it defied common sense too much.
It was true that breaking and then establishing would expand one's foundation by ten percent, but a person had to honestly spend the time cultivating it back.
Yet Yan Nu directly skipped this process, instantly filling himself back up just by eating grass. A decade of cultivation was like this, a century of cultivation was like this, and even a millennium of cultivation was just like this! The effect was just as if he had genuinely spent a millennium practicing martial arts!
Would mere ordinary grass have this much energy?
Shen Leling shook her head, unable to understand, and could only tentatively assume that this heaven-defying talent was the world infusing power directly into him.
"Out!"
Shen Leling stirred a thought, and Yan Nu felt his chest vibrate as a large, cyan water talisman manifested and emerged.
Seeing this water talisman, she almost drooled and hurriedly reached out to tap it.
Yi-yi-yi-yi... The instant rush of pleasure made Shen Leling feel as though she were about to float away.
With a soft splash, she transformed into a large gushing fountain that surged into the sky, churning up wave after wave of white, sparkling clear ripples.
She had actually been unable to hold back and revealed her true form.
Mist billowed before Yan Nu, and the splashes of water overlapped endlessly, but a single line of water remained connected to his chest, linking with the water talisman.
The water talisman slowly shrank, and its color grew paler and paler, clearly returning to its origin.
After a long while, Shen Leling finally condensed back into human form and withdrew her finger.
"Cackle-cackle, hee-hee-hee!" Shen Leling laughed happily, cast a lingering glance at the water talisman, and waved her hand to let it sink back into Yan Nu's body.
"What are you laughing at?" Yan Nu felt Shen Leling's gaze was hair-raising.
Shen Leling stared at him with burning eyes. "This is a water talisman refined from my life source. It is now brimming with qi, and can refine out twenty thousand units of magical power!"
"Moreover, the energy you breed is definitely more than just this. To ensure your true qi could be exhausted quickly, a great deal of it was certainly wasted."
"Twenty thousand units?" Yan Nu tilted his head.
Shen Leling said with a trembling voice, "Do you know what this means? I cultivated for twenty years just to reach a baseline of two hundred and fifty units of cultivation."
"How much is a unit?" Yan Nu asked.
Shen Leling explained, "Magical power condenses out of the immortal bones unit by unit. When I scatter beans to make soldiers, creating a single vine armor soldier only consumes one unit of magical power! Many simple little tricks don't even use a single unit."
Yan Nu's mouth widened. "If Elder Sister absorbs the water talisman, wouldn't you be able to wave your hand and create an army of twenty thousand?"
Shen Leling knocked him on the head. "You can't calculate it like that. When I say my cultivation is two hundred and fifty units, I mean my upper limit of magical power. Over these past twenty years, counting the magical power I've recovered, I've refined far more than just two hundred and fifty units."
"Only the magical power that has passed through the immortal bone condensation belongs to me."
"What's inside the water talisman is qi; I've merely taken it without refining it yet. Hmm, how should I put it? Right now, I'm equivalent to having eaten a vitality replenishing spirit pill. As long as I use magical power, it can quickly replenish my consumption for me."
"Not only that, but continuous refinement can also increase my cultivation. This is much faster than bitterly refining the sun and moon essence, and it skips a lot of steps."
Yan Nu was overjoyed. "Doesn't this mean I'm being used like an alchemy pill to refine for you? I can continuously replenish vitality for Elder Sister."
Shen Leling put her hands behind her back and paced around Yan Nu, sizing him up. "Yes... You're like my magical power source. With you around, it's practically impossible for my magical power to ever be exhausted."
"I believe that legend now. You really are an extremely terrifying heavenly material and earth treasure..."
As she spoke, she felt somewhat depressed. "But you must never let it burst the talisman. This water talisman is one-third of my origin. Once it explodes, it's not something absorbing a few sources can compensate for. Even if I don't die, I'll be crippled."
"Do you know why I pulled on the water talisman, interrupted your cultivation, and made you come find me in a hurry?"
"It was precisely because I felt like the water talisman was on the verge of exploding..."
"Ah?" Yan Nu secretly rejoiced that he had been obedient and immediately stopped his cultivation the moment the water talisman moved; otherwise, he might have killed Shen Leling.
"One-third you say... That means Elder Sister can store a maximum of sixty thousand units? The qi would become so abundant that there's nowhere left to put it, right?"
Shen Leling shook her head in astonishment. "That's not it... I can keep storing it because I have demon bones!"
"There is a method of gathering and ingesting in this world. That path only requires one to constantly eat pills, refine the medicinal efficacy, and accumulate daoxing; one can become an immortal sooner or later. Legend has it that there is a Nine Revolutions Golden Core, and finishing one is practically waiting around to become an immortal."
"The reason lies in the fact that when you consume such qi-rich items, you don't have to worry at all about bursting yourself. Both immortal bones and demon bones can store qi infinitely."
"Even mortals can take pills as long as they have immortal bones. For instance, the Five-Stone Powder frequently consumed by scholars—those with immortal bones take it to build a foundation, while those without immortal bones take it purely to feign refinement..."
"The qi in pills and the sun and moon essence first enters the immortal bones, and what the practitioner must do is condense it out, bring it into the sea of qi to form a qi vortex, and subsequently form it into a seed that grows into a mystical flower."
"The water talisman inside your body is equivalent to a part of my main body that lacks a demon bone, so of course it has a limit. Thank goodness I possess spiritual elegance; if it were any ordinary talisman, magical instrument, or the like, it would have exploded long ago!"
Yan Nu nodded in sudden enlightenment. "I understand. Every time the water talisman accumulates two thousand units, it needs to be vented, waiting for Elder Sister to suck away the qi."
Shen Leling said somewhat bitterly, "Yes, it can only be this way... You must also pay attention to your own true qi..."
"You don't have an immortal bone. Even if your true qi can grow infinitely, I'm afraid you can't store it infinitely either. Be careful or you'll explode and die."
Yan Nu hurriedly asked, "Then what is my limit?"
Shen Leling thought for a moment and shook her head. "Uh... I don't know either. After all, I've never heard of anyone practicing true qi to such an extent..."
"In short, once you feel your true qi expanding and your body feeling like it's going to burst, it means you've reached your limit. You must never break and then establish again."
Yan Nu nodded immediately, indicating that he would pay attention at all times.
"What a pity, what a pity... Why don't you have an immortal bone..." Shen Leling let out a long sigh, melancholy rising in her heart.
Without an immortal bone, one could not cultivate immortality, and was destined never to attain longevity. Even with heaven-defying talent, one would be nothing more than a legend of a single lifetime.
One fine day, she would watch Yan Nu fade away amidst the passing years.
To the point that Shen Leling walked all the way to the dog demon's cave in silence.
The more heaven-defying Yan Nu's talent was, the more wasteful she felt it was.
"Elder Sister, did you actually plan to absorb this large yellow dog all along? Were you just scaring Huang Banyun?" Yan Nu suddenly asked, interrupting her train of thought.
It turned out that seeing Shen Leling navigate the familiar path to the cave and first use a water curtain to block another exit from the outside, Yan Nu realized that Shen Leling had long wanted to make a move on this large yellow dog.
"Heh." Shen Leling waved her hand and scattered a handful of beans, quickly creating thirty vine armor soldiers to enter the cave and clear the way.
Then she said indifferently, "Nonsense, otherwise why would you need to save that Huang Banyun? If I wanted his life, wouldn't I have absorbed him on the way up the mountain?"
"I am a Qi Refiner, and my cultivation only requires absorbing the sun and moon essence; I am not dependent on feeding, and I only occasionally deal with a few as a snack."
"I discovered that this Huang Banyun would meet his end at the hands of fierce dogs, yet I didn't intervene... I was simply waiting for you to save him, and even save him again and again... That way he can become our helper, and if we can fight our way back to the Zhang Family later, he will definitely come in handy."
Yan Nu asked, "Aren't you afraid of offending the dog demons anymore?"
He felt Shen Leling's thoughts were too complicated, changing her tune every second.
When she looked cheerful, she would suddenly strike to kill. When she looked like she wanted to fight and kill, she actually didn't want to kill at all.
Shen Leling explained to him with a headache, "Since this dog demon has entrenched itself here for many years, it must have been tacitly approved by the surrounding powerful clans, and it probably has some friendly relations. Whether we forge a feud... Heh, I'm afraid it's all the same anyway."
As she spoke, her eyes fixed on Yan Nu and she revealed a smile. "Fortunately, though, I picked up a treasure."
Yan Nu tilted his head and said, "Then why did Elder Sister have to coerce Banyun? Clearly you didn't want to kill him, yet you had to take such a huge detour and say it was for my sake?"
"Grandpa said to treat people with sincerity. Banyun wants nothing more than to avenge his father, and if we help him, he will help us..."
Shen Leling gave a cold laugh. "It's precisely because his heart is filled with revenge that he will never be willing to die at my hands."
"He knows he is unable to resist and can only pin his hopes on you being able to stop me."
"If he truly harbored a death wish, then when I finally spared him, he should have felt like a survivor of a catastrophe, overflowing with gratitude... Instead of worrying, growing even more nervous, and feeling apprehensive because I planted a water bead in him..."
"In this world, sometimes benefactors are more reliable than friends!"
"He knows that you saved him once, so you will save him a second time."
"However, the Mystical Stage possesses Spiritually Awakened Clear Vision; mortals needn't even think about lying in front of me. He thought he could just put on an act and I wouldn't notice... Heh, I don't like people with deep scheming minds."
Yan Nu pondered, "Is that so? What's wrong with him wanting to avenge his father? What's wrong with him wanting to stay alive? I can see he cares deeply for that monkey... Even if he hadn't said those things, I didn't want him to die in the first place."
Shen Leling smiled playfully. "He truly cherishes that monkey, but so what? What kind of person he is, I don't care..."
"If I had confessed my identity to him from the start, knowing that I am a monster the Zhang Family wants to get rid of, he certainly wouldn't have cooperated. No matter what I said, he would have suspected me by three parts!"
"Since that's the case, it's better to use both carrots and sticks from the start. I knew you would definitely save him, so I played the villain."
"I want him to feel like a survivor of a catastrophe, I want him to rely on you and remember that without you... he would have died twice over!"
"From then on he can only trust you. It doesn't matter if he hates me; although he'll repel the things I say, he won't dare not listen."
"Only thus can he be of use!"
Yan Nu curled his lips, finally understanding Shen Leling's intentions.
"Why must you always go about things this way, playing with other people? Can't you just be a little more sincere?"
Shen Leling shook her head. "Yan Nu, I've deceived many people. It's precisely because I've seen too much deceitful human nature in this world that I'm unwilling to trust human beings."
Yan Nu said in shock, "Ah? You don't even trust me?"
Shen Leling rolled her eyes. "You're too simple-minded to seem human..."
Yan Nu became somewhat anxious. "You can trust me!"
"I..." Shen Leling's lips quivered slightly. Seeing that he hadn't caught her drift, she had no choice but to say it bluntly, "Of course I trust you. You never lie."
Yan Nu let out an "oh," and then furrowed his brow in distress. "Then how am I supposed to know which of your words are true and which are false?"
"You don't need to puzzle it out. From now on, you just need to remember that whenever it's just the two of us, everything I say is heartfelt," Shen Leling said earnestly.
Yan Nu finally smiled. "That's easy. I'll remember it."
"Aren't you afraid that this sentence of mine is also false? After all, I'm a master deceiver," Shen Leling said sideways.
Yan Nu actually said unconcernedly, "I'm not afraid. I believe you."
"Why?" Shen Leling frowned instead, not expecting that after saying so much, Yan Nu still hadn't grasped the sinister nature of human hearts.
Yet Yan Nu countered, "Doesn't Elder Sister hope that I believe you?"
"..." Shen Leling was left speechless.
Then she revealed a helpless expression. "Remember this, Yan Nu: in this world, I'm the only one you can trust. As for everyone else, you must be on guard against them harming you."
Yan Nu thought for a moment and nodded. "I know. There are definitely a lot of people who want to eat me and use me for alchemy."
Shen Leling was stunned for a moment, then smiled with delight. "Good to know. It seems everything I said went into your head."
As the two chatted and laughed, the fierce dogs in the gloomy cave grew frantic.
After Yan Nu cleared out the majority of the beast pack, there weren't many wild dogs left that could gather in the cave.
At this moment, Shen Leling cast spells to block the back door and returned to the front to scatter beans and make soldiers.
The half-demon realized that a great calamity had befallen him.
"Roar-woof-wu... Wu!" A huge dog barking sound rang out from inside the cave, carrying a distinctly severe warning tone.
Shen Leling simply treated this with utter disdain. "You're still threatening me? Are you joking!"
"Woof-woof-wu-wu-woof!" The barking grew more intense.
Shen Leling pointed a jade finger. "Go!"
The tunnel was not wide to begin with. Thirty vine armor soldiers, holding shields and spears, lined up row by row and marched in formation, directly blocking the tunnel completely.
Their expressions were rigid and numb, but their paces were neat, causing the echoes inside the cave to ring with a metallic clanging sound.
Yan Nu poked his head out from behind, following along as he watched the dense layers of wooden men advance forward with shields for protection.
A bristling forest of spears thrust forward uniformly, every single vine armor soldier executing the exact same movements.
This left the fierce wolves and wild dogs completely unable to cope. As they viciously bit down, those wooden men felt no pain or awareness whatsoever...
One could only hear the thud-thud sounds of spears entering flesh within the tunnel, which could truly be described as wolves meeting their slaughter and dogs meeting their butchery.
"Elder Sister, your bean soldiers are quite impressive," Yan Nu watched with great relish.
He had witnessed the scattering of beans into soldiers twice before. Last time he hadn't even gotten a good look before they were easily swept away and smashed to pieces by the Zhang Family. He hadn't expected that this time, the bean soldiers would act like a meat grinder, advancing ruthlessly and slaughtering a pack of beasts until they had no power to fight back.
Shen Leling put her hands behind her back. "My vine armor soldiers fear no pain, have no vital points, possess tough skin, and have the strength of oxen and horses! Ordinary third-rate martial artists can't even defeat them."
"If their numbers are large enough, formed into a battle array where orders are strictly obeyed, their might is even more apparent!"
"Mere fierce wolves and wild dogs can consume a martial artist's true qi, but when they encounter cultivators... Heh, it's completely meaningless."
Yan Nu asked curiously, "Then how come they got smashed to pieces all at once last time?"
Recalling the heavy losses she suffered last day, Shen Leling said angrily, "Last time I was unwilling to harm people and afraid of provoking the Mortal World Fire!"
"It was also my carelessness; I didn't expect the Zhang Family to keep a ghost as well."
"Ghost cultivators are naturally adept at wearing away life force, countering life-related and 'spirit puppet' type spells, and he even unleashed ghost fire... which entered the body and entangled, cutting off my life force. My wooden men quickly withered, their power greatly reduced, becoming like rotten wood and withered leaves that were easily shattered."
"But it's different now. With the qi from the water talisman, I'd like to see what other tricks that ghost has up his sleeve!"
By this time, the vine armor soldiers had cleared out the last of the fierce beasts, walking through every nook and cranny of the cave.
Finally, they discovered the large yellow dog in a narrow passage, but the passage was too cramped for the vine armor soldiers to enter. The large yellow dog shrank into the deepest part, and no one could reach it.
"Heh." Shen Leling blew out a thin, babbling stream of water that flew into the passage through the air.
Soon, Yan Nu heard the howling and roaring of the yellow dog, a sound that grew increasingly faint until it finally subsided.
Shen Leling recalled the stream of water, a satisfied look appearing on her face. "I'm going into seclusion to heal my divine soul. Yan Nu, you must cultivate as quickly as possible too."
"Quickly teach me a couple of moves," Yan Nu said impatiently.
To his surprise, Shen Leling shook her head. "What can you learn by cramming at the last minute?"
"Now that the crisis is right before our eyes, it's better to bring your advantages into play! Your true qi is already more than enough; the reason I told you to cultivate is for you to temper your body!"
"Even though you have two thousand years of true qi, you force yourself to control it so that each mobilization doesn't exceed twenty years... Even so, your combat strength is comparable to top-tier martial artists, because no one else would use up their 'entire life's cultivation' all at once the way you do."
"One can easily imagine that if you could achieve Primordial Body Tempering... coupled with the protection of my water talisman, you'd probably be able to slay cultivators..."
At this point, Shen Leling herself felt somewhat dazed, never expecting that someone she randomly picked up would be a monster capable of slaying cultivators the moment he completed Primordial Body Tempering.
"When dealing with the Zhang Family, you are my trump card!"
"This time I'll make the Zhang Family regret provoking me!"
p.s: Sorry.
Before you continue