"This talisman isn't for self-protection, it's for heart-protection. It protects your primordial spirit... uh, you don't have a primordial spirit, so it protects your soul and brain," Mr. Feng said weakly.
Shen Leling smiled. "That's right, Yan Nu, your mind has no protection whatsoever. Back at Tea Mountain Fort, a single word from me was enough to make you fall asleep."
"Many thanks!" Yan Nu grinned, immediately sitting down on the field ridges of the wilderness to cultivate.
This time, he had two talismans that consumed True Qi.
One cyan and one purple, one water and one fire, one yang and one yin.
Yan Nu channeled his True Qi into them, and in merely a single breath, he exhausted his entire store of True Qi.
So fast! This was Yan Nu's thought.
Just as he was about to look for grass, Shen Leling had already handed a handful over to him. These were cultivated by Shen Leling using grass seeds.
Along the way, Shen Leling had casually collected many grass seeds. After all, she had such a major grass-eating consumer like Yan Nu by her side, and she wanted to avoid the awkward predicament from the previous battle where there was no grass to eat.
As a 'tree-planting expert', Shen Leling was prepared to research further into spells for generating sheep's fescue.
"Hah!" After eating, Yan Nu's True Qi was bursting to the brim, reaching four thousand six hundred and eighty-seven years of cultivation.
Such a waste! This was Mr. Feng's thought.
The majority of the True Qi was not stored by the Water Fire Two Talismans, but instead dissipated and returned to nature.
Standing beside Yan Nu, both Mr. Feng and Shen Leling could feel the vital energy suddenly growing rich, and they hurriedly began to absorb it.
So incredible! This was Huang Banyun's thought.
He could not sense vital energy, but using a cultivator's natal talisman to cultivate True Qi was absurd enough in its own right.
What was even more extravagant was that Shen Leling actually let Yan Nu directly eat a handful of Dragon Fodder Grass.
"Is refining the True Qi of Peaceful Governance absolutely dependent on Dragon Fodder Grass?" Huang Banyun couldn't help asking.
"Right... Hm?" Shen Leling snapped to her senses. "Dragon Fodder Grass?"
Huang Banyun said, "It's the grass you just handed to him."
"..." Both Mr. Feng and Shen Leling stared at him in disbelief.
With a solemn expression, Huang Banyun thought he had asked something he shouldn't have.
He immediately said, "Pardon me, it was my place to keep quiet. You don't need to answer; just pretend I never asked."
"You..." Shen Leling looked at him with a deeply skeptical gaze.
Even his monkey understood, yet Huang Banyun actually still thought Dragon Fodder Grass existed?
Believing they thought he harbored evil intentions, Huang Banyun hurriedly said, "I mean no other harm, please don't misunderstand me. From now on, I won't ask about cultivation techniques anymore."
Mr. Feng, on the other hand, quickly eased up. "There are no cultivators in your family, are there?"
Huang Banyun shook his head. "None... Counting myself, I'm only the third generation of scholars."
Shen Leling also understood. Huang Banyun knew almost nothing about the cultivation world.
Therefore, there was simply no way for him to believe that a person could eat grass to practice Qi; that was simply too absurd, leaving him no choice but to believe the premise about Dragon Fodder Grass.
In this regard, Old Dog Wulong was actually the same. He knew nothing at all about Heaven-Defying Talent, and coupled with his narrow experience, he believed in the existence of Dragon Fodder Grass right up until his death...
This wasn't actually stupidity, but rather that within their cognitive framework, thinking of it as ordinary grass would be even stupider.
Regarding the grass ring, Wulong had given a whole explanation of it right up until his dying breath. Huang Banyun believed this implicitly, and likewise assumed his own monkey had picked up Dragon Fodder Grass.
"Well, young friend, there are some things you will gradually come to understand in time." Mr. Feng gave a faint smile and did not explain further.
He contentedly crowded close to Yan Nu, absorbing the vital energy radiating from him.
Shen Leling was also absorbing it, and remarked, "So when Yan Nu cultivates, this much vital energy scatters outward..."
"What a pity. Absorbing it this way yields the worst results. The dispersion speed of vital energy is far too fast; in an instant, it dilutes into the entire world."
Mr. Feng muttered, "Next time, we should get him an array formation so he can cultivate inside it, and then the array can absorb the vital energy he radiates."
Shen Leling tilted her head. "Do you know array formations? I don't, and I've heard they're very difficult."
Mr. Feng said in astonishment, "What's difficult about array formations? It's nothing more than the Qianyuan Star Array taking turns in arrangement."
"Not difficult? Don't put on such an act! Could it be that your mastery of formations is formidable?" Shen Leling recalled, "Back then I froli... when I was debating Dao with someone, that person said ordinary people shouldn't go researching array formations."
Mr. Feng laughed in spite of himself. "He was right; it's you who understood incorrectly. Learning array formations is difficult, and the greatest difficulty is simply that they are expensive."
"Expensive?" Shen Leling was somewhat bewildered.
Mr. Feng said helplessly, "Even if a grandmaster of array formations meticulously arranges an array diagram using stones, it still won't compare to a formation apprentice holding gold and placing things according to the diagram..."
"What kind of logic is that?" Shen Leling couldn't make sense of it.
Mr. Feng spread his hands. "That's just how the logic goes anyway. Why else would they say ordinary people shouldn't research array formations? You simply can't afford to use them."
"The number one array formation in the world is on Penglai Island. The number two array formation in the world is in the Imperial Tomb of the First Emperor."
"Even a Human Emperor shouldn't even dream of finding Penglai Island, and true immortals shouldn't even think about entering the Imperial Tomb of the First Emperor."
As they chatted, half an hour passed quickly.
In this half an hour, Yan Nu re-cultivated eight times, his cultivation soaring as high as nine thousand one hundred and thirty-four years.
Because he had undergone birth and destruction many times over, Emperor Tai's Cultivation Method re-practiced faster than before, though not by much.
However, not practicing it was out of the question; Emperor Tai's Cultivation Method's True Qi would not recover simply by eating grass, and without Emperor Tai's Cultivation Method, the quality of his True Qi dropped by two tiers.
"I can't do anymore, both the fire talisman and water talisman are full," Yan Nu said to Mr. Feng.
With a hand gesture from Mr. Feng, the fire talisman manifested on Yan Nu's chest. With a light touch, Mr. Feng instantly felt a thrill that sent him flying high.
"Hiss!"
"How is this any different from eating an immortal pill!" Mr. Feng was as high as could be, swallowing down two hundred sections of magic power in one go, with some still remaining inside.
Shen Leling also absorbed a wave of vital energy and said with glowing spirit, "Didn't I tell you long ago, it's the equivalent of eating an immortal pill..."
"Ugh..." After accepting the vital energy, Mr. Feng quickly reverted to a withered and listless expression.
Although the vital energy was more abundant than many medicinal pills, the exhilarating feeling lasted for only a fleeting moment, lacking the enduring nature of pills.
With dimmed eyes, Mr. Feng said, "Pity, vital energy can only replenish magic power. My foundation is damaged, and nothing short of incense and faith can mend it..."
"Do you still have descendants?" Shen Leling inquired.
Mr. Feng said with bitter resentment, "Gone... Not a single one is left. The Zhang family wiped out my entire clan."
"I was the very first to be killed, which is how I got the chance to be sacrificed into a ghost."
"And precisely because I became a ghost, Zhang Tong spared my life instead, sealing me within the bronze contract to suppress the Zhang family."
Shen Leling asked, "Judging by your exquisite mastery of Daoist techniques, you probably weren't a nameless figure in life, right? Oh, right, I keep forgetting to ask—what's your name?"
Mr. Feng carried his hands behind his back with haughty pride. "Feng Xiu, Feng Junyou!"
"When I was fifteen years old, my name shook the jianghu. At seventeen, I entered the mountains to practice the Dao, befriending countless mystic practitioners. People called me the Drunkard of Hongnong!"
Yet the scene remained silent. After a long moment, Shen Leling finally spoke, "Feng Junyou? Never heard of it."
"..." Feng Junyou's gaze turned dejected.
Huang Banyun suddenly asked, "Hongnong Commandery?"
"You know of it?" Feng Junyou hurriedly pursued the question.
Huang Banyun shook his head. "I've never heard of any aristocratic clan surnamed Feng in Hongnong Commandery."
"Alas! Having perished for only fifty years, is there already no one who remembers?" Feng Junyou looked up to the heavens with a long sigh, his expression sorrowful. "The Hongnong Feng Clan is no more in this world..."
Yan Nu patted him in comfort. "Isn't it enough that I remember you?"
"..." Feng Junyou thought to himself that this was completely useless.
He stood sorrowfully suspended in mid-air amidst the cold moonlight and clear wind, feeling only desolate.
His mournful voice was akin to a ghost's weeping: "Old drunkard of seventy years ago, no longer in the jianghu now. Alas, amid the western wind overnight, the autumn sounds blow across the ground and leave naught behind."
Unable to understand poetry, Yan Nu asked in bewilderment, "Why did the Zhang family wipe out your entire clan?"
Huang Banyun also asked, "Indeed! What kind of enmity or grievance could there be? Is there any need to wipe out a whole clan over affairs between aristocratic families? How could such behavior ever be tolerated by the scholarly community!"
Feng Junyou shook his head slightly. "Actually, I don't know... The Zhang family had no enmity with my Feng family, and they were even long-standing friends."
"Ah? Then why..." Everyone was somewhat astonished. No enmity, yet they wiped out an entire clan?
Feng Junyou lowered his head in thought. "When people want to eradicate a powerful clan, they usually eliminate all the cultivators first, and then wipe out the mortal descendants."
"Fifty years ago, while I was cultivating in the mountains, Zhang Tong came looking for me to drink. At the time, he was one realm higher than me, and coupled with the friendship between our two clans, of course I wouldn't refuse."
"As a result, as we drank and drank, he killed me... Also killed at the same time were several other cultivators from the Feng family, whose cultivation was even inferior to mine."
"After that, Zhang Tong had my family sacrifice me to become a ghost. It takes seven days for incense and faith to shape a ghost body, and by the time I woke up, the Feng family had already been exterminated, fresh blood staining the courtyards red."
"At the time, many people from the Zhang family as well as Zhang Tong were present. Seeing that I had formed, he quickly refined me into a magical artifact."
"So the whole affair, to me, was as sudden as autumn winds sweeping away fallen leaves. Before I could even collect my wits, everything was gone."
"To this day, I still don't know why my entire family was killed. Perhaps he was practicing some evil technique?"
Everyone was incensed upon hearing this; the Zhang family was far too ruthless.
First eradicating the cultivators, then slaughtering the clansmen, and even refining people into ghosts.
They had been drinking amicably right up until their deaths—this was completely taking advantage of trust to drive others to their doom.
"Perhaps precisely because there was no enmity, he was able to approach you and destroy you by means of trust..." Shen Leling murmured.
"How could they do such a thing!" Yan Nu's eyes turned bloodred.
Valuing gratitude and righteousness above all else, Huang Banyun indignantly said, "This Zhang family of Hua County is so sickeningly flagrant with human life, they're simply not human!"
He wasn't very good at cursing people; calling them 'not human' was already his heaviest vocabulary for insults...
When Huang Banyun had first met Yan Nu, the latter didn't even have any clothes on and was covered from head to toe in scars.
He had already known it was likely related to the local Zhang family. It was hardly uncommon for certain magnates to oppress the local populace and abuse servants.
He simply hadn't expected the Zhang family to break through his imagination step by step—whether it was wiping out the Feng family's entire clan or indiscriminately slaughtering commoners, they had already completely cast imperial law to the winds.
"I want to wipe out the Zhang family right now," Yan Nu said straightforwardly.
Huang Banyun was startled.
When powerful clans oppressed others and imperial law proved powerless to stop them, naturally there would also be those who couldn't stand the sight of magnates oppressing the common folk, and in a fit of rage would kill the magnates and become outcasts in the jianghu.
Huang Banyun's father was precisely such a person, to the extent that despite being a scholar well-read in books and military strategy, he could never serve as an official or general, and could only carve out a reputation in the jianghu as one of the Eight Chivalrous Heroes of Qingzhou.
Yet even so, no wandering knight had ever been heard of managing to wipe out an aristocratic family.
In the present world, it was a world of aristocratic families. Every powerful clan possessed immense entanglements: teachers, disciples, famous friends, official-circle connections, not to mention the entanglements of the cultivation world.
The only thing capable of wiping out an aristocratic family was simply another aristocratic family.
Yan Nu was merely a commoner; harboring delusions of wiping out the Zhang family was no different from going out of his way to poke a hornet's nest!
"Have you thought this through? If you wipe out a powerful clan, there will no longer be any place in this world that can hold you..." Huang Banyun looked somewhat melancholicly at that mysterious iron spear, then looked back at Yan Nu.
Yan Nu said resolutely, "I never lie."
Shen Leling chuckled. "Splendid, let's raise such a ruckus together that not even the dogs and chickens are left in peace."
Her cultivation had been ruined, and she had long since vowed to make the Zhang family regret provoking her.
As for Feng Junyou, there was no need to even mention him; he stated directly, "To annihilate the Zhang family, I am willing to die."
One demon, one ghost, and one lowly pariah—none of them had any place in the world to begin with. Everyone here was set on destroying the Zhang family, driven either by personal grievances or a sea of blood and deep hatred.
The only one who could remain aloof from the matter was Huang Banyun. Shen Leling looked toward him. "The water droplet inside your body, I can take back. If you want to leave, you may do so at any time."
Huang Banyun raised an eyebrow. "No need for further words! Yan Nu saved my life and avenged my wrongs. Since he wants to destroy the Zhang family, I will surely follow him!"
"Squeak, squeak, squeak!" cried the monkey on his shoulder.
Yan Nu grinned. "Very well, let's go wipe out the Zhang family together."
p.s.: Apologies.
Before you continue