Stealing Heavenly Secrets

After climbing onto the lowest tier of the medicine field, Li Zhi immediately came under attack from a swarm of bees.

In just one encounter, seven or eight large welts swelled up on his body.

If he hadn't quickly jumped into a nearby mud pit, those bees would have stung him to death.

And the venom in those bees was vicious—Li Zhi's face stayed swollen for three full days before the swelling went down.

That was only the first time.

Next, he was targeted by a group of fiery red ants.

They directly bit a chunk of flesh from his calf. If he hadn't reacted in time, those ants would have gnawed his leg down to the bone.

He fled outside the medicine field area and rested for a full seven days before the wound healed.

After recovering, Li Zhi chose a different direction to climb the mountain.

Having learned from his previous mistakes, he got smarter this time. He picked some herbs from the field, crushed them, and smeared the juice over his body to mask his scent from the poisonous insects and prevent them from attacking.

This tactic worked.

Li Zhi finally succeeded in reaching the second tier of the medicine field.

Along the way, when he got hungry, he ate some of the medicinal herbs from the fields.

Unlike the outside world, he was surprised to find that these herbs still contained a trace of spiritual medicine energy.

After refining those herbs using the methods of the Longevity Art, the vital energy inside his body seemed to have grown significantly, and even his recovery speed after injuries increased greatly.

But soon, Li Zhi dared not continue cultivating the Longevity Art.

He was afraid that eating those spiritual medicines would open up his Bitter Sea.

Who knew if he'd have any chance of surviving a ride if his Bitter Sea were opened?

After that, Li Zhi only practiced the Breathing Method.

The Breathing Method enhanced his own vitality, spirit, and essence—it didn't involve cultivating the Bitter Sea.

It seemed to follow a different path from the Secret Realm Method.

Yet it still helped him refine the trace of spiritual energy within those herbs.

By the time he climbed to the fifth tier of the medicine field, the strength in one arm had already broken through to the two-thousand-jin level.

He was faster, stronger, and his spiritual perception had become sharper.

But even so, his climbing speed showed no sign of increasing—in fact, it seemed to be slowing down.

Li Zhi realized that this mountain, which looked like a simple terraced field, was actually filled with the mysterious power of spatial law.

The true distance between two points was far from what it appeared on the surface.

In fact, Li Zhi's guess was correct.

Although the Hundred Herbs Diagram had no offensive power, as a Quasi-Emperor Divine Weapon, its internal space was self-contained.

Back then, to ensure the completeness of his medicine garden, the Longevity Daoist had refined an entire Chaos Small World into the diagram.

From then on, the medicine garden space became solid and indestructible, giving the Hundred Herbs Diagram a certain lethal capability against enemies.

It could release a mountain as massive as a small world to crush opponents with sheer force.

At the same time, to prevent the small world inside the divine weapon from drying up, the Longevity Daoist inscribed many array patterns into the diagram to draw in the essence of the eight directions and nourish the Chaos Small World.

All of this was to ensure that the divine tree at the mountain's peak never dropped in rank.

That tree was a Demigod tree cultivated from the pit of a Ginseng Fruit using Wa Huang's secret methods—the Longevity Fruit Tree.

Moreover, the medicine fields on the terraces weren't meant for growing spiritual medicines.

Instead, they used special formations to gather the power of those spiritual medicines and offer it to the Longevity Fruit Tree at the summit, allowing it to grow healthily.

Because of the Heaven and Earth Environment, a Demigod Medicine, if not constantly watered with Divine Spring Water, could easily drop in rank, degenerating into a Saint Medicine, or even further into a spiritual medicine—what this era called a Medicine King or Lesser Medicine King.

Although the Longevity Daoist had obtained great fortune back then, he had never acquired a Creation Spring or a Life Divine Spring, so he had to rely on this method to keep the tree's rank from falling.

At this moment, the Great Sage sitting beneath the Longevity Fruit Tree had also obtained great fortune—a pot of Divine Spring Water.

He had made the Longevity Fruit Tree bloom and bear fruit again, producing a single Ginseng Fruit with thirty percent of its full medicinal potency.

In the blink of an eye, over two hundred days had passed.

After countless hardships, Li Zhi finally climbed to the mountaintop.

By now, the only thing left of his clothes was a tattered pair of shorts, and his body was crisscrossed with all kinds of scars.

They were the trophies of his battles of wits and courage with the insects.

Even his heart area bore a piercing wound.

It had come within a hair's breadth of piercing his heart.

The creature that dealt him such a heavy blow was an insect he didn't recognize, with a horn twenty centimeters long on its head.

That horn was razor-sharp.

In a single exchange, it pierced through Li Zhi's palm and then stabbed straight through his chest.

If not for a crucial moment when he activated his breathing method to forcibly shift the distribution of his internal organs, he would have died.

Li Zhi crawled to the mountaintop, disheveled and filthy, looking every bit a vagrant.

Two large lumps had swelled on his head.

They were caused by a flying insect with an extremely hard carapace that had smashed into him.

At the time, he'd been concussed on the spot. If he hadn't consumed many spiritual medicines, greatly enhancing his body's toughness, that single blow would have split his skull open.

Lying on the mountaintop platform, Li Zhi felt like the unluckiest man alive.

Suddenly, he realized something.

He touched the lumps on his head and the wound over his heart, and broke out in a cold sweat.

Since arriving in this world, he had killed only two people—one whose head he'd caved in with a hammer, and another whose chest he'd pierced with a Luoyang Shovel.

Now, he himself had suffered an injury that would have killed an ordinary person by crushing their skull, and a chest wound that would have pierced an ordinary person's heart.

Li Zhi immediately recalled a passage from Stealing Heavenly Secrets: "To steal Heaven's fortune incurs the wrath of Heaven and Earth; cause and effect cycle back, and one must face calamity in person—be cautious, be ever cautious."

He also remembered the faint resonance he'd felt within the nether during the ritual that day—the borrowed fortune would only stay with him for three years.

Now it seemed those three years were up, and that was why he'd fallen into such a sorry state.

Compared to the first two times, when fortune came smoothly and easily, this trip to the Great Sage Mystic Realm had been a near-death struggle every step of the way.

For over two hundred days, he'd lived like a savage, drinking muddy water from the fields when thirsty and gnawing on spiritual medicines he couldn't be sure weren't poisonous.

Hard work paid off, and after enduring countless hardships, he finally reached the Longevity Fruit Tree.

The thought of soon obtaining the Ginseng Fruit brought a faint smile to Li Zhi's face.

But the scars on his face made that smile look especially eerie.

He lay on the ground resting for over half an hour, finally feeling his strength return.

Then he sprang up with a carp-like flip.

His jumping motion was so violent that it shook the ground.

The corpse beneath the tree instantly crumbled into a pile of powder.

Li Zhi was quite surprised.

Cautiously stepping forward, he found a miniature scroll, entirely azure blue, amid the pile of powder.

Recalling the records he'd read earlier, he quickly confirmed it was the page of scripture forged from Eternal Blue Gold that contained the complete Primordial Longevity Art.

Carefully, he used a dry branch to pry the scripture out of the powder.

He noticed that the powder seemed utterly devoid of spiritual nature, much like ordinary lime dust.

It wasn't the bone ash left behind when a cultivator underwent Dao Dissolution.

The blue scroll was only three inches long, but it was surprisingly heavy—weighing at least forty or fifty jin.

Li Zhi excitedly unrolled the scroll and immediately saw the scripture of the Primordial Longevity Art recorded on it.

The opening chapter, the Wheel and Sea Scroll, the Dao Palace Chapter, the Four Extremes Chapter, the Dragon Transformation Chapter, the Celestial Platform Chapter—the complete scripture, not a single line missing.

At the end of the scroll, a secret longevity method was also recorded.

The script used for this secret method differed from that of the preceding scripture, as if it had been added later.

After reading through that secret longevity method, Li Zhi was utterly shaken.

He first looked down at the pile of powder on the ground, then raised his head to gaze at the lone Ginseng Fruit hanging from the tree.

The Great Sage who had once sat cross-legged beneath this tree was also a man of immense fortune. In his youth, he had not only inherited the Dao Lineage of the Longevity Daoist.

Later, in his old age, he had found a Land of Fortune left behind by Wa Huang.

There, he obtained a longevity method that Wa Huang had once deduced.

By studying the Immortality Elixir, Wa Huang seemed to have uncovered its true nature—realizing that all such elixirs were formed from the remains of long-dead immortals.