Under the cover of night, Nanmo City resembled an enormous primeval beast, crouching amid the even vaster and more primitive forests of the Southern Border.
This was the southernmost tip of the Luoyu Immortal Sect's territory—a true border city.
As the sun set, the people working at the logging grounds, farms, fish farms, spirit fields, plantations, and other places outside the city finally began to catch their breath. Some had already started heading back.
At times like this, the corpse buriers always seemed especially unusual.
People avoided them like the plague, terrified of coming even a step closer!
They had been marinated in the smell. All kinds of corpse stench had soaked into them, one layer atop another, turning them into downright walking corpses. Even the carrion-loving Strange Owls could never resist getting a free meal.
Du En had long since grown accustomed to those strange looks. He walked with steady, measured steps, calm and composed.
He raised his head and gazed into the distance. Far to the north stood a city wall, blocking his view.
That was the southern city wall of Nanmo Border City.
It towered majestically, rising dozens of zhang high and stretching endlessly into the distance. It resembled a sheer cliff that made people sigh, sealing away the low-level cultivators who had moved here and shutting them firmly outside a life of peace and stability.
Lowering his gaze, he looked toward the city gate. Along both sides of the hard, spacious main road that led straight there—the transportation hub—stood large swathes of cramped shacks. That was where people like Du En lived.
The shack district outside the city.
The corpse buriers lived in a small courtyard on the outskirts of this shack district, at the very end of the road. It seemed rather unusual. Du En had always felt that something was off, but he had never managed to find out what.
The first thing they did after returning was bathe.
Wei Ming was the most impatient of them all. The others could not stand those strange looks either. Besides, after a full day's labor, they were drenched in sweat. Their clothes had dried and then grown damp again, leaving the insides sticky and horribly uncomfortable.
So they all wanted to wash up and change clothes as quickly as possible.
Only Du En hauled out a stove and began boiling corpses—no, owls.
That way, he could preserve the fat and meat to the greatest extent. The taste was nothing special, but it did not matter. He did not care.
The others cared very much.
"Boss Du, could you take it a little easier? At the very least, move it outside the courtyard before boiling it!"
Because of this compromise born of collective hope, the other seniors, much to Wei Ming's surprise, did not say anything.
Though their eyes held resentment, they seemed to feel that this was actually still acceptable?
So after burying corpses for too long, people really do start becoming twisted, huh?
I don't want this!
The more Wei Ming thought about it, the more terrified he became.
After washing up, he glanced over at Du En. Du En was skillfully boiling an owl, using his hand—now immune to scalding water after taking up cultivation—to pluck its feathers and gut it directly in the pot of boiling water, pulling out clumps of steaming, even fouler-smelling organs and feathers.
Noticing Wei Ming's gaze, he turned his head and asked, "What? Have you changed your mi—"
"Thanks, good night, I'm leaving!"
As he spoke, Wei Ming turned and ran, shutting himself in behind a door.
Du En thought about it briefly and immediately understood what Wei Ming was probably thinking. He did not take it to heart. He changed the pot of water, tossed the cleaned Strange Owl back in, and lined up to bathe while it simmered.
By the time he had finished bathing and washing his clothes and hung them beneath the eaves, the owl was nearly done. He sprinkled on some salt for a simple seasoning, and it was ready to eat.
The taste was truly awful!
It was like boiled putrid flesh!
Du En ate more than half of it without changing expression—four or five jin of meat and fat—digesting it as he ate. Only then did he fill his stomach. He looked at the others in the courtyard, who had just finished cooking coarse rice, and asked, "You really don't want any? Throwing it away would be such a waste."
"No, no, no!"
Everyone responded in perfect unison.
Du En said nothing. He simply dumped what remained beside the courtyard gate, together with the pile of feathers and dirty water, to be cleared away in a few days.
After digesting his food and taking a short nap, he awoke in the middle of the night, when everyone else was already sleeping deeply.
His fatigue had mostly eased, and his energy had returned. He could now sustain focused cultivation.
"Let's begin."
Thinking this, he sat cross-legged and began circulating his cultivation technique.
He sensed the spiritual energy, merged it with his magic power, and sent it out from his dantian through all his meridians, completing a circuit and refining spiritual energy into magic power.
The Yellow Earth Technique was plain and unadorned. It accumulated without flair, growing tough and sturdy, steady and unshakable.
After one cycle of cultivation, he gained another measure of understanding of the low-grade Yellow Earth Technique. Invisibly and imperceptibly, it was like sand falling from the sky and piling up on the ground, slowly accumulating.
Du En ended his circulation and stopped to soothe his weary mind.
Cultivating with such total concentration was no easy process.
The main reason was that he was still at the Beginner's Practice stage. He had to pour his entire being into it at high intensity, constantly leading, guiding, and tugging the flow along so that it would not stop, until it had traveled through every meridian and completed one Greater Celestial Circuit.
It consumed a tremendous amount of mental energy.
He felt that something about this cultivation method was wrong. Under normal circumstances, being only in the Early Qi Refining stage and using a low-grade technique, he should not have to complete a circuit through the entire body every time he cultivated.
He should first circulate through the main meridians, then the secondary meridians, and finally all the meridians of the body, progressing from the Lesser Celestial Circuit to the Greater Celestial Circuit, one step at a time.
"Of course, this may not necessarily be bad. If the meridians throughout the body can be opened directly and the Greater Celestial Circuit is used from the very beginning, then if I can actually make it work, my foundation will become extraordinarily deep. Invisibly, that could also offset the effects of forcing growth by pulling up the seedlings."
He truly could not understand what the Luoyu Immortal Sect was thinking. If they were treating them as expendable leeks, why go to all this trouble?
Du En shook his head and stopped thinking about it. He continued cultivating.
He focused completely, exhausting all his mental strength.
Then, once the technique had completed its cycle, he drew it back in.
When the pale-yellow gaseous magic power returned to the Sea of Qi in his lower dantian, everything fell into place. Countless insights burst forth in his mind. It was as if a door had opened and he could finally see the road.
[Yellow Earth Technique (Initial Glimpse 0/20)]
Breakthrough!
Du En opened his eyes, and a flash of earth-yellow light flickered through them.
His mind, which had been haggard and drained, rose like water surging with the tide. At that moment, he showed no trace of weariness, and his eyes shone brightly.
I can keep cultivating.
He closed his eyes again and continued without pause.
The moment he began circulating his cultivation technique, he immediately felt that the changes were remarkably obvious!
His efficiency at sensing spiritual energy had increased by ten percent.
At the same time, his meridians seemed to have become roads. The magic power mixed with spiritual energy easily pushed open the door of his dantian, then seemed to step onto a small skateboard and race along this road. Though it was still pitted and uneven, it was generally flat and straight.
Du En's mind no longer had to focus entirely on pulling and dragging. Instead, it now served as a brake and shock absorber. He even had to worry about whether it might move too fast and veer onto the wrong path.
It was an almost extravagant sensation.
His slight distraction only went that far.
Once he returned to total concentration, his magic power grew purer with every bit of accumulation, while his body visibly became stronger and tougher under the nourishing effects released by the circulating magic power.
One successful cycle, then another.
Taking advantage of the mental exhilaration brought by the breakthrough, as well as the obvious strengthening of his body, he cultivated three more times in quick succession while both body and mind were in peak condition, taking an hour and a half.
Though he was now exhausted in both body and mind, the pale-yellow gaseous magic power clustered in his Sea of Qi—originally only the size of a pigeon egg, loose and thin—had expanded by a full fraction, grown three parts denser, and deepened in color by one shade.
The effects were truly striking right after a breakthrough!
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