"Thank you."
The old monk looked at Ji Yaoguang and spoke sincerely.
At his words, Ji Yaoguang shifted her gaze uneasily and murmured, "You... how have you been able to live this long? There's nothing here."
Ku Chan smiled.
His smile looked dry, yet held the calm detachment of someone who had seen through the ways of the world.
"There are occasional storms in the tower."
He pointed overhead and smiled. "There's a crack in the roof of the ninth floor. Every so often, rainwater trickles down the tower walls, passes through layer after layer, and eventually collects in a hollow in the stone here."
He shifted to one side, and only then did Ye Honglian notice that three zhang behind the old man, there really was a stone hollow about the size of a washbasin.
A shallow layer of clear water pooled inside, so transparent that she could see the bottom.
"As for spiritual energy..."
Ku Chan looked around and sighed. "All these bones belonged to cultivators in life. After they died, their cultivation dissipated into the world, but it was trapped in this tower and couldn't fade away. After a thousand years of accumulation, the spiritual energy here is probably several times denser than the blessed grotto-heavens of your Sunset City."
Ji Yaoguang sucked in a sharp breath.
At last, she understood how the old man had survived—
He had been absorbing the cultivation that had dispersed from these countless cultivators after their deaths! He had been feeding on the legacy left by the dead!
Ye Honglian's expression changed too.
She stared at Ku Chan and asked, word by word, "So these people's deaths... had something to do with you?"
It was a dangerous question.
If the answer was yes, then this seemingly compassionate old man was actually