I Wasn't Scared into Growing Up

"My thirteen Low-grade Spirit Stones!"

Late at night, wails rang out from a small stone house in the western part of Lingyue City.

There was practically no decent furnishing in this crude stone house. Several portraits of beauties in palace attire hung on the wall beside the bed instead. They all depicted the same young girl, with towering breasts, breathtaking beauty, and, most importantly, skin as white as snow and smooth as congealed cream. The paintings were exceptionally skillful, bringing the alluring girl vividly to life; her gaze seemed to drift, as though she might step right off the paper. They also emitted a faint glow and looked quite valuable. Only the areas around the beauty's chest in the portraits were slightly gray, as if stained with dirt.

The fellow inside the stone house, howling nonstop as though his mother had died, was Wei Suo—the fairly handsome young man who had recently killed two Stone-tailed Wall Lizards in Yellow Sand Canyon on Yellow Dragon Mountain.

The reason for his miserable wailing was that, earlier today at the Free Market in the east of the city, he had been selling an ordinary white sable pup with black stripes painted on it as a Black Wind Sable pup. There, he had spotted a man dressed as old-fashioned as could be, with a face as honest and simple as could be, selling a black jade jar.

The black jade jar gleamed with an ebony radiance. Hidden mysteries lay within that dark glow, countless tiny and profound ancient runes like ants, making it look like a formidable magic treasure at first glance.

After a round of haggling, Wei Suo had bought the jade jar for thirteen Low-grade Spirit Stones. He had been thrilled to death on the way back, because even the lowest-grade Spirit Grade Magic Treasure would surely be worth far more than thirteen Low-grade Spirit Stones. Yet Wei Suo had been caught in the rain on his way home. When he took it from his robes upon arriving, the black jade jar had turned into a gray porcelain jar. The outer layer had actually melted away, as though it had merely been some kind of tree resin.

Even if it was fake, they could at least have used a real jade jar! Smearing something onto a porcelain jar at random, only for it to wash off in rainwater—wasn't that bullying people too much? At least the black balsam juice he used to paint stripes on ordinary white sables could not be washed off.

What Wei Suo found hardest to accept was that there were two cracks inside this porcelain jar. Once its outer layer melted away, those two cracks were exposed.

The incomprehensible runes on the porcelain jar were not fake. But even if this thing really was a magic treasure, with two cracks in it, it should have been useless. In any case, Wei Suo had just tried everything: pouring true qi into it, drowning it in water, burning it with fire... every method possible. (The only thing he had not done was pull out his little brother and piss into it.) Yet this piece of junk had stubbornly shown no reaction whatsoever.

Wei Suo was not like that spendthrift beauty from Yellow Sand Canyon. For a low-level Rogue Cultivator like him, thirteen Low-grade Spirit Stones was a huge sum. Of the two Stone-tailed Wall Lizards he had fought desperately to kill, one had been beaten so badly that little of its body remained intact. Together, the two had only sold for eight Low-grade Spirit Stones.

People these days were all shrewd as ghosts. Spirit Stones were hard enough to earn in the first place, and after earning them, he still had to use them himself.

Although Wei Suo was only at the Second Level of Sea of Consciousness Realm, if he fully absorbed the spiritual energy in Spirit Stones for cultivation, he would need the spiritual energy of at least six or seven Low-grade Spirit Stones a day. Yet now, Wei Suo only dared to use one or two Low-grade Spirit Stones at most each day. His cultivation had long been in a starving, thirsting state of extreme Spirit Stone shortage. Even so, after two or three months, he could usually only save up a little over ten Low-grade Spirit Stones.

And those dozen or so Low-grade Spirit Stones could not be used for cultivation. He had to save them as capital for doing business and to prepare for unforeseen needs.

But now, Wei Suo had been swindled out of thirteen Low-grade Spirit Stones in one go. How could his heart not ache?

"My thirteen Low-grade Spirit Stones!"

The more Wei Suo thought about it, the more he wanted to cry without tears. With a casual motion, he hurled the broken jar he had traded thirteen Low-grade Spirit Stones for onto the ground.

Normally, after smashing this junk jar to pieces, Wei Suo would definitely have stomped on it seventeen or eighteen times to ease the depression that made him want to ram his head into a wall and die.

"What's going on?" But what left Wei Suo somewhat dumbfounded was that, with a splat, this broken jar—which looked like it would shatter into seventy or eighty pieces at the slightest toss—did not break when he threw it to the ground. It merely seemed to gain another crack. Moreover, green light actually flashed over the broken jar.

"Quick, quick, give me blood to drink."

"Ghost!"

A shrill scream exploded through the stone house, and Wei Suo leaped straight onto the stone bed.

The green light actually gathered into a Green Robe Old Man three inches tall. His hair was like a clump of tangled weeds, his face sharp-mouthed and monkey-cheeked, and he smacked his lips as he stared at Wei Suo.

"Quick, bring me some blood to drink." Seeing Wei Suo on the bed, trembling as though struck by malaria, the Green Robe Old Man floating faintly above the broken jar looked at him with utter contempt and shrieked viciously again, "Ghost my ass! You can't even tell the difference between a ghost and an artifact spirit, yet you keep screaming about ghosts."

"Ar... artifact spirit? Lord Artifact Spirit, these past two years, I've liked going to Liuxia Alley. You know what Liuxia Alley is, right? It's a whorehouse, so I caught a little disease. My blood probably doesn't taste very good..."

"Who wants to drink your blood? Hurry and get me some Fire Earth Dragon blood to drink. But looking at how stupid you are, if there's no Fire Earth Dragon blood, Fire Scorpion blood will do." The Green Robe Old Man cursed impatiently.

"Lord Artifact Spirit, you don't want to drink my blood?" Wei Suo lowered the blanket he had been using to cover his head. "Can I ask you a question?"

"What question?"

"Can you cast spells? I know a place with lots of Fire Earth Dragons. I'll take you there to kill them, and let you drink your fill."

"If I could, would I still be wasting so much breath on you here? I'd rather beat you up and go find them myself."

"You can't possess someone or anything like that either?"

"What nonsense! I'm only the artifact spirit that helps my master control the Ghost Nurturing Jar. Now that the Ghost Nurturing Jar is broken, what else can I do?... Hey, hey, what are you doing?" The Green Robe Old Man suddenly shrieked.

Wei Suo jumped down from the bed and untied his belt...

Psssss. Whistling, Wei Suo pissed all over the terrified Green Robe Old Man, then slowly fastened his belt. "Since you can't do anything, how dare you act so high and mighty? There's no Fire Earth Dragon blood, but I've got a whole pot of piss."

"I..." The Green Robe Old Man was stunned for a long while before crying out in disbelief, "You actually dared to piss on me? You actually dared to piss on me?"

"What? Can you bite me? Come on, bite me!"

"I... do you know how formidable I am? If other people saw me, they'd be crying and begging me before it was even too late. Yet you dared to piss on me?"

"Bullshit. You can't even cast a single spell, the crappy jar you control is broken, and you can't do anything at all. You think you can scare me? Was I scared into growing up? Why don't you go ask around? When I was thirteen, I already dared to sneak out and peep at beauties bathing." Wei Suo rolled his eyes disdainfully. He could tell that the old man apparently could not even leave the space above that broken jar.