Treasures from His Past Life

Night.

Chen Guan, looking somewhat weary, crossed thirty li of mountain roads and arrived at the forest where he had once buried the vine.

At a glance,

the forest beneath the moonlight looked quiet and unchanged.

It was autumn, too, so there were fewer mosquitoes and insects.

Only the occasional roar of beasts came from the distance.

"Wolves, and a leopard..."

After judging the situation for a moment, Chen Guan emerged from behind a large tree once he was sure there were no tigers or other large beasts nearby.

With his current strength,

beating ordinary wild animals was already a piece of cake.

But if a beast had intelligence, and its strength and explosive speed far exceeded those of a normal animal—

like himself, as a black bear—

then he was done for.

He still wasn't at his peak.

"I'll find the manuals, visit my sister, and leave this place as soon as possible..."

Chen Guan carefully moved forward.

If he ran into a spirit monster, he'd run if he could.

Thinking of spirit monsters, and of how cautious he was being,

Chen Guan suddenly recalled something that Tiger Demon had once said.

It had gone something like this:

"Some living things are born powerful.

Some seem exceptionally gifted and spend their whole lives striving, yet in the end they amount to nothing."

He and Tiger Immortal were just like that, in a very real sense.

Perhaps, to outsiders, he was a "prodigy" Black Bear Spirit who had gained intelligence in just over a decade.

He should have been able to lord it over the forest, yet suddenly a tiger demon with several hundred years of cultivation had gobbled him up.

There was no twist, nothing else.

Just a harsh reality.

Because of that,

Chen Guan searched even more carefully for the treasures from his past life, lest he run into another spirit monster.

"Phew... I finally found it!"

Beneath the moon, in the forest,

Chen Guan searched in many places before finally digging up the "vine" from his past life.

By now, it had rotted away and disappeared.

Only the intact sachet, the rotted cloth amulet, and the unbroken bottle of wound salve proved that this was where the vine had been buried.

"Seven years is such a long time... So much has changed..."

Rustle—

He took out the treasures and tucked them into his clothes.

After sighing, Chen Guan continued toward the Dilapidated Temple.

This time, his older brother could talk.

He'd be able to chat with his younger sister for a long time.

Tap—

Beneath the starry sky, he entered the Dilapidated Temple.

Chen Guan drew a deep breath, filled with anticipation and apprehension.

But in the bright moonlight, when he saw the manual covered in cobwebs and the thick layer of dust inside the temple,

his anticipation vanished.

Xiao Qing loved cleanliness and often used Yin Wind to sweep away the dust and cobwebs.

"Xiao Qing, it's your brother Chen Guan."

After thinking it over, Chen Guan called out, making his identity clear.

Although he couldn't mention the Scroll that had reincarnated him, in the Spirit-Ghost World, "reincarnation" and "awakening the wisdom of a past life" probably weren't unheard of.

At the very least, back when he was with the Zhao Family, he'd heard "Nanny Auntie Hua" tell many folk tales.

There were stories of immortals reincarnating, as well as ordinary people in later generations awakening the wisdom of their past lives.

It sounded rather far-fetched and probably wasn't common.

But it could serve as an explanation if his identity came to light in the future.

As for the specifics, he'd deal with them as best he could depending on what happened.

Chen Guan had thought it through clearly.

For now, the explanation he wanted to give his sister was that he had awakened the wisdom of his past life.

But after he called out, there was no answer.

Chen Guan took a few more steps toward the corner behind the statue.

His sister's corpse wasn't there either.

"Could it be... that my sister left...?"

As he pondered, Chen Guan hurried to the rear courtyard.

Fortunately, it had rained yesterday, and the Locust Tree was still there.

There was a shallow pool of water, along with some mucus.

Swish, swish—

Chen Guan crouched beside the pool and smeared the mucus over his eyes.

At the same time,

the surrounding Yin energy gradually appeared in his vision.

With an ordinary human body, Chen Guan had activated his Yin-Yang Eyes once more.

With his Yin-Yang vision,

Chen Guan returned to the temple, only to find that his sister really was gone.

"Maybe she's cultivated successfully... shed the shackles of her corpse and gone out to travel..."

Chen Guan sat beneath the statue for a while, then went to the side room where he'd once stayed, planning to get a beast-hide bag and bring some mucus home.

When he entered the room,

Chen Guan saw a piece of cloth on the bed, covered in dust.

He stepped forward and lifted it. Beneath it lay a finished Hundred Beast Garment.

It hadn't been folded; instead, it covered the entire stone bed, stretching about two meters long.

Chen Guan ran his hand over it, feeling the fine stitching and the soft joins. He paused for a few seconds.

He could almost picture his sister, older and more skilled at controlling her power, taking apart the Hundred Beast Garment once more in the empty temple beneath the moonlight and altering it again.

At the thought, Chen Guan suddenly fell quiet for a few seconds, then folded the oversized Hundred Beast Garment.

The next morning, at dawn,

amid the damp, chilly air of the forest,

Chen Guan carried the somewhat bulky Hundred Beast Garment to the spot where the rocks had once formed a narrow gap.

This was the last place.

But the shape of the rocks had changed.

"What happened to this gap?"

Chen Guan looked at the rock formation, which resembled a throne, unsure what had happened here.

Still, he had some guesses.

Perhaps Constable Yan and the others had smashed this boulder.

Or perhaps Tiger Immortal had come here and reshaped it.

After musing for a few moments,

Chen Guan searched around the throne to see whether Constable Yan and the others had left anything behind.

As he searched,

he spotted a clear mound in the dirt at the rock formation's lower left.

After seeing it, Chen Guan set the Hundred Beast Garment aside and carefully dug into the soil with his broken blade.

As he dug the dirt away bit by bit,

he uncovered a large tiger-skin vest, its surface coated with grease to prevent decay.

The vest seemed to have been left for "himself, back when he was a black bear."

Inside the tiger-skin vest were twenty-seven manuals.

Chen Guan skimmed through them and found the Fire Attribute technique he needed most!

It was called the Yang Evolution Technique.

"Talk about a perfect fit."

Chen Guan's heart stirred at the sight, dispelling some of his disappointment at not finding his sister.

Then,

Chen Guan steadied himself and opened the first page.

Following the introduction and annotations,

he read through it carefully and found that it described everything in great detail, including what fire spiritual energy should look and feel like.

That way, first-time cultivators could use those sensations to better attune themselves to the Fire Attribute in the air.

It was like learning to sing: first, you found the emotion and the resonance in your chest, and only then could you produce the notes more clearly and sense the changes in the melody.

At the same time, following the sensations described in the manual,

Chen Guan quickly entered a meditative state and, guided by the book's descriptions, tried to sense the fire spiritual energy in the air.

Since he already had a foundation in Yin energy cultivation from the Qi Swallowing Technique,

even though back then he hadn't sensed the Yin energy with his "dantian,"

this time,

as Chen Guan concentrated and concentrated, he didn't know how long passed, but he clearly felt a warmth in the air.

He also felt that warmth burrowing into his body.

It was as if the moment he sensed the Fire Attribute, a strange suction had formed.

But the next second,

Chen Guan realized he was hungry.

When he opened his eyes, it was already late at night.

Without realizing it, he'd meditated for more than ten hours.

"I'm a little hungry, but I feel incredibly energized..."

Chen Guan stood up. He didn't feel stiff or numb from sitting for so long; instead, his body felt light and relaxed.

His lower dantian was warm, as if it held a "thread" a hundred times thinner than a strand of hair.

For now, his lower dantian could only hold this much. To hold more, he'd have to keep opening it up.

This thread was the Fire Attribute energy he had refined.

With it inside him,

Chen Guan felt as though he'd gained an extra burst of strength out of nowhere.

As for what was happening,

Chen Guan understood that he had stepped into the most basic stage: [Qi Sensation].

After cultivating for a few more days, once this strength had stabilized and he could control it with ease, he would reach [Refining Essence into Qi].

By then, he'd be able to guide these elemental energies through his body to a limited extent, dispelling illness and misfortune and extending his lifespan.

That was the most basic form of health cultivation in [Refining Essence into Qi].

If he used spiritual energy now, the most he could manage was a temporary burst of thirty or forty extra jin of strength.

Even so, Chen Guan thought it was impressive.

After all, he currently had only a little over two hundred jin of strength.

That was nearly a twenty percent increase.

"No wonder cultivators and martial-world masters have such powerful physiques. So it's because they make use of spiritual energy.

Then I count as a cultivator now.

Or, to put it another way, I'm a 'Postnatal Realm master' with inner force."

Inner force was spiritual energy; they just called it different things.

And when martial-world masters lacked manuals for spells and techniques, they were more accustomed to using spiritual energy to strengthen their bodies.

Of course, more importantly, their spiritual roots were even weaker than Chen Guan's, so they might need years or even decades to sense spiritual energy.

They sensed it late and absorbed little, so their own limits were bound to be low.

Chen Guan had learned these basic facts from the manual.

But today, he had succeeded for the first time.

"I've got half a day's worth of cultivation under my belt now..."

Since this was his first time practicing cultivation, it would be a lie to say Chen Guan wasn't excited.

But with his stomach protesting its hunger,

Chen Guan first took some dried meat from his bundle to stave it off.

Crunch, crunch...

His hard baby teeth tore at the dried meat, which was like tree bark.

Chen Guan couldn't be bothered to heat it up. He ate it straight from the bundle.

Gurgle, gurgle...

A few more bites went down, easing his hunger.

Chen Guan then looked at the remaining manuals.

Among them, besides techniques for fists, feet, and blades, there was also a water-element technique called the Water Forest Technique.

Chen Guan flipped through it a few times, then noticed a wooden slip beneath the tiger pelt.

He took out the slip and held it up in the moonlight.

A line of words was carved into it.

(Senior Black Bear, we juniors came as promised and left as promised.)