Crisis

Xia Dong looked at the warm, jade-like talisman ink on his fingertips and, without hesitation, drew some clean water to gently dissolve it in the inkstone.

As the blood ink dissolved, that strange fragrance that struck directly at the soul became even more distinct; instead of a fishy stench, it exuded a peculiar spirituality.

He spread out a fresh sheet of blank spirit paper, focused his mind, calmed his breath, and dipped his talisman brush fully into the blood ink.

Pen down, glide, outline, finish!

It was done in one continuous motion.

With the final infusion of mana, the spirit paper erupted with a cyan spiritual light far more intense than when he had used monster beast blood.

The surrounding heaven and earth spiritual energy surged in frantically, even whipping up a small whirlwind around the desk.

"Such powerful spiritual energy fluctuations."

Xia Dong pinched the newly drawn "Blood Talisman" between his fingers, walked out of the main room, and entered the courtyard.

With a thought, he channeled his mana to activate this specially crafted Wind-Riding Talisman.

Whoosh!

A powerful force of wind instantly enveloped him.

He executed the Crane Shadow Step and Wind-Riding Technique in mid-air, carefully experiencing the enhancement provided by this talisman.

Only after a long while did the wind gradually dissipate. Xia Dong landed gracefully, a flash of shock in his eyes.

"The wind force is stronger, the burst of speed is faster, and even the duration is longer... All things considered, the effect of this talisman is a full thirty percent better than a Wind-Riding Talisman drawn with ordinary monster beast blood!"

The implications of this for a cultivator during a life-or-death struggle were self-evident.

And this was achieved using blood from only a Bone Forging Realm peak martial artist. This meant that his own martial artist blood, tempered a thousand times and as dense as mercury, was far superior in talisman-making efficacy to the most common, cheap low-tier monster beast blood found in the markets.

Xia Dong couldn't help but feel a shiver of dread.

If a martial artist's blood could make such high-quality talisman ink... then couldn't a martial artist's skin, tempered and knife-proof, be specially tanned to make excellent spirit paper? Couldn't a martial artist's tough tendons and bones be fashioned into top-tier talisman brushes and magical artifacts?

Xia Dong was suddenly struck by a sense of horror.

Perhaps the other side of this world was nothing more than a bottomless slaughterhouse.

But after only a moment, Xia Dong let out a breath.

"Actually, it's nothing to be surprised about."

He thought of the society from his previous life. Although that world had no demons, ghosts, or cultivators who could fly or move mountains, wasn't its ultimate essence also "cannibalistic"?

Those "cattle and horses" struggling at the bottom exhausted their lifeblood and turned their hair white, and even after death, their remaining value was "refined" clean by pervasive algorithms and big data, becoming cold sets of data in a massive machine of profit.

The two worlds were no different.

Failing to see through it was fear; once seen through, one simply had to strive to become stronger. That was all.

Xia Dong turned and returned to the room, carefully collecting the remaining blood ink on the desk and placing it, along with the test "Blood Talisman," into his Storage Pouch.

These things must never be sold.

Xia Dong cleared his mind of distractions and turned his gaze to the other side of the desk.

There lay the normal Wind-Riding Talismans he had previously drawn using standard monster beast blood. He organized these talismans properly and wrapped them carefully in coarse cloth.

Over a hundred low-tier talismans could be considered a tidy sum of wealth.

"It is time to see Sister Qin Wan."

Xia Dong had a plan in mind.

It was inconvenient for him to personally dump these talismans in the market, lest he attract jealousy and suspicion. Since Qin Wan was in the Qixia Immortal Sect and had the cover of an inner sect disciple, using her channels to slowly exchange these talismans for spirit stones and other cultivation resources was undoubtedly the safest method.

Qixia Immortal Sect, Lone Moon Peak.

Amidst the churning sea of clouds, Qin Wan sat alone in the quiet room, staring at the shimmering Secret Treasury Jade Talisman on the desk, her beautiful face filled with deep exhaustion and worry.

Before her master, True Person Lone Moon, went into seclusion, she had unexpectedly handed the "authority" and daily resource allocation keys for this lineage within the sect to her, the youngest disciple who had entered the latest and had the lowest cultivation.

At first, Qin Wan felt flattered, but she soon understood her master's intentions.

The older senior brothers and sisters under True Person Lone Moon were mostly stuck at the bottleneck of the late Qi Refining stage, unable to make progress for years.

In the current environment of the world, their desire for Foundation Establishment Pill and high-tier cultivation resources was nearly insane.

If the authority were handed to them, they might take advantage of the True Person's deep seclusion to line their own pockets, or even turn on each other to fight for those meager resources.

Qin Wan was different. She had just broken through to the fourth level of Qi Refining; even if she had the guts to "steal" resources, her cultivation level wouldn't allow her to digest much.

More importantly, with those senior brothers and sisters watching like tigers, a delicate balance was formed.

Qin Wan felt as if she were sitting on pins and needles, not daring to overstep in the slightest.

Using the small to control the large—this was a brilliant move of balance.

However, Qin Wan could never have imagined that her current situation would become so dire.

The Qin Family had been targeted by the Unborn Cult.

Over the past few years, severe drought and plague have allowed the Unborn Cult to expand wildly in the shadows of Linyuan Prefecture.

Although the Qin Family possesses vast wealth and influence in the mortal realm, they are nothing compared to a cult that wields demonic and evil methods.

The Unborn Cult has already laid several traps for the Qin Family in secret, using the raw silk and medicinal herb trades to tighten their grip on the family's lifeline.

The hint sent by the other side was clear: they demanded that Qin Wan use her authority to embezzle cultivation resources from the secret vault of Lone Moon and funnel them to the Unborn Cult.

Qin Wan is not a fool.

If there were no mole from the Unborn Cult among her fellow disciples, how could they possibly know that she, a mere insignificant disciple, held the key to her master's secret vault?

This clearly meant that one of her "good" senior brothers or sisters was colluding with the Unborn Cult, intending to use a borrowed knife to kill her and force her hand.

After all, Qin Wan had not even breathed a word of this assignment to her family.

This is a monumental disaster.

Once she succumbs to the pressure and boards the Unborn Cult's pirate ship, she will be doomed beyond redemption.

But what if she refuses?

With her meager cultivation at the fourth level of Qi Refining and her complete lack of connections, trying to deflect this relentless pressure is as difficult as ascending to heaven.

Furthermore, it is obvious that those senior brothers and sisters have already been isolating her within the sect, both openly and covertly.

Qin Wan cannot even tell who the traitor is—the one using the Unborn Cult to scheme against the Qin Family.

Perhaps, it is all of them?

Faced with the temptation of immortality and the Dao, the cruelty of the cultivation world far exceeds what any mortal could imagine.

For the sake of seizing a sliver of opportunity to attain the Dao, some cultivators even proclaim: "Those who block my path to the Dao—if I meet a Buddha, I kill the Buddha; if I meet an ancestor, I kill the ancestor; if I meet my parents, I kill my parents."

To obtain resources for Foundation Establishment, scheming against a mortal family and a junior sister is a burden they feel absolutely no remorse for.