The matter of Mayu, the little evil spirit, had come to a close.
Besides, Li Xia had neither the ability nor the standing to ask the three Clan Elders to help a little evil spirit they had never met pass on.
With that being the case, he could only quietly keep his head down and grow stronger.
The three elders departed, leaving him a precious inheritance. They had no idea that beyond the Bone-Eater's Well lay a Demon World filled with tremendous dangers, but also tremendous opportunities and fortunes. Otherwise, they would never have handed that inheritance to him so readily.
"Fourth Uncle, sorry for the trouble, but please help me gather some Soul-Nourishing Wood that's at least a hundred years old..."
Soul-Nourishing Wood was the main material used to build a Shikigami Spirit Shrine.
Clearly, Li Xia had begun considering contracting a Shikigami to assist him.
The one he had his eye on was Flesh-Bodied Human Face.
Flesh-Bodied Human Face had originally been a mask made from a large katsura tree possessed by a Shikon Shard.
Its main ability was to attach itself to a living creature's face, then devour its brain and soul to take control of its body. It could also split into two, three, four, or more separate entities. Only destroying the mask itself would kill it for good. Otherwise, Flesh-Bodied Human Face could return by devouring the flesh of living creatures.
Humans and the vast majority of demons with physical bodies and bloodlines undoubtedly counted as living creatures.
However, a human body could not withstand its power! The flesh it attached itself to would soon rot and decay! That was why, in the original story, it had wanted more Shikon Shards-to create a perfect body it could use freely!
Li Xia had thought beyond that.
He wanted to bring Flesh-Bodied Human Face under his control and make it his Shikigami! (Just as Black Miko Tsubaki in the original story had raised a white snake Shikigami and a giant fox Shikigami!)
Then he would have Flesh-Bodied Human Face devour demons, giving this mask demon a powerful demonic body!
As a human, he would find it difficult to acquire the power of a great demon.
With Flesh-Bodied Human Face's help, however, he had a chance to use the Shikigami system to cultivate a bodyguard on the level of a great demon.
If he placed the demon mask, Flesh-Bodied Human Face, on the face of the immensely powerful great demon Ryūkotsusei while he slept under his seal...
The future would surely be exciting, wouldn't it?
Following the previous day's transport arrangements.
The Li Family had delivered an initial half cubic meter of spirit fluid.
With spirit fluid available, Li Xia naturally would not sit around doing nothing.
Before resting, he divided the spirit fluid into three portions.
He placed the two smaller portions in Mayu's former home, which had burned down, and his personal storage room at school, respectively.
Both were stored in several large bottles labeled "spare drinking water."
He left as soon as he had put everything away.
He strengthened the bulk of the remaining spirit fluid with the power of the seven Shikon Shards. After waking up and learning that the three Clan Elders had returned to the peninsula, he went into seclusion to draw talismans.
As for his studies? He did not care in the slightest!
It was only a piece of paper!
In the future, college graduates would be a dime a dozen! A degree from an ordinary university would be little better than toilet paper! Besides, he did not rely on it to make a living! So he kept requesting leave, then simply took a full two weeks off in one go!
He could deal with Water Cedar Junior High's attendance requirements later.
Right now, drawing talismans came first.
He needed to make more preparations before entering the Demon World beyond the Bone-Eater's Well.
In truth, even now, he had yet to firmly resolve to enter that world!
After all, with the Peninsula Li Family backing him, his life was wonderful. He could live his whole life without worrying about food or clothing-and in extravagant luxury, at that! Once he came of age, having beautiful girls keep him company or turning female celebrities into his playthings would take only a word! If he wanted to tie himself down in marriage, girls from modest families, daughters of wealthy households, and even lonely, pretty widows could line up for miles outside his door for him to choose from!
These were the hidden perks enjoyed by cultivators from great families!
Spending his whole life lounging around in peace and security would not be so bad, would it?
Now consider Inuyasha's Warring States Demon World beyond the Bone-Eater's Well.
Even a lowly, insignificant demon like the Centipede Hag could fly through the sky and burrow underground, inflicting heavy casualties on a fully armed village like Kaede's Village.
Or take a juvenile Corpse-Dancing Crow, a demon among the lowest of the low. It could easily kill a bandit chief who was an ordinary human, then control a whole band of bandits to terrorize the surrounding region.
When the mountain ogre enslaved by Inuyasha's elder brother Sesshomaru slapped a mountainside, it startled a dense swarm of these insignificant demons out of hiding. If a single mountain concealed that many, who knew how many lesser demons lived in the Island Nation's remote wilderness?
And speaking of which, even a little demon like Jaken had been the leader of a local group of insignificant demons before following Sesshomaru.
He had commanded hundreds, if not thousands, of lesser demons of his own kind.
Those were merely the relatively less dangerous low-level or insignificant demons.
The truly dangerous ones were the mid- and upper-level demons with two-star or even Three-Star Demon Power, not to mention the great demons with four or five stars.
For example, Hiten and Manten, two somewhat stronger brothers from the Thunder Beast Tribe, had easily wiped out two armies serving the Island Nation's daimyo in just a few exchanges. Each of those daimyo's forces had numbered several hundred to nearly a thousand men.
Then there was Kōga, who had been far from benevolent early on. He had directly ordered his wolves to slaughter a village, claiming the little angel Rin's first death.
The Iron Chicken mother and daughter, meanwhile, slaughtered villages and towns at the drop of a hat.
When Soul-Eater felt hungry, it had likewise swallowed an entire human force of five hundred cavalrymen from the Island Nation in one gulp.
Countless humans had been caught in the fallout of the infighting between the brothers Kinka and Ginka.
Whenever the Hundred Demons Bat Tribe mobilized, attacking or even wiping out nearby villages was routine.
There was also the female demon of Demon Head Castle, who specifically targeted monks and Miko among cultivators. In the less than a month since Naraku's disappearance, she had already killed ninety-nine monks and Miko by the time the Protagonist Group came looking for her. Other demons disguised themselves as caves in the wilderness to attack monks and Miko out hunting demons.
The likes of Flower Emperor loved human sorrow above all. They fed on people's grief, then killed them once they had eaten their fill.
And that did not even include immensely powerful great demons like Flying Demon Moth and Ryūkotsusei, who could easily destroy entire countries.
The Demon World beyond the Bone-Eater's Well was absolutely not as safe as it looked from the Protagonist Group's perspective! They managed to escape danger and turn disaster into good fortune every time, but that did not mean he could act as recklessly as they did!
For anyone else going through the story arcs the Protagonist Group faced, dying a hundred times would be a conservative estimate!
That was why he had kept hesitating over whether to venture into that world!
For someone to leave a comfortable, peaceful environment behind-and do so to face the terrible prospect of life and death-was no easy thing. Putting oneself in those shoes made that difficulty plain!
Forget it. Whether I go there to pursue longevity or not, I need to arm myself properly first!
That was what Li Xia thought.
After two days in seclusion drawing talismans, he added several more finished talismans to his stock.
All of them were Premium Talismans comparable to Intermediate Talismans, made from materials strengthened by the seven Shikon Shards.
"In previous years, I could only make one low-grade talisman a month on average! Now, I can produce three to five finished talismans every day! My efficiency has increased far more than tenfold!"
Had he not been running low on materials, he felt he could have stayed in seclusion for another ten days or more.
The feeling of his reserves growing deeper and his strength increasing before his eyes was truly exhilarating-and addictive.
After emerging from seclusion, Li Xia sought out his Fourth Uncle.
His elder had one piece of good news and one piece of bad news for him.
"Xia, should we go to the meeting?"
The good news was that they had found Soul-Nourishing Wood, and it was a rare specimen several hundred years old.
One could safely say that if they missed this chance, they would probably never get another.
The bad news was that this precious piece of centuries-old Soul-Nourishing Wood belonged to a North America cultivator who, as luck would have it, had dealings with members of the Peninsula Li Family's main branch! Supposedly, that cultivator was going to trade the wood to a talented young member of their own main branch! One wrong move on their part, and they would be snatching food from a tiger's jaws.
Therefore.
As an ordinary mortal on the clan's periphery, the middle-aged man did not dare make the decision himself.
Instead, he told Li Xia the whole story and left the decision to him.
"Fourth Uncle, do you know why that man wants to see me?"
Li Xia fixed the middle-aged man with an appraising gaze.
The man did not meet his eyes. He merely bowed with a smile and offered a guess:
"He probably wants to buy a few Li Family talismans at a relatively low price!"
The Peninsula Li Family specialized in talismans. That was no secret among practitioners, so naturally, they could not keep all the benefits to themselves.
Selling a few to outsiders from time to time was a means of protecting themselves.
Before you continue