The Pig-Raising Plan

At this point, the old man paused, then continued with a meaningful look. "In that case, only one method remained for Strategist Ji. He would find a mortal with spiritual roots himself, then nurture them until they reached the peak of the first level of the Qi Condensation Realm. At that point, he could freely drain their physical strength and spiritual power for himself. To put it bluntly, it was like a farmer penning up a pig. Once the pig was fat and full of lard, it could be slaughtered and cooked for pleasure."

Li Yan looked at the old man, his face full of bitter helplessness. After hearing so much, he naturally understood the circumstances of both himself and that senior brother who had died early. The gray-robed old man had not been wrong—were he and that senior brother not two pigs being raised in a pen? Thinking deeper, he felt chill after chill run down his back, icy cold spreading through his entire body. He, too, had walked through the gates of hell once. But how had that senior brother died?

As his thoughts raced, he formed a guess. After more than a month, something must have gone wrong on the forty-ninth day, when that senior brother refined the medicinal power within his body and attempted to break through to the first level of the Qi Condensation Realm. At that time, the senior brother could not possibly have cultivated to the peak of the first level, so there was no question of having his spiritual power drained. Then why had he exploded and died while breaking through to the first level? Thinking of his own present condition, Li Yan did not know whether he had successfully broken through to the first level or was still at the stage of drawing in qi.

Seeing Li Yan's expression, the gray-robed old man knew that he had guessed part of it. He smiled. "You need not rack your brains any further. I will explain it to you. You should have guessed that the person he found before you died because of cultivation, but the actual reason was somewhat different.

"Since Strategist Ji had settled on this plan, the next step was finding someone with spiritual roots. The fire poison within him could not be suppressed for many more years, so he had to find a suitable candidate as soon as possible. But where could he find mortals with spiritual roots? He did not possess the cultivation of the Foundation Establishment Realm or above, so he could not use powerful Divine Sense to sweep a vast area and scan mortals for spiritual roots. Nor did he possess an immortal cultivator's 'spirit-testing stone' or 'spirit-testing pillar,' which could test spiritual roots within a certain range or through slight contact with a person's body. He only had the most basic method of testing spiritual roots with silver needles. That Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator had casually given it to him after seeing his pitiful, pleading appearance. It was the lowest-grade and most primitive method, requiring real physical contact. The needle had to enter an acupoint, after which spiritual power was injected through it to determine whether spiritual roots existed.

"This made things difficult. Who would let a stranger jab silver needles all over their body? And after being needled, one would either feel nothing at all or suffer tremendous pain. Even if he claimed to be an immortal recruiting disciples, people had to believe him first. It would be a miracle if he was not beaten by a crowd. Although mortals no longer posed any threat to him with his current cultivation, it was hardly a good method.

"So he gave the matter much thought and finally set his sights on the military camp. The young men in the army were all strong and robust, and there were plenty of them. As long as he could enter the army and attain a high position, then display his martial arts and establish supreme prestige, he could simply announce that he was accepting disciples. Would they not then let him choose as he pleased? It was a feasible plan.

"Thus, he disguised himself as a wandering martial artist and came to the Marshal's Manor. Using the martial arts he had learned in the Immortal-Seeking Lineage, supplemented by spiritual power, he displayed techniques that worldly martial arts could not compare with. Even an ordinary move, when executed with spiritual power, carried a trace of immortal majesty. He had more than enough ability to impersonate an unrivaled martial arts master. Other immortal cultivators might see through the mystery, but how could ordinary mortals discern its subtleties?

"Then, in the dead of night, he used movement techniques to sneak into the enemy camp and gather intelligence before returning to report it to Hong Linying. With his cultivation, such things were no more difficult than lifting a hand. After doing so two or three times, the truth of the information naturally became clear, and he was able to enter the army and obtain an official post as a matter of course. Finally, when the enemy army pressed down upon them in overwhelming force, he deliberately withheld the information from Hong Linying and the others, using an excuse to leave. Then, at their most perilous moment, he conveniently arrived just in time, displaying divine might as he rescued Hong Linying and his subordinates. In one stroke, he established unmatched prestige in this borderland. After that, recruiting disciples became even easier. He no longer needed to search for them himself. Wherever he went, countless people were already eager to let him test them, hoping to enter under his tutelage. In this manner, after several years, he finally found the first unfortunate person among the hundreds of thousands of soldiers."

Hearing this, Li Yan understood how Strategist Ji had obtained his official position and why he had suffered such agony during the test. My teacher truly was deep and calculating, with stratagems one after another. He had forcibly carved out a sliver of life over several years from what had originally been a dead end. Yet the suffering I endured when testing my spiritual roots was truly an undeserved disaster. I happened to encounter a cultivator whose spiritual power and Divine Sense were both so weak, and was made to suffer terribly. But this gray-robed old man could scan a hundred li around him with merely a wisp of Divine Sense, while his primary Divine Thought could survey several thousand li. That was terrifyingly powerful. Thinking this, Li Yan opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end, he said nothing.

Though the gray-robed old man was only a strand of Divine Thought, it had existed for more than two million years. Seeing Li Yan's expression, he immediately understood his thoughts and said, "Do you wish to ask why, since I was so powerful, I did not save that first person with spiritual roots?"

Li Yan thought, This truly is an old monster. How did he know what I was thinking? Yet that was indeed what he had thought. He was, after all, only a teenager. How could he bear to see an innocent person die so easily? He nodded and replied, "Yes. With such divine abilities, saving my senior brother would have been no more difficult than lifting a hand. Why let an innocent person become a wrongful ghost?"

The gray-robed old man sighed. "Although I am merely a strand of Divine Thought separated from the main body, a million years ago, I might have killed your teacher simply because he displeased me. Killing a lowly garbage cultivator like him would have taken no more than a thought. But after two million years of depletion, this strand of Divine Thought had nearly exhausted itself. Had I used spiritual power to kill him then, I would have vanished into smoke and ashes within a few years. How could I still speak of searching for disciples?

"Moreover, for the past several hundred thousand years, only a wisp of my Divine Sense has been outside, while my primary Divine Thought has long fallen into slumber. Now, each time that wisp of Divine Sense wakes me, it becomes increasingly difficult. Every awakening takes roughly two months. And each awakening further increases the rate at which my spiritual power is consumed. I can only quickly receive the events that wisp of Divine Sense experienced over all those years, separate another wisp of Divine Sense, and immediately return to slumber.

"Besides, your temperament must change in the future. Cultivating immortality means defying heaven. The dangers along that road are beyond anything you can presently understand. One careless step, and death follows. There are no good people and no bad people in the cultivation world. Only oneself and one's closest kin can truly help one. If you abuse this so-called kind heart of yours, you will only perish early. How then could you speak of cultivating immortality, much less seeking the great Dao of eternal life?"

Li Yan merely nodded after hearing this, but inwardly he thought, When did I ever agree to cultivate immortality? If I can find a chance to leave Green Mountain Pass, I will secretly return home with Father, Mother, Elder Brother, and Elder Sister, find somewhere to settle down, and that will be that. The world is so vast—could it really hold no place for me? Being with my family would be far better than becoming an immortal.

The gray-robed old man knew that it was impossible to make an ordinary youth suddenly become decisive and ruthless in such a short time. Though Li Yan nodded to show he understood, he might not truly agree with those words in his heart. For now, there was nothing else to be done. Yet how could he know the heart of a youth like Li Yan? Young people always felt that the days of youth were endless. They did not understand the sorrows of birth, aging, illness, and death. They only felt that having their parents and family by their side was happiness, never considering the path to eternal life at all.

"Your senior brother actually possessed quite good aptitude. He had earth spiritual roots, a three-attribute spiritual root. Among those three attributes, he also possessed the wood attribute, though it was not his strongest. Still, he cultivated rather quickly. By rights, he should have been able to reach the peak of the first level of the Qi Condensation Realm in a little over a year. But Strategist Ji searched for a time and found none of the two herbs that were crucial for balancing the medicinal power. Although those two herbs were merely low-grade spirit herbs to cultivation sects, they were very difficult to find in the mortal world. The fact that he had found one of them before was merely a coincidence of fate. The key was that he had no more time to search everywhere for these two herbs with balancing properties. He likely would have died from the eruption of his fire poison before finding them. The only remaining path was to gamble—to force cultivation with an even more incomplete medicinal liquid. As for the result, it was easy to imagine. Your teacher became what he is now after lacking only one ingredient; this time, two balancing ingredients were missing at once. The result was, first, that the pain during absorption increased severalfold; second, when breaking through to the first level of the Qi Condensation Realm on the forty-ninth day, survival was basically a matter of nine deaths and one life." At this point, the gray-robed old man stopped speaking and looked at Li Yan again.

Li Yan was exceedingly clever. He only felt bitterness fill his mouth. It seemed that he and his senior brother had both attempted to break through to the first level of Qi Condensation on the forty-ninth day, but their bodies had been unable to withstand the medicinal power that lacked even more balancing ingredients, leading them to miserable deaths. Then what exactly was his own condition now?

The gray-robed old man continued, "After your senior brother died, Strategist Ji grew even more anxious and searched even more frantically for someone with spiritual roots. Who would have thought his luck would be so absurdly good? In just over a year, he found you.

"My wisp of Divine Sense wandering outside could only sense an area within a hundred li, so it was not until you entered within a hundred li of Green Mountain Pass that it detected you and came to awaken me from my slumber. But I was too weak now, and awakening took around two months. By an unfortunate coincidence, you came to the military camp to enlist and were discovered by Strategist Ji.

"You should have seen the strange book in his hands. In truth, he had simply used spiritual power to stick the jade slip and the transformed jade book together, making it easier to carry. Since obtaining that transformed jade book, he had always wanted to uncover its secrets. But with his meager cultivation, he could never open it. Yet the more he failed to open it, the more extraordinary he believed the book to be. He fantasized that it might contain even more profound immortal arts, perhaps even something capable of resolving the fire poison in his body. So he pondered it day and night. Heh." The old man gave a disdainful laugh, clearly finding Strategist Ji's overestimation of himself ridiculous.

"My wisp of Divine Sense had originally been wandering within the transformed jade book. Not long after seeing you enter under Strategist Ji's tutelage, it saw you begin cultivating that method of entering the Dao through poison and naturally became anxious beyond measure. Yet when I had reduced consumption in the past, the only ability I had given it was scanning spiritual-root constitutions; it possessed no other divine abilities. Meanwhile, my primary Divine Thought had not awakened. Thus, whenever Strategist Ji was with you, that wisp of Divine Sense could only disrupt the surrounding spiritual qi and increase the difficulty of your cultivation, slowing your progress so it could delay matters until I awakened."

Li Yan suddenly realized something. He remembered that whenever Strategist Ji came near him, he would feel the qi throughout his body become obstructed. He had always believed it was because his master's cultivation was too profound, naturally carrying an oppressive aura. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that someone had been preventing him from cultivating.

At this moment, the old man's figure had already begun to turn hazy and illusory, so he gave Li Yan no time to ask questions and continued, "But I never expected that, with your mixed spiritual-root constitution, even with that wisp of Divine Sense interfering, you still completed the seventy-seven, forty-nine days of cultivation. Yet the final result was no different from that of your previous senior brother. Without the balancing effect of those two medicinal ingredients, coupled with today's final doubled dose of medicinal power, how could the meridians within your body endure it? Even if Strategist Ji later pulled you from the pool, he had no means of bringing you back to life. At that moment, my wisp of Divine Sense sensed your approaching death. It immediately poured all its memories into the primary Divine Thought, then forcibly detonated itself, jolting me directly awake from slumber. But though this awakened me at once, it also injured the main body of my Divine Thought, making me, already weak, even weaker.

"When I awoke, I found that your five viscera and six bowels were all damaged, your blood and qi had begun flowing in reverse, and you were only a few breaths from death. I could only use my last remaining spiritual power to sort through and repair every meridian in your body. But when the repairs were nearly complete, the stimulation of Strategist Ji's spiritual power entering your body briefly woke you. You even tried to sit up and continue cultivating at that moment, so I had no choice but to give a thunderous shout and knock you unconscious before I could finish repairing your body. But unfortunately, the spiritual power I possess today is far too weak. Though I pulled you back from the gates of hell, I could no longer force the poison in your body out. I could only use a spell to suppress it in one corner of your dantian. As long as you do not continue cultivating this immortal art, it will not erupt for the time being. But if you cultivate this immortal art again, given your current condition, without some extraordinary stroke of fortune, death will be inevitable." By this point, the gray-robed old man's figure had begun to turn transparent.