Leakage Level

Virtual Spirit Transformation!

Hu Mang was startled.

In the Heavenly Gate, and indeed all of Earth Star, there were only ten Void Refinement cultivators: the Ten Lords.

Below them, only the founders of top Spiritual Qi enterprises and certain important figures within the Heavenly Gate were qualified to touch the Spirit Transformation Realm.

They numbered around a thousand.

But making it widespread surely meant more than a thousand, or even several thousand.

Could his old lady have been telling the truth?

Would "immortals" really appear before long without anyone having to ascend?

"Then again, Virtual Spirit Transformation should be different from the real thing. I don't know exactly how it works, either. That's just what I heard on the news."

Doctor Sun shrugged.

"Maybe it's just a pie in the sky."

"Whatever. It has nothing to do with a Qi Training elementary schooler like me anyway," Hu Mang said with a sigh.

"I haven't had today's 'electrotherapy' yet. Come on."

"All right, I'll spice things up for you today," Doctor Sun said eagerly.

Demon Suppression Branch Bureau, Jiangxinzhou Subdistrict

Little Xu took his lunchbox behind the cafeteria to wash it. A colleague passing by laughed.

"You're really working hard, even bringing your own Spirit Cuisine. That motivated, huh?"

"Looks like you've got your eye on one of the bureau's advanced training slots."

"Tsk, if you break through to the Golden Core Realm, I'll have to call you Brother Xu from now on."

Little Xu rolled his eyes and ignored them.

After washing his lunchbox, Little Xu went to the restroom, where he ran into Old Zhang pissing with a cigarette in his mouth.

Little Xu had finished his business, but Old Zhang was still going, drip by drip.

Little Xu had no intention of concerning himself with his old colleague's prostate problems. He washed his hands and started to leave.

But halfway out, Old Zhang called him from behind.

"Little Xu, I was the one who took you under my wing when you first joined, wasn't I?" Old Zhang said lazily as he pulled up his waistband.

"What is it, Old Zhang?" Little Xu asked, puzzled.

"Oh, it's nothing. I was just feeling sentimental, thinking about how the rookie I trained is about to break through to Golden Core."

Old Zhang took on the air of a middle-aged man settling in for a long talk about life.

"..."

Little Xu fell silent for a moment, then quietly took out two cigarettes, ready to listen to the wisdom of someone who had been there before.

He was just a bit withdrawn and introverted; that didn't mean he didn't understand how to deal with people.

Old Zhang was very pleased with his attitude.

"Never mind the little cases over the years. You've handled plenty of big ones too, haven't you? The online painted-skin case, the Great Ghost-level anomaly case, the major robbery case involving overseas Rogue Cultivators. You even came second in our internal spell-fighting tournament, didn't you? You've come a long way."

"What's wrong, Brother Zhang?" Little Xu raised an eyebrow, growing serious.

"Nothing. Oh, right, are you planning on Yin Virtue Core Formation?"

"That's the plan. I'm thinking of transferring to the ghost-handling side."

"Ambitious, and gutsy too. But young man, safety should still come first. You're not like me. I don't have much time left." Old Zhang continued his wistful musings.

"Brother Zhang, you-!?"

"He went to another province to handle a case a few days ago. Something went wrong, and he nearly didn't make it back. Now he insists on dragging everyone he sees into a long talk about life. You're not the first, and you won't be the last."

A passing colleague laughed.

"..."

Little Xu fell silent for a moment, then put out his cigarette and prepared to bolt.

Getting me worried for nothing!

"Oh, right, that virility drug you asked me about before—I know what it's for now."

Virility drug?

Little Xu froze. After thinking back, he finally remembered the strange "disabled cultivator."

He had already decided not to investigate any further. After all, his mother's records were classified, which meant a higher-level department was involved.

And he was in the middle of a background check before his "advanced training." There was no need to stir up trouble.

Still, he was somewhat curious about the matter.

Old Zhang changed the subject, returning to the major case he had handled.

"Do you know how dangerous that case in the other province was? Those bastards smuggling banned drugs had every kind of ruthless lunatic among them. We seized over thirty lethal Law Artifacts alone, and they had an underground augmented cultivator at the Golden Core level leading them. Thank goodness we weren't the only department there. The Devil Subjugation Bureau sent out its devil-subjugating Dao soldiers too. If they hadn't trapped that augmented Golden Core cultivator, your Brother Zhang really wouldn't have made it back..."

Little Xu patiently listened to his harrowing adventure. When Old Zhang finally finished, Little Xu pressed him.

"Does that virility pill have anything to do with those drug smugglers?"

For a moment, all sorts of hidden dealings flashed through his mind: powerful figures pulling strings, medical black markets, smuggling syndicates.

His expression grew more and more serious.

Old Zhang was taken aback.

"No. I was just telling you about my brush with danger."

A vein bulged on Little Xu's forehead.

Old Zhang burst out laughing. Realizing he was about to push Little Xu too far, he hurried to the point.

"It has nothing to do with the case. But after we captured those smuggling cultivators, I unexpectedly learned something about the drug's use during the interrogation."

"Out in the open sea, especially in overseas cultivation territories where old-world customs are still strong, virility pills aren't actually used to treat impotence. They're used to stimulate Essence Blood. A dose dozens of times stronger can completely activate the Demon Race bloodline hidden in some cultivators."

"You know how overseas cultivators have a trace of demonic nature and Demon Race blood in them, some more than others. Some even have flood dragon blood, like the Yu Household-"

Old Zhang raised his eyebrows, using the suggestively vague, sleazy tone peculiar to middle-aged men discussing politics.

But Little Xu didn't take the bait at all and went straight to the point.

"They activate their demon blood, and then what?"

"Fight and kill, of course. The overseas cultivation world is different from our Middle Earth. Old customs are deeply entrenched there. Disputes over overseas spirit treasures, ownership of spirit islands, grudges between factions large and small, and even conflicts between different Demon Beast lineages have made this kind of fighting especially common."

"And these fights are often held as arena challenges, with one side defending and the other attacking. Cultivators of equal cultivation are sent into the ring to fight to the death. When one dies, another takes his place; as one goes up, another dies. It continues until one side can no longer bear the losses. The dead often don't even leave a whole corpse, and anyone who flees the arena is even liable to have his tendons pulled out, his skin flayed, and his Spirit Root ripped out while he's still alive."

"It's a very common way of settling disputes."

Among the Heavenly Gate's various departments, the Demon Suppression Bureau was already well versed in actual combat, but Little Xu still frowned instinctively. This style of fighting really was excessively bloody.

"And drugs often aren't banned in these life-and-death matches. They use drugs to activate their Demon Race bloodline. For example..." Old Zhang paused.

"Virility drugs taken at dozens of times the normal dose are one of the most common activation drugs overseas."

Little Xu let out a long breath. Now he finally understood what that look had been about.

Night, in the room

The light was off.

Yet a faint glow appeared.

The lightning power produced by Hu Mang's "electrotherapy" was gathering at an indescribable speed on a "fragment" against his finger.

It was a fragment of unknown material, neither metal nor jade.

It wasn't one of Old Daoist Shen's "ancient Law Artifacts" that had lost their spirituality.

Nor was it the strange "dragon-shaped meridian diagram" or the "High Antiquity Cultivation Method" written in an unknown script.

It was the small "fragment" he had completely overlooked before.

In fact, if Hu Mang hadn't been so careful back then, it would most likely still be buried beneath the volcanic crater.

After all, the little fragment really didn't look valuable. Never mind possessing any spirituality of its own, it didn't even look like a fragment of a Law Artifact.

But now, this overlooked "fragment" was absorbing the lightning power from Hu Mang bit by bit.

In fact, Hu Mang had noticed it on the night of his second "electrotherapy" session.

His vigilance had long since been honed at Port Surumai.

"Could this thing be an ancient lightning-absorbing pearl? Come to think of it, were there lightning-absorbing pearl Law Artifacts in ancient times?"

Hu Mang muttered to himself as he toyed with it.

As he recalled, things like this had only appeared in the "electric cultivation era."

I'll ask my old lady later.

After the last trace of lightning power had been absorbed, Hu Mang tossed it onto the bedside table. Just as he was about to go to sleep, a sudden change occurred!

Without warning, the fragment suddenly blazed with light. Hu Mang's eyes widened, and he almost instinctively straightened his back and leaped up.

The next moment, his entire body was sucked into it in midair.

Both the fragment and Hu Mang vanished from where they had been, disappearing from this world in that same bizarre fashion.

Thunderclouds roiled across the sky, spreading for who knew how many miles. A terrifying flash of lightning struck down like an electric dragon, gouging a broad trench into the ground.

The land was much like the sky.

As successive flashes of lightning suddenly turned the sky as bright as day, they illuminated an ancient city below.

Every building in the city was wreathed in thick smoke and covered in ash, as though each had been struck by heavenly lightning.

Houses and pavilions alike were coated in dust and giving off smoke, scarred and battered everywhere, all in the unmistakable state of ruin left by heavenly lightning.

Every hair on Hu Mang's body nearly stood on end.

A moment ago, he had been lying by his bed, casually playing with the fragment as he waited for this "ancient lightning-absorbing pearl fragment" to absorb the remaining lightning power from his body.

The next, he had appeared here, wearing nothing but a "lightning-absorbing garment" that resembled a white lab coat.

And the psychological pressure from the thunderclouds overhead alone was equal to that of a hundred artificial lightning tribulation towers!

It was as though a bolt of heavenly lightning could strike at any moment!

Hu Mang reached into his pockets and found two things.

One was the Spirit Pivot No. 1, the latest model of Divine Sense phone. No signal! No signal at all!!

The other was a "Spiritual Qi detector." He had grown accustomed to carrying it with him back when he was working on the power station.

He casually pressed the button, and a "red number" immediately appeared on the detector-

91

"!!"

Hu Mang was stunned.

He had never seen a number this high.

No, he had seen one in a textbook.

For example, an accident at a major cultivation facility could cause "clear and turbid Qi" to separate, with the clear Qi leaking out and developing into a large-scale cultivation disaster. That could push the reading above 90.

And so it had another name: Leakage Level.