Long pig meat tasted a lot like pork, as one might guess from the name. Elder De Danw was extremely opposed to giving away that delicacy and I had to keep convincing him over and over with the help of Dimensional Rift. The problem was that with each shrinkage of the barrier, it became stronger, meanwhile, he consumed even more drugs to reinforce his body.

So, in the end, I came close to ending it all, yet he managed to survive, turtling even more.

[Come on now, De Danw, don’t be like that…]

“Get away from me, you monster! Get away! That’s an order! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

The tingling of my Soul that accompanied the screeching of a banshee was slightly annoying.

[Stop that, we’ve established already that your orders mean nothing. They have no force behind them. You need to say them like you mean it. Like this.]

I took a deep breath and focused my Soul into a battering ram. I called upon the experience of the thousands of the dead and used that to fuel my conviction. My Intent.

[SUFFER.]

I slammed into his Soul as the barrier preventing physical damage did nothing to stop my Soul Smite. It shook but didn’t crack as its size was much greater than mine and it could take a beating. It was much weaker though, like a piece of styrofoam compared to concrete.

“AAAaaaah…” Elder De flailed his remaining hand around, somehow the stimulants and pain giving him some of his mobility back.

[Maybe I should have started with this. I wonder what would happen if I tried to cut you with a piece of the Divine?]

“No, please… No more, no more…” Elder De began to sob. “This isn’t happening… It’s not right, it’s not fair.”

[Not fair? Open your little dog eyes and see the fruits of your labor. This is what you get for messing with MY STUFF!]

“What?! This is about your stuff?!”

[Well, I mean…] I looked at him seriously and frowned. [I can understand you might want to kill me, but I can take that. However, stealing my stuff, in front of me no less… Well, you must be some kind of super stupid to do that.]

“Huh?! Are you retar-”

[Enough talk! It’s time for you to leave.] It was his fault for saying stupid things. Why did he want to insult me when I did the same? So hypocritical.

I extended the two threads of Divine Essence running through each of my limbs and created a tiny spike on the middle and index finger of my Soul. Divine Essence versus Spirit Essence. I wondered which one would come out on top.

An elephant against a million ants. Who would win? Place your bets now!

Spoilers, it was the elephant. Duh. It wasn’t even a competition. Wherever Divine Essence touched, his Soul began to unravel and decay. The pressure exerted on his Soul was like taking a power washer to a block of cheese. A really, really soft cheese. Or maybe a watermelon. Ever seen a pressure washer go against a watermelon? It was like that.

Wherever I pushed with my two fingers, his Soul wanted none of it and just tried to escape. It was tearing itself apart, and I just slurped up the Essence right from the source. It was refreshing. I had been starving for so long, and to get such a feast right after, I was in heaven.

Oh, and meanwhile, he was in hell. I soon toned out his screams and pleads for mercy. Even his promises of wealth and reward for sparing his life.

Yeah, right. His fragmented Soul told another thing entirely. He had some kind of weapon or tool in his armory that could turn the tide and kill me in an instant. It did so by targeting the Soul itself and blowing it up. I was curious and wondered if it could really do that, but I didn’t want to test it.

The villain wanted to kill me, and I desired nothing less for him. We battled like that for a while. Well, I say battle, but I was basically craving his Soul to pieces without any resistance. It was large, extremely so, and my blades were tiny, so the going was slow, yet impossible to stop.

Everything came to an end sometime later when the Soul completely broke apart and he died. I never would have been able to do such a thing if the Elder was able to move or use his Qi, but my blood was such a perfect secret weapon, I was glad I had it.

Still, I was not yet ready to fight those of a higher Realm. I mistakenly thought I could compare since I could beat a guy at the peak of Golden Core Realm. But I forgot how significant the disparity was between the Gold and Spirit Qi. It was a hurdle not easy to overcome.

I sat on the ground and absorbed the fragmented Soul, making sure to extract the maximum amount of Essence and knowledge from it. The consciousness was already ruined and I just had to wipe it, which was easy, considering it did not resist.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The amount of Soul Essence I consumed made my Soul bloated for a moment until I digested and absorbed it all. I felt the possibility of advancing to a Layer higher, yet refused to do so. I just reached the minimal requirement for doing so. That made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

I ate a dozen Golden Core Cultivators and an early Spirit Realm Cultivator, yet I could just barely reach the Second Layer? What kind of nonsense…

If things continued like that, would I have to devour gods to reach the Spirit Realm? I decided not to think about it because the implications were scary. With each higher Realm, the disparity between them would become larger. Techniques and quality of Qi were becoming more and more of a deciding factor in battle. Not to mention all the relics the older generations had. I was a new guy with just a few toys in comparison.

Or, I used to be, until Elder De died, leaving me all his wealth.

I jumped on my feet and ran to the first locked door with excitement in my mind. I had glimpses into the inside as the foreign memories started combining with my own.

I changed my Qi and twisted it around to mimic the key required. The barrier on the door fell apart and allowed me to enter. I pushed pulled the heavy doors open and stepped inside. The lights lit up by themselves, and my sight fell onto a mountain of stones. A mountain of Spirit Stones.

The 5 by 5 meter room, with shelves on the walls, and a pile of Spirit Stones in one corner, easily numbering in the thousands or even tens of thousands.

[I’m rich!]

I jumped in and landed in the pile of stones, taking them by the handful and throwing them in the air.

[Woooo- Wait a minute…] I took one of the thumb-sized rocks and examined it closer. It was devoid of Qi. I then slowly turned my head and activated the Arcane Eyes. Immediately I was plunged into a pit of despair as memories came flooding in, in regards to the treasury.

[Motherfucker! They are all empty!]

I stood up and kicked at the pile of stones. Those were all Spirit Stones, just without any Spirit Qi in them. So they were just stones, waiting to be filled. Even though they were made of pure Ether and worth something, their price was nowhere near their full potential.

[Aw, fuck. I just got a large pile of slightly expensive rock...]

That was depressing. But as more memories trickled in and combined with my mind, I realized that those were Elder De’s secret stash. Whenever he needed some money, he would just take some from the pile, and fill them up with Qi. Of course, it wasn’t so simple, and the process took days, weeks, or sometimes even months, depending on how much he needed, but it was nice just creating money on a whim.

Obviously, he was sacrificing his Cultivation potential, using Qi to trade with instead of Cultivating, but that was just a small part. Most Cultivators never traded away more than 5% of their gathered Qi, on average.

Or, at least that’s what Elder De knew. Spirit Realm Cultivators had a surprisingly large amount of Qi. Sometimes even a hundred times more than a peak Golden Core Disciple. And they were more efficient with it, allowing them to use more wasteful spells or ways of travel.

The rest of the treasury had comparatively few items, but they were worth much, much more. Three perfectly round beast cores sat on a cushion, their golden forms sparkling in the light. They were about the size of a melon and belonged to a high-ranking Golden Core beast.

Perfect energy storage devices for Tiny.

I took one of them and was just about to stuff it into my pouch when I remembered something important.

I ran out of the treasury and back to the Elder’s room. What remained of him was the body, head, stumps for limbs, and the intact right hand. I bent over and took his hand.

He had four rings on it, one on each of his fingers except for the thumb.

[Ah… It’s been a long time old friend.]

I took a ring off his finger and slid it onto mine. It was protected by an imbued will, but with its owner dead, it took almost no effort to break it. It served more as a warning than actual protection. It was just in case if the ring was ever stolen, Elder De could easily track it down. Something similar to what he had done to the Soul Breaker.

[Oh, yeah… That’s much better.]

The storage ring had a few hundred Spirit Stones inside, actual money, not just the empty shell. There were swords inside as well, and some pills and clothes. There was no food, unfortunately, but I still had some long pig to eat.

Some might complain that was cannibalism, but so what? There was no way I was leaving all that juicy Essence to go to waste. I stuffed him into the ring and then went back to continue raiding the treasury.

I took the beast cores, and they disappeared into the ring on my middle finger. One of the rings had a Weightless enchantment, taking off about 95% of the weight of the wearer. I put it on and immediately felt incredibly light, almost as if I was floating. I was still way heavier than an average Mortal man though, but the sensation was pleasant.

The third ring was called a Ring of Warding. It had an enchantment that increased the defense of the wearer, though it was quite small and its effect limited, it was nice having one. The last ring I wasn’t sure about. According to De Danw, the Ring of Stability was supposed to block any local spatial disturbances, as higher Realm Cultivator liked to hide traps in small dimensional pockets, and the ring was supposed to prevent them from triggering.

It didn’t work with my techniques though, and with the Weightless one being active, despite the anti-space shenanigans ring, I suspected it was broken.

There were some manuals neatly stacked on the shelves as well, most of them about sword techniques and movement arts. I was going to read them for sure, but they weren’t on a high list of priorities. Into the ring, they went.

I also found a few large bones, but that was about it. There was nothing special about them except that they must have belonged to a really large Spirit Beast. I took them as well. Heck, I took everything that could fit into the ring, which was pretty much everything. It had a space of 30m3 and it wasn’t even half full with stuff.

As I was sucking in everything I could, on the back shelves I found a strange metal box. My mind was telling me it was made of pure Ferrite and enchanted with various treasure-preserving arrays. It was like a stasis chamber inside, but slightly different from the timeless void that was the storage ring. For some reason, I had the feeling that the item inside should never be placed inside a timeless storage device. Something about it not being compatible with Souls or something. I only had a vague recollection of knowledge and not the exact reason as to why.

Anyway, I slowly opened it and immediately recognized what was inside. A crystal vial with a single Spirit Rejuvenation Pill inside. I opened my eyes wide and then immediately slammed the box closed.

Cold sweat began pouring down my back as I was slowly coming to terms with the implications.

[How the fuck does this idiot get this thing?!]