Will followed behind the Dragon Flame Clan Patriarch as he led him to the junk tier of the treasury. He'd been told that a servant with his new storage ring would be meeting them there.

It wasn't a long walk, only two minutes or so. He saw the servant in charge of bringing the ring. The man had it placed on a cushion he was holding. Will Wind Danced over and grabbed it.

He pulled the two rings he had on his index finger off, putting the new ring on in their place. He put the ring with the poisonous stuff back on, and put the other on his right hand. Looking inside the new ring, he saw the books he'd asked for. He also saw a few pills. He embedded the alchemy book he had to see if he could recognize them.

He couldn't. He turned to the patriarch and asked him.

“What piwws are these?”

“Ah, the green ones are healing pills, and the blue ones are qi replenishing pills.”

Will appreciated it. Though the qi replenishing pills were quite literally useless for him since the only qi he had was storm qi which he couldn't replenish because it wasn't his and was constantly streaming into him anyway, and the qi he stole from a mouse. Oh, and the qi from all those beasts that he'd put on his spiritual roots. He didn't know how to use qi either. Now that he thought about it, depending on the definition, he wasn't even really a cultivator. He was more of an inhaler.

But it was the thought that counted. He also would probably be able to make use of them, somehow.

He turned towards the patriarch as the servant left.

“Thanks!”

The man nodded, then spoke while gesturing towards the junk room.

“Feel free to take whatever you'd like. It's ordered by date of arrival, so the items at the back are ones that have been left unused for many years.”

Will nodded and started looking around.

The junk room didn't have a door. Just an arch that was slightly smaller than the width of the room. The room itself seemed to be a long corridor, with items in rows of two, one long line of items on each side of the room.

He looked at the first item on the right. It was a toothpick. Looking in front of it, there was a pedestal with a description of it.

‘Spiritual Willow Toothpick

Toothpick made of wood from a Spiritual Willow Tree.’

That was certainly uninteresting. He walked down the hallway, seeing many similarly useless items. Scraps of metal, little twigs, a board here and there, spiritual herbs with effects weaker than regular aloe vera, the occasional little household object with a spiritual ability that has an effect completely unrelated to its regular usage, a few swords with drawbacks to using them that didn't even have decent positives to go with them, botched pills that caused about ninety times more poisoning than they did anything positive, botched poison pills that caused effects like sore knees and stomach aches. It was a whole lot of junk. Unsurprisingly.

It was only now that it hit Will that mapping right now was something that a robber would do. He didn't stop.

After a few minutes he found something a bit interesting. It was little rectangular block, with what looked almost like a screen on the front. The “screen” showed a flower unwilting when supplied with qi, but the amount it took was weirdly high. He put it in his ring. When he did, the line on the right side (the side it had been on before he took it) moved forward so that the item that was behind it had taken its place.

Will continued on. His map was messed up, but he just moved the old position to a different layer and put the new ones there instead. It was kind of worrying how casually he had just interacted in four dimensions like that. He wasn't sure how to feel about it, honestly. He decided on ignoring it.

After a bit longer he found another interesting object. It looked similar to plastic. It was nostalgic, so he took it. He kept moving as the left line shifted, and the door moved closer to get rid of empty space.

He found a ring that vibrated. It didn't mention how it powered itself, so he took it so he could find out later.

Then he found the kind of thing he'd been hoping for. It was a mirror that aided cultivation. Except it was cracked, so it would lead to qi deviation when used. He took it.

He found a ball that couldn't bounce. He put it in his ring because he found it amusing.

He found a botched calming pill that had a side effect of qi deviation, so he took it.

He found a mask that makes whoever wears it look like themselves. It was funny so he took it.

He found a fire that never went out but didn't affect the temperature or do much of anything at all. It was contained in a glass box. He took it.

As he was walking, Sarah suddenly contacted him.

“Holy shit! Will, go back! You just passed something that could help with the metal physique plan!”

Will turned around. He felt like he knew what it was. A metal apple. He put it in his ring.

Soon after that, he saw something really interesting. It was a little marble looking thing. That wasn't the interesting part, obviously. The interesting part was its effects.

It had a weak effect of sucking spiritual energy towards itself. As soon as it sucked up spiritual energy, it would spit it back out, except the spit out spiritual energy would be chaotic and hard to control. If left alone, the spiritual energy it spit out would eventually calm down, but without any interference, the spiritual energy would run out of outward momentum and get sucked into it again before it fully went back to normal. And when it was spit out again, it would be even more chaotic.

The marble was considered useless because it was hard to stop if left alone for too long, and because it only worked on spiritual energy and not qi. But it seemed great for Will. He'd just need to find a way to get it into his dantian.

He didn't know if it would actually offer any advantages to have his spiritual energy be chaotic and hard to control, but it would be fun to try.

The next thing he saw was… well he couldn't see it. It was covered with a tinted barrier. It was supposedly a large standing stone slab with remnant sword intent left behind by a powerful swordsman on it. But said swordsman was also a madman, and anyone who tried to comprehend it ended up going insane to some degree. It was covered so that no one skilled in the way of the sword started comprehending it unintentionally. Will put it in his ring, barrier included.

The next thing he found was a pen that changed colors as it wrote. Basically, if someone used it to draw a straight line, the line would be a rainbow. It could probably cut down export costs. More importantly, Will liked it, so he took it.

Will didn't find anything else good for a while. It was only when he reached the end of the room that he saw two things that were perfect for him.

The first was a pill. But it was no ordinary pill. This was a pill capable of healing an old man on the brink of death to the point that he could do a backflip without a problem. It was like a perfect heal plus extra. As long as it wasn't death, this pill could fix it.

And that was also why it was back here. The pill had originally been an attempt at a pill able to bring back the dead. That goal failed. Instead of making the dead living, it made the living dead. That is to say, anyone who took the pill would instantly die. All the healing was useful for was leaving a pretty corpse.

It was stored in a jade pill bottle covered in arrays. He placed it in his ring.

Then there was the second one. It was a horrific thing. It took the form of a knife. To use it, one had to stab someone with it. The person who was stabbed would die in a moment, but it would feel like eons of agony as their soul would be painfully torn to shreds. Then, the user has to stab themselves. Once they did, they would gain another dantian.

Of course, there was no reason for anyone to use this. It was rare to ever see someone use more than one dantian, so the idea of anyone wanting extras was preposterous. The cultivation methods that used all three were already exceptionally challenging to use, with failure meaning a certain death in almost every scenario. But even that was secondary. No one would be able to survive the consequences of an extra dantian. They'd be dooming themselves to qi deviation no matter what they did afterwards. It was a knife that was useless beyond useless.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

For a normal person, that is. Sarah spoke up, worried.

“Will, I get that you're immune to qi deviation, but do you really plan to obliterate someone's soul? You're immune to qi deviation, not guilt. Do you really think you can live with yourself after that? This is something the Sick Freak would do. Not you, Will. Put the dagger down and let's just go, okay?”

She was scared. She'd just escaped from a person who tortured people for his own gain. She didn't know if she could handle being wielded by someone like that again. She had really started to trust this kid. More than she'd trusted anyone before. She didn't know what she'd do if he turned out to be just another Sick Freak.

Will laughed like she'd just told him a joke, and her heart sank. This was it, huh? Back to the same suffering as always. At least she got a break from it for a few days.

Her heart instantly lightened. Haha, of course. The kid was just having ideas. He was probably trying to come up with a way to use the knife without sacrificing anyone. He'd be putting it down any second now. He put it in his ring.

“Will? Why did you take it? Didn't you just say you weren't going to sacrifice someone? Why are you taking it when you just said you wouldn't use it?”

Will chuckled.

“You! Just now! Like, less than five seconds ago!”

“Yeah! And that's step one of using it! How would you use it without sacrificing someone?”

Will smirked.

Sarah really couldn't believe this kid. He'd just said the dumbest shit she'd ever heard while smirking like a smartass. Was this really how it would end? With the one person who could wield her literally stabbing himself to death?

“You… That would just kill you.”

“Wh-you… you're planning on taking that pill!? That's not even vaguely qi deviation related!”

“Don't fucking ‘you'll see’ me, you fucking lunatic! The only thing I'd be seeing is your fucking corpse!”

He stabbed himself in the chest with the knife.

“WILL!!!”

He wasn't wrong. He was fine. Whether the death felt like eons or not, it was still instant. And he was immune to that. He pulled out the knife. It's not like getting stabbed was instant death, it was the soul obliterating that was, so the knife wound stayed. Will lined up the knife with the already-made hole and put it back in again.

A new dantian grew. Right between the lower and middle. It was honestly a pretty gross process. But once it was done, everything was in order. Though he would probably need to start referring to them with numbers now.

“Why even bother being immune to qi deviation if you were just gonna be immune to dying anyway?”

This kid was fucking exhausting.

“That actually makes less sense than being immune to death.”

Will quickly pulled the knife out half way and pushed it back in twice before he felt like he needed to stop. The stab wound was starting to actually really hurt. He stored the knife and took out a healing pill. He didn't know how to use it properly, so he just ate it and tried to push all the energy it turned into over to the stab wound. It worked fine. The lifeforce in dantian one was helping heal it, so it would be fine. After another healing pill, there wasn't even a scar left behind.

He realized the state of his attire now. It had a blood-stained hole in the center of his chest. He would have to ask for a change of clothes from the patriarch.

He'd gotten everything he needed now, so he Wind Danced at full speed back to the entrance. Once he was out of the room, he took the books out of the ring in a stack and slid his finger along each from the bottom up, copying as he went.

“You can have these back.”

The man ignored the books, staring at the bloodstained hole in Will's shirt.

“What happened?”

“Don't wowwy about it.”

And so he didn't.

“I'd like some new cwothes, though.

“Right away.”

He burned a talisman and a servant arrived in under a minute with a storage ring, which he passed to Will before leaving. The patriarch spoke.

“Just keep that one as well.”

Will took off the poison storage ring and replaced it with the new one. After putting all the clothes in the first ring he'd been given, he put the poisons into it, putting the old poison storage ring on his right hand.

“Thanks.”

The man nodded.

“Have you gotten everything that caught your eye?”

Will nodded.

“Yep.”

The man really didn't want to see what they'd m taken

“Then I'll guide you out?”

Will nodded.

“Sure.”

He didn't really need him to. He knew the way there. But it would be weird to just run around on his own.

Soon enough, Will was out of the city and headed back to the snake. When he reached it, the snake hissed.

“~Ready to go?~”

“~Yep.~”

He hopped on, and they set off towards Duodibunu City.

They reached it in about an hour and a half.

It seemed to be four hours past midnight. The guards at the gate recognized him and let him through, and he headed to the alleyway store. As the door creaked, the old man turned to look at him.

“What is it, brat?”

He looked at the evidence of a stab wound on the brat's chest, his expression growing confused.

“How'd you get stabbed so quickly?”

“I dewivered the infowmation and came back.”

“That doesn't answer the question about the stab wound.”

“I wanted mowe dantians.”

The old man sighed.

“Sure. You said you delivered the information? How?”

“A Colossal Wightning Snake bwought me.”

“Ah. That'd do it.”

He didn't bother questioning it. There was no point.

“If you already delivered the information, then what are you bugging me for?”

He shrugged.

“Then leave.”

He remembered something.

“Wanna make me your discipwe?”

The old man looked at him like he was an idiot.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Satisfied? I don't care. Go away.”

“You're not vewy nice.”

“I'm not trying to be. Shoo.”

Will couldn't come up with any excuse to bother the man more.

“Bye.”

He headed back to Li Rencai's place. The guards opened the gate when he approached. Entering the front door, he saw the maid he'd informed of his departure.

“It was fastew than expected.”

Such a wide range an the kid had managed to miss it. She was almost impressed.

Will headed to the guest room he was staying in, closing the door behind him. Now it was pill time.

He started by taking a regular healing pill. He placed the healing energy on his spiritual roots.

Then, he took out the special one. It would all be going to dantian one. He popped open the container, and swallowed the pill. He died instantly. In other words, he was unharmed.

He focused on the energy of the pill. The description said the healing and death were inseparable, but he was able to control the healing because of what he'd done with his spiritual roots. The death energy stuff was still there, it was just doing nothing now.

For all the weirdness that happened with Qi Deviation Immunity, it felt like Instant Death Immunity honestly had even weirder effects on things. The fact that he had energy that kills you instantly sitting in his body doing nothing was evidence of that.

The healing energy of this pill was very different from the healing energy of the regular healing pill. It felt like a more profound version. But it had enough similarities to the regular healing energy that he could control it.

And so he did. He moved it all the way up to dantian one. The leftover death energy he put on his spiritual roots. Seemed like it might be a good thing to be able to control. If it was like the life half of the pill, and had similar weaker variants that weren't instant death, it would be nice to be able to control it and make it go away or something.

He observed his body. The lifeforce and life energy, as he had decided to call it, seemed to mesh well together. It did have that same overhealing effect the lifeforce had, but it wasn't as much, even taking quantity into consideration.

Instead, it seemed to focus its effects on the lifeforce. The lifeforce was right next to it, while his body was on the other side of the wall of his dantian.

It seemed as if it was rejuvenating the lifeforce. And it was also mixing with it at the same time. It felt like it had changed the lifeforce from being from a bunch of various creatures in different conditions. The lifeforce used to share the flaws that living things have. Like age, and improper diet, and lack of proper exercise, and everything else. Now it was free of them. Like every bit was from a version of the thing it came from too perfect and healthy to be realistic. And that seemed to make its effects a lot stronger.

It was like the lifeforce was also giving Will all of those ailments, and some of the healing part of the lifeforce was being used to cancel them out. Now that they were gone he got to experience all of the positive effects.

But the life energy wasn't purifying the lifeforce. It wasn't getting rid of the bad parts. Consider it like a bunch of green with the bad parts being discolored greens, like darker greens and browner greens. Instead of just removing those off colored parts, it made them into the normal green. And at the same time, it made even the normal green more green. Which meant not only was it not canceling out, but the part it was canceling out also became a positive.

But that was only the first part. Once Will saw it finish its healing process, he saw it do something else. It started to fuse with it. As if it was only okay with doing so once it had reached the proper level of perfection.

Lifeforce wasn't something used to heal. Lifeforce was the health itself. When he put it in his dantian, it was like adding health. That was why it was able to make his body's condition better than it was at its best. Because it was giving him a higher max health. Once it had fused with the life energy, it became both. It was life that created life. It was health that healed itself.

It's not like lifeforce couldn't ‘heal’ itself necessarily. It could obviously be replenished. But it always needed outside influence to do so. Whether through spiritual energy or food or healing pills or whatever else. But now, it was self-replenishing. Usually healing energy would be used up to make more lifeforce. But now the lifeforce was the healing energy.

Will had gotten his first replenishable energy. Just like an actual cultivator could replenish their own qi, he could replenish… whatever this was. Honestly, it felt a bit scary on principle, like a chimera that could replicate itself. He felt like he'd read about something like that in a fantasy manga before. Some chimera with troll DNA that let it regenerate itself. Felt like he might've even seen it more than once, honestly.

But as long as he kept it locked up in his dantian and never let it out, he wouldn't be assimilated into some kind of self-replicating ever-assimilating monster right out of an end-of-the-world scenario. Which kind of made the whole replenishing ability a bit less useful.

It was only replenishing itself, not duplicating, either. Like, for each bit he'd taken from something, it only regenerated it to the same ‘perfect form’ of that thing level. At least it didn't have some kind of ‘tainted vision of perfection’ type of thing. It didn't seem to have the creativity for that.

Which was all the more reason to never let it out. Luckily, it wasn't something he needed to worry about, since his Qi Deviation Immunity meant it couldn't break out.

He put the possible world-ending aside for now, and focused on the effects. Since he'd been splitting his lifeforce half and half between spiritual roots and dantian for the first pile of beasts, it seemed to be restoring the missing parts of them. Though it seemed like it would take at least a few hours to be done.

He decided to test the limits on that. He brought out a corpse from his ring, one of the lightning deers, though one in a good enough condition as to not bleed all over the floor and make a mess. That reminded him, he needed to move everything over to the new ring.

The beast corpses hadn't gone bad yet, he could tell that much. Whether that was because spiritual beasts didn't go bad for a long time, or because the rings had helped keep them from going bad, or a bit of both, he wasn't sure. But he was sure that the first ring he'd been given at the Dragon Flame Clan was a lot better. His old rings were the ones the Sick Freak had deemed unimportant enough to leave behind, so they obviously weren't anything special.

And judging from how big the new one was, it was certainly a lot better. He could fit everything he had in his old rings in it and it wouldn't even be a tenth of the way full. And a ring that high quality almost certainly had some kind of preserving ability better than his old ones.

Even the second ring he got probably did. It was a good bit smaller than the first, maybe about a fourth of the size, it was still a lot better than his old rings.

He quickly moved everything out of his old rings into the first of the new rings, then got back to his original task. He looked at the deer in front of him. He inhaled only a hundredth of its lifeforce into his dantian, then observed.

The weird whatever he'd made in his dantian didn't seem to be able to recreate the whole thing from just that. It still healed it, but it didn't make more of it.

He inhaled a bit more until he'd taken a tenth in total. It still didn't start recreating it. He kept adding more. Once he'd added about half, it finally started regenerating it.

Now it was time for the second phase of his testing. He inhaled until just a tenth of the deer's lifeforce was left, then he put the deer back in his ring, separate from the others so he could grab it again later.

He waited while playing on his phone in the mind space until the regenerating was done. Once it was, he brought out the deer again, and inhaled the rest of the lifeforce.

The result was interesting. It seemed like the part that had been recreated was incomplete somehow. When the new lifeforce came, the regenerated part seemed to unmake itself, as the new part replaced it. It was illuminating for Will.

He really wanted to try removing a piece of what the deer's lifeforce turned into, and see if it would regenerate it properly now that it ‘knew’, but he didn't want the world to end, so he couldn't.

That reminded him of the patriarch guy. He actually had a pretty good reason to fear him now, since his being able to contract Sarah was only because he was immune to qi deviation.

Then he thought of something. Couldn't he have just told the patriarch guy about his Qi Deviation Immunity and he wouldn't have been scared of him anymore?