The walk back was long and painful. Chen Hao was heavy, and Jun’s body was on the verge of giving out, but he wasn’t about to risk their lives for some comfort. He only made it halfway back before He Ming appeared from the darkness, hurriedly rushing to check up on the boy.
“Not dead. Figured I’d come check when everything went silent,” he spoke to the unconscious Chen Hao, muttering as if he could hear him.
“And you thought me stupid for suggesting to bring the dog along.”
He Ming quickly glanced between the two, and his eyes lingered on the black ring for an extra second. A flash of greed sparked, but the desire was suppressed as soon as it came. Suddenly, he raised both of his hands and tore the darkness asunder, wrapping the boy in a cloak of midnight sky. Then, they both disappeared.
Jun was lost for words.
“Hey! What about me?” he yelled out into the darkness. It didn’t answer.
“I’ll let this one go just because you saved Chen Hao, but there better be no next time.”
It wasn’t for convenience’s sake he was complaining—the shadows were deep, and the streets were deathly silent. Jun was carrying a fortune in his mouth while a regular cat could push him over. He jumped at the figments of his imagination and vague hallucinations until he safely arrived back at the inn. Only then did he allow himself a moment to breathe.
But, just as he began to relax, he happened to glance inside the kitchen. Chen Hao’s body was lying motionless on the floor, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of white ringed worms. He saw one of them wriggle inside the boy’s nose, and that was too much for his poor stomach to take. He painted the floors puke-green.
“Rest in peace, Chen Hao. You lived a short but meaningful life,” Jun gave a prayer to the poor boy, watching how Liu Wei and He Ming knelt over him. Then, he threw it to the back of his mind and went upstairs. There wasn’t much he could do about the situation even if the two wished the boy ill. They probably didn’t.
Inside his room, he settled on the bed and resisted falling asleep. Instead, his qi connected to the storage ring, and a mental image appeared in his mind. What appeared was a fifteen by fifteen-foot cube, stuffed to the brim with various items. The stone room, carved away from reality and placed here, was much bigger than his storage bag.
There was nothing left to do but take out the items one by one and inspect them. A greedy smile blossomed on his face, and his paws twitched with excitement. This was what life was about!
The very first thing he checked was the spirit stones—the lifeblood of the cultivation economy. The woman had meticulously sorted them into pouches of exactly a hundred each. In total, there were twenty-two full pouches, and a twenty-third one halfway full. 2257 spirit stones, to be exact.
In order, his first thought was, “Holy shit! I’m rich.” The second thought was, “We could buy a mansion if he put it all on black.” Only then did he think, “How should I split this with Chen Hao?”
Sharing wealth was a touchy subject for most, but the simple reality was that Jun was rich, and Chen Hao was poor. One had a successful business generating hundreds of spirit stones per month, and the other had to help a thief in order to make a pittance.
“Still, I’ve been eyeing the market for any magical artifacts suitable for my unique body shape. Very justifiable business expenses. I’m sure he’d understand.”
After minutes of arguing with himself back and forth, he, with a heavy heart, left 1600 spirit stones inside the ring.
“Oh how my generous heart bleeds,” he howled to the three moons.
After his dramatic display, he remembered to put the two clearly magical knives back in the ring. In exchange, he took a particularly sharp and wicked knife from her collection. What was cooler than a dog wielding an evil-looking weapon? Absolutely nothing.
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Then there were the books and the manuals. In a way, they were the most valuable objects here if one believed that knowledge was power. He quickly skimmed the various fire and shadow techniques, placing them all in his pouch. At some point, he would copy the contents on separate bamboo slips and sell the originals. Chen Hao couldn’t be trusted with this task—the boy was bound to get scammed.
‘Yes, I’m still holding a grudge about the bones. Deal with it,’ he said, winning an imaginary debate against a part of his consciousness. It was a shame he couldn’t hallucinate imaginary angels and devils on his shoulder.
Adding in the copies of Chen Hao’s techniques, he would be finally qualified to teach Xun Peng something. It was quite fun pretending to be the grandpa in the ring in his spare time. The fact that he had forgotten to find out what the boy’s spirit roots were was a stupid point that shouldn’t be brought up.
Apart from that, there were two manuals that stood out from everything else she had. The titles spoke for themselves as to the grandeur of the techniques within.
“Killing Art—Butchering Gods.”
“Manual of Gluttony.”
It was with great excitement that he read the gluttony manual. It would perfectly complement his bone art. In fact, he could already imagine transforming into a hundred-foot version of himself and devouring beasts whole, using the two techniques to instantly ascend through several stages.
But, of course, if such was the case, then life would be too easy and convenient. Having learned from reading the stone dog technique, he didn’t rage or destroy anything around him. A buddha could not be disturbed by simple words.
“Fucking racist manual.”
It did exactly what he expected it to do. In essence, it converted raw flesh and blood into spiritual force. It also had the effect of making all spiritual food much more effective, which opened up two possible paths—either you became a butcher or a gourmet. Quantity or quality. The problem was that this technique required human meridians, and as such, it was completely useless to Jun.
“It’s not all that bad. Chen Hao can eat the meat, and I can have the bones,” he sighed, coping with the loss.
Surprisingly, the killing art was already familiar to Jun -it was a collection of knife techniques. The very first one involved cultivating powerful killing intent and suppressing it into a single blow. Pig Butchering Knife was not a pretty-sounding technique name, but it was effective, and Chen Hao had already halfway mastered it under the woman’s guidance.
He left the two manuals to the boy and turned towards the second most eye-catching thing in the ring. A massive crocodile, so big that it had to be hacked in half to even fit here, was laid down on the ground, its mouth open in a silent roar. Jun did not dare to take it out of the ring. One glance at the thing was enough for his heart to skip a beat, cold sweat running along his paws. This was a Foundation Establishment beast, a terror which could destroy mortal kingdoms.
A large part of it had already been butchered and eaten, but the magical crocodile was thirty feet long—there was more than enough for everyone. The problem was that his storage pouch couldn’t hold even half of it. He was about to leave it for Chen Hao when he saw the pure-white bones poking out of the flesh. They were practically brimming with power.
Every neuron in his body activated at once. A deep craving overwhelmed every bit of logical processing he had. This was the equivalent of seeing cultivator cocaine. Premium, 100% pure cocaine.
With a new rush of energy, he sprinted outside the inn and found the most desolate alley he could. The body of the crocodile nearly scared him to death when it appeared out of thin air, but his greed overcame his cowardice and instincts. Clumsily, he wielded the sun knife, starting a long and incredibly messy process of cutting chunks of meat and bones from the crocodile. There was the slight problem of him being unable to pierce through the scales, but he carved away at the already exposed parts, filling his storage pouch as much as he could.
When he returned to the inn, he was covered entirely in blood. Was it worth it? Absolutely. This would sustain his cultivation for a long, long time. And while he was sad he couldn’t get the entire body, once Chen Hao started consuming the crocodile’s meat, he would naturally give the bones to Jun. And if the boy dared to keep them for himself, well, there were lots of things a dog could do to make one’s life miserable.
“Why settle for a couple of bones when you can have the whole bank?"
There was one more thing of note inside this ring, and it excited him the most. All of the previous items were placed to the side, but this... this was the centre-piece. Black, tumorous roots spread above a mountain of meat like an umbrella, piercing flesh and draining blood until the meat withered away. Jun’s eyes followed the red liquid up the roots where numerous streams merged into a thick, dark green stem. Like a rose, numerous thorns adorned its sides, and at the top, five blood-red petals spread outwards, pulsing with thousands of blood capillaries. The liquid pulsed through the “veins” of the flower, converging in the middle. There, a black, withered fruit greedily gulped the blood.
“If I can’t figure out a way to use this for bloodline cultivation then I should throw myself off a cliff.”