"Oh? Fellow Daoist Li, you truly have such a heaven-defying secret art? This cultivation method, can it..., oh, wait..."
As Jiao Hua spoke, he immediately thought of something. He quickly looked towards the door, and after sensing no one was nearby, he waved his large hand, and the door was instantly shut by a suction force.
Then, a restriction light shield swiftly rose within the room, isolating everything inside from the outside world. Unless a cultivator with a higher cultivation base than the two of them was present, it would be impossible to know what was happening in the room.
After doing all this, Jiao Hua looked at Li Yan again, but this time with a great deal of solemnity in his eyes. "Fellow Daoist Li, then how many times can this secret art be used on one person?"
"Hehe, as you can see, they've only aged to middle age now. I think it can be used at least two or three more times."
Jiao Hua nodded. Indeed, one could tell their state from their appearance. All four of them still looked full of vigor and blood.
"Can it really increase their combat power by twenty percent?" Jiao Hua ran a hand over his bald head, a look of doubt on his face.
Li Yan gave a noncommittal smile. "Do you think a cultivator's lifespan can just be depleted for nothing? They are cultivators. Even for human cultivators, a Foundation Establishment cultivator has a lifespan of two hundred years."
Jiao Hua finally smiled as well. "That's good. Then, Fellow Daoist Li, state your conditions. You asked to speak with me alone for this matter, right? How can I obtain this secret art? What price must I pay?"
"How about this? You first see if what I said is true or false, and then we'll talk about the conditions. But I must state beforehand that my conditions are very high.
"After all, once Fellow Daoist Jiao obtains this secret art, you'll be able to share in this benefit with me. When you engrave as many secret art jade slips as you want and sell them, I won't get any profit."
With that, Li Yan flicked his hand, and a pale yellow jade slip flew toward Jiao Hua.
Jiao Hua spoke as he reached out and caught the jade slip. "Hehe, Fellow Daoist Li thinks far ahead. But, you're right. I'll take a look first.
"However, even though you say so, if the conditions are too harsh, I would rather not have it."
As he spoke, he pressed the jade slip to his forehead. When cultivators purchased cultivation methods or immortal arts from shops in a market, the jade slips displayed on the counters usually only contained an introductory chapter.
At the same time, to further entice the buyer, a portion of the cultivation method or immortal art would usually be excerpted and recorded inside.
This way, it allowed the cultivator to learn more about the art and judge its authenticity, while also preventing them from peeking at the full content. This was a common method used among cultivators.
Jiao Hua naturally had no suspicions. But after he pressed the jade slip to his forehead, he showed a look of bewilderment for only a moment before anger began to rise on his face.
He removed the jade slip from his forehead, and his gaze toward Li Yan was already unfriendly.
"Fellow Daoist Li, are you here to make fun of me? What is the meaning of showing me a blank jade slip? Or did you... grab... the wrong one?"
He spoke the last few words almost one by one. Although his realm was not as high as the other's, it would not be easy for the other to defeat him. He was not a low-level demonic beast to be kneaded at will.
So he hoped the other party had taken the wrong jade slip, and thus reminded him heavily out of dissatisfaction.
"Oh? Did I really take the wrong one? Let me see."
Li Yan, however, remained motionless, still leaning back in his chair. He just deliberately patted the storage pouch at his waist. Without even releasing his divine sense, he said faintly, "It seems I didn't take the wrong one. This is it. Could it be that Fellow Daoist Jiao can't even use his divine sense?"
"You..."
Jiao Hua was about to leap to his feet, but his expression suddenly changed drastically. He found that he had not only lost all his strength in an instant, but even his throat seemed to be blocked, and after uttering a single word, he could no longer speak.
Seeing this, Li Yan suddenly let out a soft laugh and stood up from his chair. He looked at Jiao Hua, whose face had changed dramatically, sweat beading on his forehead, and whose eyes revealed an inexplicable terror and confusion. Only then did he say softly, "Hehehe, when you demon clan came to the Desolate Moon Continent, did no one tell you that you need to be wary of Poison Cultivators? To dare to so casually accept something from someone else, your courage is quite something."
The confusion in Jiao Hua's eyes seemed to clear a little, and a barely audible "gurgle" sound came from his throat.
But in his mind, he was screaming, 'Poison Cultivator... Poison Cultivator, he's a human cultivator, he must be a human cultivator! But... but he... how does he have such pure demonic qi? Could it be...' Jiao Hua thought of some reasons, but he still couldn't believe that he would run into something so rare.
Li Yan then glanced around and made a "tsk tsk" sound.
"Fellow Daoist Jiao's magic power is truly extraordinary. With this restriction you casually set up, even if someone outside wanted to come in, they couldn't, let alone know what's happening here."
Hearing these words, Jiao Hua almost spat out a mouthful of old blood. He finally understood now. All of this person's previous bargaining and so on was nothing more than to make him and his men relax their guard and suspicion.
What was most hateful was that the bait this person threw out had even made him draw a cage for himself. He had painstakingly set up the sound and sense-isolating restriction, spinning a cocoon to trap himself. Now, all his escape routes were sealed. This human cultivator's mind was too vicious.
At this point, Li Yan didn't want to delay any longer. All his painstaking efforts before, even haggling over a small matter and wasting so much time, were all for this final strike.
He knew that the physical bodies of demonic cultivators had a super-strong resistance to poison, so they didn't care about ordinary poisons at all. It was for this very reason that demonic cultivators were far less cautious about poison prevention than human cultivators.
This gave Li Yan an opportunity. The poison he had placed on the jade slip only made the other party lose control of their spirit power and divine sense. Even without an antidote, it would wear off on its own after a period of time.
Li Yan was quite confident in the toxicity of his Fragmented Poison Body, especially against cultivators of the same rank. The poison he laid was not comparable to pills like the "Spirit Dispersing Pill" or "Soul Loss Pill."
Probably even a Golden Core cultivator who took this jade slip would experience sluggish spirit power and weary divine sense for a moment, unable to immediately deal with Li Yan.
Li Yan walked up to Jiao Hua. Under Jiao Hua's extremely venomous gaze, Li Yan, with a normal expression, removed the storage pouch from his waist. Then, with just a sweep of his divine sense, he easily entered the storage pouch, completely ignoring the divine sense imprint on it.
As Li Yan's divine sense forcibly penetrated it, Jiao Hua, whose divine sense was linked to the storage pouch, spat out a mouthful of blood with a "pfft."
At the same time, his sea of consciousness felt as if it had been directly pierced by a steel needle. The pain made his whole body tremble uncontrollably, and sweat instantly beaded up in layers.
Jiao Hua was extremely anxious. He wanted to scream desperately, partly to have others discover him and save him.
And partly to tell others that an enemy cultivator at the Golden Core stage or above had entered Zhouyang Town, because only a Golden Core cultivator or above could ignore the divine sense seal on his storage pouch as if piercing a thin sheet of paper.
Jiao Hua felt that his divine sense, in front of the other party, was as laughable and helpless as a baby facing a giant. The other party had made no move at all and had easily penetrated it.
Li Yan paid no mind to the trembling Jiao Hua. His divine sense quickly swept through the storage pouch.
He found that besides one magical treasure, there were seven or eight strange talismans. They were different from any talismans he had seen before, even the material was pitch black. Li Yan had no time to study them now.
What surprised Li Yan in the storage pouch was the large number of spirit stones. The quantity was so great that it even energized Li Yan. After a careful look, he estimated there were about thirty thousand, including twelve mid-grade spirit stones.
Given how scarce resources were said to be in the Demon Realm and the realm of this demonic cultivator, these spirit stones must have been plundered from the various cultivation sects in the South Sea. Of course, a small portion should have been obtained by hunting down cultivators from the Desolate Moon Continent on this battlefield.
However, soon, Li Yan's divine sense wrapped around two palm-sized, crimson iron-like objects and brought them out into the room.
The moment these two objects appeared, the room was instantly filled with gusts of sinister wind and a faint scent of blood.
Li Yan formed a seal with his hand, and then a five-colored brilliance shot out from his fingertips, directly hitting one of the iron blocks.
Instantly, the iron block emitted a "wuwu" roaring sound. But as soon as the sound appeared, it was controlled by Li Yan's spirit power to the vicinity of the iron block. Even Li Yan himself had to listen carefully to hear it clearly.
Although Li Yan felt that the sound and sense-isolating restriction set up by Jiao Hua could completely block out people outside, he still acted with caution, not allowing himself to make any careless mistakes.
Along with the "wuwu" sound, Li Yan, who was staring intently at the iron block, saw illusory faces constantly appearing and changing on the surface of the crimson iron block, like a revolving lantern.
These faces were expressionless, seemingly without any thought. Although illusory, one could still see that they were the faces of Jiao Hua's six subordinates, the disciples of the Clear Spirit Sect.
After watching for a short while, as the four faces rotated, Li Yan did not see the face of the Luoshu Lake disciple from the courtyard. At this point, Li Yan roughly understood, and his gaze shifted to the other crimson iron block.
He similarly raised his hand and sent a spirit power seal onto it. Amidst the "wuwu" sound, Li Yan soon discovered an illusory face appearing and then switching back and forth, but there were only two faces. The Luoshu Lake disciple from the courtyard was indeed among them.
"The essence souls of these cultivators are not detained together, but separately. One demonic cultivator died, so Jiao Hua must have taken the restriction token from that demonic cultivator.
"However, there's a problem with this method. If that demonic cultivator is killed and his body destroyed, there's no way to retrieve the restriction token on him, and those South Sea cultivators will perish along with the demonic cultivator.
"Truly vicious. This is like being buried with him."
Looking at the six faces on the two crimson iron blocks, which appeared in a dazed rotation as if soulless, Li Yan felt that cultivators were truly pitiful. Unlike mortal captives, who still had the option of suicide, for captured cultivators, even that thought was an extravagant hope.
Detained within this iron block was a wisp of the essence soul of those six people. A certain restriction art had been cast on these essence souls. A cultivator could use this wisp of essence soul to exert their magic power and easily take another's life from ten thousand miles away.
In other words, if Li Yan were to crush this object now and release the essence souls within, the six Clear Spirit Sect disciples in the courtyard "should" be able to regain their freedom. Similarly, a single strike of spirit power directly shattering any of the faces on the iron block would cause the person's real body to die instantly.