Chapter 27: Taking Stock
Returning to his wooden hut, Lu You didn't have time to listen to the Evil Eye's complaints.
He hurriedly changed into his spare clothes and destroyed what he'd been wearing.
Even then, Lu You still didn't feel at ease.
After making sure no one was around, he used a Rain-Calling Talisman and a Beginner Wind Talisman to clean the area around the hut.
This way, all traces of his actions—from the moment he entered the Verdant Cloud Sect onward—were completely erased.
"Everyone's attention will be focused on Dongfang Bubai. First, I've changed out of the red outfit. Second, I used Teleportation Talismans to shift out. Even if someone saw me, they wouldn't know I entered the tomb, much less guess that I teleported out. So no one will pay me any mind."
Lu You reviewed his actions and, after confirming there were no loose ends, finally relaxed. He took out some spiritual rice and spirit wine from the hut, stir-fried a few simple dishes, and celebrated on his own.
This trip down the mountain had brought Lu You huge gains. The most important of them was obtaining Teleportation Talismans.
Because Teleportation Talismans were rare and hard to buy instructional manuals for, and because of their seemingly "useless" nature and high crafting difficulty, even talisman masters who wanted to learn them were often deterred. So from the moment he obtained Teleportation Talismans, Lu You had gained a survival trump card. A single Teleportation Talisman could only teleport him randomly a hundred meters, but if he smashed out an unlimited number of Teleportation Talismans, even Lu You wouldn't know where he'd be in the next second—let alone his enemies.
Second was Lu You's acquisition of the Evil Eye.
It was precisely because the Evil Eye had seen Lu You use Teleportation Talismans to transfer Zeng Yan and the others away that it chose to ingratiate itself with Lu You and sign a soul contract with him. If Lu You hadn't had Teleportation Talismans, the Evil Eye would have trapped him in the ancient tomb and sucked his blood every day. But with Teleportation Talismans, the Evil Eye's control abilities were neutralized by Lu You's other talismans. It could only forcibly restrain Lu You through constant deadlock. The moment the Evil Eye relaxed, Lu You would activate a Teleportation Talisman and escape. In order not to lose this "all-you-can-eat" opportunity, the so-called Eye of Hell could only bow its head in submission.
At present, the greatest benefit the Evil Eye offered Lu You was blood replacement.
Ordinary cultivators could only temper their meridians with their qi and blood over time. With the Evil Eye, Lu You could use the cultivation-origin blood to scour away impurities. Even just that single session in the ancient tomb had made Lu You feel his qi and blood grow stronger—his breathing itself became more powerful and steady. If he kept washing his meridians day after day, Lu You believed he would reap enormous benefits.
"Boss, don't just eat by yourself."
Watching Lu You enjoy his comfortable dinner, the Evil Eye felt a little envious and reminded him not to forget to feed it some blood.
Lu You smiled faintly, picked up a dictionary from the room, and while transfusing blood to the Evil Eye, used the Blood Shadow technique to record the dictionary:
"The current writing system is now stored in Blood Shadow. Hurry up and learn to translate that parchment. When you're done translating it, that's when you'll get your next meal."
After assigning the Evil Eye a task, Lu You rose unhurriedly and left his hut, heading toward Senior Sister Zeng Yan's residence.
Senior Sister hadn't returned yet, which didn't surprise Lu You at all. He was just here to "leave some traces of his presence."
Familiar with the place, he opened her door, used a Rain-Calling Talisman and a Beginner Wind Talisman to clean her room, then carried the bedding she'd left sitting for several days into the courtyard to air it out. After finishing all that, Lu You even took the leisure to weed Senior Sister's spiritual field.
'That way, there's solid physical evidence that I've been staying in the sect the whole time.'
If anything went wrong and he came under suspicion, he could simply say that he'd never gone down the mountain. Because he admired Senior Sister, he'd been taking care of her room the entire time. After all, besides Senior Sister, no one knew he could use talismans to clean spiritual fields. By normal standards, tending the field and cleaning the room could never be done in an instant. Subtracting the workload Lu You deliberately created, the time he "spent" on the surface was nowhere near enough for him to have gone down the mountain at all.
Returning to his wooden hut, Lu You stopped wasting time. He sat cross-legged on the bed and began cultivating the Minor Five Elements Qi-Nourishing Technique. After this round of impurity cleansing, not only had he entered the fifth level of Qi Refining, but his cultivation speed had also become a tiny bit faster than before.
From the moment he obtained his cultivation technique, in less than two months, Lu You—despite having mixed spiritual roots—had cultivated straight to the fifth level of Qi Refining. His progress could be called astonishingly fast. The good thing was that many menial disciples in the Verdant Cloud Sect entered with some skills already, and there was little combat in daily life. Aside from Han Tian, who had tested his spiritual roots, and Senior Sister Zeng Yan, whom he saw often, no one else had noticed the speed of his cultivation.
There was no need to worry about Han Tian—he wouldn't be seen again until the harvest season next year. As for Senior Sister Zeng Yan, there was even less to worry about. In the ancient tomb, Lu You had discovered that she had already broken through to the ninth level of Qi Refining. Calculating carefully, from the time he met her to today, less than two months had passed, yet she'd gone from Qi Refining Level 7 straight to Level 9. Even Foundation Establishment cultivators wouldn't dare underestimate her combat power. The "value" of that achievement was far higher than his own jump from Qi Refining Level 1 to Level 5.
Sure enough, compared to true geniuses, he was still far behind.
After cultivating for an entire day, Lu You completely stabilized his realm. There was still no news from the Verdant Cloud Sect side for the time being. As for the Evil Eye—motivated by the promise of blood—it worked at full throttle and had already finished the translation.
Evil Eye: Boss, I'm done translating it. Hurry and open your eyes to take a look.
Eye of Hell, open.
Lu You's eyes turned blood-red. At the same time, he instructed the small cauldron to supply blood to his eyes. In the next instant, Lu You saw the Blood Shadow projection that the Evil Eye had manifested once again.
After absorbing a large amount of fresh blood, the Evil Eye had built up some reserves. It simply activated the Blood Shadow technique as well, engraving the results of its translation of the parchment. This way, Lu You no longer needed to communicate with the Evil Eye to transcribe anything. Whenever he wanted to read the parchment, he only needed to activate the Eye of Hell and repeatedly watch the Blood Shadow recording.
"Didn't expect your abilities to be this unexpectedly useful." Lu You was no longer stingy and fed the Evil Eye continuously, while focusing his thoughts on the cultivation technique the Evil Eye had translated.
"A body-refining technique?"
After reading the cultivation method, Lu You was a bit surprised. This body-refining technique was called Jade Toad Swallows the Moon Technique. Its core principle was to gather all kinds of heavenly materials and earthly treasures, swallow them, and then run the cultivation technique to digest them—absorbing nutrients from external objects to strengthen one's physical body.
When cultivated to the peak, the Jade Toad Swallows the Moon Technique could make one's physical body as sturdy as ancient divine artifacts. While it wouldn't make one immortal or indestructible, it could hard-resist several true heavenly tribulations without any problem.
"It's not as powerful as I imagined. I thought reaching the peak would let me bulldoze through the ages. Turns out it just lets me tank a few heavenly tribulations." Lu You snorted. The parchment only contained a small portion of the technique—the introductory foundation. To obtain the complete cultivation method, one would need to decipher the map on the back of the parchment to find the remaining parts.
This was something the Evil Eye's previous contractor—the evil cultivator—had obtained. The Evil Eye had thought it useful and left it behind when the evil cultivator died. Back then, that evil cultivator was being hunted everywhere and had no time to hunt for treasures. Even the introductory foundation of the technique hadn't been fully cultivated due to lack of resources.
"This reeks of a trap."
Lu You curled his lip. First of all, this cultivation technique required consuming external resources. To cultivate it properly, the first requirement was money. If outsiders without the Cauldron of Cornucopia wanted to burn resources like this, at the very least they'd need to be top-tier members of a minor clan. Combined with the map on the back, it was obvious that the creator of this cultivation technique used Jade Toad Swallows the Moon Technique to filter for "leeks," and then had the chosen ones mobilize their family resources to fulfill whatever objective lay behind this technique.
"I'm not learning this. What if there's some restriction in this cultivation technique? Like if I learn the entry-level part and then don't continue, I might die. Wouldn't that force me into taking risks?"
Lu You spat in disdain, shattered the Blood Shadow recording left by the Evil Eye without the slightest hesitation, and had no intention of cultivating the technique at all. Instead, he began studying another interesting aspect of the ancient map.
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