Chapter 4: Fairy of Wuzhou
Ding Hao had only two taels of silver in his pocket, so he didn't dare enter the larger shops. There was a small-to-medium sized elixir shop ahead, and he walked into it.
As soon as he entered, a shop assistant came up to greet him and politely asked, "Young Master, what kind of elixirs are you looking for?"
It was Ding Hao's first time in an elixir shop. He looked around and saw that the shelves held many porcelain bottles, large and small. Some were labeled "Healing," some "Body Tempering," some "Mind Calming," and some "Foundation Consolidating"—an extremely wide variety.
The assistant smiled warmly. "Young Master, judging by your age of fourteen or fifteen, you must have already awakened. Why don't you tell me what grade of immortal root you have, and I'll help you pick out some elixirs."
Ding Hao's face turned awkward. He hesitated, then finally said, "My immortal root hasn't awakened yet. I'm looking for elixirs to help with awakening."
At those words, a look of contempt immediately surfaced on the assistant's face. Not having awakened an immortal root at this age—he was absolutely trash!
His enthusiasm faded considerably, but since the other party was still a customer, he continued, "Sir, I suggest you buy our Foundation Consolidating Elixir. This elixir is used by children who haven't awakened yet; it can stabilize the meridians and help break through the immortal aperture. I'd also recommend our Mind Calming Elixir to help you achieve a state of meditative focus. There's also Essence Elixir, which is quite good—it boosts spiritual power. You know how much the strength of one's spiritual power benefits the breakthrough of awakening and the potential of one's immortal root..."
Ding Hao thought to himself that the people of this world truly placed great importance on immortal roots. The moment they heard he hadn't awakened, they dropped from "Young Master" to "Sir."
But the assistant did make sense. Ding Hao said, "I don't need the Mind Calming Elixir. Let me see the Foundation Consolidating Elixir and the Essence Elixir."
The assistant reached up and took a small bottle from the counter. As soon as he opened it, a faint medicinal fragrance wafted out. He poured some into his palm—the elixirs inside were tiny pills the size of Sichuan peppercorns.
Ding Hao asked, "How much for a bottle?"
The assistant said, "A bottle of Foundation Consolidating Elixir contains fifty pills. Two taels of silver."
Ding Hao thought the price wasn't bad. He had two taels of silver—enough to buy one bottle.
But then the assistant added, "For children under eight, take twice a day, two pills each time; for every year older, add one more pill per dose."
Ding Hao calculated in his head: he was fifteen, meaning nine pills per dose, twice a day. A single bottle would be finished in less than three days!
At this thought, he smiled bitterly. "How could anyone afford to eat this?"
Seeing that he had neither awakened nor any money, the assistant's face immediately darkened. Rolling his eyes, he said, "Then what do you want? Something cheap and good—should we just give it to you for free? Kid, if you don't have silver, don't go around asking questions."
In the blink of an eye, "Sir" had become "kid." Ding Hao glared. "How do you know I don't have money?" As he spoke, he pulled out his two taels of silver.
"If you have money, then buy it!" the assistant said rudely.
Just then, someone else entered the shop, and the assistant grew impatient. Ding Hao said, "Let me look a bit more."
"Look, look all you want." The assistant shoved a small bottle of Foundation Consolidating Elixir into Ding Hao's hand and turned to attend to a man who was clearly dressed in expensive clothing.
While the assistant attended to the other customer, Ding Hao poured the entire bottle of pills into his palm.
As it turned out, just now when the assistant had opened the bottle, Ding Hao had distinctly felt the black stone pressed under his tongue move! Then, he had felt a sense of hungry yearning emanating from the stone!
"What's going on?" He had spent a long time with this stone; their hearts and minds were connected.
So at this moment, with the assistant conveniently sent away, he poured fifty tiny pills into his palm. Ding Hao could feel the stone's greed toward these pills—it could only be described as frenzied.
"The black stone wants these pills? What's this all about?" Ding Hao was stunned for a moment, then thought of something.
Back on Earth, when he cultivated the Star Absorbing Art, he had suffered from having no spiritual power to absorb. Could it be that the black stone sensed the spiritual power in these pills and wanted him to absorb their pure essence?
Thinking this, Ding Hao glanced back at the assistant and sneered inwardly. You treat me with such attitude—then don't blame me! Immediately, with a flicker of thought, he began cultivating the Star Absorbing Art, and waves of suction erupted from his palm.
Ding Hao swayed his hand back and forth, making the little pills swirl in his palm, evenly absorbing the spiritual power from each one, then poured the pills back into the small bottle. But this fellow Ding Hao wasn't satisfied yet, and shamelessly called out, "Assistant, is your Foundation Consolidating Elixir defective? The medicinal power is too weak. Let me see the Essence Elixir!"
"Kid, don't talk nonsense! Our shop's elixirs are all of the highest quality!"
Before long, Ding Hao walked out of the elixir shop. He had switched between three kinds of elixirs, draining the spiritual power from each. Afraid of arousing suspicion, he didn't dare switch any more, and slipped out with some excuse.
"Haha, who would have thought the useless Star Absorbing Art from Earth could actually absorb the spiritual power from elixirs!"
After this spiritual power entered his body, he felt a force wandering unpredictably through his meridians—a feeling of having strength with nowhere to use it. There happened to be a cobblestone by the roadside. Ding Hao walked over, picked it up, channeled the spiritual power into his palm, and squeezed hard!
Crack!
"Heavens! He crushed a cobblestone into several pieces—how strong is this power?" A look of astonishment shot from Ding Hao's eyes as he stared at his own palm in shock.
With this discovery, Ding Hao continued walking, entering several more elixir shops and secretly draining a great deal of spiritual power from their elixirs.
Elixirs whose spiritual power was drained immediately became like grains of flour, losing even their medicinal fragrance. But Ding Hao was cunning—he never drained them completely, leaving behind a trace of the elixir's power so that no one would grow suspicious.
However, this activity soon grew boring.
The reason was that the vast majority of the spiritual power he painstakingly stole was sucked away by the black stone! Only a tiny fraction remained in his body.
"Damned vampire!" Ding Hao cursed the black stone bitterly in his heart.
But Ding Hao also knew that even if the black stone didn't suck it away, the power would be useless to him! Because he hadn't awakened, he had no core dantian of primal energy, so no matter how much spiritual power he absorbed, there was nowhere to store it. In the end, it would dissipate through the pores of his body, with only a minuscule amount remaining in his meridians.
He spat out the stone from his mouth to take a look, and suddenly discovered that a white pattern, like a nebula, had appeared on one corner of the stone.
"The stone has changed! What does this nebula mean?" Ding Hao was inwardly startled. He had fiddled with this stone on Earth for so long without any change, yet after coming to this world and absorbing a certain amount of spiritual power, patterns had appeared on its surface!
And once the patterns appeared on its surface, the stone gained a new ability—to change shape!
"Interesting. This stone was completely useless on Earth, but here it's a treasure! I wonder where my ancestor, that old demon Ding Chunqiu, obtained this treasure, and what it will eventually grow into?"
Mulling over these thoughts, he continued forward. By now he had arrived at the center of Wuzhou City. Here lay a magnificent, vast plaza, at the center of which stood a giant jade carving a hundred meters tall. This was no ordinary jade—it was Emerald Leaf Jade, the finest quality in the Nine Provinces world.
The statue was of a beautiful woman in a flying apsara pose, standing at the center of the plaza, gazing at the sky with a solemn expression.
The Nine Provinces world—the "Nine Provinces" referred to the nine strongest experts of the Immortal Refinement Great World! They had all come from the Nine Provinces world, and thus founded the Nine Provinces Dao Sect in the Immortal Refinement Great World. This woman represented Wuzhou among the Nine Provinces!
All the people of Wuzhou worshipped and revered this woman, and all their faith and will converged upon this jade body. There were nine such giant jade bodies in the Nine Provinces world. They gathered the thoughts, faith, and will of everyone in the entire Nine Provinces world, and merging together, formed the most fundamental force that protected and sustained this small world—the Will of Heaven!
The woman standing here was incomparably beautiful, yet no one in this place dared harbor wicked thoughts. Ding Hao thought to himself that in his previous life, he had read the Investiture of the Gods, which told of King Zhou desecrating the statue of Goddess Nüwa and Nüwa's furious retribution. In the Nine Provinces world, such a thing would absolutely happen!
Ding Hao didn't dare let his thoughts run wild either. Facing this guardian deity of Wuzhou, he went over and lit two sticks of incense.
After doing this, he lingered in the nearby shops. As he grew more familiar with the area, he dared to enter some of the more upscale and luxurious stores.
"There's a bookshop over there. Let's take a look."
Ding Hao walked into the bookshop, and with one glance, he spotted the "Ten Methods of Immortal Root Awakening" that Fourth Ding had brought back.
"Bastard! This book costs only five qian of silver, yet he reported ten taels to me! That wicked servant—sooner or later, I'll make him spit out everything he's swallowed!" Ding Hao fumed inwardly.
At that moment, a kind-faced middle-aged man came over and asked, "Young Master, I am the owner of this shop. I'm about to close for the day, so if there's anything you need, please be quick."
Ding Hao was puzzled. "It's still early. Why close so soon..."
The middle-aged man smiled bitterly. "Forgive me, Young Master, but my son is thirteen and still hasn't awakened his immortal root. Today I've invited a lofty master to help my son enter the intermediate meditative state. The master will be arriving any moment."
"I see." Ding Hao thought that they were truly kindred souls in misfortune, and said, "To be honest, Shopkeeper, I'm fifteen and a half and still haven't awakened. That's why I came in—to look through some books on awakening and try to find a way out."
This middle-aged man, feeling sympathy for Ding Hao because of his own son, said, "There are a few good books here. If you want to buy them, I'll sell them to you at a low price. If you don't want to buy, then when that master arrives, you can watch from downstairs—see as much as you can."
This was the first time Ding Hao had met such a good person since coming to this world. He said gratefully, "Shopkeeper, I cannot thank you enough. I'll just read here. If there's ever a chance in the future, I, Ding, will surely repay you!"
As they were speaking, someone called out, "Shopkeeper Shang, are you here? Immortal Master Min has arrived!" As the words rang out, a graceful figure in green robes, leading several people, walked into the bookshop.
How could Ding Hao have any mind to admire a beautiful woman at this moment? He was concentrating intently on the books, trying to absorb as much helpful content as he could.
Shopkeeper Shang hurried over to greet her, about to kneel. "This one pays respects to the Immortal Master."
"Rise. Where is your son?"
"Upstairs."
"Lead the way." The captivating woman known as Immortal Master Min moved forward with graceful steps, though she cast a glance at Ding Hao, thinking to herself that this young man read with such single-minded devotion, thirsting for knowledge.