# Chapter 6: The Fiancée
On the way home, the sky had already grown dark, and dotted lanterns on both sides of the road blazed like an ocean of light.
The prosperity of this world was in no way inferior to the world Ding Hao had lived in his previous life.
Behind every lantern was a home, but Ding Hao understood that in this world, he could only rely on himself!
When he returned to the Ding family's main hall, a broken bowl sat on the offering table.
Ding Hao saw it but said nothing. He knew it had been placed there by the steward, Ding Laosi, to humiliate him.
He pretended not to see it.
Because Ding Laosi didn't know that sometimes humiliation could also be a form of motivation!
"The ancients tied their hair to a beam and jabbed their thighs with an awl to stay diligent in study. I'll just treat that bowl as an awl for jabbing my thigh!"
Ding Hao ordered the servants to bring some simple food to his room. After eating, he sat cross-legged on his bodhi cushion.
"The only thing I can rely on right now is this black stone. I absolutely cannot let anyone discover it," Ding Hao pondered silently to himself.
For a person without strength, revealing wealth is extremely dangerous! Although he wanted to use this black stone to help others enter stillness and earn money, if the secret of this stone were made public, he would be in great danger!
"But fortunately, after this stone reached one star, it gained the ability to transform!" Ding Hao's mind stirred. "Transform for me—become a... ring! Yes, a ring! Smaller, gray, nothing too eye-catching!"
At Ding Hao's will, the stone truly transformed into an unremarkable gray stone ring. Satisfied, he slipped the ring onto his middle finger and nodded. "When the time comes, I'll use both hands in turns and throw in some misleading gestures. No one should notice this ring."
At this thought, Ding Hao felt quite pleased with his own intelligence.
"If only I could test it out." Just as Ding Hao was wondering who to experiment on, several barks sounded outside, and he immediately had an idea.
The night was cool as water, and human hearts were unfathomable—sometimes trusting a person was worse than trusting a dog!
Spring nights were always especially good for sleeping. With the steward and servants all lost in dreams amid the chirping of summer insects, Ding Hao quietly slipped out the door and brought the big yellow dog inside.
"Da Huang, sit."
Ever since entering stillness earlier that day, the dog had become much more obedient toward Ding Hao and was extremely well-behaved.
Once the dog sat down, Ding Hao alternately hovered his hands above its head while chanting, "With wine in hand we sing—how long is life? When the mind is still and clear, no dust shall stir."
Ding Hao had already decided: since these four lines of verse were going to be overheard anyway, he might as well speak them himself.
After the four lines were recited, Da Huang instantly entered a state of perfect stillness, its breathing even and its mental energy restored.
But a new idea formed in Ding Hao's mind. "This stone's power is too strong. Everything enters perfect stillness at the drop of a hat—it's truly alarming! No, I can't help them reach perfect stillness. At most, I'll grant them intermediate or advanced stillness!"
With this thought, Ding Hao lifted a foot and kicked Da Huang awake. The poor dog had just entered stillness and hadn't even begun to enjoy that half-dream, half-immortal state when it was kicked awake, growling at him twice in discontent.
"Woof woof!"
"Quit fussing, let's go again!"
After more than a dozen experiments, amid the dog's cursing-like barking, Ding Hao finally made some discoveries. "So that's how it works!"
"Each line of this four-line verse raises the level by one tier! Reciting only 'with wine in hand we sing' produces low-level stillness; adding 'how long is life' produces intermediate stillness; adding 'when the mind is still and clear' produces advanced stillness; and reciting all four lines produces perfect stillness! Haha, so that's it—hard work truly pays off!"
Only after figuring all this out did Ding Hao pat the dog. "Da Huang, you've worked hard today. As a reward, I'll let you enter perfect stillness along with me!"
"With wine in hand we sing—how long is life? When the mind is still and clear, no dust shall stir!"
After letting Da Huang enter perfect stillness, Ding Hao changed the ring back to its original form, held it in his mouth, and entered perfect stillness himself.
In perfect stillness, the entire body entered a state of perfection and balance. Every cell slipped into that half-dormant state, and the most effective benefit was to the mental energy!
As mental energy improved, it manifested as the strengthening of the six senses.
And so, Ding Hao read books by day and entered perfect stillness with Da Huang by night. In just three short days, Ding Hao felt his body reach a state unlike anything he had ever experienced!
Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and perception—all six senses had been enhanced to an extraordinary degree!
Not only him—even the big yellow dog's hearing and sense of smell had become much sharper, its movements as agile as a leopard's.
......
"Boss Shang and the others still haven't come?"
After waiting three days, Ding Hao grew somewhat uneasy. He thought to himself that waiting idly for opportunities wasn't his style—he had to go out and seek his own chances.
He transformed the black stone into the ring, ready for use at any time. Just as he walked out of the Ding family's main gate, he saw a young man and a young woman standing outside.
"It's them?" Ding Hao's brow furrowed.
The young man standing at the gate was none other than the eldest son of the steward Ding Laosi—Ding Junjie. The giggling young girl beside him was, surprisingly, Ding Hao's betrothed fiancée from this life, matched by his parents before he was even born—Zheng Peipei.
Ding Junjie was sixteen now, having awakened at eleven with a sixth-grade Xiuchun Blade immortal root.
The Xiuchun Blade was the standard weapon of government runners, so Ding Junjie had already secured an errand-running job in the government offices. After awakening, he cultivated a blade technique for immortal roots used by government enforcers, and his current ability was at Innate Third Stage.
Zheng Peipei was the same age as Ding Hao, with a few charming freckles on her cheeks, but youth was on her side—she had a certain prettiness about her, and with a little grooming, she could even turn a few heads.
The Zheng family worshipped clay idols, so they greatly admired the Ding family's wooden sculptures. Fifteen years ago, when both families' wives were pregnant, the Zheng family came to propose a marriage, saying a childhood betrothal between the two families would be wonderful.
The old Ding family had hesitated at first. After all, they were supposed to be well-matched families—your clay idols matched with our wooden sculptures? Wasn't that reaching above your station?
But later, seeing the Zheng family's sincerity, sealed with matchmakers and betrothal gifts, they agreed to the match.
Who could have known the Ding family would fall so dramatically? The two elders died early, Ding Hao turned out to be a good-for-nothing, and even the Ding family's wooden sculpture became mute. The Zheng family began to consider breaking off the engagement. But fortunately, the steward's son Ding Junjie had a strong chance of seizing the immortal seed, so the two families vigorously pushed the two together.
To be honest, Ding Hao wasn't satisfied with this engagement either. As a modern man, he had no interest in arranged betrothals. Besides, in his impression, this Zheng Peipei was arrogant, sharp-tongued, and far from likable.
Seeing Ding Hao walk out, Zheng Peipei sneered, "Good-for-nothing! Cowardly and useless! What are you coming out for? Hehe, too bad I'm not here to see you!"
Ding Junjie said in a flirtatious tone, "A beauty belongs with a hero. Peipei naturally came to see me. How could she possibly be looking for a good-for-nothing like him? He's been alive for fifteen years, and I've never seen a girl come looking for him."
Zheng Peipei giggled. "What girl would be blind enough to come looking for a good-for-nothing?"
Ding Hao had intended to simply walk past them, but their words ignited the fire in his heart. He turned back and snapped, "Zheng Peipei, have you no shame? You're betrothed to me, which makes you my fiancée. Yet you come to the Ding family and instead of seeking me out, you flirt with a servant's son! I ask you, have you no shame? You've made me furious. Next time you trade away your dignity, at least pick someone of a higher class!"
"Who are you calling a servant's son?" Ding Junjie's face turned livid as he pointed at Ding Hao.
"You!" Ding Hao declared loudly. "Your father Ding Laosi works as a servant in my Ding family, draws wages from my Ding family to feed your whole family—he even took our surname, Ding! Is that not a servant? Or should I go door to door and ask everyone?"
Ding Hao had been a sharp-tongued one back on Earth, and a few words left Ding Junjie furious to the point of bursting.
Zheng Peipei quickly chimed in. "Ding Hao, let me ask you this—have you no shame? Back then, my parents only set their eyes on your family because you had a wooden sculpture. Who knew you'd turn out to be a good-for-nothing? You, like this, still want to marry me? Still calling me your fiancée? Stop dreaming—a toad lusting after swan's meat!"
"A swan?" Ding Hao snorted. "From where I stand, you're just a low-class blind goose—back then you coveted my family's wooden sculpture, and now you covet Ding Junjie's sixth-grade immortal root. What short-sightedness! I say you're the toad, the frog at the bottom of the well! With you like this, you still want to marry me? What a grand delusion!"
Zheng Peipei's face flushed red from the scolding. She thought, Is this really the good-for-nothing? How can he insult people so viciously? She immediately turned to Ding Junjie and cooed, "Junjie-gege, he called me a toad!"
With a metallic shing, Ding Junjie drew the Xiuchun Blade at his waist and said through gritted teeth, "Little good-for-nothing, I was planning to take your immortal seed title in six months, but since you're seeking death yourself, don't blame me!"
Ding Hao wasn't afraid of him at all.
The spiritual energy from the pill he had secretly absorbed yesterday still had a wisp left wandering through his meridians. This power was only enough for a single punch, but it carried the force to split stone and crack steles.
Ding Hao gathered this power into his palm and glared at Ding Junjie. "You've awakened an immortal root and reached the Innate realm, yet you dare attack me, a mortal of the后天 Houtian realm? That makes it legitimate self-defense! Even if I kill you, I bear no blame!"
"You? Kill me? What a joke—did your brain go bad too?" Ding Junjie advanced sinisterly, thinking to himself, One slash to cripple this brat, then I'll just report it as hunting down a culprit—that should suffice to cover it up!
But just as the two men harbored their own schemes, a woman's sharp rebuke sounded from behind. "Stop!"
Ding Hao turned to look and saw a beautiful woman in a lake-green dress standing behind him. This graceful, jade-carved beauty, like a fairy descended from the heavens, was none other than the Immortal Master Min Qingqiu he had seen at the Shang family's bookstore that day. Behind Min Qingqiu followed two guards of the City Lord's mansion in gleaming silver armor.
It turned out that in recent days, Min Qingqiu had gone back to Boss Shang's place to help Xiao Hai enter stillness, but no matter how she guided him, Xiao Hai's stillness state was very poor—at best he reached low-level stillness, and even then he would wake easily. So today she had arranged with Boss Shang to come find Ding Hao and try their luck.
This woman had an extraordinary presence, with guards following behind her. Ding Junjie hurriedly sheathed his Xiuchun Blade and said with an ingratiating smile, "Miss, we were just having some fun......"
Min Qingqiu had been searching all this way, and the moment she laid eyes on Ding Hao, she discovered someone about to attack him. Nothing disgusted her more than the strong bullying the weak. Her willow brows shot up in anger as she demanded, "Having fun? You're an Innate cultivator with an awakened immortal root, while he's an unawakened mortal of the Houtian realm. He's bare-handed, while you hold a steel blade. Let me ask you—what kind of 'fun' is this? If someone were to die, how would you answer for it?"
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A note for everyone: *Cultivation Madman* has been completed; only the chapters on this bookstore haven't finished updating yet. Please wait patiently.
A note for everyone: *Cultivation Madman* has been completed; only the chapters here haven't finished updating yet. You can look for the complete version through other channels.