Jiao Potian’s physical constitution was so good that even Li Qiuchen was somewhat astonished.
For a while, it even made him suspect that this guy might have trained while he was in prison.
They had both been poisoned, yet he alone had managed to wake up and run all the way back to his lair overnight.
And now, after drinking a brimming bowl of the medicinal meal Li Qiuchen had specially prepared for him, he could actually still cling to life, wriggling back and forth on the bed like a cabbage worm, trying with tremendous effort to break free from his nightmare.
If it were a head-on fight, Li Qiuchen estimated his odds against him would be thirty-seventy—three seconds, and he would be chopped into seven pieces.
So when it was time to be a coward, one had to be a coward.
The greatest difference between humans and animals was that humans had brains.
One should not always think about fighting and killing. One had to learn to solve problems with one’s head.
He reached out and pressed his hand against Jiao Potian’s face. The spike in his palm pierced straight through the man’s eye socket, and a surging torrent of life force instantly poured into Li Qiuchen’s body.
That sensation of his whole body burning hot, as though he possessed boundless strength with nowhere to vent it, appeared once again.
Good thing I’m still young, and the one lying on the bed isn’t a woman. Otherwise, this cultivation method would make it far too easy for people to get the wrong idea…
No, wait. There’s no need to get the wrong idea. It is wrong.
Li Qiuchen sighed silently in his heart. Although his motive for exterminating the mountain bandits had been justice? That was right, justice.
But no matter what standard one used to judge his methods, they were thoroughly and utterly those of a heretical cultivator.
Casually tossing Jiao Potian’s corpse aside, Li Qiuchen began to loot the place.
There was nothing particularly valuable in the stronghold. Jiao Potian’s private stash was hidden right under his backside… or more accurately, under the bed. When Li Qiuchen lifted the bed board, he found piles of gold and silver wrapped in ragged cloth.
Unfortunately, there was no storage pouch.
How could cultivating immortality not involve storage pouches? You gave yourself such an impressive nickname, Jiao Potian, but when you went out robbing people, you didn’t even use a storage pouch? The villagers next door could share nuclear fusion technology, and look at how you ended up.
Li Qiuchen was deeply disappointed.
After rummaging for half a day, all told, there were only a little over a hundred taels of silver and a few taels of gold. He was not even as rich as Great-Uncle’s household.
Of course, Songlin Village had been a base that Great-Uncle had managed for many years. It naturally could not be compared to a newly fledged bandit like this fellow, who had only taken to the hills for less than two years.
Aside from the gold and silver, there were also several incomplete pages from a book.
My painstaking planning over all these days wasn’t in vain. Good loot finally dropped!
Li Qiuchen quickly picked them up and examined them, discovering that they were pages torn from some unknown martial arts manual.
This manual was called the Tiger-Embracing Art. According to its description, it was a grappling technique capable of locking down an opponent’s internal energy circulation. It was specifically provided for jailers to cultivate, a skill used to subdue the fierce bandits and madmen held in prison.
Mm… it could only be said to be better than nothing.
Having it was better than not having it.
After putting away the manual, gold, and silver, Li Qiuchen walked out the door.
The entire mountain stronghold had already fallen into deathly silence.
The white crane was drenched in blood from head to toe, standing beneath the moonlight. Its sharp aura was like a newly unsheathed sword that had just drunk blood.
The first time it killed, it had still been unaccustomed to it. By the second time, however, there was no sign of any psychological issue at all.
The only flaw… was its broken beak, which looked somewhat comical and ruined its air of grandeur.
“Shall we go home?”
Li Qiuchen asked tentatively. The white crane turned its head and gave a slight nod.
The bandits in the mountains had already been wiped out. As for the remaining few mountain men, they were only after money. No matter how lawless they were, they would not go so far as to massacre a village.
The future trouble had been eliminated, and this trip had yielded a full harvest. It was time to go back.
Li Qiuchen remained extremely curious about the world beyond the mountains, but he knew very well that with his current meager abilities, he was still far from reaching the point where he could wander outside freely.
After crossing mountains and ridges for several days, the man and crane returned once more to the small hut in the mountain stream.
After sorting out the things he had brought back from this trip and harvesting all the mature herbs from the few medicinal plots by the door, Li Qiuchen began the next stage of his cultivation.
Now that he had a complete iron pot, he could follow the prescriptions recorded in the Jingyunzi and boil proper finished pills, no longer needing to eat raw herbs directly as he had before.
That was not a human way of living. That was for mules.
The cultivation methods recorded in the Jingyunzi consisted only of body tempering and pupil techniques. There were no concrete martial arts moves—thinking about it carefully, this was also very normal. After all, the ancestors had already cultivated immortality. An immortal could kill you with a single glare, so why would they need to learn useless martial arts techniques?
But Li Qiuchen did not have the safe cultivation environment provided by a clan. Before his physique was fully tempered to an inhuman realm, he could only learn some self-defense martial techniques and do his best to preserve his little life.
The Tiger-Embracing Art seized from the mountain stronghold was said to be a grappling technique, but in truth, it leaned more toward tripping, throwing, and wrestling methods. It also included sections on tempering the body and strengthening the bones and blood, which might have been the reason Jiao Potian’s constitution had been so extraordinary.
During the process of grappling and throwing, one would drive one’s own internal energy into the opponent’s joints, severing the opponent’s internal energy circulation, then suppress them with superior strength—if there was no superior strength, then multiple people would work together and all pile on at once, with no need to speak of any martial world righteousness.
This was a cultivation method completely tailor-made for jailers. Its advantage was that it was simple and easy to understand. Its flaw was that it had no future to speak of.
Li Qiuchen made a simple wooden dummy by the river and, following the cultivation method in the manual, set aside one shichen every day specifically for practice.
One shichen did not sound like much. It was not because he was lazy, but because he was busy.
This trip down the mountain could, for the moment, be considered to have broadened his horizons. He had gained quite a bit, and he needed to let the thoughts and insights in his mind settle as much as possible to improve his cultivation efficiency.
He also had to go out searching for herbs, open up new medicinal plots, pick and process herbs, and use the large pot to boil them into medicinal decoctions.
Chewing raw herbs actually tasted fairly good. Aside from the normal bitterness and astringency, there was also a fresh fragrance of grass and wood. Many herbs could be eaten directly as wild vegetables, and if they could be dipped in a little soybean paste, they would be a delicacy of the mortal world.
But once these herbs were processed, thrown together, and boiled, the decoction that came out could only be described with one word: shit.
Every day, when Li Qiuchen pinched his nose and forced the medicinal decoction down his throat, he felt that life held no more hope.
When, exactly, would days like this come to an end?
Originally, he had wanted to imitate the cautious seniors in the books, refusing to venture outside until he had achieved results in his cultivation.
But that thought had still been too naive.
The first time, he had only lasted a month before he could no longer endure the loneliness and emptiness of the mountains.
After going out to wander around and coming back, he had originally thought he would be able to hold out a little longer this time. At the very least, he ought to start with half a year of secluded cultivation.
But reality was simply too cruel.
After persisting in cultivation for two and a half months and forcing himself to drink down countless pots of medicinal decoction, Li Qiuchen could no longer feel the slightest joy in life.
It could be said that living was worse than death.