The coquettish voice seemed like silk threads that drifted through the air, into the ears, and down to the soul.

Xu Qing frowned and looked at Li Youfei.

Li Youfei, who was visibly stunned, shook his head and said, “Not me… I don’t have any. I lost it all in Qi Condensation.”

The clay fox glanced disdainfully at Li Youfei. “Where did you come from, you piece of trash?” She looked back at Xu Qing, her eyes glittering flirtatiously. It was as if she could see right through Xu Qing’s disguise. “Also, you’re so handsome! I’m getting worked up just looking at you.”

The clay fox stood and stepped out of the shrine. Then, the fox’s entire body rippled as she transformed into a bewitchingly charming young woman. 1

Her ample chest swayed as she walked, and her hourglass figure was so incomparable that Li Youfei gasped upon seeing it. As his heart raced, he thought, Seductress!

She wore gauzy red clothing that only half covered her, and looked like it might fall off at any moment. Her skin was so fair it was almost translucent, and her curvaceous body was so attractive that anyone who looked at her would be overwhelmed with the desire to be with her.

Xu Qing’s eyes glittered coldly as he assessed the seductress’ cultivation base. She was clearly in Nascent Soul. His shadow spread out, but as soon as the woman took a step forward from the shrine, it shivered and tumbled back to Xu Qing.

The woman licked her lips and smiled. “Young sir, although we’re both in Nascent Soul, you’re not aware of my background and origin. I don’t want to use force on someone as cute and lovable as you. That would take all the fun out of it. Therefore, let’s negotiate. Name your price.”

Xu Qing didn’t respond. This was his first time experiencing something like this. Ling’er had already stuck her head out of his sleeve. She was clearly bristling with rage, to the point where her scales were standing on end as she glared at the woman.

The woman ignored Ling’er. She slowly looked at Xu Qing from head to toe. Then she looked back into his eyes and licked her lips again.

“I won’t hurt you,” she said. Then she took out a bottle gourd and slowly shook it back and forth. “I have nine painquelling lozenges here. There used to be ten, but someone bought one of them for twenty red heavenfire crystals. I can give the rest to you, if you’d like. Sound good?”

Xu Qing was very taken aback.

When she saw his facial expression, she felt herself burning with even more passion than before. Next, she took out a silver-colored bone. Smiling, she continued, “This is a bone pill from an almighty member of the Ancient Spirit species. It would be very useful to that little snake of yours. Want it?”

Ling’er was visibly stunned for a moment, but then she clenched her teeth and continued glaring at the woman, all while refraining from even looking at the bone pill.

The woman smiled and took something else out. Astonishingly, it was an internal organ from a human. It was golden and crescent-shaped, indicating that it was probably a kidney.

“This little treasure came from a crazy person who took a bite out of Crimson Mother, and was subsequently chopped to pieces. Someone gave me the kidney later on. If you spend a few days with me, young sir, you can have it to replenish your emptiness.” 2

Shocked, Xu Qing looked at the kidney. Ling’er, meanwhile, was starting to get nervous. Li Youfei was astonished, and looked enviously at Xu Qing.

When Xu Qing didn’t respond to the woman, she sighed.

“The young man made a big mistake; he somehow took to favoring a snake. Ah, whatever. Take care of your primal yang, young sir. If you ever change your mind, you can come back and look for me right here. I’d be happy to do business any time.”

The woman turned and swayed back to the shrine, where she turned back into a clay fox. During the entire exchange, the clay people just stood there expressionlessly. And once she was back in the shrine, the procession continued on its way. As the sinister wind blew, they went through the valley and then disappeared into the distance.

Everything went quiet.

Xu Qing looked thoughtfully in the direction the clay fox had disappeared to. Ling’er looked nervously at Xu Qing. Li Youfei stood off to the side with very mixed emotions, not really sure of what to say. Ever since leaving the desert, things had been very strange.

Speaking in hardly more than a whisper, Ling’er said, “Big Bro Xu Qing….”

“There was no curse on her,” Xu Qing replied calmly.

Ling’er sighed.

Li Youfei shivered. “Grandmaster, do you mean… she’s from out of the region?”

Xu Qing shook his head. The clay fox had shown up too unexpectedly, giving him no chance to assess whether she had passed by randomly, or if she had come this way on purpose. What was more, the items she had pulled out were all extraordinary to say the least. He couldn’t help but wonder if the painquelling lozenge she’d mentioned selling was the same one he had bought in the Moonrebel Congregation. And then there was that kidney…. .

Xu Qing hesitated for a moment. However, in the end, he knew he couldn’t stay in this location for very long. Turning, he left in the opposite direction. Li Youfei hesitated briefly, then followed him.

Half a month flew by.

Xu Qing followed the directions of the parrot the entire time. Every day, he would spend more time studying Li Youfei. As a result, he gained a lot of inspiration regarding pill concocting, and also continued to make changes to his version of the painquelling lozenge.

At first, Li Youfei was very nervous about the whole thing. But as the days passed, he gradually stopped caring. Just about every day, he ate more painquelling lozenges than he could afford even if he sold himself.

Eventually, Xu Qing came to learn why Li Youfei had chosen to leave the Bitter Life Mountains, specifically, because of his conflict with a patriarch there.

“Patriarch Inkrule is in the Void Returning level. He’s the number-one expert among rogue cultivators in the Bitter Life Mountains. He deals with both the Red Moon Cathedral and the Moonrebel Congregation, and has always lived well doing so. Having no other options, I killed his apprentice to pass the Moonrebel Congregation test….”

Thinking back to how things played out, Li Youfei surreptitiously looked at Xu Qing out of the corner of his eye. Sighing, he mused that things really hadn’t gone well. After all, though he successfully killed his target, he didn’t manage to keep his hands on the corpse. The reason he was surreptitiously looking at Xu Qing was that, over the course of the past half a month, he had come to realize that Xu Qing had two godslave corpses. They were none other than the ones he had killed in the white wind.

Xu Qing had been experimenting on them, especially when reaching a deadlock in his work on Li Youfei. When that happened, he would often take them out and dissect them for research purposes. As time passed, his dissection methods grew increasingly brutal. Sometimes he would remove their organs to study, sometimes he would crush their bones to check the marrow. It always involved a lot of blood. 𝘪𝘳.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Xu Qing had discovered something very interesting about the two godslave cultivators. Their internal organs were in different states of invasion. Although the curse within them had turned into a blessing, that transformation wasn’t complete.

“I wonder what Spirit Trove godservants would look like,” he murmured.

During times like that, Li Youfei would shiver. Although there was no screaming involved when Xu Qing dissected the corpses, Li Youfei would still watch with his heart full of trepidation. He had always thought of himself as a ruthless person. But compared to this grandmaster, he almost didn’t even count as being ruthless. And he couldn’t help but fear the prospect of this grandmaster coming up with the idea of experimenting with Li Youfei’s corpse.

As he stewed in anxiety, they got closer and closer to the Yin Sacrifice River in the west. Eventually, Xu Qing solved the final problems with his new painquelling lozenge.

At the moment, they were about a month away from the Yin Sacrifice River, atop a mountain. Li Youfei lay in front of Xu Qing on the ground, unconscious.

Xu Qing had just finished with some experimentation. He looked at Li Youfei, whose life force was flourishing, then at the pill he had just concocted. His eyes gleamed with satisfaction. This pill was the result of the fantastic circumstances relating to Li Youfei’s body, as well as all the research he’d done on the two godslave corpses.

It didn’t look very different from a normal painquelling lozenge. It had the same five-colored exterior. But if you examined it closely, you would find that it also contained a white color, making it generally lighter in appearance. That said, in terms of its medicinal efficacy, it was poles apart from the original. It didn’t just quell the pain from the curse. It could actually reduce the curse levels!

If you assigned a numeric value to the curse level in a person, say 10,000, then consuming this pill would reduce the level to 9,999. Although that wasn’t very much, perhaps even too little to notice, it was still a big leap forward.

And that was because the reduction was permanent! The fundamental principle was similar to antibodies. Once the reduction occurred, it never changed. And the pain relief was only a side effect. There were other side effects. For instance, it drained life force. However, the drainage was less than with the ordinary painquelling lozenges, while the pain relief was even more effective.

Unfortunately, the curse reduction only works the first time you consume it. After that, you get pain relief but nothing else. That’s because the curse is alive, and it will adjust to deal with the pill effects.

Xu Qing was slightly disappointed, but at the same time, realized that problems like this couldn’t be solved instantly. In order to improve this pill, he needed more information about the curse.

Also, if I could experiment on a Spirit Trove godservant….

The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that Spirit Trove godservants must have some fantastic mysteries hidden within them.

Another problem is that plants are just too rare in the Moonrite Region. I remember that some forbidden regions have plants with a lot of mutagen in them. If I could add some of those medicinal properties into this pill, then I could probably make my version of the painquelling lozenge even better.

Xu Qing had the shadow cover the sleeping Li Youfei, which sent him into even deeper sleep. After making sure that the surroundings were safe, Xu Qing took out the mirror fragment and went to the Moonrebel Congregation.

It had been quite a while since he went there, so when he arrived on the altar in the temple, he felt a bit uncomfortable. After taking a moment to acclimate, he went outside. The sky was bright and blue, causing him to squint a bit as he looked around.

In the distance… he saw the temple where he had paid heavenfire crystals to get the first painquelling lozenge. It made him think about the clay fox, which caused his guard to go up. Whether it was a coincidence or not, he still got the feeling that his original opinion of the Moonrebel Congregation was correct. People here were complicated.

This time, he didn’t leave his temple. He waved his hand, and a beam of light shot from the depths of the temple to form a ball in front of him. It looked just like the balls of light in the other temples. After inspecting it, he put one of his altered painquelling lozenges inside. Next, he made a notation of what he wanted for it.

One hundred drops of blood from a Spirit Trove godservant.

It wasn’t an outrageous price. For him, concocting these painquelling lozenges wasn’t difficult. After all, he had given over two hundred of them to Li Youfei. And ultimately, he wanted to improve the pill even more. Based on his previous experience, he knew that after he put the item in and listed the price, he could leave and come back later to collect the profit.

Hopefully it doesn’t take very long.

With that, he went back to the altar and left.

Back on the mountain top, he woke up Li Youfei and continued traveling.

***

The next day in the Moonrebel Congregation, the burly man from the temple next to Xu Qing’s opened his door and walked out. With his bare chest and ribbons of stone, as well as his intimidating expression, he seemed very dazzling in the sunlight.

It’s been quiet recently.

He came to the Moonrebel Congregation on a daily basis to enjoy the sunlight. Only in this place did he feel truly alive, to the point where he was reluctant to go back to the real world. The real world was full of darkness and suffering, and he was constantly forced to think about the tragic fate that awaited him in the end.

There were many people like him who would rather stay in the Moonrebel Congregation permanently. However, there were rules in place, so no matter how much he liked it here, he had to go back to the real world every few days. That was the main reason he got so infuriated by the racket Xu Qing had made earlier. After enough time, anyone would start to get annoyed at having their precious peace disturbed.

Upon walking out into the peace and quiet, the burly man stretched, then prepared to go for a walk. That was when he noticed the ball of light in Xu Qing’s temple. The burly man’s eyebrows shot up.

So, the annoying scoundrel put some stuff up for sale?

The burly man wasn’t very surprised. It actually made him chuckle disdainfully. He remembered how the person from that temple would always act so mysteriously, and hardly did business with anyone. Whenever he glared over, that person would flee like a scared rabbit.

Ah, whatever. Might as well see what the scared little rabbit is like.

The burly man was clearly not very happy to have a neighbor like Xu Qing. Swaggering over, he went into Xu Qing’s temple. Noting that there wasn’t any incense in the corroded cauldron, he snorted sarcastically. Once inside, he glared scornfully at the unmoving statue on the altar, then shifted his attention to the ball of light.

I wonder what he finally put up for sale. Probably some junk.

He touched the ball of light, whereupon his previously calm expression flickered. Then his eyes went wide and he stopped moving, as if he had been struck by numerous bolts of lightning.

1. In this case, the word for ‘young woman,’ means someone roughly between the ages of 25-35. Technically it means ‘young married woman,’ but nowadays this word is basically synonymous with ‘hot girl.’ If you Google

/Baidu the term, you will get bombarded with images of curvaceous and seductive young women. ☜

2. Many years ago in China, I was told that eating kidney is a way to replenish yang energy, which could also be considered “male” energy. Also, here is an interesting passage from my Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine that relates to kidneys and the “primal yang” that was mentioned in the last chapter: “Since kidney yin and kidney yang are the root of the yin and yang of all the organs of the body, they may also be referred to as true yin or original primal yin, and true yang or original primal yang.” ☜

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