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nTranslator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

nAfter dinner, Wang Ling returned to his room. He was still enveloped in the golden light of the “Great Fortune Spell,” which formed a faint sheen of light that only he could see.

nFor the next ten days, his luck would be extremely, extremely good… The prizes that he had drawn for Father Wang were just mere trifles.

nWang Ling remembered that the last time he had used the Great Fortune Spell, he had bought a lottery ticket, but hadn’t won anything. Since then, he hadn’t believed in any type of lottery. To not win even when he was using the Great Fortune Spell… it was plain to see how deep the waters were – when it came down to it, buying the lottery was just a kind of tax on the poor…

nHe didn’t dare say that no had ever truly won the lottery. Some people had bought lottery tickets with the money leftover from grocery shopping, and had been lucky enough to win thousands of HNY. However, those who hit the jackpot always came to collect their prizes either in a mask or cosplay, which for a time had made Wang Ling doubt the veracity of their win.

nLuckily in the Wang family, both Father Wang and Mother Wang weren’t interested in either lotteries or shares. Mother Wang had always felt that a down-to-earth life was the most important thing, while for Father Wang, steadily typing out words would always be much more practical than buying a lottery ticket and waiting for a pie to fall from the sky.

n…

nLoopy Toad had a dumbfounded expression on its dog face when it heard that Wang Ling had signed it up for a competition.

nWhat kind of plot development was this… even Loopy Toad itself didn’t quite understand.

nWhen it came to following Little Master Ling’s line of thought, there was no way it could puzzle it out in a short span of time by relying on just its dog brain.

nLoopy Toad just felt that it wouldn’t be fair for it to compete – it would be as if it had already been crowned champion.

nAlthough it was currently at the peak late Golden Core stage, in terms of soul pets, it was barely a third-class spirit beast.

nA third-class spirit beast wouldn’t be anything rare in a university flooded with Golden Core cultivators.

nLoopy Toad had learned that such elite universities heavily invested in the construction of spirit beast labs in schools to conduct tests on hundreds of third-class spirit beasts. In university, there were as many third-class and fourth-class spirit beasts as there were hairs on an ox, so a soul pet that was not yet second class didn’t stand a chance of becoming a school pet. If you reached first class for real, the students in the lab would worship you like an ancestor.

nOf course, Loopy Toad had learned all this from a post on the cultivation forum.

nIt remained to be seen whether it was true or not, but indeed, Loopy Toad’s goal all this time had been to cultivate until it advanced to first class as quickly as possible.

nAfter all, it had been a demon king before, had led the demon race, and had been chief of the toad clan. It couldn’t return to its original body, but at the very least it had to preserve as much of its strength as possible, otherwise it would be too embarrassing.

nOf course, Wang Ling had his own reasons for having Loopy Toad participate in the competition.

nFor one thing, Wang Ling’s classmates had indeed missed its presence.

nFor another, Wang Ling wanted to use the competition this time as a practical test of Loopy Toad’s current strength. Loopy Toad was currently cultivating the second version of the “Demon King Heart Sutra” which Wang Ling had modified by completely replacing the part which involved demon qi cultivation with spirit qi; although the cultivation path was the same, there could be possible adverse reactions.

nGenerally speaking, adverse reactions, if any, would only reveal themselves in true combat.

nWang Ling hugged Loopy Toad in his lap and stroked its dog fur with slender fingers, making it feel so comfortable it lay limp in his hold.

n“We need to test the ‘Demon King Heart Sutra’; this is the first time I’ve modified a martial art, and I need to see if there are any adverse reactions from it,” Wang Ling communicated telepathically.

nAdverse reactions?

nLoopy Toad cocked its head; at the very least, cultivating the revised version of the “Demon King Heart Sutra” made it feel very good.

nFor the moment, it indeed couldn’t tell if it was experiencing any adverse reactions; it would need to be tested in true combat to know for sure.

nWang Ling had actually come up with his own martial arts before as a kid, but they were just like the stories a child writes on a whim – they were bold and imaginative but impractical, and would be of very little use in actual combat.

nWhen he had revised Loopy Toad’s “Demon King Heart Sutra” previously, he had in fact referred to something he had secretly written called “Immortal King Heart Sutra,” and had replaced the “demon qi” with a “spirit qi” formula.

nThe “Immortal King Heart Sutra” was a martial art that Wang Ling had been thinking about for a very long time, and of course, it had taken him a very long time to put it all together. After a rough calculation, it had already been eight years since he had first thought about it when he was eight years old.

nThe main thing was that this art wasn’t complete, so this was just a beta version.

nOnce he successfully completed it, Wang Ling felt that he would be able to suppress his uncontrollable aura through cultivating this heart sutra, and he would no longer need to depend on the talisman seal on his arm.

nIt was just as Wang Ming had said: the talisman’s restraining function was having less and less of an effect on him.

nIt was like when hospital patients were given too many antibiotics: even if it was in appropriate amounts, once you took too much, the body would involuntarily become resistant to them.

n“Say, do you think you could cultivate to the level of a holy beast?” Wang Ling stared at Loopy Toad as he suddenly held the dog up.

n“…I don’t think so.”

nAfter looking stunned, Loopy Toad smiled bitterly. How could cultivating to the level of a holy beast be that easy?

nAccording to the ranking system for holy beasts, first-class spirit beasts were in fact just one rank under holy beasts. The most important thing required was the beast heart. In ancient texts, a beast heart was in fact something that could be cultivated, but this cultivation method had long been lost, and most holy beasts basically inherited their beast hearts – it couldn’t be obtained through mutation nor through paying for a transplant.

nThis was why the main aim of most spirit beasts nowadays was to cultivate to become first-class beasts.

nAs for cultivating toward becoming a holy beast, it was just as absurd as some real estate tycoon’s big words about setting a small target of a hundred million yuan first 1 .

nMoreover, were there still holy beasts around nowadays?

nLoopy Toad doubted it.

nEven if there were any, most would probably choose to lie low.

nBack when there had still been holy beasts, cultivators had believed that the beast hearts of holy beasts could help them in their pursuit of the path of Dao; they had done plenty of stupid things in the fight over beast hearts, and had even gone to war.

nBut… if Loopy Toad could truly cultivate to the level of a holy beast…

nIt would be like waking up laughing from a dream, and the first thing it would do would be to eat thirty tons of meaty houseflies in celebration.

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