Eye of Wisdom, activate!
His gaze fell upon the trash heap, his vision seemingly piercing through the surface filth and debris to land directly on that gray cloth bundle.
Inside the bundle was a fruit the size of a baby’s fist, emerald green and translucent, with faint spiritual light flowing on its surface.
Almost instantly, the "Encyclopedia of All Things in the Heavens" in Chen Chuan’s mind flipped pages automatically, and relevant information emerged:
Green Spirit Fruit: Grade One spiritual fruit.
This fruit contains gentle wood-attribute Spiritual Qi, which can nourish the Physical Body, clear blockages, and improve the Physique. It has miraculous effects for those who have just started to Cultivate or those with bodily depletion.
Because its Spiritual Qi is contained within and its appearance is simple, it is often mistaken for an ordinary wild fruit by those who do not recognize its value.
Improve the Physique!
Nourish the Physical Body!
Chen Chuan was overjoyed.
This was simply a life-saving straw tailored for him at this moment.
He looked around vigilantly, confirming that the person who threw the items away had long since departed.
No one nearby was paying attention to this corner, so he pretended as if nothing were wrong and slowly strolled over.
As he approached the trash heap, a sour, putrid smell hit him.
He frowned and quickly reached out to push aside the surface debris.
He grabbed the gray cloth bundle in one hand, hid it in his sleeve, and then quickened his pace, leaving in a hurry.
However, he did not notice that in the shadows of the distant street corner...
A young girl wearing a goose-yellow dress and her hair in twin buns was staring wide-eyed, looking at his series of actions just now in disbelief.
Ji Qingyu!
Ji Siyu’s younger sister.
She had snuck out today wanting to see her sister.
Unexpectedly, she saw from afar that trash brother-in-law, Chen Chuan, sneakily rummaging through a trash heap for something, and finally running off with a dirty bundle.
"This bastard has actually stooped to picking through trash?"
Ji Qingyu’s mouth opened slightly, her face full of shock and an indescribable contempt.
She stomped her feet, turned, and ran straight towards Qingyun Academy.
In a quiet area outside the academy, Ji Siyu had just finished her classes for the day.
She looked at her sister running over panting and frowned slightly: "Qingyu? What’s wrong? Why are you in such a panic?"
"Sister! This is bad!" Ji Qingyu grabbed Ji Siyu’s arm and said urgently: "I just saw that trash Chen Chuan! He was rummaging through the trash heap at the street corner for food. I was truly stunned."
Upon hearing this, Ji Siyu’s cold eyes flickered slightly, and her hands tightened imperceptibly.
Picking through trash?
The image of Chen Chuan’s face—pale as paper and incredibly weak—when she left this morning instantly flashed through her mind.
That’s right, she usually did the cooking, but today, out of anger, she had gone straight to the academy and ignored him.
A very faint ripple, almost impossible to catch, spread across her frozen heart.
Was it guilt?
No, perhaps it was just a negligible pity for a dying stray dog.
"Sister, let’s go take a look and see what on earth he’s up to!" Ji Qingyu pulled her to leave.
Ji Siyu was silent for a moment, but in the end, she was pulled by her sister towards the direction of the manor.
The two sisters did not enter the courtyard; instead, they quietly circled to a low slope outside the back wall, using the trees as cover to look into the yard.
They saw Chen Chuan sitting on a stone stool in the backyard, his back to them, holding the fruit he had picked from the trash heap and devouring it ravenously.
He didn’t even notice the juice running down the corners of his mouth; he looked exactly like a starving ghost reincarnated.
"Look! Sister, I didn’t lie to you, he’s really so hungry that he’s eating dirty things he picked up." Ji Qingyu lowered her voice, her tone full of intense disgust: "He wasn’t very smart to begin with, and now he’s probably starved himself even stupider."
Ji Siyu stood there silently. The afterglow of the setting sun outlined her exquisite profile with a soft halo, yet it could not melt the complexity in the depths of her eyes.
Looking at Chen Chuan’s thin back and his urgent swallowing, she thought of his current situation where everyone had turned against him, and even eating had become a problem.
Ji Siyu had always felt that Chen Chuan was stupid, incompetent, and self-deprecating—useless except for bringing her endless humiliation and trouble.
But at this moment, seeing his wretched state with her own eyes, a corner of her cold heart seemed to be touched gently.
Ji Siyu felt some guilt; regardless of anything, Chen Chuan was her husband after all.
Seeing Chen Chuan eating trash like a fool, Ji Siyu’s tears began to flow uncontrollably.
She was not only pained for Chen Chuan but also indignant at her own unfair fate; in her youth and beauty, she had actually married such a profligate son.
He, perhaps, was also a pitiful person.
But as soon as this thought arose, it was suppressed by more unpleasant memories.
The arguments, the solicitations for bribes, the thefts, and the look in his eyes when he looked at her—a mixture of greed and impotent rage.
Ji Siyu stopped her tears and ultimately said nothing, only silently turning around and pulling her sister, who still wanted to watch the spectacle, away quietly.
Inside the courtyard, Chen Chuan finally swallowed the entire Green Spirit Fruit whole.
A gentle but undeniable warm current instantly dissolved from his stomach and flowed into his limbs and bones. Everywhere it passed, that bone-eroding sense of weakness was actually dispelled by a few degrees, and even his breathing became much smoother.
"Whew..."
He let out a long sigh of relief, feeling the long-lost warmth. He was about to get up and return to his room to try and circulate the crude Elementary Cultivation Technique in his memory to see if he could refine this medicinal power.
Right at that moment!
[Special energy intake detected]
[Analyzing energy properties]
[Resonating with host’s meager Bloodline]
[Primordial Purple Radiance Ancestral Dragon Bloodline concentration increasing: 0.0011%...0.0012%...0.0013%...]
Chen Chuan suddenly froze in place, his pupils shrinking sharply.
This Green Spirit Fruit could actually increase Bloodline concentration.
Although the magnitude was minuscule and almost negligible.
But this meant that besides paying to win, there were other ways to achieve the Awakening of this Primordial Purple Radiance Ancestral Dragon Bloodline.
"Eating spiritual fruits to increase Bloodline concentration is too slow; it seems only paying to win is the fastest way."
Chen Chuan muttered to himself.
"Damn, if I had known, I would have sold the Green Spirit Fruit. It definitely could have been exchanged for ten thousand gold tickets. What a huge loss."
Thinking of the value of the Green Spirit Fruit, Chen Chuan wailed in his heart.
He could be certain of one thing: if he wanted to quickly increase his Bloodline concentration, he could only rely on the pay-to-win system; relying on spiritual fruits was extremely slow.
Therefore, the System was the key to his Bloodline improvement.
If I missed it, then I missed it, Chen Chuan shook his head.
Now he had only one thought, and that was to get money.
Only getting money was the key to improving his strength.
Hope, in another unexpected way, had torn open a shimmering crack before him.
He returned to his room and began to Cultivate according to the Elementary basic Cultivation Technique of the Chen family in his memory.
As he operated the formula, the Spiritual Qi of heaven and earth began to gather towards his position and was finally inhaled into his body.
According to the cultivation method, Chen Chuan began to condense Spiritual Qi and guide it to travel through his limbs and bones.
After fifteen minutes, Chen Chuan’s cultivation finally advanced to the Martial Dao First Stage.
"As expected of an invincible cultivation talent, just fifteen minutes and I could advance to the Martial Dao First Stage." Chen Chuan was excited: "I believe it won’t be long before I can advance to the Martial Dao Ninth Stage and then step into the Burning Lamp Realm."
In this world, the Martial Dao Realms start from Martial Dao First Stage to Martial Dao Ninth Stage.
After breaking through the Martial Dao Ninth Stage, one can enter the Burning Lamp Realm, followed by the Ming Quan Realm, Furnace Realm, Mountain Sea Realm, Myriad Manifestations Realm, True Domain Realm, Inquiry Realm, Fate-Executing Realm, and Void Breaking Realm.
Each major Realm is further divided into nine minor stages.
Chen Chuan continued to Cultivate, ignoring the time.
At noon, Ji Siyu returned to the manor.
She was holding vegetables and meat she had bought from the market.
Walking into the house, she glanced at Chen Chuan’s tightly closed door; her cold eyes showed no fluctuations.
She hated facing Chen Chuan.
Perhaps because they were husband and wife, or perhaps because she felt pity for the current Chen Chuan, she continued to live with him.
Although Chen Chuan was a Disciple abandoned by the Chen family, his status as the son of the Chen Family Head was still there.
If Ji Siyu wanted to leave Chen Chuan, she also had to consider the Chen family.
She wanted to escape her fate, and perhaps only if Chen Chuan died could she be free.
After cooking the meal, Ji Siyu did not immediately call Chen Chuan out to eat.
After she finished eating, she left the manor and returned to Qingyun Academy to continue her cultivation classes.
Ji Siyu thought that if Chen Chuan were hungry, he would come out to eat on his own, so she didn’t think much of it.
Chen Chuan, who was cultivating in his room, had smelled the aroma of the food long ago, but he wasn’t hungry and chose to continue cultivating.
In the evening, Ji Siyu returned home and found that the food had not been touched.
Obviously, Chen Chuan hadn’t eaten.
Glancing at the closed door, Ji Siyu walked over and raised her hand to knock, wanting to call him out for dinner.
But in the end, she didn’t knock.
"Forget it, maybe starving to death would be a relief for him," Ji Siyu’s expression was complex: "And maybe I could be free too."
Thinking of this, Ji Siyu returned to her own room.
The next morning, Ji Siyu threw away the leftover food, made a simple breakfast, and went to study at Qingyun Academy.
When Chen Chuan came out of his room, it was almost noon.
Feeling a bit hungry, Chen Chuan went to the kitchen and saw that there were still plenty of vegetables Ji Siyu had bought yesterday.
He personally cooked a meal.
As a hotel head chef in his previous life, cooking was not difficult for him at all.
After finishing his meal, Chen Chuan covered the remaining food and then walked out of the manor to stroll around outside.
After Chen Chuan left, Ji Siyu returned home.
She had intended to come back and cook for Chen Chuan.
When she saw the prepared dishes on the table, a hint of confusion appeared on Ji Siyu’s beautiful face:
"I didn’t cook this morning? Who made this? Did that bastard make it himself?"
But Ji Siyu felt it was impossible.
How could a profligate bastard like Chen Chuan know how to cook?
But there was no third person in this house besides her and Chen Chuan.
With doubt, Ji Siyu sat down and tasted it.
Her eyes immediately lit up.
"It’s delicious; even vegetables can be made so tasty. The culinary skills are definitely not simple." Ji Siyu took another bite: "It shouldn’t be that bastard; he’s never even been in the kitchen, he doesn’t know how to cook, let alone have this kind of skill."
She got up and walked to Chen Chuan’s room, opened the door, and found that he wasn’t inside.
"Where did this bastard go?" Ji Siyu’s brows furrowed slightly.
She wanted to ask Chen Chuan if he was the one who made the food.
But Chen Chuan wasn’t home, and she didn’t know which romantic establishment he had gone to mess around in again.
Without paying too much attention to Chen Chuan, Ji Siyu returned to the academy after eating to continue her classes.
By the afternoon, Ji Siyu returned home and found that Chen Chuan still hadn’t returned.
Just as she was about to go out and look for him, Chen Chuan returned.
Entering the hall, Chen Chuan didn’t even give Ji Siyu a glance.
Because he knew Ji Siyu detested him and didn’t want to have any communication with him.
So Chen Chuan also had no intention of speaking to Ji Siyu.
Clang
Chen Chuan entered his room and then closed the door.
As the sound of the door closing echoed, Ji Siyu finally snapped back to her senses.
She noticed that Chen Chuan’s spirit and temperament were different, and even his attitude had changed, becoming indifferent to everything around him, as if he didn’t care about anything.
The sudden change in Chen Chuan’s attitude made Ji Siyu a bit uncomfortable; after all, the two of them would argue every day.
"Hmph, what’s with the act of being cold?"
Ji Siyu snorted coldly in her heart.
She believed Chen Chuan was deliberately putting on this attitude.
This was fine too; it saved them from arguing every time they met.
But thinking about the meal today at noon, Ji Siyu wanted to clear things up.
She walked towards Chen Chuan’s room and knocked on the door.