Sometime in the afternoon, Old Zhao left with his fishing rod. The disciples who had been waiting for his personal instruction, including Zhao Yong, didn’t stick around either once they saw him leave.
Of course, some greeted Xu Guang before leaving, while others completely ignored him.
Xu Guang wasn’t surprised. From chatting with Zhao Yong, he knew that these fellow disciples were Mortals, albeit from minor families. Still, their status was much higher than his own commoner background. In the eyes of some, training alongside him was probably a disgrace.
Xu Guang tucked the two packets of Secret Medicine his master had given him into his clothes, swept the courtyard, and left with Zhao Yong.
He didn’t approach Xu Sanduo. Since he was still undergoing his bloodline transformation, eating more regular food could satisfy his bodily needs—and more importantly, it was cheap. After paying his tuition, he was now completely broke.
His third search, because he added the keyword "suitable," was faster than he had expected. It would take about three days to get the search results, which should solve his current financial dilemma.
Xu Guang returned home and ate with Mrs. Xu. Afterward, Xu Chun stayed in the room with Wang Wen to keep their mother company. He went out to the courtyard alone to practice his cultivation.
After his session, he consumed the oral Secret Medicine. He then boiled water, filled a wooden tub, sprinkled in the topical Secret Medicine, and submerged his entire body.
An unprecedented sensation of comfort washed over him, drawing out an involuntary moan. Intense numbness and tingling spread across the skin of his armpits, legs, and waist. These were the key areas targeted by the Golden Willow Skill.
From that day on, Xu Guang’s life fell into a strict routine.
The transformation of his Bloodline Power continued, and his progress in practicing the Nourishing Body Chapter of the Golden Willow Skill advanced at a tremendous pace. In just three short days, he could clearly feel that his strength had reached an astonishing level. He could effortlessly lift the half-person-tall water vat in his house when it was completely full, a weight of nearly six hundred pounds.
He didn’t know if other cultivators in the Nourishing Body Realm possessed this kind of strength.
The vast majority of the nourishment driving this growth didn’t come from the food he ate, but from the drop of Essence Blood within his Blood Eye. Whenever he trained, the Essence Blood would subtly tremble, supplementing his body with energy. Over the course of three days, the drop of Essence Blood had unknowingly shrunk a little.
This made him look forward to the future of the Blood Eye even more. He wondered if he could develop new powers from it later on. After all, the three-eyed figures from the myths of his past life were no ordinary beings.
Figures like Yang Jian and Wen Zhong...
Three days after acknowledging his master, Xu Guang opened his interface. His previous search had finally yielded results.
[Search results are as follows:]
[1. Fifteen miles east of Feiyun City, enter Two-Arm Mountain, then travel southeast for eighteen miles to find a cave. A Hunter’s secret stash is hidden inside. Specific location is as follows...]
[2. At No. 23, West Alley of Ping’an Square in Feiyun City, a Treasure is buried at the bottom of a well. Specific location is as follows...]
[3. Twenty miles west of Feiyun City, locate an abandoned temple. Gold and silver are hidden within the belly of a ruined God statue. Specific location is as follows...]
[Note: The current number of displayed search results is three.]
Xu Guang frowned slightly. Master Zhao went to the Immortal Institute to personally instruct his disciples every five days. He didn’t want to miss that. With only two days left until the next session, he could only afford to go after the closest Treasure.
No. 23, West Alley of Ping’an Square wasn’t far from where he lived—only about two streets away.
The Searcher couldn’t remain idle. After some thought, Xu Guang inputted what he wanted to know next into the interface.
[Current search keyword: Methods for Accelerated Awakening Stone Skin. Associated tags: Suitable, Safe. Set range: Within a fifty-mile radius of Feiyun City.]
[Searching... 0%]
He didn’t want to swallow pebbles every day anymore. If he kept at it, he’d eventually eat the stone lions across the street. Considering the rarity of Bloodline Power, he had expanded the search radius a bit.
That night, Xu Guang dressed in black and slipped through the streets and alleys.
Feiyun City at night was filled with sin. In a mere journey of three to five hundred meters, he witnessed gang members breaking into a house and dragging away a daughter while her parents cried and screamed. He also saw a beggar who had starved to death at the head of an alley, their uncollected corpse already emitting a foul stench.
Xu Guang was already numb to it. He merely glanced at these tragedies before looking away. Why waste grief on things that were so commonplace?
Fortunately, the courtyard at No. 23, West Alley was uninhabited. Xu Guang swiftly vaulted over the wall.
The night was silent, the moonlight bright and clear. The young man stood in the courtyard, frowning at the well as his eyes flickered. An eerie aura was seeping out from the opening. For some reason, he could sense an extremely dangerous Qi Mechanism emanating from it. There was something perilous inside.
Xu Guang had the urge to turn around and leave, but after mulling it over, he decided to give it a try. According to the Searcher’s location display, the supposed Treasure was only two meters below the surface. There was likely a hidden compartment in the well’s wall.
Taking a moment to plan, he went into the house, caught a rat, tied it to a rope, and lowered it into the well. About five minutes later, Xu Guang pulled the rat back up. The massive rat let out frantic SQUEAKS as it struggled incessantly, adding a strange touch of vitality to the silent night.
"Did I sense it wrong?"
Xu Guang lowered the rat again. He repeated this three times. Only after confirming the rat was completely unharmed did he tie a hemp rope around his waist, secure the other end to the wellhead, and slowly descend.
At about two meters down, he spotted the hollowed-out hidden compartment. Inside lay a slightly rotten black bundle, revealing oxidized silver within.
Everything was going so smoothly. Xu Guang chuckled softly. Scaring himself like that really had been terrifying.
But as the light from the small flint in his hand unintentionally illuminated the depths of the well, his entire body jolted. His pupils rapidly dilated, and his breathing grew erratic.
It was an ancient well. The bottom was a full seven or eight meters down. The water had long since dried up, leaving only a few small puddles scattered across a bed of thick mud. However, lying silently within that mud was a gigantic black beast. Its pitch-black scales were each the size of a human hand, gleaming with a chilling light under the flint’s faint glow.
"It looks like... it’s sleeping?"
Xu Guang couldn’t help but curse inwardly. Gripping the rope tightly, he slowly hauled himself back up.
Even when he reached the surface, his heart was still pounding, THUMP THUMP. That was definitely a behemoth far exceeding his imagination, yet its aura felt somewhat familiar. It was exactly the same as the Exotic Yellow Pig he had personally butchered a few days ago.
This was an... Alien Species! Fortunately, it hadn’t noticed him.
He rushed all the way back, not even bothering to avoid the gangs wandering the night. It wasn’t until he was back home, lying safely in his bed, that Xu Guang felt just how sweet the surrounding air was.
He recalled the glimpse of the giant beast he had seen in the well. It looked somewhat like a crocodile, but with scales the size of a palm, its full body length had to be at least ten meters. He wondered if anyone knew that such a behemoth was hiding right inside the city.
What concerned Xu Guang the most was that a beast of that size must have an enormous appetite. Where was it getting its food? Was someone feeding it? Or... did that ancient well connect to an underground river?
Shaking his head, he dispelled the doubts from his mind. None of this had anything to do with him. He was just a commoner. If the sky fell, the high-and-mighty lords would be the ones to prop it up.
Only then did he have the mind to examine his harvest for the day: five ingots of ten-tael Great Qian Standard Official Silver, and a letter with long-blurred handwriting. Fifty taels of silver. Converted into Blade Coins, that was fifty-two thousand Small Blade Coins, or five hundred and twenty Large Blade Coins—enough to pay his tuition for five months.
When he went to the Immortal Institute the day after tomorrow, he would try to make contact with his senior apprentice, Xu Sanduo.
Practicing martial arts required keeping up with nutrition. Xu Guang planned to buy some extra meat for Xu Chun’s husband. Over the years, Xu Chun had skimmed quite a bit of her husband’s cultivation resources to nourish Xu Guang’s body; this was a debt of gratitude he needed to repay.
Days passed one by one. Xu Guang’s cultivation progressed methodically. Every day at dawn, he would begin practicing the movements from the Nourishing Body Chapter until he was completely exhausted.
It was worth mentioning that after realizing the benefits of Essence Blood for his cultivation, he contacted the butcher he had worked with at the Cheng family villa. He joined the man in slaughtering pigs, but with the request that he be allowed to keep extra pig blood for himself after every kill.
His excuse was that someone in his family had just given birth and lost too much blood, requiring the blood of large livestock to nourish their body. The butcher believed this without a doubt. The concept of "you are what you eat" existed in this world as well.
With a large amount of silver coins spent, Xu Guang’s body filled out at a visible rate. His physique grew increasingly robust, and he even grew three centimeters taller.
He had finally settled down in the city. Mrs. Xu spent her days tending to the vegetable garden in the courtyard, and Xu Chun occasionally brought Wang Wen over to visit. In secret, Xu Guang also tried to ask around for the whereabouts of Qian Cheng, the man from the Ya Bang who had trafficked his youngest sister all those years ago.
In the blink of an eye, half a month passed.