A Loose Cultivator's Path to Longevity

”This is the place!”

Lü Zhong muttered, then closed his eyes.

He entered the Gray Mist Space and rewound the scene of this location. His Soul Power began to drain rapidly, but he soon pinpointed the correct time frame. It was as if he was there that day, witnessing the scene unfold with his own eyes.

By supplementing this with his Divine Sense to interfere with reality, he gathered a good deal of intelligence.

There had been five dark figures pursuing Su Xu’Er that day.

Only one of them was a living person—a cultivator with Mid-stage Foundation Establishment Cultivation. Black smoke billowed from his body; he was clearly practicing some kind of Demon Technique. He was, without a doubt, a Demon Cultivator.

The other figures were all Refined Corpses, their auras equivalent to Early-stage Foundation Establishment. However, they were different from the Refined Corpses Lü Zhong knew of. Their bodies were covered in blood-red spells, unlike the common Refined Corpses described in the texts. Instead, they resembled the ”Witch Corpses” found among the Barbarian Race.

That was one thing.

He noticed that the Demon Cultivator had been wielding a White Bone Fork.

Green flames billowed from the fork, marking it as no ordinary item at a glance.

A faint sense of unease crept into his heart. So, Lü Zhong spared no Soul Power, using his Divine Sense to interfere with and inspect the White Bone Fork. The result he obtained was utterly astonishing.

The White Bone Fork was actually a Demon Artifact!

Demon Artifacts were of the same rank as Spiritual Artifacts, but they were far more bizarre and sinister. In terms of destructive power, the former surpassed the latter.

There were numerous records in ancient texts stating that the methods for refining Demon Artifacts went against the harmony of heaven and earth. The creation of every single Demon Artifact was backed by the brutal slaughter of countless living beings. This led to continuous campaigns of extermination by the Sect Clans, causing many of the refining methods to be gradually lost to time.

For these reasons, Demon Artifacts were even rarer than Spiritual Artifacts in the Cultivation Realm.

Secretly raising his guard, Lü Zhong shifted his attention to Su Xu’Er.

He was very curious why the Demon Cultivator was hunting this woman.

’Since the Demon Cultivator has a Demon Artifact, his background must be significant. For him to risk exposing his identity, even to the point of charging into the perilous Jiangkui Forest to hunt her down, Su Xu’Er must have either obtained something extraordinary or discovered one of his secrets.’

Whatever the reason, it meant that Lü Zhong would have to confront this Demon Cultivator.

’Accepting the reward meant accepting the trouble that came with it.’

He had obtained the Jade Vein Technique from Liuu Piaoniang, which solved the problem of his stalled cultivation and gave him a better chance of forming a Golden Core. Now, he had to bear the trouble that came as a result.

’Fortunately, I’ve already mastered Palm Thunder.’ Thinking this, Lü Zhong felt a wave of relief.

Recalling the direction Su Xu’Er had fled, he followed the trail in pursuit.

...

Deep within Jiangkui Forest, a fierce battle was raging.

On one side were the Bronze Puppet Armor Warriors, clad in armor and wielding halberds. They held a firm numerical advantage, a crimson Spiritual Light flickering in their artificial eyes. They were now displaying a side unknown to outsiders. Gone was their usual out-of-control frenzy; instead, they had formed a disciplined military formation and were launching a group charge like a roaring tsunami.

On the other side was a defensive line of corpses. It was composed of Refined Corpses with black qi rolling off their bodies and blood-red spells flickering across their skin, along with a large number of ten-foot-tall Walking Dead in tattered clothes. Although this side was outnumbered, they repeatedly managed to thwart the Puppets’ attacks. Their defensive line was as solid as a fortress.

Behind the defensive line, a dark figure standing in the shadows would occasionally strike out with a White Bone Fork.

As the green flames billowed, one Bronze Puppet after another was engulfed in green fire, their movements slowing to a crawl. Their bodies would soon be tinged with layers of green, and then large flakes would begin to fall off. In no time, the Spirit Patterns within were destroyed, and they could no longer maintain their puppet forms, instantly crumbling into a pile of parts.

When the number of Walking Dead reinforcing the line dwindled, the figure would slap a black cloth bag at his waist, releasing more Walking Dead that were clearly refined from members of the Barbarian Race to continue resisting the Puppet horde’s assault.

The battlefield was now a complete mess, with the remains of both Puppet Armor Warriors and Walking Dead littering the ground.

This was the scene that greeted Lü Zhong when he arrived, following the trail.

He looked at the Tracing Spirit Light in his hand. It had been created using a piece of Su Xu’Er’s clothing as a Spirit Medium and was now pointing toward a tall, gray tower behind the horde of Puppets. The tower was half-hidden in the shadows of the night, giving off a sinister and terrifying feeling, like an Evil Ghost lurking in the darkness.

’Judging from the Spiritual Light’s direction, Su Xu’Er is definitely hiding in that tower,’ Lü Zhong concluded. However, he didn’t advance rashly. Instead, he found a hidden, safe spot to analyze the situation carefully.

Just from watching the Demon Cultivator’s actions from a distance, he could tell the tower likely held some kind of secret. Otherwise, the man wouldn’t need to fight the horde of Puppets at all; he could have simply snuck in silently while their attention was diverted.

Demon Cultivators were often masters of stealth; otherwise, they could never have survived being hunted by the Sect Clans.

Thinking of this, he formed a hand seal and began Chanting, casting the Qi Observation Skill.

As the first Magic Skill Lü Zhong had ever learned, the Qi Observation Skill was actually not simple at all. As his mastery of the skill deepened and the strength of his Divine Soul increased with his Realm breakthroughs, its functions had also evolved. Before, it could only roughly observe the flow of Spiritual Qi, but now, it could perceive Spiritual Qi with microscopic detail.

In his vision, the entire gray tower was enveloped in a dim Spiritual Energy Net. The net was shaped like a bowl, inverted over a clearing in the forest about a li in radius. On the surface of the net were seven layers of Spiritual Energy Nodes arranged in rings.

With the naked eye, it was impossible to detect anything abnormal about these Spiritual Energy Nodes.

’This Spiritual Energy Net seems to be some kind of Composite Array, but it’s not an Illusion Array, Puzzle Array, or Killing Array. It seems to be designed specifically to power those Spiritual Energy Nodes. At the edge, there’s the corpse of a beast, torn in two... It’s Su Xu’Er’s Cyan-winged Lion. Judging from its wounds, most of them came from the bronze halberds of those Puppets, but the fatal blow was some kind of incredibly powerful slash.’