A Loose Cultivator's Path to Longevity

In the next moment, Zhuanghong burst out from the serpent’s lower jaw.

It circled once more before landing back in Lü Zhong’s hand.

He stared at the Sea Beast, which he had grievously wounded in a single strike, and was utterly shocked.

Admittedly, it was a sneak attack. The Sea Beast was caught off guard, allowing him to pierce its skull in one go. The blow damaged its brain, leaving it critically injured and on the brink of death.

Furthermore, Zhuanghong was a Spiritual Artifact, its sharpness far beyond that of any Magical Artifact.

Even so, the power of the Star Pulling Skill was not to be underestimated.

’Without the skill’s acceleration, Zhuanghong would have likely gotten stuck inside the Sea Beast’s body.’

’If I were unlucky, the Sea Beast might have escaped with it, and I would have lost a Spiritual Artifact for nothing.’

Shaking off the thought, Lü Zhong decided to strike while the iron was hot.

He delivered a few more blows to the Sea Beast, finishing off the Tier Two creature.

As he stopped, he suddenly felt a wave of dizziness.

’Poison!’

Cursing his luck, he quickly took out a Detoxification Pill he carried with him and swallowed it. Only then did the discomfort gradually begin to fade.

Looking at the unidentified Sea Beast, Lü Zhong made a mental note. ’When I get back to Changchun Immortal City, I’ll read through the bestiary of Sea Beasts and related texts. I can’t let a blunder like this happen again.’

’Winning a fight against a Sea Beast only to die carelessly from its poison... I wouldn’t be able to rest in peace!’

Only after dragging the Sea Beast out with brute force did Lü Zhong truly comprehend its size.

It was no exaggeration to say it was at least a hundred yards long.

Even though the giant serpent was dead, standing before it was an overwhelmingly oppressive experience.

’So much meat... how long would it take me to eat all this?’ he wondered, his mind drifting between how much money the materials would fetch and how he could cook the meat so he wouldn’t get tired of the taste.

With no concubines for company, eating was Lü Zhong’s only real pastime.

The serpent’s body was still twitching, a testament to its astonishing Life Force.

He sent out his Spirit Puppet to begin stripping the serpent’s scales.

Meanwhile, he went to the cave entrance and installed a large bronze door.

He also added a plaque that he inscribed himself. Thanks to years of practice from Talisman Making, his calligraphy was quite decent. He wrote the two large words ”Ganquan Cave” on it.

Next, he laid down a Concealing Array, which made the entrance blend seamlessly with the surrounding rock face.

Inside the cave, he started setting up a tunnel of traps.

He laid down layer after layer of Prohibitions until the entire passage was filled with lethal dangers at every turn.

If any enemies invaded again, these traps alone could inflict massive casualties. He also remembered to protect the cavern housing the Spirit Vein. He set up a Tier Two Golden Spirit Lock Rock Formation to prevent anything from burrowing through the mountain directly to the Spirit Vein’s node.

All these preparations took Lü Zhong the better part of a month.

Whenever he had a spare moment, he worked on butchering the serpent’s corpse.

The scales, each the size of a washbasin, piled up into a small mountain. Though not all of them could be used as artifact refining materials, they still represented a considerable sum—worth over a thousand Spirit Stones at the very least.

The perfectly preserved hide would also fetch a good price.

Beyond that, there was its Demon Pill.

The Demon Pill was the size of a human head and pulsed with a watery blue light. It was soft to the touch, not completely solid, and contained the majority of the Tier Two Sea Beast’s Demon Power. When he looked at it with his Qi Observation Skill, it blazed like a red sun. It was the most valuable material on the Sea Beast.

It had significant uses, being the best supplement for various python-type Demon Beasts seeking to advance in rank.

This Tier Two Demon Pill alone, with its near-perfect condition and minimal loss of Demon Spiritual Qi, could easily fetch close to ten thousand Spirit Stones at an auction.

Rumor had it that cultivators in the East Sea had developed a technique to refine pills from Demon Pills to solve the shortage of Spirit Medicine. Lü Zhong didn’t know if this was true, but if such a Demon Core Refining Art actually existed, the price of Demon Pills was bound to skyrocket.

After all, the current price of Demon Pills was still relatively low.

Compared to the Demon Pill, other parts like the Poison Sac, snake blood, and Snake Gallbladder were worth considerably less.

The only exception was the meat. Although most of it was toxic, a single strip of meat along the spine was poison-free.

However, there were hundreds of thousands of pounds of the toxic meat. Even if he could only sell it to Beast Taming Manors at the low price of one talismanic coin per pound, it would still earn him five to six thousand Spirit Stones.

In total, the profit from killing this one Sea Beast was over twenty thousand Spirit Stones. This was a significantly higher return compared to hunting a typical Tier Two Demon Beast. The main reason was the Sea Beast’s immense size, which yielded a far greater quantity of spiritual materials. Of course, hunting Sea Beasts also came with significantly greater risks.

Without the unique terrain, killing a Sea Beast this large would have been no easy task for an ordinary cultivator. It would typically require a coordinated team effort just for a chance at success. Once the seemingly handsome reward was split among several people, it suddenly seemed rather unremarkable compared to the life-threatening risks involved.

That was why many cultivators preferred to hunt Demon Beasts in the south rather than battle Sea Beasts.

Finding some time, he grilled a piece of the serpent tenderloin over charcoal to taste it.

He had to admit, it tasted absolutely incredible!

The meat was tender yet firm, and juices burst out with every bite. He sprinkled some seaweed salt on top, which made the savory flavor even more sublime.

The only downside was the powerful surge of blood and qi he felt after eating, which required him to circulate his cultivation technique to digest it properly.

...

After a night of meditation and cultivation.

The next day, Lü Zhong made a circuit of Ganquan Island.

He gained a general understanding of the island’s layout. Hills and mountains covered more than half of it, while the rest consisted of grassy plains dotted with numerous rivers, streams, and several lakes of varying sizes.

The only wildlife to speak of were some rabbits and small birds; he figured the Sea Beast had eaten anything larger.

Traces of the Sea Beast’s activity were everywhere.

Gazing south from his position in the air, he could see a hazy landmass in the distance.

Ganquan Island was not the largest in the Ganquan Islands. The archipelago contained over a hundred islands of varying sizes and countless reefs and atolls. The biggest was Qingquan Island to the south, which spanned hundreds of miles, but it had no Spirit Vein. Its Spiritual Qi was so barren that it was unsuitable for cultivators.

Drawing his gaze back, Lü Zhong returned to Ganquan Cave.

He needed to perform Alchemy, but doing so directly at the Spirit Vein node was not a good idea. While the Spirit Vein wasn’t fragile, he planned to nurture it into a Tier Three Spiritual Vein. That would require extensive construction and the deployment of a special array to upgrade it, making the location unsuitable for an Alchemy Room.

So, he decided to carve out a separate cavern in the rock wall.

The cavern wasn’t large, a rectangle roughly a hundred feet long. With Zhuanghong cutting through the stone, he carved it out quickly.

During the excavation, he even discovered a vein of iron ore.

It was of little consequence. Though ”Mortal Iron” and ”Spirit Iron” were similar in name, they were fundamentally different materials. There was no chance of finding anything valuable alongside a vein of mere Mortal Iron.

He ignored it and continued with his work.

He set up a Spirit Gathering Array, a Spirit-Guiding Array, and various other auxiliary arrays.

Then, he installed the Gui Water Phoenix Wing Furnace on its pedestal.

And with that, a rudimentary Alchemy Room began to take shape.

Next, Lü Zhong had to set up another Spirit-Guiding Array at the Spirit Vein node. This was to channel the Spiritual Qi accumulated within the Little Sumeru Formation into his new Alchemy Room, a task just as laborious as creating the room itself.

The process involved laying down restrictive Prohibitions and delineating the conduits for the Qi.

After a great deal of effort, he finally completed the task.

He tested it. Once the Spirit-Guiding Array in the Alchemy Room was activated, a continuous stream of Spiritual Qi flowed out.

’Phew, the preparations are finally complete!’

Lü Zhong gazed at the empty Alchemy Room and suddenly felt a strange sense of unease.

Back at Lintao Pavilion, there were always people checking in on him, a far cry from his current solitude.

A pang of melancholy struck him, but he quickly composed himself. ’There’s no use dwelling on it. I should focus on the here and now.’

He tossed the Golden Sun Insect Fire into the core of the Gui Water Phoenix Wing Furnace and began refining the Spirit Medicines he had prepared.

The process of refining the Creation Spirit Liquid was similar to standard Alchemy.

The first two steps were the same: processing and purification, followed by fusion and transformation.

The difference lay in the third stage. In standard Alchemy, this would be Spirit Infusion and Pill Splitting. However, when refining Creation Spirit Liquid, the Spirit Infusion step was especially critical. If not enough Spiritual Qi was fused into the Pill Liquid, the refinement was considered a failure. A liquid that didn’t reach the target concentration of Spiritual Qi would be nearly useless if consumed as a medicine.

This step was called ”Spirit Infusion and Liquefaction.”

To conserve his Spirit Medicine, Lü Zhong decided to start by refining a Yellow Bud Pill, but using the technique for making Creation Spirit Liquid. The resulting product could be called ”Yellow Bud Creation Liquid.”

Soon, the first two steps were complete.

He had, after all, successfully refined a High-grade Yellow Bud Pill before; he was far from being a novice Alchemist.

The chance of failure was low.

Next came the most critical step: Spirit Infusion and Liquefaction.

Since this was his first time attempting it, Lü Zhong wasn’t very confident.