An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

The Ocean-Swallowing Jar was an enchanted artifact designed specifically for storing liquid substances. It could hold demonic beast blood, tree sap, rare liquids, or anything fluid in nature. Its capacity was vast, and it also preserved and stabilized whatever it contained.

Luo Chen’s first encounter with such a jar had been when it was used to contain the blood of Explosive Apes. Later, he had seen Wang Yuan use one to store the blood essence of many Qi Refinement cultivators. That incident in Crescent Moon Valley had left him deeply shaken. Yet compared to the jar he now found within Xuan Yu’s storage pouch, Wang Yuan’s display back then was utterly insignificant.

What he faced now was not just a jar of blood, but an ocean of it! And each drop brimmed with surging vitality, each one more potent than the life essence of a Qi Refinement cultivator! With only a glance, Luo Chen realized with horror that every last drop belonged to an Initiate!

There was no mistaking it. Essence blood was the fusion of a cultivator’s blood and spirit power, carrying even a trace of innate yuan qi formed when breaking through realms. Ordinarily, its presence went unnoticed, and only through deliberate concentration could a cultivator force out a single drop. By common knowledge, a cultivator could extract no more than ten drops of blood essence without harming themselves. If they disregarded their life, perhaps twenty or thirty drops. Even with a physique as strong as Luo Chen’s, comparable to an archaic third-tier beast, the limit was barely a hundred drops, and that would outright cripple him. After all, each drop held energy nearly equivalent to one percent of his cultivation. Even cultivators at higher realms rarely exceeded that limit.

Yet here and now, the jar before him contained not tens of drops, nor hundreds, but well within the thousands. They gathered densely into a mass that resembled a pool of blood, yet at the same time, they refused to merge. They somehow coexisted in an eerie, unnatural harmony, and the ripples on the surface radiated endless vitality.

After gauging the volume, Luo Chen couldn’t help but draw in a sharp breath. ”Hisss... At least a hundred cultivators!”

The thought that Xuan Yu had personally slain so many Initiates sent a chill through his chest. But then, shock gave way to reason, and he quickly calmed himself. One hundred people’s worth of essence blood did not mean one hundred kills. The tales of Blood Devil spoke not only of slaughter and blood-draining, but also of corpses vanishing from battlefields when sect cultivators failed to recover them in time. Xuan Yu had likely used the chaos of battle to steal corpses, then extracted the blood essence that remained. At times, he had been forced to abandon the process and flee when discovered. Little by little, his actions had been pieced together, and thus the legend of Blood Devil was born.

”But why did he collect so much blood essence?” Luo Chen wondered. The question lingered without an answer. ”Could it be for cultivating a Blood Path technique? Or perhaps, like Wang Yuan, to refine pills like the Blood Fiend Pill?”

Unable to reach a conclusion, he simply carefully stowed the jar away. He even slapped a second-tier talisman onto it to suppress its aura. Such a thing could never be revealed. Once exposed, not even the Ice Fortress could shield him.

Wang Yuan might carry the Blood Devil title now, and the major sects just let him be. But that was only because they chose not to act. They likely already knew the real Blood Devil was someone else, but if they ever decided to take him to task for it, how could he ever prove his innocence?

Strictly speaking, the title isn’t all wrong. Wang Yuan did such things back when he was weak. Weird coincidence. Luo Chen chuckled softly and began sorting through Xuan Yu’s inheritance.

This time, the blind box was stuffed to the brim.

Unlike Zheng Xian, who had struggled on his own, Xuan Yu had lived as the favored consort of Grand Elder Peach Blossom of Hundred Flowers Palace, overseeing the holdings of Peach Mountain and wielding authority in his own right. Thus, his storage pouch brimmed with resources. Pills of every kind, enchanted artifacts of varying grades, talismans, and a wide assortment of rare materials filled its space. Among them lay the one thing Luo Chen valued most—spirit stones!

With just a quick count, Luo Chen found over one million spirit stones, a staggering fortune by any standard. Among them were two thousand mid-grade stones and over a dozen top-grade ones!

By all rights, a cultivator who had reached the Pseudo-Golden Core Realm should have exhausted every bit of wealth. Yet Xuan Yu still carried such an astonishing trove, and after a moment’s thought, Luo Chen understood why. These riches came from the inheritances of the cultivators Xuan Yu had slain. With the divine soul of a Pseudo-Adept and the techniques of Hundred Flowers Palace at his disposal, the imprints on Initiates’ storage pouches might as well not have been there. That was how he had accumulated such wealth.

”Well, lucky for me then,” Luo Chen muttered. ”Just like that, I’ve become richer than ever. This is more than I’ve ever owned in my entire life, combined. Tsk, tsk... Truly, without eating grass at night, a horse grows thin; without unexpected fortune, a man never grows rich!”

This windfall was no mere figure of speech. The sheer number of spirit stones alone made the point clear, and the resources piled up were easily worth another two or three million! Not to mention the dozens of enchanted treasures—even at a conservative valuation of fifty thousand each, they amounted to several million more!

Piece by piece, Luo Chen spent three full days tallying the contents of Xuan Yu’s pouch. The final estimate came to nearly ten million in total value. Even Luo Chen, who always considered himself wealthy, couldn’t help but curse, his eyes burning red with jealousy.

”What a filthy fortune! I’ve really hit the jackpot this time!”

Luo Chen sat in his chair as he faced over a dozen texts: jade slips, bamboo scrolls, and paper-bound tomes. In his hands, he held three jade slips and three third-tier techniques. All of these were part of Xuan Yu’s inheritance.

With this stockpile alone, Xuan Yu could have supported the rise of a mid-sized sect. Cultivation resources of every type, assorted rare materials, enchanted artifacts and treasures, second-tier and third-tier techniques in abundance, and more than a million spirit stones in liquid capital. All of these were needed to fund a sect.

The Luo Tian Society, in its current state, did not have as much wealth as this single man’s estate. Such a trove would stir envy even in the heart of a Golden Core Adept.

”Raiding cultivators are truly terrifying. Ordinary petty raiders are little more than rabble, but one who rampages freely across the battlefield carves out fortunes unmatched by any other path. These items may have gotten to me as Xuan Yu’s legacy, but in truth, they are a lifetime’s accumulation of hundreds of Initiates. Even their cultivation essence was gathered into that Ocean-Swallowing Jar. He really stripped them clean without leaving so much as a scrap behind.”

The scale of this discovery left Luo Chen unsettled. From these spoils, he could already sense the true purpose behind Xuan Yu’s collection of blood essence. It had not been for himself; it had been for Grand Elder Peach Blossom. Everything else was only a byproduct of his blood harvesting. It explained why Xuan Yu had carried that red silk defensive treasure, feminine in style and only shallowly refined. It had never belonged to him. It had been a gift from the Grand Elder Peach Blossom.

”As expected, keeping that red silk hidden all this time was a wise choice,” Luo Chen thought. ”If she discovered I took what was hers, the consequences would be devastating. The reason the major sects no longer pursue the Blood Devil affair likely has to do with Xuan Yu’s status and the fact that he was acting in her service.”

After careful reflection, Luo Chen separated every resource directly tied to Peach Mountain, Xuan Yu, or the Hundred Flowers Palace and placed them into his personal ring. Such things could never pass through the hands of the Luo Tian Society; they would invite disaster.

From the remainder of the items, Luo Chen selected those that still carried traces of others’ auras. Even unclaimed objects were handled with care. Following his principle of utmost caution, he sealed them in a separate storage pouch. Who could say whether some of them were linked to Grand Elder Peach Blossom?

By the time this work was complete, the sky had already grown dark. It was time again for daily cultivation. Countless treasures from the inheritance remained to be explored, but Luo Chen forced down the restlessness in his heart. Cultivation could never be set aside. The slow, grinding process demanded unbroken discipline. As for the treasures, he had more than enough time to examine them later.

Within the cultivation chamber, spirit energy surged as his breathing followed the rhythm of his technique. Each inhalation drew in energy, each exhalation refined it, until the power condensed into the purest spirit power and merged into his sea of qi. The whirlpool formed by the Clear Origin Mystical Pill turned steadily, filtering his spirit power and rendering what was already pure into something even clearer and cleaner. His cultivation deepened ceaselessly, growing ever more profound and formidable.