Eternal Life from the Golden Needle Technique

Chapter 356: Chapter 353: Life

And that wasn’t all.

Being a guide wasn’t a safe and worry-free job.

In fact,

the profession came with its own dangers.

Because even if you developed Eyes of Golden Flame and could spot a newly arrived Cultivator from the outside at a single glance,

it was still hard to determine if that new Cultivator actually needed a guide.

To find more business,

you had to go up to them one by one, asking and pitching your services.

You had to seize every possible opportunity to make a deal.

But every Cultivator had a different temperament and personality, and naturally, their attitudes varied.

If you met one with a better temper, they would just wave their hand dismissively as if shooing a fly and say they didn’t need you.

But a short-tempered one might start cursing you out or even get physical.

If you ran into someone particularly vicious,

you could even end up fearing for your life!

That was how Wang Xiao’Er had lost his arm.

「Several years ago.」

Cyan Essence Water Grass had appeared in the Border Desolate Forest. A series of subsequent events caused a massive influx of foreign Cultivators to pass through Qing City, all heading to the Border Desolate Forest to treasure hunt...

At that time,

Qing City saw a sudden surge in its foreign population,

and it was a chaotic mix of good and bad.

Wang Xiao’Er had blindly approached a vicious character, who obliterated his arm into a bloody pulp with a single finger...

Get someone to compensate him?

Have the City Guard Army serve justice, maybe even arrest the perpetrator?

What a joke!

Who would care about the life or death of a mere ant at the Qi Introduction First Layer?

While chatting idly with Shen Changchuan,

Wang Xiao’Er’s voice was cautious and timid.

He didn’t dare to speak loudly,

and he didn’t even dare to show the slightest hint of hatred for the enemy who had taken his arm. His gaze involuntarily swept his surroundings, as if terrified his words might somehow reach the other person’s ears...

Just like any common person struggling to survive at the bottom,

he was cautious.

Of course,

life wasn’t entirely bleak.

There were still many bright spots.

「Several years ago.」

he had gotten married.

Afterward, they had a big, healthy son.

Now, his goal was to save up as many Spirit Stones and build as many savings as he could. He wanted his son to achieve Qi Introduction Success before the age of six and then enroll in the city’s most famous institution, Shushan Academy.

However,

achieving this dream was not easy.

Considering the current cost of living and his level of income,

it was about as difficult as an ordinary worker from his previous life trying to buy a house, get married, and have children in the city...

But no matter how hard it was,

one still had to have dreams.

Shen Changchuan could sense it.

When Wang Xiao’Er spoke of his wife and son, the faint spark that had dimmed in his eyes lit up once more.

Regarding Wang Xiao’Er’s life,

Shen Changchuan made no judgment.

He would never spout the kind of ridiculous nonsense you’d see online in his past life, like the infantile argument that poor people don’t have the right to have children.

Poor?

’You’d have to kill the two or three billion people in the regions of Asia, Latin America, and Africa still struggling at the poverty line before you’d have the right to call yourself poor!’

’Compared to the fabulously wealthy, the multimillionaires with fortunes in the hundreds of millions, an ordinary person is poor, of course.’

’But compared to the even larger, more numerous populations across the world who have yet to escape hunger, how poor could you really be?’

’We get used to looking up,’

’gazing at the peaks we can never hope to climb.’

’And so we resent our humble origins, resent our parents for not giving birth to us at the summit.’

’But we never stop to think,’

’that the very height from which we started’

’is itself a ’peak’ that many others at the foot of the mountain will gaze up at their whole lives, yet never reach!’

’A peaceful environment, compulsory education, a life without hunger, a stable society... these things we take for granted are, in fact, a fortune that countless others can only dream of!’

Take Wang Xiao’Er, for example.

He lived at the very bottom of Qing City,

but was he truly poor?

In reality, as a Cultivator,

how bad could things really be for him?

If he were to return to the countryside, to the Mortal World, he would be a high and mighty master of an Immortal Family in the eyes of countless mortals!

Everyone has their own way of living.

Shen Changchuan would never stand on a high horse and point fingers at how other people lived their lives.

Perhaps he was influenced by the philosophy of his master, Master Wandering Dragon.

He might have his own flaws, like a tendency to be preachy, but he would never force others to make life choices according to his own ideas.

Shen Changchuan was just a listener.

And in the process,

for some unknown reason,

listening to the other man’s life story

brought Shen Changchuan a sense of spiritual tranquility.

Strong winds test the sturdiest grass;

all living beings rise and fall between heaven and earth.

It calmed and soothed Shen Changchuan’s Heart Spirit.

This sort of enlightenment,

was something Shen Changchuan found difficult to describe in words.

’Ah, life...’

A long sigh echoed in Shen Changchuan’s heart.

Perhaps it was because he saw a bit of himself—the him from his past life who had struggled after entering the workforce—in the Wang Xiao’Er before him.

His heart resonated with him.

Or perhaps it was because, for days on end, he had spent his every waking moment either Refining Elixirs or practicing the Trapped Liver Refining Technique, with almost no Time for rest, and had accumulated too much fatigue.

And Wang Xiao’Er’s story had provided a peculiar sort of release for his constantly taut nerves.

So much so that,

not only was his Heart Spirit soothed and relaxed in this moment,

but he even felt a faint sense of enlightenment dawning within him.

These five Spirit Stones,

were well spent!

Of course,

though he had gained some enlightenment from listening to Wang Xiao’Er’s life story along the way,

Shen Changchuan didn’t let any of it show.

Nor did he abandon his own objective.

He gathered his thoughts,

and under Wang Xiao’Er’s guidance,

he arrived at Qing City’s black market.

The black market in Qing City was a peculiar place.

It was truly located underground, beneath Qing City. Aside from a few dim lamps, his surroundings were almost completely pitch-black.

Its entrance was in an extremely remote corner and seemed to be connected to the city’s underground drainage channels.

Without a guide,

it would be nearly impossible to find.

This piqued Shen Changchuan’s interest slightly.

And in fact,

the black market did not disappoint Shen Changchuan.

Almost everyone inside had their faces covered with black cloths, concealing their identities. The stalls set up everywhere sold what could be described as just about anything and everything. Most of the goods were of dubious origin, some even bearing fresh bloodstains...

There was no shortage of good items, and many were priced lower than they were in the outside world.

However, Wang Xiao’Er also gave Shen Changchuan a word of warning.

While it was possible to find a hidden treasure in the black market, it was also possible to fall into a huge trap.

For instance, something had happened recently.

Someone had excitedly scored a Top Level Magical Artifact from the black market.

But not long after, he used it during a battle with an enemy.

It was recognized as the personal Magical Artifact of the beloved son of a powerful expert in the Soul Emergence Realm...

And so, afterward,

that person was never seen again.

Perhaps the person who bought the Magical Artifact had been terribly wronged.

But that’s just how the black market was.

And that was just one aspect of it.

Though Wang Xiao’Er’s own strength was lacking, as a local operator, he was well-informed.

According to him,

in the black market, there were even evil cultivators of the Demon Dao who would put out tempting Secret Techniques as bait to fish for fat sheep...