Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 81: Pebble Hidden Weapon

“By the way, Branch Leader, you left the restaurant without settling the tab last time. Are you paying now, or should I put it on your tab?” Man Gu asked earnestly just as they were about to leave.

Lu Yang immediately intervened, his tone dripping with righteous indignation. “Silence! As vanguards of the demonic path, dining and dashing is our sovereign right. Do you take our esteemed Branch Leader for some bleeding-heart saint who actually *pays* for his meals?!”

Meng Jingzhou nodded sagely. “Exactly. The Branch Leader explicitly stated he was *treating* us. He never said anything about *paying*. How can you fail to grasp such a fundamental distinction?”

Branch Leader Chu stared at them in dead silence.

He had to concede a bitter truth: when it came to sheer, unadulterated psychological warfare, he was hopelessly outmatched by these three. Grinding his teeth hard enough to spark, he fought down the overwhelming urge to commit triple homicide and hurled a solid gold ingot at Man Gu’s chest.

“Keep the change. Now, all three of you—get the hell out of my sight!”

Man Gu caught the gold, utterly bewildered. He had merely asked a standard financial question. Why did Brother Lu and Brother Meng sound so strange? It felt like they were defending him, yet simultaneously defending the Branch Leader. The nuances of demonic corporate culture were truly baffling.

By the time the trio stepped out, the hour was late. Lu Yang gazed up at the sprawling, diamond-dusted canopy of the night sky and let out a heavy, philosophical sigh.

“To think the celestial bodies above are nothing but a grand illusion. Unfathomable. Truly unfathomable.”

Meng Jingzhou scratched his head. “It’s not *that* hard to believe, is it? Growing up, my grandfather always told me I could have whatever I desired, even the stars in the sky. When I was about seven or eight, I pointed up and told him I wanted one.”

“So, the old man shattered the void, leaped into the cosmos, and came back holding a speck of light the size of a fingernail. He handed it to me and said it was a star. And sure enough, there was a blank spot in the constellations that night.”

“I argued with him, of course. I told him stars were supposed to be massive—bigger than our entire estate—not some tiny pebble. Grandfather just gave me this mysterious smile and said, ‘No, stars are exactly this small.'”

“And then what happened?” Lu Yang asked, his morbid curiosity piqued.

“Then? Then some high-ranking official from the Ministry of Justice showed up at our door. He accused my grandfather of ’embezzling state-owned natural resources’ and ordered him to put it back. So, Grandfather tossed the speck of light back into the void, and the missing star reappeared.”

“I always felt something was off about that incident, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Eventually, I just forgot about it. Hearing the Branch Leader’s lore drop today, I finally realized that the speck of light I held back then was an actual, literal star.”

“Truly, the Meng family pedigree is terrifying. Your childhood was on a completely different level than ours.” Lu Yang shook his head, briefly reflecting on his own youth.

Ah, right. As a child, he had been busy sorting through his pre-transmigration memories, reciting classic poetry to himself. Lines like: *The tower rises a hundred feet high; my hand can pluck the stars from the sky. I dare not speak aloud, lest I startle the immortals on high.*

He could only pluck stars in metaphorical verse. Meng Jingzhou’s family plucked them as literal party tricks. The wealth gap in the Cultivation world was truly staggering.

Recently, Lu Yang had toyed with the idea of writing a sci-fi novel to make some quick coin—something like *The Wandering Earth*. But given the sheer absurdity of this world’s power scaling, it wouldn’t feature massive planetary engines pushing the globe; it would just be some almighty Cultivation paragon bench-pressing the continent through the cosmos.

The trio decided not to dwell on the existential dread of fake stars and compressed continents. Such cosmic truths were far above their pay grade. With their current cultivation bases, never mind moving stars—moving a particularly stubborn boulder was a full-body workout.

“Let’s turn in early,” Lu Yang said. “Tomorrow, we need to pay a visit to our beloved sect members currently rotting in the county dungeon.”

The three of them yawned in unison. Technically, at the Foundation Establishment stage, a cultivator could substitute sleep with deep meditation and achieve the exact same restorative effect. However, the trio vastly preferred the mundane luxury of being unconscious.

Meditation? That sounded like a problem for the Golden Core stage.

…

Early the next morning, Lu Yang tracked down Chief Constable Wei. Upon hearing his request, the Chief Constable readily stamped a permit, granting Lu Yang official visitation rights to the county dungeon.

The moment Lu Yang crossed the dungeon’s threshold, an invisible weight slammed down on his meridians. His spiritual qi locked up, stagnating like a frozen river. Even his physical movements felt sluggish, as if he were wading through invisible molasses.

*Is this the Spirit-Sealing Formation Chief Constable Wei mentioned?* Lu Yang thought, genuinely surprised. He hadn’t expected the provincial array to be this oppressive.

When handing over the permit, Wei had warned him about the dungeon’s primary defense mechanism. The Spirit-Sealing Formation was a specialized array designed to completely suppress a cultivator’s spiritual power, rendering them incapable of casting even the simplest technique. It was the ultimate deterrent against jailbreaks and internal riots.

The array’s grade was exceptionally high. Even a Golden Core paragon would find their divine abilities shackled upon entering. There were no exceptions.

Lu Yang had arrived right at the shift change.

The incoming day-shift guard, Old Zhou, was yawning so hard tears pricked his eyes. He looked completely dazed, stumbling around as if he were sleepwalking.

The outgoing night-shift guard, eager to finally get some rest, was in high spirits. He nudged his colleague playfully. “Old Zhou, you’re usually the most energetic guy on the roster. Why so sluggish today? Didn’t get up to something shady last night, did you?”

Old Zhou let out another jaw-cracking yawn before rubbing his face. “I don’t know what’s wrong lately. I’m just constantly exhausted. Getting out of bed is a nightmare. It’s not just me, either; the wife is the same. I splashed freezing water on my face before coming in, but I’m still dead on my feet.”

The night-shift guard chuckled. “You definitely overexerted yourself in the dark. Look at me—fresh as a daisy.”

Old Zhou curled his lip. “You’re a cultivator. We aren’t built the same.”

The night-shift guard waved a dismissive hand. “I’m at the first level of Qi Refining. It’s a coin toss whether I’ll even hit the second level before I die of old age. Don’t lump me in with the real immortals.”

It was standard dungeon protocol: day-shift guards were ordinary mortals, while the night shift was staffed by first-level Qi Refining cultivators. Even that meager sliver of spiritual qi was enough to stave off nocturnal drowsiness and prevent negligence.

Naturally, cultivators despised the suffocating effects of the Spirit-Sealing Formation, loathing the feeling of being reduced to mere mortals. But relying solely on first-level Qi Refining guards to secure a prison full of demonic Rogue Cultivators was a recipe for disaster. To compensate, a network of hidden sentries manned by higher-level cultivators was stationed just outside the array’s perimeter.

Once the handover was complete, Lu Yang approached Old Zhou and presented his permit. Old Zhou gave him a cursory pat-down, verified that he was only carrying a wooden lunchbox, and waved him through the heavy iron gates.

…

Chi Xulong was a ruthless figure who had carved out a bloody reputation among the demonic Rogue Cultivators in the neighboring counties. He had firmly believed that joining the demonic Cultivation would be his ticket to the big leagues—a chance to conquer territory and reign as a local warlord.

Even now, languishing in a maximum-security cell, his grand ambitions remained entirely unquenched.

If he was stuck in prison, then by the heavens, he would become the apex predator of this prison!

There was just one minor obstacle: he currently possessed zero means of intimidating anyone.

He was caged in reinforced spiritual steel that even a Foundation Establishment expert couldn’t dent, and he had been stripped of all weaponry. To make matters worse, the inmate in the adjacent cell possessed a venomous tongue, spending every waking hour hurling creative insults and mocking him. It infuriated Chi Xulong to the point of grinding his teeth into powder.

That was when his cellmate, Shen Jinyi, proposed a tactical solution. Shen popped a small pebble into his mouth, gathered his breath, and spat it out with a sharp *pfft*. The pebble shot out like a bullet, striking the opposite wall with a loud crack. The impact was impressive; hitting a person with it would undoubtedly be devastating.

Shen Jinyi, a professional assassin, was adept at using any object as a hidden weapon.

“We’re brothers in adversity now,” Shen declared with a sense of camaraderie. “We must unite and work together to conquer this place! Master this technique, and you’ll be invincible within these walls. Together, we’ll dominate this dungeon!”

Chi Xulong was greatly inspired. He rose early and stayed up late, diligently practicing the art of launching pebble projectiles with his mouth.

Unfortunately, Chi Xulong’s talent was lacking. Despite his brute strength, he just couldn’t get the hang of it.

“You need to do it like this: store the air in your mouth, then spit it out with a sharp *pfft*! Speed is key!” Shen Jinyi was demonstrating, trying his best to teach Chi Xulong.

“I know, I know, it’s just a *pfft*,” Chi Xulong replied impatiently.

“Wrong, wrong! You’re not puckering your lips enough. Like this.”

“Like this?”

Lu Yang stood outside the cell, watching Chi Xulong and Shen Jinyi aggressively pucker their lips at each other. He pondered whether he should interrupt them, as this scene was highly susceptible to misinterpretation.

Better to record it with a memory orb first.

(End of Chapter)