Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Chapter 198: Long Cry!

“An innate minor supernatural power?” Shen Fu echoed internally, his mind struggling to grasp the concept.

Within his Spiritual Terrace, Old Demon Jiang sensed his confusion and offered a rare, begrudging explanation. “Innate minor supernatural powers are entirely divorced from standard spells. They are profound, bizarre abilities that warp the very rules of reality in specific ways. They are impossibly rare. Normally, only a minuscule fraction of third-order lifeforms with heaven-defying Potential can even brush against this domain.”

The ancient demon’s voice carried a heavy, lingering awe. “The ‘Demonic Ape Transformation’ I mentioned is precisely one of these abilities. It has a microscopic chance of Awakening only when a select few third-order ape-type spirit beasts reach the absolute limit of their growth. Once triggered, it violently elevates their destructive force to a higher dimension. Within the same tier, if not strictly invincible, it effortlessly obliterates ninety-nine percent of its peers.”

Old Demon Jiang paused, his tone shifting into genuine reverence. “For this monkey to Awaken such a power while still at the second-order… its Potential is a bottomless abyss! Kid Shen, I don’t know what else your Senior Brother hides, but his terrifying mastery over nurturing spirit beasts is an absolute, undisputed marvel!”

Shen Fu’s heart hammered with a chaotic mix of shock and soaring elation. However, the catastrophic shockwaves from the severed mountain peak violently yanked his attention back to reality.

…

At the shattered peak.

Boulders crumbled into dust as the lake waters churned into a frothing maelstrom.

The colossal giant ape stood like a mythological titan, its silver fur writhing with dark, suffocating demonic flames. With a thunderous roar, the beast casually gripped the Profound Gold Cone lodged in its chest, ripped it out in a spray of blood, and hurled it at Zheng Yuanhua with the ballistic force of a siege engine.

Zheng Yuanhua’s pupils shrank. He swept his large sleeve, his dense Spiritual Power violently swatting away the lethal projectile, though the sheer kinetic impact forced him to touch down heavily on the jagged rocks.

While the ape’s monstrous transformation sent a jolt of alarm through him, a far more desperate panic gnawed at his mind.

My third-order Yin Ghost is going to die! The black Spirit Poultry’s aura was swelling like a rising tide, completely suppressing the ethereal horror. The ghost’s struggles were growing pitifully weak. Only a third of its form remained. At this rate, it would be entirely devoured by that cosmic anomaly of a chicken in a matter of seconds!

Zheng Yuanhua’s mind raced with frantic, suffocating dread. Unlike Li Canghai, his entire cultivation path was rooted in the Yin Spirit lineage. His Yin Ghosts were his absolute foundation. This specific third-order Yin Ghost represented the culmination of his life’s work and wealth. To lose it here was a fate worse than death.

Gritting his teeth until he tasted copper, he reached into his Storage Bag and pulled out a heavily sealed black clay jar.

Above him, the Demonic Ape vaulted into the heavens, clasping its massive hands into a double-fisted hammer, hurtling down to crush him into paste.

Simultaneously, the ground beneath Zheng Yuanhua’s feet violently lurched. The earth itself seemed to groan, and a disorienting tremor washed over him, causing the Divine Sense power shielding his mind to flicker and stutter.

A spell?! Knowing the margin between life and death was measured in fractions of a second, Zheng Yuanhua violently expanded his mind. From the howling Yin Ghost Formation, several wailing apparitions broke off from the swarm, throwing themselves at the descending giant ape!

But the moment the ethereal claws grazed the ape’s silver fur, vicious arcs of purple lightning violently erupted from the beast’s body. The Yin Ghosts shrieked in absolute agony, their forms scorching as they were violently repelled.

Watching this, Zheng Yuanhua nearly vomited blood from sheer, suffocating frustration.

Why does every single one of this Heavenly Gate Sect worm’s beasts perfectly counter my arts?! With the ghosts swatted away like flies, the Kaiju-sized ape plummeted toward him, the sheer atmospheric pressure of its descent flattening Zheng Yuanhua’s robes and whipping his hair wildly. Barely thirty feet separated man and monster.

Yet, as a supreme leader among second-order cultivators, Zheng Yuanhua refused to yield. His vision swam with red as he let out a furious, feral roar. He violently slapped the mud seal off the black jar and hoisted it high above his head!

Whoosh— In that instant, a terrifying, bone-chilling coldness swept across the lake. Even the fisherman and Shen Fu, hovering safely in the distance, shuddered as a profane chill gripped their hearts.

“What… what is that?” Shen Fu rasped, his eyes wide.

Beneath the towering shadow of the descending Demonic Ape, a grotesque, pulsating orb of gloomy blood-light erupted from the black jar!

The blood-light violently expanded into a shockwave, slamming into the giant ape with the force of a falling meteor. The titanic beast was instantly blasted out of the sky, crashing into the earth with a deafening boom. It thrashed weakly amidst the rubble, temporarily paralyzed.

But the profane blood-light didn’t stop. It arced through the sky and plunged directly into the howling Yin Ghost Formation.

Instantly, the green-faced, spectral horrors violently convulsed. A sickening crimson hue bled into their translucent forms, infecting the dead entities with a frantic, feral, and utterly profane vitality.

The mutated Yin Ghosts shrieked, their eyes glowing with blind bloodlust. They swarmed out of the Formation, desperate to tear apart any living creature in their path—including Zheng Yuanhua!

But mere inches from Zheng Yuanhua’s face, the ghosts hesitated. Their twisted features contorted in a violent struggle before they abruptly snapped their heads toward the true threats: the giant ape and the black Spirit Poultry.

Like piranhas injected with pure adrenaline, the previously terrified ghosts swarmed the flock of chickens.

Empowered by the blood-light, the Yin Ghosts suddenly possessed the density to resist the chickens’ beaks. The dull-witted birds, completely devoid of tactical coordination, were swiftly isolated, overwhelmed, and torn to pieces by the frantic red swarm.

The battlefield had violently flipped in a matter of seconds.

Zheng Yuanhua let out a ragged, trembling exhale. His heart bled at having wasted a supreme, Elder-bestowed treasure, but survival demanded sacrifices.

A pity the ‘Yin Soul Blood’ is too volatile. Even a newly-ascended third-order Yin Ghost would implode from the strain. I’m lucky the Formation distributed the burden across the swarm, he thought grimly.

Rallying his Divine Sense, he ignited his flying Magical Artifact, rocketing toward the black Spirit Poultry to save what remained of his prized ghost.

Suddenly, every instinct in his body screamed in terror.

Without thinking, Zheng Yuanhua threw himself sideways. A lethal stream of spiritual light violently sheared through the space his chest had occupied a millisecond prior.

Whipping his head around, his eyes locked onto the Heavenly Gate Sect cultivator, who was hovering calmly in mid-air, watching him with cold, calculating eyes.

“A mere Foundation Establishment Low Grade ant! You are Courting death!” Zheng Yuanhua roared, his patience completely fracturing.

He instantly violently compressed his Divine Sense, forging an invisible, intangible spear of mental annihilation, and launched it directly at Wang Ba’s Spiritual Terrace.

Swoosh! The formless arrow crossed the void instantly, burying itself directly between Wang Ba’s eyebrows!

Zheng Yuanhua felt the satisfying, absolute feedback of a soul being violently erased. Yet, his sadistic grin froze. The Heavenly Gate Sect cultivator simply hovered there… entirely unharmed?

Just like before! How is this possible?! Zheng Yuanhua’s mind reeled. The third-order Yin Ghost had failed the exact same way. Logically, this whelp should be a brain-dead husk falling from the sky. This completely shattered Zheng Yuanhua’s understanding of cultivation reality.

He must possess an ultra-rare, soul-protecting treasure, Zheng Yuanhua quickly deduced, his eyes narrowing. But treasures like that shatter after a few uses. I will personally separate his head from his shoulders! Deciding to capture the king to rout the beast swarm, Zheng Yuanhua shifted his focus entirely to Wang Ba. His third-order Yin Ghost would take longer to recover anyway. He leveled his second-order Top Grade Magical Artifact, the Mysterious Gold Cone, aiming squarely at Wang Ba’s heart.

But then, an incredibly weak, almost pathetic ripple of Qi emanated from the youth.

Zheng Yuanhua blinked. A spell? This Foundation Establishment trash wants to engage me in a spell duel?! A sneer of sheer, disbelieving arrogance twisted his face. Was this idiot suicidal?

When Wang Ba slowly began weaving the hand seals for a basic elemental spell, Zheng Yuanhua felt deeply, personally insulted.

“At the end of your rope!” Zheng Yuanhua spat, his voice dripping with venom. “Naive! In the face of absolute power, your parlor tricks are meaningless!”

With a dismissive flick of his wrist, Zheng Yuanhua unleashed a highly concentrated, lethal Divine Sense spell. Unlike the explosive, flashy Five Elements arts of Qi Refining scrubs, a Yin Spirit lineage spell was invisible, silent, and instantly fatal.

But a split second later, the sneer melted off Zheng Yuanhua’s face.

Another spell flared around the youth. No—two. Three. Five. Ten.

In the space of a single heartbeat, Wang Ba’s hands blurred into a phantom of motion. Over a dozen Five Elements spells were chained together in a flawless, terrifying rhythm. Water fed Wood, Wood fed Fire—a flawless cycle of elemental amplification. The overlapping spells collapsed into a single, localized singularity of spiritual violence.

BOOM! A suffocating, apocalyptic tsunami of Five Elements arts cascaded forward, instantly obliterating the air between them.

Zheng Yuanhua’s face drained of all color.

What monstrous Spiritual Power! If he had his third-order Yin Ghost or his crescent moon blade, he could have cleaved the wave. But his ghost was half-eaten, his blade was disabled, and his secondary ghosts were distracted. He had critically underestimated the “ant.” The spell avalanche started deceptively slow, then violently accelerated, robbing him of any chance to dodge.

It’s do or die! A veteran of countless slaughters, Zheng Yuanhua didn’t hesitate. He flooded his second-order Top Grade defensive Magical Artifact with every ounce of his strength. Simultaneously, he violently accelerated his invisible Divine Sense spear, aiming to lobotomize Wang Ba before the spells hit him.

Zheng Yuanhua’s eyes bulged as he stared down the incoming apocalypse. Half a day ago, if someone had told him a Low Grade cultivator could force him into a desperate standoff, he would have laughed in their face. Now, he was fighting for his life against a nameless ghost.

BOOM! Zheng Yuanhua felt his organs violently shift. The colossal kinetic force hit him like a waterfall dropping from the Ninth Heaven. He was completely engulfed.

The protective light of his Top Grade Defensive Magical Artifact was instantly scoured away, rapidly thinning to a translucent film under the relentless, crushing pressure. And the avalanche of spells showed absolutely no sign of stopping!

How can his spells be this devastating?! Where is a Low Grade worm getting this bottomless ocean of Spiritual Energy?! Gasping for breath under the crushing weight, Zheng Yuanhua frantically tapped his Storage Ring, pulling out a massive handful of defensive Talismans. As the State of Chen’s Yin Spirit leader, he was wealthy beyond measure. He violently ignited them all.

Layer after layer of glowing Talisman shields erupted around him, only to be instantly shattered, ground into dust by the relentless spell cascade.

It took the sacrifice of over a dozen high-tier Talismans before the terrifying wave finally spent its energy and dissipated.

Panting heavily, Zheng Yuanhua checked his Spiritual Terrace. A spike of pure horror pierced his heart. Just surviving that barrage burned through a third of my total Divine Sense! He snapped his eyes forward, desperate to see the result of his counter-attack.

Wang Ba’s body was plummeting from the sky, hitting the rocky ground with the lifeless thud of a corpse.

“Dead!”

“I still won!” Zheng Yuanhua let out a ragged, shuddering gasp. He had clearly felt the biological life-signature of his target wink out upon impact.

Yet, there was no triumph in his heart. Being pushed to the absolute brink of annihilation by a Low Grade junior was a humiliating stain on his legacy.

Glancing down, he saw the mountain peak below had been further vaporized, its height ground down to almost sea level by the sheer collateral damage of Wang Ba’s spell.

What terrifying destructive force. If my foundation wasn’t this deep… Suddenly, his eyes snapped toward the center of the battlefield. His pupils contracted into pins.

“Vile beast!”

The third-order Yin Ghost was down to a fraction of its face. The black Spirit Poultry was preparing to swallow the last morsel!

Abandoning Wang Ba’s corpse, Zheng Yuanhua burned his remaining reserves to rocket forward, desperate to save his life’s work.

Hum! A lethal streak of light, radiating a pseudo-third-order aura, screamed toward his temple!

It was Shen Fu, launching a desperate sneak attack from the lake!

“SCRAM!” Zheng Yuanhua roared, his fury finally boiling over. Did every insect in this lake think they could take a bite out of a dragon?!

His Divine Sense instantly analyzed the structural weakness in Shen Fu’s short sword. Swiping his hand, he wrapped the ambient Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi into a crushing vice, swatting the blade out of the air like a toy.

“Pfft!”

Miles away, Shen Fu violently spewed a mist of blood, his internal organs shuddering from the backlash. He stared at the hovering middle-aged man with sheer, unadulterated horror. Seeing his Senior Brother suppress Zheng Yuanhua, Shen Fu had foolishly assumed the man was overrated. Now, he understood the terrifying, suffocating reality of a true Perfection-stage overlord!

Senior Brother was actually fighting a monster like this head-on?! Beside him, the fisherman didn’t even reprimand the youth. His eyes were locked on Zheng Yuanhua, grave and solemn.

“I underestimated him,” the fisherman murmured, a cold sweat breaking out on his back. “If I had fought him… even without his third-order weapons or ghosts… I likely would have perished.” He glanced at Shen Fu. “Your friend did not die in vain.”

Hearing those words, Shen Fu’s eyes instantly swam with bloody, hysterical tears.

Meanwhile, within the blood-soaked Formation, Zheng Yuanhua finally closed the distance to the black chicken. With a feral scream, he drove his second-order Top Grade Mysterious Gold Cone directly at the bird’s throat!

Clink. Zheng Yuanhua’s arms went numb. The supreme, armor-piercing Magical Artifact had violently rebounded off the chicken’s soft black feathers, unable to pierce a single millimeter.

“This… this is impossible!”

For the first time in his long, blood-soaked life, genuine, reality-breaking disbelief shattered Zheng Yuanhua’s composure.

The black Spirit Poultry paused. It slowly tilted its head, blinking its beady eyes at Zheng Yuanhua. Then, entirely unbothered, it looked down, snapped up the very last remaining scrap of the third-order Yin Ghost’s face, tossed its head back, and swallowed it whole.

Zheng Yuanhua’s brain short-circuited. He stood frozen, staring blankly at the bird.

“You… you ate it. You ate all of it!” he whispered, his voice cracking with borderline insanity.

The Black Feather Chicken cocked its head, seemingly confused by the screaming man. It turned to look at the “dead” Wang Ba lying in the distance. Slowly, the gears in the cosmic anomaly’s head seemed to turn. And then, for the first time in its existence, a spark of genuine, territorial fury ignited in its beady eyes.

But Zheng Yuanhua was already entirely consumed by madness. With a hysterical scream, he commanded the blood-crazed Yin Ghosts to swarm the bird.

Like sharks smelling fresh blood, the terrifying red specters abandoned the lesser chickens and shrieked toward the Black Feather Chicken. A suffocating black hurricane of resentment energy descended upon the bird like judgment day.

The Black Feather Chicken stood perfectly still, letting the horrors close in.

Just as the lead ghost opened its jaws to bite—

The Black Feather Chicken craned its neck back, its throat violently expanding.

And then—

“Cock-a-doodle-doo—!”

It was not a cluck. It was a soul-shattering clarion call!

The sound wave struck with the force of a physical meteor. The swarming Yin Ghosts froze mid-lunge as if struck by divine lightning. Their terrifying, blood-crazed faces suddenly contorted into masks of absolute, primal terror.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Unable to withstand the acoustic purification, the Yin Ghosts violently detonated, shattering into massive clouds of gloomy, formless resentment soul energy! The suffocating black hurricane collapsed instantly.

The Black Feather Chicken opened its beak and inhaled deeply. Like a cosmic black hole swallowing a dying star, the massive clouds of resentment energy were violently sucked into the bird’s gullet!

The exact moment his ghosts detonated, the crimson flush of rage on Zheng Yuanhua’s face vanished, replaced by the waxy pallor of a corpse.

He violently spewed a massive fountain of black blood.

These Yin Ghosts were not just weapons; they were bound to his core vitality. With his life-bound entities reduced to chicken feed, his foundation was critically, irreversibly shattered.

His vision swam, his mind teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

A colossal shadow suddenly blotted out the sun.

Standing thirty feet tall, wreathing in silver demonic flames, the Kaiju-sized Demonic Ape was already mid-air, bringing a massive stone pillar down upon him!

Running purely on the muscle memory of a hundred death matches, Zheng Yuanhua violently ignited his flying Magical Artifact, throwing himself out of the crush zone just as the pillar shattered the earth.

The brush with death forcibly shocked him back to clarity. He looked around the devastated battlefield, a profound, bitter despair settling into his bones.

He had lost.

His life’s work was gone. This absurd chicken, the titanic monkey, and the looming threat of the fisherman, Wu Buping—who would undoubtedly capitalize on his severe injuries—spelled certain doom if he stayed another second.

Without a trace of hesitation, Zheng Yuanhua tapped a jade slip, preparing to flee southwest. As long as he returned to his stronghold, the vast reserves of Divine Essence Dew could slowly knit his foundation back together. And once they slaughtered the State of Chen, the millions of fresh souls would let him rebuild his army!

Swoosh! Suddenly, the ground beneath him exploded. A massive, second-grade python burst from the rubble, its jaws snapping shut inches from his legs!

Zheng Yuanhua barely dodged the ambush. His Divine Sense reflexively swept downward, and his eyes nearly popped out of his skull.

“You aren’t dead?!”

Standing casually amidst the dust, dusting off his robes, was the utterly unremarkable Heavenly Gate Sect cultivator.

Wang Ba looked up at the hovering man. His expression was a mask of placid calm, but his eyes were pools of absolute, frozen murder.

“I think you should reconsider leaving,” Wang Ba said softly. “Just stay here forever.”

Before Zheng Yuanhua could process the sheer psychological horror of Wang Ba playing the pig, the Demonic Ape vaulted back into the sky. Boulders magnetically fused to its hands, forming a colossal earthen club that it brought crashing down toward Zheng Yuanhua’s skull!

Simultaneously, Wang Ba’s hands blurred, unleashing another wave of spells to cut off the escape routes. The giant python coiled and launched itself skyward again. Even the Black Feather Chicken flapped its wings, awkwardly launching itself like a feathered cannonball.

Zheng Yuanhua was perfectly, completely surrounded.

Hovering in the crosshairs of certain death, Zheng Yuanhua stared down at Wang Ba, his face pale and twisted.

“I admit, I failed to see the tiger beneath the pig skin,” Zheng Yuanhua spat, “But you are an absolute fool if you think you can keep me here.”

Wang Ba’s heart skipped a beat.

With a flick of his wrist, Zheng Yuanhua crushed a golden Talisman. Searing soul power flooded the paper, and intense spatial ripples violently warped the air around him.

“Not good!” Wang Ba’s expression finally fractured.

But it was too late. Zheng Yuanhua’s physical form was already fading into transparency, slipping into the spatial fold.

As he vanished, Zheng Yuanhua locked eyes with Wang Ba, his gaze radiating an abyss of hatred and venom.

“Rest assured! I will return! I will butcher you, rip out your soul, and forge you into a Yin Ghost! I will make you suffer for a thousand generations—!”

“ROAR!”

The Demonic Ape, driven to a state of absolute berserk fury, ignored the warping space and violently plunged its arm directly into the collapsing spatial rift!

The spatial shear instantly annihilated the flesh and fur on the ape’s arm, stripping it to the bone in a spray of blood. But in that same fraction of a second, before Zheng Yuanhua fully dematerialized—

The skeletal hand closed around Zheng Yuanhua’s arm, and violently pulled.

“AAAAAAAGH—!”

A blood-curdling scream of absolute agony echoed from the void.

“Get back!” Wang Ba roared in terror, fearing the spatial rift would swallow his beast.

In a flash of blinding light, the spatial ripples collapsed. The screaming Zheng Yuanhua vanished entirely.

From mid-air, a heavy body plummeted to the ground.

It was the silver-haired ape. The monstrous Kaiju transformation had violently ended, reducing the beast back to its half-man-sized state. It lay gasping in the dirt.

Its entire right arm was a horrifying mess of stripped, blood-stained white bone.

Yet, locked tightly within the skeletal fingers of that mangled hand, was a freshly severed human arm.

And gleaming upon the severed index finger was a finely crafted Storage Ring.