Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Yu Changchun remained oblivious to Wang Ba’s internal shock. Instead, he continued his lecture with the earnestness of a weary veteran.

“Fellow Daoist, take my advice: do not be greedy for speed. The Heavenly Gate Sect possesses many techniques that offer rapid advancement, but speed now comes at the cost of stagnation later.”

“Think about it. On the surface alone, our sect boasts twenty Golden Core Elders. Yet, how many have truly achieved the Nascent Soul realm? Only the Sect Master himself.”

“And this is despite the sect possessing four True Scriptures that theoretically point directly to the Nascent Soul.”

Wang Ba was stunned by this insider information. A hypothesis began to form in his mind.

“Is this… because of the ‘fast at first, slow later’ issue you mentioned?”

“Precisely!” Yu Changchun nodded gravely.

“I won’t sugarcoat it. Of the twenty-four legacies in the Heavenly Gate Sect, more than half are rooted in the Demonic Path. As long as you have the resources and the right affinity, you can grow and break through with terrifying speed.”

“So why is the Sect Master the sole Nascent Soul True Lord?”

“Because our techniques lower the threshold. Breaking through to Foundation Establishment and forming a Golden Core is indeed easier here than with conventional orthodox methods. That is why we have so many Golden Core Realized Ones.”

“But once you enter the Golden Core realm, the debt comes due. Every step becomes a chasm. Unless one possesses supreme talent, infinite resources, and unyielding perseverance, progress is impossible.”

Yu Changchun sighed, his lone eye filled with a deep, complex regret.

“To be honest, if I hadn’t seen that Foundation Establishment was hopeless for me, I never would have chosen the Blood Bone Path.”

“The Profound Puppet Path might look grotesque to outsiders, but its core is a legitimate path of the Five Elements. My cultivation was built step by step, through blood and sweat. There is no falsehood in it.”

“It is a pity… my talent was simply too limited.”

Hearing this, Wang Ba felt a mix of enlightenment and empathy.

Yu Changchun knew the trap of the Demonic Path, but his lack of talent left him no choice but to pivot to the Blood Bone Path to survive. And it was precisely that choice that led him to hire Wang Ba to raise Spirit Poultry.

Destiny, it seemed, operated in strange, inevitable loops.

However, Wang Ba’s mind latched onto the specific condition Yu Changchun had mentioned earlier for a ‘Perfect’ Foundation Establishment without a pill: One must never have taken a pill.

Apart from his spiritual root aptitude being mediocre, Wang Ba met the hardest condition perfectly.

Since the day he started cultivating, he had never swallowed a single pill. He hadn’t even bought one.

He had tried to buy some once, but the shop had been sold out of everything except Blood Pills, which he refused to touch. He had left empty-handed.

A series of coincidences, born of poverty and caution, had accidentally placed him on the path of a supreme Fated Chance.

“Perfect alignment of Soul, Essence, and Spiritual Power… attaining this is just a matter of grinding through time.”

And if there was one thing Wang Ba didn’t fear, it was a task that required patience.

Yu Changchun eventually left.

Wang Ba returned to his secluded life of cultivation. However, peace was short-lived. A few days later, a familiar face appeared at his gate.

“A rare guest, indeed. Wasn’t Fellow Daoist preparing for the Legacy Talisman Competition? How do you have time to visit my humble abode?” Wang Ba asked, genuinely curious.

The visitor was Cultivator Yan, the old regular from the chicken farm.

Unlike the bitter, haggard man Wang Ba remembered from before the conscription, this Yan looked hale and hearty, his face glowing with vitality. Clearly, his time in the Mirror Moon Prefecture had been lucrative.

Yan chuckled at Wang Ba’s teasing, unbothered.

“Fellow Daoist Wang, don’t mock me. I’m here to buy more Spirit Poultry. I’ve finished the last batch, and since my breakthrough is imminent, I need to stock up again.”

“Finished? All of them?”

Wang Ba blinked.

Yan had bought over seventy chickens before the conscription. After the war, flushed with new wealth, he had bought nearly a hundred more. That was barely two months ago.

Eating nearly two hundred Spirit Chickens in sixty days? The sheer volume of meat was staggering.

But Wang Ba quickly shelved his confusion and put on his business face.

“You’re about to break through? Congratulations! Once you cross that threshold, you’ll likely be the undisputed number one Talisman Master among the Eastern Sage Garrison’s Left Path.”

Yan was at the eighth layer of Qi Refining, same as Wang Ba. An imminent breakthrough meant stepping into the ninth layer.

In the Qi Refining realm, the gap between layers widened near the end. A ninth-layer cultivator was an elite, subordinate to only a handful of people in the garrison. Given Yan’s skills, the praise wasn’t empty flattery.

“I dare not, I dare not,” Yan waved his hands humbly, though the smug glint in his eyes betrayed his pride.

After the pleasantries, Yan cut to the chase. “Fellow Daoist, do you have stock? I need at least a hundred birds this time.”

The number wasn’t an issue for Wang Ba’s current operation, but he frowned instinctively. Scarcity drove value.

“So many at once? Can we do it in batches?”

“I’m afraid not.” Yan shook his head firmly.

Wang Ba offered fifty now and fifty later. Yan hesitated but refused.

Sensing something interesting, Wang Ba pressed for the reason. Under repeated questioning, Yan finally spilled the secret.

It turned out there was a Spirit Chef in the Sword Billow Garrison who specialized in “Concentration.”

This chef could process large quantities of Spirit Chow, boiling it down into a dense essence. This method preserved the majority of the beneficial nutrients while drastically reducing the volume, allowing a cultivator to ingest massive amounts of energy in a short period without bloating.

That explained how Yan had devoured nearly two hundred chickens in two months.

Of course, this Spirit Chef’s fees were exorbitant. Splitting the order into two batches would mean paying the chef’s base fee twice—a cost even the wealthy Yan wanted to avoid.

“A Spirit Chef… I didn’t know such a profession existed.”

Wang Ba’s heart skipped a beat.

His cultivation speed was decent thanks to the Spirit Water Courtyard, but he had hit a dietary bottleneck. The production of Middle Grade Spirit Poultry was inconsistent, and Low Grade Spirit Poultry offered him almost no cultivation benefit due to his higher realm. He had stopped eating chicken entirely, subsisting only on Spirit Turtles.

But if this Spirit Chef could concentrate a massive volume of Low Grade chickens…

Those useless birds would suddenly become valuable fuel again, on top of the Lifespan he harvested from them.

Having extracted this valuable intel, Wang Ba dropped the reluctance act and sighed, feigning a difficult decision.

“Fine. You are a loyal customer, and you are at a critical juncture for your breakthrough. Even if it disrupts my breeding cycles, I cannot hold you back.”

Yan was overjoyed. He immediately produced a Storage Bag.

Inside were four hundred Spirit Stones and a thick stack of High Grade Talismans.

Wang Ba paused. “Fellow Daoist, isn’t this… too much?”

“Not at all,” Yan replied matter-of-factly. “Current market price for a Low Grade male Spirit Chicken is eight Spirit Stones. A hundred birds is eight hundred stones. I’m paying half in cash, half in talismans at market value… If you feel this is unfair, give me a few days to sell the talismans and I’ll bring you the cash.”

Eight Spirit Stones for a Low Grade rooster?

Had the shopkeepers gone mad from greed?

That price was approaching the hyper-inflation levels seen during the Eastern Sage Sect’s market collapse.

But since Yan was offering, Wang Ba wasn’t about to push money out the door.

He accepted the payment, handed over the lifespan-drained chickens, and casually noted down the exact address of the Spirit Chef.

After Yan left, Wang Ba took a few sample chickens and visited the local market for the first time in months.

He was shocked to find that inflation had hit everything. Prices had skyrocketed across the board.

Yet, the buy-back prices remained ruthlessly suppressed.

When he presented his Low Grade roosters to a Spirit Beast shop, the owner offered him a measly one Spirit Stone per bird.

Selling at eight, buying at one.

The shopkeeper practically had the word ‘ROBBERY’ carved into his forehead.

Wang Ba walked a full circuit of the market and bought absolutely nothing.

It was too expensive. Even with his padded wallet, he refused to be slaughtered like a fat sheep. Fortunately, he was self-sufficient and didn’t strictly need anything on offer.

If anything, this inflation was good news—it meant his income from selling chickens privately was about to explode.

Back at the farm, life moved forward.

A few days later, the four female Shield-Armored Giant-Headed Turtles, thoroughly nourished by Rice Bucket, finally began to lay eggs.

Wang Ba designated a sandy patch of land for the clutch. He even summoned Shen Fu to install a small formation to maintain constant temperature and humidity.

Years of breeding had taught Wang Ba the science of turtles.

Unlike chickens, whose gender was a roll of the dice, turtle gender was determined by incubation temperature.

Low temperature and a long incubation yielded males. High temperature and a short incubation yielded females.

Since one male turtle could service a harem of four or five females, Wang Ba didn’t need many males. He set up a small, cooler zone for a few male eggs and kept the rest warm to maximize egg-laying females.

With the turtle nursery settled, Wang Ba prepared for his trip to the Sword Billow Garrison.

He had already booked a slot on the teleportation array.

The only problem was the shadow at his heels.

The Black Feather Chicken, shimmering with its “multicolored black” feathers, trailed behind him with a vacuous, dazed expression.

He couldn’t shake it.

It wasn’t fast by nature, but it was a Top Grade Spirit Poultry. Its physical stats were high enough that it could easily keep pace with Wang Ba’s casual walk.

He tried to stuff it into a Spirit Beast Bag, but the bird panicked, backing away and refusing to enter.

“This thing… looks like I need to buy a Spirit Beast Collar. It’s docile, but it’s too stupid to understand commands.”

Helpless, Wang Ba accepted his fate of having a bizarre, feathered tail.

He packed a batch of Spirit Poultry for the chef and stepped out of the farm.

Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine.

Wang Ba’s hand flashed to his Storage Bag, channeling Spiritual Power instantly. He was ready to summon Alpha-Thirteen and unleash a barrage of talismans in a split second.

An uninvited guest stood near the entrance of the farm.

The man wore plain gray robes. He stood silently, staring at the spirit fields protected by the Minor Golden Bell Array. His features were unremarkable, his presence almost nonexistent.

If Wang Ba hadn’t looked directly at him, his spiritual sense might have missed the man entirely.

But Wang Ba recognized him.

He had only seen this man once, years ago, but the memory was etched into his brain.

This was the mysterious cultivator who had sold him the proof-of-kill heads back when Wang Ba was still living in the Stone Cave Dwelling.