Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Chapter 126: Soul Search, Yin Spirit

The voice drifting from the darkness instantly brought a specific figure to ‘Pan Long’s’ mind: the honest, slightly wooden cultivator who raised chickens.

The little cultivator who raised Spirit Poultry… Top-grade Spirit Poultry…

In that instant, while shock violently battered ‘Pan Long’s’ heart, a sudden realization dawned upon him.

He finally understood.

Elder Huo, the middle-aged woman, the original Pan Long, and even himself—they had all been blind.

The truly terrifying one wasn’t the woman surnamed Bu, but the man surnamed Wang!

But… knock me out?!

Panic flared in ‘Pan Long’s’ chest. He hurriedly raised his hand, but before he could even circulate his Qi, he was horrified to find a layer of frost rapidly creeping up from the soles of his feet!

In the blink of an eye, his legs were completely sealed in ice.

Just then, he heard the faint, sharp whistle of wind.

He jerked his head up, only to see a razor-sharp beak rapidly expanding in his field of vision…

Looking at ‘Pan Long,’ who was now completely encased in ice, the two figures who had emerged from the shadows slowly came to a halt.

They were, of course, Wang Ba and Bu Chan, who had been observing from the darkness for quite some time.

Bu Chan couldn’t help but look at Wang Ba, her eyes filled with indescribable shock, admiration, and awe.

“Senior Brother, you were right! There really was a problem with this Pan Long!”

She couldn’t help but ask, “But even the two cultivators who knew him best didn’t notice. How did you see through him, Senior Brother?”

Facing Bu Chan’s query, Wang Ba smiled but remained silent.

How could she know that, thanks to his tragic history in the Eastern Sage Sect, he possessed an almost instinctive sensitivity to the slightest abnormality?

Pan Long had seemed to behave normally, but Wang Ba’s suspicion had been aroused the moment they were besieged by the fanatical Incense Path believers.

The reason was simple.

The fanatics had prioritized attacking Elder Huo, who appeared to be the strongest combatant, rather than Wang Ba or Bu Chan.

This proved that there was a leak among the five of them.

In reality, Wang Ba possessed the highest cultivation base of the group. If the Incense Path faction could truly see through everyone’s cultivation, logic dictated they should have targeted him first.

But they hadn’t.

This indicated that Wang Ba’s disguise had successfully misled the enemy.

Aside from Bu Chan, the only people who “knew” Wang Ba was weak were the trio: Elder Huo, Lady Xue, and Pan Long.

Bu Chan was out of the question. Elder Huo, being the primary target of the siege, was also unlikely.

That left only Lady Xue and Pan Long.

Among them, Pan Long was the most suspicious. Before entering Meng Xing Village, he had left the group alone for a significant amount of time.

That window of time was more than enough for something to happen.

Originally, Wang Ba had intended to relay this suspicion to the others through Bu Chan. However, the secretive behavior of Lady Xue and Elder Huo made Wang Ba sense that something was amiss, so he quietly stopped Bu Chan from speaking.

Using the pretext of setting up the formation, the two of them quickly distanced themselves. In reality, they used the power of the Yin Spirit to hide in the unlit outskirts of Meng Xing Village.

They only returned after the blood curtain had fallen.

Abandoning the mission wasn’t an option; they had to investigate the situation and confirm the absence of Incense Path cultivators to consider the task complete.

As a result, they witnessed Pan Long ambushing Elder Huo and Lady Xue.

Pan Long’s bizarre actions confirmed Wang Ba’s earlier deduction.

“This Pan Long… was likely possessed by an Incense Path cultivator some time ago.”

“But, a Foundation Establishment cultivator possessing a Qi Refining junior… Is he insane?” Wang Ba wondered, perplexed.

Normally, a cultivator could only birth a divine sense and perceive the soul upon reaching the Foundation Establishment realm. Only by perceiving the soul could one manipulate it to possess another.

If this Incense Path cultivator could perform possession, he must have reached the Foundation Establishment realm. Such a formidable figure could have crushed them all with a casual wave of his hand.

Wang Ba truly couldn’t understand why the opponent would go to such unnecessary trouble.

This was why he had ordered Alpha-Thirteen to knock him out rather than kill him.

“Senior Brother, what are you doing?”

Bu Chan watched curiously as Wang Ba retrieved several silver needles, each shimmering with Qi fluctuations, from his storage bag.

“Soul Search.”

Wang Ba channeled Qi into his eyes. He could faintly see the convergence points of Qi within the captive’s head.

He began inserting the silver needles into ‘Pan Long’s’ skull, one by one.

Bu Chan immediately fell silent, watching intently. However, it wasn’t long before her gaze drifted, drawn once again to Wang Ba’s side profile.

His features weren’t particularly chiseled, but for some reason, the more she looked, the more handsome he seemed to become…

Wang Ba, meanwhile, was fully concentrated. He infused Qi wrapped in his soul aura through the silver needles, injecting it bit by bit into the captive’s brain.

If this infamous technique were performed by a Golden Core cultivator, a mere thought would be enough to extract every memory, down to how many times the victim wet the bed as a child.

But Wang Ba was only at the Qi Refining stage. Lacking sufficient power, he had to rely on auxiliary tools.

Suddenly, ‘Pan Long’ snapped his eyes open!

But there were no pupils visible—only the whites of his eyes, rolled back and trembling violently.

Seizing the moment, Wang Ba commanded, “Who are you? What is your identity? Where are you from? What is your objective?”

As the barrage of questions hit him, a look of struggle twisted ‘Pan Long’s’ face.

Immediately, layers of frost tightened around him, suppressing his resistance.

Under the continuous infusion of Wang Ba’s Qi, ‘Pan Long’s’ expression stiffened. Slowly, he began to recount his origins, piece by piece.

A long time passed.

Wang Ba finally withdrew the silver needles, his face etched with exhaustion. ‘Pan Long’ slumped silently to the ground.

“Senior Brother.”

Bu Chan stepped forward with concern. After a brief hesitation, she reached out with her fair hands and gently massaged Wang Ba’s temples.

Wang Ba waved his hand slightly, signaling that she didn’t need to worry.

His expression turned solemn as he sank into deep thought.

The harvest from this Soul Search far exceeded his expectations. The information he had obtained made it difficult for him to remain calm.

From the interrogation, he learned that the enemy’s name was Ji Lin. He hailed from an extremely distant land—the ‘Myriad God Kingdom’.

It was located in the eastern region of the Wind Descending Continent, a vast territory easily ten times the size of the State of Chen.

Unlike the State of Chen, where sects stood like forests, in the Myriad God Kingdom, everyone served the various ‘Gods’.

Of course, these Gods were not a monolith. They each had their own believers and raised their own Incense Path cultivators.

Incense Path cultivators spread faith and collected incense for their Gods.

In gratitude, the Gods would feed large amounts of divine power back to these cultivators, helping them open their Spiritual Platforms and Divine Mansions. This allowed them to embark on a path of ‘Spirit Refining,’ completely different from the Qi Refining path of ordinary cultivators.

Due to this difference in cultivation, Incense Path cultivators possessed exceptionally powerful souls for their rank, enabling them to easily seize the bodies of those with weaker wills.

This resolved one of Wang Ba’s doubts.

Pan Long—or rather, Ji Lin—was not a Foundation Establishment cultivator. He was a Spirit Refining cultivator, equivalent in rank to the Qi Refining stage.

His actual strength was roughly around the sixth layer of Qi Refining.

Within the borders of the State of Chen, there were nearly 1,000 first-rank Spirit Refining cultivators like him.

The reason they had traveled countless miles from the Myriad God Kingdom to the State of Chen was not by choice, but out of desperation.

The God that Ji Lin and his lineage served had perished decades ago.

Without the God’s protection, this branch of Incense Path cultivators lost their source of divine power. Even worse, the cultivation method that allowed them to slowly accumulate divine power by visualizing their God’s idol had been erased from their memories by a powerful existence.

Without the visualization method to accumulate power, and with their idols destroyed, the immortal and indestructible God lost all hope of reviving from the silence of death.

And along with that hope, the hearts of the cultivators in this lineage died as well.

But some refused to accept this fate. They decided to investigate the ‘Yin Spirit’ lineage of cultivators who had left the Myriad God Kingdom in the past to spread the faith in other nations.

These wandering missionaries often kept physical copies of the cultivation manuals for their own practice.

With these copies, and through the efforts of the remaining believers, they believed they could eventually reshape the idols and awaken their great God.

Perseverance paid off. Finally, in a small city near the Eastern Sage Sect in the State of Chen—countless miles from home—they found a clue regarding a manual copy on the descendant of an Incense Path cultivator.

However, the situation was tricky: the manual had been left inside a sect.

That sect was the Eastern Sage Sect.

The descendant’s name was ‘Sun Yan’.

And the manual capable of accumulating divine power was titled the Yin Spirit Great Dream Scripture.

The moment Wang Ba heard these familiar names, everything clicked into place.

When he had first received the Yin Spirit Great Dream Scripture from Old Man Sun, he had found it strange. Why would Old Man Sun, a mortal, possess such a peculiar cultivation method?

Now it seemed that although Old Man Sun was a mortal, his ancestors had been illustrious.

Old Man Sun’s sudden death had felt suspicious to Wang Ba at the time, but he never imagined that so many hidden agendas lay behind a single book.

Through the interrogation, Wang Ba also learned that the God worshipped by Ji Lin’s lineage was known as the ‘Yin Spirit’.

This entity wielded the power of ‘Dreams’.

Thus, He was also revered as the ‘Dream Lord’.

Among the many Gods of the Myriad God Kingdom, although not renowned for raw power, the Dream Lord held an extraordinary status.

Upon learning that a copy of the manual existed here, the Incense Path cultivators of the Yin Spirit lineage mobilized. Aside from a few Nascent Soul and Golden Core level cultivators who stayed behind to guard the temple against encroachment by other Gods, nearly half of the remaining Foundation Establishment and Qi Refining cultivators had teleported here several years ago.

Their sole purpose was to seize the manual.

Of course, not all of them were true believers.

Ji Lin was one such example.

As an Incense Path cultivator of the Yin Spirit lineage, no other God would accept him if he tried to defect. Yet, staying with the Yin Spirit lineage meant waiting a long time to retrieve the manual and rebuild the idols before he could even hope to reach Foundation Establishment.

His lifespan was running out.

So, not long ago, when he spotted Pan Long, a lone Left Path cultivator from the Heavenly Gate Sect, a wild idea struck him.

Substitute the plum for the peach. Replace Pan Long and become a cultivator of the Heavenly Gate Sect!

The plan was risky, but it offered a way to break free from the shackles of his identity and choose a new path.

He had deliberately acted slow during the battle, using Lady Xue to kill his fellow Incense Path companion.

He had originally intended to kill Elder Huo as well. But sensing the rapid decrease in fanatical believers around Wang Ba and Bu Chan, he grew wary. After hesitating, he abandoned the opportunity and ordered the remaining fanatics to scatter.

Inciting the group to perform the blood sacrifice on Meng Xing Village was also a move to erase all traces of his former self.

Finally, he seized the moment when Elder Huo was distracted by the Blood Dharma Pills, striking with lethal precision. He then followed up with a violent attack to end Lady Xue’s life.

If Wang Ba hadn’t suddenly intervened, Ji Lin would have succeeded.

Listening to Ji Lin recount his scheme in detail, Wang Ba felt a chill in his heart.

In this world, no one was a true fool.

Even Elder Huo, who had died by a sneak attack, would likely have seen through ‘Pan Long’s’ true colors eventually if not for his greed blinding him in the moment.

That was why Ji Lin had been so desperate to kill them both. They knew the real Pan Long too well.

Once they had time to think, the tables could have turned instantly.

Beyond this, Wang Ba gleaned many secrets about the Incense Path from Ji Lin, including one piece of information that was vital to him.

“Along with the Yin Spirit Great Dream Scripture, there is a matching technique called the Divine Dream Method.”

“The Yin Spirit Great Dream Scripture is the method for cultivating Yin Spirit divine power.”

“The Divine Dream Method, however, is a powerful, exclusive technique designed to utilize that divine power to its limits.”

“Although this technique lost its value with the disappearance of the Yin Spirit Great Dream Scripture, it is typically accessible only to Foundation Establishment cultivators.”

“According to Ji Lin, in Water Controlling City—a large city less than 300 li from here—there are three Incense Path Foundation Establishment cultivators. One of them possesses this technique in his collection.”