Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Chapter 153: Blood-Sucking Black Leech & Wood Forest Island

Beyond the chart provided by the proprietor of the spirit beast shop, Wang Ba had also visited the market’s bookstore to acquire general maps of the vicinity, alongside detailed topographical records and travelogues covering the majority of the Yan Kingdom.

A cross-reference of the documents revealed no glaring discrepancies. However, within a hundred-mile radius of the Sword Billow Garrison, the spirit beast shop’s map was vastly superior. It even demarcated specific zones where First-Order spirit beasts were known to congregate.

Second-Order beasts, naturally, were absent from the listings.

The major markets of the Heavenly Gate Sect dealt almost exclusively in First-Order resources. Anything classified as Second-Order was a rarity, often restricted or exorbitantly priced. This scarcity was not accidental; the sect’s hoarding of high-grade resources—Magical Artifacts, beasts, pills, and cultivation techniques—was a primary lever of control over its Foundation Establishment cultivators.

To advance, one had three choices: venture into the lawless wilds to seize resources personally, grind through dangerous sect missions for merit points to spend in the treasury, or cultivate private channels with artisans who possessed Second-Order expertise.

The message was clear: if you wanted to thrive, you had to bind yourself to the Heavenly Gate Sect’s war machine.

Wang Ba, however, was content with First-Order stock for the moment. After months of confinement within the sect, he simply needed to stretch his legs. His goal was twofold: capture novel specimens to expand his breeding catalog, or, failing that, harvest biological material for his Processing Liquid experiments.

Tracing a finger across the map, his eyes locked onto a familiar name.

Shield-Armored Giant-Headed Turtle.

His interest piqued instantly.

He activated his Second-Order Flying Artifact, soaring over the massive, sword-shaped peaks of the garrison and plunging into the deep, verdant embrace of the surrounding mountain range.

Perhaps due to the sect’s aggressive mobilization against the Faith Path, the skies were largely clear. Wang Ba spotted only a few patrol flights near the perimeter. As he ventured deeper, human presence evaporated, replaced by the increasing density of wild beast tracks below.

Wang Ba expanded his Divine Sense, blanketing a radius of several hundred meters.

To his disappointment, the journey was barren. He had anticipated a wilderness teeming with spiritual life, but the reality was starker. The proximity to the garrison meant that generations of cultivators, driven by profit and opportunity, had likely scoured these woods clean.

Yet, Wang Ba did not feel disheartened.

His gaze swept over the strange, towering flora and the mist-wreathed canopy. A rare sense of joy bubbled up within him, his soul feeling lighter than it had in years. Cultivators, after all, were still human; too much isolation bred stagnation.

Guided by the map and using the Sword Mountain as a distant landmark, Wang Ba soon located the supposed habitat of the Shield-Armored Giant-Headed Turtle.

It was not the placid lake he had envisioned, but a rushing stream cutting through a dense, suffocating stretch of forest. The environment felt primal, reminiscent of a tropical rainforest from his past life. The air was thick with atomized water, heavy and humid.

Wang Ba trawled the area for a long time. There were no turtles—likely harvested to extinction long ago.

What he found instead were leeches. Black, glistening, and the size of a man’s arm.

Wang Ba’s mind instantly pulled up the relevant entry from his studies.

First-Order, Low-Grade Spirit Insect: Blood-Sucking Black Leech.

Dietary range: indiscriminate. Birds, beasts, fish, insects—anything with blood flowing through its veins was a valid host.

From his vantage point, he observed a tiger that had strayed into the damp zone. A black leech dropped silently from the canopy, latching onto the beast’s spine. There was no roar, no struggle. In the blink of an eye, the tiger’s robust frame collapsed inward.

It was a rapid, clinical extraction.

The terrifying part was the tiger’s reaction—or lack thereof. Reduced to a skeletal husk draped in loose, dry fur, the beast continued to prowl, its consciousness intact, blissfully unaware that its biological fuel had been completely siphoned away.

Snap.

Wang Ba’s fingers closed around a leech that had attempted to ambush him from a broad leaf above. He applied a fraction of pressure, and the creature burst. Crimson fluid splattered, dispersing a weak wisp of Spiritual Qi.

“Fragile,” Wang Ba noted, unimpressed.

Their combat potential was negligible. For most cultivators, these pests were worthless—too weak to be threats, too specific to be weapons. This likely explained why they had survived the general purge of the area.

Wang Ba, however, operated on a different philosophy. He couldn’t immediately think of a use, but waste was a sin.

With the efficiency of a locust swarm, he swept the area. Relying on his Divine Sense, he harvested every single leech in the vicinity. It would likely take a decade for the local population to recover from his visitation.

Specimens secured, he consulted the map and pushed deeper into the wilderness.

Without a specific target, his pace slowed, but his scrutiny sharpened.

The journey became a field study. He encountered Spirit Grasses and beasts he had only ever seen in illustrations. He discriminated against nothing. If it had spiritual energy, it went into his storage bag. Materials, herbs, ores—he took it all.

The only regret was the total absence of Second-Order entities.

He had hoped to test his combat capabilities—specifically the coordination of his spirit beasts, Alpha-Fifteen and Alpha-Sixteen. Aside from a few Second-Order Talismans and a set of Iris Formless Needles, Wang Ba was painfully aware of his lack of high-grade offensive methods.

It wasn’t a failure of talent, but of time. He had rocketed to Foundation Establishment in just over a decade; his accumulation of wealth and artifacts lagged behind his cultivation base.

The market’s selection of Second-Order spells was abysmal, and the few available were incompatible with his spiritual roots. Practicing them would yield less combat value than simply buying a better artifact. This resource drought was a major reason he sought access to the outside world.

…

Crossing a hundred miles was a trivial matter for a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

Despite his meticulous scavenging, Wang Ba soon arrived at a massive mountain chasm.

Across the divide, the terrain shifted dramatically. The forest on the other side towered over the surrounding woods, the trees ancient and colossal. Through the gaps in the titanic trunks, the shadow of a giant beast flashed and vanished.

Wang Ba’s expression sobered.

Across the chasm lay Wood Forest Island, one of the three great danger zones encircling the Sword Billow Garrison.

The name was apt; the gigantism of the flora made the area stand out like a crane among a flock of chickens, an isolated island of greenery within the forest.

It was a known haven for Second-Order spirit beasts, with rumors of Third-Order monstrosities lurking in the deep. Worse, the area was governed by a natural, chaotic Formation. Intruders often found themselves trapped in a labyrinth of distorted space, unable to escape.

Both the Sword Billow Sect of the past and the current Heavenly Gate Sect had marked it as forbidden ground. Fortunately, the beasts seemed equally bound by the formation, rarely crossing the chasm to threaten the garrison. A tense peace of mutual avoidance had held for years.

Wang Ba had no intention of testing his luck. He hovered by the chasm for a moment, observing the dark canopy, before pulling out his map again.

The three danger zones formed a near-perfect blockade around the garrison, but they were not contiguous. Narrow corridors of neutral ground existed between them—passages that allowed cultivators to slip through toward the wider world.

According to the map of the Yan Kingdom, passing this blockade would lead to the mortal territories. Beyond those lay the chaotic fringe: scattered gathering points for Rogue Cultivators and the elusive, shifting ‘Ghost Markets.’

Ghost Markets were the lifeblood of the unaffiliated. They appeared irregularly, established by powerful Rogue Cultivators to facilitate trade while evading the predatory gaze of the great sects.

In the unstable regions governed by the Great Chu Dynasty, these markets were prolific. Stability was a liability for Rogue Cultivators; a fixed market was just a fat sheep waiting to be slaughtered and annexed by a sect. Thus, the markets became phantoms—appearing for a night, then vanishing.

While they lacked the depth of a sect’s treasury, they often circulated Second-Order, and occasionally Third-Order, treasures. Rumors even spoke of Fourth-Order rarities surfacing in markets hosted by apex cultivators.

Wang Ba wasn’t that greedy. A few usable Second-Order items would suffice.

After weighing his options, he turned his flight path away from the looming threat of Wood Forest Island, steering toward the narrow channel that led to the outside world.