Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Chapter 161: Divine Soul Concealment

High above the town of Li Three Bays, spiritual energy pulsed from a Second-Order Low-Grade flying artifact. Wang Ba stood atop the vessel, his brow furrowed in deep thought.

Wu Hai was the first cultivator he had encountered since entering the State of Yan. Through the clever application of Dream Creation, Wang Ba had used the man to reach the local broker, Zhu Jianyi, and secure entry into the Exquisite Ghost Market.

Wang Ba hadn’t doubled back out of sentimentality. He was a man of utility, not nostalgia. He simply couldn’t shake a nagging discrepancy: when they had parted, Wu Hai was a living, breathing man. Now, according to his senses, the man was a void.

In the world of cultivation, losing one’s Divine Soul meant becoming a “living corpse”—a body with breath but no spark. Yet, to the naked eye, Wu Hai appeared perfectly normal. Had Wang Ba not possessed the keen Divine Sense of a Foundation Establishment master, he might have walked right past him.

Could it be the parasite? Wang Ba wondered. The larva hidden within those pills?

He pulled out the Storage Bag he had stripped from Zhu Jianyi. Inside sat a dozen “Chiyuan Pills,” each a Trojan horse for a Yin Food Worm larva. Wang Ba crushed one between his fingers. An invisible, pallid white worm writhed in the air, its mandibles gnashing at his skin.

His physical senses felt nothing. Had his Divine Sense not been locked onto the creature, it would have been entirely undetectable.

Intrigued, Wang Ba descended into Wu Hai’s courtyard.

The butcher looked up, startled by the sudden aura of a cultivator. When he recognized Wang Ba, his face lit up with genuine, if manipulated, joy. “Fellow Daoist Shen! You’re back? I thought you left with Brother Zhu.”

The power of the Yin Spirit was formidable; despite the lapse in time, Wu Hai remained trapped in the mental loop Wang Ba had woven.

“I had a change of heart,” Wang Ba replied with a thin smile.

Inside, his confusion deepened. Dream Creation acted directly upon the Divine Soul. If the spell was still active, the soul had to be present. Yet his Divine Sense insisted the man was a hollow shell.

Without another word, Wang Ba flicked his finger. A thread of Magic Power struck Wu Hai, knocking him unconscious before he could utter a sound.

Wang Ba pressed two fingers against the man’s lower abdomen, sending an inquisitive pulse of energy into his Dantian.

His eyes widened. The Divine Soul was there—perfectly intact, nested deep within the body.

“Strange…”

Why was it invisible to a passive scan?

He pushed further, his Magic Power surging through Wu Hai’s meridians. The butcher’s body tried to resist the foreign invasion, but Wang Ba’s will crushed the opposition instantly. He searched every inch of the man’s anatomy. Aside from the fat, white Yin Food Worm larva nestled in the Dantian, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Is it you?” Wang Ba muttered, eyeing the parasite.

He reached out with a claw of energy, intending to pluck the worm from the Dantian. As his power tightened, Wu Hai’s body began to tremble; the Dantian was on the verge of catastrophic collapse.

Wang Ba hesitated. He had used Wu Hai, but the man was just a bottom-tier Rogue Cultivator—a man whose greatest sin was siphoning a bit of vitality from the meat he sold to mortals. Wang Ba wasn’t a saint, but he felt a kinship with these “ants” of the cultivation world. Without his unique ability to manipulate Lifespan, he would be no different from Wu Hai.

Destroying a man’s path to immortality, however meager, was a line he preferred not to cross.

But he needed that worm. He sensed a profound opportunity here, even if he couldn’t yet articulate it.

Fine. I’ll pay for it.

Wang Ba reached into his bag and retrieved a vial of Spirit Poultry essence. He funneled the concentrated spiritual energy and vitality directly into Wu Hai’s gut.

The thirsty Dantian drank greedily. Under Wang Ba’s careful guidance, Wu Hai’s Magic Power vortex swelled and compressed. The butcher’s aura flared, skipping past the threshold into the Third Layer of Qi Refining.

As the Dantian expanded and strengthened, the physical strain eased. Wang Ba seized the moment. His energy snared the Yin Food Worm larva—which had also grown fat and patterned from the influx of essence—and yanked it out.

The worm shrieked silently in his hand.

Wang Ba ignored it, his gaze fixed on the sleeping butcher. The moment the larva left the body, Wu Hai’s Divine Soul aura reappeared on his radar, bright and clear.

“The Yin Food Worm… it conceals the host’s Divine Soul,” Wang Ba whispered, his heart racing.

The realization hit him like a lightning bolt. This was the solution to the one chain he couldn’t break: the Spirit-Hosting Bamboo Slip.

Why did the Left Path cultivators stay and endure the Heavenly Gate Sect’s cruelty? Because their soul signatures were recorded on those slips. If they fled, the Profound Soul Path would simply use the signature to track and curse them to death. Even sect-born cultivators were bound by this; the Sect Master, Ning Daohuan, held everyone’s life in his palm.

“This tiny thing… it’s the key.”

He saw it now. The chance to truly vanish. The “Opportunity to become a Dragon” that Zhao Feng had spoken of.

Wang Ba dropped the larva into a jar of Spirit Poultry essence, but the creature was useless in a vacuum. It didn’t know how to eat. It was a specialist—a parasite.

He pulled a High-Grade First-Order Yellow-throated Spirit Turtle from his bag and introduced the larva into the reptile. Instantly, the turtle’s soul signature grew muffled and indistinct. It wasn’t perfect—a focused scan could still find it—but it was a start.

The parasite’s strength must match the host’s soul, he theorized.

He began feeding the turtle Spirit Poultry essence, watching as the larva within grew and the concealment deepened.

Despite his excitement, Wang Ba forced himself to remain cold and analytical. There were hurdles to clear. He was a Foundation Establishment master; his soul was vastly more powerful than a Qi Refining grunt’s. Could a worm ever mask him? Could it fool the specialists of the Profound Soul Path? And most importantly, could he host such a creature without it devouring his own foundation?

He had to verify everything. He turned his flying artifact toward the north, leaving the town behind.

Golden River City.

From above, the city was a masterpiece of spiritual engineering. The ambient Spiritual Qi had been channeled into two massive hubs. The northern hub, lush and overflowing with energy, housed a secluded courtyard of ponds and pavilions.

Inside, the City Lord—a mere Fourth Layer Qi Refining functionary—stood trembling before a scholarly middle-aged man. Cold sweat soaked his robes.

“So…” the scholar began, his voice like cracking ice. “The market ends, and Zhu Jianyi disappears along with four others. And you have no lead?”

This was Lin Xiwen, known to his peers as True Cultivator Lin.

“Give me one day! Just one day, True Cultivator Lin! I will round up everyone who was at the market and interrogate them personally!” the City Lord begged.

Lin Xiwen shook his head slowly. “You are a disappointment.”

The City Lord’s face went white.

“Xi Meng,” Lin Xiwen called out.

An elderly steward stepped from the shadows. “Master, the witness is here.”

A burly cultivator named Shi Liu entered, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched his knees. “Junior Shi Liu pays his respects to Senior Lin.”

“Speak,” Lin Xiwen commanded.

Shi Liu manifested a Water Mirror in his palm. Faces flickered across the surface—the 17 attendees of the recent market.

“City Lord Dai, identify them,” Lin Xiwen said.

The City Lord scrambled to the mirror. “This is Zhao Ping’an, too weak… Wang Xiaoyu, a local… these two I don’t know…”

The steward, Xi Meng, pointed to one of the unknowns. “That’s a nobody from Changshui City. He hasn’t the spine for this.”

“Then only this one remains,” Lin Xiwen said.

His gaze locked onto the final face in the mirror. It was the face of Wang Ba.

Suddenly, a voice boomed from the city outskirts.

“Lin Xiwen! Your disciple sent me to find you!”

A streak of light landed in the courtyard, revealing a plump old man.

“Li Qu?” Lin Xiwen frowned. “Where did you see Zhu Jianyi?”

“I fly across the province to help you, and you don’t even offer tea?” Li Qu huffed, then paused, spotting the mirror. “Oh! At the Exquisite Ghost Market. He was being followed by an early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator… wait, that’s the man! You already found him?”

He pointed directly at Wang Ba’s image.

Lin Xiwen’s eyes narrowed into lethal slits. “I found him. And it isn’t too late to—”

Abruptly, the scholar’s face contorted. His breath hitched.

“Zhu Jianyi… is dead.”