The Rat Cultivator

Chapter 166: Talent, Nine Refinements of Filth

The Azure Radiance Grotto-Heaven snapped back, its voice dripping with grievance. “I am doing terribly!”

“You shattered the Blood Water Pool, drained the spiritual essence of heaven and earth, and reaped all the rewards! Then you just waltzed off, leaving me to clean up your colossal mess!”

“Do you have any idea how much Grotto-Heaven power it took to pacify the world’s killing intent? Without me, do you really think you’d be cultivating in peace? A lightning tribulation would have smote you to ash by now!”

Wu Yuan offered an awkward, sycophantic smile. He bent low, rubbing his front paws together like a scheming merchant. “Lord Xiaoqing has truly worked incredibly hard!”

“If not for your boundless assistance, I never would have captured the Black Water Flood Dragon Snake alive, let alone conquered Polong Lake. The credit is entirely yours!”

Mollified by the flattery, the Azure Radiance Grotto-Heaven’s tone softened. “At least you have some self-awareness! If you hadn’t occupied Polong Lake and stabilized the Providence, I wouldn’t have wasted another drop of Grotto-Heaven power maintaining it for you!”

Wu Yuan’s beady eyes darted back and forth. “Lord Xiaoqing,” he probed, feigning casual curiosity. “It seems your reserves are still quite vast. You’ve been expending power for so long, yet you haven’t run dry.”

“Hmph! I was once a High Grade Grotto-Heaven!” the entity boasted. “I used to have as much power as I pleased! Even though I’m currently sealed and forced to live off my savings, my lingering reserves are nothing to scoff at.”

Wu Yuan made a mental note of the term ‘High Grade’ and pushed his luck. “Lord Xiaoqing, my cultivation has recently hit a bottleneck. I find myself a little short on Grotto-Heaven power…”

His voice trailed off, losing confidence with every word. Even he knew a mere rat had no business requesting such high-tier cosmic energy.

The Grotto-Heaven shrieked as if someone had stepped on its invisible tail. “Absolutely not!”

“I may have power, but the amount I can squeeze through this seal is strictly limited! Every drop spent is gone forever, and I need the rest for my future escape!”

The entity’s voice echoed through the treehouse before fading into dead silence. It had vanished completely. No matter how much Wu Yuan coaxed or pleaded, the Grotto-Heaven refused to utter another word.

Wu Yuan sighed, slapping his hind leg in frustration. “If I can’t harvest it from him, what then? I suppose my bloodline advancement will have to wait.”

He retrieved a Purple Jade cup filled to the brim with a viscous, golden-red liquid. The blood rippled gently, emitting a brilliant golden radiance that tried to escape into the air. Instantly, mountain-like spirit patterns flared across the surface of the Purple Jade cup, forming a barrier that forced the radiant energy back into the blood.

This was the Golden Carp Blood Wine, meticulously brewed from the essence blood of the Sinking Gold Carp. The Sinking Gold Carp possessed dual metal and water attributes; the brewing process perfectly extracted the latent dragon energy within its blood, binding it to the wine to exponentially magnify its potency.

Little Yellow had sacrificed a fortune in spirit materials—and endured countless agonizing tail-slaps—just to safely extract enough essence blood to brew this single cup without permanently crippling the Sinking Gold Carp’s foundation. And this precious cup amounted to nothing more than a single mouthful for Wu Yuan.

Despite Little Yellow’s clinical precision during the extraction, the Sinking Gold Carp had been left thoroughly drained, their once-dazzling golden scales now dull and lifeless.

I really must thank Little Yellow for this delivery, Wu Yuan mused. Without hesitating, he tossed his head back and downed the Golden Carp Blood Wine in one gulp.

A searing, spicy heat immediately torched its way down his throat. It felt like swallowing a storm of razors, violently churning his stomach and intestines.

The taste is atrocious, and the brewing process is an absolute nightmare, Wu Yuan analyzed, wincing as the energy hit him. But the metal Spiritual Qi within it is overwhelmingly dense and hyper-active.

More importantly, the inherent water Spiritual Qi acts as a buffer, tempering the metal’s sheer violent edge. Combined with the massive surge of blood vitality, this is the perfect catalyst for cultivating the large intestine!

Previously, through the brutal process of slicing open his own abdomen to manually carve into his organs, Wu Yuan had successfully grafted foundational metal-element spirit patterns directly onto his large intestine. He had maintained this harsh regimen ever since, ensuring his daily diet of minerals always included a heavy dose of Geng Gold spirit ore.

Today, he would finally complete the condensation of this bodily talent.

Thanks to his rising cultivation, Wu Yuan’s physical vessel was far stronger than before. The razor-sharp metal Spiritual Qi that once threatened to shred his internal organs now felt like nothing more than a passing breeze.

The Golden Carp Blood Wine ignited a raging blood-fire within him, ruthlessly smelting the metal Spiritual Qi and fusing it directly into the lining of his large intestine. The faint, diamond-shaped spirit patterns etched across his organ began to glow with blinding intensity.

They sank deeper into the tissue, achieving total integration. As the process finalized, the diamond shapes shifted, evolving into a sleek, fish-shaped spirit pattern. Its edges were dangerously sharp, radiating the lethal, cutting aura of an unsheathed flying sword.

Wu Yuan slowly exhaled a plume of misted blood Qi. “I shall call this the Golden Sword Spirit Pattern,” he declared.

He closed his eyes, turning his perception inward. A wave of ethereal bliss washed over him. His Demon Power and blood vitality were as immense and heavy as ever, but they now flowed with a pristine, untainted clarity. The circulation of his internal energies responded seamlessly to his every whim. If his internal control had been high-definition before, it had just upgraded to an immaculate, ultra-high-definition resolution.

This was the ultimate physiological function of the large intestine: to completely separate the clear from the turbid and purge all impurities.

Wu Yuan circulated his Demon Power. His abdomen bulged slightly as the Golden Sword Spirit Pattern flared to life.

The large intestine governed the transit of waste. By elevating this biological function to a supernatural extreme, a new innate talent was born: the Nine Refinements of Filth.

From this moment on, Wu Yuan’s lower digestive tract had been transformed into a biological alchemy furnace. Any external impurity he ingested—be it the violent, feral Qi of slaughtered Demon Beasts, the useless slag from his daily diet of raw ores, or the lethal, accumulated toxins from high-grade Pills—would be systematically broken down and eradicated. His physiological purity and the unhindered flow of his Spiritual Qi were now guaranteed.

But then, Wu Yuan sensed a secondary, far more terrifying function awakening within him.

A heavy pressure stirred in his gut. Frowning in intense concentration, he made his way to a facility he had not utilized in ages: the latrine. He had originally excavated this chamber back when his infantile body couldn’t fully digest raw Spirit Copper, forcing him to manually pass the slag. As his cultivation had deepened, his body’s efficiency had rendered the room obsolete.

Today, however, duty called.

A short time later, Wu Yuan emerged. He stroked his chin thoughtfully, his claw gripping a sealed gourd.

He placed the vessel on the ground, his eyes gleaming with the manic joy of a researcher who had just made a breakthrough discovery. “Fascinating,” he murmured. “The physiological talent deemed the mere expulsion of these highly concentrated impurities to be a waste of resources. Instead, via the Nine Refinements of Filth, it has compressed and weaponized the slag into Filth Spirit Sand—a substance specifically designed to corrode and pollute spirituality.”

“To think even my body’s rejected waste can be weaponized!” he marveled. “I must have Little Yellow procure a high-quality gourd spirit material immediately. I will need to forge a Filth Spirit Gourd to store this.”

Wu Yuan felt absolutely no revulsion toward his creation. In his eyes, this was a lethal, top-tier alchemical byproduct.

For years, his diet had consisted exclusively of ultra-rare heavenly treasures and potent spirit ores. The condensed waste stripped from such profound materials was bound to be extraordinarily toxic. After all, any mundane impurity was naturally recycled into raw Spiritual Qi by his body.

Therefore, the residual slag that was stubborn and virulent enough to resist even his innate talent—condensing instead into Filth Spirit Sand—possessed a horrifyingly potent, unimaginable destructive quality.