Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Chapter 186: Spirit-Entrusting Candle Completed

Wang Ba’s figure blurred into a streak of light, tearing across the sky above the mountain valleys and the sprawling market.

Within moments, he touched down beside the familiar shores of the South Lake.

Bu Chan was already waist-deep in the spirit fields. Catching sight of Wang Ba descending, she dropped her tools and hurried over, her brow furrowed with anxiety.

“Senior Brother, what did Senior Bai say?”

Wang Ba offered a reassuring smile, deliberately omitting the psychotic, near-death encounter he had just survived to spare her the terror. “It went well. You shouldn’t have to deploy to the front lines.”

Instead of the profound relief Wang Ba expected, Bu Chan’s expression tightened. Her sharp instincts immediately caught the unspoken caveat.

“I don’t have to go… but what about you, Senior Brother?”

Wang Ba shook his head slightly, his eyes sweeping the perimeter. Understanding the cue, Bu Chan quickly followed him into the fortified confines of the chicken farm.

Only after Wang Ba had blanketed the area with his Divine Sense to block any eavesdropping did he let out a weary sigh.

“The deployment roster for Foundation Establishment cultivators was carved in stone by the Sect Master himself. No one has the authority to alter it. I have to go,” Wang Ba admitted, his voice tight. “But you don’t need to worry. You’ll be safe inside the garrison. Just focus on cultivating the Hundred Fragrance Bees.”

Hearing this, the worry in Bu Chan’s eyes deepened, but she didn’t collapse into weeping or paralyzing anxiety like a mortal woman might. Instead, her jaw set, and she nodded sharply.

“I understand. The soil here is terrible for those flowers, but I’ll find a way. I’ll increase the yield.”

“Good. You handle the logistics here. If you run short on anything, send word,” Wang Ba instructed.

Driven by lingering anxiety over her safety, he emptied a portion of his Storage Bag for her. He left her a complete set of first-grade Top Grade Magical Artifacts tailored for immediate use, a stack of second-grade Talismans that required minimal Qi to trigger, bags of rare spirit plant seeds scavenged from various ghost markets, advanced agricultural manuals, and a small fortune in Spirit Stones.

He specifically avoided giving her second-grade Magical Artifacts. While powerful, they demanded massive reserves of Qi to operate. A Qi Refining cultivator could swing one for a few seconds in an emergency, but in a protracted fight, the weapon would drain her dry and kill her faster than the enemy.

Bu Chan didn’t waste time with polite refusals. She swept the supplies into her own bag and immediately marched back out to the spirit fields, plunging her hands back into the dirt without missing a beat.

Watching her back, Wang Ba exhaled and stepped into the wooden hut.

In the quiet solitude, the sheer terror of his encounter in the Qian Dong Hall finally caught up with him.

Lu Yuansheng’s malice had been absolute.

Wang Ba had always known the Golden Core Elder despised him. But after years of dutifully breeding high-tier Spirit Poultry for the man, Wang Ba had assumed a Golden Core Perfected Being would possess the magnanimity—or at least the sheer arrogance—to forget about a lowly Foundation Establishment junior.

He was wrong. The very second Wang Ba’s protective status was revoked, Lu Yuansheng had gleefully pounced, eager to casually crush him like a bug.

The Elder possessed none of the aloof dignity expected of a Golden Core master. His mind was a chaotic, hyper-violent storm, as unpredictable and treacherous as a coiled viper. It terrified Wang Ba to his core.

If he hadn’t been forced into a corner, Wang Ba would have spent the rest of his life avoiding the man.

But a cultivator, no matter how psychotic, was still a slave to their greed. Lu Yuansheng’s lust for high-tier resources was his fatal flaw.

Wang Ba had gambled his life on that greed. He had used the second-grade Top Grade Spirit Poultry as hard proof of his value, and then dangled the mythic third-grade—a Golden Core beast—as bait.

Even Lu Yuansheng couldn’t resist. As the cultivation world slowly suffocated from resource depletion, a third-grade spirit beast was a strategic asset of immeasurable value. It was priceless.

Of course, if Wang Ba hadn’t debased himself with utterly shameless flattery, and if he hadn’t unhesitatingly tried to cave his own skull in to prove his fanatical loyalty, Lu Yuansheng’s curiosity would never have been piqued. Wang Ba would be a corpse right now.

It was a testament to how the grinding brutality of the Eastern Sage Sect and the Heavenly Gate Sect had honed his survival instincts.

But I am never doing that again, Wang Ba swore to himself, his hands clenching into fists. He absolutely refused to experience that suffocating helplessness a second time.

Nine years? Hah!

He didn’t want to stay in this psychotic sect for another nine minutes, let alone nine years.

With Alpha-Fifteen’s accelerated breeding cycle, Wang Ba’s timeline for producing a third-grade Spirit Poultry had drastically shortened. The moment he successfully bred one, his endgame began.

He would immediately contact Tang Ji at the Exquisite Ghost Market.

He hadn’t forgotten the promise delivered by the brocade-robed old man on the market’s second floor: Breed a third-grade spirit beast, and you earn the right to enter the third floor. Entry meant securing the absolute protection of the Exquisite Ghost Market.

Once he neutralized the tracking tether of the Spirit-Hosting Bamboo Slip, the Heavenly Gate Sect could scour all five kingdoms and still fail to find a single hair on his head!

From there, the world was his. He could travel north to the Great Yan Kingdom, or west to the Great Jin, entirely on his own terms.

Thinking of the escape plan, Wang Ba slowly exhaled, purging the lingering dread of Lu Yuansheng from his mind.

He reached into his Storage Bag and pulled out the hard-won block of Hundred Fragrance Bee wax Bu Chan had suffered to harvest.

It was time to forge a Spirit-Entrusting Candle.

The Spirit-Entrusting Candle was a relic from a collapsed, ancient Sect, originally used to monitor the life signs of disciples venturing into the wilderness. When a disciple joined, a microscopic sliver of their soul was extracted to ignite the candle wick.

Mechanically, it was identical to the Heavenly Gate Sect’s Spirit-Hosting Bamboo Slips. The only difference was that the Bamboo Slips passively absorbed the soul’s ambient aura rather than requiring a direct extraction.

And, of course, normal Sects used the candles to rescue disciples, whereas the Heavenly Gate Sect used the Bamboo Slips as remote-detonated kill-switches to enforce loyalty. It was a crude, brutal leash, likely implemented because the Sect’s demonic hierarchy was a chaotic mess of untrustworthy cutthroats.

The recipe was simple: the body was forged from Hundred Fragrance Bee wax, and the wick was spun from the silk of a ‘Leaping Ghost Spider.’

Once ignited by a soul fragment, the candle burned eternally. Depending on the purity of the wax, it could burn for decades or even centuries. The flame would only extinguish if the soul’s host died and their spirit dissipated.

Leaping Ghost Spider silk was common trash; Wang Ba had bought spools of it at the ghost market. He could afford a thousand failed wicks.

The Hundred Fragrance Bee wax, however, was precious. He had to be surgical.

Perhaps due to the subpar quality of the flowers Bu Chan was forced to use, Wang Ba’s first attempt melted into a useless puddle of slag almost immediately.

“Failed.”

He didn’t blink. He adjusted the thermal output of his Qi and tried again. And again.

After several grueling hours, he finally produced two functional Spirit-Entrusting Candles. They were ugly, lumpy things barely half the length of his finger, but for a proof-of-concept experiment, they were perfect.

Wang Ba approached the first-grade High Grade Spirit Turtle currently serving as the host for the Yin Food Worm larva. Carefully, he extracted a microscopic wisp of its soul power.

Guiding the soul wisp with his Qi, he touched it to the wick of the first candle.

Sizzle!

The wick instantly caught, flaring with a weak, ghostly light.

But a second later, to Wang Ba’s shock, the flame sputtered and died!

“Is the candle defective?”

Wang Ba frantically inspected the lumpy wax, but the structural integrity was flawless. The array carved into the wick was active.

Wait… is it because the Yin Food Worm larva is actively cloaking the host’s soul?

The theory hit him like a lightning bolt. To test it, he immediately extracted a soul wisp from a completely healthy, uninfected first-grade Low Grade Spirit Turtle and touched it to the second candle.

The wick caught instantly. The tiny flame burned with weak, unwavering stability.

Holding his breath, Wang Ba crushed a ‘Pseudo-Chiyuan Pill’ containing a dormant Yin Food Worm larva and force-fed it to the healthy turtle, using his Qi to drive the parasite deep into its core.

Seconds later, the miraculous occurred.

The steadily burning Spirit-Entrusting Candle suddenly snuffed out!

“It works!”

Wang Ba’s eyes blazed with wild ecstasy. “It actually works!”

The Yin Food Worm larva acted as a perfect, impenetrable stealth field! It completely severed the soul’s connection to the outside world. Even the direct tether of the Spirit-Entrusting Candle was rendered blind!

Which meant the Spirit-Hosting Bamboo Slip—which relied on a far weaker, passive aura tether—would be completely oblivious to a soul cloaked by a Yin Food Worm!

“A supreme treasure!” Wang Ba laughed breathlessly. “This parasite is a goddamn supreme treasure!”

Despite his deep mastery of beast taming, he had never even heard of such a creature. Then again, the field of spirit insects was an insanely complex, entirely separate discipline of cultivation. It was no surprise he was ignorant of it.

He didn’t care about the entomology. He only cared that it was his ticket to freedom.

“Since the cloaking works, establishing my second Dantian is now my absolute highest priority,” Wang Ba calculated, pacing the room.

“I just need a vessel to host it.”

Once he found a suitable vessel, he would use the Primordial Chaos Two Poles Method to carve out a second Dantian. Then, he would refine the terrifying Yin Food Worm mother insect and seal it inside that new core.

The problem was the mother insect’s sheer power. It was a second-grade Top Grade monstrosity. If he tried to shove it into a low-grade vessel, the insect’s ambient spiritual pressure would instantly detonate the second Dantian.

Furthermore, the second Dantian itself would need to be cultivated up to the Foundation Establishment stage to withstand the strain.

“Which means I need a third-grade treasure to act as the vessel.”

“Once I secure the vessel, I cultivate the second core to Foundation Establishment.”

“When those two conditions are met, the Spirit-Hosting Bamboo Slip is rendered completely useless.”

Wang Ba mentally mapped out the brutal grind ahead of him. Fortunately, as a true Foundation Establishment cultivator with his three primordials united and his spirit robust, power-leveling a secondary core would be drastically faster than his initial climb.

“But obtaining a third-grade treasure…”

Wang Ba rubbed his temples, a headache building. A third-grade treasure was a Golden Core-level artifact. Men slaughtered entire cities for less.

But it was the only key to breaking his chains.

After organizing his thoughts, Wang Ba suddenly slapped his forehead. He unsealed a small spirit beast bag and tipped a furry little creature onto his palm.

It was the mysterious, incredibly weak chick he had hatched months ago.

After nearly 60 days of growth, the pathetic, bald lump had transformed into a plump, creamy-yellow ball of fluff. It was tiny, easily fitting in the cup of Wang Ba’s hand. It had bright, rosy red patches on its cheeks, and a single, expressive tuft of feathers sticking straight up from its head like a bizarre antenna. The tuft would flatten against its skull or fan out depending on its mood.

It stared up at Wang Ba with eyes that were breathtakingly clear and profoundly stupid. It tilted its head, peering around the room with boundless, naive curiosity.

It was aggressively adorable.

The dark, suffocating pressure of Lu Yuansheng and the impending war melted away slightly as Wang Ba looked at the bird.

He pulled out a small feeding spoon and tapped the rim. The bird jolted, its antenna popping straight up. Eschewing its wings entirely—it absolutely refused to fly if walking was an option—it scrambled clumsily up Wang Ba’s fingers using its beak and claws. Reaching his palm, it threw its head back, opening its beak impossibly wide and demanding food.

“Eh? What kind of bird is that?”

The door swung open, and Bu Chan stepped inside, wiping dirt from her brow. The moment her eyes landed on the yellow fluffball, they lit up like stars.

She abandoned her tools and rushed over, gently stroking the antenna feather on its head.

The bird couldn’t care less about being pet; it was ferociously slurping milk from the spoon.

“It looks exactly like a Xuanfeng, a type of parrot… but the grade is completely wrong,” Wang Ba explained.

When it was bald, he had no idea what it was. Now that its plumage was in, Wang Ba recognized the species from Daoist Horn-Pot’s Notes on Avian Husbandry.

The Xuanfeng was renowned for its beautiful plumage, but functionally, it was useless. It had a spark of intelligence, but it didn’t even rank on the lowest tier of spirit beasts. It was, for all intents and purposes, a mundane mortal pet.

Yet, this specific bird possessed the exact same intrinsic grade as the Earth Ape King!

Externally, it was a harmless, idiotic parrot. Internally, it was a high-tier enigma. Wang Ba still had no idea what he had actually bred.

“A Xuanfeng…” Bu Chan cooed, her heart visibly melting at the sight of the creamy-yellow chick. She brazenly stole the feeding spoon from Wang Ba’s hand to feed it herself. “Does it have a name yet?”

“Not yet. I figured you could name it, Junior Sister,” Wang Ba smiled.

“It looks so soft and squishy. Like a sticky rice dumpling… let’s call it Sticky Rice Dumpling!” Bu Chan declared.

“Sticky Rice Dumpling it is,” Wang Ba agreed instantly.

He officially transferred custody of the bird to her. He was about to leave for a warzone, and Bu Chan was going to be isolated in the garrison. Leaving Sticky Rice Dumpling with her would give her some much-needed companionship.

Bu Chan was ecstatic, carefully cradling the little bird against her chest as if it were spun glass.

Watching them, a rare, genuine smile touched Wang Ba’s lips.

But peace was a luxury he couldn’t afford for long. He immediately returned to his brutal workload.

After a massive deposit of his accumulated Lifespan, the newest generation of Azure Water Spirit Turtles successfully mutated into second-grade Middle Grade beasts.

Wang Ba reviewed the data. The turtle breeding cycle was agonizingly slow but incredibly stable. Starting from the Low Grade stock, it had taken three full generations of selective breeding and Lifespan injections to force the mutation to Middle Grade. Factoring in their long incubation and mating cycles, the project had taken nearly five years.

He dragged one of the newly ascended Middle Grade turtles into the yard and blasted it point-blank with a second-grade attack Talisman.

The explosive force washed over the turtle, leaving its shell completely unmarred. The physical defense of a second-grade Middle Grade Azure Water Spirit Turtle could now effortlessly shrug off a direct strike from an ordinary late Foundation Establishment cultivator!

Its soul defense was still pitifully weak in comparison, but Wang Ba was ecstatic. He spent hours playing with the massive, armored beasts, hand-feeding them and scrubbing their shells until they gleamed.

These were the ultimate meat-shields for his ‘Substitute Death’ supernatural ability.

Every drop of sweat spent raising them was an investment in his own immortality.

He kept the older, Low Grade turtles alive as well. Even the weaker generation possessed defense roughly equivalent to a late Foundation Establishment cultivator. Wasting that kind of armor would be a sin.

Days bled into nights as Wang Ba finalized his preparations.

Finally, the Heavenly Gate Sect delivered his marching orders.

“Mandate: Foundation Establishment Cultivator Wang Ba, commanding a unit of 20 Qi Refining cultivators, shall immediately deploy to the southeast theater, objective: ‘Luolan Mountain,’ to establish forward Formations…”