Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Chapter 192: Withered Soul Seeding Method

In that razor-thin margin between life and death, Li Canghai managed to conjure a single technique barrier, shoving his Yin Ghost in front of him as a meat shield. Simultaneously, the Tier 2 Top Grade defensive Magical Artifact on his body erupted into a blinding corona!

But the incoming sword light didn’t just strike—it went incandescent. Like a falling star, it homed in dead-center on Li Canghai’s brow.

The technique barrier vaporized like morning frost thrown into a furnace. The formless Yin Ghost, a profane entity of pure malice, fared even worse. It let out a hollow, desperate rasp before being completely obliterated by the radiant edge.

Immediately after, a dazzling secondary treasure light flared to intercept the strike.

Crack!

The defensive treasure light shattered, scattering like dying fireflies.

Yet, the residual momentum of the sword light punched a clean hole right through Li Canghai’s skull! His massive, burly frame was violently flung backward like a discarded ragdoll.

The battlefield plunged into a suffocating silence.

The Incense Path practitioners stared blankly, their minds unable to process the sheer, impossible shock of Li Canghai falling.

Even the fleeing Heavenly Gate Sect cultivators skidded to a halt, turning back to stare at Wang Ba with eyes wide enough to tear.

“Li Canghai… is dead? Killed by him?!”

“Who is he?! How does the sect have a monster like this hidden away?”

“I remember him! When Yue Xiang was assigning the fodder earlier, he called his name… Wang Ba?”

“But his aura is only at the early Foundation Establishment stage…”

Several Foundation Establishment cultivators frantically exchanged hushed words. Yet the more they scrutinized Wang Ba’s painfully unremarkable face, the more bewildered they became. He was a complete ghost. This hesitation cost them the perfect window for a counterattack.

The Incense Path practitioners finally snapped out of their stupor. Like a disturbed ant colony stripped of its queen, total chaos erupted.

“Divine Envoy Li is dead! He’s dead!”

“Run! Find Divine Envoy Zheng! Find the Tier 3 envoys!”

“Scatter to the east! No, west!”

Amidst the screaming panic, a thunderous roar shattered the air:

“Shut your mouths!”

Boom!

A burly figure violently launched himself out of the rubble! His protective treasure lights were tattered, but layers of defensive radiance still clung to his body. A jagged, ruinous hole marred the center of his forehead. Through the weeping wound, a grotesque mass of brain tissue, squirming and coiled like pale intestines, pulsed visibly.

It was Li Canghai. He had taken a lethal sword through the brain and lived.

Seeing their commander standing, the Incense Path zealots froze, then erupted into ecstatic cheers.

For the Heavenly Gate Sect cultivators, the sight was pure nightmare fuel. They immediately turned and fled for their lives. Li Canghai’s notorious savagery was legendary; had Zhu Ziji not confidently promised victory earlier, none of them would have even dared to take the field. Now that Zhu Ziji had been utterly routed, a single lucky strike from a stranger wasn’t enough to make them stay.

Wang Ba’s stomach dropped. I put a hole through his skull and he’s still breathing?

His Magic Power was already bottoming out from dealing with the square-faced cultivator earlier. Without hesitation, he unstoppered a vial and downed a mouthful of Spirit Poultry essence. As raw energy flooded his withered meridians, he stomped on his flying Magical Artifact and tore across the horizon, abandoning the battlefield in a completely different direction from the others.

That sword light jade pendant—a parting gift from Zhao Feng years ago—was his absolute, final trump card. He only used it because he had sensed a genuine, inescapable threat to his life.

Faced with an unkillable monster, staying was suicide.

Behind him, Li Canghai ignored the fleeing Heavenly Gate Sect cultivators. He narrowed his eyes at Wang Ba’s receding figure, a flicker of deep, visceral wariness in his gaze. He didn’t chase.

For a split second, Li Canghai had genuinely believed he was a dead man. If not for his Tier 2 Top Grade Magical Artifact absorbing the brunt of the kinetic force, and a secret esoteric art he had cultivated specifically to shift his “spiritual platform” away from his brow, that nameless farmer would have ended his life.

It was his closest brush with death since arriving in the State of Chen.

“The Heavenly Gate Sect still has some hidden fangs…” Li Canghai muttered, a cold glint flashing in his one good eye. “Unfortunately, it’s time to slaughter them all.”

He rallied his zealots and plunged after the remaining Foundation Establishment cultivators.

…

Deep within a nameless, sun-starved mountain ravine.

Hoo—

Perched high in the canopy of an ancient tree, Wang Ba finally let out a long, ragged exhale. He swept his Divine Sense backward. No pursuers. No tracks.

He was safe. For now.

He had been terrified Li Canghai would hunt him down. Thankfully, the madman was paranoid enough to fear a second sword strike. But Wang Ba’s cynical mind immediately calculated the next threat: once Li Canghai finished butchering the stragglers, he would marshal his zealots. They would scour the mountains and dig three feet into the earth to find the man who shot their commander in the head.

“I have to get out of this warzone. Back to the East Saint Garrison, or out of the State of Chen entirely.”

He pulled a map from his Storage Bag. It was detailed, but useless—it didn’t show the shifting frontlines or the Incense Path’s territorial spread. He was flying blind.

Meng and his squad mapped the Incense Path forces perfectly… Wang Ba grimaced. He hadn’t possessed the luxury to save them. Given the sheer numbers of the enemy, Meng’s squad was undoubtedly dead.

He was entirely on his own.

“Wait. The dead guy’s ring.”

Wang Ba fished out the Storage Ring he had looted from the square-faced Incense Path cultivator. Because the owner was dead, the residual soul imprint was weak. Wang Ba ground away at it with his own formidable Divine Sense until the lock snapped open.

When he peered inside, his breath hitched.

“A fortune…”

Suspended in the void of the ring were exactly 20 drops of Divine Essence Dew, shimmering like weightless spheres of pure water!

Beyond that was a respectable mound of Middle Grade Spirit Stones, stacks of gold-leaf manuals, Pills, Talismans, Magical Artifacts, and a row of ominous black clay jars.

His eyes immediately locked onto a peculiar, ear-shaped Magical Artifact.

He pressed it against his ear. Silence.

Maybe… He carefully fed a thread of Magic Power into it. Still nothing.

Realizing the missing link, Wang Ba carefully peeled off a sliver of his Divine Sense and grafted it onto the artifact’s runes.

Buzz—

A deafening cacophony of overlapping voices exploded directly into his mind:

“Move! We spotted a Heavenly Gate native to the southwest! Foundation Establishment, stay sharp!”

“Southwest! We found another one! Box him in!”

“Anyone near my sector? Pinned down, target is highly lethal.”

“Check the Spirit Ear! Check the…”

“I found a cluster of Qi Refining rats, moving in…”

Wang Ba’s eyes widened. It was a tactical, localized communication network.

No wonder Li Canghai’s ambush on Zhu Ziji had been so fast and perfectly coordinated. This was infinitely superior to firing off clumsy, interceptable communication Talismans.

A cold smile touched his lips. With this, he possessed a real-time radar of every enemy patrol in the sector. He could weave through their dragnet like a ghost.

While keeping half his attention on the chatter, he dug through the ring’s contents again. There wasn’t a second Spirit Ear, but his hands found something far more interesting among the gold-leaf manuals.

The Withered Soul Seeding Method.

It was a profane, horrific application of soul arts. By refining a specialized Yin Ghost into a ‘Soul Seed’ and forcefully implanting it into a living host, the parasite would violently cannibalize the host’s life force. If implanted in a cultivator, it would leave them a husk, their flesh shrinking against the bone as they let out a hollow, desperate rasp.

However, the manual described using it strategically on beasts. It triggered a terrifying, hyper-accelerated metabolism, granting the creature a false, elevated cultivation state.

For example, if planted in a Low Grade Tier 1 Spirit Poultry, the bird would instantly radiate the exact Pressure, aura, speed, and lethality of a Middle Grade Tier 1 beast. To any observer, it was a flawless upgrade. In reality, it was just burning its own life span like kindling to achieve a momentary peak before inevitable death.

Wang Ba lowered the gold leaf, his gaze drifting toward the heavy black clay jars stored in the ring. They matched the manual’s description of where the active ‘Soul Seeds’ were kept.

A very dark, very practical idea began to form in his mind.