Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Chapter 194: An Unexpected Person

“So, if we want to return to the Eastern Sage Sect garrison, our only option is to retrace our exact path?” Wang Ba asked, his expression grim.

He was addressing Meng and the two other Heavenly Gate Sect survivors he had just violently extracted from the kill-zone.

Hearing Wang Ba’s question, the three men nodded frantically. Meng’s face was heavy with dread.

“We originally infiltrated through the Incense Burner Path’s occupied zone. But now that our position is compromised, the entire route will be saturated with Hunter-Killer squads. The sky and earth will be locked down. Trying to punch through now… it’s a death sentence.”

“Can’t we detour through the southwest?” Wang Ba pressed, unwilling to accept the bottleneck.

The southern border was heavily fortified by the zealots, and the southeast was controlled by the Mountain Sea Sect—where he had just murdered an elite disciple. The eastern and northeastern corridors were solidly occupied by the Incense Burner Path.

Only the southwest seemed vaguely viable.

“The southwest is commanded by Zheng Yuanhua,” a gaunt, shivering Heavenly Gate Sect cultivator blurted out. “He’s the other supreme leader of the Incense Burner Path. It was his trap that crippled Yan Yun of the Sword Demon Path…”

Hearing the name Zheng Yuanhua, Wang Ba’s expression tightened into a mask of pure stress.

He knew the name. Zheng Yuanhua was allegedly in the exact same weight class as Li Canghai.

And Wang Ba had already burned the lethal sword pendant Zhao Feng gave him. He possessed absolutely no countermeasure against a monster of that caliber.

Rapidly calculating the impossible odds, Wang Ba shook his head. “What if we abandon the garrison entirely? How about we head to Qianyu Lake?”

“Qianyu Lake?”

Meng and the others stared at him in confusion. “But Senior, that sector is entirely populated by Rogue Cultivators…”

“I don’t care if it’s populated by Rogue Cultivators,” Wang Ba cut him off, his logic razor-sharp. “Our absolute priority is dropping off the Incense Burner Path’s radar.”

The chilling broadcast from the ‘Master Ear’ still echoed in his mind. Remaining anywhere within the zealots’ occupied zones gave him zero sense of security. While a Rogue Cultivator settlement was inherently lawless and dangerous, at least he wouldn’t have an entire geopolitical army actively hunting him.

The gaunt cultivator immediately grasped the tactical value. “The Senior is absolutely right! We can’t worry about the garrison right now. We just need to survive the night!”

He rapidly broke down the logistics.

“Qianyu Lake is an excellent blind spot. Over the past decade, as the Incense Burner Path expanded, thousands of Rogue Cultivators were displaced and forced to migrate there. The population is a chaotic, untraceable mess. It’s the perfect place to vanish.”

“Furthermore, many Heavenly Gate Sect operatives who were cut off by the zealots’ advance are stranded near the lake. If we rendezvous with them, we might establish a secure exfiltration route.”

“Most importantly,” the gaunt man concluded, “it’s incredibly close. At your cruising speed, Senior, we can reach the lake in less than a day.”

Hearing this, Wang Ba whipped the map out of his Storage Bag and spread it on the dirt.

“Show me. Plot the route.”

The three survivors immediately huddled over the parchment. They were hardened veterans of the Left Path, having scraped by on the fringes of the garrison for years. They knew the backroads and smuggler trails intimately.

Perhaps sensing the other two cultivators vying for Wang Ba’s favor, Meng became aggressively proactive.

“Senior, starting from our current coordinates, we need to minimize contact with the Incense Path patrols while maintaining maximum velocity. I suggest we take the Han Ancient City corridor, follow the Banqiao River, and cut through Ding Village…”

“You handle the navigation. Just make it fast,” Wang Ba ordered, stepping back.

He didn’t bother participating in the cartography. He was entirely ignorant of the region’s geopolitical layout, and he knew these three men were literally plotting for their lives. They would bleed their brains dry to find the safest possible route.

The three men were profoundly moved by Wang Ba’s absolute trust. In the notoriously cutthroat Heavenly Gate Sect, such delegation was rare. Factoring in that Wang Ba had just snatched them from the jaws of death, their loyalty was cemented.

Within minutes, they had optimized the flight path.

Meng briefed Wang Ba on the grim reality. “Based on our intel, we will inevitably encounter three distinct blockades. The first two are standard patrols; we can punch through. The nightmare is the third layer—the vanguard guarding the perimeter of Qianyu Lake. They are heavily fortified elites. Our stranded operatives at the lake have repeatedly tried to break their siege and failed every time.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Move out.”

Wang Ba didn’t waste another breath. He grabbed the three men and launched into the sky, hugging the tree line to evade skyline detection.

Exactly as Meng predicted, an hour into the flight, they slammed headfirst into the first Incense Burner Path blockade.

It wasn’t an ambush; the zealots had simply fortified a natural geographical chokepoint. A clash was unavoidable.

The blockade consisted of three early Foundation Establishment zealots.

Wang Ba didn’t hold back a single drop of Qi. He didn’t test combos, and he didn’t play games. He violently erupted, dumping over a dozen high-tier offensive techniques in a singular, apocalyptic barrage that instantly vaporized the three zealots into pink mist.

The sheer kinetic force of the bombardment completely leveled the fortified mansion they were defending.

The three Heavenly Gate Sect survivors had been too concussed during their rescue to register Wang Ba’s true firepower. Witnessing the absolute, overwhelming devastation firsthand, their jaws unhinged in sheer terror.

Good heavens! He instantly cast over a dozen lethal techniques simultaneously… and every single one was a different element! Is Senior Wang even human?!

Every cultivator knew that mastering a single technique required years of agonizing research and repetition. A standard Foundation Establishment expert relied on three or four core techniques, supplemented by a few minor utility tricks. To effortlessly cycle through over a dozen distinct, high-tier offensive arts was completely unheard of in their limited worldview.

Their reverence for Wang Ba spiked into absolute, fanatical awe.

Wang Ba calmly swept up the three Storage Bags dropped by the vaporized zealots.

Without breaking his flight path, Wang Ba casually cracked the soul-locks on the three newly acquired bags, as well as the bag he had looted from the hunter who attacked Meng.

To his immense satisfaction, every single bag contained a stash of Divine Essence Dew. While they only held five or six drops each, the combined haul rivaled the fortune he had stripped from the square-faced commander.

Even better, one of the bags contained several black clay jars used to incubate Yin Ghosts.

Scanning the jars, Wang Ba’s eyes lit up. One of the dormant Yin Ghosts had already evolved into a first-grade Top Grade entity!

While still flying at maximum velocity, Wang Ba executed the Withered Soul Seeding Method, flawlessly refining the captured Yin Ghosts into dormant Soul Seeds.

He then dumped the newly forged Soul Seeds into the same jar containing the seeds he had looted from the square-faced zealot.

According to the manual, when placed in proximity, Soul Seeds would cannibalize one another in a rapid, brutal Darwinian struggle until only a single, apex seed remained, possessing the aggregated power of the entire cluster.

The violent merger was instantaneous. Within seconds, the lesser seeds were devoured, leaving behind a single, pulsating second-grade Low Grade Soul Seed.

Wang Ba sighed, slightly disappointed.

A second-grade Low Grade seed was practically useless to him. His primary combat beasts had already evolved to the second-grade High Grade tier. A Low Grade seed could, at best, temporarily boost a Low Grade beast to the Middle Grade tier. It was a marginal tactical advantage.

An hour later, they smashed into the second blockade.

This patrol was significantly heavier. Wang Ba was forced to summon Alpha-Sixteen to break their formation. Under the Phantom Chicken’s terrifying, hyper-lethal stealth strikes, the squad was rapidly butchered, yielding four more Storage Bags.

This haul lacked Yin Ghosts, but provided a wealth of golden-paper soul manuals, massive stacks of Spirit Stones, and high-tier Talismans.

Wang Ba didn’t bother cataloging the loot; he swept it all into his inventory and pushed forward.

“Senior! That’s Qianyu Lake!” Meng suddenly pointed toward the horizon, his voice ringing with relief. Surviving two blockades under Wang Ba’s terrifying escort had completely erased his tension. He began eagerly playing tour guide.

“The lake is actually a recent geographical anomaly. Massive flooding over the past decade submerged the surrounding valleys, leaving only the peaks of the highest mountains exposed. Because there are over a thousand of these ‘islands,’ we call it Qianyu Lake.”

Meng pointed to a towering, jagged spire of rock dominating the shoreline. “That’s Wangfeng Mountain. The view from the summit is legendary!”

Wang Ba nodded, finally understanding why his map was useless. He had purchased it over a decade ago in the Eastern Sage Sect’s market. The topography had literally changed since it was drawn.

But as they approached the shoreline, Wang Ba frowned.

“Where is the third blockade? Why haven’t the zealots engaged us?”

Meng and the others exchanged bewildered glances. The perimeter was supposed to be swarming with elite Incense Burner Path guards. However, their absence was a literal godsend.

Wang Ba didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He accelerated, preparing to exploit the distraction and stealth his squad directly into the heart of Qianyu Lake.

However, as they cleared the foothills, Wang Ba felt a violent tremor in the ambient Qi ahead.

The massive bulk of Wangfeng Mountain blocked his line of sight.

They banked hard, skirting the edge of the mountain. As they cleared the rock face, the deafening roar of combat slammed into them.

BOOM!

RIP!

WHOOSH!

The sky was saturated with the blinding, chaotic glare of overlapping techniques!

Wang Ba instantly pulled his squad back into the cover of the mountain, peering around the jagged stone.

Below them, a small strike force of elite second-grade Incense Burner Path zealots was brutally suppressing a massive, disorganized mob of over a hundred distinctly dressed cultivators. Despite being vastly outnumbered, the zealots’ overwhelming firepower made it look as though they had surrounded the mob.

“It’s the Rogue Cultivators!” Meng gasped in shock.

The mystery of the missing blockade was solved. The guards hadn’t abandoned their posts; they were busy massacring the local populace!

The sprawling mob of Rogue Cultivators—almost entirely comprised of Qi Refining grunts—was desperately dodging the relentless, high-tier magical bombardment. If they hadn’t managed to link their meager Qi into a crude, desperate defensive Formation, the zealots would have slaughtered them in seconds.

Even with the Formation, the slaughter was inevitable. Every few seconds, a low-level grunt’s Qi would buckle, and a second-grade technique or artifact would punch through the shield, instantly reducing them to a smear of bloody paste.

“Fall back! Retreat to the islands!” a voice shrieked from the center of the mob.

The command shattered their fragile discipline. The defensive Formation buckled, exposing massive tactical flaws.

The zealots laughed, immediately pouring an ocean of firepower into the cracks.

Watching the massacre unfold, a cold, cynical reality settled over Wang Ba.

No matter how many tricks, traps, or numbers a low-level cultivator possessed, they were absolutely meaningless in the face of absolute, overwhelming power. In the cultivation world, raw realm supremacy was the only true defense. Tactics only mattered when the power scales were balanced.

Shaking his head, Wang Ba had zero intention of playing the hero. He cycled his Qi, preparing to exploit the distraction and stealth his squad directly into the heart of Qianyu Lake.

But as his gaze swept over the routing mob, it locked onto the disheveled, blood-soaked cultivator leading the desperate retreat. The man radiated a frantic, early Foundation Establishment aura.

Wang Ba froze, utterly stunned.

“What in the hell is he doing here?!”