Cultivation: I Can Steal Lifespan from Spirit Beasts

Chapter 200: Master Ear

A desolate, windswept mountain.

“Cough, cough… you really want to bleed me dry, don’t you?!”

Shen Fu stood perfectly still, turning the bloody Storage Ring over in his hand. He listened to the weak, eerie voice echoing within his Spiritual Terrace, his expression carved from ice. “I don’t care. I made a promise to Senior Brother. He just pulled both of us from the jaws of death, so I will fulfill his request.”

“Bullshit! I didn’t need him to save me! A measly Foundation Establishment ant… back when I ruled the Great Yan, trash like him wouldn’t even be fit to wipe my boots!” The eerie voice dripped with wounded pride and annoyance.

“Believe what you want. Without Senior Brother, you would have dissipated into nothingness today,” Shen Fu replied, his tone entirely wooden.

His absolute stubbornness infuriated the eerie voice. “Nonsense! I am already dead! Whether he saves me or not, I remain a ghost! Don’t think for a second that just because I see a shred of Potential in you, you can order me around like a dog—”

“Enough, Old Demon Jiang. Are you going to open it or not?” Shen Fu interrupted impatiently. “Or could it be you simply lack the ability?”

The eerie voice scoffed, a cold sneer vibrating in Shen Fu’s mind. “Heh. Goading me? Do you take me for a three-year-old child, so easily manipulated?”

A beat passed.

“I… of course I have the ability!” Old Demon Jiang snapped. “Hold the ring steady!”

Shen Fu’s expression didn’t shift, but he dutifully gripped the Storage Ring. After years of sharing a mind, he knew Old Demon Jiang’s arrogant nature inside and out. A slight prod at his ego was all it ever took.

“Don’t look at the contents,” Shen Fu quickly added, suddenly remembering the demon’s habits.

This drew a scornful, echoing laugh. “Hah! What kind of beggar do you take me for? Even if you shoved this backwater junk in my face, I wouldn’t spare it a second glance… Hiss, wait, there is a massive amount of Divine Essence Dew in here!”

“Let me see… Wow! This bastard was loaded! Tsk, his puppet techniques are crude garbage, these Pills are muddy, but the Magical Artifacts are passable. They’ll serve perfectly as kindling for the ‘Artifact Detonation Technique.’ Kid Shen, aren’t you going to skim a little off the top?”

Shen Fu sighed, exasperation finally breaking his stoic mask. He knew the old monster couldn’t resist prying.

Still, he was inwardly astounded by the demon’s terrifying speed. Old Demon Jiang was nothing but a fragile wisp of a remnant soul, yet he had shattered the psychic lock of a Perfection-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator effortlessly. Shen Fu often wondered what kind of heaven-defying monster this old man had been at his peak, and what catastrophe had reduced him to a parasite. Whenever he asked, the old demon would hem and haw, changing the subject. Shen Fu didn’t press; sooner or later, the demon’s ego would compel him to brag about his past.

“Cough, cough… by the way, Kid Shen. I am afraid my time is almost up,” the eerie voice suddenly murmured.

Shen Fu froze. A rare flicker of genuine panic cracked his cold demeanor. “W-what did you say?”

“I said, I am going to die. Truly die this time. Not even a speck of my soul will remain.”

Shen Fu didn’t erupt into intense emotion or cry out. He simply stood there, staring blankly at the rocks. After a long, heavy silence, he asked softly, “How long?”

“Two, maybe three years,” Old Demon Jiang replied, his tone surprisingly light.

“Is it because you burned your essence to crack the Forbidden Sky Talisman earlier?”

“Mm, you could say that. I am but a wisp now. In my prime, a Forbidden Sky Talisman of that pathetic grade would have shattered with a flick of my wrist…” For the first time, the eerie voice carried a heavy, weary lament.

Shen Fu fell silent again. “Is there a way to save you?”

“A way? Of course there is. North of the Wind Descending Continent lies a primordial sea eye containing the ‘Hundred-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Spirit Marrow.’ Nourishing my soul in it for a century would restore me to absolute Perfection. Oh, and the ‘Thousand Buddha Bone Relics’ from the Xituo Continent can regrow flesh from a phantom. If you can slaughter those old baldies, that’s an option. Then there is the ‘Purple Gold Seven Orifices Pill’ from the Taiqing Sect—the supreme sect of the Daosheng Continent. When that Pill is forged, it gains sentience; swallowing it can revive the dead. There is also…”

Old Demon Jiang rattled off a list of mythological treasures Shen Fu had never even heard whispers of. Just from the sheer weight of their names, Shen Fu knew obtaining even one was a near-impossible pipe dream.

“Alright, don’t strain your brain over it,” the eerie voice drawled lazily. “While I’m still kicking, I will drill some proper techniques into your skull. That way, when you roam the cultivation world, you won’t get recognized by my old rivals and have them laugh their teeth out at your shoddy skills.”

Shen Fu didn’t respond. He simply gripped the unlocked Storage Ring, summoned his Magic Power, and flew toward Wang Ba’s location.

…

After handing off the ring to Shen Fu, Wang Ba didn’t waste time worrying about whether the youth would steal it. He trusted his judgment. Instead, he immediately sat cross-legged and entered a meditative state.

Having constantly relied on his Five Elements spells recently, he had accumulated a wealth of tactical combat data. He seized this quiet moment to analyze and refine his arsenal.

The Five Elements combination spells are devastatingly powerful, but the fatal flaws are glaring, Wang Ba thought, mentally dissecting his duel with Zheng Yuanhua. The cast time is far too long. If an opponent is sufficiently paranoid and breaks distance early, the entire fifteen-spell chain hits empty air, wasting a massive chunk of Magic Power. Once I run dry, I am a sitting duck. Furthermore, the combo lacks crowd-control or binding mechanics to pin the target in place.

If only my Magic Power reserves were deeper…

My current absolute limit is a fifteen-spell chain. That equals exactly three full elemental cycles. Initiating with Wood, terminating with Water, and utilizing the Golden Wind Jade Dew Art as the finishing catalyst…

Wang Ba silently recorded these epiphanies, visualizing the spell matrix in his mind.

Thanks to his Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment, his Dantian’s capacity and recovery rate were monstrous. Now, over a year into the Foundation Establishment stage, fueled by the relentless consumption of Spirit Poultry and Spirit Turtle essences, his Magic Power density vastly eclipsed that of his peers.

However, because his foundation was an abyss, filling his Dantian completely would take time. Wang Ba estimated it would take another eleven or twelve years to hit the Perfection stage. The further one progressed, the exponentially harder it became to condense even a single drop of liquid Magic Power.

Currently, his ability to chain fifteen spells seamlessly was a miracle entirely reliant on the mastery granted by his system panel. Every hand seal, every breath, and every elemental conversion was executed with flawless, robotic perfection. If a normal cultivator attempted this and misaligned even a single syllable, the entire combination would violently misfire, losing all its momentum.

Yet, a fundamental bottleneck remained: Metal and Fire.

Because his spiritual roots lacked these two affinities, his execution of Metal and Fire spells, while technically perfect, lacked the raw, native resonance he achieved with Water, Wood, and Earth. This bottleneck hindered the overall kinetic output of the spell chain.

If I possessed all five spiritual roots, the Five Virtues would harmonize flawlessly. The elements would mutually generate, each violently amplifying the next. If I had that synergy during the clash with Zheng Yuanhua, I would have crushed him directly through the spell wave, Wang Ba concluded.

But the solution was already in motion. Once he finalized the trade with Wu Buping for the third-grade ‘Meteorite Flame Red Gold Iron’, he could harvest the dense Metal and Fire Dao within it to forge a second Dantian. Then, the Five Elements would be complete.

When that day came, his combination spell would undergo a terrifying evolution. Coupled with breaking into the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment, his firepower would skyrocket. Wang Ba didn’t even dare imagine the apocalyptic destruction he could unleash at the Perfection stage.

At that level, a monster like Zheng Yuanhua wouldn’t even be qualified to stand in front of me, Wang Ba thought, a rare spark of confidence igniting in his chest.

This brutal exchange had finally given him a clear benchmark of his own lethality. He was still vastly inferior to a Perfection-stage overlord like Zheng Yuanhua. However, he was no longer the weak, defenseless prey he had once been.

Ordinary mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators were no longer a threat. As for the late-stage… the waters there were deep, but relying on his Five Elements combos, the sheer brute force of the Earth Ape King, and his Substitute Death turtles, he could genuinely hold his own.

A surreal sense of vertigo washed over him. Just a year ago, he was a hollow cultivator with zero combat arts, desperate to hide from the world. Now, he was trading blows with regional leaders.

Still, Wang Ba remained brutally pragmatic. He knew his greatest trump card wasn’t his spells, but his customized spirit beasts. The Earth Ape King alone could likely bludgeon a standard late-stage cultivator to death.

Remembering the suffocating, Kaiju-like demonic aura the ape had exuded during its transformation, Wang Ba’s inner researcher salivated at the thought of dissecting the phenomenon.

Before he could spiral down that rabbit hole, his Divine Sense rippled. He relaxed instantly as a familiar figure stepped out from the dense tree line.

“Senior Brother. Here.” Shen Fu tossed the Storage Ring over.

Wang Ba caught it, faintly sensing a heavy, lingering gloom around the youth. Choosing not to pry into Shen Fu’s demons, Wang Ba smiled brightly, his Divine Sense slipping into the ring without resistance.

“Junior Brother, you actually cracked it!” Wang Ba praised genuinely. “Come, let’s see what kind of fortune that bastard was hoarding.”

He swept his hand, emptying the ring’s contents onto the cavern floor.

Shen Fu immediately stepped forward, his hands blurring as he laid down a complex array of flags around the loot. “Some high-tier cultivators embed tracking runes or blood-curses into their wealth. This Formation will scrub the majority of those tricks clean,” Shen Fu explained smoothly.

Wang Ba raised an eyebrow, deeply impressed by the youth’s paranoia. Shen Fu’s years in the meat-grinder of the Rogue Cultivator underworld had forged him into a brilliantly cautious survivor.

Turning to the loot, Wang Ba’s breath hitched.

“So much Divine Essence Dew!”

Nearly two hundred luminous, colorless droplets floated in specialized jade vials. Wang Ba was overjoyed. To force Alpha-Fifteen to rapidly produce specialized chicks, he had been constantly draining his Yin Spirit power. This severe deficit had left him terrified of using his Yin Spirit arts in actual combat.

(Though, admittedly, his one attempt at using Yin Spirit attacks on Incense Burner Path zealots had failed miserably, likely due to their innate resistance as practitioners of the same lineage).

But with this massive stockpile of Divine Essence Dew, he could instantly supercharge his Yin Spirit reserves. It would grant him an entirely new vector of attack against orthodox Cultivators.

Zheng Yuanhua’s status in the Incense Burner Path is far, far higher than I estimated, Wang Ba realized with a chill.

He moved on, unpacking several heavy black clay jars. He recognized them instantly—these were incubation vessels for Yin Ghosts.

However, upon inspecting a specific set of jars, Wang Ba’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief. They were packed with high-grade Soul Seeds!

“Second-grade Low Grade… Middle Grade… Second-grade High Grade Soul Seeds! There are so many!”

Wang Ba’s eyes burned with feverish intensity. A single second-grade High Grade Soul Seed could force a High Grade spirit beast to artificially touch the boundaries of the Top Grade.

But a terrifying hypothesis formed in Wang Ba’s mind: If I force these Soul Seeds to cannibalize each other… could they mutate and birth a second-grade Top Grade Soul Seed? A Top Grade seed could temporarily push a Top Grade beast across the heavenly chasm into the third-grade realm! It would be a supreme, qualitative leap in destructive power. Even if the duration was only a few breaths, utilizing a third-grade Kaiju at a critical moment meant absolute victory. If he had possessed a third-grade beast today, Zheng Yuanhua wouldn’t have escaped with his life.

If I knew where the Incense Burner Path outposts were, I could actively hunt them down to harvest their Soul Seeds… Wang Ba mused darkly, before instantly crushing the thought. No. Greed leads to the grave. If I stumble into a Golden Core elder, I’m dead. Stay steady. Farm in peace.

He violently suppressed his racing heart and continued cataloging the loot.

There were piles of Magical Artifacts, Talismans, Pills, and even crude combat puppets. Many of the artifacts and defensive Talismans were of pristine quality. Wang Ba ignored the Pills, having no use for human medicine. He sifted through several gold-leafed rubbings and jade slips containing dark arts.

But none of this compared to the visceral shock of holding a very specific, fleshy artifact.

“This is… a Master Ear?”

Wang Ba stared at the grotesque, ear-shaped Magical Artifact. It was nearly identical to the Spirit Ears the zealots used, but its aura was profoundly deeper.

He never imagined Zheng Yuanhua would keep the sect’s command-and-control artifact in his personal ring.

The Master Ear intercepts the soul resonance of anyone using a Spirit Ear… which means, as long as I map their auras, I can navigate the wilderness and bypass every single Incense Burner Path patrol all the way back to the Eastern Sage outpost! Adrenaline surged through him. He immediately poured a sliver of Divine Sense into the fleshy artifact.

Instantly, a cacophony of whispers flooded his mind. Above the artifact, a translucent, holographic map materialized, dotted with glowing markers and the distinct soul-signatures of various patrol captains.

Wang Ba’s eyes narrowed as he pinpointed a cluster of red dots. “The nearest patrol… is right over there.”

…

Far to the south of the Eastern Sage outpost.

Mount Yu Tang.

Deep underground, cloaked by a massive, tiered concealment Formation, lay a reinforced secret chamber.

A one-armed figure sat trembling on a meditation mat. His face was a sickly, pale white beneath a flushed, feverish red. It was Zheng Yuanhua, having barely survived his spatial jump.

His face contorted violently, cycling through expressions of absolute hysteria, suffocating rage, profound hatred, and a sickening, gnawing regret.

But eclipsing it all was a murderous intent so dense it practically warped the air around him.

“He destroyed my Dao body! He severed my path to immortality!” Zheng Yuanhua shrieked, slamming his remaining fist into the stone floor until his knuckles shattered. “He deserves to die! He deserves to be butchered!”

With the Yin Spirit Divine Idol on the verge of reconstruction, Zheng Yuanhua had been perfectly positioned to seize the momentum and break into the third-stage (Golden Core realm). But losing an arm had critically unbalanced his physical vessel, erecting a massive, nearly insurmountable wall in his cultivation.

Worse, the supreme third-grade Yin Ghost—the very entity he had starved himself to nurture as his foundation for ascension—had been casually eaten by a chicken.

His dreams of godhood were reduced to ash.

The agonizing hatred he felt for the nameless Heavenly Gate Sect cultivator burned hotter than the sun.

But the nightmare didn’t end there. The absolute, most terrifying reality was that his Storage Ring was still strapped to his severed arm back at Qianyu Lake!

Losing his life savings and cultivation supplies was agonizing, but it was nothing compared to the true crisis: The ring contained the Master Ear.

It was the only Master Ear currently issued to the Yin Spirit lineage in the State of Chen. The third-grade Divine Envoys, consumed by their dark ritual to forge ‘that thing,’ had entrusted it to him to act as the supreme commander of the region.

And he had lost it.

Pure, unadulterated terror temporarily smothered his rage. If the Divine Envoys discovered his failure, their punishments would make him beg for the sweet release of death.

Breathe. Breathe! Zheng Yuanhua forced his hyperventilating lungs to slow, frantically rationalizing his survival.

It will be fine for now! I am still alive. My psychic lock on that ring is tied to my Perfection-stage soul. Even if a Golden Core True Person native to the Qi Refining sects found it, cracking it would take them at least a year of continuous brute force.

And it most likely fell into the hands of that Foundation Establishment worm anyway. He can’t even scratch the lock! Once I stabilize my wounds, I will enlist Li Canghai, return to Qianyu Lake, and slaughter him to retrieve— CRACK. Zheng Yuanhua’s thoughts violently derailed. The color drained from his face entirely, leaving him looking like a corpse. His eyes widened in sheer, reality-breaking horror.

He felt his psychic tether to the ring snap.

“How… how was it cracked so fast?!” Zheng Yuanhua whispered, his voice trembling with absolute dread. “Did… did a Nascent Soul True Lord intervene?!”