“Yes. I only received the news yesterday.”

Deacon Li looked grim.

“They say a vicious criminal broke into Old Man Sun’s residence in the dead of night. He was tortured to death—brutally. His newly wedded concubine and over a dozen servants… none were spared. It was a slaughter.”

Li paused, his voice dropping lower. “The strange thing is, the Sect investigators found Spirit Stones and mundane wealth left untouched in his bedroom. The killer didn’t take a single coin.”

Wang Ba felt a cold hand grip his heart. He thought of how Old Man Sun had looked after him when he first arrived at the manor.

“Deacon Li, that… that doesn’t make sense,” Wang Ba stammered, his voice laced with disbelief. “Old Man Sun had cultivated to the Ninth Layer of the Physique Strengthening Scripture. He possessed the strength of a thousand jin—he was nearly half a ton stronger than an ordinary man! What common bandit could possibly harm him?”

Deacon Li hesitated for a moment before answering.

“Based on the scene… it is suspected that a cultivator was responsible.”

A cultivator? An Immortal?

But why would a high-level cultivator target Old Man Sun?

Wang Ba’s mind raced. The answer struck him almost immediately, sending a jolt of terror through his veins.

The Golden Page.

The page inscribed with the Yin Spirit Great Dream Scripture that Old Man Sun had pressed into his hands before leaving.

“I don’t know,” Deacon Li said, shaking his head. “But regardless, Old Man Sun was a Deacon of our Sect. The Sect won’t let this slide. They will get to the bottom of it.”

Li fixed Wang Ba with a serious look. “If you know anything—anything at all—you must tell me.”

“Yes! Of course!” Wang Ba nodded furiously, hiding the tremor in his hands.

Deacon Li didn’t seem in the mood to chat. After a perfunctory check of the inventory, he took the tribute Rare Fowl and eggs and left in a hurry.

He didn’t even bother to inspect the coop.

Wang Ba’s efforts to hide his special stock—Alpha-One through Alpha-Six—had been unnecessary.

But Wang Ba didn’t care about that. He stood frozen in the yard, lost in thought.

Old Man Sun’s violent death… suspected cultivator involvement. Was it random? Or targeted?

If it was random, fine.

But if it was targeted… was it for the Golden Page?

Old Man Sun had served the Sect for fifty years safely. Yet, mere months after returning to the mortal world, someone tracked him down and tortured him. That implied the killer knew exactly what they were looking for and placed immense value on it.

And given the methods of cultivators… Old Man Sun, a mere mortal in the end, likely couldn’t keep a secret under torture.

Which meant…

The killer likely knew about Wang Ba.

The blood drained from Wang Ba’s face.

If I leave the Sect, I’m dead.

They would be waiting for him, just as they had waited for Old Man Sun.

Of course, this was just speculation. It might be Wang Ba’s inherent paranoia spiraling out of control.

But he was a man who lived by the code of caution. Once the seed of doubt was planted, it took root deep in his heart.

“I will not take a single step out of this Sect until I have a Spiritual Root,” he vowed silently.

In the following days, Wang Ba threw himself into his work to drown out his fear.

He took the remaining sixteen male Rare Fowl and forced them through a Life Breakthrough. Then, he harvested their Lifespan, slaughtered them, and ate them one by one.

Most of the spiritual energy in their flesh was wasted due to his lack of a proper cultivation method, but the Visualization of the Yin Spirit managed to capture a portion of it.

Inside his Yin Spirit Abode, a second drop of Yin Spirit power condensed. Then a third.

As his Yin Spirit grew stronger, his perception of the world sharpened. He could now see the flow of Qi with greater clarity.

He noticed that among the twenty Rare Fowl he had fed Spirit Stones to, a few possessed a slightly denser aura of spiritual energy. The others showed little change.

They had all eaten the same feed. The difference lay in their bloodlines.

Resources were limited. Wang Ba stopped wasting expensive materials on the duds. He culled the flock, keeping only the six with the highest potential. He fed them another round of Spirit Stone powder, implanted fresh Tendon-Severing Nematodes, and waited.

Three months passed in the blink of an eye.

“Exhausted! I’m absolutely dead!”

Old Hou panted heavily as he hauled a sack of chicken feed up the stone steps of the manor.

“Have you heard the news, Brother Wang?” Old Hou wheezed, wiping sweat from his brow. “Those young Immortals from the Sect went to some grand tournament recently. Rumor has it our Eastern Sage Sect came in dead last!”

Old Hou loved to gossip during his deliveries. Usually, it was mundane chatter, but today’s topic piqued Wang Ba’s interest.

“I hadn’t heard,” Wang Ba said, feigning surprise. “Isn’t the Eastern Sage Sect supposed to be very strong?”

“Who knows?” Old Hou shook his head, looking around conspiratorially. “They say they’re strong, but I heard a big shot from our Sect fought an Elder from the ‘Heavenly Gate Sect’ a while back. Guess what? Heh! Our guy got thrashing! Personally, I think the Heavenly Gate Sect has the upper hand these days.”

“Shh!”

Wang Ba pressed a finger to his lips, his eyes darting around the empty yard.

“Old Hou, keep your voice down!”

He had heard of the Heavenly Gate Sect from Hou before. They were a mysterious, rising power rumored to care for the suffering of the common folk. As they grew, friction with the established local sects—like the Eastern Sage Sect—had intensified.

Old Hou seemed to have a dangerous fondness for them.

Praising a rival sect while standing on Eastern Sage soil? For a lowly laborer, that was a death wish.

But Old Hou just waved a dismissive hand at Wang Ba’s caution.

“Bah! The Immortals don’t have time to listen to us blowing hot air,” Hou scoffed. “They don’t give a damn about cheap lives like ours. To them, we’re just trash who will never cultivate Spiritual Roots.”

“Never cultivate Spiritual Roots?”

Wang Ba froze. He latched onto the phrase immediately.

“You don’t know?” Old Hou looked at him, a bitter sneer curling his lips. “We’ve been scammed, Brother Wang. The Sect played us all.”

“You practice the Physique Strengthening Scripture, right? Heh! It’s a trap.”

Hou leaned in, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “If you can’t reach the Tenth Layer within three years, you’re done. No hope for the rest of your life. You’ll never awaken a root.”

“Three years?!”

Wang Ba was stunned.

Three years? Impossible.

He knew the Physique Strengthening Scripture intimately. It was a water-grinding method—slow, steady, requiring immense patience. Without his ability to manipulate Lifespan, even a thousand years might not be enough to master it, let alone three.

“Old Hou,” Wang Ba asked sharply, “who told you this?”

“The Ascension Society, of course… cough!”

Old Hou’s face stiffened. He realized he had said too much.

“Heh, well, it’s not exactly a secret,” he stammered, backing away toward his cart. “Plenty of people know! Anyway, I have more deliveries. Talk tomorrow!”

With that, he jumped onto his donkey cart and whipped the reins, fleeing the conversation.

“Ascension Society…”

Wang Ba narrowed his eyes as he watched the cart rattle away.

For some reason, the image of Deacon Li’s plump, smiling face flashed through his mind.

Several days later.

Wang Ba stood in the coop, staring at two chickens with uncontainable joy.

“Finally succeeded!”

“At last!”

After burning through thirty-two Low-Grade Spirit Stones and three gourds of Tendon-Severing Nematodes, he had done it.

Standing before him were two Rare Fowl that were undeniably transforming into Spirit Poultry.

They weren’t fully evolved yet, but the signs were unmistakable. With a little more care, they would cross the threshold.

This was the proof of concept he needed. With this method established as his “cover,” he could finally mass-produce Spirit Poultry without raising suspicion.

Ten days later.

Deacon Li arrived for the collection. When Wang Ba presented his offering, the Deacon’s chubby face went slack with shock.

“You… you actually cultivated Spirit Poultry?”

Li stared at the birds. “And two of them?!”

Wang Ba bowed his head, the picture of humility.

“I have you to thank, Deacon. The book you lent me, Notes on Avian Husbandry, contained a method for inducing transformation. I studied it day and night. After many failed attempts… I got lucky.”

Feigning total incompetence wasn’t smart. Showing a bit of talent—just enough to be useful—was the best way to secure his position.

He deliberately presented two birds. One could be a fluke. Two implied a reproducible success.

Deacon Li’s mind was racing.

He knew about the method in Notes on Avian Husbandry. It wasn’t a secret; it was just famously impractical. The cost of the Spirit Stones required to transform a single bird usually exceeded the value of the bird itself by a factor of hundreds. It was a money pit.

For Wang Ba to succeed—and produce two—suggested he had found a way to make it work, or perhaps he had a natural gift for beast taming.

Either way, Wang Ba’s value just skyrocketed.

Li grabbed Wang Ba’s arm, his grip tight and earnest.

“Brother… this is significant. Very significant. I’m going to report this to the Sect immediately!”

Li lowered his voice. “However, the annual Sect Recruitment is coming up. The Elders are swamped with preparations, so news might be slow. But don’t worry—I promise you won’t be shorted on benefits.”

“And remember,” Li added sternly, “keep this to yourself. Don’t go spreading it around that you can do this. Understand?”

“Understood,” Wang Ba said.

Li nodded and hurried away, clutching the cages containing the two Spirit Poultry as if they were made of gold.

“Sect Recruitment?”

Wang Ba stood alone in the yard, pondering the term.

There were two ways to join a Sect: knock on the door and beg (or pay), or wait for the Grand Recruitment.

Wang Ba had taken the first path—using money and connections to buy a spot as a servant because he lacked a Spiritual Root.

In a flash, nearly ten months had passed since he arrived.

Standing there, listening to the wind rustle through the trees, he felt a sudden, profound sense of distance. It felt as though a lifetime had passed.

He sighed, shaking off the melancholy.

He had established his value. He had secured a channel through Deacon Li. Now, he could safely go to the market, buy up Rare Fowl, and begin his real work.

It was time to push the Physique Strengthening Scripture to the limit.