Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 24: The Great Terror

“I crept through the frigid, desiccated catacombs,” Shang Zhongtian murmured, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Fist-sized night pearls lined the walls, glowing with a spectral blue luminescence that had endured for untold millennia. The light was meager, barely enough to outline a silhouette, let alone illuminate a face. A prickling sensation crawled up my spine—the undeniable weight of an unseen gaze. My hair stood on end. Yet, whenever I whipped around, the corridor was empty. I convinced myself it was merely the paranoia of the trade.”

“I followed that phantom light through the jagged arteries of the earth until I breached the inner sanctum—the main burial chamber.”

“The sheer magnitude of the architecture stripped away my fear, leaving only awe. For a moment, I forgot I was standing in a dark, terrifying tomb.”

Shang Zhongtian closed his eyes, his face slackening as he immersed himself in the memory. When he finally spoke, his words carried a heavy reverence. “I had never laid eyes on a mausoleum of such impossible scale. The cavernous ceiling vaulted upward like the night sky itself. Beneath that stone firmament stood legions of terracotta soldiers, their bronze spears honed to a razor edge, standing in eternal, unwavering loyalty to their master. The burial goods—a dazzling hoard of unimaginable wealth—were meticulously arranged in the Eight Trigrams formation, resonating with the very laws of the Heavenly Dao.”

“Though the ancient corpse had been dead for centuries, the terrifying spiritual pressure bleeding through the sarcophagus still made my heart stutter. It felt less like a fallen Nascent Soul eccentric and more like a slumbering god, one that might open its eyes at any given second.”

“But hesitation is the death of a tomb raider. I moved with decisive precision, sweeping half the burial goods into my spatial ring. Just as I turned to make my escape, a sound shattered the silence.” He swallowed hard. “Footsteps. Echoing through the cavernous expanse of the tomb. It chilled me to the marrow.”

“What followed was a horror I had never encountered in all my decades of delving into the dark.”

At this point, Lu Yang and Tao Yaoye unconsciously leaned forward, the tension pulling them in.

Shang Zhongtian’s face twisted into an expression of profound agony, his voice trembling. “I encountered the descendants of that Nascent Soul cultivator coming to pay their respects to their ancestor!”

“What?” Lu Yang and Tao Yaoye heard the words perfectly, but their brains refused to process the anticlimax.

“Those people brought lavish offerings and Dharma Treasures to worship their ancestor, praying for the family’s longevity, the emergence of peerless geniuses, and success in the imperial examinations! On their way to the altar, they noticed me looting the burial chamber. They swarmed me! They captured me! It was absolutely terrifying. Even now, just thinking about it makes a cold sweat slick my palms.”

“…I think their reaction was entirely logical,” Lu Yang said, his tone deadpan. It spoke volumes of their good breeding that the family hadn’t butchered him on the spot.

“This is the ‘great terror’ you spoke of?” Tao Yaoye asked, her brow twitching.

Shang Zhongtian scratched his head, genuinely baffled by their lack of sympathy. “Yes! Is there anything more horrifying than digging up a grave and bumping into the owner’s children?”

“And then?”

“Then they beat me half to death. They shattered my cultivation base, dropping me from the peak of Qi Refining down to the middle stages, and threw me into the magistrate’s dungeon. The authorities forced me to liquidate my life’s savings to compensate for all my past thefts, then locked me up for ten years. When I finally saw the sun again, I decided to wash my hands of the martial world, turn over a new leaf, and never touch this messy business again.”

“Tell the truth,” Lu Yang said.

“I was too embarrassed to face my peers in the grave-robbing industry.”

“…”

Shang Zhongtian’s earnest absurdity left the two young cultivators entirely at a loss for words.

After personally burying Steward Zhang’s skinless corpse, Shang Zhongtian invited Lu Yang and Tao Yaoye to stay another night. Tao Yaoye immediately refused.

If it hadn’t been necessary to lure the Painted Skin Ghost out of hiding, she never would have chosen to sleep in this estate to begin with. Traveling through the dead of night posed zero difficulty for two Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Before departing, Lu Yang sought out Shang Yuan and gently patted the green parrot on the head.

If the people of Taiping Township hadn’t mistakenly identified this bird as a Demon Beast, Lu Yang and Tao Yaoye would never have come to the Shang estate, and the Painted Skin Ghost would have continued its grisly work.

“This parrot has good bones. It might actually be a Demon Beast. Cultivate it well,” Lu Yang advised.

Shang Yuan was startled and quickly asked for an explanation.

“In their nascent stages, the spiritual signatures of Demon Beasts are highly ambiguous and difficult to distinguish from ordinary animals. Even I can’t definitively grade it,” Lu Yang explained. “However, when Little Green fled your estate, it didn’t fly off into the wilderness. It continuously circled Taiping Township. It sensed the lethal danger within your walls and knew better than to approach. Perhaps it’s mere coincidence, or perhaps it’s the nascent spark of spiritual intelligence. Time will tell.”

Lu Yang smiled and left it at that.

Shang Zhongtian felt he had been a thoroughly inadequate host. These two had saved the lives of all twelve members of the Shang family, and the only compensation he could offer was the pathetic tale of his retirement.

“This is a manuscript of my personal grave-robbing insights. If you don’t find it beneath you, please accept it. It might come in handy someday.” Shang Zhongtian pulled a blue, thread-bound book from his robes and offered it to them.

Lu Yang politely accepted the manual, and the two finally waved their goodbyes.

On the journey back, Lu Yang glanced at his companion. “Do you want this tomb-raiding manual?”

Tao Yaoye shook her head. She wasn’t a tomb raider; what possible use would she have for it?

Lu Yang also felt it was practically useless, but he stowed it in his robes anyway.

“Why didn’t you warn me before deploying a virulent fungal toxin in my quarters?” Tao Yaoye demanded, still harboring a deep grievance over the battle tactics.

Fortunately, her Feathered Immortal Body possessed an absolute, divine resistance to all worldly poisons. Otherwise, wouldn’t she have contracted the same necrotic affliction as Steward Zhang? A peerless maiden of the Dao suffering from the unbearable itching of the soul—the dreaded athlete’s foot? The very thought was a crime against aesthetics.

Lu Yang shrugged. He had naturally released the toxin with the full knowledge that it was harmless to her constitution. “I did warn you.”

“When?”

“During dinner. I communicated it through my eyes.”

“I thought you were just glaring at me because you couldn’t reach the braised pork and wanted me to pass the plate!”

“I am not so shallow a man.”

***

The two successfully returned to the Dao Seeking Sect. Coincidentally, Meng Jingzhou had also just completed his mission and was currently venting his frustrations to the Senior Brother in charge of the task registry.

“Junior Brother Meng Jingzhou, your assignment was incredibly straightforward. How did you manage to incur a formal complaint from a fox demon regarding your ‘uncooperative attitude’?” The Senior Brother was utterly bewildered. All Meng had to do was deliver a dual cultivation manual. How could one possibly have an attitude problem during a delivery?

“Senior Brother, you need to launch a full investigation into that vixen! There is definitely something wrong with her!” Meng Jingzhou roared, his face flushed with righteous indignation. “I went there strictly to provide the dual cultivation technique, but she actually demanded to ‘test the merchandise’! She insisted we practice the dual cultivation technique right then and there to verify its authenticity!”

Meng Jingzhou slammed his fist against the table. “If it weren’t for the absolute necessity of maintaining my Pure Yang body—the tragic, ironclad rule of the Single Spiritual Root—I would have cultivated with her on the spot!”

Looking at his furious expression, it was entirely unclear whether his anger stemmed from the fox demon questioning his dedication to the Dao, or the bitter tragedy of the Path of the Eternal Bachelor robbing him of a romantic encounter.

Seeing the quest-giving Senior Brother rubbing his temples in helplessness, Lu Yang stepped forward to defuse the situation. “Senior Brother, the two of us have completed the Demon Beast subjugation task.”

Lu Yang provided a detailed, tactical breakdown of the mission: how the paranoid mortals of Taiping Township had mistaken a parrot for a talking Demon Beast, how he and Tao Yaoye had intentionally exposed flaws in their defense to bait the Painted Skin Ghost, and how the entity was ultimately eradicated.

To conclude his report, Lu Yang placed the urn containing the Painted Skin Ghost’s ashes onto the registry desk.

“To execute your very first mission with such flawless precision… you are quite impressive.” The Senior Brother looked at Lu Yang with newfound respect. When he had posted the task, he assumed it was a simple beast hunt. He never expected a supernatural conspiracy.

Hearing how Lu Yang had deployed a targeted, flesh-eating fungal toxin to swiftly cripple the entity elevated his evaluation even further. Without the virulent foot rot, subduing a Painted Skin Ghost would have been a grueling battle of attrition, and the creature might very well have escaped.

Most importantly, this Junior Brother casually carried a weaponized strain of athlete’s foot in his robes.

At that thought, the Senior Brother subtly shifted his chair a few inches away.

“You two have vastly exceeded the mission parameters. Your original Contribution Points will be quadrupled. Lu Yang, you receive one hundred and twenty Contribution Points. Junior Sister Tao Yaoye, as you played a supporting role in this operation, you receive ninety Contribution Points.”

Tao Yaoye voiced no objections. Lu Yang’s tactical mind had been the crux of the mission; she had merely served as the beautiful, heavily-poisoned bait.