Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 64: The Shadow

Driven by a fleeting spark of human decency, Lu Yang left exactly one garment behind: a pair of underpants to preserve the demonic cultivator’s modesty.

…

The Storage Ring—a type of Dharma Treasure ubiquitous among Cultivation practitioners.

The Falling Coin Chamber of Commerce had published numerous market analyses on the “Most Popular Dharma Treasure,” and the Storage Ring consistently dominated the polls by a landslide. For cross-continental travel, hoarding illicit treasures, and hiding private slush funds, it was the quintessential household artifact.

Furthermore, the manufacturing cost was incredibly low. Even entry-level Qi Refining cultivators could afford the base models, albeit with severely restricted spatial dimensions.

Every year, waves of new Qi Refining cultivators purchased these rings, allowing the Falling Coin Chamber of Commerce to rake in astronomical profits. It was a cornerstone of their revenue stream.

To maintain market dominance, the Chamber also released “upgraded” versions annually—a highly lucrative business model that focused entirely on aesthetic chassis enhancements while offering zero increase to internal spatial capacity.

For the vast majority of the populace, a Storage Ring was the very first Dharma Treasure they acquired upon stepping onto the path of Cultivation, giving it immense sentimental value.

Whether one walked the righteous path or the demonic path, everyone utilized Storage Rings. Qin Yuanhao was naturally no exception.

This was the sum total of Qin Yuanhao’s understanding regarding Storage Rings.

He had lived for decades, and in all those years, he had never once heard of someone weaponizing a Storage Ring to instantaneously strip an enemy of their garments!

Was this in any way a reasonable application of spatial magic?!

Logically speaking, it was entirely sound. A Storage Ring’s primary limitation was its inability to store spiritual objects bound to a master—such as living organisms, spectral entities, or sentient spiritual treasures. Clearly, Qin Yuanhao’s mundane robes did not meet that criteria.

Fortunately, as a dignified practitioner of the demonic path, Qin Yuanhao’s sense of shame had long since eroded into dust. Even stripped down to his boxers, he remained a lethal combatant!

And then, he watched Meng Jingzhou casually produce a Recording Orb.

“What kind of deranged cult are you people from?! What blood feud drives you to this?!” Qin Yuanhao roared, utterly convinced that Lu Yang and his companions were sadistic disciples from one of the other three demonic sects.

Even if Lu Yang swore upon the heavens that they were righteous cultivators, Qin Yuanhao wouldn’t believe a word of it.

He simply couldn’t fathom it. Sure, he had made enemies over the years, but he had always been a consummate professional, meticulously avoiding any grudges that would warrant this level of psychological warfare.

Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu shot Lu Yang deeply complicated looks. Even they hadn’t anticipated their friend engineering such a profoundly unorthodox vector of attack.

“There is no need to observe martial chivalry when purging heretics. Jump him!” Lu Yang commanded, rallying his two companions.

If the three of them synchronized their assault, even a half-step Golden Core stage tiger demon would be reduced to paste. A late Foundation Establishment cultivator like Qin Yuanhao didn’t stand a chance.

They had briefly entertained the idea of challenging Qin Yuanhao to a series of one-on-one duels. As peerless geniuses, they possessed the absolute confidence to fight above their Cultivation realms.

However, pragmatic efficiency dictated that jumping him in a three-on-one beatdown was the optimal strategy.

Casting aside the last shreds of his dignity, Qin Yuanhao clashed head-on with the trio.

Sword light cascaded like a torrential river, painting the cavern with strokes of lethal, inky qi. The sheer, soaring heroic spirit of the assault forced Qin Yuanhao to scramble backward, utterly unwilling to face the brunt of their offensive!

Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu unleashed a synchronized barrage of four fists. The kinetic force crashed down like a collapsing mountain range, hammering directly into Qin Yuanhao’s sternum and causing him to violently cough up mouthfuls of blood!

With a desperate flick of his wrist, Qin Yuanhao manifested three monomolecular poison needles, thin as ox hair, and launched them directly into the chests of his three attackers.

To his absolute horror, the trio didn’t even blink. Their swords and fists showed no signs of faltering; if anything, the sheer violence of their assault escalated.

Lu Yang had long anticipated the deployment of biochemical weaponry and had mandated the preemptive ingestion of antidote pills.

Strictly speaking, “antidote pill” was a gross misnomer. “Toxin-quarantine pill” would be far more accurate. The alchemical matrix functioned by encapsulating the foreign venom before it could breach the bloodstream, aggressively flushing it out through the pores via accelerated perspiration.

Since the poison never actually interacted with the body’s systems from start to finish, calling it an “antidote” was a semantic stretch.

Qin Yuanhao’s heart sank. His opponents were terrifyingly over-prepared. His arsenal of sinister, underhanded techniques was completely neutralized—and frankly, even at their peak, his methods felt significantly less sinister than whatever the hell these three were doing.

Meng Jingzhou’s musculature expanded, spiritual qi surging through his veins like molten iron. In Qin Yuanhao’s vision, the incoming fist rapidly expanded, breaking the sound barrier before he could even twitch to evade.

Then, another spatial anomaly occurred. Meng Jingzhou’s strike carried apocalyptic kinetic weight; a direct hit should have pulverized the ribcage of any late Foundation Establishment cultivator. Yet, Qin Yuanhao absorbed the blow without a single flinch.

A raspy, grating laugh escaped Qin Yuanhao’s lips. He had told them—these brats couldn’t kill him!

After several more exchanges, Lu Yang finally deciphered the underlying matrix of Qin Yuanhao’s Cultivation technique. He brought his blade down in a blinding arc. The sword qi erupted like a celestial rainbow, an indestructible wave of localized destruction.

This strike wasn’t aimed at flesh or bone. It cleaved directly into Qin Yuanhao’s shadow!

“Damn it!” Qin Yuanhao shrieked, the phantom pain tearing through his nervous system.

“I knew it. You were the one who slaughtered that bandit gang last night. Your structural weakness is your shadow!”

Lu Yang recalled seeing Qin Yuanhao exit the brothel after receiving operational orders from his Branch Leader. The timeline perfectly aligned with the annihilation of the bandits.

With his ultimate trump card exposed, Qin Yuanhao abandoned all thoughts of combat. His physical body dissolved into the ether as his shadow slithered across the cavern floor at breakneck speed.

He might not be able to defeat them, but he possessed absolute confidence in his exfiltration capabilities. No matter how sharp a sword was, it couldn’t kill a two-dimensional absence of light.

“You three little runts, I’ve memorized your auras! Prepare yourselves for an eternity of my boundless vengeance, hahahaha…” Qin Yuanhao cackled, thoroughly convinced of his tactical superiority.

Suddenly, a blinding pillar of white radiance slammed into the shadow. Qin Yuanhao unleashed a guttural, heart-rending shriek—the photic blast was the equivalent of having a chunk of flesh violently ripped from his bones.

The Light Gathering Formation—a rudimentary Formation designed to absorb and project ambient photons. It was incredibly easy to master, widely considered a completely useless parlor trick. Yet, deployed in this specific theater of combat, its efficacy was devastating.

Forced out of his two-dimensional state, Qin Yuanhao’s physical body erupted from the shadow to physically block the blinding light. The gaping wound in his shadow instantly vanished.

His injuries stabilized.

“It seems you came prepared. But so what? Do you naively believe a mere Light Gathering Formation is enough to execute me?”

Qin Yuanhao sneered, “Are you ignorant of the fundamental law of nature? The brighter the light, the darker the shadow!”

Lu Yang, utterly unbothered, casually tossed out a dozen more Light Gathering Formations. He met the sneer with a deadpan stare. “Then have you ever heard of a Shadowless Lamp?”

Qin Yuanhao froze. He had absolutely no idea what a ‘Shadowless Lamp’ was, but the sheer clinical detachment in Lu Yang’s voice triggered a primal, ominous dread in his gut.

Lu Yang had no desire to deliver a physics lecture mid-combat. Dozens of intersecting beams of pure white light locked onto Qin Yuanhao. His shadow began to sizzle and smoke. Whether the demonic cultivator manifested his physical body to block the glare or compressed his form into the two-dimensional plane, he could not halt the degradation.

The shadow grew fainter and fainter, until it was entirely indistinguishable to the naked eye.

The principle of the Shadowless Lamp wasn’t to destroy a shadow, but to dilute it from multiple intersecting angles until it ceased to exist on the visible spectrum.

With a final, desperate roar, Qin Yuanhao was violently expelled from the microscopic remnants of his shadow. His true body could no longer maintain its quantum state within the darkness.

A streak of sword light plummeted from the heavens like a falling star—a sudden, unavoidable trajectory of absolute lethality that pierced cleanly through Qin Yuanhao’s chest.

Lu Yang had been waiting for precisely this moment.

“Damn, that was close. He almost slipped the net.” Meng Jingzhou exhaled a heavy breath as Qin Yuanhao’s lifeless body collapsed. If the target had successfully exfiltrated, their days of meticulous planning would have been completely wasted.

Meng Jingzhou had assumed their tactical net was airtight, that Qin Yuanhao couldn’t escape even if he sprouted wings. Who could have predicted his Cultivation technique was bound to the manipulation of shadows? It made him a logistical nightmare to pin down.

Meng Jingzhou playfully shoved Lu Yang’s shoulder, a grin breaking across his face. “Good thing you insisted on mass-producing those Light Gathering Formations before we deployed.”

“Pure statistical probability,” Lu Yang replied dryly. “I merely hypothesized his technique was shadow-reliant based on circumstantial evidence. I had no empirical proof.”

“Regardless, let’s hold off on the victory lap. We can celebrate after we’ve thoroughly sanitized the crime scene.”

Under Lu Yang’s pragmatic direction, the trio incinerated Qin Yuanhao’s corpse into an unrecognizable, carbonized husk. They unceremoniously kicked the remains into the tiger demon’s cavern, then detonated the entrance, triggering a localized structural collapse.

With the site buried under tons of rubble, unless someone launched a dedicated, mountain-wide excavation, this shallow grave would remain undiscovered until the end of time.