Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 85: Reverse Longevity Talisman

“Open the door!” Zheng Shouhe hissed, the cold steel of his dagger biting into the small of Wen Xiangyu’s back.

Left with no alternative, the trembling widow unlatched the door. Standing on the threshold was a young man with a refined, handsome face—Lu Yang.

Wen Xiangyu’s eyes darted frantically, silently screaming at him to flee. Lu Yang, completely ignoring the frantic ocular Morse code, plastered on a flawless, deadpan customer-service smile. “Your grilled skewers. Hot and ready.”

Zheng Shouhe mirrored the artificial grin. The delivery boy looked like a gullible fool; luring him inside to his doom would be child’s play. “Why don’t you step inside and take a seat, young man? I’ll fetch your coin.”

Taking the invitation at face value, Lu Yang strolled into the pitch-black room. “Not even a single spirit-lamp lit?” he chuckled dryly. “Turning in rather early, aren’t we?”

Seeing the delivery boy wander foolishly into the slaughterhouse, Wen Xiangyu’s panic peaked. Steeling her resolve, she lunged to shove Lu Yang back out the door.

But Zheng Shouhe was a seasoned predator. Sneering at her futile heroism, he violently hurled the widow behind him. His dagger thrust forward, a venomous fang striking through the absolute darkness toward Lu Yang’s vitals.

Zheng had been lurking in the shadows for hours; his pupils were fully dilated. The boy, stepping in from the moonlit street, would be blind for at least three seconds. A fatal window.

Tonight was destined to be a symphony of bloodshed!

Lu Yang casually front-kicked Zheng Shouhe fifteen feet across the room.

Because applying mortal biological science—like pupil dilation—to a Cultivator was a fool’s errand.

The impact was catastrophic. Zheng Shouhe felt as though a falling meteor had just parked itself in his sternum. Stars exploded across his vision, several ribs snapped like dry twigs, and a geyser of blood erupted from his mouth.

Panic pierced his bloodlust. He had kicked a sleeping dragon. Survival dictated only one path: the hostage!

Forcing down the agonizing pain with sheer willpower, Zheng rolled over and blindly snatched at Wen Xiangyu’s wrist in the dark.

“Take one more step, and I’ll butcher her!” he roared, his voice dripping with feral desperation.

The figure trapped in his iron grip let out a dry, unimpressed scoff. “Who exactly are you butchering?”

Zheng Shouhe froze. He looked down, his blood running cold as he realized the wrist he held didn’t belong to the delicate widow. It belonged to Lu Yang.

With the casual grace of a man swatting a fly, Lu Yang jammed the heel of his palm under Zheng’s chin, pinning his head back. His free hand smoothly stripped the dagger away before systematically, and almost lazily, dislocating all four of the killer’s limbs.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

“My luck is truly abysmal,” Lu Yang sighed, dusting off his hands. “I just wanted to deliver some late-night BBQ. Is a peaceful gig too much to ask?”

He exhaled a breath of spiritual qi, igniting a nearby candle. A dim, flickering light finally illuminated the room.

Wen Xiangyu sat slumped on the floor, her mind entirely blank. The humble waiter from the local skewer joint had just descended like a primordial war god, dismantling a hardened killer in the span of a few breaths.

“You alright?” Lu Yang asked, offering a hand to help the dazed widow to her feet.

“I—I’m fine,” she stammered.

“Excellent,” Lu Yang said, his tone shifting back to absolute business. “That’ll be thirty copper coins for the skewers, please.”

“Ah? Oh… right.” Only then did her shattered reality piece itself back together. He was here for a delivery; saving her life was just a localized side-effect.

After numbly handing over the coin, the lingering terror demanded she make small talk just to anchor herself to reality. “A-are you a Cultivator?”

“Obviously.”

“Cultivators… run late-night barbecue stands?”

“Hey, the economy is tough. A man’s gotta eat.”

Writhing on the floor in a puddle of his own blood and dislocated joints, Zheng Shouhe wept tears of profound existential regret. What kind of cursed luck was this? Had the grand, ethereal world of Cultivation truly degraded to the point where its mighty practitioners were running midnight takeout to make ends meet?!

Seeing the widow still trembling like a leaf in a hurricane, Lu Yang shook his head with a wry smile. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the magistrate’s office to report this.”

“Thank you,” Wen Xiangyu breathed, before suddenly remembering the other intruder. “Wait, there’s another man upstairs. He must be an accomplice.”

When she had first awakened, she had seen both Zheng Shouhe and Lu Zhi, assuming they were a team that had suffered a violent falling-out over her beauty.

Lu Yang trudged upstairs and found Lu Zhi hogtied on the floor. “Ah, a coordinated syndicate,” Lu Yang noted dryly.

“Slander!” Lu Zhi shrieked, wriggling like a desperate caterpillar. “Don’t lump me in with that psycho! He’s a kidnapper and a murderer! I’m just a humble burglar! Our baseline sentencing thresholds under the imperial penal code are completely different!”

Lu Yang raised an eyebrow, genuinely amused. “You’re surprisingly well-versed in criminal jurisprudence.”

“Professional standards, brother,” Lu Zhi said with a hint of tragic pride. “In our line of work, you always cross-reference the legal statutes before a heist to calculate the risk-to-reward ratio of your prison time.”

“Fascinating,” Lu Yang said. “Let’s head to the yamen and see how accurate your calculations are.”

The word ‘yamen’ shattered the thief’s professional facade. “Wait, wait, wait! Brother, let’s negotiate! We’re both men of the jianghu, navigating the treacherous rivers and lakes! There’s no need to be so ruthless. How about a trade? I give you a supreme treasure, and you pretend you never saw me?”

Lu Yang sized the man up. He was a mortal, devoid of even a drop of spiritual qi. “What kind of supreme treasure?”

“A mystical yellow paper! It commands sleep! With this talisman, you can force anyone into a deep slumber and do whatever you desire to them!”

Lu Yang’s deadpan demeanor vanished. He instantly connected the thief’s words to the bizarre epidemic of daytime lethargy plaguing the town. The plot had just thickened into a concrete wall.

“Where is it?” he demanded, his voice dropping to a glacial chill.

Lu Zhi wasn’t entirely brain-dead. “Swear an oath to let me go first!”

Lu Yang raised three fingers, his expression one of absolute, solemn piety. “I, Chi Xulong, do solemnly swear to the Heavens. If I do not let you go, may the Heavens strike Chi Xulong down with five divine thunderbolts!”

Lu Zhi beamed, practically weeping with relief. “The yellow paper is stashed in the corner of the outer wall on the first floor!”

Clearly, Lu Zhi wasn’t entirely brain-dead, but he was still pretty stupid.

Lu Yang vaulted out the second-story window, landing silently. A quick sweep of the first-floor perimeter revealed the hidden stash. It was a piece of yellow talisman paper, inscribed with esoteric, blood-red runes that Lu Yang couldn’t immediately decipher.

He tucked the talisman securely into his robes and vaulted back up to the second floor. “Where did you acquire this?”

“Under the Grand Stone Bridge,” Lu Zhi confessed eagerly. “I was fleeing on a boat once, looked up, and saw it plastered to the underside of the arch.”

Lu Yang nodded thoughtfully. He went back downstairs, casually popped Zheng Shouhe’s legs back into their sockets so the man could hobble, and frog-marched both criminals toward the magistrate’s office. Wen Xiangyu followed closely behind, clutching her shawl.

“Hey! Hey! You swore an oath! You’re breaking your word!” Lu Zhi howled as he was dragged down the street.

Lu Yang merely scoffed. The Heavens are more than welcome to smite Chi Xulong with lightning. What does that have to do with me, Lu Yang?

As fate would have it, Constable Wei was manning the night desk at the yamen. Seeing Lu Yang march in with two battered felons in tow, the constable’s face contorted into a distinct expression of ‘Why is it always you?’

However, upon hearing the details of the night’s events, Wei’s exasperation evaporated into grim professionalism. Zheng Shouhe was a wanted man with multiple homicides to his name—a heavy-hitter in the criminal underworld. Lu Yang had just delivered a massive merit directly into the constable’s lap.

“This is the yellow paper Lu Zhi mentioned,” Lu Yang said, sliding the talisman across the desk. He had already burned the runic pattern into his eidetic memory.

Constable Wei inspected the paper, the gravity of the situation dawning on him. He had heard grumblings of the commoners suffering from unnatural daytime lethargy. He hadn’t felt it himself and had dismissed it as a seasonal bug. Now, the truth was glaringly obvious: this was a coordinated, malicious array!

Who knew how many of these cursed talismans were currently hidden in the dark corners of Yanjiang County?

Unfortunately, Constable Wei was equally illiterate when it came to high-level Cultivation runes. He would have to escalate this to the Chief Constable at dawn.

“You have my thanks, Lu Yang. I’ll have another silk commendation banner delivered to your shop tomorrow,” Constable Wei said, waving them off after finalizing the official depositions.

Before leaving the yamen, Lu Yang took a quick detour down to the holding cells. He stopped in front of a familiar iron-barred door.

“Chi Xulong,” Lu Yang called out to the imprisoned master thief. “A good buddy of mine, Zheng Shouhe, is going to be moving in for a while. Do me a favor and take good care of him, will you?”

Chi Xulong sneered from the shadows. So, the mighty Cultivator finally needs my help? ‘Take care of him’? Hah! My Spitting Pebble Divine Skill has reached the realm of Great Perfection! Just wait and see how I ‘take care’ of this new meat!

After escorting Wen Xiangyu safely back to her shop, Lu Yang firmly and unequivocally rejected the widow’s enthusiastic offer to “come inside and eat some of her fresh tofu.”

By the time he navigated back to the barbecue joint, the night’s chaos had finally settled. The shop was closed, the dragon-oil lamps extinguished, and the two Changui were diligently scrubbing the grease off the skewers in the back alley.

Lu Yang found Lan Ting and quickly sketched the talisman’s runic array onto a scrap of parchment. “Take a look at this formation. Does this look like a sleep-inducing hex to you?”

Lan Ting scrutinized the drawing. Her eyes widened in genuine shock. “Where in the world did you find this? This isn’t a sleep hex. This is a Reverse Longevity Talisman. It forcefully siphons the lifespan of the living. The victims don’t fall asleep because of a spell; they suffer from extreme lethargy and drowsiness because their very life force is being drained away.”

She traced a finger over the sinister lines. “This specific variant is a low-tier construct. It only works on ordinary mortals. It wouldn’t have the slightest effect on a Cultivator.”