I Can Devour Spirits

Chapter 201: Cave Stronghold

Duan Rong saw Shen Ping leaving abruptly, and immediately shouted at his back, "Old Shen, there are many fierce beasts in the mountains. Let me escort you out."

"No need!" Shen Ping replied, and almost at the same time, he raised his sleeve and waved it, releasing a faint white mist that drifted with the wind.

Duan Rong was shocked and immediately used the Cloud Serpent Step to leap several feet away, holding his breath and standing still.

Shen Ping was a master of the Poison Dao. How could Duan Rong dare to touch the poisonous powder he scattered?

I was kind enough to offer to escort him out of the mountains, worried that his Dantian was ruined and he’d fall victim to beastly poisons. Turns out it’s unnecessary; how could I forget that this old fellow is a poison expert? Normal beasts can’t do anything to him.

As Duan Rong leaped away, the white mist, which was actually a very faint white smoke, was blown away by the wind and drifted into the forest beside the cliff.

In just a breath, it seemed like dumplings dropping, with snakes, insects, and birds falling from the trees beside the forest...

Duan Rong watched the cicadas, snakes, and birds dropping in the forest beside him, his face turning ashen. This poisonous powder was truly so potent!

Duan Rong instantly felt his blood boiling, shouting at Shen Ping’s back, "Damn it, if you catch me off guard with this, what should I do?"

Without turning his head, Shen Ping responded with a peculiar laugh, "If it hits you, wouldn’t you eat a pellet of the medicine I gave you?"

"I damn it!" Duan Rong muttered helplessly.

Shen Ping’s voice became somewhat ethereal, and his figure appeared and disappeared among the trees, gradually becoming unseen...

Duan Rong stood there, eyes bright as he gazed in the direction where Shen Ping’s figure disappeared, watching for a long time.

Although he hadn’t spent long with this old man, Duan Rong felt quite compatible with him.

Shen Ping had a stubborn side similar to Xiao Zongting but also carried a kind of ambiguous rogue aura of Jianghu.

Duan Rong stood for a while, watching the rustling of the woods, a sense of solitude rising in his heart. He sighed, turned his head, and looked towards a certain spot on the cliff, underneath which was Shen Ping’s cave.

Duan Rong flashed his figure, traversing across, and vanished over the cliff.

Duan Rong returned to the cave. As soon as he reached the entrance, his mind moved, and his Divine Sense suddenly spread out.

Instantly, all the various items in the cave appeared before him.

Duan Rong’s figure darted like a phantom within the cave.

Suddenly, in a dark corner of the cave, he grabbed a stone pestle used for pounding medicine. Duan Rong’s eyes flickered as he silently recited, "Read Artifact Spirit."

Looking at the data panel that appeared before his eyes, Duan Rong was suddenly overjoyed and said, "Devour!"

As the data panel wavered and dissipated, Duan Rong moved again and suddenly stood in another part of the cave, picking up a dagger from the cluttered stone table. The dagger was only four or five inches long, with its surface stained with something, showing speckled marks that were definitely not rust.

In the dim cave, Duan Rong’s eyes flickered as he muttered, "Read Artifact Spirit."

After a breath, Duan Rong devoured the Artifact Spirit of the dagger, his figure flashing again, appearing beside the stone bed deeper in the cave, where there was a pillow made of an unknown large animal bone.

The pillow was stained and greasy, evidently used for many years.

Duan Rong’s eyes widened in surprise, silently exclaiming at Old Shen’s eccentricity, using such a pillow, not afraid of having nightmares.

Duan Rong picked up the bone pillow, silently saying, "Read Artifact Spirit."

After devouring, his figure flashed again.

Shen Ping had lived in this cave for nearly twenty years, and the amount of clutter inside was imaginable.

Many of the items, Shen Ping had used for nearly twenty years, his insights and thoughts soaked into the Artifact Spirits of these items.

Duan Rong spent nearly half an hour devouring all the items in the cave, regardless of size.

Better to mistakenly kill than to let it go!

After devouring, Duan Rong began to sort through the items in the cave and classified them.

He planned to use this cave as a foothold on Wild Boar Mountain in the future.

If something happened in Xianggu County, he could find a way to escape the city, sneak into Wild Boar Mountain, and hide in the cave. Who could find him there?

After the outbreak of Xu Ruhu and Jie Lei, Jie Daohan had long found traces of the Corpse Rot Poison, but at that time, Shen Ping was hidden in this forest cave. How could Jie Daohan track him?

If it weren’t for the old man, exhausting his blood and energy to develop the First Grade Red, which still couldn’t restrain practitioners of the True Qi Realm, he wouldn’t have despaired and gone down the mountain to the brothel to vent. How could Jie Daohan and Fan Yuanhai have caught him?

Duan Rong busied himself, roughly categorizing the items in the cave into four types.

One type was daily life sundries. These items, Duan Rong sorted through, keeping anything useful as he might live here in the future. Anything broken was discarded.

Another type was various processed and unprocessed herbs. Unlike the chaotic piles of daily sundries, Shen Ping had organized them very well. In this regard, Duan Rong needed only to continue the existing arrangement.

There was also a type, which was finished medicines and poisons. Duan Rong glanced at them; there were actually more than a dozen bottles, most of which he didn’t recognize.

When Shen Ping left, the First Grade Red poison and antidote were evidently the most crucial things he entrusted to Duan Rong. As for these finished medicines and poisons, obviously they weren’t ordinary items, but they still required time for Duan Rong to slowly recognize and explore.

The final category was Shen Ping’s scattered notes and some medical books that had been worn out from flipping through.

The thing Duan Rong valued most was the three notebooks Shen Ping left behind; the paper and handwriting of these three notebooks differed slightly, clearly from different periods.

After organizing the cave, Duan Rong took the three notebooks, sat at the cave entrance, and started reading them by the daylight.

Duan Rong skimmed through them quickly and soon discovered that the latter part of one notebook recorded the relationship between medicinal properties and Martial Artists’ Inner Breath circulation, which he regarded as a treasure and read word by word.

Sitting at the cave entrance, Duan Rong watched the daylight fade into dusk.

By the time night fell, he had spent several hours but had only read two pages.

Despite pondering repeatedly, he still found it difficult to comprehend the profound meanings in many places.

It wasn’t entirely Duan Rong’s fault; he had achieved the Third Level of the Inner Breath Realm and had a certain level of mastery in identifying the properties of various drugs. He should have been able to understand this notebook’s content about medicinal properties and Inner Breath circulation.

However, many parts of Shen Ping’s notes were vague; they weren’t originally meant for others to see, but just a record of his scattered thoughts and reflections.

They were originally disorganized and unsystematic.

Seeing the dusk envelop the valley, a wave of fatigue surged in Duan Rong’s mind.

After devouring several Artifact Spirits, he needed to digest and absorb them. Although the discomfort after devouring Artifact Spirits diminished greatly with his progression to the Second Layer of the Fetal Concealment, he hadn’t rested but instead fell into deep thoughts for a long time over the notes...

Now, as he returned to consciousness from deep thought, seeing the dusk fall and darkness deepen, a stab of pain surged in his Divine Soul.

Duan Rong closed the notebook, moved in the dark to the stone bed deeper in the cave, and lay on the hard stone bed, his head resting on the bone pillow refined to a polished sheen by Shen Ping, instantly falling into a deep sleep.