novelraw Chapter 102: Spring Rain in the Third Month, All Things Come to Life
Chapter 102: Spring Rain in the Third Month, All Things Come to Life
In mid-third month, Yun County finally received its first spring rain.
The raindrops fell on the streets and froze into ice overnight.
Even so, the first faint traces of early spring green still pushed stubbornly through the alleys and streets.
Spring had arrived. All things were coming back to life.
Miss Tang Xiaoxue wasted no time in launching her underground construction project.
For Rakshasa ghosts living in the Border Wilds, not having a cellar of their own was like a Chu person having no house of their own. It left you with a deep sense of insecurity.
This time, however, she wouldn't have to dig it herself.
Boss Tang had money.
Li Qiuchen wasn't entirely sure how much merchandise Boss Tang had brought back on this trip, but the trading house had been raking in enormous profits over the past several months. Liu Da, as shopkeeper managing things up front, had put on a full layer of weight.
That was right. A full layer.The first rule of doing business was learning to drink.
Anything said by northern people at the drinking table, especially every word spoken once the cup had been raised, was the equivalent of passing wind.
If that was too indelicate a way to put it, then a more refined formulation would be: two liang of horse piss down the throat and the bragging starts.
You couldn't conduct real business at a drinking table, but if you wanted to conduct real business, you still had to sit at the drinking table.
The balance was very difficult to strike.
If one round didn't go well, there had to be another round.
One thing leading to another, Shopkeeper Liu Da had put on a full layer of weight.
Boss Tang was making good money, so arranging a construction team to dig a little hole for his dear daughter was hardly worth mentioning.
Seven days to complete. Three levels deep. Red brick and hardwood throughout, solid and reliable.
It was just a pity about the wintersweet trees in the courtyard.
Miss Tang Xiaoxue leaped and bounced around her newly built little nest, so happy she was rolling across the floor.
Zhang Shaoyao was so frustrated she kept rolling her eyes, yet couldn't very well scold her.
Cats will be cats, dogs will eat what they eat, and Rakshasa ghosts will sleep in cellars. How do you constrain that kind of innate nature?
And it wasn't only sleeping in the cellar. The bed arrangement had its own particular requirements too.
The Chu-style wooden sleeping platform was uncomfortable for Miss Tang Xiaoxue.
First, a thick layer of dried lula grass was spread on the floor. Over that went a full bear hide. Then a cotton mattress, followed by a cotton quilt. Over the quilt another layer of fur was added, and any remaining gaps along the sides were stuffed with more pelts.
When it was forty or fifty degrees below zero outside, you climbed in and didn't think about coming back out.
The first level was Miss Tang Xiaoxue's private chamber. Besides her own little nest, it was piled high with all manner of snacks and toys accumulated over months of shopping.
The second level stored food provisions, potatoes and cabbage, sorghum and corn, peanuts and soybeans, and various sausages and cured meats.
That was true wealth.
Cold silver brought no warmth when winter descended. Only sufficient food was a genuine guarantee of continued life.
The third level appeared on the surface to be kept in reserve, but in reality Li Qiuchen had claimed it as his own private space.
He had certain items that couldn't be seen by others and needed somewhere to keep them. His storage bracelet wasn't something he could display openly, so to avoid arousing suspicion he kept it tucked inside his sleeve at all times, as if it didn't exist.
What was more, cultivating in this place allowed him to absorb earth energy far more efficiently than at ground level.
In the two-plus months since arriving in Yun County, Li Qiuchen had been carving out time to cultivate quietly and without drawing attention.
The greatest advantage of the "Huyang Chapter" was that it left absolutely no outward trace of cultivation progress. Even the gains accumulated before could be concealed entirely, leaving him looking like an ordinary person from the outside.
Even that day when Senior Brother Yang had checked his foundation, Li Qiuchen strongly suspected it had been nothing more than going through the motions. But whatever the case, the man had not seen through him.
By now, Li Qiuchen had entered his fourth blood exchange.
By the calculations of the original qi guidance formula, he was approaching the equivalent of the twelfth layer of heaven.
But that figure was somewhat hollow.
Every blood exchange in the Withered Wood Technique brought a leap in real power. Once this blood exchange was complete and he ascended to the fourth layer of heaven, his actual strength would reach the late stage of the qi refinement level. One further step beyond that would bring him to full completion, at which point he could begin to consider the question of foundation building.
But this particular layer was not easy to ascend.
Every blood exchange was a fundamental transformation of life itself. From the third layer of heaven onward, he had mastered the method of absorbing the life energy contained in flesh and blood. To reach the fourth layer of heaven, he had to absorb a sufficient quantity of that life energy.
Either by hunting large and powerful beasts.
Or by killing people.
This was precisely why Medicine Master followers so easily fell into the demonic path.
Killing and consuming people was the most efficient cultivation method of all.
Without killing, the pace of cultivation simply couldn't advance.
Zeng Mingming's living example had ignited a fervent wave of cultivation enthusiasm among the new students.
More and more people's minds began to stir.
Some learned from upper-year students about the existence of the Hongwen Hall. While they couldn't enter it themselves yet, upper-year students would have transcribed copies to varying degrees.
As they say, dragons have their own paths, and rats have theirs.
Even without going through Liu Huai'an's particular route, quite a few people had obtained cultivation methods normally reserved for upper-year students through other channels.
And the county school's teachers adopted a curiously ambiguous attitude toward all of this.
If they hadn't seen it, they didn't know about it.
This ambiguous attitude only further encouraged the students' drive to advance.
The Elixir Viscera was still an unknown distance away. But a cultivation method was a real, tangible thing.
As the saying goes, a slow bird should start out early. Starting cultivation a little ahead of others, when rounded off, was essentially equivalent to improving cultivation efficiency.
But after obtaining cultivation methods, everyone quickly ran into the second problem.
No teacher, no understanding.
Even for something as basic as meridians, acupressure points, and qi circulation routes, without someone guiding you hand in hand, reading the material alone made it completely incomprehensible.
For instance, the Tianliang point and the Baihui point. Where exactly were they?
Everyone knew they were somewhere on the head. But the head was a large place. Where precisely? Which came before which?
Someone worked up the courage to ask a teacher.
The teacher's eyes went wide and a sharp voice demanded, "Who told you to study that?"
Not everyone possessed Zeng Mingming's particular brand of fearlessness, the kind that put him in roughly the same tier as the sun itself. Under the teacher's rebuke, the student wilted immediately and didn't dare ask anything further.
That was the moment when Senior Brother Yang's importance became unmistakably clear.
Senior Brother Yang could teach people.
This shouldn't be taken as a simple skill to possess.
Many upper-year students had great difficulty with their own cultivation methods. Asking them to teach new students was well beyond what they were capable of.
It would only create more confusion.
Teaching and transmitting knowledge was a technical skill. If anyone could do it, there would be no need for the county school.
Unlike other upper-year students who focused entirely on their own cultivation, Senior Brother Yang was a man who conducted research.
Any question related to cultivation, he could answer. Whether you could understand the answer was your own affair.
Under Liu Huai'an's tireless efforts, six or seven students had already gathered under Senior Brother Yang's wing. Li Qiuchen blended in among them without standing out in any way, his cultivation efficiency and level of strength drawing no one's attention.
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