Chapter 67: The Strangeness of Li Yan
Behind the courtyard where Li Yan lived, a small winding path stretched up toward some unknown place in the mountains. The path was narrow, just wide enough for two people walking side by side, and it was paved with small, uneven stones.
On both sides of the path, the dark bamboo still swayed gently in the breeze. Little Bamboo Peak was a sea of black bamboo, and walking through it felt like standing in waves of bamboo tide.
However, the bamboo along this trail wasn't as thick as those near the front of the mountain or around Li Yan's courtyard. Each stalk was only about the thickness of a finger, a little taller than a man, like delicate saplings. As the breeze passed through, the thin stalks rustled with a soft, whispering sound.
This was already the mid-mountain region of Little Bamboo Peak, where the peaks pierced into the clouds. From time to time, tufts of white mist would drift lazily out of the bamboo grove, then float away into the distance.
As Li Yan walked along the path, those drifting clouds would occasionally brush past his waist or gently skim over his head before vanishing into the bamboo on the other side. He looked as if he was walking amidst a sea of clouds.
While walking, Li Yan was deep in thought.
He had been coming to the back mountain every few days recently. The destination he sought was about twenty li from his residence, heading up toward the peak. There, a small platform existed, one he had discovered earlier that served as an excellent place for cultivation.
Rewinding time to over half a year ago, when Li Yan had just begun cultivation, both his training in the cultivation techniques and spells had progressed fairly normally. But after ten days or so, a series of strange and unexplainable events began to unfold.
First, the rate at which his spiritual power improved slowed dramatically. At first, he thought it was normal, after all, Lin Daqiao had told him that bottlenecks were to be expected. But no matter how hard he tried, his spiritual power crawled along like a tortoise. Sometimes, it didn't increase at all for days. If he paused his training, it even began to decline slightly.
That was when Li Yan realized something might be wrong.
He first suspected that his cultivation method had issues, so he entered his sea of consciousness and carefully reviewed the Guishui True Scripture word by word. Yet no matter how thoroughly he analyzed it, he couldn't find a single flaw. After much investigation, he still found nothing.
Meanwhile, strange things also began happening with his spell practice. The Raincloud Technique, which he had just started to grasp, began working inconsistently.
Even more disturbingly, when he did successfully cast the spell, bizarre results occurred. Several times, the rain produced by the spell turned emerald green. When it fell to the ground, it created clouds of green mist, and once those mists dissipated, the once-solid ground was left pitted with numerous tiny craters, as though corroded by acid.
Completely confused, Li Yan tried casting the spell again to investigate. But this time, he couldn't activate it at all.
Frustrated, he kept trying over and over. Eventually, the spell did go off again but what fell from the conjured dark clouds wasn't rain, but an eerie green mist. Within moments, the entire courtyard was nearly engulfed.
Startled, Li Yan quickly summoned his spiritual power to protect his body. Thankfully, his power didn't fail him this time, and he managed to shield himself completely. Breathing a sigh of relief, he quickly used his waist token to open the formation protecting the courtyard gate and escaped.
He had no idea what that green mist was. It was supposed to be a Raincloud Technique, just a simple shower.
Peeking in from outside, he waited for half an hour before the strange green fog finally dissipated. When he returned to the courtyard, he was dumbfounded.
The stone table and stools in the center of the yard had vanished. The bamboo branches that had stretched over the yard now drooped and curled as though wilted. The bamboo huts were still intact, but their once-dark surfaces had faded to a dull gray, as though their spiritual energy had been drained.
At least the courtyard walls and its formation remained intact, which gave him some relief. But after circling the yard, Li Yan's face darkened, the spiritual stones powering the protective formation were significantly depleted.
He remembered that when the formation was only in passive defense mode, it usually took four or five days for the spiritual stones to dim slightly. But he had checked them just the day before and now they were more than three-quarters depleted. They wouldn't last another ten days.
Only then did he realize: the courtyard had been saved not because it was untouched, but because the defensive formation had absorbed the attack. That eerie green mist had been blocked by the formation, at the cost of rapidly draining the spiritual stones.
After grieving the lost stones, a wave of fear followed. Looking at the pits on the ground, the vanished furniture, and thinking about what might've happened if the corrosive rain or the green mist had landed on him…
Just the thought of it gave him chills.
It took him a long time to calm down, and then he turned his focus back to the root of the problem, why had his spell gone so awry? Could it be that the Guishui True Scripture was incompatible with the spell?
But that idea quickly passed, Dong Fuyi had never mentioned that their sect's cultivation techniques required special spells. If that were the case, he would've placed both the spells and the technique together in his sea of consciousness.
Was it the spell itself, then?
No, it was a common spell, one that the sect had verified. Both Uncle Gu of the Treasure Repository, and the Eldest and Seventh Senior Brothers had confirmed it.
Which left only one possibility, something was wrong with his body.
And the only abnormality in his body… was that mysterious Fractured Poison Body.
Realizing this, Li Yan gradually calmed down and sighed deeply. It seemed that he had no choice but to seek out that fat master. Otherwise, this problem would never be resolved.
Whether he wanted to or not, he could only activate his flying spirit artifact and head toward the area where the instructors lived.
Half an hour later, Wei Chongran stood inside Li Yan's courtyard. After glancing around silently, he walked to the pitted ground, squatted down, and reached out to touch one of the craters.
Startled, Li Yan tried to stop him. There were still traces of the green residue in those pits, and he knew how corrosive it was.
But before he could act, Wei Chongran had already touched it. Surprisingly, there was no green mist or corrosive reaction as Li Yan had feared.
Wei Chongran rubbed some of the dry residue between his fingers, held it up to his eyes, then brought it to his nose and sniffed. He pinched his fingers together, and a wisp of green mist briefly rose, then vanished in an instant.
Then, before Li Yan could react, his master raised his hand and waved it through the air. Instantly, strange green wisps began rising from the mist-veiled formation surrounding the courtyard walls, quickly gathering toward his palm...
Li Yan looked closely and saw that the mist was indeed the same eerie green fog he had released earlier. He hadn't expected there to still be remnants lingering in the courtyard but this time, he had no intention of issuing a warning.
Having seen Wei Chongran's methods firsthand, he'd already guessed that these strange emissions from his spell likely posed no threat at all to the man. Besides, on the way here, he'd already described the whole process and its result in detail.
Sure enough, once Wei Chongran drew those wisps of green mist into his palm, they began to swirl and churn restlessly, as if struggling to break free, yet they never managed to escape his grasp.
Wei Chongran clenched his fist and closed his eyes. A moment later, he opened them again, and when he spread his hand, the green mist had vanished completely. After pondering for a second, he turned his gaze toward Li Yan.
"This is likely a consequence of your 'Fractured Poison Body.' I've read about it in some ancient texts, it produces highly toxic substances within the body. Those two kinds of toxic rainfall just now, no actually, they were made up of five types of poisons. The first kind was a combination of phosphor smoke grass and spotted leaf greenwater. The second type consisted of blue horse-bell flower, aconite leaves, and purple lightning centipede tail."
"These poisons are typically refined from herbs and beast materials, yet you're generating them naturally. I'd only read about how terrifying the Fractured Poison Body was in records but seeing it today, I have to say, it's truly impressive. Truly incredible, truly terrifying!"
Wei Chongran repeated his praise deliberately. And he wasn't exaggerating. Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, only three people had successfully cultivated the Fractured Poison Body. The last one had lived tens of millions of years ago. Its rarity alone was astonishing, otherwise, how could someone like Li Yan, with mixed spiritual roots, have been accepted into a titan like the Wraith Sect?
Wei Chongran had only ever seen written accounts of it before. Witnessing it now made him regard his disciple with newfound respect.
Regardless of what achievements Li Yan might attain in the future, just this poison power alone was formidable. Even a Foundation Establishment cultivator could fall victim to it if caught unaware.
Li Yan, however, was reeling with a different kind of shock. He didn't know whether his plump master was truly that powerful, but to handle those green mists and toxic rain, things that he himself had viewed as deadly, as if they were nothing and even dissolve them so casually, without the slightest harm… The man had even identified all the poisonous components just by touch. That was a level of strength and confidence he hadn't imagined.
After thinking for a moment, Wei Chongran spoke again.
"These kinds of phenomena are normal. They're part of the cultivation process of the Fractured Poison Body. I do know a bit about this physique, but it's one of the three great poison bodies, and my understanding is limited. Let's do this: I'll take you to collect some jade slips left by former sect members. They should contain much more detailed insights."
Hearing there was a possible solution, Li Yan couldn't have been more delighted. He was genuinely interested in cultivation now and had no desire to see his path cut short just as he was getting started.
Next, a glow of spiritual light flashed around Wei Chongran, and without even using a flying magical tool, he wrapped Li Yan in his aura and soared into the sky. Only then did Li Yan realize that a Core Formation cultivator could carry someone through the air so effortlessly.
They visited the gray-robed elder on Little Bamboo Peak, then went to the Treasure Repositories of Old Lord Peak and Spirit Insect Peak. At each stop, they retrieved jade slips and imprinted their knowledge into Li Yan's sea of consciousness.
Li Yan also learned that the three known cultivators in Wraith Sect history who had developed the Fractured Poison Body had each originated from these three peaks.
An hour later, they were on their way back. As they passed over the outer disciples' quarters, Wei Chongran paused in thought and descended.
The outer disciples were busy working. Seeing Wei Chongran suddenly appear, they all dropped to their knees in a panic.
Wei Chongran nodded slightly, then instructed a few of the disciples to move a new set of stone tables and stools into Li Yan's courtyard.
This action stunned the outer disciples, none of them could understand why Li Yan commanded such attention.
Normally, tasks this minor wouldn't even be handled by the likes of Li Wuyi. A simple voice transmission would have them scrambling over each other to carry it out. But today, the Peak Master himself had come to deliver the order!
Upon hearing the news, Miao Wangqing, who was stationed in the main hall, rushed over. When she realized that her master had come all this way just to issue such a trivial order, her beautiful eyes sparkled as she looked at Li Yan, her thoughts unreadable.
Her gaze made Li Yan feel a little uncomfortable. In truth, Wei Chongran hadn't done this deliberately. He'd simply remembered, while passing by, that Li Yan's stone furniture had been destroyed and considering that the boy was still new to the sect, he might not yet know how to handle things, so he casually gave the instruction along the way.
Seeing that everything was taken care of, Wei Chongran gave a wave of his wide sleeve, and several spirit stones flew toward Li Yan, who blinked in surprise. Wei Chongran smiled faintly and told him to use them for reactivating the courtyard's protective array.
Li Yan was caught off guard. He hadn't expected his master to be so considerate, he'd even accounted for the loss of spirit stones due to the array's recent overuse. Li Yan only had a few spirit stones left himself, so he didn't hesitate. He respectfully accepted them after giving thanks.
This move left Miao Wangqing even more astonished. It wasn't because the spirit stones were valuable, just a few low-grade ones, really. Even hundreds or thousands of them would mean little to a Core Formation cultivator.
What surprised her was that, while Wei Chongran wasn't stingy, he was known never to give away a single spirit stone unless you asked. The Wraith Sect prided itself on cultivating disciples who could survive and thrive independently. Everything had to be earned. Relying on others would only limit one's future.
But today's gesture made Miao Wangqing reevaluate her junior. Clearly, in their master's eyes, this little junior brother held some weight.
Li Yan, of course, had no idea that accepting a few spirit stones could spark so many thoughts in others.
Seeing Wei Chongran's robes flutter as he soared away, Li Yan quickly took his leave of Miao Wangqing, who seemed curious and on the verge of questioning him. But he had too much on his mind to entertain conversation right now.
Cultivation, advancement. That was what truly mattered!
(Chapter End)