I have Immortality In The Cultivation World

Chapter 74: Chapter 74: Heretical Demons and Evil Paths

The old book has yet to be returned, and the new one has yet to be borrowed.

Zhou Yi strolled through the trading area and felt reassured seeing that the prices were stable.

He came across a few naive newcomers who had spent Spirit Stones to buy Spiritual Objects made last week and were still delighted thinking they had made a great profit.

Newcomers to the Marketplace, perhaps having been important in the mortal world for too long, or genuinely believing themselves to be exceptional, always considered themselves the protagonists of stories, encountering fortuitous opportunities and stumbling upon great deals in the Marketplace.

Standing by, Zhou Yi of course wouldn’t remind them.

Those in the Marketplace who dared to openly sell fake goods or peddle outdated Spiritual Objects all had connections and backers.

Brother Liu had privately warned Zhou Yi not to think about breaking the rules; those who could exploit loopholes at the Dan Mountain Market had at least a formal disciple backing them, otherwise they would have been killed as deviants long ago.

The buyers left with high spirits, while the sellers packed up and left.

“When you covet extra profit, others are eyeing your principal!”

Zhou Yi took it as a lesson to always be vigilant and avoid falling into the trap of desire in the future.

The swindlers of the Cultivation World were not just smooth talkers; for instance, the female cultivator not far away, whose mana fluctuated while introducing Spiritual Objects, left buyers dazed and unwittingly handing over their Spirit Stones.

At dusk.

Zhou Yi went to his own Spirit Farm to cast the Spiritual Rain Technique; the neighboring land was deserted with ripe Spirit Rice unattended.

“Why isn’t Brother Gu here?”

Gu Chen had been tirelessly farming day and night for years, willing to sacrifice his cultivation time just for the sake of his grandson’s future. Regardless of his use in cultivation, his parental affection was admirable.

The Spirit Rice was about to ripen, so Gu Chen’s absence surely meant that something serious had happened.

“I hope all is well!”

Zhou Yi, while practicing in the Marketplace, had not yet encountered incidents like murder for loot, but he wasn’t naive enough to think they didn’t occur.

Human nature is lazy by default, and cultivators are no different, with an even stronger desire for resources.

How could farming for a year to save a few Spirit Stones compare to the quick gains from looting?

Thus, even though Gu Chen and Zhou Yi had known each other for years, they had kept the locations of their hometowns secret from one another.

Back to the cave dwelling.

He meditated and practiced Qi cultivation until dawn.

“The bottleneck of mid-stage Qi refinement is much harder than expected. Even with Gu Chen’s inferior talents, he at least has a Spirit Root; I don’t even have the lowest rank of the Five Spirit Roots!”

Zhou Yi estimated it would take another ten or eight years to advance to the fourth level of Qi Refinement.

“This is a good time to save up some Spirit Stones and buy a Water Escape Technique to learn, ensuring a safe getaway into the ocean when fleeing!”

Zhou Yi was well aware of the prices in the Marketplace. There were about a dozen varieties of Water Escape Techniques, with the highest grade being Jade Law Pavilion’s Water Yuan Escape selling for fifty Spirit Stones.

“That’s just five years of farming Spirit Rice, and the time will fly by!”

…

The following morning.

Zhou Yi did not go straight to the fields but first checked on the remaining three Ling Yuan flowers in his courtyard.

Ling Yuan flowers are the main ingredient for concocting Foundation Building Pills; they can be harvested after ten years of growth, and one plant sells for one Spirit Stone.

He loosened the soil, summoned the Spiritual Rain, and took meticulous care of them.

“The survival rate of these seedlings is incredibly low; ninety percent die after sprouting!”

Zhou Yi took out some medicinal seeds to fill the vacant spots in the medicine field.

A cultivator’s cave dwelling courtyard spans about two to three Zhang, keeping a path for entry and exit, which allows for the cultivation of two medicine fields for planting easy-to-survive and saleable Spiritual Medicine.

While expensive, the cave dwellings in the Dan Mountain Market were not overseen in their use after being sold to cultivators.

Indeed, no one cared even if it seemed shabby to dismantle the eastern side rooms or lateral chambers to convert them into medicine fields. In fact, many cultivators did just that, reducing their dwellings to nothing but walls and a bed.

With the Mountain Protection Array encompassing the Marketplace, there was no need to worry about rain, snow, or hail. Perhaps practicing in the open air would even yield better results!

However, the survival rate of Spiritual Medicine was extremely low and took a long time to grow, leaving few who actually profited from selling Spirit Stones.

Zhou Yi had purchased quite a few Foundation Building flower seeds, not expecting to get rich quickly by planting medicine, but instead, was slowly learning from experience.

After learning for a hundred and eighty years or so, he would basically become one of the top farmers in the Marketplace, since those more skilled than Zhou Yi would have already succumbed to time.

The central and core areas of the Marketplace were all medicine fields; after all, the Dan Ding Sect’s expertise lay in Alchemy, which had an enormous demand for Spiritual Medicine.

By renting a few acres of medicine fields, he would earn much more than by farming Spirit Rice!

Additionally, planting a few top-grade Spiritual Medicines with extremely long medicinal ages, and waiting hundreds to thousands of years for them to mature, would allow for breakthroughs in cultivation by directly consuming and refining them without the need for Alchemy.

Selling them was out of the question, lest it attracted deviant cultivators seeking to kill for loot!

“The seeds of top-grade Spiritual Medicine are too expensive, and the survival rate is even lower. They must be constantly tended to, or alternatively, find a hidden realm and scatter the seeds, reaping the harvest after a few hundred years.”

Zhou Yi had once considered purchasing a manual on the intricacies of growing Spiritual Medicine.

Fellow Daoists, usually merry and drinking, would deflect the subject when it came to techniques for cultivating Spiritual Medicine.

“Just the experience of planting is held so closely guarded, not to mention the inheritance of the four great arts of true cultivation, which ordinary cultivators cannot even access!”

Coming to the Spirit Farm, he still saw no sign of his neighbor Gu Chen.

Zhou Yi didn’t pay much attention, now that he’d used the Spiritual Rain Technique, he was much more proficient than before.

This year, he hoped to break through a yield of one stone per mu which would make him a fairly competent farmer. In the future, he might reach the level of Elder Brother Liu, able to save a hundred or more spirit stones every year.

Time passed quickly.

Half a year had gone by in the blink of an eye.

The neighboring field’s spirit rice was ripe, harvested by the enforcement team and recorded accordingly.

If Gu Chen were still alive, the marketplace would return this batch of spirit rice according to the rules.

This was not unusual, many cultivators left to gain experiences and never returned.

The tragedy and cruelty of the mortal world were often expressed through the wails of the wronged, seen and heard by many, while the Cultivation World was silent and unknown, with souls scattering silently to their doom.

That day.

Zhou Yi came to the fields, suddenly spotting a familiar figure squatting at the end of the field, staring blankly at the spirit fields.

“Brother Gu…”

Zhou Yi approached to greet him and caught sight of Gu Chen’s empty left sleeve, asking in confusion, “What happened to your arm?”

“Cough cough cough!”

Gu Chen coughed violently a few times, his complexion pale: “I fought a depraved cultivator, lost an arm in the fight, but sent him to hell.”

Zhou Yi was quite surprised, the usually honest and simple Gu Chen, no different from the old farmers in the field, had actually managed to kill a depraved cultivator.

Depraved cultivators were not only those who practiced evil and demonic arts.

Cultivators who lived by killing and robbing others also belonged to the heretical and demonic paths; they did not engage in production, and their cultivation resources came from looting. Once successful, they would change their appearances and cultivate in the marketplace, and return to robbing when resources dwindled.

Such cultivators were ruthless and skilled in combat, with few equals among their peers.

Gu Chen’s expression turned gloomy as he asked, “How can those depraved cultivators bring themselves to harm the elderly and children?”

“Depraved cultivators are no longer human!”

Zhou Yi had a guess in his mind, probably about some calamity that destroyed a family, and said, “They climb over corpses to cultivate, and one day they too become the bones under someone else’s feet. There’s no other end for them.”

“I don’t care about their life or death, I just want my dear grandson to come back to life.”

Gu Chen murmured, “To redeem my grandson, I’ve sold everything I owned, I was almost reduced to becoming a test subject for alchemy. Finally, when I mustered enough spirit stones, that depraved cultivator showed no mercy.”

Zhou Yi consoled him, “At least you avenged him.”

Gu Chen’s voice carried a hint of despair, “It’s really hard to be a good person!”

Zhou Yi didn’t know what to say, as he couldn’t simply say it was too hard for the weak, a fact Gu Chen surely understood.

Cultivators like Gu Chen, aware of the severe exploitation in the marketplace, still worked tirelessly on their fields.

After all, Dan Mountain had its rules and left a glimmer of hope.

Those heretical and demonic paths that didn’t follow the rules, claiming to be free and resisting oppression while committing murder and robbery, were essentially bandits and outlaws.

Zhou Yi often mocked Dan Mountain’s cold-heartedness but was willing to follow the marketplace’s rules because a stable environment was more important!

This had nothing to do with docility or a slavish mentality, but with establishing rules that everyone followed to ensure safety. If one truly found Dan Mountain unacceptable, they were free to find another marketplace; no one would stop them.

“Brother Zhu, when I die one day, please bury my bones in this spirit field!”

Gu Chen managed to stand up with difficulty after saying this, clearly having been seriously injured in his battle with the depraved cultivator, and staggered back to his cave.

Zhou Yi watched Gu Chen’s lonely figure with a sigh, then cast the Spiritual Rain Technique to irrigate the spirit fields.

A person who lives without purpose, drifting aimlessly, might as well be dead!

————————————————

The solutions to the questions raised in the last chapter at the end of this chapter.

First: Spiritual Energy in the Mortal World

Sects used formations to restrict and confine the spiritual energy produced by the spirit veins, increasing the concentration within the marketplace. The sparse spiritual energy in the mortal world is due to the fact that it can’t be completely confined and escapes.

If there were no confining formations, the spiritual energy in the world would be roughly equal, except slightly higher within the spirit veins.

Implication: “As long as there are sages, the great thieves will not cease.”

Second: High-Level Cultivators

I saw some readers questioning the chase between a Nascent Soul Daoist and a Qi Refinement cultivator in the Cultivation World. Even in the mortal world, a Nascent Soul Daoist wouldn’t lose his realm in just ten or eight years.

In the previous chapter, an example was given about magical treasures. Even without sealing techniques, they would retain their spirit for hundreds of years if left to dissipate on their own.

Cultivators would actively suppress the diffusion of spiritual energy, whether through formations, magical treasures, divine skills, or other means, making the diffusion extremely slow. It would take decades, hundreds of years, or even a thousand years to drop in realm.

Therefore, there is no situation where a Nascent Soul Daoist dares not chase after a Qi Refinement cultivator!

In the current world of cultivation, dispersion has no effect on battles and duels because it is too slow; unless two people fight for hundreds of years.

When the end times of the law come, those who survive last will also be those old immortals who sealed their spiritual energy. It’s a matter of who can endure until the end. Surviving right before spiritual energy rejuvenates one’s life.

Spiritual energy is the basic setting of this book, the fundamental framework that affects the entire plot of the story.

If readers have anything unclear, just leave a comment, the author lives in the comment section (and it’s not just to read reviews, haha)!