Once he confirmed that combat had little effect on purifying the spiritual power of a cultivator at the seventh layer of Qi Refining, Luo Chen stopped dwelling on it.
Over the following period, he basically stayed in the Pill Hall.
He concocted pills, cultivated, read, and dug a tunnel.
Yes, digging a tunnel!
After spending half a month, he had literally carved out a tunnel leading straight into the Howling Moon Mountain Range.
For this endeavor, he ruined a lower-grade Tier 1 flying sword, and he even ground the auxiliary Mountain-Cleaving Monument-Breaking Palm all the way to the Grandmaster tier.
Truth be told, the Grandmaster Mountain-Cleaving Monument-Breaking Palm was genuinely impressive.
When unleashed, the strike delivered spiritual power that was exceptionally thick and condensed.
Aside from its rather short reach of only ten zhang, it had practically no flaws.
The power of a single palm strike was scarcely inferior to an attack from an upper-grade magical artifact.
"No wonder after Brother Wang sold this book back then, someone copied and resold it so quickly."
"It truly has its merits!"
Luo Chen chuckled. His joy was not limited to just this.
In typical battles between cultivators—unless constrained by a special setting like the Dao Discussion Platform—both sides would keep quite a distance from each other.
A range of ten zhang made it difficult to hit an opponent.
Whose magical artifact couldn't effortlessly fly over a hundred meters to kill someone?
What pleased him was that this palm technique had granted him four achievement points from beginning to end, and once he achieved Great Perfection with it in the future, it would yield another point.
Smiling softly, Luo Chen gave a gentle pulse of spiritual power and shattered the final rock wall before him.
A refreshing nighttime mountain breeze rushed in.
Luo Chen stepped out of the tunnel entrance and gazed down.
Pale moonlight spilled from the night sky, illuminating the already snow-covered forest until it looked almost like broad daylight.
He was standing halfway up a mountainside.
The star silver ore veins of Crescent Moon Valley actually extended all the way into the inner region of the Howling Moon Mountain Range.
While it might still be very far from the core zone, cultivators rarely ever set foot in this area.
Suddenly, Luo Chen shrank back into the cave.
He activated the Breath Concealment Spiritual Art with all his might!
"Awoo—!"
The howl carried a hint of sorrow and desolation.
In the dead of night, the sound was chilling to the bone!
"A Tier 2 demon wolf!"
Luo Chen froze like a piece of deadwood, doing everything he could to rein in the fluctuations of his blood and Qi, even suppressing his spiritual power to the absolute minimum.
This was his Breath Concealment Spiritual Art, which had reached the Grandmaster tier after several months of focused cultivation.
When he occasionally disguised his cultivation realm, even cultivators at the ninth layer of Qi Refining like Gu Caiyi couldn't see through it.
Yet he had no confidence at all in whether he could fool a Tier 2 demon beast.
*Don't tell me my escape route is going to turn into a dead end!*
Luo Chen's mind was taut as he quietly listened to the movements outside.
Following that lone wolf howl, one howl after another rose and fell across the neighboring mountains.
At first listen, there seemed to be thousands upon thousands of them.
Dahe Market was adjacent to the Million Mountains of the Eastern Wilderness, but the mountain range most commonly visited by cultivators was the Guyuan Mountain Range.
As for the Howling Moon Mountain Range, which spanned hundreds of towering peaks and was just as richly endowed with resources, very few cultivators dared to venture into it.
The primary reason was that this particular range had few other types of demon beasts; it was almost entirely populated by demon wolves.
In the short time Luo Chen had crouched there, he heard at least a dozen voices as powerful and resounding as the first howl.
This meant that within these neighboring peaks alone, there were over a dozen Tier 2 demon wolves.
And if that were extrapolated across the entire Howling Moon Mountain Range, the sheer number of Tier 2 demon wolves would be terrifying.
After a while, the howling showed no signs of abating; if anything, it grew even more intense.
A scent of blood suddenly drifted to the tip of Luo Chen's nose.
"Something's off!"
Luo Chen's expression shifted slightly. He noiselessly stepped out of the tunnel mouth.
His eyes flickered.
The Spiritual Eye Art rooted in his eyes could activate automatically without forming hand seals.
This way, he would not disrupt the effects of the Breath Concealment Spiritual Art by channeling overt spiritual power.
Under the gaze of his sharp, perceptive eyes, a scene a thousand meters away sent a jolt of shock through him.
"Are they... slaughtering each other?"
A gray-leaf wolf was locked in a frenzied fight with a frost wolf.
Although they were only Tier 1 demon beasts, their relentless battle to the death produced an atmosphere far more brutal than anything seen on the Dao Discussion Platform.
In the end, the fight concluded with the defeat of the gray-leaf wolf.
With late winter approaching, the frost wolf clan held the advantages of both season and terrain. Even though gray-leaf wolves were exceptionally formidable among Tier 1 demon beasts, it still failed to overcome a frost wolf of the same tier.
Luo Chen swallowed hard and swept his gaze across the area.
On this single mountain alone, there were at least several hundred skirmishes.
Some, like the one he had just witnessed, were duels between one or two wolves.
Others were chaotic melees involving over a hundred demon wolves.
Farther in the distance, terrifying fluctuations of spiritual power from Tier 2 demon wolves radiated outward.
Looking at several lifeless wolf corpses on the ground, Luo Chen suppressed the urge to scavenge them.
He quietly moved a massive boulder over to block the tunnel entrance.
Then he turned back.
This place was no place to linger!
……
All along the way, he used boulders to seal off sections of the tunnel until he returned beneath Crescent Moon Valley, where he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Releasing the Breath Concealment Spiritual Art, Luo Chen pondered the bizarre scene he had just witnessed.
They were all demon wolves, so why were they slaughtering each other?
Could it simply be because they belonged to different packs? Did the gray-leaf wolves and frost wolves harbor an irreconcilable feud?
No, it couldn't just be that.
There were over a dozen different wolf packs in the Howling Moon Mountain Range.
If they fought like this every day, their vitality would have been depleted long ago, and this area wouldn't have remained a forbidden zone for human cultivators.
Inexplicably, an image surfaced in Luo Chen's mind.
Back when he lived in the courtyard in the outer city, he had encountered several cultivators fleeing from the Howling Moon Mountain Range.
One of them, named Huiniang, had kindly warned him that the vicinity of the Howling Moon Mountain Range was unsafe and advised him to move early.
In other words, the abnormal situation in the Howling Moon Mountain Range had already emerged as early as early summer of the previous year.
"Forget it. Looking into this further has nothing to do with me."
"Even if demon beasts assault the market, the taller trees will take the wind. As long as I can run faster than everyone else, I'll be fine."
When it came to fleeing speed, Luo Chen had quite a bit of confidence!
Casting a Cleansing Art, Luo Chen prepared to brush away the dust on his body.
Yet the habitual motion of forming a seal somehow turned into a casual flick of his sleeve.
With that single flick, all the dust vanished, and beyond that, an unusual odor was also swept away.
Catching the scent, Luo Chen paused.
"Demonic qi?"
He recalled the brutal slaughter among the demon wolves earlier; he had unknowingly picked up a trace of demonic qi.
"Wait, isn't the Cleansing Art only supposed to wash away dirt and grime?"
He hurriedly opened his attribute panel.
Sure enough, the entry for the Cleansing Art was glowing faintly.
That was a brief, special indicator that only appeared when proficiency broke through a tier.
"The Cleansing Art reached Grandmaster!"
Luo Chen had a sudden realization. Without him noticing, the Cleansing Art he used the least had also reached the Grandmaster tier.
As for the specific effects of a Grandmaster Cleansing Art, Luo Chen had just tested them.
On top of cleansing ordinary dirt, it gained the effect of expelling foreign auras.
Any aura that did not belong to his own body could be purged.
"If demonic qi can be cleansed, what about things like blood qi, fiend qi, yin qi, or even the pill qi and herb qi I carry from years of concocting pills? Can they be purged as well?"
"What about someone else's spiritual power?"
In an instant, Luo Chen realized the potential applications of the Grandmaster Cleansing Art.
If it could even purge spiritual power left behind by other cultivators, he would have an effective countermeasure should he ever be marked by an enemy's spiritual tracer in the future.
Before finding an external test subject, Luo Chen tried clearing the complex herb qi he carried from his long years of pill concoction.
Qi Refining cultivators were still fundamentally mortal; they had not undergone the qualitative leap in life essence that came after Foundation Establishment.
Consequently, frequent contact with certain materials would leave residual odors.
Luo Chen's herb and pill odors, or the pungent beast-hide smell on Old Daoist Chen, would linger to varying degrees even with regular baths.
The logic was much like the lingering odors on doctors, fishmongers, and mechanics back on Earth, which never truly washed out.
He gave a casual wave of his hand.
*Whoosh!*
To his surprise, it actually worked!
A strange cluster of vapor peeled away from Luo Chen's body like dried beef jerky being torn apart.
Sniffing closely, it was filled with a mixture of bitter, sweet, burnt, numbing, and fragrant scents.
Blended together, it was faintly nauseating.
Luo Chen was startled. When had his body accumulated such a scent? Had he essentially marinated himself in it?
He wondered whether others had been able to smell it whenever he was around them before.
Humans were peculiar creatures: when arriving in a new place, they were acutely sensitive to any odd smell. Yet if they remained in a foul-smelling environment for a long time, they grew accustomed to it and could barely detect it.
Luo Chen hadn't even realized he was carrying such a complex medicinal odor.
"I suppose it built up naturally while processing all those herbs during pill refinement!"
Luo Chen hesitated slightly over whether to cast another Cleansing Art to eliminate the pill qi he could currently smell.
With a gentle sniff, he could discern the scent currently on him.
Mellow and light, like jade and fire.
Somewhat contradictory, yet rather pleasant.
It was likely accumulated bit by bit from ranked pills like the Myriad Wonders Pill and the Jade Marrow Pill.
Suddenly, Luo Chen caught a discordant note.
His fingers reached up and touched his shoulder.
There, a faint trace of spiritual power that did not belong to him seemed to rest.
It was extremely minute, so thoroughly familiarized over time that it went entirely unnoticed.
Had it not been for the stark contrast after purging the demonic qi and herb qi, coupled with his focused sniffing, he almost certainly would have missed it.
Now, by concentrating his senses, actively channeling the Spiritual Eye Art, and focusing his mind, he located the source.
It was an extraordinarily pure wisp of spiritual power!
And he was even somewhat familiar with it!
"Mi Shuhua!"
……
Mi Shuhua!
Luo Chen knew the man valued him greatly, to an extent that exceeded his own immediate family.
Before Luo Chen could no longer generate profits for him, he would never allow Luo Chen to come to harm.
This was plainly evident from Zhou Yuanli and the other four bodyguards.
It was protection, but wasn't it also surveillance?
Yet Luo Chen hadn't expected that Mi Shuhua had also placed a hidden measure on him.
Luo Chen was certain this wisp of spiritual power was not something picked up by chance.
He was not so intimate with that old man for that to happen.
Moreover, the purity of this spiritual power far exceeded the fluctuation strength typically displayed by a normal Foundation Establishment cultivator.
This was undoubtedly spiritual power that Mi Shuhua had refined to an extreme degree and planted on his shoulder through some subtle means.
With this spiritual power present, as long as Luo Chen didn't flee to the ends of the earth, Mi Shuhua could track him down by following its resonance.
Even with concealment methods like Shan Xiu's, he likely wouldn't be able to hide.
Furthermore, Luo Chen had a feeling.
If this wisp of spiritual power were detonated, it could instantly destroy almost any Qi Refining cultivator.
"No wonder he never restricted my movements."
This time, Luo Chen offered a truly wry smile from the bottom of his heart.
His hand slipped naturally from his shoulder.
He did not attempt to remove the spiritual power.
The moment it was erased, Mi Shuhua would likely sense it.
With a Foundation Establishment cultivator's speed, Luo Chen might manage to run for a short while, but Mi Shuhua was no ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator; he had recently acquired a magic treasure, and Luo Chen had previously caught a glimpse of its staggering flight speed.
Besides, run?
*Why should I run!*
He still needed to leverage the Mountain Breaker Gang's manpower and material resources for his cultivation.
Besides, Mi Shuhua monitoring him was entirely expected.
This wisp of spiritual power was merely an additional insurance policy beyond bodyguards like Zhou Yuanli.
Most importantly, Luo Chen now possessed a means to purge this spiritual power in short order!
With a Grandmaster Cleansing Art, if he mobilized his internal spiritual power without holding back, he was fully capable of stripping away this attached spiritual power.
Foundation Establishment cultivators were powerful, but they were not invincible gods.
Spiritual power was like rootless duckweed once detached from the body.
Over too great a distance and after too much time, it would gradually dissipate.
Mi Shuhua was not formidable enough to detonate this trace of spiritual power from a hundred li away.
"I'll let it stay on me for now!"
"That way, Mi Shuhua will feel even more at ease with me and show greater leniency, making it easier for me to reap benefits from him later."
"Until we reach an open fallout, he will maintain a tactical contempt toward me."
Having thought this through, the feeling of a fishbone stuck in his throat dissipated considerably.
Such was the life of a rogue cultivator!
That was just how things were!
He leisurely returned to the Pill Hall above, seemingly having forgotten the internal war of the wolf packs and the secret measure planted by the Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Instead, he unhurriedly took out an animal hide and began studying it.
If Wang Yuan were here, he would recognize it immediately. That hide was the very one he had handed to Luo Chen back then.
Recorded upon it was a Tier 2 pill formula of great importance to him.
A long time had passed since then.
He had acquired this pill formula back when he first became the master of the Pill Hall.
Counting carefully, more than half a year had gone by.
From the height of summer through autumn, and now cold winter was nearly over.
Time truly flew without one realizing it!
For a moment, Luo Chen genuinely felt the vicissitudes of a cultivator watching the years drift by.
Luo Chen sighed softly, studying the hide with focused attention, occasionally taking out a brush and paper to jot down notes in another small booklet.
That booklet was what he used to record his alchemy insights.
Whenever he had an epiphany or developed a new technique for processing a medicinal ingredient, he would note it down.
He had to admit that this habit was formed after reading the *Qingyuan Alchemy Exposition*.
The *Qingyuan Alchemy Exposition* contained many of Qing Yuanzi's whimsical, ingenious ideas.
Techniques such as the Jade Breaking Hand and Pure Heart Hand were alchemical arts that Qing Yuanzi had accumulated step by step.
Now, he had adopted the same habit.
However, the pages he was currently writing on were filled entirely with notes concerning the Blood Fiend Pill formula.
[Cultivators' essence blood cannot be used. What if it is replaced with demon beast blood?]
[Which demon beast should the blood be taken from?]
[Perhaps one with meridians similar to humans? Monkeys? Apes? The legendary hairy folk? Or perhaps the Wuqi beasts spoken of in the Eastern Wilderness?]
[Yellow Springs Yin Fiend is far too scarce. What if it is replaced with the lesser and more common Earth Fire Fiend?]
[Earth Fire Fiend has an entirely opposite attribute to Yellow Springs Yin Fiend and cannot be used, but the core concept remains valid. Heavenly Water Yin Fiend might work.]
[Ziheche is one of the three primary ingredients, used to capture a trace of residual innate qi. This is relatively easy to solve; many herbs contain innate qi and can be tested one by one.]
……
The booklet contained a wealth of notes.
Some were sudden flashes of inspiration, while others were the product of careful deliberation.
He had considered almost every element of the formula involving demonic arts, blood arts, and rare ingredients.
Some were replaced, others discarded, in countless variations.
Luo Chen had never treated the pill formula that Wang Yuan prized so dearly with negligence.
He hadn't called him "Brother Wang" for nothing.
The two of them had shared adversity.
When Wang Yuan was down on his luck, Luo Chen had lent a hand.
When Luo Chen was severely injured and acquired a "costly" storage bag, Wang Yuan had not taken advantage of his vulnerability.
He had even provided considerable assistance and looked out for him.
As long as that *Record of Customs Across the Six Domains* remained in Luo Chen's possession, their friendship would never reach a dead end.
Even without frequent conversation, this tacit understanding was clear to both of them.
Luo Chen valued this friendship deeply, so he had no objection to helping Wang Yuan within his means.
After more than half a year of study, Luo Chen had developed a modest grasp of the Blood Fiend Pill formula.
He had already devised several modified variations.
Leveraging the convenience of the Pill Hall, he had even conducted occasional practical tests.
Most ended in failure.
The occasional success merely confirmed the efficacy of a particular auxiliary ingredient.
What Luo Chen truly cared about was the system's feedback.
When dawn broke, Luo Chen swapped in another primary ingredient. Deciding the formula was nearly flawless, he attempted to initiate entry through the system.
Now, after the Breath Concealment Spiritual Art, Cleansing Art, Mountain-Cleaving Monument-Breaking Palm, and Jade Marrow Pill had all reached Grandmaster proficiency, his tally of achievement points had surpassed the thirty-point mark.
Luo Chen did not dare use them to deduce incomplete pill formulas; he had no idea how much he would have to invest to deduce a complete one.
If it turned out to be a bottomless pit, the losses would far outweigh the gains.
However, for a formula he had refined himself, he could use the system's feedback to confirm whether it was complete.
[Incomplete Blood Fiend Pill Formula... Tier 1 Blood Burning Pill, entry available]
Seeing this prompt, Luo Chen was momentarily stunned.
*The entry I wanted was for a cultivation pill!*
*This renamed "Blood Burning Pill" doesn't look like an orthodox pill at all!*
Luo Chen paused the entry and carefully reexamined this modified formula.
It used Tier 1 explosive ape blood, Earth Fire Fiend, and Heavenly Sun Fruit as its primary ingredients.
His original intention was to avoid yin-aligned main ingredients and take the opposite approach, deducing a yang-aligned cultivation pill formula instead.
Even at Tier 1, it should have been sufficient to support Wang Yuan's cultivation during the Qi Refining stage.
Yet the result had turned into something called a Blood Burning Pill.
"What kind of effect will this thing have when swallowed?"
Inexplicably, Luo Chen thought of the many martial arts and xianxia stories he had read in his previous life.
Things like the Heavenly Demon Disintegration Art, Blood Burning Escape, and the like.
Could the Blood Burning Pill produce a similar effect?
Luo Chen hesitated over whether to initiate entry for this formula.
Strictly speaking, he possessed quite a few pill formulas right now.
Yet aside from the Myriad Wonders Pill and Jade Marrow Pill, the rest were incomplete.
The Nether-Passage Pill was incomplete, and the Tier 2 Jade Dew Pill was incomplete.
The Blood Fiend Pill formula was complete, but if he dared to gather its primary ingredients, he might as well wait for a Yuding swordsman to claim his head from ten thousand li away!
In other words, besides the Myriad Wonders Pill and Jade Marrow Pill, Luo Chen had no complete formulas in his hands that were ready for immediate entry.
Now that he had an additional Tier 1 formula of his own design, his interest was piqued.
Explosive ape blood was easy to gather.
Ape-type demon beasts were abundant in the Guyuan Mountain Range, and the explosive ape population spanned several large mountains.
Earth Fire Fiend was also easy to purchase; Wanbao Pavilion, Spirit Source Studio, and Xianzhu Residence all carried it.
As for the Heavenly Sun Fruit, the Hundred Herbs Hall sold them by the jin.
Because Heavenly Sun Fruits contained a trace of innate qi, they served as a minor tonic for Qi Refining cultivators.
Eating them directly was beneficial, and more was always better.
Back when they lived in the quadrangle courtyard, Gu Caiyi often brought a few back after work.
Luo Chen had the pleasure of tasting several; as for the flavor, it was intensely pungent and sharp!
As for the various modified auxiliary ingredients, obtaining them through the Mountain Breaker Gang's channels and the Medicine Hall's inventory would be no problem at all.
"No, this formula cannot be revealed to the Mountain Breaker Gang."
"The Jade Marrow Pill is already enough to elevate my status and importance. Adding another pill would merely be gilding the lily, and it might even expose my true alchemical capabilities."
After some thought, Luo Chen decided to initiate the entry.
Whatever effect the Blood Burning Pill actually possessed, he would only know once it was refined.
Besides, there were no useless pills in this world—only useless cultivators who used them in the wrong situations.
Even an unconventional pill like the Myriad Wonders Pill had its market.
A Tier 1 pill deduced from a Tier 2 formula couldn't possibly be worse than the Myriad Wonders Pill!
When it came to refining it, however, Luo Chen resolved not to rely on the Mountain Breaker Gang.
"It seems I'll need to find time to quietly gather the raw materials for the Blood Burning Pill myself."
Luo Chen's eyes glinted as he pondered how to purchase what he needed without drawing attention.
Chapter 115