The God-Deterring Technique was a spell without grade or rank.
Its might depended entirely on the strength of the caster's own soul.
If the caster had attained the Foundation Establishment realm, they could project their spiritual sense outward, sweeping it forward to seize the enemy's soul in an instant.
If one had not yet reached Foundation Establishment, the technique could only be channeled through the eyes onto a foe.
In that state, its soul-extracting capability was greatly diminished, retaining mostly an intimidating and deterrent effect.
Of course, if the disparity in soul strength was immense, one could still manage to wrest away another's soul with sheer force.
That was why the Loose Cultivator Soul Refiner, Gu Yue, had usually beaten his enemies within an inch of their lives or slain them outright before forcibly extracting their souls before they could dissipate, subsequently assimilating them into himself.
Luo Chen had only just reached the entry level.
As a vivid green light erupted from his eyes, the thrashing pheasant across from him fell silent in an instant.
At the same time, Luo Chen felt his own head grow heavier by a fraction.
It felt as though something had hooked onto his soul, tugging it outward.
The two sides were locked in a tug-of-war.
Yet the pheasant was merely an ordinary wild beast with unawakened intellect and a feeble soul.
With just a shift of his will, Luo Chen seized full control of the rope.
*Out!*
Calling out silently within his heart, he felt an ephemeral wisp being drawn out of the pheasant in the very next moment.
The instant it emerged, the surrounding temperature dropped by a fraction, tinged with a faint chill.
However, it was the dead of winter and bitterly cold to begin with, so Zhou Yuanli and Liu Qiang noticed nothing amiss.
At most, they thought a chilly draft had just swept past.
They could not see this pitifully frail beast soul, but that did not mean Luo Chen couldn't.
A Great Perfection Spirit Eye Art was more than enough for him to perceive such formless entities.
*Is it really this weak?*
*It doesn't even have a defined shape.*
In his vision, a tiny, translucent ball of light hovered before him.
It was exceedingly faint, unable to impart even the slightest hint of danger.
Yet its shivering, bewildered state made it unmistakably the soul of the pheasant.
A slight pulling sensation tugged from the pheasant's limp body on the ground.
Luo Chen grew thoughtful.
He knew that if he released the God-Deterring Technique, the soul could return to the pheasant's body within a brief window.
Should that happen, the pheasant might end up dull and witless, but it would at least survive.
"Unfortunately, with heavy snow blanketing the mountains, food is scarce. I must trouble you to make a sacrifice."
The corners of Luo Chen's mouth curled slightly. With a thought, his gaze slowly shifted toward the small flowerpot he had taken out.
As his gaze traveled, the tiny glowing orb of the pheasant's soul drifted along with it, sinking gently into the pot.
Inside the flowerpot, the Soul Nourishing Tree—bearing only three newly sprouted buds—seemed to sense something.
Driven by instinct, it extended its fresh shoots.
The ball of light merged instantly into one of the tender buds.
The Soul Nourishing Tree was a yin-attribute spirit plant.
It typically grew in freezing, gloomy, yin-chilled areas, possessing a natural ability to absorb and devour nearby yin souls.
This tree served many purposes: crafting soul-path magic treasures, nourishing souls, gathering wandering ghosts, and more.
However, to produce those effects, the tree had to be at least a thousand years old.
That was why Luo Chen hadn't paid it much mind when Feng Xia gifted him the seed.
How many thousand-year spans did a mortal have in a single lifetime?
In most cases, not even one.
Thus, he had casually tossed the seed to Qu Lingjun as a plaything.
He hadn't expected the boy to actually grow it.
Heaven only knew how he had pulled it off.
Right now, Luo Chen was merely making use of otherwise wasted resources.
Without cultivating the True Soul Refining Art, he could not absorb or assimilate souls extracted via the God-Deterring Technique.
Feeding them to the Soul Nourishing Tree to aid its growth was a far better alternative.
Once the pheasant's soul orb sank into it, a faint gleam flitted across one of the Soul Nourishing Tree's tender shoots.
Only after confirming that the pheasant's soul had been absorbed did Luo Chen breathe a sigh of relief.
He closed his eyes and opened them again.
The sensation of something tugging at his soul was gone.
Glancing at his status panel, the technique remained at the entry level, without a single point of proficiency gained.
*It seems the soul of a mere pheasant contributes an utterly negligible amount of proficiency.*
*Still, many grains of sand make a tower. I should familiarize myself with the process step by step first.*
Not the least bit discouraged, Luo Chen nodded to Liu Qiang beside him.
Liu Qiang blinked in surprise, then quickly understood.
Without hesitation, he opened his sack and pulled out another pheasant.
"Again!"
Making no attempt to conceal his actions from the two men, green light flared from Luo Chen's eyes once more.
……
Two hours later.
Luo Chen concluded his practice of the God-Deterring Technique and led the two men back at an unhurried pace.
Instead of flying, he strolled slowly, as if taking a leisurely walk.
Zhou Yuanli and Liu Qiang followed closely behind, their eyes filled with a faint trace of awe as they looked at him.
Luo Chen paid it no mind.
Practicing the God-Deterring Technique was fraught with perils, both internal and external.
Therefore, he needed people around him to stand guard.
For the time being, Zhou and Liu's loyalty to him was beyond question.
Aside from their reliable character, the compensation and treatment he provided were far beyond what any other faction could offer them.
Hence, he had no fear of them blabbing about this to outsiders.
He looked down at the flowerpot in his hands.
After absorbing the souls of several pheasants and a hyena, the verdant glow of the Soul Nourishing Tree had deepened noticeably.
Even its tender shoots had grown slightly thicker.
Had it not been for his Great Perfection Spirit Eye Art, Luo Chen would have struggled to notice such minute growth.
He nodded slightly. It seemed the Soul Nourishing Tree truly could absorb and devour yin souls.
Though he might rarely find a use for this tree in his lifetime, keeping it as a houseplant was harmless enough.
Caring for flowers and greenery was good for cultivating one's character, after all!
At present, he was far more focused on the changes within himself.
The proficiency of the God-Deterring Technique had barely budged; casting it six or seven times to extract seven souls had only raised it by a single point.
How long it would take to grind from Entry to Skilled was anyone's guess.
The change that truly delighted him was not the proficiency of the spell,
but the enhancement of his soul!
After ingesting the Nether-Passage Pill the previous night, his soul foundation had surged by a tremendous margin!
Yet that sudden explosion had left his head throbbing and floaty.
He had struggled to concentrate even while cultivating or concocting pills.
It felt like a person who had suddenly gorged themselves, ending up painfully bloated.
The body was unable to adjust all at once, making it impossible to focus on anything, let alone exercise or study.
Yet after practicing the God-Deterring Technique, Luo Chen acutely perceived that his bloated soul
had lost its former flimsiness, growing much more condensed and firm.
*The Nether-Passage Pill bolsters the soul foundation.*
*The God-Deterring Technique tempers and refines it, polishing the surging soul until it is flawless and well-rounded.*
*In this way, I can rapidly eliminate the side effects of taking the Nether-Passage Pill while also making my soul far more resilient.*
Upon reaching this conclusion, Luo Chen could hardly contain his joy.
This meant his initial estimate of being able to take a Nether-Passage Pill only once every half-month could now be shortened to once every ten days.
Increasing the frequency of pill consumption might seem trivial while burning through resources,
but in truth, its impact was colossal.
Take the Qi-Nourishing Pill and the Dust-Cleansing Pill as examples.
In the beginning, Luo Chen could only digest one per day.
Back then, he was penniless, so that pace was actually too fast for his pockets.
Yet as his wealth swelled, that digestive speed ended up holding his cultivation back.
Only after his Eternal Spring Art reached Master tier and widened his meridians was he able to digest two pills a day.
Even now, Luo Chen felt that was too slow.
It would be far better if he could increase it to three or four pills a day.
All in all, Luo Chen's method of cultivation was fundamentally about "trading resources for time!"
For every cultivation session, two Dust-Cleansing Pills cost forty spirit stones, a stick of Spirit Calming Incense cost twelve, a portion of Origin-Nourishing Spiritual Liquid cost ten, and using the Spirit Gathering Formation to draw wood-attribute spiritual energy consumed another five spirit stones. That came out to sixty-seven spirit stones in total.
That was not even counting the occasional high-grade Jade Marrow Pill he had taken in the past, which added another ten spirit stones.
Factoring in supplementary cultivation resources like moonlight grass and the spirit vein cave,
the resources Luo Chen burned through daily amounted to nearly eighty spirit stones.
That was over two thousand a month, and twenty to thirty thousand a year!
And that still omitted the Spirit Purifying Pills used to temper his soul, body, and eyes and purify spiritual energy, the Mending and Nourishing Meridian Liquid used to repair meridians damaged by excessive cultivation, and so on!
He hadn't even factored those into the tally.
If he included them, a mere Qi Refining cultivator like him was burning tens of thousands of spirit stones worth of resources in a single year!
What did that mean?
That sum of spirit stones was enough to take a cultivator of normal aptitude all the way from nothing to the Great Perfection of Qi Refining!
On the surface, Luo Chen looked like a complete spendthrift.
In reality, a normal cultivator equipped with that sum would take several decades to reach the Great Perfection of Qi Refining.
Luo Chen had taken less than two years!
This was trading resources for time.
Only Luo Chen could manage it. Others couldn't even dream of it, and even sect disciples would find it nearly impossible.
For no other reason than because Luo Chen was an "esteemed alchemist."
He had the prowess and wealth to surpass dual-spirit-root talents and rival the cultivation speed of heavenly-spirit-root prodigies despite his mediocre aptitude.
Even so, Luo Chen still lamented that his resource utilization rate wasn't high enough.
If he could push his daily pill-refining and absorption frequency even higher, that would be ideal.
……
When Luo Chen returned to the Luotian Association, he happened upon a visitor arriving at the gates.
It was the young master of the Nangong family, Nangong Qin.
Gu Caiyi was attending to him.
"Didn't we agree that we would deliver the goods to your door? Why trouble yourself to come in person, Fellow Daoist?"
"Cough, cough..."
Nangong Qin's complexion was somewhat pale. He shook his head and said,
"The Nangong family has entered a state of martial readiness recently and might close our estate to outsiders for a time. Because of that, the quantity of Jade Marrow Pills we need is rather large, so I had to come in person."
Outside the hall,
Luo Chen's brow twitched upon hearing those words.
*The Nangong family is on lockdown?*
Inside the hall,
Gu Caiyi said with a troubled expression, "The quota of Jade Marrow Pills for each family is fixed. Tripling it all of a sudden puts us in a very difficult position!"
"There's nothing difficult about it." Nangong Qin produced a pouch. "We'll waive our discount and purchase them at full retail price."
The Luotian Association had granted gilt VIP status to all the Foundation Establishment families.
Not only did they offer direct doorstep delivery, but they also extended a twenty percent discount on purchases.
In other words, while a bottle of Jade Marrow Pills sold on the market for fifty spirit stones, the Foundation Establishment families could acquire it for merely forty.
This move served both to secure their hold on the pill market and to curry favor with the prominent clans.
By relinquishing the discount now, the Nangong family was surrendering far more than a mere ten spirit stones.
Their usual quota was fifty bottles a month. Demanding two hundred bottles all at once meant they were forfeiting two thousand spirit stones in total!
Gu Caiyi was tempted.
However, market demand for pills was currently soaring.
Qi-Nourishing Pills circulating on the black market were fetching steep prices, presenting a prime opportunity to cement their market share.
As she hesitated, Luo Chen stepped into the reception hall.
He laughed heartily. "Since you come with such sincerity, how could we not help fulfill your wish?"
"Caiyi, send someone to fetch two hundred bottles of Jade Marrow Pills."
With someone making the call, matters were naturally settled.
Gu Caiyi nodded at Luo Chen, turned, and hurried out.
Only Luo Chen and Nangong Qin remained in the hall.
Looking at the young master, Luo Chen smiled. "Fellow Daoist Nangong, I trust you have been well?"
Nangong Qin gave a bitter smile. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, he burst into a fit of violent coughing.
Cough, cough, cough...
After the hacking fit subsided, he said wryly, "I've made a fool of myself before President Luo."
Luo Chen shook his head. "To lead men into the Ghost City and escape with your life from a ghost general earns only my respect. How could I mock you?"
He then asked curiously, "What is the situation like inside the Ghost City, exactly?"
Since he was asking for a favor and Luo Chen was being so gracious,
and given that the recent fiasco had already spread across Dahe Market anyway,
Nangong Qin had nothing to hide. He sighed and recounted the circumstances within the Ghost City in detail.
The two chatted at length until Gu Caiyi fetched all the Jade Marrow Pills, at which point Nangong Qin took his leave.
Luo Chen personally saw him to the main gate.
Watching the Nangong family cultivators hasten away atop streaks of light,
Luo Chen murmured, "The Nangong family is looking to recuperate for a spell."
"Recuperate?" Gu Caiyi asked, confused. "Didn't they just claim several territories from the Mountain Breaker Gang?"
"No matter how vast the territory, you need people to run it!"
What the Nangong family lacked most right now was manpower!
Luo Chen smiled and said no more.
The Nangong family had originally been outsiders.
Back when things were going poorly for them at Snow Lotus Market, they decided to relocate here just as Dahe Market opened the Dao Discussion Platform.
To gain a foothold in this place, they had expended tremendous effort.
They joined the Xuanyi Society and dispatched their family's strongest youth to make a name on the platform.
Later, they took part in carving up the Mountain Breaker Gang.
If everything had gone smoothly, then backed by their vigorous Foundation Establishment True Cultivator and their talented Qi Refining juniors, they would have easily established themselves in Dahe Market.
Yet the process had met with constant misfortune.
First, they lost a batch of clansmen in the skirmish to intercept Qin Liangchen.
Later, they clashed with the entrenched local Li family, suffering numerous casualties.
Now, from this expedition into the Ghost City, their harvest remained unknown, but they had lost nine whole late-stage Qi Refining cultivators.
Their vitality had suffered a grievous blow!
Under these circumstances, the many territories they had fought to seize had become an unwieldy burden.
Trying to hold and operate those parcels by force would only drag them into a quagmire against rival factions.
The Nangong family was not without foresighted leaders.
Thus, they had settled on a strategy of resting and biding their time.
This massive purchase of Jade Marrow Pills was precisely part of their preparations to lie low and recover.
With these pills, given enough time, they could readily cultivate a fresh crop of mid-stage and even late-stage Qi Refining clansmen.
When that day came, they could step into the open once more.
The reasoning behind it
was immediately transparent to Luo Chen.
Perhaps this clarity of thought was also a byproduct of his bolstered soul foundation!
His attention settled on the intelligence Nangong Qin had shared before leaving.
*The Ghost City might have more than one ghost general?*
Narrowing his eyes, Luo Chen felt a spike of urgency.
If ghost generals ventured beyond the city, they would inevitably bring a reign of blood and terror.
Monsters of such vile ferocity did not weigh pros and cons or care for material profit.
If one truly crossed paths with a ghost general, the creature wouldn't give a damn even if Luo Chen could brew second- or third-rank pills.
After all, ghosts born so abruptly were not orthodox ghost cultivators.
Reasoning with them was impossible.
"So in the end, I still need to increase my strength!"
……
"Hearing you describe it, this Luo Chen is quite remarkable!"
Inside the former ancestral grounds of the Mi family, now the headquarters of the Nangong family,
Nangong Jin opened his eyes in a meditation chamber, studying his son's ruddy complexion.
Nangong Qin no longer looked like the sickly invalid from earlier. Though his vitality was not at its peak, he was far from coughing at every breath.
He nodded and said, "Luo Chen coaxed quite a bit of intel about the Ghost City out of me, yet up until the very end, he didn't reveal the slightest intent to enter the city."
"It seems we were the reckless ones back then."
Nangong Jin let out a soft sigh.
Losing nine late-stage Qi Refining cultivators was a heavy blow to their Nangong clan.
The promised gains from the Ghost City had simply been too alluring, and having acquired several ghost-countering dharma artifacts from the Zhenlong Black Market, he had been tempted to explore it.
Who would have anticipated the outcome...?
This Luo Chen, on the other hand, held sway over an entire faction despite having only a Qi Refining cultivation, yet he could still rein in his greed.
It truly forced one to view him in a new light.
His willingness to show goodwill to the Nangong family by providing such a large shipment of pills spoke volumes of his magnanimity as well.
"It wasn't just his insight and poise—the impression he gave me was completely different from before."
"Oh?"
Nangong Jin furrowed his brow, speaking with a trace of uncertainty.
"Standing before him, I felt a pressure not unlike what I feel facing you, Father."
Nangong Jin's brow lifted. "Are you serious?"
"Yes!" Nangong Qin looked slightly uncomfortable as he recalled the meeting. "In front of him, I felt as though he could see right through me, inside and out."
"Not only that, looking back, he was in complete control of the conversation's rhythm the entire time."
"It was almost... as if I were facing a Foundation Establishment True Cultivator!"
Hearing this, Nangong Jin fell into deep thought.
After a long silence, he exhaled a long breath.
"No matter. The more Luo Chen stands out, the more advantageous it is for us."
"The other families have long coveted his alchemy skills."
"With him drawing attention at the forefront, he can shoulder some of the pressure on our behalf and help us weather the crisis before us."
At this point, he looked at Nangong Qin with affection.
"Take some time to rest."
"Although that foray into the Ghost City didn't damage your foundation, you still suffered no small amount of harm."
"Use this period to cultivate diligently and reach the Great Perfection of Qi Refining as soon as possible. I will keep that Foundation Establishment Pill reserved for you."
Overjoyed, Nangong Qin bowed respectfully.
After his son withdrew, Nangong Jin pondered silently for a while before suppressing the unease in his heart.
"Whatever happens, the family cannot be extinguished in my generation."
"Even if it means diverting trouble eastward... Luo Chen, is it...?"
Chapter 170