Swish! Swish! Swish!
Dawn had yet to break, but the fields were already alive with movement.
Li Yan swung his sickle with practiced ease. His left arm swept inward, gathering a bundle, while his right drew the blade across. Sheaves of wheat fell cleanly in rapid succession, settling in neat rows behind him to await binding.
After a time, as the horizon turned the pale white of a fish’s belly, Li Yan finally paused his relentless labor. He straightened slowly, working through a few stretches to ease the stiffness in his back, and glanced around.
In the distance, the other fields were just as busy.
The wheat of Fort Li was ripe for harvest.
Timing was everything when reaping wheat. As the old saying went: *Nine parts ripe, a full harvest; ten parts ripe, one part lost.* One could never afford to wait until the crop was fully mature.
Even the hour of day mattered. Work was concentrated in the early morning and late evening, when the stalks were supple and less prone to snapping, keeping the grains firmly on the head.
A whole year of bitter toil went into the crop; losing even a handful was agonizing.
Four or five days had passed since his return. Every night, he had practiced the visualization of spirit preservation. Though he had not yet fully succeeded, he had made substantial progress.
The harvest had begun right on time, allowing him to reap wheat by day and cultivate by night without neglecting either.
An able-bodied laborer could cut about one mu of wheat in a day.
Li Yan, however, was a trained martial artist with a solid foundation. He had also learned the local sickle methods passed down through the countryside. Nimble and efficient, he could clear a full mu and a half each day.
The few mu belonging to his household took only a matter of days.
Daily cutting, threshing, drying, and binning meant leaving early and returning late. Even with his martial conditioning, he was left exhausted, his back aching and muscles sore.
Yet he found genuine joy in the routine.
His erratic supernatural ability had previously kept his emotions dangerously unstable. But after a day of hard, honest physical labor, his mind cleared, making it far easier to enter deep meditation.
Without him realizing it, several more days slipped by.
In the fields surrounding Fort Li, the golden waves of wheat had vanished, replaced by vast stretches of yellow earth bristling with dense stubble.
Whenever the wind blew, loose dust rose into the air.
Beneath the setting sun, the Guanzhong plains appeared all the more desolate and grand.
Though the scenic golden waves were gone, the common folk wore broad smiles.
Scholars and poets always imagined that a sea of gold signified abundance, but only those who scratched a living from the dirt knew the truth. Hail, torrential rain, violent winds—each was a trial. Only when every single grain was safely stored in the granary could a year truly be called a harvest.
And on this very night, Li Yan finally achieved a breakthrough.
In the dead of night, he sat cross-legged upon his bed.
His mind was completely detached from worldly affairs, his breathing faint and indistinct. His awareness was entirely concentrated between his brows. In the darkness, a luminous human silhouette floated in stillness.
This was the spirit he had visualized.
Following the methods of the *True Scripture of Xixuan Dongming*, he visualized his internal organs and bodily vessels each day, gathering every faint glimmer of hidden spiritual light toward the point between his brows to preserve his spirit.
The mark of success was when the preserved spirit became imperishable.
Even after waking, a single thought would instantly manifest the preserved spirit in his sea of consciousness.
Of course, this method progressed in gradual stages.
As one’s cultivation deepened, the visualized spirit would grow clearer.
Cultivators of major orthodox sects had blueprints based on their sect founders or celestial beings. Li Yan, however, encountered an anomaly.
His blueprint for visualization was the substitute idol resting in his dantian.
Because this object was permanently rooted there, attuned to his very heart, he needed only to focus his attention. Unlike other Xuanmen practitioners, he did not have to laboriously round up a scattered mind.
This was the secret behind his extraordinary speed.
The moment his visualization succeeded, the glowing silhouette between his brows resonated with the substitute idol. It descended rapidly, enveloping the figure below.
This unexpected development caught Li Yan completely off guard.
Before he could react, the idol underwent another transformation.
Merging with the light of the preserved spirit, the idol’s originally indistinct face began to twist and reshape. Features defined themselves until it bore an exact likeness to Li Yan.
At the same time, a flood of knowledge surged into his mind.
Shock filled Li Yan’s eyes, quickly giving way to delight.
Previously, his connection to the idol had been murky, leaving him to deduce its uses from fragmentary impressions.
Only now, through spirit preservation, had he truly and completely refined it.
This treasure was called the "Daluo Dharma Body."
Beyond swapping wounds and substituting lives, it could also guard the spirit.
The spirit he had visualized had now merged seamlessly with the Daluo Dharma Body.
This brought two major advantages.
First, it protected the preserved spirit. Serving the same purpose as a Louguan spirit pavilion, it prevented his preserved spirit from casually dispersing, even without formal rituals to erect an ethereal structure.
Second, just like his physical flesh, it could take the blow in his stead.
If he fell victim to curses targeting the soul, he could transfer the damage to the idol, leaving his preserved spirit unharmed.
Naturally, building a proper spirit pavilion would still be necessary down the road.
After all, the Daluo Dharma Body could only absorb harm; it could not actively enhance his cultivation.
More importantly, the Daluo Dharma Body could continue to evolve.
It needed only to consume heavenly spirit earthly treasures to strengthen its resilience. And if it absorbed enough of them, a specific ritual could rekindle his life-fire.
That was tantamount to gaining an extra life!
To think this Daluo Dharma Body actually required spiritual refinement.
A smile crossed Li Yan’s face. With a shift of intent, the preserved spirit returned to the space between his brows. Even when stray thoughts rippled through his mind, that luminous figure showed no sign of fading.
Suppressing his excitement, he adjusted his breathing and focused his mind according to the instructions in the *True Scripture of Xixuan Dongming*. Instantly, his supernatural ability began to shift.
His heightened sense of smell had long been out of control—faint and unreliable most of the time, yet prone to sudden, violent surges that left his head pounding and vision black, taking hours to recover.
Now, that terrifying sensitivity faded away.
In the end, it was no different from that of an ordinary man.
Li Yan remained calm. He pressed the tip of his left thumb to the upper joint of his index finger.
This was the Yang mudra, representing the Lord of the Sun.
Holding the hand seal, he drew a deep breath. His olfactory ability snapped open instantly. Scents flooded his nasal cavity, growing stronger and sharper in response to his will.
Next, he shifted his left thumb to the upper joint of his ring finger.
This was the Yin mudra, representing the Moon Star Lord. The ability closed once more.
According to the manual, supernatural abilities stemmed from the Yang Six Roots rather than mere physical strength, draining mental energy and spiritual vitality during use.
Now that he had accomplished spirit preservation and mastered the Yin and Yang hand seals, he could toggle the ability at will.
Keeping it closed during daily life would prevent sinister, yin-aligned entities from noticing him.
The dark cloud that had loomed over his head had finally dispersed.
*Clack!*
Right as Li Yan was basking in relief, a stone landed in the courtyard.
In the dead of night, the noise could not escape his ears.
Someone was out there!
His brows drew together. Rolling off the bed, he seized the Guanshan blade hanging from the wall and tiptoed out the door.
*Clack!*
Another stone struck the ground.
Li Yan’s gaze narrowed, his right hand gripping the hilt.
This was "throwing a stone to ask the way," a customary practice among those of the martial underworld.
If someone of the craft were inside, they would call out a line of thieves’ cant, prompting the visitor to leave so neither would intrude uninvited and trigger a bloody feud.
If no one answered, the visitor was free to come and go as they pleased.
Li Yan was about to call out and drive the intruder away when a thought struck him. Forming the hand seal, he inhaled deeply. Scents within a hundred paces became instantly distinct.
*Sha Lifei?!*
Catching the scent, Li Yan was caught off guard.
He glanced toward the other wing, confirming that his grandfather Li Gui was still sound asleep. Then he dashed toward the corner of the wall. With a quick two-step climb, he launched himself into the air and cleared the courtyard wall with a crisp, sideways flip.
Waiting outside was indeed Sha Lifei.
He was in a sorry state, his clothes tattered and coated in dust. Huddled beneath the shadow of a jujube tree, he was craning his neck, peering left and right.
"What happened?" Li Yan asked in a hushed whisper, his brow furrowed.
Sha Lifei scratched his bald head and said bitterly, "Let’s talk outside the village. Daoist Wang is here too, waiting up in the ruined temple on the back hill."
He hesitated, then added, "Also... could you spare some water and food?"
"Haven't eaten all day..."
***
On the hill behind Fort Li stood a mountain god temple.
Such shrines were scattered all across the realm. Herb gatherers, hunters heading into the wilds, and weary travelers often burned a stick of incense before entering the mountains, praying for safe passage and protection from lurking demons and spirits.
Back when Fort Li’s generation of veteran soldiers was still vigorous, incense had burned plentifully here; those veterans were all skilled archers who regularly climbed the mountain to hunt game.
Nowadays, fewer and fewer people ventured up. Combined with the fact that the barren hill yielded little worth taking, the temple’s offerings had dried up. Neglected for years, even a corner of its roof beams had collapsed.
At this moment, a bonfire crackled within the shrine.
Sha Lifei and Wang Daoxuan were warming flatbreads over the flames, wolfing them down alongside gulps of cold water like starving ghosts returned to the world of the living.
"Bandits raided the village?" Li Yan asked, seated to one side in disbelief.
No wonder. Over the days he had been cultivating, Heidan and the other wheat reapers had all returned, yet there had been no sign of Wang Daoxuan and Sha Lifei.
He had assumed the First Madam was lingering longer than expected and the funeral arrangements were simply taking time.
He never imagined bandits had stormed the village.
"Yeah, you bet!" Sha Lifei mumbled around a mouthful of food. "Right after the reapers left, bandits raided the place that very night. Luckily, the Daoist and I had gone into town to order the coffin, so we didn't get trapped inside."
Li Yan’s brow knit. "The Lu family had plenty of guards. Were there really that many bandits?"
Sha Lifei forced down a lump of flatbread and cursed, "Tons of 'em! A black swarm you couldn't even count, three or four hundred at least."
"I even spotted a familiar face—that leader of the Qilu mounted bandits we ran into on the road! He was banded together with several big-saber bandit outfits from Guanzhong."
"Dammit, they slaughtered the whole village. Brutal bastards!"
"Qilu mounted bandits?"
Hearing that, Li Yan fell deep into thought.
This matter was likely far from simple...
Chapter 28