Applied Immortality

Wang Qi lay on the ground for a moment, then got up, “I need to get ready to go out into the wild in a few days, try my luck and whatnot. Start killing and robbing, a life in which good triumphs over evil.”

Zhen Chanzi said, “Wait.”

“What?”

“Not with that attitude.” Zhen Chanzi replied, “Spiritual power needs discipline, needs pursuit and focus. After getting spiritual power, you can relax for a while, but after you have your fill, you need to meditate on your core.” 

Wang Qi sighed, sitting back down in the Spiritual Gathering Array, focusing on the mental art that Zhen Chanzi taught him.

A truly good mental art wasn’t made of words, but insight. Wang Qi focused on making sense of the cryptic will in his head. He used spiritual power, working to understand its nature. 

Feeling the spiritual power moving through his body at his whim, Wang Qi giggled inside. [There’s nothing remotely scientific about it.]

After a while, Wang Qi looked within at the changes. He felt disillusioned, “Old man, did I do it?”

[Going by the cultivation method’s description, I nailed it…]

“Isn’t it too easy?” Wang Qi scratched his head.

[Isn’t it normal for a novel’s protagonist to have his life hang by a thread after losing countless treasures in breaking through? Only to find some ridiculous insight in cultivation no one ever could on the brink of despair?]

[It’s official, with advancing becoming a breeze, those novels are nothing but garbage.]

Zhen Chanzi was raving mad, roaring in his head, “Ridiculous! Insanity! How can you use baseless market gossip to measure cultivation? You still had to work for so long to enter the first stage and you’re already thinking of the end goal? Is cultivation a children’s play to you?”

Wang Qi shook his head, “Not children’s play, but a game! This is a violent and bloody game rated R. Especially not for children.”

Zhen Chanzi, “Ugh, I don’t want to hear it, kid.”

Wang Qi spent six more hours adjusting and consolidating his cultivation. As he got up, something came to mind. “Old man, aren’t there any tricks to hide your energy and cultivation?”

“Why ask?”

Wang Qi stated, “Nothing beats faking weakness to smack people around.”

Zhen Chanzi regretted choosing this wacko. Having a kid with a screw loose had got to be the biggest shame in his twenty thousand years, “The ring comes with the best stealth arts. With you entering Qi Refining, you can’t display their true worth, but it’s no problem hiding up to Foundation Establishment.” 

“Got any get rich quick skills in there as well?

“Rich skills?”

“You know, refining items out of thin air, or foolproof alchemy…”

Zhen Chanzi had to be feeling a stroke from anger for the first time in ten thousand years, “I’d have attained immortality eons ago with such skills!”

“Eh?” Wang Qi had a look of scorn on him, “Lame.”

Zhen Chanzi sighed in annoyance and helplessness, “I can give all the alchemy and refining arts you want. Learn them by yourself.”

Wang Qi bobbed his head, counting on his fingers, “I guess it’ll have to do. Another cool stuff checked.”

“Kid, is there a point to all this?”

“Entertainment.”

“Cultivate to the heavens, focusing on immortality and earn respect for eons to come. Isn’t that just as interesting and entertaining?”

Wang Qi was packing his bags for his very first big trip outside when he stopped and brought the ring to his eye, “Eons? It’s not like I can change the coming generations. Respect won’t get me a dime. Moreover, immortality? Old man, don’t you find this world such a drag?”

“A drag?”

“It’s stale. From your words, the first Foundation Establishment cultivator appeared eighty thousand years ago, followed by the first immortal ten thousand years later. Forty thousand years ago, immortality had been taken to the very limit, drying up the world’s spiritual energy.”

“Right, with my spirit destroyed, I am unable to sense spiritual energy. But judging by the thin spiritual energy from ten thousand years ago, we must now be in a barren world. There may not even be a Great Ascension cultivator alive…” 

“Then forty thousand years later, won’t immortality die out? Working under some guys doomed to die is so boring.”

Zhen Chanzi sank into silence. He had been a Great Ascension cultivator before and knew better than anyone. Cultivation focused on stealing the world’s energy and making it yours. One cultivator’s theft was a drop in the bucket, but now the world had long since been unable to sustain the proliferation of countless disciples and great disciples.

“The cultivators will one day suck the world dry. I can’t do anything to change it, nor do I want to. You know I hate trouble the most. How the world goes by or how others live has nothing to do with me. I just want to live a little.”

Wang Qi ignored the silent Zhen Chanzi, focusing on his packing for his little outing. 

Cultivators focused on spiritual power, wealth, fellow cultivators and environment. This secluded village could only offer Wang Qi the first, needing to look elsewhere for the other three.

Since the Spirit Body Stage was all about toughening the body and not holding any spiritual power, meeting a Qi Refining cultivator meant death. Zhen Chanzi also said that Spirit Body cultivators relied on themselves to grow, needing no pills. That was why Wang Qi staved off leaving and getting lucky somewhere out there all the way until now. 

“Since I’ll be leaving for good, I don’t need land. I’ll sell it to the villagers. That’s three acres and the house…”

Wang Qi flinched then, feeling his hand shake, “Old man, did you get vibration on?”

“There’s a Foundation Establishment cultivator nearby. We know nothing about him so pour your spiritual power into the ring. I’ll hide it for you.”

Zhen Chanzi might’ve fallen ten thousand years ago, reduced to a soul fragment, but he was once a sect leader, or so he claimed. He had many experts under him and even reached the peak of Great Ascension. He just had to withstand the tribulation to fly unfettered. While all that clout was gone as a mere soul fragment, he still had his uses.

Wang Qi did just that, sending his spiritual power. A cool feeling came from the ring that covered him. Then Wang Qi’s aura subsided, feeling like a lifeless tree. 

“Wait, you don’t know anything about the current cultivation world, right? Shouldn’t we ask around?”

“We have no idea of the other party’s intention and you want to risk dying? Fool.”

Zhen Chanzi sounded serious. He sensed how the Foundation Establishment cultivator was flying to the center of the village. It stopped nine hundred meters away, turning in this direction.

Nine hundred meters was the limit of a Foundation Establishment cultivator’s spiritual sense, on account that he trained in a legacy sense art. 

[Were we found out? Can’t be.] Zhen Chanzi was just a soul fragment, but his senses spread for five kilometers, finding out anyone that entered it. When Wang Qi used the ring, the other party was a kilometer away. A Foundation Establishment with a kilometer wide divine sense? It went against any common sense. 

It could see through the ring’s handy stealth skill? Not possible. In the glorious cultivator age of old, one had to be two stages over the other to discover the ring’s skill, something that was impossible in these barren times. 

Wang Qi watched a white light flying towards him in the sky. Zhen Chanzi said, “Play dumb.”

With danger coming for him, Wang Qi had no mind to talk back.

“Deep breath, deep breath. Good, be cool now, and smile. Relax your face, show only a few teeth in your smile, keep your tone even… ugh, scratch that last part.” 

Wang Qi did his best to put on a casual smile.

“What are you doing…” Zhen Chanzi was baffled.

“Making a good impression.” Wang Qi let it slip through his frozen smile.

“Fool, you should be playing dumb!”

“As if! Not with the Spiritual Gathering Array still set up. No amount of faking will work.” 

The white light stopped above the Wang clan manor, scattering to reveal a girl of seventeen. The girl looked quite fetching in her red dress and on a purple short sword.

“Flying sword…”

Wang Qi gushed like a fanboy. He had countless dreams in his first life of traveling on a sword anywhere he wanted. While in this life someone got him to cultivate, since he was not at Foundation Establishment, he couldn’t use such tools.

The girl broke his daydreaming. “You there! Yes, you. You entered Qi Refining with an ancient art so you’re coming with me!”

“Hey lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Wang Qi outright lied.

The girl showed her scorn, “You can’t hide the ancient treasure you have that is meant for destruction by modern cultivators. Your mutual stealth skill is a dead giveaway.”

“Eh?” Wang Qi gapped.

[Oh shit, this is way off script. Wasn’t this supposed to be some barren era? Don’t they say the older the art the better? Shit, shit shit…]

Wang Qi’s mind was racing, with Zhen Chanzi shaken up as well. “Just who is this little girl… What mythical item does she carry…”

“No, I think I might have an idea…” Wang Qi used his rough senses to send to Zhen Chanzi.

“What?”

“Providence must’ve sent her to diss us.”