บท 9: Chapter 9 The Ghost Shadow in the Small Village
Having escaped the dangerous situation for the moment, Lu Qingshan took the opportunity to tally his loot.
As the second senior brother of the Corpse Refining Cave, Si Xuesong only had one defensive magic artifact on him, which was a crystal clear, snow-white bracelet.
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[Golden Essence Ring]
Level: Middle Grade Mortal Artifact
Description: This magic artifact is forged from golden essence stone.
Magic Artifact Effect: When damaged, it can automatically trigger a First Grade spell, the Golden Light Shield (time remaining until recharge is complete: 11 hours).
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As a Middle Grade Mortal Artifact, it is indeed much stronger than the Earth Spirit Pendant. Firstly, the spell is automatically triggered and does not require manual activation.
Magic artifacts that trigger defensive spells automatically are highly practical in combat. Additionally, the spell's recharging time is a big factor, the Earth Spirit Pendant takes three days, while the Golden Essence Ring only needs one day.
Lu Qingshan deftly put the Golden Essence Ring onto his own wrist.
Next, he proceeded to check Si Xuesong's storage bag.
The contents of Si Xuesong's storage bag were clearly much more abundant than those of his two junior brothers.
However, that's only in comparison to his junior brothers. To Lu Qingshan's eyes, the Corpse Refining Cave was nothing more than a den of paupers.
Luckily for him, since the whole lot were impoverished, there wasn't a single attack magic artifact among them, and that's how he was able to muscle his way out.
Within Si Xuesong's storage bag, there were more than sixty First Grade spirit stones, which was more than three times the entire wealth of his two unfortunate junior brothers combined.
There were also several Spell Jade Slips and Cultivation Technique Jade Slips, all of which belonged to Dharma Cultivation items that Lu Qingshan, a Sword Cultivator, had no use for.
As for pills, besides the same bottle of Fasting Pills, there was surprisingly also a bottle of Qi Condensing Pills, which should count as the biggest gain of the day.
A bottle of Qi Condensing Pills (12 pills) is worth one hundred and twenty First Grade spirit stones. Qi Condensing Pills are only suitable for Qi Refining Cultivators to consume, and once one's Cultivation exceeds Qi Refinement, the pill's efficacy greatly diminishes.
Lu Qingshan opened the bottle and glanced inside; there were still eight round Qi Condensing Pills remaining.
Qi Condensing Pills can aid cultivators in their cultivation, accelerating their cultivation speed, and they are also beneficial for players.
In "Nine Heavens," players, like NPCs, can also meditate to refine their cultivation methods and gain experience points (by leaving the game running).
The role of Qi Condensing Pills in accelerating cultivation translates to an increase in the experience points gained from leaving the game running for players.
Lu Qingshan estimated that with the aptitude of his current body, if he cultivated his method for four hours a day, it would take about two days to gain 1 experience point.
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[Qi Condensing Pill]
Level: First Grade Pill
Description: After ingesting the pill, operate the cultivation technique to absorb the spiritual power within the pill, which can rapidly improve Cultivation. The efficacy is halved after consuming more than 10 pills, and after 20 pills, no further effect will be produced.
Pill Effect: Experience Points +10
Note: As long as one chews enough pills, even a mortal can become an immortal.
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Qi Condensing Pills don't take effect immediately upon ingestion; one must spend time operating the cultivation technique to fully absorb the spiritual power contained within the pill before gaining experience points.
But compared to the dry and dull practice of pure meditation, the efficiency is certainly more than a little bit higher.
Lu Qingshan put the pills back into the storage bag and tied the bag to the inside of his robe. At this moment, there were already three storage bags inside his robe.
This inevitably reminded him of a widely circulated saying among players.
Storage bags are just the lowest-grade storage artifacts with limited space. But since players can't afford high-level storage artifacts in the early stages of the game, they often choose to carry multiple storage bags to meet their storage needs.
Players, who are endowed with the so-called Ah Q spirit, sarcastically dubbed themselves members of the Beggars' Sect, ranking their seniority by the number of storage bags they carried.
In Lu Qingshan's current situation, he would be considered a 'Three Bags Elder'.
What impressed Lu Qingshan was that in his previous life, there was a fierce player from a certain 'Three' country who exploited his racial talents and equipped a hundred storage bags on his body, calling himself the 'Hundred Bags Elder' and 'Leader of the Beggars' Sect'.
...
Following the flow of the river, Lu Qingshan walked for a few more hours and finally, when his legs started to feel a bit wobbly, he saw a few village women laundering clothes by the river ahead.
The village women placed the clothes on rocks, using crushed soapberries formed into balls as detergent, constantly beating the clothes with wooden mallets. Their hands were busy at work, and their mouths did not rest, chatting about this and that of household gossip.
"Did you see the Taoist priest the village chief invited from the city the other day? All sharp-chinned and monkey-cheeked, I don't think he has a bit of the aura of an immortal Taoist priest."
"Eh, looks can be deceiving. That Taoist Priest Bai Piao is quite well-known even in Yuanshan City.
A few years ago, the neighboring village seemed to have offended some filthy thing, with several people becoming possessed. It was after they invited Taoist Priest Bai Piao to perform an exorcism that, on the very same day, those possessed villagers were said to have returned to normal!"
"If that's the case, this priest must be able to get rid of the evil spirit in our village, that would be such a relief. My child has been scared by this ghost for several days now, not having had a good night's sleep, it's been so distressing."
"Shh, that's not necessarily true. I heard from my husband that the evil spirit that appeared in our village is likely a big one.
Li Laoer got up in the middle of the night once and caught a glimpse of a ghostly shadow in his backyard, all fangs and claws, even claiming to be the West Chu Overlord, scared him out of his wits."
The oldest-looking among the women suddenly interjected, immediately causing a few gasps of shock.
"West Chu Overlord?!"
"Right, our village is very likely the place where this West Chu Overlord fell.
Since this overlord's ambitions were unachieved and he fell, he naturally held onto resentment. Over the years, this resentment accumulated and turned into a Resentful Spirit that now causes trouble!"
"Hiss——"
...
Of course, Lu Qingshan did not believe the village women's words. A ghost that could call itself the West Chu Overlord was an entity capable of bringing suffering to every living being within a domain.
If it were really the West Chu Overlord, you village women would have been long gone, how could you still be here washing clothes?
However, there's never smoke without fire, and the appearance of a ghost was probably true eight or nine times out of ten.
Moreover, to be able to claim the name West Chu Overlord implied that it had developed intelligence, which meant it should be a Yin Spirit rather than a Resentful Spirit.
Resentful Spirits were fierce ghosts that lingered in the mortal realm because they harbored resentment before death and refused to enter the Six Paths of Reincarnation. Their consciousness gone, they retained only an instinct for slaughter akin to that of wild beasts, a herald of great calamity.
Yet, Resentful Spirits were also top-notch material for refining magic artifacts by evil cultivators. If a Resentful Spirit was integrated as an artifact spirit within a magic artifact, it could boost the artifact's power by at least thirty percent.
Therefore, most cultivators were quite willing to subdue Resentful Spirits when encountered, as it served both to rid the people of harm and to gain a substantial profit when sold to evil cultivators.
If Resentful Spirits were considered valuable, then Yin Spirits were truly priceless treasures.
Different from Resentful Spirits, Yin Spirits were spiritual beings with opened intellect. If they obtained a suitable Cultivation Technique, they could cultivate like Human Cultivators, constantly enhancing their own power. After reaching Foundation Establishment, they could even recondense their bodies.
If one could subdue a Yin Spirit to be their ghost pet and nurture it well, it would undoubtedly become a powerful assistant for the cultivator, one that could continually upgrade.
A Yin Spirit appearing in a small village, and the fact that the villagers who saw it were still alive, suggested that this Yin Spirit was probably newly born and had not yet obtained a suitable Cultivation Method for spirit cultivation, only able to use its innate abilities to play some minor tricks.
An idea flashed through Lu Qingshan's mind.
"Auntie, I just overheard you talking about the West Chu Overlord, Taoist Priest Bai Piao. May I know exactly what the situation is?" Lu Qingshan stepped forward and asked with a shy smile.
The village women, seeing that the visitor was a seemingly harmless young man, were quite enthusiastic and did not hide much, chattering away: "It wasn't long ago that our days were going just fine, but about half a month ago, domestic animals started disappearing frequently in the village.
At first, we didn't think much of it, figuring it must be some dog's son of a thief getting greedy, stealing our chickens and ducks to feast on.
So, we sent a few people to stealthily watch around the chicken coop, hoping to catch this petty thief.
But who could have known, not a single shadow was seen, yet two chickens still went missing from the coop, night after night, for several nights.
We began to suspect it was the work of a ghost, and it wasn't until a few days ago that Li Laoer himself witnessed the ghost shadow; then we were sure that there truly was a ghost in the village. So, we hurriedly asked the village chief to go to the city and invite a Taoist priest to exorcise the spirit."
A ghost stealing chickens?
Lu Qingshan felt there was something slightly amiss.
"May I ask when the Taoist priest is performing the exorcism? I am rather interested in these exorcism rituals; may I observe it?"
The eldest village woman looked at Lu Qingshan in surprise, "You're quite bold for someone so young. The priest said he would start the ritual at the time of You (5-7 pm).
If you're interested, just wait here a moment. Once we finish washing the clothes, you can come back to the village with us."
Lu Qingshan bowed his hands in thanks, "Alright, then I'll thank the auntie first."
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