Walking alone with a sword, slaying ghosts and gods

Chapter 406: Poisonous sores, new and ancient methods
"You guys take this corpse monster away and hand it over to the Tianmu Guards for disposal when we return." Lu Cheng glanced at the corpse python and gave a light order.

Hearing this, Zhou Zijing, Chu Yibai, Yan Xiao and others stepped forward to clean up. After sixteen years of getting along, even the most unruly Yan Xiao knew that there was a huge gap between him and this Taoist.

All I can say is that he is worthy of being an ascended monk. He was able to overcome all difficulties and ascend to the spiritual world when the spiritual energy in the lower realm is so thin. No matter his mental cultivation, he is not comparable to that of ordinary spiritual world monks.

Xuantian Pavilion is an insurmountable chasm for his cultivation, but for others, it is probably just a starting point.

If you don't follow suit at this time, you may never have such an opportunity again.

At the same time, Lu Cheng threw a spirit stone to Lin Qingya. The female cultivator riding on the elk reached out to take it, but looked at the Taoist with a puzzled look.

"After we bring this corpse demon back to Tianmuwei, we will convert it into combat power, and the gains will be far more than these. Even if you don't need these, the brothers who follow you will also have families and careers."

“…Thank you.”

The female cultivator from the Wood Spirit Clan was silent for a moment after hearing this, then thanked him and threw the spirit stone to her assistant:
"After the mission, share it with your brothers. You don't have to hand it in."

"Thank you, Captain."

"Thank you Captain."

The Mu Ling cultivators behind Lin Qingya looked excited.

The cultivators of the Wood Spirit Clan are close to spiritual trees, but in fact they also like many creations of foreign races. Some of them are similar to the beliefs cultivated by a tribe since childhood and the temptations of the outside world, the two influence each other.

After sixteen years of occasional contact, Lu Cheng already knew that Lin Qingya in front of him was a conservative and moderate member of the Wood Spirit Clan. If he met the radical members of the Wood Spirit Clan, he would not give them such a good face.

After completing the patrol mission at Mulong Ridge, the group of seven returned to Tianmuwei to report, and then returned to Mudu.

The Tianmu Guard itself has cultivators responsible for patrolling Mulong Ridge. The people from Lu Cheng were considered to be airdropped from above. In the words of the Tianmu Guard cultivators: they will go back after taking the credit.

Therefore, the attitude of the upper-level monks of Tianmuwei towards people like Lu Cheng was: polite but distant.

There is a natural gap between high-level monks and local people.

Mudu, the mansion with the best spiritual environment that can be purchased with spirit stones, in the South City District, Lu Cheng controlled the escape light to return to his mansion.

He spent the past sixteen years like this, completing his patrol duties, returning to his mansion to study, practice swordsmanship, and cultivate Taoism.

He has little contact with outsiders and seldom socializes or drinks, and seems to be a typical ascetic.

Compared to chance and sudden enlightenment, only hard work is the most graspable thing for people. Therefore, there are many such cultivators in the spiritual world. If they can really persevere, they can indeed achieve a relatively high level at their level.

In most cases, failure in life is due to either arrogance or laziness, one of the two must be the other. Courage, perseverance, prudence, and intelligence are the roots of Taoist practice, and diligence is also among them. They are also the basis for achieving immortality.

Of course, the diligence in learning here refers to the diligence in learning Taoism.

"Lu Shangxiu, what a coincidence, we meet again."

A gentle and charming voice sounded from the front. Lu Cheng looked in the direction of the sound and saw a female cultivator in a red robe and with a graceful figure waving a whisk and flying towards him.

At first glance, there seems to be nothing, but if you look closely or have excellent eyesight, you can see that the hem of this female cultivator's skirt is slightly open, revealing two faintly visible snow-white thighs, plump breasts, round buttocks, slim waist and long legs. It seems that there is infinite charm in her casual gestures.

"It turned out to be Fellow Daoist Wen. It was indeed a coincidence."

After Lu Cheng returned the salute, he said this calmly, then turned around and continued to return to his own cave, causing the female cultivator Wen Xiujing behind him to look angry.

Many monks who practice Taoism will not get involved with women before they have achieved success in their own cultivation, because beauty can easily lead to uncertainties. Especially after Lu Cheng moved here, fellow Taoist Wen Xiujing moved here a few years later, and the two met by chance several times.

Half a year later, Lu Cheng discovered that Fellow Daoist Wen had close contacts with several male practitioners.

"Such a beauty, coupled with her easy availability, is indeed very tempting. She should be a cultivator from Tianmuwei, right? It's been sixteen years, and she still hasn't let down her guard against me?

It seems that these guys have done something serious, and they will be wary of every cultivator sent by Xuandu City.'

Inside the cave, on the platform.

Lu Cheng sat cross-legged, cleared his mind of distractions, and began today's practice, reading Taoist scriptures, accumulating magical powers, and practicing swordsmanship.

Lu Cheng's life seemed to be nothing but hard training.

But in reality, his original body was living a life of debauchery, singing and dancing with his wife and concubines in the human world, and his incarnation did not understand his happiness.

"I am just an incarnation without human rights. I will do the hard work, and I will do the drinking and having fun."

The dragon poison body spoke silently and then continued to practice.

late at night.

Lu Cheng was in the cave, and through the Wu Earth Spirit Earthworm, he continuously expanded his spiritual perception. Without alerting anyone, he had a clear and intuitive view of the Tianmu Guard's surveillance of him.

If he used the gold-gnawing fire ants, the poisonous golden silkworm Gu or even the Eastern True Locust to conduct the investigation, it is indeed possible that he would be detected by the insect cultivators in the spiritual world.

After all, the level of Taoism in the spiritual world is far higher than that in the mortal world. The Nine Volumes of Insect Scriptures of Haiyuan City, which Lu Cheng was once obsessed with, are nothing special when he looks at them again in the spiritual world.

He also found many fallacies and errors in it, because several insect scriptures he found randomly in the spiritual world were more advanced than it.

Although the earth burrowing of the Wu Earth Spirit Earthworm was slow, it was indeed difficult to be detected. Through the perception spread by the Wu Earth Spirit Earthworm, Lu Cheng cast an invisibility talisman on himself and then escaped. However, he felt that there was no need to waste this fifth-level invisibility talisman.

Escape from Mudu, change your appearance, and then go to Mulongling:
The first time I patrolled Mulong Ridge, that somewhat strange robbery cultivator, the patrols in Mulong Ridge in the past sixteen years, and the most recent corpse demon.

Each time there were only slight discords, which would have been easily overlooked by ordinary cultivators. However, Lu Cheng was an old monster who had practiced all the way up from the mortal world and had actually been practicing Taoism for five or six hundred years.

Whether it is the Tianmuwei monks or people like Zhou Zijing and Chu Yibai, they are actually juniors in front of him.

The sky and the moon are hazy, the night is dark and windy.

The dark blue moonlight shines through the branches of the towering ancient trees in Mulong Ridge, casting mottled shadows on the humus layer.

At this time, Lu Cheng was hiding among the tangled roots of the ancient locust tree. The Wu Earth Spirit Earthworm spread silently and drilled thirty feet into the ground, taking in all the spiritual fluctuations in the surrounding area.

He had released these spirit insects little by little over the past sixteen years, and even the Wood Spirits would have difficulty sensing or detecting them.

Therefore, he gradually narrowed the scope and locked on this place.

At this moment, below the forest, a group of wood spirits dressed in animal skins and tree clothes were trading with human monks.

"We spent a lot of effort to get these today. We can't calculate them at the same price as last time." As a human cultivator said this, he shook open his Qiankun bag, and more than a dozen corpses of humans and monsters inside slid to the ground and piled up together.

The elder headed by the Wood Spirit Clan brushed his withered fingers across the dantian of the corpses, examining them one by one.

“Hehe… you are willing to do so. Well, since you can get the corpse of a Nascent Soul cultivator, then this Moonlight Spirit Wood is yours.”

The transaction was still going on. Lu Cheng merged with the rocks and used body cultivation techniques to reduce his heart's qi and blood to the lowest level.

At the same time, using the Wu Earth Spirit Earthworms as landing nodes, Lu Cheng can greatly expand his spiritual consciousness and refine the scan. For example, at this moment, he saw a "person" coming close to a tree, stretching out his palm, and countless wooden tentacles emerged from his palm, merging with the ancient tree. Then came his entire body, which merged with the tree, like a wood escape technique, and after the fusion, the breath was almost non-existent.

'A wooden puppet, and a wooden puppet that can exert a certain amount of combat power it had in its lifetime. In this way, everything before and after can be explained.

Why do the monks of Mulongling encounter attacks from time to time? This is because the monks of the Muling clan are hiding secrets and training. Although the puppet from sixteen years ago is not as powerful as some Jindan monks, it has indeed reached the general combat power of Jindan monks, but it is slightly slow...'

"Why would the Tianmu Guards spy on me? Because they were involved in smuggling with the Muling Tribe, which is already treason."

While Lu Cheng was thinking and hiding, the transaction below was quickly completed. The Tianmu Guards delivered the corpse, and the Muling cultivators gave the spiritual wood.

Then the Mu Ling monks left quickly, leaving only the Tian Mu Wei monks on the scene.

"The Millennium Moonlight Spirit Wood is a treasure of inestimable value. Even a Yuanying Zhenjun would desperately try to snatch it from the outside."

The leading Tianmuwei monk took out the Moonlight Spirit Wood and looked at it, sighing.

Even the high-level cultivators of Tianmuwei are only at the Jindan stage. With these spiritual wood treasures, whether they use them themselves or sell them secretly, they can gain the benefit of changing their destiny.

"Brother Qiao, aren't we aiding the enemy by doing this? The Wood Spirits have clearly begun to study the art of corpse refining and puppetry. Not only have we suppressed it and not reported it, we've also provided them with corpses to refine. This..."

"So what? They are just a few refined corpses. Can they destroy our clan? The Wood Spirit Clan just wants to increase its strength to protect itself. The leaders are corrupt and nepotistic. They haven't cultivated a single Mahayana cultivator in all these years. Can we destroy our clan just by making a little profit?
You are talking so much nonsense now. I didn't see you talking so much when I took the spirit stones to Tianxiang Tower to have fun before."

"Brother, I...I'm just asking, I don't mean anything else."

"Qiao Zhenyu, the deputy battalion commander of Tianmu Guard, is involved in this. It seems that the entire Tianmu Guard is rotten. Be extra careful. With my current cultivation level, if I am discovered, it will be almost impossible for me to leave Mulong Ridge alive."

After the transaction was completed, Lu Cheng hid there for another seven days and nights, and then after constant calculations, he sneaked away from Mulong Ridge.

At this moment, Lu Cheng already had the Shadow Stone in his hand. Although it was not very clear, this level of evidence was enough for Taiqing Sect to bring out the Questioning God Talisman and conduct a strict interrogation.

Secret arts such as the soul-searching talisman and the soul-searching technique have a certain impact on the mind of the recipient and may affect his future path. Therefore, famous and orthodox sects like Taiqing Mountain will not use this technique easily.

On the other hand, where there is attack, there is defense. A high-level cultivator can also forge the memory of a low-level cultivator and lure a high-level cultivator from a hostile sect into a trap. There are even some ruthless low-level cultivators who take great risks to forge their own memories, which can also greatly affect the God-Questioning Talisman and the Soul-Searching Technique.

Mudu, Lu Cheng successfully returned to his own residence in Nancheng.

“It’s basically safe to return here. The highest realm of the cultivators in Tianmuwei is only Yuanying. Mudu is a border city, and the cultivators stationed here include Huashen and the highest Lianxu realm cultivators. Even if there is a big disturbance, they can’t arrest me in Mudu.

The difficulty now lies in delivering this reflection stone to Taoist Master Yuding. If I return, something unexpected may happen to the teleportation array. It is better for me to write a personal letter, make a copy of the reflection stone, and let Zijing do it for me.

As long as these are safely delivered to Taoist Master Yu Ding, the corrupt monks in Tianmuwei will have no choice but to commit suicide."

Committing suicide by falling on the sword would not bring harm to his wife and children, and he might even be able to keep his property. When all the evidence was delivered to Taoist Master Yu Ding, if the cultivators of Tianmuwei fought back again, they would only be charged with treason.

Although the Taiqing Sect has weakened over the years, it is still far from being able to bear its thundering wrath.

Thinking of this, Lu Cheng copied the Shadow Stone and wrote a letter himself.

He knew that at this moment, neither the Wood Spirit Clan nor the Sky Wood Guard monks had most likely noticed what he had done. After all, he had waited sixteen years for this matter to allow them to let down their guard.

Therefore, when he later called Zhou Zijing over and handed him the letter and the shadow-reflecting stone, Lu Cheng did not say much, but only told him to set off immediately and hand them over to Taoist Master Yuding.

"Once this is accomplished, it will be a great achievement. However, you must not reveal this to anyone."

Zhou Zijing still listened to Lu Cheng, and because what Lu Cheng had done before was secretive enough, the Mu Ling clan and the Tianmuwei monks did not notice it. Therefore, Zhou Zijing returned to Xuandu City through the teleportation array and handed the letter and the shadow stone to Taoist Master Yuding. After Taoist Master Yuding read them, he asked him to return, and everything went very smoothly.

"Brother Lu, the Taoist master said that the mission has been successfully completed and asked you to return to Xuandu City immediately."

Half a day later, inside the mansion, Zhou Zijing bowed and said this.

"Okay, thank you for your hard work."

In addition to delivering the message, Zhou Zijing also brought back a handwritten letter from Taoist Master Yu Ding. Lu Cheng was able to recognize the handwriting, so he was completely relieved.

On that day, Lu Cheng brought Zhou Zijing, Chu Yibai Yanxiao and his two guards, and did not say goodbye to Taoist Zhuang An, but returned directly to Xuandu City.

When receiving this news, Taoist Zhuang An's face turned pale.

He was indeed a retired warrior from the Tianmu Guard, but after being hired by Lu Cheng, he was summoned by high-ranking cultivators from the Tianmu Guard and secretly re-hired.

He had served as a warrior in the Tianmu Guard for many years and knew some inside information about the smuggling trade. At this moment, he immediately sent out various talismans to the high-level monks of the Tianmu Guard. For a moment, everyone was in a panic.

"That Lu Cheng is not a person who doesn't know etiquette. Moreover, we have known each other for many years. Now he suddenly returns to Xuandu City, so suddenly, and he didn't even meet me...Did he find out something about you? I told you not to trade in these years, not to trade, there are only four years left. Are your brains blocked by spirit stones, and you can't even wait for four years!?"

At the same time, Lu Cheng had returned safely to Xuandu City with everyone.

After dismissing everyone, Lu Cheng went directly to Xuantian Pavilion.

Taoist Master Yu Ding was still teaching, and Lu Cheng waited in Xuantian Hall until the class was finished.

Then, this great cultivator in the Refining Void Realm led Lu Cheng to his private cave in Xuantian Pavilion.

"To be honest, Cheng'er, your static skills are quite good, but I really didn't expect that your dynamic skills could reach such a level. I can only say that you are worthy of being an ascended cultivator. The seeds rolled out of the blood mud are indeed fuller than most of the cultivation seeds in the spirit world."

"Master Dao, you are overpraising me."

At this time, Taoist Master Yu Ding personally handed over a cup of spiritual tea. Lu Cheng took it without hesitation and drank it. He was in Zifu, and the opposite was Lianxu. Not to mention this external incarnation, even if the real body came, Taoist Master Yu Ding would blow him into ashes if he spoke louder.

The gap in cultivation between the two sides is too great, so being cautious is meaningless.

"You did a great job this time, but Mulongling cannot be touched now."

"I will follow the Taoist master's orders." Lu Cheng heard it and said this without saying anything else.

"I'd better explain it to you clearly, lest you think I'm the one behind this deal. To be honest, when I received your letter just now, I was also shocked. I didn't expect that the Taoism of the Wood Spirit Tribe has been so profound, and I didn't expect that the Tianmu Guard has been so corrupt.

But now the Muling Clan cannot move, because they already have a cultivator in the Refining Void Realm, and the mountain gate has no Mahayana cultivators yet. In fact, it is not just Mulongling that is like this, many of the alien races controlled by the sect are like this, as long as they have not raised the flag of rebellion, the sect will pretend that they are unaware of their private actions.

Cheng'er, do you know why? "

"…Because the sect is waiting for a Mahayana cultivator."

"Of course."

Taoist Master Yu Ding smiled bitterly and nodded, then continued:
“There is already a cultivator at the Refining Void Realm in Mulong Ridge. Although he cannot hide, the mountain gate knows about it. Combined with the Ten Thousand Trees Profound Array there, even if a cultivator at the Fusion Realm from the sect carries a treasure, he may not necessarily be able to win.

My Taiqing Sect is best at using realm to suppress others, which is what is called fighting with magic power is not as good as fighting with Taoism. But the cultivator with the highest Taoism in my Taiqing Sect is only Brother Xuan Zhenzi, who is a cultivator who practices ancient methods. It is extremely difficult to make up for that one step difference. "

The distinction between the ancient method and the new method is a division that has only appeared in the last tens of thousands of years. The new method divides each level of cultivation of cultivators into nine levels, which is very detailed and detailed. Therefore, it is relatively easier to break through. The ancient method simply divides each level into early, middle, late and perfect levels, which makes it relatively difficult to break through compared to the new method.

Even though it is just a slight difference, many times it is these slight differences that make a cultivator break through.

From this perspective, the new method is definitely better than the old method. However, even the Taiqing Sect, which is the most advanced sect, is far from reorganizing the old system into the new one. Xuan Zhenzi of the Taiqing Sect is limited by this and is unable to advance or retreat.

"I understand. The Wood Spirit Clan of Mulong Ridge is like a poisonous sore on a seriously injured person. Everyone knows that it is best to dig it out, but if there is any more damage, the seriously injured person may not be able to bear it. It is better to let it continue to exist and wait until the seriously injured person recovers a little before dealing with it."

If the Taiqing Sect cannot wipe out the Muling Clan of Mulong Ridge in one fell swoop with a thunderous force, then it is best not to touch it for the time being. Otherwise, once it falls into a stalemate, the various problems that have accumulated in the Taiqing Sect for thousands of years may be triggered in large numbers.

(End of this chapter)