Fangxian Heretical Path

Chapter 211 Clever Use Leads to Good Fortune
After leaving the auction, Fang Shu did not immediately return to the inn.

He wandered around the market, buying some materials for refining magic along the way. As night fell, fireflies and lantern monsters began their work, hanging themselves by the roadside.

Only then did he leisurely return to the inn.

When he appeared at the inn, he had already removed the fox fur from his body, and his clothes were ordinary, making it impossible for anyone to tell that he had gone to the auction to make some purchases.

Suddenly, when Fang Shu asked the innkeeper for food, the innkeeper, while fiddling with the abacus beads with his paw, said indifferently, "Sir, someone did come to inquire about the thirteenth house of the Bing family today, but it wasn't anything important. I'm just letting you know."

Fang Shu raised an eyebrow; the guest in room thirteen of the Bing character was none other than himself.

He immediately asked and found that it was indeed Tian Jinmao who had come. Perhaps that guy wanted to team up with him again to eat and drink for free at today's auction.

However, Fang Shu carefully recalled that he did not see Tian Jinmao at the auction. But perhaps there were too many people and monsters today, and he and that fellow simply missed each other.

"Thank you, innkeeper." Fang Shu bowed to the innkeeper and then went into the guest room.

The following days.

Fang Shu immediately entered a state of seclusion, beginning to refine the acquired pathogenic energy into his body.

Approximately seven days.

He successfully condensed his evil energy, and the true energy within his body rose to another level, its color becoming heavy and infused with poisonous intent. Moreover, the amount of stagnant true energy began to increase again.

From this point on, Fang Shu had already condensed three kinds of evil energy into his body. The collection of evil energy had reached halfway. He only needed to refine three more kinds to fuse with the six evil energies and get a glimpse of the Refining Qi!
His gradual progress in cultivation truly delighted him.

Since leaving the stomach, the lingering feeling of rootlessness and drifting in my heart has mostly disappeared.

Therefore, Fang Shu did not leave the seclusion, but instead took advantage of this momentum to vigorously improve his Qi cultivation in the guest room.

In his spare time, he did not waste any time, but began to study the two new methods he had learned.

More than a month.

He first mastered the "Soul Searching and Truth Revealing Technique".

Furthermore, based on his own spiritual talent, he also devised a technique to use divine silk to drill into the skull of living beings through their seven orifices, thereby searching for their souls and scraping away their spirits.

This method is undoubtedly more convenient and has a clearer effect than using only divine sense.

He had experimented with livestock; if one was patient, one could extract every detail of a livestock's life within half a day from its mind.

Furthermore, it was only after mastering this soul-searching spell that Fang Shu realized that such spells often had a very tricky situation, or rather, a side effect.

That is the target of the soul search. The closer the level of the target is to the soul searcher, the greater the risk of backlash from the spell.

If one is not careful, the practitioner's soul may be impacted, or even have their memories spied on.

Therefore, it is said in the art of magic that if the effectiveness of the soul-searching spell is to be guaranteed, the recipient and the caster must be at least one kalpa of cultivation apart.

The best approach is to go to a human immortal who is a whole realm apart, such as a Qi Refining Immortal searching for souls and refining essences. This is the most appropriate approach and will have almost no harmful effects.

However, what Fang Shu found strange was that when he was testing the spell, he did not feel any change in his soul during the casting.

He was quite surprised by this, and even spent a lot of money to inquire in the floating market whether there were any immortals who cultivated Qi and were willing to come and serve as his soul-searching subjects.

As a result, this market truly had all sorts of people trying to make a living.

Within two days, a deity came to his door with a mentally challenged furnace to make a deal. The deity assured him that the furnace was genuinely mentally challenged and not a fake, and that even if Fang Shu's craftsmanship was poor, it would not backfire on him.

Furthermore, the cultivation level of this furnace cauldron is also at the Condensation of Evil Realm. It is said that it cultivated soul-type spells, but accidentally turned itself into an idiot. That's why its brother made use of it and cultivated it into a furnace cauldron for testing spells.

Faced with a Five Tribulation Condensing Fiend Immortal of the same realm as himself, Fang Shu carefully considered the matter several times before deciding not to refuse. Instead, he chose to spend fifty taels of spirit stones to rent an hour.

The final result pleased him greatly.

As expected, what was said in "The Soul Searching and Truth-Exposing Technique" was true. Immortals of the same realm who search each other's souls are extremely vulnerable to injury and face great risks.

Even if someone is an idiot, the subconscious activity of their soul can still significantly impact Fang Shu's soul-searching spell.

But it was precisely because of this that Fang Shu was able to carefully observe the differences between his spellcasting and what was described in the teachings.

It turned out that the backlash from the soul being searched was all blocked by the Taoist talisman in his mind.

Previously, when searching the souls of livestock, Fang Shu subconsciously ignored them because the souls of the livestock were too weak and insignificant, and had less impact than the vital energy in the animal's body. He was unaware of the reason.

Realizing this, Fang Shu immediately recalled the Taoist talisman in his mind. Apart from its two main uses of recording and analysis, its primary function was actually to ward off evil spirits!

This effect can extract all the vital energy and essence from his body, preventing external forces from possessing his soul. The effect can be described as "better to die than live in dishonor."

Even now, although Fang Shu has completely mastered the Dao Talismans, and the Dao Talismans have changed quite a bit because of his cultivation, this aspect remains unchanged.

Even for him, if he wanted to unlock the power to ward off evil, he would have to expend a great deal of effort, wait patiently for a long time, and even actively cut off most of the Daoist talismans in his mind in order to unlock this power.

Now, with the wondrous power of the Taoist talisman protecting him, Fang Shu is even able to avoid being attacked and eroded by other objects when searching for their souls.

After a series of experiments, Fang Shu even secretly suspected that he might be able to use the Dao talisman to perform the astonishing act of defying superiors and searching the souls of immortals at the sixth tribulation!

Unfortunately, when he wanted to spend a lot of money to rent a Six Tribulation Furnace to test it out, there were very few furnaces of that level in the Floating Market.

Unless he himself buys a six-fold slave at an auction and uses it as a test subject.

Faced with this, he could only decide to stop while he was ahead and temporarily halt his research into soul-searching magic.

After resting for a few days, Fang Shu then devoted his spare time to studying and analyzing the "Seven Arrows of Nailhead Technique".

However, he soon encountered difficulties in his research on this technique.

After the Taoist talisman's analysis, it was found that although the secret texts for the three nails—the Black Dog Nail, the Red Lead Nail, and the Green Corpse Nail—were complete, the specific refining steps were quite complicated.

If one wants to manifest the power described in the spell, the time required for its deduction and analysis is not a month or several months, but rather half a year, or even a year.

Even so, it was only because he had a considerable number of books on witchcraft and ghosts that he could refer to; otherwise, it would have taken even longer.

Fang Shu could afford to wait that long for the analysis time.

However, after thinking it over, he realized that in just a few months since entering the Floating Market, his expenses had been equivalent to his expenses in ten years in Lushan. His thoughts drifted back to the matter of quickly earning spirit stones.

For him, the most convenient way was naturally to earn money through Taoist ancient treasures!
He only needs to find another ancient Taoist artifact with evil energy, exorcise it, and he will not only obtain the artifact itself and sell it for money, but also accumulate dragon energy to promote his cultivation.

Fang Shu was now quite familiar with the intricacies of the Floating Market, and had even inquired about the jade gambling sites there, so he shouldn't easily expose himself. He decided to act on his idea!

He immediately emerged from seclusion again and began wandering the streets all day, either lingering in the gambling stone markets or searching for traces of evil ancient treasures in various shops.

To Fang Shu's disappointment, such evil ancient treasures were extremely rare, even in the Floating Market.

Although he did gain something, after wandering around for half a month, he only obtained two ancient treasures for refining qi. After exorcising the evil spirits, he only got fifty taels of spirit stones in total, which was far less than what he could have gotten from the old mountain lord.

This dashed Fang Shu's hopes that he could find an ancient treasure for building a foundation and become rich overnight.

This day.

After browsing around for half a day as usual, Fang Shu strolled over to a shop called "Old Goods and Antiques Shop" and pondered for a moment.

After several days of inquiries, he inadvertently learned from somewhere that the temple in front of him contained many ancient treasures with evil energy, and that there were immortals in the temple who were good at exorcising evil spirits. It was quite famous in the mountains.

If he wanted to obtain such items, the most convenient way would be to go directly into this dining hall and purchase them.

However, after only a short while, Fang Shu strolled away from the shop without ever stepping inside.

He thought to himself, "If things are not kept secret, I will lose my life. Whether it is a spirit stone or dragon energy, they are ultimately just external things and not worth the risk."

It has been decided that from now on, all the antique treasures with evil auras that he acquires will be bought from the gambling market unless he moves to another place after buying them.

Buying such items directly would be too conspicuous, and he didn't want to be targeted.

After Fang Shu left.

That night, voices could be heard from the dining hall where he had stayed:

"Has anyone come in today to inquire about the evil treasure, as if they want to buy it?"

The shop assistant replied, "Reporting to the boss, there isn't any."

The waiter was puzzled:

"Speaking of which, why bother asking about this thing... Our shop only serves people who come to sell evil artifacts and ask master craftsmen to clean them up, who would come to buy this thing?"

"Is another master craftsman trying to practice and stealing business?"

The owner of the vegetarian restaurant scolded, "Why are you asking so many questions? I told you to keep an eye on things, so just keep an eye on things!"

In this bustling market, although people from all walks of life are mixed together, news spreads very quickly within small circles.

Aside from the time spent searching for stones, Fang Shu only inquired in the market for about ten days, yet he still managed to attract the attention of the immortals in the business of evil treasures.

The fact that he even heard of the name "Old Goods and Antique Shop" might have already attracted the attention of someone with ulterior motives, who deliberately mentioned it to him.

Fortunately, he did not reveal his true identity during these past few days. He either wore a fox fur or a cloak and hat when he went out, and he also carried a breathing insect with him, so no one knew his background.

After he stopped intentionally inquiring about the evil treasure in the store, some time passed, and the ripples he had caused gradually subsided.

In the blink of an eye.

Fang Shu had already been spending more than half a year in Fudang Mountain.

In the past six months, his life has been on the right track, and he has even started to think that it is time to rent a small house to facilitate long-term cultivation.

While staying in an inn is certainly convenient in terms of daily life, there are still some issues regarding cost, cultivation, and safety.

This day.

Before Fang Shu could even start looking for a long-term rental courtyard, Tian Jinmao suddenly showed up at his door.

The other party approached Fang Shu excitedly: "Old Fang, Old Fang, do you want a house?"

These words made Fang Shu narrow his eyes, wondering if he had somehow revealed his intentions these past few days. However, after carefully recalling the events, he couldn't find any oversights he had made recently.

Without showing any emotion, Fang Shu smiled and said, "Brother Tian, ​​what do you mean by that? Is someone offering to give away a house for free in exchange for a son-in-law?"

Tian Jinmao was stunned for a moment, then shook his head: "If there were such a good thing, why would I come to you? I, Jinmao, am a handsome man myself, I would have taken it!"

After making a witty remark, Tian Jinmao quickly said:

"It's those guys from the Four Limbs Temple. One of their immortals mortgaged their ancestral home and wants to rent or sell it. But that immortal has some requirements for the tenants. He said he's only willing to rent to the natives of Fudang Mountain or disciples of the Five Sects of Lushan."

If it's for serving the Mountain Lord, or being an inner disciple of one of the Five Sects of Mount Lu, the price can be negotiated further, at least reduced by 20%.

As he spoke, Tian Jinmao rubbed his hands together and laughed, "The local natives are all loyal followers of Lord Fudang Mountain, so they certainly wouldn't lack houses. The inner disciples of the five sects are all well-connected, so they certainly wouldn't lack houses either."

I reckon that guy is deliberately exaggerating his wealth; he just wants to rent it out to the outer disciples of the five sects.

It looked at Fang Shu expectantly, then suddenly lowered its voice and said, "Aren't you just an outer disciple? As long as you still have your waist token, this house is yours. Speaking of which, those fat bastards from the Four Limbs Temple still owe me their offerings!"

While cursing and swearing, Tian Jinmao seemed even happier than Fang Shu.

Fang Shu then casually remarked with a smile, "You seem to care more about finding me a place than about your own business."

"This, this..." Tian Jinmao stammered for a moment, and after a long while, he said in a low voice, embarrassed:

"Look at you, you're a bachelor too, haven't found a wife yet. I was thinking that if you rent a long-term lease, I could get a free ride and have a stable place to live."

Before Fang Shu could answer, Tian Jinmao immediately swore an oath: "Don't worry, I just need to register at your place and leave my address there. I don't intend to actually move in."

It jumped up and hurriedly explained, looking as if it was afraid that Fang Shu had misunderstood.

Upon hearing this, Fang Shu's tone softened slightly.

After thinking for a moment, he began to ask the other party about the specific location of the house and its advantages.

Tian Jinmao smiled and said:
"It's not far, not far. Although it's not within the city, it's on Fudang Mountain, right next to the city's border. There are little demons on the mountain patrolling and guarding it every morning and evening."

The key point is that this house is quite affordable and of high quality, in no way inferior to a certain Little Western Hills house from back then.

It spoke eloquently, praising the subject to the highest degree.

(End of this chapter)