Ghost Immortal

Li Feng didn't have time to think much; the stench emanating from his body after the breakthrough was simply unbearable.

Li Feng used the remaining water in the water tank to wash his body briefly, changed into a relatively clean old outfit, and then sat back down on the straw pile.

Iron Guard remained standing motionless on the stone steps, his empty eye sockets staring in his direction.

But Li Feng's feelings towards Tie Wei now are completely different from before.

Previously, when he looked at Iron Guard, he only felt oppression, fear, and despair.

Now, when he looks at Tie Wei, although he remains vigilant, the feeling of unease he once felt has vanished.

He could clearly sense a cold aura slowly flowing within Tie Wei's body, the intensity of which was roughly equivalent to a three-inch spiritual root.

In other words, this armored corpse's strength is at the level of a three-inch spiritual root.

Li Feng felt more confident, but he did not act rashly. Instead, he picked up the tattered book again and turned to the section recording spells.

This tattered book was casually tossed behind the statue by the bald old man. The old man didn't seem to value it at all, or perhaps he simply couldn't learn anything from it.

But Li Feng was different; he already possessed a five-inch spiritual root and increasingly felt that this book was extraordinary.

The book was bound with the hide of an unknown animal, impervious to water and fire, and unbreakable by knives. Its contents were all-encompassing, practically a complete guide to cultivating immortality.

Previously, Li Feng had no spiritual power, so he couldn't understand most of the content in the book.

Now that his spiritual root has grown to five inches, his eyes look completely different when he looks at this book.

The techniques recorded in the book are divided into several major categories: offensive techniques, defensive techniques, auxiliary techniques, as well as miscellaneous items such as talismans, formations, and alchemy.

Among offensive spells, the most basic are Fireball and Palm Lightning.

The Fireball spell requires converting spiritual energy into flames and releasing them from the palm of the hand to form a fist-sized fireball. The fireball is extremely hot and can easily burn through ordinary iron armor.

The Palm Lightning is even more violent. It compresses spiritual energy into the form of lightning and strikes it from the palm. It is more powerful than the Fireball spell, but it also consumes more spiritual energy.

Besides these two basic techniques, the book also records some more advanced attack methods.

For example, Ice Spike Technique, Wind Blade Technique, Ground Spike Technique, etc., but these techniques can only be used in the later stages of Qi Refining, and Li Feng cannot use them yet.

The most basic defensive spell is the spiritual energy shield, which releases spiritual energy to form an invisible protective shield that can withstand a certain degree of attack.

Li Feng can learn this technique now. The strength of the spiritual energy shield is directly related to the caster's cultivation level. With his five-inch spiritual root, the shield he can create should be able to easily block the armored corpse.

Now the armored zombie has been completely reduced to a combat unit, and Li Feng even often spars with it to enrich his practical combat experience.

Auxiliary spells include Spirit Eye Technique, Light Body Technique, Breath Concealment Technique, and so on.

These are all practical minor spells that don't consume much spiritual energy and are relatively easy to learn.

Li Feng was eager for these techniques. In his previous life, he was a person with an extremely strong learning ability. Although he had been soaking in medicinal soup for sixteen years in this life, his brain had not been damaged.

Following the method in the book, he sat cross-legged and guided the spiritual energy within his body to circulate along a specific route.

The spiritual energy circulation route of the Fireball Technique starts from the dantian, passes through the three Yang meridians of the hand, and gathers at the Laogong acupoint in the palm. Then, the spiritual energy vibrates at a specific frequency, transforming it into flames.

It sounds simple, but it's incredibly difficult to do.

Li Feng tried more than ten times, but apart from a wisp of blue smoke rising from his palm, there were no special effects.

On his fifteenth attempt, a tiny flame finally burst forth from his palm, no bigger than a fingernail, which flickered and then went out, leaving him somewhat embarrassed.

But his eyes lit up – there was hope!

Over the next three days, Li Feng consolidated his cultivation while practicing his spells.

He was the first to master the Fireball spell, and it took him two days to become familiar with it, starting with a flame the size of a fingernail and progressing to a fireball the size of a fist.

After the fireball is launched, it can travel seven or eight zhang (approximately 33-40 meters) in the air, and explode into a ball of flame after hitting the wall, with a power roughly equivalent to that of a hand grenade.

Li Feng was secretly delighted.

That's so true to me!

The Palm Lightning is more difficult because lightning is more unstable than fire.

Li Feng practiced dozens of times, but either his spiritual energy would dissipate as soon as it gathered in his palm, or the lightning he unleashed wouldn't even kill an ant.

It wasn't until the evening of the fourth day that he successfully fired a complete palm strike for the first time.

A bolt of lightning, as thick as a chopstick, shot out from his palm, striking a blue brick ten steps away and instantly splitting it in two.

Li Feng was very excited, but the spiritual energy consumption of the palm thunder made him secretly gasp.

A single palm strike of lightning consumed one-tenth of the spiritual power in his dantian.

At this rate of energy consumption, he can only unleash a maximum of ten palm strikes before his spiritual energy is exhausted.

The spiritual energy shield is relatively easy to master; you can basically learn it in no time.

The techniques of lightness and concealment of breath also only took one day to learn.

The Lightness Technique is an absolutely divine move to show off in front of others. With just a light touch of the toes, one can leap onto a roof beam ten feet high and land as silently as a cat.

If an ordinary person were to see this, wouldn't they all call him a celestial master?

The Concealing Breath Technique can suppress the fluctuations of spiritual energy within Li Feng's body, an essential technique for feigning weakness to exploit strength.

But after learning these techniques, Li Feng's doubts only grew stronger.

Because he had never seen the bald old man use any of the techniques recorded in the book.

Fireball, Palm Lightning, Spiritual Shield, Lightness Technique, and Breath Concealment Technique—these techniques, while not considered profound, are all essential basic skills for Qi Refining cultivators.

If the bald old man were truly a cultivator, it's impossible that he wouldn't know any of them, nor that he wouldn't use them even once.

Li Feng recalled the events of the past sixteen years. The bald old man did indeed have some strange methods, such as controlling the armored corpse, refining medicinal soup, and burning fire in the cauldron to refine pills. However, these methods and the cultivation techniques recorded in the book were completely different systems.

The alchemy techniques recorded in the book use spiritual energy as a guide and an alchemy furnace as a tool to refine medicinal herbs by precisely controlling the heat and the output of spiritual energy.

But when the bald old man was refining pills, there was no fluctuation of spiritual energy at all. He just used ordinary firewood to heat the cauldron and threw the medicinal herbs into it. The whole process was so crude that it was like he was boiling a pot of medicinal soup.

Unfortunately, the medicinal herbs are mixed and boiled together, which greatly reduces their effectiveness. Otherwise, the old bald man might have been able to discover some of the special functions of the large cauldron.

The corpse-refining technique recorded in the book requires using spiritual power to inscribe runes on the corpse, and then nurturing it with spiritual power for forty-nine days to refine a usable armored corpse.

But when the bald old man was refining Zhao Yuanshan, Li Feng was right next to him. The old man simply smeared a black ointment on Zhao Yuanshan's body and chanted some incomprehensible incantations. On the fourth day, the armored corpse mechanically walked out on its own.

This is not the method of a cultivator at all.

The more Li Feng thought about it, the more he felt something was wrong.

The bald old man kept telling him things like, "I'll help you cultivate immortality" and "I'll help you achieve eternal life," but he himself didn't know any cultivation techniques at all.

He said, "When you have spiritual roots, your master will guide you to cultivate immortality." But Li Feng already has spiritual power. According to the book, he is a genuine spiritual root cultivator. But if the bald old man knew about this, would he really guide him to cultivate immortality?

The answer is obviously no.

What the bald old man wanted was not a disciple who could cultivate immortality, but a "human pill".

He spent sixteen years soaking in medicinal soups and collecting various medicinal herbs to help Li Feng grow his spiritual root.

The purpose was to refine Li Feng into a pill, then consume it, so that he could grow spiritual roots and embark on the path of cultivation!

Perhaps this is what is meant by dietary supplements?

It's like eating tendon to break through to the fifth level of Qi Refining.

Li Feng felt a chill run down his spine as he thought about this.

He had always thought that the bald old man was a true cultivator who had fallen on hard times and was hiding in this dilapidated temple for some reason.

But now he understands that the bald old man is not a cultivator at all.

He was merely a mortal who possessed certain unorthodox skills, or rather, a being somewhere between a mortal and a cultivator.

His body is indeed stronger than that of ordinary mortals, but this strength does not come from orthodox cultivation methods, but from some kind of strange and evil magic!