Chapter 3 (1/2)
Translator: TuiwenEditor: Tuiwen
“Good heavens! It’s a ghost!”
Right when the fierce-looking maid heard Shen Ling’s voice behind her, she turned around and let out a terrified scream.
The man inside the room panicked when he saw Shen Ling, and he scrambled around looking for a way to escape.
He caught them like this: a maid and a man.
Shen Ling glanced over at the maid, then gripped the man’s neck, and pressed his body against the wall.
“Tell me, where’s the antidote?”
“No, there’s no such thing as an antidote…”
The man turned to look at Shen Ling and shook his head back and forth. “With over twenty kinds of poison as well as more than ten kinds of poisonous plants in my Seven Day Soul Severing Powder, even though the poison won’t cause fatal effect right away, there is no current antidote available.”
It turned out there was no antidote.
Shen Ling exerted a little more strength on his hand, and the man’s face started to redden.
Just as the man was about to be strangled to death, Shen Ling was suddenly startled by the noise behind him. From out of the corner of his eye, Shen Ling saw the maid reaching down for something.
Shen Ling bowed his head to duck, and a dagger was thrown over his head. That was close!
“You’ve practiced martial arts? A maid?”
A trace of doubt flashed in Shen Ling’s eyes.
With no signs of hesitation, he lifted the stool next to him and tossed it at the maid.
The room wasn’t very big. As the two of them continued fighting, the maid, who knew only a smattering of martial arts, was soon defeated by Shen Ling.
With a thud, the maid fell down to the ground with a bleeding head. After that, Shen Ling’s eyes swept the room.
The man was already gone.
When he saw that Shen Ling and the maid were fighting, he took advantage of this and fled.
After thinking things through, Shen Ling was in no particular hurry to return home. Instead, he did a careful search of this small room.
His search came up with an incomplete notebook and a book about the practice and methodology of poison.
Although the man was already gone, he had left in a hurry and did not have the time to take his things with him.
But among the things he left behind, an antidote was nowhere to be found.
Shen Ling’s heart sank in his chest.
…
Early in the morning.
In the hall of the Shen family.
Old Master Shen was sitting in the main seat and as he looked at his wife next to him, he said in a cold voice, “Is is true, what Shen Ling said just now?”
Madam Shen turned her gaze to the ground and said nothing.
The maid, who was tied up and gagged, shook her head wildly at Madam Shen.
“Let’s hear what she’s got to say.”
With a wave of his hand, Master Shen motioned for the servant to remove the cloth out of the maid’s mouth.
After the gag was removed, the maid turned to look at Master Shen and pleaded, “Master, I did this all on my own. It really has nothing to do with Madam. Please… I’m telling the truth!”
After he heard this, Master Shen suddenly slammed the table out of anger. “Are you telling me that a mere maid would dare to poison her master for no reason? Do you really think I’m so old and muddle-headed that I wouldn’t know any better?”
Shen Ling did not bother to speak up.
At this time, he didn’t care a bit about what was going on in the Shen family hall.
Because no matter what happened, the poison in his body would still be there and would continue to damage his insides.
This was a huge concern for Shen Ling.
“Get lost now!”
With a ferocious roar, Old Master Shen pointed his finger at Madam Shen, the anger on his face clearly visible. “Leave the Shen family at once. I don’t want to see you ever again!”
After Madam Shen admitted that she had planned to poison Shen Ling, Old Master Shen was so enraged that he chased Madam Shen directly out of the Shen family.
Together with Shen Ping, the child she had borne.
Shen Ling still did not say anything.
His silence was taken as acceptance of the punishment for Madam Shen. Anyway, the matter was settled.
Shen Ling went back to his room and tried to think up other ways of saving himself.
Apparently, there was no antidote available for this so-called Seven Days Soul Severing Powder.
The only choice he had left was to strengthen his body so that he could have a fighting chance of survival.
He continued to cultivate the Longevity Technique.
‘You have completed one full circulation of the Longevity Technique, proficiency +5.’
Seeing this notification, Shen Ling’s eyes flew open.
Five points of proficiency? Seriously?
He could recall earlier that there had only been one point of proficiency when he first started to cultivate this technique. The system had notified him about the additional point after he had successfully circulated the Longevity Technique for one day.
So one successful session of practice added up one proficiency point, while one complete session of practice added up five proficiency points.
Originally, Shen Ling had thought that he would need to put in more than ninety hours of cultivation, which was a few days, to be able to cultivate the technique to the second level.