Chapter 143 – Bountiful Returns (1/2)
Li Qingshan continued, “Alright, look. You wanted to be a good person, but you’re basically bending over backwards for slaps to the face. And then you couldn’t put up with that, so you became a bad person, basically killing everything and everyone in sight mindlessly. You couldn’t bring salvation to all living creatures, so you decided you would destroy all living creatures. If that’s not a mental disorder, what would it be? If you should comprehend this ability, then comprehend it. If you should cultivate it, then cultivate it. But don’t take it all too seriously.”
As a result, a certain powerful being beyond the Nine Heavens became labelled as someone suffering from a mental disorder.
If the black ox were present, it would have definitely chimed in with praises, not because of how impressive what Li Qingshan saw was, or how intelligent he seemed. Instead, it was the exact opposite. This all sounded slightly stupid, but contemplating the philosophy of life, the truth of the world, had never been his specialty.
He was not a wise man. He did not have great wisdom or knowledge. He was not a benevolent man either. He did not have great benevolence or great mercy.
He was a courageous man. He gave off an aura of unruliness and fearlessness. If he could not think it through, then he would just stop thinking about it. He would approach matters in whatever way that made him happy.
This was easy to say, but even great cultivators countless times more powerful than Li Qingshan could only carefully comprehend and understand the essence of an ability created by immortals and buddhas beyond the distant Nine Heavens. It was impossible for them to be like what Li Qingshan had said, “Don’t take it too seriously.”
People could not go without reverence and fear, yet those who were courageous were fearless. At the end of the day, abilities and cultivation methods would only be tools to me, existing purely for the sake of achieving what I want. This would never be reversed, where it supersedes my original goals.
Xiao An obviously treated Li Qingshan’s teachings as the gold standard. He viewed it with much greater importance than the essential ideas from the Path of White Bone and Great Beauty. Although he did feel that there was something off about Li Qingshan words, he definitely would not be wrong. Instead, either Xiao An had not thought it through, or there was something wrong with this eminent monk. However, it did clear up his messy, abstruse thoughts, preventing the ability from affecting him too much.
Probably no one would have imagined that something as wondrous as this would arise from a half-assed teacher and an ignorant student.
Li Qingshan felt rather proud of himself. Whether it be Xiao An’s talent or his intelligence, they were both extraordinary. Moreover, Xiao An was still a child, so he needed his guidance that served as a beacon.
Li Qingshan calmed himself down from his excitement and took out Qian Yannian’s hundred treasures pouch. “Now let’s see what we’ve gotten in return for all of this!”
As soon as he channeled true qi into it, he could not help but gasp. The space inside was as large as a store room. This was the largest hundred treasures pouch he had obtained so far. It was even slightly larger than Zhao Liangqing’s.
Li Qingshan was worried that Zhao Liangqing’s hundred treasures pouch had been imprinted by the Sect of Clouds and Rain, so he was afraid of carrying it around with him. There was no possibility with this one, so it could replace the one he obtained from the Hawkwolf Guard.
There were various items stored in the hundred treasures pouch, forming quite an assortment.
The first thing that Li Qingshan searched for were pills.
For once, Qian Rongzhi was not lying. He took out small bottle after small bottle, placing them onto the table. Before long, the table was covered by them. The pill refining arts of the Qian family did not seem to be particularly impressive. Each Qi Gathering pill was the size of a longan at the very least, and each bottle only held three of them.
However, even with that being the case, there were over four hundred of them. This was Qian Yannian’s greatest tool to control the Qian family, but it was just easy pickings for Li Qingshan now. Just these pills were enough for him to reach a whole new level with his daemonic path.
He probably could reach the second layer with the Ox Demon’s Fist of Great Strength, and afterwards, he would be able to practise the Tiger Demon’s Fist of Bone Forging. As for the Spirit Turtle’s Method of Sea Suppression, he had basically been practising it everyday, even when he practised qi. Most of the power from the Qi Gathering pills had been devoured by it. Although there was still a very long road ahead of him before he could face the first heavenly tribulation and become a Daemon General, he was travelling very swiftly towards it.
With over a hundred bottles of Qi Gathering pills placed together, Li Qingshan was overjoyed by the sight. He smiled from ear to ear like a poor man who had suddenly won the lottery. He casually took out a pill, tossed it into the air, but he did not swallow it immediately. Instead, he sucked on it like candy. The Qi Gathering pill that was refined from several dozen medicinal herbs was extremely bitter and astringent. It viciously stimulated his mouth, but Li Qingshan sucked on it like he was tasting tea. There was a certain sweetness to it.
Xiao An saw how Li Qingshan’s brows were furrowed as he smiled ear to ear before counting through the Qi Gathering pills on the table. He thought of the sight when Qian Rongzhi spoke to the corpses again.
The collection was not limited to Qi Gathering pills. There were several bottles of relatively more precious pills similar to Pearl Dew pills. They were called Hundred Herb pills and were basically a stronger version of the Qi Gathering pill. As they required even more precious herbs and had a greater requirement on the alchemist’s ability, there were not a lot of them. There were only around a dozen in total. Li Qingshan planned on saving them for important moments when he needed to break through.
Aside from that, there were other pills for strengthening vitality like Blood Invigoration pills. Clearly, the old coot Qian Yannian knew his life was coming to an end and wanted to last for a little longer.
The twenty-seven talismans exceeded all of the talismans Li Qingshan had collected so far ever since he began cultivating. Looking at the squiggly writing on the talismans, Li Qingshan only managed to recognise a small portion of them. Five of them were mid grade Lightning Summoning talismans. This daoist talisman was extremely powerful. If it were used during a lightning storm, it could even summon heavenly lightning. It had startling power to incapacitate or kill.
Even without the other talismans, if Qian Yannian used these five Lightning Summoning talismans together, he could basically kill any Qi Practitioner below the sixth layer instantly. Even sixth layer Qi Practitioners would have to be wary.
If Li Qingshan did not possess the tenacity from daemonifying, only death would await him from making trouble with Qian Yannian.
However, to Li Qingshan’s slight pity, there were not a lot of spiritual artifacts. There were only two at the low grade. Clearly, Qian Yannian was not skilled at forging artifacts, nor did he go around killing Qi Practitioners like the Hawkwolf Guard.
Out of the two low grade spiritual artifacts, one of them was a patterned, hidden blade around a foot in length. Once true qi was channeled into it, a blade five feet in length would extend out from it, becoming an extremely long sword. Li Qingshan immediately gave it to Xiao An.