“Surround the perimeter! Stop the fugitive from escaping!”
In the heavy rain, Duo Lang and Zhou Genwei brought a large amount of troops and thoroughly surrounded the Tuoba Tavern.
“What is the meaning of this?” Boss Tuoba walked out with a serious expression.
Energy Forging Stage middle levels! Even Duo Lang did not dare cross fists with Boss Tuoba, he got off his horse and saluted, “Celestial Tuoba, I come bearing orders from my head shopkeeper to pursue a fugitive of the Tang Family! We will leave immediately after we capture him, it will definitely not affect your business.”
Boss Tuoba said angrily, “You have already affected it! Everyone in this store is my customer, if you want to enter my store, don’t blame me for being impolite!”
Duo Lang did not expect Boss Tuoba to be so unreasonable, but he was just at the Innate Stage, so he did not dare to disrespect him. He could only hold up his family crest, saying, “Boss Tuoba, this fugitive is looked for by both the head shopkeeper and elder of the Tang Family store! If he escapes…”
Boss Tuoba walked into the shop and said coldly, “Get them to talk to me themselves!”
Duo Lang was stuck, he did not dare venture into the tavern.
Zhou Genwei whispered, “What do we do?”
“Old monster.” Duo Lang cursed under his breath.
At the time, a report came through, “Someone in the tavern noticed earlier that Boss Tuoba gave the trash a flower seed, the trash has already escaped from the northern gate!”
“What!” Duo Lang had a fierce look on his face, he clenched his teeth and said, “The old monster was stalling for time, Ding Hao has already run for the northern gate!”
“The northern gate!” Zhou Genwei felt a sense of bitterness.
The northern gate was right beside the forest, and regularly had evil celestials around. These celestials hated righteous folk, so normal people would not dare venture there. However, Boss Tuoba had connections with evil practitioners, so his flower seeds could allow for safe passage.
“What do we do?” Zhou Genwei was only at Innate Stage level seven, he did not dare venture into that area.
He got angrier as he thought about it, “Sh*t, that piece of trash walks in just like that, and casually just heads back after buying his stuff, this is too shameful!”
Du Lang was incredibly frustrated as well, he thought and said, “The piece of trash still needs to escape to the outskirts even if he leaves by the northern gate! He is only Innate Stage level three, he would not dare to stay in the forest for too long. Let’s chase after him!”
“Good idea!” Zhou Genwei said, “This rain is heavy, he would not be able to run that far. We can leave from the eastern and western gates and surround him! Capture him and don’t kill him yet, I want to properly torture him!”
“Okay!”
…
In the ruins of Indigenous City, the rain covered the entire ruins. Half the buildings there had already collapsed. A short wall remained standing, and another short wall had collapsed onto it, forming a triangle-shaped space.
In that narrow space, there was a black figure, sitting cross legged without any sound or movement.
Du Lang and the others would never imagine that Ding Hao would be so daring, not leaving Indigenous City at all!
This was originally a nest of wild cats, but Minion had chased them away, and Ding Hao was now perched there.
The rain was a wild torrent outside, but this was a small and safe refuge.
Ding Hao took off his overcoat, and retrieved his moderate grade storage pouch that was filled with spiritual rice.
“Zhou Genwei, I bet you did not expect this!” In the darkness, Ding Hao’s eyes shone brightly as he grabbed a fistful of spiritual rice form the pouch, “Power Absorption Skill, activate!”
Who would have expected that a teenager was cultivating in these ruins with the wild winds and violent rain outside. Beside him lay a yellow dog, protecting him from harm!
“Innate Stage level three to level four is a hard bottle neck to past! A lot of people get stuck here for their whole lives!”
“However, to me, it’s so easy! That’s the power of the Power Absorption Skill!”
With that in mind, Ding Hao immersed himself in his dantian.
The third level was actually hard to overcome, because that layer of the dantian was incredibly thick, and the last bit of the layer was incredibly hard to peel open!
“I need an even more powerful spiritual energy! I’m using up a lot of spiritual rice!” DIng Hao felt some physical pain.
He had assumed that twelve bowls of spiritual rice would have been enough for a breakthrough, but even at twenty bowls, he was still unable to get past the last layer!
“Whatever, my life is more important than money!” With that thought, Ding Hao grabbed another fistful of spiritual rice, “Absorb!”
At that time, Ding Hao’s Dantian was already filled with thick spiritual energy.
That layer had already been grinded against until it was incredibly thin.
“It’s coming!” Ding Hao had an excited look. The layer suddenly opened, and like a flame that was just lit, it flickered before the entire layer fell off, dropping into the spiritual lake underneath.
Level four!
If anyone else knew, they might spit out blood. Most people would use forbidden medicines to breakthrough, and they would take half a month of closed cultivation to advance, but Ding Hao only used two hours!
Looking at his dantian, his sea of chi had already begun forming a basic shape.
“The spiritual energy here is double that of Innate Stage level three!” Ding Hao was elated, no wonder everyone said that level three to level four was a huge roadblock, but once it was overcome, one’s skill will drastically increase!
Ding Hao had advanced a level, so he had even more determination in his heart.
“Let’s continue!”
Yuandan were thicker on each level, and once the fourth layer was reached it would be harder to cultivate. In front of Ding Hao was a large pile of empty spiritual rice!
This rice had turned into ordinary rice after being absorbed, it did not have any spiritual energy left!
“Another eighty bowls! I did not expect it to consume so much spiritual rice.”
Ding Hao was flabbergasted, he had estimated that 384 bowls of spiritual rice would be enough to get him to level eight or even level nine, but it did not look very possible right now.
There were two reasons, the first one was naturally due to the thickness of each layer of the yuandan, the other was an even more important problem.
Alongside the growth of his cultivation, the spiritual rice was beginning to become less effective!
That was why the consumption got even greater each time.
“Innate Stage level five!”
Ding Hao’s eyes widened again, he had used another two hours. There was no bottleneck in this level, so the time taken was not too long, but it still took up eighty eight bowls.
“This cultivation speed is way too fast! How fun!”
Ding Hao stood up and noticed that the rain outside had died down quite a bit. He walked out and unleashed a punch, shouting, “Blazing Palm Fifth Layer!”
“Boom! The air in front shook violently, and a large portion of the rain in front changed directions.
“How powerful!” Ding Hao had an elated look, “Ding Juncai, young prince, how are the two of you going to compete with me. I hope you don’t look for death!”
Ding Hao sent out a few fists, and realized the impact was too large. The roofs behind him could collapse and any time, so he was afraid to continue.
“It’s still early, let’s continue!” He once again headed inside.
After a whole night of violent rain, the entire Indigenous City looked like it had been thoroughly cleaned, muddy water was clowning all over the ground.
The city was basically an incredibly large ruin. Other than the four major stores and a few other usable buildings, the rest of them were just bricks and stones.
With the rising sun, an eye-piercing sunlight began to shine on the wet ruins.
“What a bright sun.” Ding Hao opened his eyes when the sunlight shone on his face.
He was incredibly happy.
What got him happy was the increase in his cultivation. In just one night, he had broken through to Innate Stage level six from level three, how many people in this world could do that?
The worrying part was, the effect of the spiritual rice had weakened to an unthinkable degree. In other words, spiritual rice was already useless to him!
“I get it now. Even the things that I absorb have grades!”
“I should only absorb objects that are at my cultivation level, only then would it be useful! When I was the Acquired Stage, pills were at my level. After I got into the Innate Stage, it became spiritual rice. Now that I’m in the peak of the middle levels of the Innate Stage, I should look for some higher quality goods!”
“However, what exactly are those goods?”
Ding Hao could not think of anything at the moment. He opened his storage pouch, and there seemed to be around fifty bowls of rice left, which were all practically useless now.
Even if he could not use it he still refused to throw it away. He stored the fifty bowls of rice into his main storage pouch and threw away the other one.
When he was transferring the spiritual rice, Ding Hao noticed the white colored beast stones.
“Right, let’s take this time to level up the power absorption stone!”
These days, DIng Hao wore the ring that the power absorption stone turned into. The first white nebula on the stone was already glowing brightly. Ding Hao had bought a bunch of worthless beast stones in order to level up the power absorption stone.
The spiritual energies in the ebast stones would cause side effects to Ding Hao, but the power absorption stone was not picky, it was not afraid.
“Absorb it!” Ding Hao once again used the Power Absorption Skill.
With the large amount of wild beast spiritual energies being absorbed, a lot of black fur began to appear on Ding Hao’s arms. However, Ding Hao knew it would disappear quickly, so it was not afraid.
The power absorption stone greedily lapped up the energy from the beast stones. Ding Hao could clearly see the white nebula slowly start spinning. It got brighter and brighter and the speed kept increasing!
Suddenly, Ding Hao felt a jolt in his consciousness, like something had entered his mind, his eyes widened…
“The second nebula has appeared!”
The second nebula was still very blurry at the moment, but it had a faint green color!
“Why is it a green nebula?” Ding Hao retrieved the remaining beast stones and absorbed all of them, causing the second nebula to light up a little. It really was green in color.
“The first one is white, and the second one green, what does it mean? What exactly is the power absorption stone?”
Ding Hao could not find an answer, and it was an absolute mystery to him, but he believed he would find out eventually.
“What entered my consciousness earlier?” Ding Hao had another question. He started to think deeply, and a row of words suddenly appeared in his mind, “power absorption demonic mantra, second level.”
“What, demonic mantra! Isn’t this the power absorption skill?” Ding Hao looked at the words and in shock and realization.
He had always thought that the skill was created by his ancestry Ding Chunqiu, but it seems like it was very possible that Ding Chunqiu only managed to obtain the first level from the power absorption stone in his entire lifetime!
So the power absorption skill was only the first level of the power absorption demonic mantra!
“But this is a demonic mantra, it’s a skill on the demonic path!!”
Ding hao suddenly remembered what Boss Tuoba had said, “Sometimes, there’s only one path ahead of you. Following it would lead to death, but not following it would cause you to die as well.”
“So there’s one road right now, will I take it?”
Ding Hao did not even think for three seconds before laughing, “Nonsense, I’m obviously taking it! I would have died a long time ago if not for this skill! Even bugs knew how to climb upwards, if I did not take it, wouldn’t I be less than bugs?”