Chapter 68: Kian’s New Practice
The wind whipped through Kian’s hair as he ran along the city, his feet soundless against the cold stone.
Wind Step felt smoother now, a natural extension of his will rather than a technique he had to force.
He dropped from the parapet into a quiet side street, his landing cushioned by a pocket of air that dispersed the force before it could rattle his teeth.
Kian was not headed directly to his home. No, no. He had a completely different plan.
In his pocket, a carefully cloth-wrapped necklace glowed slightly. From it, a voice echoed: "I can’t believe you were also a Blood Demon descendant! You can only train the Art of the Blood Beast if you are a descendant!"
"Maybe I am a descendent, maybe I am not."
"Don’t lie to me brat! You are clearly a descendant."
"Anyway, ghost, forget about that. Tell me, how did Hua Shulong control that disciple in the past? He had some insect inside his eyes, or something similar. Can I do it as well?"
"I’d have said no, but since you have the Art of the Blood Beast, you can easily control a weak human from a distance. You just need a spirit-control related technique."
Kian nodded.
Soon, he walked into an alley and hidden in the shadowy area, took out the necklace.
Kian tucked the jade pendant into the trash bin on the side and walked a fair distance away, cutting off Fang Ping’s voice with a humph.
The ghost was useful, sure, but a smart cultivator kept his secrets, especially when dealing with ancient consciousnesses that had seen too many rises and falls.
Kian didn’t even know how to seal a ghost, why would he carry one around when doing secret shit?
’I’ll grab you once I am done.’
He sat cross-legged on a dry wooden crate tucked behind a stack of rotting wine barrels, the alley’s shadows wrapping around him like a cloak.
Even though he had thrown it away, he was still in the vicinity to see in that direction.
With a silent breath, Kian closed his eyes and summoned the blue interface of the Divine Arts Shop.
The screen flickered to life in the darkness of his mind, its pale light reflecting off the inner surface of his eyelids.
His current budget—7679 low-grade stones and 2 mid-grade stones remaining—glowed in a neat green font at the top right of the panel, a comfortable cushion that nevertheless reminded him how quickly wealth could evaporate.
He slid his finger down the translucent list, bypassing the physical combat techniques and movement arts he had already browsed.
He was looking for something specific, a spiritual bridge to connect his newly forged blood beast to a living vessel.
He looked for the word ’Spirit’ as he scrolled, watching the useless low-tier body-refining methods dissolve to reveal a smaller, more specialized selection of arts.
[Low level techniques]
[Mind-Tether Art: 3,000 low-grade spirit stones]
[Allows the user to project a single command into the mind of a mortal or a Stage 1 Qi Builder. Easily resisted by anyone with a strong will.]
[Soul-Whisper Needle: 5,500 low-grade spirit stones]
[Condenses Qi into an invisible needle that can temporarily paralyze the sensory organs of a target. Does not grant control.]
[Thread of the Puppet Master: 7,000 low-grade spirit stones]
[A specialized spirit-control technique. Spins a thread of spiritual intent that can be attached to a mindless beast, a corpse, or a weak-willed cultivator, allowing the user to percieve through them like an antenna]
Kian’s gaze locked onto the third option. The price was steep—almost the entirety of his wealth—but the utility was exactly what he needed to turn his new blood beast into a proper spy.
With Thread of the Puppet Master, he would be able to strengthen this technique even more and make it really useful; it was worth it.
Kian tapped the screen, and the seven thousand spirit stones dissolved from his balance in a soundless flash of green light. He was sure the spirit stones back at home had dissappeared.
[Purchase successful. Thread of the Puppet Master, Low Quality, initiation begins.]
A cool, thin needle of energy pierced the center of his forehead, threading backward into his brain and spinning a delicate web of spiritual pathways.
Kian’s mind expanded outward in a sudden, sharp radius; he could feel the dust falling in the alley, the scurry of beetles behind the rotting wine barrels, and the precise, dormant pulse of the blood beast resting inside his own bloodstream.
Just as quickly as his senses changed, it also returned to normal.
He focused on that tiny red speck of his blood beast and sent a gossamer thread of his newly formed spiritual intent into it, instantly establishing a link that made him feel as if he had a second, tiny body ready to uncoil from his skin at a moment’s notice.
With a nod, he retrieved the jade pendant from the trash bin, ignoring Fang Ping’s muffled, indignant complaints as he tucked it into his inner robe, and activated Wind Step.
Once again, Kian had a plan.
But for that, he needed to bath first.
That was easy to do in one of the many bathhouses in the city and Kian did that first before anything.
With the little money he had carried in his pockets, he also bought himself new clothes.
Then, his body flickered through the shadows of the city gates, blending with a caravan of traveling mortal merchants and robed tourists entering the outer territory of the Jinguan Sect.
The sect was inside the city itself, but in its own, discrete section.
Thanks to his Juhuan Meridian hiding his Stage 5 cultivation, the sect’s perimeter guards barely glanced at him, dismissing him as just another low-level rogue cultivator visiting the outer markets.
Once inside the sprawling, pine-scented grounds, Kian slipped away from the main thoroughfare and let his enhanced senses guide him toward the deeper, quieter residential quarters where the sect’s low-ranking disciples resided.
"I am so mad!" someone shouted. "I am so scared!"
’Hm?’
Peering over a high courtyard wall near the servant quarters, Kian’s sharp ears caught the wet, heavy thud of fists hitting flesh, accompanied by a young man’s painful grunts.
Inside the dusty stone yard, a massive, thick-necked fatty was brutally beating a thin servant boy, his face twisted in a mask of pure, resentful rage.
"That trash Su Chen kills my father in the middle of the city, and the elders did nothing because of his damn baptism? They call me a traitor?" the fatty roared, slamming a heavy fist into the boy’s ribs. "I can’t touch that bastard yet, but I can at least vent my anger on my servants!"
A butler watched coldly from the side, nodding.
The youth getting beaten said in fear: "Young master, please stop!"
"NO!"
Saying that, the fatty kept hitting the young man on the floor.
Kian watched the fat youth’s chest heave with murderous anger, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his own face.
’A good target!’
The butler was a mortal, the fatty was a mortal, so was the young man inside.
Kian slowly entered the room, his shadow suddenly looking scarily cold as it expanded in the light to cover the three inside.