Chapter 35
Chapter 35: Throwing Money at It
First-rank Qi Replenishing Pills barely helped at all.
Every task she posted was the same: buy second-rank Qi Replenishing Pills or above.
A single second-rank pill cost ten low-grade spirit stones.
The price was outrageous, but she didn’t have a choice.
Third-rank pills started at fifty, right out of the gate.
Qi Replenishing Pills were common enough that anything below third-rank was still tolerable… but tolerable didn’t mean affordable. And the players were still scrambling. Meanwhile, she only had one second-rank pill left on her.
How long could she keep burning like this?
Weren’t there supposed to be Senior Brothers and Senior Sisters guarding this area? Where were they? Someone—anyone—come save her!
The fight had been so vicious that sweat kept beading at Song Jiu Lai’s brow. She wiped it away hard, eyes catching on a low hill ahead, and sprinted straight for the slope.
Another massive fireball roared out of her palm. She followed it with a waterball.
Fire and water met—steam exploded into the air, hissing like a living thing. Even with tough scales and thick flesh, the devil-horned snake couldn’t endure that kind of cooking. It was only a second-rank demon beast, after all.
Smoking wounds split its hide. Not lethal, but enough. Its speed faltered for the briefest heartbeat.
That heartbeat was all Song Jiu Lai needed.
The snake’s black, vertical pupils pinched tighter, tighter, as it whipped its huge head and hissed without pause.
Song Jiu Lai dashed up the hill, then cut around toward the far side. As she ran, she dry-swallowed several first-rank Qi Replenishing Pills and first-rank Blood Replenishing Pills.
The effect was laughable. Mostly, it was comfort—something to tell her body she hadn’t been abandoned.
Her heartbeat still hammered like a drum.
But she wasn’t at the edge of death yet.
Because deep down, she knew she still had the System backing her. She hadn’t fallen into that suffocating, hopeless certainty of dying.
She glanced out over the terrain. This was one section of First Mountain—forest packed so tightly it looked like a solid wall of green. Only a few scattered clearings broke the canopy, and none of them looked like a path out.
A mortal who walked in here would almost never walk out again.
But a cultivator’s memory wasn’t a mortal’s. She still remembered the way she’d come.
Then—suddenly—she caught a thread of aura from somewhere.
Faint. Weak. And laced with a corrosive stench, like the devil-horned snake.
Song Jiu Lai wasn’t sure if it was real or desperation playing tricks on her, but the direction lined up too well. It could be the route that man had taken when he ran.
She steadied her breathing and made her decision.
“Hiss—”
The sound was closer now. Song Jiu Lai’s calves cramped on instinct.
Shit.
That thing was fast.
She hadn’t even seen its shadow before she fired another fireball.
A roar answered as the devil-horned snake took the hit squarely again.
Then—splatter.
Furious, it spat a mouthful of pus. Dozens of little snakes poured out and rushed up the hill, swarming toward where Song Jiu Lai had been moments ago.
But the second-rank Qi Replenishing Pill she’d taken earlier had only restored about half her qi. Two more exchanges like this and she’d still fold.
She ran while forcing the System to watch the sect’s account like a hawk. Minutes later, a new second-rank Qi Replenishing Pill finally appeared.
And then another message.
[Fan Gu Zhou exchanged five hundred points and paid fifty low-grade spirit stones.]
[Fan Gu Zhou completed your posted task: “third-rank Qi Replenishing Pill.”]
—
Jin Shu crouched beside a creek, staring at his own reflection.
The devil-horned snake’s pus had splashed his face. He’d swallowed two second-rank Blood Replenishing Pills just to slow the corrosion.
He was out of Qi Replenishing Pills. His qi was more than half depleted, and there was nowhere to restock. This trip had been a loss.
If he hadn’t happened to find that earth-bell ling zhi…
Not because of its market price. Because one of the pill formulas he needed required earth-bell ling zhi.
But harvesting it had inevitably disturbed the devil-horned snake.
A peak second-rank demon beast had attacked without warning. He’d been caught off guard, sprayed straight in the face, and his qi kept getting eaten away. Otherwise, he never would’ve ended up this miserable.
Worse, the snake refused to let him go.
If he hadn’t run into a cultivator…
Jin Shu’s expression darkened. A Qi Refining Stage early-phase cultivator couldn’t possibly withstand a peak second-rank devil-horned snake. Once that woman was mostly dead, the snake should wander off. Then he could circle back and see what he could salvage.
Doing this kind of thing on First Mountain was still risky.
This place was strange, inside and out.
Low-level cultivators came here to train… and there were even guards?
Jin Shu, who’d suffered his way here from Heavenly Sun Sect, couldn’t understand why Myriad Immortals Sect would allow rules like that.
Where he came from, mortals were ants. In a cultivator’s eyes, they were no different from beasts.
But here, mortals and cultivators actually coexisted.
Ridiculous.
Mortals were low. They didn’t even deserve to meet a cultivator’s gaze.
Then he felt it—movement. A faint disturbance. A weak aura drifting from another direction.
Jin Shu narrowed his eyes, wary. But the presence was so thin, he decided to check it out.
A few hundred meters later, he froze.
In front of him lay the devil-horned snake’s collapsed body, still breathing faintly. The pustules on its forehead had burst—an unmistakable sign it was at the end of its life.
Not far away was Song Jiu Lai, kneeling on the ground.
One arm had been corroded more than halfway through.
If she didn’t take medicine in time, she would eventually be eaten alive by the poison.
She braced herself with a hand that kept rotting. Her lips were bloodless. Cold sweat poured down her face. Her whole body trembled.
Jin Shu stared, shock tightening his throat—then he let out an incredulous laugh.
“You killed the devil-horned snake?” He scoffed. “Impossible.”
Absolutely impossible.
She was a Qi Refining Stage early-phase cultivator. How could she do it?
How couldn’t she?
From the moment she’d run into danger until now, Song Jiu Lai had swallowed at least five second-rank Qi Replenishing Pills—bought on the spot the moment the players sold materials.
She’d also forced down several second-rank Blood Replenishing Pills.
Blood Replenishing Pills kept the body from collapsing under the backlash of depleted qi, buying her just enough reaction time to keep moving.
In the apothecary, if you had money, second-rank pills were never truly “out of stock.”
Even though second-rank pills didn’t stack—and the more you swallowed, the weaker each one became—the devil-horned snake still couldn’t endure someone smashing it with money like this. And Song Jiu Lai’s cultivation method, taught by the System, wasn’t normal. Her fireballs hit like three people’s put together.
The devil-horned snake had already put on the fight of its life.
It didn’t die to superior skill.
It got beaten to death with money.
When the pus exploded, Song Jiu Lai had been hit too.
But after paying that price, was she really doing it for a snake?
Jin Shu looked at her shaking body, at the wound that kept corroding, and whatever questions he had about how she did it fell away. The conclusion was simple.
She was dying.
All he had to do was squeeze.
He could crush her like a bug.
His voice turned cold, almost casual. “Hand over your mustard seed pouch. Remove the imprint. Do that, and I might spare you.”
At this stage, cultivators couldn’t hide items in their sea of consciousness. A mustard seed pouch was obvious—bright as a lantern on her body.
Song Jiu Lai’s lips trembled. When she tried to speak, she vomited blood.
Jin Shu narrowed his eyes. A faint, twisted pity flickered across his face as he walked closer.
“You can’t blame me,” he said softly. “Blame your bad luck—”
The instant he stepped into range, Song Jiu Lai’s fingers twitched.
Jin Shu sensed danger—too late.
The ground beneath his feet was seized by the Water Control Technique. Soil turned to sludge. He dropped straight into mud and began to sink.
He tried to break free with a movement art, but the mud clung like it had teeth. Before he could tear himself loose, he saw Song Jiu Lai shove a pill into her mouth.
A third-rank Qi Replenishing Pill.
Then two basketball-sized fireballs screamed toward him, straight and merciless.
Jin Shu’s pupils shrank to pinpoints.