Chapter Forty-Five: Ritual Refinement
"There must be something fishy about this." Chen Mu walked to the side of the street and squatted in front of a bamboo weaver's stall.
He casually picked up a woven bamboo basket while his peripheral vision swept over the approaching Chief Constable Lu.
"Chief, what kind of beast is this? Why does it specifically gouge out internal organs?" A constable lagged half a step behind Chief Constable Lu and asked in a low voice.
"A wild wolf," Chief Constable Lu replied indifferently.
"But the wounds don't look entirely like they were made by a wolf," the constable puzzled.
Chief Constable Lu glanced at him sideways. "We'll talk when we get back."
The constable immediately shrank his neck, not daring to ask any more questions.
Once the group had walked far away, Chen Mu stood up.
He paid for a bamboo basket and continued on his way as if nothing had happened.
"The smell of blood, the smell of medicine... Chief Constable Lu is injured?" Chen Mu wondered.
Recalling carefully, he couldn't help but shake his head. "No. The medicinal ingredients seem to be harsh drugs meant to stimulate the potential of one's organs."
His Tier 3 pharmaceutics skill had heightened his sense of smell, allowing him to detect a hint of clues from just a faint medicinal scent.
"Forget it. Better stay out of his way."
This Chief Constable Lu did not look like a good person at all.
...
Early in the morning, Chen Mu woke up feeling refreshed.
"It's been so long since I felt this good." Chen Mu stretched lazily.
Ever since he was injured, he had always woken up feeling groggy every day.
Today, he finally saw the dawn of recovery.
Synthesizing the counterfeit San-Yang Liu-Jun Pills was secondary; healing his wounds was the key.
He didn't need to consider the cost and could increase the dosage.
Recently, he had also been pondering medicinal diets to aid in his recovery.
He boiled the medicinal porridge in a charcoal-heated clay pot.
Chen Mu sat on a recliner, watching the heat while taking out the "Five Ghosts Mountain-Moving Incantation" to ponder over it.
After a long while, Chen Mu sighed. "Still no use."
He changed the arrangement of the characters, but the more he changed them, the more chaotic they became.
He read it word by word again, but still could not make head or tail of it.
Just as he was about to put it away, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck him.
Chen Mu subconsciously brought up the gray wall.
Writing: 1666/10000 / Tier 2;
Drawing: 1533/10000 / Tier 2;
Throwing: 7597/10000 / Tier 3;
Red Falcon Body-Shaping Technique: 4009/10000 / Tier 3;
Culinary Arts: 806/10000 / Tier 2;
Pharmaceutics: 626/10000 / Tier 3;
Sword in the Sleeve: 816/10000 / Tier 3;
Five Ghosts Mountain-Moving Incantation: 1/10000 / Tier 1;
"It's on the board!"
He immediately recited the scripture again.
Five Ghosts Mountain-Moving Incantation: 2/10000 / Tier 1;
A faint comprehension welled up in his heart.
He felt that the speed of the first sentence needed to be slightly faster, and the pronunciation of the fifth character needed to be heavier.
He thought this way, and then he did it.
The scripture, which previously felt awkward and tongue-twisting to read, suddenly became a little smoother.
Without any surprise, the proficiency increased by one once again.
"So the secret lies in the changes of speech rate, pronunciation, and emphasis!"
...
After hastily eating breakfast, Chen Mu buried his head in reciting the scripture.
...
The bright moon hung in the sky.
On Lesser East Mountain, the chirping of cicadas resounded from time to time.
The Ancestor Hall of Qingfeng Temple was dead quiet.
Moonlight shone through the open window onto the wall.
A scripture with graceful handwriting resembling flying immortals was carved across the entire stone wall.
Only, for some reason, the brushstrokes that used to look elegant now seemed like winding serpents, giving people an eerie feeling.
Chengyi sat on a rush mat, staring fixedly at the scripture without blinking.
A masked figure in black suddenly leaped in from outside the window.
"The thing you wanted is here, where is mine?" With that, he placed a bronze medicine chest on the ground.
"Chief Constable Lu, if you want to reap rewards, you must have enough patience," Chengyi said calmly without turning his head.
Chief Constable Lu hurriedly looked around to make sure no one was there, and only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.
His brow furrowed deeply, his tone laden with sarcasm. "Is this the reasoning you figured out after suffering a backlash from Fengnian?"
"Backlash? How can you say that? Master is merely in secluded cultivation," Chengyi said indifferently.
"Give me the Five Qi Pills right now!" Chief Constable Lu suddenly blurted out irritably.
"You should take fewer of them. Look, your temper is becoming more and more irritable," Chengyi stood up and looked calmly at Chief Constable Lu.
Chief Constable Lu took a deep breath, suppressed the restlessness in his heart, and said coldly, "I know."
Chengyi smiled and pulled out a wax pellet the size of a ping-pong ball from his sleeve.
Chief Constable Lu snatched it away impatiently.
"Have you found the people I asked you to look for?" Chengyi asked.
"I've already found four, just the last one remains," Chief Constable Lu finally regained his composure, furrowing his brow slightly as he explained. "I found people meeting the requirements in the household registry. But that person's whereabouts are uncertain, so it will take some time to track him down."
"Good, be quick about it," Chengyi said indifferently. "They are the best ingredients for alchemy."
"Can top-grade Five Qi Pills really help someone cultivate divine vigor?" Chief Constable Lu couldn't help asking.
"Haven't your martial arts improved quite rapidly recently?" Chengyi asked with a smile, bending down to open the bronze chest.
A wave of bloody stench rushed out—what was inside turned out to be human internal organs!
A look of excitement appeared in Chief Constable Lu's eyes.
He considered himself diligent in martial arts, having practiced hard for more than twenty years, and he had only just begun tempering his marrow.
Yet recently, by taking ordinary Five Qi Pills, a month of cultivation progressed faster than a whole year in the past.
If it were top-grade Five Qi Pills...
"Alright, I'll find that person as soon as possible," Chief Constable Lu hardened his heart.
He was accustomed to life and death in the yamen, and countless ghosts had died unjustly in the prison.
What were a few human lives after all!
"How should those people be dealt with? Should their internal organs be gouged out for alchemy just like before?" Chief Constable Lu asked with a fervor he didn't even notice in himself.
"No, no, no. They are special and must be treated specially," Chengyi said indifferently.
After chatting briefly for a moment more, Chief Constable Lu flipped over the windowsill and left.
Chengyi quietly watched the direction the other man left in. "He actually believes human internal organs can be used for alchemy? What a fool!"
"A leaf before the eye blocks the view. He is simply blinded by the Five Qi Pills," an old Daoist priest with meticulously combed white hair and a ruddy, wrinkle-free face suddenly appeared in the Ancestor Hall.
"Master, I will go refine the Heartless Bell first," Chengyi said, carrying the bronze chest.
The so-called internal organ alchemy was simply a deception to fool Chief Constable Lu.
Its true purpose was to refine the magic tool, the Heartless Bell!
"Go," Fengnian nodded.
Watching Chengyi leave, Fengnian stood by the window and muttered to himself, "I hope it's not too late..."
...
Chen Mu was hopelessly addicted to grinding proficiency.
Whenever he had free time every day, he would recite in a low voice.
As his proficiency increased, his understanding of the scripture grew deeper.
The content of the scripture itself was meaningless; what mattered was the pronunciation of the characters.
The gibberish-like scripture, when recited with a special speech rate and vocal tone, would form an entirely different pronunciation.
Much like using Mandarin homophones to annotate English vocabulary in the past.
Seeing the rapidly increasing proficiency, Chen Mu was like someone possessed.
He recited by day, recited by night, and pondered it even in his dreams while sleeping.
...
Half a month later.
On the west side of Lesser East Mountain, within the familiar mountain forest pit.
A large black pig lay unconscious on the ground.
Chen Mu brought up the gray wall.
Five Ghosts Mountain-Moving Incantation: 1/10000 / Tier 2.
Chen Mu took out the Five Ghosts Bag and placed it on the ground.
He took a deep breath.
A low incantation quickly spilled from his mouth.
Though only one person was speaking, it sounded as though a thousand people were whispering simultaneously.
A puff of black Qi emerged from the Five Ghosts Bag, gathered in mid-air, and contracted inward.
A pale paper figure appeared.
The small paper figure was covered in patterns, with the character "Winter" inscribed on its back.
"Done!"
Chen Mu looked at the paper figure with novelty.
A bizarre sensation arose.
He felt as if an extra hand had appeared out of thin air.
"So that's how the round-faced Daoist controlled the paper figures back then!"
Thinking to himself, he willed the paper figure to move.
The paper figure indeed drifted slowly in mid-air just as he wished.
Recalling the description in the Five Ghosts Mountain-Moving manual, Chen Mu controlled the paper figure to burrow beneath the black pig's body.
"Lift!"
...
The black pig didn't budge an inch!
"Too heavy," Chen Mu realized.
He controlled the paper figure to fly out and swapped it for a boulder the size of a human head.
The small paper figure fluttered beneath the boulder, bracing it with both hands and its head.
Chen Mu shouted aloud, "Fly!"
...
The boulder didn't budge an inch!
Chen Mu: "..."
He suddenly had an ominous premonition.
A quarter of an hour later.
Chen Mu looked at the small paper figure drifting slowly beneath the leaves overhead, speechless.
And this is supposed to be the legendary Five Ghosts Mountain-Moving?
More like Yu Gong Moving the Mountains!