Snap! Snap! Snap!
The sky had yet to brighten, but there was already movent in the fields.
Li Yan was seen swinging the scythe, his left hand pulling and his right hand carrying, causing large bundles of wheat to fall in response, neatly laid behind him waiting to be bundled later.
After a while, when the horizon showed a pale white, Li Yan, who had been working intently, slowly stood up, did a few stretches to ease his waist and back, and looked around.
In the distance, the wheat fields were bustling with activity as well.
The wheat at the Li Family Castle was also ready to be harvested.
The timing for harvesting wheat was crucial, as they say, "Reap when nine-tenths ripe; if fully mature, one-tenth is lost," so wheat could not be left to ripen fully.
Even the timing during the day was important, with the preferred tis being morning and evening, as the stalks were more pliable then, less likely to break, and the grains less likely to fall.
Having worked hard for an entire year, wasting even a little would be painful.
It had been four or five days since his return, and these days he had been visualizing and ditating every night. Although he hadn’t succeeded yet, he had made considerable progress.
As the scythe opened, he could harvest wheat and cultivate without delay.
A strong laborer could harvest about an acre of wheat a day.
However, Li Yan, being a practitioner with solid foundational skills, and having learned the rural Scythe Technique, worked swiftly and could harvest an acre and a half in a day.
With a few acres at ho, it was just a matter of a few days.
Every day involved cutting wheat, threshing, drying, and storing it, often from early morning to late night, and even as a practitioner, he felt exhausted, with aches in his back and waist.
Nonetheless, he found joy in it.
His Divine Skills often went out of control, making his emotions extrely unstable, but each ti after exhausting work, his mind emptied, making it easier to ditate.
Unknowingly, days passed again.
The golden wheat waves in the fields around Li Family Castle had disappeared, leaving only vast swathes of yellow earth and densely scattered wheat stubble.
A gust of wind would stir up dust and sand.
Under the setting sun, the land of Guanzhong appeared even more vast and majestic.
Although the beautiful scene of wheat waves was no more, the people were all smiling happily.
Scholars and poets often thought that a sea of golden fields represented a bountiful harvest, but only those who relied on the land for food knew the threat posed by hail, rain, and strong winds. Only when every grain was stored did it count as a successful harvest.
And on this particular night, Li Yan finally achieved a breakthrough.
Deep in the night, he sat cross-legged on his bed.
At this mont, he was free of external distractions, breathing faintly, with his consciousness entirely focused on the center of his brows, where in the darkness, a glowing figure hovered silently.
This was the deity he visualized.
According to the Cultivation Techniques of the "Western Mystical Hidden True Sutra," he visualized his five viscera and six bowels and all his body’s organs daily, gathering the faint spiritual light into the center of his brows before storing the god.
The mark of success was the unwavering stored god.
Even upon waking, with a re thought, the stored god would instantly manifest in his sea of consciousness.
Of course, this Magic thod was also progressive.
As his Dao advanced, the deity he visualized would beco increasingly clear.
Other cultivators from major sects had templates of ancestors or immortals to visualize from, but Li Yan’s situation was extraordinary.
His visualization template was the Divine Statue in his Dantian.
This object was always present in the Dantian, linked with the heart and mind, requiring only focused attention, unlike other Mystical Sect cultivators who had to frequently gather their scattered minds.
This was also the reason for his rapid progress.
And at the mont of his successful visualization, the glowing figure at the center of his brows resonated with the Substitute Divine Statue, quickly falling and enveloping the statue.
This sudden situation caught Li Yan off guard.
Before he could react, the Divine Statue underwent changes again.
rging with the Light of God Storage, the originally blurred face of the Substitute Divine Statue began to distort continuously, then the features ford, becoming identical to his own.
anwhile, various pieces of information surged into his mind.
Li Yan’s eyes showed shock, followed by delight.
Previously, his sense of the Divine Statue was very vague, so he could only infer its purpose through incomplete information.
But after storing the god, the Divine Statue was fully consecrated by him.
This treasure was nad "Daluo Dharma Body."
Beyond injury swapping and life replacent, it also protected the god.
The deity he visualized had now rged with the Daluo Dharma Body.
There were two main benefits.
The first was the protection of the stored god, akin to the function of a building, such that even without conducting ritual ceremonies for housing the stored god, it wouldn’t disappear easily.
The second was that, like the flesh body, it could swap injuries.
If struck by spells aid at the Divine Soul, the divine statue could take the hit, sparing the stored god.
Naturally, the building still needed to be constructed.
After all, this Daluo Dharma Body could only replace injuries, not enhance cultivation levels.
More importantly, this Daluo Dharma Body could continue to upgrade.
By just devouring Heavenly Spirit Earth Treasure, one could enhance the Dharma Body’s strength, and if enough Heavenly Spirit Earth Treasure was obtained, performing a certain ritual could reignite the Life Fire.
It equated to gaining an extra life!
Unexpectedly, this Daluo Dharma Body also required Divine Refinent.
Li Yan smiled, shifted his thoughts, and the stored god returned to his brows once more, and even if his mind was chaotic, the light form human figure did not disappear.
Suppressing excitent, he regulated his breathing according to the spells taught in the "Western Mystical Hidden True Sutra," then focused his mind, causing his Divine Skills to undergo a change.
Previously, his sll superpower was uncontrolled, mostly faint, and would occasionally surge abruptly, causing dizziness and blackouts, taking a long ti to recover.
But now, that astonishing sense of sll began to fade away.
Eventually, it was no different from that of an ordinary person.
Li Yan did not panic, his left thumb pinched onto the segnt of his second finger.
This was the Yang Jue, representing the Deity of the Sun.
He pinched the hand seal, took a deep breath, and the nasal superpower suddenly activated, with various odors flooding into his nostrils, intensifying with his ntal will.
Later, his left thumb pinched onto the segnt of his fourth finger.
This was the Yin Technique, representing the Deity of the Moon, causing the superpower to be closed again.
According to the spellbook’s explanation, Divine Skills originated from the Yang Six Roots, not re physical strength, and using them would deplete one’s ntal energy and Divine Soul.
After storing the god, by mastering both the Yin and Yang Techniques, the Divine Skills could be freely controlled.
By closing them on regular days, one would not be targeted by sinister things.
The dark clouds overhead finally dissipated at that mont.
Crack!
Just when Li Yan was rejoicing, a stone was suddenly thrown into the courtyard.
In the silence of the night, it did not escape Li Yan’s ears at all.
Soone was there!
His eyebrows raised sharply, and with a flip, he got out of bed, grabbed the Guan Mountain Blade hanging on the wall, and quietly stepped out the door.
Crack!
Another stone landed on the ground.
Li Yan narrowed his eyes, holding the handle of the blade with his right hand.
This was a tactic known as "testing with stones," a thod only understood by those in the pugilistic world.
If there were likeminded individuals, calling out "Spring Festival" would make them leave, to avoid entering without notice, causing a conflict, and ending in a blood feud.
If no one responded, then one could enter as they pleased.
He was about to speak and drive the person away when a thought crossed his mind, and he made a hand seal, taking a deep breath, thoroughly distinguishing the scents within a hundred ters around.
Sha Lifei?!
Upon sniffing the visitor’s scent, Li Yan beca slightly surprised.
He glanced to the other side, noticing his grandfather Li Gui was still soundly asleep, then suddenly dashed forward, reaching the corner of the wall, where he used his left foot to step and then his right to propel himself into the air, executing a neat sideways flip over the courtyard wall.
Standing outside the courtyard wall was indeed Sha Lifei.
He looked quite disheveled, his clothes torn and tattered, covered with dust, hiding in the shadow of the jujube tree, peeking around.
"What happened?"
Li Yan frowned, lowering his voice to ask.
Sha Lifei scratched his bald head, replying bitterly, "Let’s talk outside the village. Master Wang is here too; he’s in the broken temple on the back mountain right now."
"Also, could you get so water and food?"
"Haven’t eaten all day..."
......
Behind the Li Family Castle stood a Mountain God Temple.
Such Mountain God Temples were present across the Divine State, where dicine farrs, hunters, or passing travelers often stopped to burn a stick of incense before entering the mountains, seeking protection from harm and disturbance by evil spirits.
Back when the old veterans of Li Family Castle were around, the incense offerings were quite robust, given these veterans were all remarkably skilled with arrows, often hunting so ga in the mountains.
But now, as fewer people went into the mountains, and with nothing valuable on the barren mountain, the Mountain God Temple gradually lost its incense, fell into disrepair, and even had a corner of the roof beam collapsed.
At that mont, a campfire crackled inside the temple.
Sha Lifei and Wang Daoxuan took up a cake to roast over the fire and devoured it with cold water, like ghosts reborn from starvation.
"Bandits attacking a kiln?"
Li Yan, sitting to one side, looked sowhat surprised.
No wonder, during his period of cultivation, while Hei Dan and those other wheat reapers had returned, Wang Daoxuan and the others were nowhere in sight.
He initially thought it was the delay in handling Lady’s funeral.
Little did he expect that bandits had invaded the village.
"Yeah, exactly!"
Sha Lifei mumbled while eating, "Just as the wheat reapers left, bandits hit the kiln that night. Luckily, Master and I went to fix the longevity material and weren’t surrounded."
Li Yan frowned, "The Lu family’s Protectors are many, were there a lot of bandits?"
Sha Lifei swallowed the cake in his mouth with force, cursing, "A whole lot more, pitch-black and uncountable, but at least three to four hundred."
"I also saw soone, the leader of the bandits from Qilu we encountered on the road that day, tead up with several major Guan sword bandits."
"Damn, the whole village was slaughtered, utterly ruthless!"
"Qilu bandit?"
Hearing this, Li Yan beca thoughtful.
This matter, probably wasn’t that simple...
User Comments
0 comments from readers