An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

After confirming that battles offered little assistance in refining his spirit power beyond the seventh stage of Qi-Refining, Luo Chen quickly lost interest in battle contests.

In the days that followed, he buried himself once more in the Alchemy Hall, falling into a rhythm that suited him perfectly—cultivation, alchemy, reading... and digging tunnels.

Yes, digging tunnels!

With painstaking effort over the course of half a month, Luo Chen successfully carved out a narrow passageway that connected Crescent Moon Valley to the Howling Moon Mountains.

The project cost him a first-tier low-grade flying sword, reduced to a splintered husk during the excavation. But the gains were more than worth it. One unexpected benefit was that the effort pushed his auxiliary martial technique, the Mountain Cleaving Monument Breaking Palm, to Grandmaster level.

He had to admit, the Grandmaster-level Mountain Cleaving Monument Breaking Palm was indeed impressive. With just one palm strike, he could unleash a concentrated wave of spirit energy, compressed and devastating.

The only drawback was its limited range of just ten zhang [1], but otherwise, it was nearly flawless. The strike’s power was almost equivalent to that of a top-grade enchanted artifact.

”No wonder Brother Wang’s book was copied and resold so quickly after he first sold it,” Luo Chen mused, chuckling to himself as he dusted rock powder from his sleeves. “It’s definitely worth a read.”

Of course, ten zhang wasn’t much in a real battle.

Most cultivators preferred to fight from a distance, flinging swords, talismans, and spells across hundreds of meters. Unless one was on the Debate Platform, where distance was controlled, closing in for a palm strike was rarely feasible. Hence at ten zhang, it was hard to hit anyone.

After all, which enchanted artifact couldn’t easily fly over a hundred meters to kill?

What pleased him was that this palm technique had already earned him four achievement points, and once he reached Perfected Mastery, it would grant another point.

Grinning faintly, he gathered a burst of spirit energy and shattered the final thin rock wall before him.

Crack—

A wave of crisp mountain air swept in through the opening, carrying with it the earthy scent of snow and pine.

Luo Chen stepped out onto the ledge at the tunnel’s end and looked around

The pale moonlight spilled from the night sky, illuminating the already silver forest snowfield as if it were daylight.

He stood halfway up the mountain. Unexpectedly, the Star Silver mine of Crescent Moon Valley seemed to extend deep into the interior of the Howling Moon Mountains. Perhaps it was still far from the core areas, but this place was already one rarely ventured by cultivators.

Suddenly, Luo Chen retreated back into the cave. He activated the Spirit Suppression to its fullest!

Awooo

It carried a sense of sorrow, a haunting chill. In the dead of night, the sound was chilling to the bone.

Second-tier spirit wolves! Luo Chen froze like a dead tree, straining to suppress his blood and qi fluctuations, even retracting his spirit power to its limit.

This was the Grandmaster level Spirit Suppression he had mastered after months of practice. Occasionally, he could disguise his cultivation realm so well that even Gu Caiyi, a ninth stage Qi-Refining cultivator could not detect him. But whether it could fool a second-tier demonic beast, he had no confidence.

Could my escape route become a death trap instead? Luo Chen’s mind was taut as he silently attuned to the noises outside.

As the wolf’s howl pierced the air, a chorus of howls echoed throughout the surrounding mountains, rising and falling in succession. It sounded as if there were tens of thousands of them.

The Great Million Mountains stretched endlessly across the land, but most cultivators preferred to venture into the Ancient Plains.The Howling Moon Mountains, though equally abundant in resources and spanning hundreds of peaks, remained largely untouched.

Because Unlike other ranges teeming with a variety of demonic beasts, this place was dominated by one kind alone—spirit wolves

And crouched in silence for only a short while, Luo Chen had already heard over a dozen deep, powerful howls, each one echoing with the unmistakable presence of a second-tier beast. This meant there were over a dozen second-tier spirit wolves in just the nearby mountains. And if extended to the entire Howling Moon Mountains, the number of second-tier spirit wolves would reach a terrifying scale.

After a while, the wolf howls showed no sign of subsiding; instead, they grew even more intense. A faint scent of blood suddenly reached Luo Chen.

”Something’s not right!” Luo Chen’s expression shifted slightly as he silently stepped out of the tunnel.

His eyes flickered.

Without any conscious effort, the Spirit Eyes embedded within his vision automatically activated, casting a faint glow beneath his lashes. This ensured that using spirit power wouldn’t disrupt the effect of his Spirit Suppression

And through this heightened vision, his gaze pierced through the snowy forest—a thousand meters away—to a scene that made his breath hitch.

”Is that... a fight? ”he murmured, eyes narrowing.

A Grayleaf Wolf was locked in a frenzied battle with an Ice Frost Wolf.

Both were first-tier demonic beasts, yet their clash was anything but ordinary. Each movement was wild, ruthless, and filled with desperation. The ferocity of their strikes—snarls, blood-splatter, and vicious lunges—far exceeded anything Luo Chen had seen even on the Debate Platform.

And in the end, the Grayleaf Wolf fell.

At the end of winter, the Ice Frost Wolves had the advantage of time and terrain. Even though the Grayleaf Wolf was a formidable first-tier beast, it still couldn’t triumph over its equal-tiered rival.

Luo Chen swallowed hard and scanned the surroundings.

In this single mountain alone, there were at least hundreds of skirmishes. Some were minor like the battle he had just witnessed, involving only one or two wolves locked in desperate battles.

But others... others were on a far greater scale.

He could faintly glimpse the chaos of massive pack battles, where hundreds of spirit wolves tore into each other in frenzied clashes, snow and blood blending across the terrain. The howls echoed like drums of war, shaking the very bones of the mountain.

In the distance, the spirit power fluctuations of second-tier spirit wolves radiated with terrifying intensity. Seeing the lifeless corpses of several spirit wolves on the ground, Luo Chen resisted the urge to scavenge.

Quietly, he dragged a massive boulder to block the tunnel entrance. Then, he steadily retreated back.

This place was not safe to linger! Thought Luo Chen.

He used boulders to block the tunnel along the way and only exhaled in relief once he had returned to the lower reaches of Crescent Moon Valley.

Dispelling the Spirit Suppression, Luo Chen pondered the peculiar scene he had just witnessed.

Why were spirit wolves, of the same kind, slaughtering one another? Was it merely due to differences in their internal clans? Did Grayleaf Wolves and Ice Frost Wolves truly share such enmity?

No, it couldn’t be just that. The Howling Moon Mountains were home to over a dozen wolf clans. If they fought like this every day, their strength would have been depleted long ago, and this area wouldn’t be a no-go zone for human cultivators.

For some reason, an image surfaced in Luo Chen’s mind.

When he had been living in the small courtyard at the outer city, he had encountered a few cultivators who had fled from the Howling Moon Mountains.

One of them, a woman named Huiniang, had kindly warned him that the area near the Howling Moon Mountains was unsafe and advised him to move out early. This meant that the abnormalities in the Howling Moon Mountains had already begun as early as last summer.

Forget it. Digging deeper into this matter has nothing to do with me. If demonic beasts do attack the market, the strong ones can handle it. I just need to run faster than the others.

When it came to running away, Luo Chen had some expertise!

Smirking at the thought, he lifted his hand to cast Cleanse, intending to shake off the grime and dust from his tunnel-digging expedition.

However, his habitual gesture of casting mysteriously turned into a casual wave of his hand. With that wave, the dust vanished entirely, and an unusual scent was dispersed as well.

Smelling that scent, Luo Chen froze in surprise. ”Demonic energy?”

Recalling the brutal battle of the spirit wolves earlier, he realized he had unknowingly been tainted with a trace of demonic energy.

”The Cleanse only removes impurities, doesn’t it?”

He quickly pulled up his status panel and noticed that the Cleanse on his status panel was glowing faintly. This was a special display that only appeared after achieving a breakthrough in proficiency.

”The Cleanse has reached Grandmaster level!” Luo Chen suddenly came to a realization that his mastery of the most basic Cleanse had reached the Grandmaster level.

What Luo Chen has just tested was the specific effects of the Grandmaster level Cleanse. Not only could it effortlessly clean impurities, it now possessed a far more profound ability—to purge foreign energy from the body. Any energy flow that didn’t belong to him could be cleansed.

If demonic energy can be cleansed, then could it also purge things like blood energy, malevolent energy, yin energy, or even the pill and medicinal energy flow I’ve accumulated over years of alchemy?

And what about other people’s spirit power?

In an instant, Luo Chen thought of scenarios where the Grandmaster level Cleanse could come in handy. If it could even cleanse spirit power applied by other cultivators. Then he would have an excellent countermeasure if he ever encountered an opponent’s spirit power markings.

Without a test subject, Luo Chen decided to try purging the complex medicinal energy he had accumulated over years of alchemy.

Qi-Refining cultivators were still fundamentally ”human” and had not undergone the qualitative life transformation that came with Foundation Establishment. As a result, frequent exposure to certain things would leave lingering scents.

Luo Chen’s medicinal energy and pill energy, like the faint beast-hide musk on Old Man Chen, lingered even with regular cleansing.

With a casual wave of his hand...

Whoosh! Sure enough, it worked!

A strange cloud of gas peeled away from Luo Chen’s body, like tearing apart dried beef jerky.

Upon closer inspection, it carried a mix of bitterness, sweetness, pungency, and an odd fragrance.

Combined, it created an unsettling scent.

Luo Chen was startled. When did my body accumulate such a scent? Did somebody secretly marinate me without knowing?

He began to wonder if others had noticed this peculiar odor when they were around him before.

Humans were strange creatures—keenly sensitive to new and odd smells in unfamiliar places. But over time, in an unpleasant environment, they would become accustomed to the stench and stop noticing it.

Even Luo Chen hadn’t realized that such a complex medicinal scent had clung to him.

”Maybe it accumulated unknowingly from handling so many medicinal ingredients during alchemy,” he mused.

Luo Chen hesitated, wondering if he should use the Cleanse again to remove the faint pill energy flow he could now detect.

He sniffed lightly, discerning the lingering scent on his body—rich yet subtle, a curious blend of jade and fire. The contrast was striking, almost contradictory, but not unpleasant.

It was most likely the result of long-term exposure to refined alchemical pills—specifically the Myriad Wonders pill and the Jade Essence pill—their medicinal energies having accumulated over time.

Suddenly, Luo Chen caught a hint of discomforting energy.

His hand instinctively rose to his shoulder. There, he felt a faint trace of spirit power that didn’t belong to him. It was so subtle that it would have gone unnoticed after years of familiarity.

It was so faint, so well-hidden, that under normal circumstances, it would have gone completely unnoticed. Years of cultivation had allowed it to blend in naturally, like dust gathering in the folds of old robes.

Now, with heightened focus, his Spirit Eyes activated, and his mind centered, he identified the source. It was an exceptionally pure strand of spirit power!

And that spirit power felt vaguely familiar.

”Mi Shuhua!”

1. The term 丈 (zhàng) is a traditional Chinese unit of length commonly used in historical texts, including those found in Xianxia and Wuxia literature. It is equivalent to 10 Chinese chi and roughly measures 3.33 meters in modern conversions ☜