The soft light in the study was on. Qin Ran sat at the desk, taking out all the cultivation techniques he had bought during the day from his Universe Bag and neatly arranging them on the desk.
He picked up a pen and paper, prepared himself, then took a jade slip and placed it on his forehead. With the unsealing incantation, he opened it and carefully read the cultivation technique within.
These cultivation techniques were bought cheaply and of uneven quality. Or rather, there were useful techniques among them, but it took a discerning eye to find them.
As a poor cultivator, Qin Ran had to have such an eye. He had to sort through these techniques and find the useful ones - just like a trash collector.
Most of these techniques were garbage, too low in quality to be worth the effort.
After discarding the true trash, what was left most were incomplete techniques, or rather, potentially useful incomplete ones.
This incompleteness was not just missing the first or last parts. No, the pages were eaten by bugs, chewed up in tatters. Forget the text, even the sentences were unreadable.
Next were the fakes. Some idle cultivators would carve gibberish on jade slips and pass them off as top-tier techniques to sell to ignorant, low-level cultivators. And so on.
Then there were jade slips without incantations. These were like blind boxes - if you were skilled in arrays and managed to open them, you might find an ancient master's secret manual inside. Of course, more often after all that effort, you'd get a fake.
Finally, there were the weird techniques with extremely high cultivation requirements. Rarely anyone would need these, so they were hard to sell.
In short, he had to pick out treasures from the trash heap.
Ideally, he wanted to find very powerful techniques without follow-up parts. Qin Ran wanted such techniques to give Li Shiyin a solid foundation.
He was already skilled at this task. In small sects, you had to be familiar with finding good techniques.
He moved swiftly, first skimming through each technique, then sorting them into categories based on the above five types.
After organizing them, he evaluated each technique one by one.
Those too incomplete to salvage were decisively discarded.
Confirmed fakes were of course also discarded.
Jade slips without incantations were kept for later attempts to open them when he had time.
Techniques with cultivation requirements too high to be useful were discarded.
There was another type to discard - very good techniques but with completely unattainable follow-up parts. These had to be discarded as well.
After a whole night of writing and sorting, Qin Ran finally finished organizing all the techniques. The useful ones were kept, the useless discarded.
By now the moon hung over the western mountains, its soft light shining down on the forest treetops outside. Qin Ran stretched and a breeze blew in through the window, fluttering the papers on the desk.
Those papers were full of writing, categorizing:
Techniques without follow-ups:
1. Dayan Sword Canon, first two levels, able to reach Core Formation, but missing follow-up parts after Core Formation. Top priority. Contains Dayan Sword Technique, three moves.
2. Green Cloud Sword Art, first five levels, able to reach Infant Transformation, but only foundation techniques without skills or divine abilities. Secondary priority.
Techniques with requirements too high:
1. Underworld Spirit Immortal Art, complete edition, cultivatable to Unity Realm. Requires Underworld Spirit physique. Excellent skills and divine abilities, can try extracting parts later when have time.
2. Control Spirit Beast Magic Book, first half. Cultivation technique for beast masters to control beasts, but requires blood of intended spirit beast. Somewhat niche, keep as backup.
3. Divine Demon Nine Transformations, first seven transformations. Movement technique, requires several dozen top-tier pills like Divine Demon Pill, Bloodthirst Pill, Immortal Connecting Pill etc. Extremely painful to cultivate, but excellent effects, keep for now.
Techniques needing restoration:
1. Refine Spirit Eight Stages, soul technique. Extremely difficult to restore but still a soul technique, keep for now.
2. Spirit Gold Ten Thousand Refining Art, only first two levels and heavily damaged, but resonates very well with Metal spirit root. Try to restore as much as possible.
3. Gale Nine Transformations, moderately damaged, resonates with existing Gale Steps movement technique, can try restoring.
4. Geng Metal Flying Sword Art, Metal attribute skill.
And some other jade slips without incantations.
After stretching, Qin Ran pressed down the fluttering papers and put a book over them. Though this was proper immortal cultivation, his pre-rebirth habits still lingered, so he decided to rest for now and deal with things tomorrow.
He got up, closed the window, stretched again and walked out the door, directly passing through the exercise room and into the corridor outside. Glancing around, he noticed a shadow down the corridor leaning over the railing looking towards the study.
Following the line of sight back to the study, he saw the light was still on instead of automatically turning off when he left.
Looks like something's wrong with the sensing array in the study, he thought. As a diligent all-nighter cultivator, he loved working at night the most.
The study lights saw the most use and were prone to problems. He would have to find time to adjust the sensing array soon.
But first things first, he had to scold that silly disciple. "You're not asleep yet?!" It was almost dawn.
The shadow at the railing watching the study was of course his silly disciple Li Shiyin. During her medicinal bath earlier she had dozed off, only to be woken by the cold, and had hurriedly gotten out. Looking out the window then, it was already midnight.
Just as she was about to go to bed, she noticed the study light was still on.
Master must still be busy, she thought, and came out to lean on the railing watching the study, lost in thought.
So engrossed she didn't notice her master's approach until he spoke up, startling her.
"Master, what are you doing here?!" she cried in shock.
"What are you doing here?" Qin Ran discretely looked Li Shiyin up and down. His disciple was still wearing his clothes, hanging loosely on her body with a different allure, and temptation.
"I was here after my bath!" Flustered like she'd been caught red-handed, Li Shiyin hurriedly explained, "I came out for some fresh air!"
Qin Ran glanced at her. "Seems like today's training wasn't enough..." With that, he entered his room.
"No no, Master! It was enough! More than enough!" Li Shiyin quickly called out, but Qin Ran ignored her and closed his door, leaving her in the corridor.
She pouted resentfully. "Stinky Master!"
Speaking of stinky, she sniffed herself again and frowned at the medicinal smell. What kind of aroma was that for a girl?
...She didn't know what kind of image she presented earlier, motionless as a statue.
But her master had already gone in, so she was too lazy to care and returned to her own room.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
