Chapter 2146: Boneforge

Yushi Moli decided not to think further about these matters after spending some time in a daze. His lips curved upward when he looked at Luo Qing’s body on the ground.

“Killing and looting?” he chuckled. “I know how to do that too.”

Luo Qing had failed to kill him and was killed in return. Didn’t that make Luo Qing’s possessions his spoils of battle? Just look at his clothes, he must come from money!

Yushi Moli walked up to his would-be robber and felt up the corpse that was still pliable.

“There really is something here..” He found a cloth bag on the man. It held a couple hard objects that seemed to be a book and a few gold coins. “Lower human rank body method—Galewind Step?”

Yushi Moli raised an eyebrow when he took the book out of the bag. Other than a cultivator’s own training in determining their strength, the methods, techniques, and weapons they wielded were equally important.

Take Yushi Moli, for instance. He only knew one martial technique—basic sword techniques. Since cultivation methods were useless to him, he couldn’t practice them at all. Regardless, the procurement of a lower human rank body method brought a smile to the boy’s face.

“I’ll hunt through Qingqiu Mountain with greater confidence if I can master this method..” Yushi Moli smiled in great spirits. “Let’s see what else he’s got.. Hmm, five gold notes valid for one hundred gold coins each and a dozen gold coins as well. Not bad, martial cultivators are definitely rich!”

Five hundred gold coins was no small sum for Yushi Moli—they were half of a Boneforge Pill!

Other than his monthly medicinal supplements, his allowance at the city lord’s residence had only been one or two silver coins a month. One gold coin was worth one hundred silver coins in this world.

Luo Qing carried nothing else on him, so Yushi Moli carefully tucked the gold notes away. They were issued by the ten biggest trading companies on the continent and could be exchanged at any of their branches.

The gold notes were made of special material that were impervious to fire and water. They were difficult to destroy and printed with anti-counterfeit symbols jointly created by the trading companies.

Yushi Moli ignored Luo Qing’s corpse, instead choosing to undo the tripwire. He didn’t want it to hurt someone else. Hmm.. I feel like people called me a saint before? So doing all this is what I should be doing?

But.. Yushi Moli scratched his head. What have I ever done? This is the first good deed I’ve ever done in my life! Well, I killed a bad guy who wanted to rob and kill me, so father would praise me if he found out, but he won’t call me a saint..?

He hopped back onto his horse and headed for Clearsnow Estate.

“Little Ying, Little Hua!” He called out when he reached a village close to the estate.

“Big brother Moli is here!”

“C’mon, big brother is here!” A group of kids ran out from the village.

“I just got back from the city and have presents for everyone!” Yushi Moli handed out candies, cakes, and trinkets that he’d picked up in Aurora City. He was very popular in the village and it put him in a good mood to see smiles on the children’s faces.

It always felt like he gazed at a certain kind of hope when he looked at these children—as if a tiny dot of illumination had flitted into view in a bottomless abyss. It represented hope and light.

Yushi Moli liked spending time with these kids. In the city lord’s residence, his younger brother was kept under heavy guard and there was usually no trace of his father to be found. Other than his uncle Ouyang Du, he didn’t have a single person to talk to.

Meanwhile, there were a few small villages close to Clearsnow Estate; many boys and girls his age lived in them. Whenever he tired of cultivating, he came here to play with the children and while away the hours.

After he passed out his souvenirs, Yushi Moli leisurely led his horse through the village and greeted everyone he saw. Though the village residents knew that the boy lived at Clearsnow Estate, they didn’t know who he was. Regardless, they very much liked the boy who always had an easy smile on his face.

“You’re here, Moli! I’ve just baked some bread, come share it with us!” a sixty year old woman called out to Yushi Moli.

“I can’t, I’ve got to get back because I have some business to take care of later,” Yushi Moli declined with a smile.

“This is for you, big brother!” A girl two years younger than him and a bow on her head ran up to him. She shoved a simple cloth doll into his hands. “I made it myself!”

The bow on her head was a present from Yushi Moli.

“Thank you Little Ying!” He accepted the doll and stored it in his robes. The girl called Little Ying beamed with contentment and waved goodbye.

Yushi Moli returned to Clearsnow Estate after a short while, his emotions no longer as calm as they appeared.

The Boneforge Pill and Galewind Step!

He couldn’t wait to try them—they would enhance his cultivation incredibly in a very short period of time!

“Let’s try the pill first!” Cloistered in a meditation chamber, Yushi Moli took a deep breath before placing the fragrant medicinal pill in his mouth. It melted into a pool of refreshingly sweet liquid that traveled straight to his stomach.

Boom!

Something exploded in his stomach before he had the time to react. Currents of air rushed out of his stomach and shot into his limbs.

“Are these the effects of the Boneforge Pill?” Yushi Moli tilted his head to the side and carefully took in the sensation. As expected of a pill meant for martial cultivators!

However, he quickly frowned and raised his eyebrows.

Pain!

Bone-piercing pain!

It felt like countless ants were nibbling at his bones. Pain and numbness!

It was worse than death, but at the same time, he felt that he should be able to endure it.

“Ugh, it hurts so much..” he exclaimed because it seemed to be the expected reaction, then continued to carefully assess the pill’s effects.

While his mind could endure the agony, his body was too weak. Sweat poured out of his body and soaked his clothes. He’d never encountered this kind of pain in his entire life. Although he could put up with it, his body still reacted instinctively.

“How is this a Boneforge Pill? It’s a Killing Pill!” Yushi Moli heaved a sigh of resignation, but his tone remained untroubled.

As time went on, the torment felt like someone was hammering all of his bones to pieces. An ordinary person would’ve fainted dead away a long time ago or even died from the anguish. Thin lines of blood seeped out of his pores.

“The old me probably would’ve undergone a mental collapse by this point.. When did I start changing? Am I still me?” As much as it hurt, Yushi Moli still had the capacity to entertain certain wild thoughts.

He was using less than one hundredth of his mental capacity to manipulate the pill’s effects into honing his body. When Ouyang Du took his first pill, he was wrung inside and out and ultimately fainted from the torture. Even now, he didn’t have the courage to try a second Boneforge Pill.

“I think I’m reaching my limit.. Why is my body so weak?” Yushi Moli grumbled. His mind was mind, but his body was startling to buckle from the strain.

His eyes suddenly lit up.

“That’s right! I can meditate on the Sword Chart of Heaven and Earth and use the sword shadow to suppress the pain!” A stroke of inspiration struck Yushi Moli and he sat down cross-legged, meditating on the sword shadow in his mind.

Humm!

A note reverberated in his mind as a snowy sword shape floated to the fore. His concentration was squarely focused on it. While his body and bones continued to ache, his mind was completely preoccupied by the sword shadow. It suddenly shifted and suppressed the pain coursing through his body. Though the pain continued, it no longer damaged his nerves.

What Yushi Moli didn’t know was that if he hadn’t turned to meditation, the pain would’ve lasted a few dozen more breaths at most. He didn’t possess true qi and thus couldn’t fully digest the pill’s effects. It would’ve dispersed from his body after making a full circuit.

But now that he’d started mentally observing the sword chart, the sword shadow in his mind flared with light and helped him digest the effects of the Boneforge Pill.

Yuqing Yang had counted on the pill helping Yushi Moli realize that his path was wrong. After he endured pain that regular people couldn’t, yet didn’t obtain the effects that he anticipated.. The immense disappointment would cause him to change his mind.

However, he didn’t know that the boy possessed the Sword Chart of Heaven and Earth, or that Yushi Moli’s soul was so strong that the pill’s searing pain was just a commonplace event for him.