Chapter 113: Cursed Weapon (3)

  After giving and receiving gifts from the Sect Master, Xu Mo asked, “Where can I find the Ancestor?”

  The Sect Master replied calmly, “The Ancestor resides mostly within the restricted area. Entry is permitted only to the Sect Master.”

  Xu Mo nodded. He didn’t want to break any rules or owe unnecessary favors. Without hesitation, he handed the Ancestor’s gift to Bai Xu and walked back to his residence.

  By the time he returned, only a few hours had passed. Xu Mo was overjoyed that his precious cultivation time hadn’t been wasted too much. He could resume cultivating almost immediately.

  He didn’t know when the sect would summon him and the others to enter the secret realm. He couldn’t afford to delay his progress any longer.

  Placing the box containing the cursed weapon far away from himself, Xu Mo left it in the room he had previously assigned to the Shadow Sentinel.

  He had no intention of letting that cursed, female voice of resentment disturb him while he was at a crucial point in cultivation.

  “Time to really unleash my talent to the extreme,” Xu Mo thought aloud, rubbing his palms together to create a bit of heat, trying to calm the goosebumps rising across his skin. “My identity will be revealed soon. I need to have strength worthy of that title.”

  With a flicker of anticipation in his eyes, he looked forward to seeing what would happen when he finally let go of all restraint.

  Xu Mo sat down and cleared his mind of every useless thought.

  A faint amount of Qi lingered in the air, left behind after his last breakthrough. It had accumulated inside his home like a whisper of energy awaiting purpose.

  “Whooo…” Xu Mo inhaled deeply, letting the air circulate through his entire body while giving his brain a generous amount of oxygen. As he closed his eyes, thoughts and faces he normally wouldn’t think of surfaced in his mind. His brows wrinkled slightly, forming a frown.

  Then, his consciousness began to play everything in reverse.

  Every interaction he had experienced played backward—like a stream of memories rewinding. Finally, when there were no more memories left to revisit, his mind sank into a dark abyss where even his own form couldn’t be seen.

  Turning inward, Xu Mo stood in the depths of his consciousness.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  There, suspended in the vast void, floated his Dantian—not a mere core anymore, but a dense, grey sphere pulsing with suppressed power. It resembled a dragon egg buried in shadow—its surface smooth and still, except for the faint shimmer of a barrier formed by the ever-shifting grey liquid that had gradually overflowed from his heart and flooded his meridians like a second bloodstream.

  The spiritual energy within glowed faintly, like starlight struggling behind heavy clouds—trapped and waiting.

  Drawn closer, Xu Mo extended his hand.

  His fingertips brushed the surface.

  Crack.

  A fine fracture spread across it.

  Then another.

  Hairline cracks splintered like silver threads across the dull grey shell—delicate at first, then pulsing with urgency, like the beat of a war drum growing louder.

  Crick… Craaack—

  From within the cracks, light began to bleed through.

  At first, it was a mere flicker—faint and uncertain.

  Then came the radiance.

  A soft, golden luminescence seeped outward, slicing through the darkness like dawn’s first light after a long winter night. Each fracture glowed brighter, burning with restrained brilliance, as though something ancient was waking from slumber—something that had waited, watched, and endured for far too long.

  The darkness began to dissolve, revealing that it had never truly existed. The moment even the faintest light appeared, the abyss vanished.

  Having unlocked the Dantian he had once sealed to control how much Qi would leak from his pores in daily life, Xu Mo watched as the world within became bright as day. Even now, he couldn’t see himself—it was like witnessing his insides from a first-person perspective.

  Six containers began to materialize around his Dantian. While five of them were already full and sealed to the brim, the sixth container had finally taken the same form. Qi had begun to gather within it.

  Xu Mo’s body instinctively started absorbing Qi like a sponge soaking in water. The spiritual energy in the air, in its gaseous form, flowed into him, governed by the law of his Qi circulation technique. He continued refining the raw, impure Qi of the world.

  One hour later.

  The refined Qi gathered in the sixth bucket.

  Xu Mo didn’t stop even after noticing that the Qi had been fully depleted in the immediate surroundings. His range of absorption had long exceeded the nearby residences, and he was still slowly expanding it.

  Other disciples merely noticed the Qi density around them was decreasing, but they didn’t think much of it. They couldn’t see Qi like Xu Mo could. And even if they could, they would have no idea where it was vanishing to.

  It was thanks to the early benefits of his Dao of Silence—such as the ability to manipulate formations—that he remained undetected.

  Xu Mo frowned again, the calm in his expression vanishing. This time, he didn’t hold back the range of his Qi absorption. Like an immortal beast awakening from hibernation, his body became the center of a vortex, greedily consuming the Qi around him.

  This had nothing to do with spiritual sense—it was simply Xu Mo’s raw talent at play. His command over Qi and the spiritual energy in the environment was overwhelming. The Qi obeyed his will. To fulfill his insatiable hunger, the energy seemed to instinctively seek ways to satisfy him.

  Unaware of the extent, Xu Mo’s body was now absorbing Qi from all four directions—across the entire outer sect.

  Something like this should have caused a massive disturbance within the sect.

  But no one suspected a thing.

  People cultivating nearby only felt the Qi thinning and assumed it was a temporary anomaly. They didn’t think too much of it.

  Things might’ve been different if someone like Bai Xu or the Head Elder had been stationed in the outer sect.

  But at the moment, no such people were present.