Chapter 10: Earth Milk Spiritual Liquid (Please add to favorites)

“Heh, heh, heh.” The masked man could only emit a hoarse, wheezing sound, but his exposed eyes were filled with mockery.

The anger in Xia Yunsue’s heart climbed higher and higher. She said coldly, “This is your last chance. Who told you to do this? What are you planning?”

The masked man revealed a sinister smile. Without any visible movement, his body began to tremble, and filthy, turbid blood flowed from his seven orifices.

“Hmph!” Xia Yunsue immediately crushed his neck and tossed him aside like a broken sack. He quickly dissolved into a puddle of blood, his soul completely extinguished.

“People from the Blood Demon lineage.” Her expression was as dark as ink. These remnants of the demonic path were becoming increasingly rampant.

This was the first time Song Changsheng had seen this side of his mother. In his memory, she had always been a gentle and virtuous woman.

“Sheng’er, are you alright?” Only after confirming that Song Changying was not in any serious danger did Xia Yunsue check Song Changsheng’s injuries with a face full of heartache.

Finding only minor wounds, she hugged Song Changsheng and let out a sigh of relief. She had already lost her husband; she could not lose her only son as well.

Song Changsheng managed to squeeze out a smile. “Mother, I’m fine. But Uncle and the others…”

“It’s all Mother’s fault. I arrived too late.” Xia Yunsue’s heart was filled with self-reproach. If she had been just a little faster, would the outcome have been completely different?

“This is not your fault. No one expected these demonic remnants to target us. Let us first collect the remains of Uncle and the others to avoid further trouble,” Song Changsheng said softly.

The two of them, carrying the unconscious Song Changying, returned to the place where they had been ambushed. The area was already a mess, with fallen trees scattered everywhere.

Several corpses lay there in solitude.

Song Luding had been cut in half at the waist, and his bronze tripod had been shattered.

Song Luzi still had his eyes wide open in anger even after death, a large hole in his chest where his heart had been ripped out.

Song Changjiu was nothing but a headless corpse; his head was nowhere to be found. Even in death, his hand remained tightly gripped around a broken sword.

Looking at such a tragic and miserable scene, Song Changsheng felt the world spinning; he nearly lost his footing. Only a few hours ago, they had been laughing and talking together.

The image of Song Changjiu’s simple, honest smile was still fresh in his mind, yet now they were separated by the divide between life and death. He was only fifteen; his life had just begun…

“Sigh, they shed their last drop of blood for the clan. I will report this to the family and request honors for them,” Xia Yunsue sighed slightly. She had seen such scenes too often; the Song clan had shed far too much blood over these years.

“They are already gone. What use are honors now?” Song Changsheng said in a low voice.

“Their families need this recognition.”

The Song clan had been established for hundreds of years, enduring constant battles. The most important reason they maintained such high cohesion to this day was their clear system of rewards and punishments.

The clan never mistreated any clansman who bled or sacrificed for it.

Song Changsheng nodded silently. He respectfully collected the bodies and cleaned up the battlefield. Afterward, Xia Yunsue personally retrieved the children hiding in the mountain cave and brought them back to the clan.

The clan held a grand funeral for the fallen and distributed pensions according to their merits. But the dead were gone, and such gestures were merely a small comfort to the living.

This attack by the demonic cultivators shocked the entire clan, even causing the Patriarch to come out of seclusion early.

After the funeral, Song Xianming personally issued an order, dispatching the Third Elder, Song Luyao, and the Fourth Elder, Song Luhai, to descend the mountain with demon-suppressing artifacts and disciples from the Law Enforcement Hall to purge the demons.

They conducted a carpet search throughout the Wangyue Mountain Range, eventually rooting out over a dozen demonic cultivators. However, they caught no big fish and gathered no useful intelligence, eventually returning in frustration.

But none of this concerned Song Changsheng. At this moment, he was busy healing his wounds.

Due to his outstanding performance in the mission, as well as the merit of having his heterochromatic and twin spiritual roots detected, the clan rewarded him with two hundred spirit stones and a second-grade low-tier Rejuvenation Pill. With the help of the elixir, his injuries were recovering quickly.

In the courtyard, Song Changsheng exhaled a breath of turbid air, feeling a lingering fear. “I really shouldn’t drink second-grade spirit wine at my cultivation level. I probably won’t have such good luck next time.”

At the time, his energy consumption had been too great, and he had been forced to gulp down several mouthfuls of the second-grade low-tier spirit wine he had begged from his Fifth Uncle, Song Luzhou.

Fortunately, his parents had built a solid foundation for him since childhood, and his meridians were both wide and resilient. He had also happened to be in a state of high-intensity depletion.

Otherwise, given the immense spiritual energy contained in the second-grade spirit wine, he would surely have been burst apart on the spot. Even now, he felt a shiver down his spine thinking about it.

It could only be said that a newborn calf is not afraid of the tiger. It was Song Changsheng’s first life-and-death battle, and he had been reckless in the heat of the moment.

If he were to do it now, he certainly wouldn’t dare to drink that much.

Feeling that his injuries were mostly healed, Song Changsheng took out four storage bags.

These were the bags from the four people he had killed. He had only taken these and their artifacts; he had given the rest to the descendants of Song Luding and the others, as well as to Song Changying.

“Let me see what gains I can get from this first spoils of war in my life.” Song Changsheng felt a sense of anticipation and began to focus on breaking the restrictions on them.

Since the owners were already dead, he didn’t have much trouble opening the four bags.

He first looked at the bags of the two fourth-layer Qi Refining demonic cultivators. They were shockingly poor, containing only fifteen spirit stones in total. Aside from a few pills and ores of some value, the rest was just a pile of junk.

The eighth-layer Qi Refining cultivator’s assets were slightly more substantial, with fifty-two spirit stones, some ores useful for artifact refining, and a few demonic manuals.

He burned the manuals immediately; it was better not to keep such harmful things.

Finally, there was the bag of the ninth-layer Qi Refining demonic cultivator. As a minor leader, his assets were the most abundant, containing ninety spirit stones and some other resources like pills and ores, worth roughly another hundred spirit stones.

At the very bottom, a purple jade bottle caught Song Changsheng’s attention.

Purple jade was quite precious; containers made from it could prevent spiritual energy from dissipating for years, and it was generally used to store rare spiritual items. This made Song Changsheng look forward to what was inside.

Carefully pulling out the stopper, a strange fragrance immediately wafted out. Song Changsheng took one look and immediately closed the bottle, saying with pleasant surprise, “It’s actually Earth Essence Spirit Liquid.”

Earth Essence Spirit Liquid was a precious spiritual fluid produced at the center of earth veins. Consuming it could increase one’s cultivation and cleanse the marrow; it was truly a rare treasure.

“I suppose the demonic cultivator prepared this to break through to the Great Perfection of Qi Refining,” Song Changsheng said, looking at the purple jade bottle in his hand, unable to put it down.

There were four bottlenecks in the Qi Refining stage: breaking through the first, fourth, seventh, and the Great Perfection layers.

Breaking through to the Great Perfection was the most difficult and required a long period of time.

However, this process could be accelerated by external aids, and this Earth Essence Spirit Liquid was one of them.

“I’ll just use this to take my cultivation to the next level.” Song Changsheng didn’t intend to save it until he reached the ninth layer.

He was different from these demonic and rogue cultivators; when he needed to, he could simply exchange for a pill to assist in his breakthrough.

This was the benefit of having the clan as his backing; his starting point was naturally a cut above the rest.