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Chapter 136 The Ability to Advance

"What? So you guys are all fine now?" Lin Qing muttered, but her expression was rather lighthearted.

Chen Xuan silently rolled his eyes. Actually, this was just one of several things that worried him.

What truly unsettled him was the anomaly that had occurred at the ability shop.

But even if he talked about it, it would be useless. No one could help him solve it, and talking about it would only cause unnecessary panic. So he kept the matter to himself these days and didn't even tell Liu Shuyue.

It all started two weeks ago.

After the disaster in Chang'an City temporarily subsided, Liu Shuyue returned the two abilities to him. She explained that these abilities were far too evil, and she felt uneasy using them; it was better for Chen Xuan to seal them away. Since both the Splitting and Remelting and Flesh Thirst had been stored in his inventory, they couldn't be traded again once they returned to him—perhaps this was what Liu Shuyue hoped for.

Chen Xuan could also accept her reasons.

To be honest, even watching from afar, seeing countless roots made of exposed muscle bundles and blood vessels frantically rushing into Liu Shuyue's body, he could empathize with her intense discomfort and resistance. If the situation hadn't been urgent, with the lives of everyone in the city hanging by a thread, she would never have used such a demonic ability.

However, after he regained these two abilities through a "one-way demand" method, he realized that something was wrong.

First, their colors have all changed, and the descriptions have changed too!

Currently, in the inventory, they are displayed like this:
"Curse: Thirst for Flesh" LV5, Purple.

—"You yearn to merge into a new body, a new soul, until you reach perfection. As an apostle spreading the gospel of integration, the degree of distortion will be greatly reduced. You will no longer be a blind, lowly creature gnawing on filthy flesh; He allows you to remain graceful until the Great Integration is achieved."

"Crack and Remelt" LV1, Gold.

— "Taboo +7".

That's right, the rarity of both abilities has increased by one level. In particular, the effect of the curse on Bloodthirst has been controlled.

To prevent the app from making inappropriate claims, he even tried it out on himself... He found that the bloodthirsty urges were still there, but they weren't as disturbing or overwhelming. If he used the Mind-Clearing Mantra, he could almost completely calm the burning sensation.

He hadn't tested the degree of distortion, as it would be embarrassing if some parts grew out of his body. But since his desire for flesh and blood had been suppressed, the description of "significantly reduced distortion" should be credible.

If it were just an improvement in ability grade, he could understand it.

At least Liu Shuyue absorbed a large number of roots with it, and then used the Disintegration and Remelting technique to remove the altar demon's defenses, so she must have gained a lot of experience.

However, the strangeness of these two abilities doesn't stop there.

After being returned to inventory, their fonts actually changed!

At first, Chen Xuan thought he was seeing things, but two days later, the change became much more obvious. Many tiny whiskers grew on their characters, as if they were moldy.

A week later, these tendrils had grown to seven or eight millimeters long, making them particularly eye-catching on the screen. Upon closer inspection, they resembled tentacles quite a bit.

The problem is that the fonts in the app are all standard Microsoft YaHei, so how could these roots possibly grow?
Chen Xuan even dragged the abilities to see if there was a problem with the monitor. The font would turn into normal text for a moment when they were dragged, but once they were in place, the roots would immediately grow back to their previous length, which was quite creepy to look at.

It couldn't be that the computer is infected with a virus, could it?

There was no option to destroy the inventory, so he could only leave those two abilities at the bottom and pretend he didn't see them.

Today, those tendrils have grown to over a centimeter in length, even crossing the boundaries of the table, as if they are struggling to climb upwards. Previously, when they were at the top of the table, the roots were pointing downwards.

It was as if something was tempting it.

Chen Xuan moved the two abilities to the right corner again, hoping to find some clues.

If this thing can affect the shop's abilities, then there will be big trouble. He's been spacing out a lot lately, actually observing whether these words are really growing on their own.

"By the way, now that you've disbanded the Sovereign Sect, what will happen to those two little guests?" Lin Qing stretched lazily. "Should we occasionally bring them to the shop for a visit?"

“I’m running an ability shop, not an amusement park,” Chen Xuan said decisively. “Besides, the Immortal Alliance Governor is overseeing things. They can just join the Ascension Platform directly. Xu Xuanling is going there anyway.”

"The farewell scene must have been very sad. They lost their master and their sect. It's pitiful to think about," Lin Qing said thankfully. "Luckily, I wasn't there."

Chen Xuan fell silent.

That is true to some extent.

Although Ah Jiu and Ah Hua were not children in the ordinary sense, and were well-educated and mentally strong, they still cried their eyes out that day, even choking back tears as they asked to go to the "celestial realm" with him.

The problem is, there's no such thing as a celestial realm, and the shop can't possibly hire two more child laborers, otherwise it would surely attract complaints from concerned residents of the neighborhood.

Moreover, Chen Xuan knew that leaving them in that world was the best course of action—the Immortal Alliance had reached a consensus that they couldn't launch a retaliation against the other world until all cultivators reached a certain level of strength. Therefore, the most rational approach was to leave a portion of the cultivators to monitor the eroded areas in Chang'an City, using the outer city walls to build fortifications to prevent the enemy from sneaking out, while the vast majority of the remaining cultivators should head to the Western Coast to participate in the war against the demons.

Such large-scale demon-slaying battles are the best way to improve the level of cultivators.

Liu Shuyue also said that although absorbing demonic energy would lower a cultivator's upper limit, its rate of progress was incomparable to converting the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into one's own. If it were a genius-level cultivator like the Wei siblings or Xu Xuanling, then it would naturally be better to continue cultivating using the latter method. However, for ordinary cultivators without aptitude, improving themselves by slaying demons was not necessarily a bad thing, because they would find it difficult to reach the realm of giving birth to a demon in their entire lives.

War, on the other hand, means opportunity.

With Ajiu and Ahua's abilities, Chen Xuan believed that it wouldn't be long before they rose to prominence in the Immortal Alliance and became a dazzling new star. With the support of Xu Xuanling and Xu Yuanqing, their future path would be quite smooth.

If they always stick with me, they will miss out on this turbulent period.

Therefore, Chen Xuan did not follow the initial plan to collect two golden abilities as payment, only taking the "Spiritual Qi Body," while leaving the "Cultivation Genius" title to the other party. Even taking the Spiritual Qi Body wasn't purely for performance purposes; this thing would accelerate the arrival of inner demons, and he couldn't keep an eye on the two indefinitely, so he simply helped them eliminate this potential threat. After all, the "Twins" already possessed double the absorption effect, so the amount of spiritual energy conversion wouldn't become a bottleneck in their cultivation.

"How exactly did you explain things to the Immortal Alliance back then?" Lin Qing asked curiously. "A person can't just suddenly disappear, can they?"

"What else can I say? It's nothing more than that a great battle triggered a connection between heaven and man, and he wants to seek a breakthrough opportunity on his own. As for the disciples of Spicy Village, they naturally dispersed as soon as they were told, since they can't find him anyway."

"In that case, the teleportation array won't be usable either."

Chen Xuan laughed and said, "Actually, compared to the Sovereign Sect, the Immortal Alliance is more reluctant to part with this formation. The day before we left, they were still desperately stuffing people into it, trying to send as many cultivators as possible."

However, this is not a fatal problem.

The eastern and western continents are the same landmass, so carriages can still travel there; it just takes an extra year or two. For a long cultivation journey, that's a manageable amount of time.

(End of this chapter)