Am I the old man who's always by my apprentices' side?

Chapter 187 Gravekeeper

Two months ago, on the day Chang Ping'an followed Qu Zhiweng and left Baishi Mountain on his master's orders, Tang Xiaoyu gritted her teeth and obeyed Zhang Chengdao's advice to "take down the secret treasure and try cultivating again."

The thing Zhang Chengdao mentioned that she was "wearing" was actually the Blood Demon Pearl.

If Zhang Chengdao had a higher cultivation level, more knowledge about cultivation, or was even a "professionally trained" cultivator in the cultivation world, it wouldn't be difficult to see Tang Xiaoyu's true situation.

Unfortunately, Zhang Chengdao was just a modern-day lazybones who had only learned cultivation on his own. All his knowledge of cultivation was not only self-taught, but also involved a lot of guesswork, making its accuracy quite questionable.

Therefore, he didn't realize that Tang Xiaoyu, as an "old monster" who had lived for over three hundred years, was like her predecessors, relying on the Blood Demon Pearl to sustain her life.

The Blood Demon Pearl is actually a mutated inner core of a cultivator.

This thing can no longer be called a normal cultivator's inner core; it is more like a "demon core" or "evil core." Of course, it doesn't actually have a formal name; some call it an "evil core," but in this world, it is known as the "Blood Demon Pearl" by martial artists.

Although it was indeed originally formed by cultivators as an inner core, it is well known that the spiritual energy in this world was too thin in the past to support cultivators in forming an inner core.

What should we do then?
The old Blood Demon came up with a brilliant idea—to refine the martial artists' true energy and extract spiritual energy for his own use.

The Blood Demon Bead is slowly "refined" using this method.

This also brings us to the fact that although spiritual energy is scarce in this world, it is not nonexistent; otherwise, martial arts and martial arts true energy, which are intricately connected with spiritual energy, would not have been born.

Don't be fooled by Zhang Chengdao's ability to "refine" true qi. In reality, true qi is indeed a kind of internal energy formed by relying on spiritual energy. However, because spiritual energy is too scarce, martial artists can only use the spiritual energy from their natural breathing to condense their internal strength and solidify it in their meridians. This is the origin of true qi meridians and true qi, and it is also the reason why spiritual energy can refine true qi and true qi meridians.

However, the spiritual energy contained in true qi and true qi meridians is too little. After all, it is just a "medium" and a "glue" for internal energy. Therefore, Chang Ping'an, who truly relies on spiritual energy to cultivate, seems to gain nothing after refining other people's true qi - it is too little and can be ignored.

Even such a small amount can accumulate into a large sum for the Blood Demon, which is why he invented the Blood Demon Pearl, an evil object—in a sense, he has already refined his inner core into a "magical weapon".

Of course, the details of the process are omitted. In short, during the "Martial Arts Catastrophe" more than a thousand years ago, a group of martial artists worked together to seize the Blood Demon's Blood Demon Pearl. They then severely injured and sealed the Blood Demon in the Qin King's Tomb, and selected the most determined person to be the tomb guardian. One of the surviving Grandmasters, surnamed Tang, was the founder of the Tang Clan in Sichuan and the ancestor of the Sword Saint Tang Xingjian.

If you really want to say something, Tang Xiaoyu is also his junior—the kind who isn't related by blood.

This is because, although most of the people in the Tang Clan share the surname Tang, they are not all descendants of the true founders of the Tang Clan. Many are adopted children of beggars or orphans who were taken in by successive Tang Clan leaders, and thus became adopted sons of the Tang Clan. Tang Xiaoyu is one such example.

Although the generations of tomb keepers are nominally "tomb keepers," they are actually guarding not the tomb, but the Blood Demon Orb.

If this thing is destroyed, its strange power might return to the Blood Demon. And if it were to wander the world, some people with bad intentions might develop greedy thoughts. That's why the "tomb keeper" exists.

The only thing the tomb keeper needs to do is to protect the Blood Demon Orb, neither destroying it nor using it, passing this responsibility down from generation to generation.

However, even without using the Blood Demon Pearl for cultivation, the strange power it carries can sustain the lifespan of long-term wearers, seemingly possessing the ability to slow down aging.

In short, most of the tomb keepers lived to be close to four hundred years old before passing away. Of course, such an extraordinary lifespan did not come without a price. Compared to ordinary people, tomb keepers' bodies would gradually begin to rot after the age of three hundred, until they finally died.

Some unlucky ones have to endure this suffering from the age of two hundred until they die completely.

Therefore, some predecessors of the tomb guardians chose their successor as soon as their bodies began to fester, and after arranging everything, they committed suicide and passed the Blood Demon Orb to the next generation of tomb guardians.

Tang Xiaoyu had already chosen a successor, but because the fact of "White Stone Immortal" was so suspicious, she was afraid that something like "the Blood Demon reappearing in the world" would cause turmoil in the world, so she came to participate in the Immortal Fate Conference with the determination to die.

Fortunately, the "White Stone Immortal" doesn't look like the Blood Demon at all—the Blood Demon's portrait has been collected by generations of tomb keepers!
Moreover, although the sect leader had an eccentric personality, the teachings he imparted did not sound like demonic arts at all, which gradually put Tang Xiaoyu at ease and gave her hope.

If I could cultivate an immortal body as powerful as the sect leader's, would I no longer need to worry about the Blood Demon?

I'll personally go to the Qin King's tomb then. If the Blood Demon is dead, I'll grind its bones to dust. If the Blood Demon is still alive, I'll kill it even if it means mutual destruction. In this way...

Will the suffering of generations of tomb keepers and the crisis that has been looming over the entire world finally come to an end?

With this in mind, Tang Xiaoyu's cultivation was incredibly arduous. However, she never expected that almost all the disciples who entered the Immortal Fate Conference had successfully guided their Qi into their bodies, while she herself was still unable to sense Qi, until her master gave her a private reminder.

Perhaps... it really is a problem with the Blood Demon Orb?
But if the Blood Demon Pearl is removed, one will age and die within three days. Even if one can draw Qi into the body within three days, can a Qi Refining cultivator live to be 321 years old?

Will I die after only one day as a Qi Refining cultivator?

I wonder if a Qi Refining stage cultivator could defeat the Blood Demon...

After much hesitation, Tang Xiaoyu wrote a letter detailing the background of the tomb guardians and the location of the next generation of tomb guardians. He then placed the letter, along with the Blood Demon Pearl, into a Qiankun Bag and left a note, essentially asking that if he were to die, the person who found him should hand the Qiankun Bag over to the sect leader.

Then, she gritted her teeth and took off the Blood Demon Bead, and tried to sense her Qi according to the method she had heard so many times before.

Soon, Tang Xiaoyu began to feel her eyes becoming cloudy, her hearing becoming somewhat impaired, and her hands and feet trembling so much that she could not stand, forcing her to lie down on the bed to "sense her qi".

Fortunately, she did manage to draw qi into her body successfully in just over an hour, much faster than she had imagined.

Unfortunately, the lifespan of a Qi Refining cultivator is indeed limited. Physical aging is not the key factor; it only slows down the decline, but it is still irreversible.

"Ugh……"

Tang Xiaoyu sighed softly, turned her head with difficulty, and looked at the Qiankun Bag on the table not far away and the note underneath it.

Fortunately, I've made sufficient preparations. I hope that Tang Mao'er, the chosen next-generation tomb keeper, won't let me down and will be able to do what I couldn't...

(End of this chapter)