Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

Chen Fan took a deep breath, looked away from the square, and turned to walk along the ditch in another direction.

His steps were neither fast nor slow, each footstep making a dull thud on the dry, cracked yellow earth.

Behind him, the screams continued.

The female cultivator's voice was sharp and short, and it stopped abruptly.

The third cultivator seemed to have done something before he died, which drew a furious roar from the ancient demon and a more intense sound of bones and flesh shattering.

Chen Fan did not turn around.

An image inappropriately popped into his mind.

Many years ago, when Chen Fan was a young eunuch who had just entered the palace, he saw a group of old eunuchs pouring boiling water on an ant nest in a corner of the Imperial Garden in the Dayuan Palace.

The ants tumbled, struggled, and curled up into a charred, corpse in the boiling water.

He was squatting to the side, watching with great interest.

In the eyes of the ants, those old eunuchs were incomprehensible demons.

In the old eunuch's eyes, it was nothing more than a pastime to pass the time in the afternoon.

Now, is Chen Fan an ant or an old eunuch?

The answer is neither.

He was neither a human cultivator bound to a stone pillar nor an ancient demon grinning in the square.

He was just an observer.

A passerby who must survive in this alien society until he finds a sense of belonging.

After walking for about half an hour, Chen Fan arrived at a low stone house.

This is the dwelling place of this ancient demon's body.

The stone house was small, built of rough, dark red stones, with dry grass and mud stuffed into the gaps, so it was obviously drafty and leaky. The roof was covered with several stone slabs of different sizes, with animal bones used to weigh down the edges, which made a creaking sound when the wind was strong.

Inside the room was only a bed made of animal hides and hay, and in the corner were a few pottery jars and a rusty dagger.

Next to the stone house was a mud pit enclosed by a fence.

The pool water was murky, covered with a layer of dark green foam, and occasionally a few fist-sized bubbles would rise to the surface, emitting a stench like rotting flesh when they exploded on the muddy surface.

Several huge black shadows could be vaguely seen moving slowly in the pool.

Netherworld Beast.

This is Chen Fan's duty in the Ancient Demon Clan: to raise Netherworld Beasts.

The Netherworld Beast was the size of a catfish magnified hundreds of times. It was pitch black, with smooth, scaleless skin covered in a layer of viscous secretions.

Their heads are flat and broad, with mouths taking up half of their faces. When they open their mouths, you can see rings of fine, inverted teeth arranged like a vortex.

These beasts are ferocious and omnivorous, eating anything and everything. Occasionally, low-level ancient demons who accidentally fall into the pool are dragged to the bottom and devoured.

Chen Fan stood at the edge of the mud pit, watching the giant beasts thrashing about in the murky water.

[At this point, I hope readers will remember our domain name: 10 ...

The largest of them was over five zhang long. When it rose from the bottom of the water, a small mound would first rise on the muddy surface, and then it would split open to reveal its huge mouth covered with backward teeth.

It floated motionless on the water, and when its murky eyes moved, they met Chen Fan's gaze.

There was no trace of submissiveness towards its master in its eyes, only pure, undisguised hunger.

Chen Fan stared at the giant beast expressionlessly for a moment, then turned and walked towards the animal pen behind the stone house.

There were several corpses of demonic beasts piled up there. Some were the skeletons left over from the low-level demonic beasts hunted and eaten by the tribe, while others were the remains dragged back from the battlefield.

Most of them were pieces of flesh and broken bones that were indistinguishable from their original form, covered with a dense layer of black flies.

Chen Fan picked up a bone shovel and pushed a half-rotten monster corpse into the mud.

The moment the water splashed, several Netherworld Beasts pounced at the same time. Their massive bodies writhed and twisted in the water, churning up mud everywhere.

The sound of sharp teeth tearing through flesh and bone was dull and continuous, occasionally interspersed with the crisp cracking of bones being cleaved. In just a few breaths, the monster's corpse was torn to pieces and swallowed by several Netherworld Beasts.

The pool water returned to calm, only a little more turbid than before.

Chen Fan put down the bone shovel and sat down on a rock by the mud pit.

The grayish-yellow sunlight shone on his rough scales, giving them a faint, dim sheen.

This is Chen Fan's first day entering the third level.

From this moment on, he was no longer the Nascent Soul Divine Sword Cultivator, but a low-ranking member of the Ancient Demon Clan whose bloodline was weak and who made a living by raising Netherworld Beasts.

He must learn to live like an ancient demon, think like an ancient demon, and see the world like an ancient demon.

Only in this way can he possibly find that so-called sense of belonging.

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and seven days have passed in the blink of an eye.

For the past seven days, Chen Fan's daily life has been simple and regular.

At dawn, he would go to the tribe's hunting grounds to carry away the corpses of monsters and fill the Netherworld Beast Pool.

In the morning, he would practice the most basic body-refining techniques of the ancient demon race in the open space behind the stone house.

That was a technique called Blood Tempering Technique.

In the afternoon, Chen Fan will continue to feed the Netherworld Beasts and clean up the remains and droppings in the enclosure.

After nightfall, he sat cross-legged in the stone house, using the meager bloodline power within this ancient demon body to sense the ancient demon's path of cultivation.

Blood Tempering Technique is the most basic body-refining technique of the ancient demon race.

The principle is not complicated. It involves using a special method to activate the power of blood vessels in the body, causing it to flow through the muscles, bones, skin and flesh of the whole body along a specific route, and continuously tempering the body in the process.

Each complete cycle is called a tempering, and the effects of tempering vary greatly depending on the purity of the bloodline.

The bloodline purity of Chen Fan's body is extremely low.

This was the conclusion he reached during his seventh attempt at the Blood Tempering Technique.

According to the standards recorded in the cultivation manual jade slip, the bloodline of the ancient demon is divided into nine grades.

Those with the highest-grade bloodline can experience a significant strengthening of their muscles and bones after just one tempering.

Those with the middle-grade bloodline need to undergo ten tempering processes to see results.

Those of the lowest bloodline need to undergo a hundred days of arduous cultivation before they can barely feel any changes in their physical body.

Chen Fan's body probably wouldn't even rank among the lowest three classes.

When he circulated the power of his bloodline through his meridians, he could clearly feel the resistance.

That wasn't resistance from blocked meridians, but rather the blood vessels themselves resisting his will.

This is a sign of thin blood vessels.

The thinner the bloodline, the weaker the remaining will of the ancient demon ancestors, the lower their recognition of their clansmen, and the more difficult it is to cultivate.

During these seven days, Chen Fan also roughly figured out his position in this tribe.

This is a small tribe located in a remote area of ​​the ancient demon planet, called the Blackrock Tribe, with a population of only a few thousand.

The tribe members are roughly divided into three classes, with the highest being warriors, those ancient demon powerhouses who possess the bloodlines of the upper three classes and have proven themselves on the battlefield.

Secondly, there are the ordinary tribespeople, of medium bloodline, who undertake most of the tribe's daily affairs.

The lowest class consists of those with thin bloodlines, collectively known as beast slaves, meaning they are not even qualified to go to the battlefield and are only fit to be with livestock.

There are about a hundred beast slaves like Chen Fan in the Black Rock Tribe.

They were responsible for the dirtiest and most tiring jobs in the tribe, such as feeding the ghost beasts, cleaning up excrement, moving corpses, and mining veins.

The tribe's attitude towards them was less that of fellow tribesmen and more that of tools and consumables.

No one cares whether a beast slave lives or dies, just as no one cares whether a bone shovel is worn out.