Wild cultivation begins with wielding the Taiyin talisman.

The remaining grain could last for another seven or eight days, but the people's hearts might not be able to support it. In addition, he had to behead the demon hiding in the Black Pine Forest ahead of schedule. Clearly, he didn't have much time left.

Five days it is. After five days, we will go to the Black Pine Forest to kill that demon.

Ning Che secretly made up his mind, then asked about the casualties of the hunting team. In the end, he couldn't help but emphasize Mancang.

Shi Yong knew about his life-or-death friendship with Man Cang. When he heard him mention it, the fat on his face slumped down, and he said with some regret, "Last time when he was guarding the forest, he rushed in too recklessly. He got surrounded while trying to plug the gap. By the time I brought people back to rescue him, his right arm was already gone. He's lost an arm."

Ning Che's expression changed, and his first reaction was to look at him, but he stopped in his tracks as soon as he took a step.

Mancang had finally found the confidence to be the "big brother," but now that he had lost an arm, the last thing he wanted to see was the pitying look in the eyes of his own people. After much deliberation, he finally suppressed his thoughts and solemnly entrusted Shi Yong to take good care of him, making sure that no one else would bully him because of this.

Shi Yong immediately assured him that he would not let the brothers who shed blood for the village feel disheartened.

With Shi Yong's assurance, Ning Che felt relieved.

He returned home, sat cross-legged on the couch, calmed his mind, and began to practice the two spells that Shi Gu had passed down to him.

The Golden Armor technique wasn't difficult; in just two hours, he had already reached the threshold of the Initial Light Realm. The light barrier could be opened and closed at will, and ordinary swords, arrows, and demonic claws couldn't break through the defense. However, when he reached the Ascending Mountain stage, he still couldn't find that sense of overlooking all things from the mountain. Ning Che worked hard until late at night, but his soul felt like it was wrapped in an invisible membrane. No matter how much he activated his metal element magic power, he couldn't take that step and couldn't find the entrance.

Helpless, he had no choice but to stop his practice, condensing two streams of lung-golden sword energy in his lungs, and then went to sleep fully clothed.

For the next four days, he would catch up on sleep and rest in the mornings, study the methods of climbing mountains in the afternoons, and sit on the roof at night to cultivate under the moon, refining the moonlight to nourish his Daoist talisman.

Time flies when it's full. He only regretted that time was fleeting and that he didn't have enough time to master this detection technique.

Over these four days, Shizhu Village has also been quietly changing its appearance.

The barricades at the village entrance were reinforced with three more layers. Thick, deadwood logs, about the thickness of a bowl, were sharpened at the ends and densely nailed to the earthen slope. Even the ditches on both sides were blocked with rubble and deadwood, leaving only a narrow passage in the middle wide enough for two people to pass side-by-side. At the eastern and western entrances, half-person-high mud-brick walls were erected, with arrow slits and lookout posts behind them. Even the village's able-bodied men were organized to practice basic combat and defensive formations daily at the training ground.

The more thoroughly the village prepared for war, the heavier Ning Che's heart became.

He still hadn't mastered the skill of climbing mountains. This was the first time he had encountered a setback since he began practicing magic.

During this time, he went to see Shi Gu again, but the old man just smiled and said it was normal. Other cultivators, even the most renowned geniuses and masters in Fei Hu City, all take a long time to master a spell.

Those who, like Ning Che before, mastered the Golden Armor in two hours and comprehended the Lung Golden Sword Qi in an afternoon are rare exceptions in the world.

His speed in cultivating magic was indeed quite good, an achievement worth boasting about. But he still couldn't feel happy.

That demon was most skilled in illusions and mazes; without this method of investigation, he wouldn't have been able to find its true form.

On the evening of the fourth day, the setting sun dyed the wasteland a dark red, and the smell of decay in the wind became even stronger.

Ning Che sat on the couch for an entire afternoon, dissecting the cultivation method of "Ascending the Mountain" a hundred times over, but still couldn't find a single breakthrough. After much deliberation, he finally got up, intending to ask Shi Ying for her opinion.

She is a genius cultivator from the main branch of the Shi family, so she must have some understanding of this family-inherited magic.

He pushed open the door and walked along the dirt road in the village.

A cool night breeze woke me up. In the distance, the shouts of hunters training their troops drifted from the training ground, while from the east end of the village, a woman's soft humming soothed her child, accompanied by some suppressed words.

These sounds, carried on the wind, clearly penetrated his ears.

Ning Che slowed his pace.

Excessive thinking is a kind of illness, so he simply emptied his mind of those elusive legal principles, stopped thinking about decapitation and breaking the deadlock, and just stood in the wind to listen to the sounds of heaven and earth.

His soul was already far superior to that of other cultivators of the same level due to the Taiyin Dao Talisman. At this moment, as he emptied his mind, a faint radiance suddenly appeared on the Dao Talisman in his sea of ​​consciousness. The radiance flowed through his meridians and circulated throughout his body, and his soul seemed to become lighter, floating up lightly, and gradually he was able to "hear" more.

He could hear the two hunters on night watch at the village entrance, their voices low, saying that their wives had just dried meat and that they would hold a first birthday celebration for their child once the drought was over; he could hear the dull thud of chopping wood coming from Mancang's courtyard, where the one-armed boy was still struggling with himself; he could hear Zhaodi standing on tiptoe by the window of Shiying's small building, searching for the herbs she needed and asking Shiying how to combine them, her voice as soft as a falling leaf.

These subtle, vibrant sounds, belonging to Shizhu Village, flowed through his soul like a stream.

He closed his eyes, trying to savor this profound feeling. Suddenly, he remembered what Shi Gu had said: climbing a mountain is to "climb to the summit, look down upon the mortal world, and use one's soul as eyes to see the finest details."

The mountain belonging to the Shi family is a mountain that stands above all living beings, but he cannot grasp the feeling of being superior.

So he couldn't master the art of climbing mountains, but what he lost in one area he gained in another. Since climbing a mountain doesn't reveal the whole picture, why not venture inside?

Guided by the power of the Dharma, magical energy surged forth, flowing into his ears and enhancing his hearing to an extremely high degree. Hundreds and thousands of sounds were distinguished one by one, and then, through the processing of his soul, they were transformed into images of the village.

He was somewhat excited. He stopped the spell, suddenly opened his eyes, and a clear light flashed in his eyes before disappearing.

Although this spell has many drawbacks, it not only requires all efforts to deal with these sounds, making it difficult to attack simultaneously; it also consumes a great deal of energy, as exploring the same area consumes at least the amount of stone tablets needed to climb a mountain; in addition, there is no way to advance, and even he himself does not know how to practice next.

But this was his own method after all. He remembered the Journey to the West he had read when he was a child, so he named himself Shunfeng'er (meaning "ears that follow the wind").

He didn't bother Shi Ying anymore, turned around and went home to rest and recuperate. The night passed without incident.

The next morning, Ning Che got up, made all the necessary preparations, and went to discuss the specific plans with Fu Gui.

Aside from utilizing the terrain, the two didn't have much else to prepare. The only noteworthy thing was that Fugui prepared a secret poison and soaked the weapons they brought in it for a while.

To maximize the power of their sword energy, the two decided to explore the Black Pine Forest at night.

After Fu Gui's afternoon nap, Ning Che had also replenished his sword energy and met up at the village entrance as agreed.

When Ning Che saw him, the hard bow on his back was polished to a gleaming shine, two short swords were at his waist, and he was dressed in a neat animal skin outfit, making him look nothing like a man nearing sixty. Seeing Ning Che approach, he grinned, revealing a set of uneven, yellowed teeth, and raised his fist: "Xing, ready?"

Ning Che nodded, his gaze fixed on the direction of the black pine forest in the distance.

He couldn't see the black pine forest yet, but he was already confident.

He raised his hand and bumped fists with Fugui, his voice calm: "Ready. Let's go into the mountains and slay the demon."

The morning breeze lifted the hems of their clothes, and the two figures, one old and one young, stepped into the wilderness without hesitation, facing the rising sun.