“Then I’m not very different from ordinary martial artists?”
“Of course there are differences. Ordinary people have bodies that easily become weak and are hard to restore. If they eat too much ginseng, it will not only not be beneficial but will be harmful instead. I didn’t tell you before because your body was still too weak. Even if I told you it would have been useless.”
“Those days slowly nursed you, you also cultivated a shred of true qi, only this can be considered as meeting the requirements. I was just about to ask you to find a way to make money, now we can save some trouble. However I’m afraid this much money won’t be able to support for too long.”
Li Qingshan also understood where the difference was. He could eat more ginseng than ordinary people and didn’t have to worry about suffering from internal heat and bleeding noses. His body was like a furnace, and with the support of the supernatural skill it could refine and absorb all the essence and energy entering his body, not wasting a single bit.
This also meant that Li Qingshan had to buy many many ginsengs. And ginseng this stuff, no matter the era, was a considerably costly precious ingredient.
He had to eat ginseng like radish, so his money probably wouldn’t be enough no matter how much of it he had.
With his thousand taels of silver, how much ginseng could he buy? He couldn’t refrain from considering this question!
After lamenting, Li Qingshan couldn’t help but admit that this wasn’t bad news. His strength progress’s speed would reach a new level.
In order to make a breakthrough in their strength, ordinary people had to search for rare spiritual pills and herbs, and when they ate them they weren’t even guaranteed to have any result. While he only needed to eat those common and most easily obtained things to make continuous progress in his strength. If he spread this out he had no idea how many persons would envy him, what was he still dissatisfied for.
As to genuine gold and white silver, he’d always manage to find a way. With a sufficiently powerful strength, was he still worried he couldn’t make money?
“This little ghost is interesting.” The green bull circled behind Li Qingshan’s body and stared with its round bullseyes at Little An who was hiding behind Li Qingshan’s body. From beginning to end, Little An had always been hiding behind Li Qingshan, quietly leaning out as he observed the green bull with great curiosity.
Little An became scared and hid himself on the other side. He didn’t dare directly face this talking bull. Although the green bull didn’t have any frightful stuff like a killing aura or an angry aura on its body, he was still almost instinctively reluctant to get close.
“You’re talking about Little An, he has no where to go. I’ll first take care of him, you won’t mind right!” Li Qingshan casually said that. If the green bull actually had reservations it naturally wouldn’t say them in front of Little An.
“With only a broken page, she actually managed to cultivate to the point of ordering ghosts, and even a ghost that can manipulate objects. This is really incredible, either that old woman was a genius in the dao of ghost refining, or else there’s something exceptional about the spiritual nature of this little ghost. However that old woman cultivated for so many years and sacrificed so many test products, but she only refined this one ghost, so it’s definitely the latter.”
Li Qingshan looked at little An. He had no idea what’s exceptional about him? But anyway a little ghost was a very strange thing to begin with.
The green bull said: “Maybe it’s your best spoil. Why aren’t you still quickly making him your slave ghost, it’ll be greatly useful to you in the future.”
“What slave ghost, he’s only a child, I already promised him to set him free.” Li Qingshan was someone who wouldn’t go against his conscience even in the most difficult of times. He didn’t sell off the green bull for travel money, and now he naturally wouldn’t do so.
The green bull felt itself that it had said too much and yawned: “That’s up to you, but it lost its master, and if there’s no one to rear it, the spiritual aura will disperse in not too much time. Then the soul will scatter away.”
Scattered soul! Little An confusedly blinked his eyes.
“Yin ghosts aren’t poultry or livestock, they still need to be reared?”
“The dead aren’t tolerated by the living world. Even extremely strong ghosts can’t withstand a trivial exposure to sunlight. They might even disappear and die if blown away by a fierce gale. If anyone who died left a ghost behind, then after ten thousand years, the human world would have stocked up on who knows how many ghosts.”
“Then what can I do?”
At dusk, Li Qingshan walked in great strides to the mountain woods carrying an ax on his shoulder. A little ghost both real and unreal hovered back and forth around him.
Sometimes it ran far away to the river sh.o.r.e and watched a fish with great curiosity, and sometimes it flew to the treetops and touched a flying bird. But without waiting for Li Qingshan’s call, it came back beside Li Qingshan swift as the wind, anxiously watching him.
Li Qingshan shook his head and returned a smile. He faintly felt a little responsible for this child.
But behind his body, the flying bird stiffly dropped from the treetops while the fish floated on the water surface flipped on its belly. It was proof this wasn’t an ordinary child, but a dangerous ghost.
Li Qingshan carefully searched within the forest. He finally stopped in front of a great locust tree whose trunk could only be circled around by more than ten men. He lifted his ax, wildly chopping and hacking.
Although he didn’t know any ax technique, the [Bull Demon Strong Fist] contained the most basic and the most profound of operating techniques. No matter what weapon came to his hand, he could smoothly command them all.
Every chop of the ax sank with great force at the same spot.
Sawdust swirled in the air, a tremendous tree topped over.
Li Qingshan didn’t pay attention to the rest and only cut out a little wooden core from the center. He handed it in front of Little An.
Little An reached his hand out and touched this small wooden core, his small face revealing an expression of pleasant comfort. Finally he altogether transformed into a burst of cool breeze and drilled inside.
Li Qingshan smiled. This was a method taught by the green bull, to find an ancient locust tree more than a hundred years old. Locust trees had a natural effect in gathering gloomy spirits, and they were greatly beneficial to gloomy ghost types. Trying now, it was indeed the case.
This way, he didn’t have to worry about Little An’s soul scattering away.
Back to the thatched house, he sat on the big boulder in front of the door, and carved the wooden core into the shape of a wooden plate. After careful polishing, he engraved the character “An” on it, then he wore it on his waist. His body’s inborn yang qi would slowly nourish Little An’s soul.
He could also borrow the yin qi1 on Little An’s body, and practice the manipulation of qi.
……
Inside the small yard, Li Qingshan sat upright on the ground while his mouth shouted nonstop: “Little An, the neck!”
Little An hugged his neck. The shred of true qi inside Li Qingshan’s body was stimulated by the yin qi and flowed to the neck.
“Right arm!”
Little An hurried to shift the direction and hugged his arm. Although his handsome little face was still pale white, it was filled with an innocent childish smile, as if he found this an extremely funny game.
Until the moon reached the branch tips, Li Qingshan finally stood up and Little An reluctantly pulled away.
With Little An’s help, the shred of true qi inside Li Qingshan’s body became a lot tamer, and Little An’s eyes also became a little more alert, not as wooden as they were at first.
Li Qingshan thought that the reason wasn’t only because of the nourishment from the yang qi. Even the cleverest and most quick-witted of children would probably look this wooden and inarticulate if they were to be taken away from their parent’s knees, being mistreated and beaten at will.
When they recovered their freedom and life restored a little normality, the cleverness inside them would begin to sprout anew.
Little An looked hopefully at Li Qingshan. He still couldn’t speak, but in his eyes was clearly written: “Let’s play again!”
“Alright, this isn’t a game. Let’s stop for today, we’ll talk about it tomorrow!”
Little An obediently nodded his head. He absolutely wouldn’t act shamelessly spoiled like a normal child, but it was hard to conceal his disappointment.
Li Qingshan was the most helpless faced with this appearance: “Fine, let’s play again!”
Little An smiled shyly, but his ears immediately p.r.i.c.ked up.
“Left leg! The back!”
1. You’ve probably heard about Yin and Yang already. Yin and Yang are two opposites that form together the Oneness, the Dao. Yin is a.s.sociated with cold, gloom, shady things, the dead, negative energy, the moon and femininity, while Yang is related to the sun, virility, positive energy, heat, life, activity, etc.
By the way, “true qi” doesn’t mean that the rest is false. “True” in this case is just a Chinese qualifier to signify something is on a higher level, a more primordial level.