Chapter 14: The Tycoon Is Actually Me?
Late at night, the skinny old man held a candlestick and, borrowing the faint light, came alone to the basement.
In the basement, at a glance, there were densely packed half-person-high earthen jars.
The old man approached one unremarkable earthen jar and muttered to himself, “By my count, you two brothers have been here for over ten years. It’s time for you to work for me.”
He uncovered the black-red seal of the earthen jar, and a stench like a hurricane assaulted him, but the old man didn’t dodge or avoid it, as if he didn’t care about the smell at all.
As the almost substantial stench dissipated, the contents of the earthen jar also appeared before the old man’s eyes.
Half the jar was filled with some viscous black oil, soaking two fetal corpses tightly embraced together.
These two fetuses hadn’t fully developed yet, and it was unknown where the old man had obtained them.
Their surfaces were covered with a honey-wax-like gelatinous substance, half their bodies exposed above the black oil, motionless.
But the old man who saw this scene was very satisfied. In his view, the nurturing of these two ghost infants had been very successful.
If the earthen jar was compared to a womb, then the black oil was like amniotic fluid, providing nutrition for the ghost infants.
“Hee hee hee”
Ghostly laughter suddenly arose. The old man turned back and saw two identical-looking, pallid porcelain dolls grinning at him.
The old man was not only unafraid but overjoyed: “Vengeful spirits! Both are vengeful spirits! If they attack together, even a newly entered Ninth-Rank Jianghu sorcerer would probably be devoured without a scrap left!”
He bit his finger and drew identical patterns on the foreheads of the two ghost infants, who didn’t dodge.
After finishing, the old man waved his hand: “Go, make him disappear completely!”
A certain suburban single apartment.
Jiang Ce was developing something very new.
He was testing whether, if he attacked someone online, his evil art could follow the network cable and flush the person away.
“Brother, why aren’t you talking? Are you okay? Did your vision go black and you’re about to pass out?”
“You got a problem or something? Coming out of nowhere with a bunch of insults and then acting concerned—what do you want?”
“Goodbye.”
“Leaving facts aside, I think you’re a retard. Can you die for me to see?”
“You lost your mind? Coming to the retard forum to play the Sun Bar routine?”
“Hook Straight Bait Salty, and sure enough some idiot took the bait. Goodbye!”
Jiang Ce leaned back in his computer chair, feeling inexplicably melancholic.
“Looks like the internet can’t serve as a vector for attacks. Kinda disappointing.”
After finishing the experiment, Jiang Ce felt bored and started studying Great Shamatha again.
He had originally thought that cultivation stages could be simply understood as a quantifiable level system: ordinary people at First Level, Jianghu sorcerers at Second Level. But after discovering that absorbing the merit converted from the bronze statue—tentatively calling it lack of merit—further boosted the power he could wield.
Though the boost was limited, it still proved that even within the same stage, cultivators’ strength varied.
So now a question arose—what was his level among Jianghu sorcerers?
So far, Jiang Ce had only engaged in real combat against Fang Yihang and the bronze statue ghost face.
Fang Yihang didn’t count, just an ordinary person—beating him easily was normal. But he didn’t know the strength of the bronze statue ghost that he one-shot, so without a benchmark, Jiang Ce couldn’t gauge his own strength.
For a cultivator, this was undoubtedly fatal.
If he could just steamroll everything, fine—but what if he later encountered an enemy cultivator whose depth he couldn’t fathom? Wouldn’t that be a huge loss?
But after scouring the sutras, Jiang Ce found no way to gauge strength in Great Shamatha.
In Jiang Ce’s eyes, the fully comprehended Great Shamatha’s status had turned from supreme treasure the day before into trash.
Yet with no other channels for new cultivation info, after much thought, Jiang Ce made a simple and crude decision.
“As long as cultivating to absorb lack of merit no longer feels like a strength boost, that should mean saturation, right?”
With the strategy set, the next steps were straightforward.
First, find the fastest path to boost strength. Currently, there were two: one, acquire merit and convert it via the bronze statue into usable power; two, visualize that tentacled monster again—after all, Great Shamatha said visualization was the fastest way to boost strength.
Though comparatively, Jiang Ce felt acquiring merit was far more reliable than seeing that tentacled monster again, opportunities for merit were rare, the process time- and energy-consuming, and not guaranteed to yield one-shot opponents every time—extremely unstable.
If merit opportunities never came, it’d mean treading water forever—unacceptable.
So no matter what, visualization was necessary.
Plus, Jiang Ce had learned from last time: visualization required a mind free of distractions, total emptiness. Last time, he’d gotten targeted because he couldn’t resist mocking the tentacled monster—before that, there was no real danger.
In other words, as long as Jiang Ce controlled himself, even if the tentacled monster was overpowered, nothing should go wrong.
Over the past nearly twenty years, Jiang Ce had spent most days in meditation—this time with mental prep, he was confident he could nail it!
No sooner said than done: Jiang Ce sat cross-legged before the Kou Liu Buddha, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, cleared all stray thoughts, silently recited the Great Shamatha sutra, and soon entered visualization state.
This time, unlike last—reciting to the Eighty-First Time to enter that eerie space—he succeeded on the first try.
Same scene: green lake, mist, tentacled monster.
This time, Jiang Ce kept steady control, avoiding random thoughts, focusing on the tentacled monster. He used his lifetime of imagination to envision it as the Buddha, then with sincere devotion, as the sutra instructed, genuinely worshiped it.
This time, Jiang Ce felt unprecedented calm.
Time seemed to freeze; the tentacled monster’s tentacles slowed in his eyes until halting at some instant.
At that moment, Jiang Ce suddenly gained insight: a flood of info, unlike last time, streamed into his mind like a brook.
Human-ghost five tiers, excluding ordinary people and ghosts; each tier nine ranks.
One rank one pass, one tier one calamity.
Each rank advanced multiplies power geometrically; each tier leaps power qualitatively.
The so-called “ten years of merit to tread the cultivation path” didn’t mean only the virtuous could cultivate, but that even basic daily good deeds needed ten years’ accumulation to commune with heaven-earth, converting merit into enough power for Ninth-Rank Jianghu sorcerer entry!
One could imagine the terrifying merit needed to advance even one rank.
And currently, Jiang Ce was at Ninth-Rank Jianghu sorcerer stage.
Normally, to advance, a Ninth-Rank Jianghu sorcerer pauses cultivation, uses existing power for greater deeds to gain more merit, accumulating enough to cross to the next rank’s threshold.
But Jiang Ce seemed exempt.
Because visualizing the tentacled monster still felt like steady strength gains.
This made him recall the old abbot’s words.
“Could Master not have exaggerated—my owed merit truly rivals a fierce fiend? If true, doesn’t that mean my reserves suffice to cultivate straight to Half-Immortal? Even if exaggerated, before finding the next stage’s method, casually promoting to First-Rank Jianghu sorcerer shouldn’t be hard. Damn, never fought such a rich battle!”
Turns out I’m the rich guy?
Discovering this good news, Jiang Ce was thrilled yet somewhat depressed.
Others need ten years of daily good deeds for Ninth-Rank Jianghu sorcerer; he might coast to Half-Immortal on stockpiles.
How much merit had he lost, how much sin committed all these years?
