Demoness, Stop! - Chapter 10 - Chapter 10 – Incense Burner’s Strange Transformation

Looking into the little white tiger’s lively eyes, Li Yu felt a bit ashamed.

After all, last time with that Qi Gathering Pill, he had ill intentions—treating the tiger like a lab rat for testing medicine.

The little white tiger obviously didn’t know this and kept low growling, urging Li Yu on.

Li Yu swiftly leapt down and picked the Zhu Guo fruit. As the fruit left the branch, the Zhu Guo tree gradually withered and eventually turned to dust, drifting away with the wind.

A Zhu Guo tree bears only one fruit in its lifetime. The fruit is the crystallization of all its spiritual energy. Once the fruit falls, the tree withers.

Heat radiated from the fruit in Li Yu’s hand, and his heart burned with excitement. Five hundred spirit coins—this was a huge sum for him. He could exchange it with Elder Sun for many things, including protective talismans, artifacts, and even attempt some higher-level missions in the future.

Just as this thought arose, Li Yu felt a slight warmth in his chest. Then, the Zhu Guo fruit in his hand visibly withered, turning into powder, which transformed into a hot flow and flowed toward the incense burner mark on his chest…

“Damn it…”

Li Yu stood there stunned, helplessly watching the spirit fruit disintegrate into dust.

He was filled with endless sorrow and frustration, exclaiming, “No, my medicine, my spirit coins!”

Li Yu only knew that the incense burner could absorb ghosts—he hadn’t expected it to also absorb spiritual herbs. This Zhu Guo, at least a century old in medicinal potency, hadn’t even warmed in his hand before it was sacrificed for someone else…

If he had known the incense burner was so bizarre, he wouldn’t have touched it!

But before Li Yu could grieve, his body suddenly trembled.

He keenly sensed that the heat flow from the disintegrated Zhu Guo wasn’t entirely absorbed by the mark on his chest. A small portion circulated within his body and then surged into his meridians.

Soon after, Li Yu happily discovered that the Shao Fu acupoint, which he had tried to break through for a long time without success, was finally opened by this hot flow!

At this moment, the Shao Chong and Shao Fu acupoints in his body were both filled with spiritual energy. Of the eight acupoints in the first stage of Qi Refining, he had now opened two.

Li Yu was stunned for a long time. The incense burner actually had this kind of effect?

The medicinal power of spiritual herbs was fierce and could not be consumed directly. Usually, they needed to be neutralized and refined into pills before use. This method of absorbing medicinal power directly bypassed the pill-refining step and preserved the herb’s potency to the greatest extent.

While Li Yu was dumbfounded, the little white tiger was too. With its intelligence, it couldn’t comprehend why the fruit it had coveted for so long suddenly vanished.

However, since the fruit was meant to repay Li Yu’s kindness, it didn’t think much about it. It growled softly again at Li Yu and ran off in another direction.

Li Yu closely followed behind. Before long, the two stopped in a valley.

Li Yu clearly felt that the grass and trees in this valley grew extremely lush—so lush it seemed unusual, even covering the entire valley.

In the most flourishing clearing among the trees, Li Yu found a green medicinal herb.

The herb had slender leaves like an orchid and small purple flowers on them.

He didn’t recognize this herb but could feel a strong concentration of spiritual energy within it.

This was obviously another spiritual herb. The little white tiger nudged Li Yu, signaling that this was also for him.

At the same time, Li Yu felt a kind of yearning from the incense burner mark on his chest.

Having learned from the previous experience, Li Yu slowly approached the spiritual herb and gently touched its leaf. The next moment, the herb withered into dust and transformed into a stream of energy that surged from his fingers toward the mark on his chest.

Unlike the violent energy from the Zhu Guo, this energy was much gentler and full of vibrant life—likely a wood-element spiritual herb.

Just like before, most of the herb’s energy flowed into the mark on his chest, while a small portion roamed inside Li Yu’s body. Li Yu was full of hope, wanting to use this spiritual energy to breakthrough his third acupoint. But the result did not go as he wished.

The spiritual energy passed three times over his Fire Spirit Meridian without entering, and finally fiercely rushed toward another acupoint on Li Yu’s body.

Li Yu’s face changed drastically, and he shouted, “No, not there!”

That acupoint was not one of the seventy-two acupoints of the Fire Spirit Meridian. Forcing a breakthrough there could cause serious consequences.

Boom!

Li Yu felt a buzzing in his head as the spiritual energy forcefully broke open the acupoint. A trace of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, but Li Yu did not feel much pain; on the contrary, he felt quite comfortable.

Being in this valley, he could feel the vibrant life energy of the surrounding grass and trees.

Suddenly, Li Yu had a thought: could it be that the one just opened was the Wood Spirit Meridian?

He looked down and saw some black stains seeping from his body. Li Yu was very familiar with this—he seemed to have gathered Qi again…

Gathering Qi means using spiritual energy to open spirit meridians. Everyone has five spirit meridians in their body, all naturally sealed. In theory, a person can gather Qi five times, but few actually do.

The path of cultivation is extraordinarily arduous. Every cultivator is fighting against fate, each wishing to live another five hundred years. It is already extremely difficult to cultivate just one spirit meridian. If one cannot breakthrough and extend lifespan before their life ends, only geniuses can afford to spend time cultivating other meridians.

For cultivators, wasting time truly means wasting life.

Of course, cultivating more than one spirit meridian has great benefits—it means deeper spiritual power than others of the same rank. The strength of someone who cultivates five spirit meridians at the Qi Refining stage cannot be compared to someone who cultivates just one.

Moreover, cultivating two or more meridians simultaneously can unleash power far beyond a single meridian.

For example, those cultivating both Fire Spirit Meridian and Water Spirit Meridian can learn Thunder techniques after foundation establishment, which is even more fierce than fire techniques.

Those who cultivate Water and Wood Spirit Meridians can fuse them into Wind attribute after foundation establishment. When running, they can easily outrun opponents even a realm higher than themselves.

Additionally, high-level alchemists need to cultivate both Fire and Wood Spirit Meridians to better control fire and medicinal properties. Powerful artifact refiners inevitably cultivate both Fire and Metal Spirit Meridians…

Though with Li Yu’s aptitude, cultivating two meridians might not be ideal, the extra spiritual power is free—why not take it? It doesn’t require extra effort or time.

Before Li Yu could think further, the little white tiger beckoned him to the next location.

Li Yu’s face lit up: “There’s more?”

About half an hour later, they reached a waterfall in a mountain stream.

The waterfall, tens of meters high, fell from the peak and formed a deep pool in the valley. The little white tiger nodded toward the waterfall. Li Yu understood immediately, leapt up, and passed through the waterfall. Behind the water curtain was another world.

This was a water cave several meters across, with some standing water on the floor. In the center stone platform grew a pure white lotus flower.

Another spiritual herb!

The little white tiger lightly leapt and astonishingly jumped several meters to land inside.

Li Yu glanced back. Such rare treasures usually only grow in hidden blessed lands, and it was hard for outsiders to find them. He wondered where the little white tiger had found these plants…

This time, Li Yu was wiser and didn’t touch the flower directly with his hand. Instead, he touched it through his sleeve. The lotus showed no reaction.

It seemed the incense burner’s effect only triggered with direct contact to the spiritual herb.

Then, he stretched out his hand and directly touched the lotus.

As expected, the mark on his chest flickered, and the spiritual herb was drained of its energy and turned to dust.

At the same time, a gentle force moved through his body. Unlike the fiery spirit energy that was fierce, or the wood spirit energy that was vibrant with life, this one was continuous and unending. After circulating once inside Li Yu’s body, it suddenly broke open an acupoint, allowing Li Yu to feel the taste of gathering Qi for the third time.

However, this time, the impurities expelled from his body were extremely few. Li Yu jumped into the pool and bathed, rubbed his clothes clean, then put them back on. He circulated his spiritual power, and the wet clothes quickly dried from the heat radiating from inside.

Then, he guided his spiritual power to touch the incense burner mark on his chest again and entered the space where the incense burner was.

This space was exactly the same as before. The incense burner stood there, covered with countless cracks. Li Yu circled the incense burner several times and finally noticed something abnormal.

He remembered last time he came here, on the incense burner’s front, the first horizontal stroke of the character “乾” (Qian) in the phrase “乾坤” (Heaven and Earth) had a tiny hairline crack. Li Yu had stared at these two characters for a long time and remembered this detail clearly.

But now, that crack thinner than a hair was gone.

The stroke was completely whole, without any flaw.

This thing could actually self-repair…

It seemed to repair its cracks by absorbing the spiritual power of herbs.

However, it had absorbed the energy of three spiritual herbs just to repair a hairline crack. Who knew how many precious things it would have to consume to fully heal itself? That was something Li Yu could not imagine at this point…