Lu Sheng hoisted the old man up and carried him a short distance to a nearby cell where the stench was noticeably lighter. He then sat down.
While the old man was caught off guard, Lu Sheng forced the pill from the Wandering Heart Society into his mouth.
He paid no heed to the drastic change in the old man’s complexion.
“Come on. Eat it. Eat it and let me see what it does…”
Lu Sheng pressed a palm lightly against the old man’s chest. A thread of pure Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi slipped into his body and swiftly spread through every inch of his meridians.
Before long, an intricate Yin Crane Web took shape within him, redirecting and channeling the old man’s originally vast inner Qi into its framework.
This was Lu Sheng’s method. He tested pills on others first. If the effects proved beneficial, he would absorb the resulting increase in inner Qi through the Yin Crane Web. A flawless approach.
Moreover, with so many severe offenders confined here, a plan quickly formed in Lu Sheng’s mind. The experts imprisoned in this dungeon were perfect supplements for advancing his inner Qi cultivation.
The fourth story alone held twenty to thirty criminals, many of whom had been locked away for decades. Anyone confined earlier had long since perished.
In any case, the severe offenders here were destined to die sooner or later. Lu Sheng intended to drain their inner Qi before that day arrived. Recycling, after all, was good for the environment.
He was eager to see just how far his inner Qi cultivation could rise after absorbing the accumulated power of these experts.
Once the pill took effect, the old man’s body began to tremble violently. Heat poured out as steam from the crown of his head, while fine crimson blood vessels bulged across his skin.
“PU!”
The old man suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood. Uncontrollable waves of inner Qi boiled and surged within him.
Lu Sheng’s eyes gleamed. He placed his hand on the old man’s forehead and fed in additional strands of Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi.
The instant his Qi entered, Lu Sheng sensed it clearly. The old man had turned into a bomb, primed to explode at any moment.
Massive volumes of inner Qi gushed from the old man’s abdomen like a raging geyser, surging wildly through his limbs and meridians.
Had his body been strong enough, a few dozen more of such pills might have allowed him to step into the realm of Qi liquefaction. Unfortunately, his physical shell was pitifully weak.
Just a little over a hundred years’ worth of inner Qi, force-fed by a single pill, was already more than he could endure.
“Save… save me…!” The old man’s eyes bulged, bloodshot and frantic.
The Yin Crane Web rapidly took form within his body. Lu Sheng waited in silence. About ten breaths later—
“GASP!!”
A shrill, ragged intake of breath tore from the old man’s throat. His body shuddered violently, his eyes rolled back, and he instantly blacked out.
In the same moment, vast quantities of inner Qi poured out of him, guided by the Yin Crane Web and funneled directly into Lu Sheng’s palm.
In just a few fleeting instants, the old man’s century of Yang-aspected inner Qi was completely consumed, devoured without remainder.
Lu Sheng released the withered body and drew in a deep breath. Within him, a vast sea of inner Qi roared and circulated at full speed, all incompatible traces swiftly refined and converted into his own.
After a short while, Lu Sheng’s body trembled. A new drop of liquefied Aquarius Qi condensed within his chest.
This single drop was the crystallization of the old man’s entire inner Qi, amplified by the effects of the pill.
This rate of exchange… not bad. I should have come here to absorb inner Qi as soon as the Yin Crane Web was formed. But it’s not too late now.
Lu Sheng stood up, ignoring the paralyzed old man at his feet, and continued down the corridor toward the remaining cells.
He needed more criminals to drain of their inner Qi.
As he moved forward at an unhurried pace, he saw bloated corpses floating atop the murky water in many of the cells. Some were still alive, yet completely drained of vigor, teetering on the brink of death. A few had already lost their sanity.
None of them were as suitable as the old man from before.
Lu Sheng surmised that the old man must have been the most recent inmate confined here, which explained why he still retained a trace of strength.
He finished surveying the entire floor. Only about a dozen cells were still occupied, and among them, merely five prisoners retained inner Qi that was intact and complete. The rest were already on the brink of death, their vitality nearly drained dry, let alone their inner Qi.
“The second.”
The second cell he selected held a female prisoner reduced to skin and bones. Yet her eyes burned with a frightening brightness.
She was naked, but her body was caked in thick layers of mud and filth, enough to banish even the faintest trace of lust.
She stared straight at Lu Sheng, unkempt hair cascading over her shoulders. Even with the cell door between them, Lu Sheng could clearly sense the vigorous life force coursing within her.
“I heard the pitiful scream of the old fogey, Yang-Fixing Hand,” she rasped. Her voice was hoarse, as though her vocal cords had been damaged long ago. “Have you come to release us, or have you come to test your skills on us?”
“You could say I’m testing my skills,” Lu Sheng replied calmly.
She was another Divine Prime. Merely standing above the cell door, Lu Sheng could feel the unfathomable depth of her inner Qi.
So this was it. The dungeon of the Number One Sect in the Northern Lands truly concealed monsters of this level. No wonder not a single famed Divine Prime expert had appeared across the Northern Lands. They had existed all along, only to meet misfortune or be sealed away in this abyss.
And the hand behind it all was undoubtedly the Zhen Family.
“I heard it,” the woman said seriously. “I heard you releasing Yang-Fixing Hand. Are you releasing me too? Just like you did him?”
“What do you mean?” Lu Sheng frowned, genuinely puzzled.
“I’m a little afraid,” she replied with unsettling sincerity. “Afraid that once I’m released, I might kill you. I suggest you bring more experts and nail down my hands and feet first.”
Lu Sheng froze. Then he burst out laughing.
“You’re… an interesting one.”
He reached out, gripped the iron bar as thick as a man’s forearm, and pulled hard.
“Creak…”
With a horrifying screech of tortured metal, two iron bars, each as thick as a man’s forearm, were wrenched apart and bent into a crude “O” shape. The woman stared, momentarily stunned.
Such brute strength lay far beyond ordinary human understanding.
“Come on out.” Lu Sheng leaned forward and peered into the cell.
The light in the woman’s eyes flared even brighter.
She glanced at Lu Sheng, then planted both palms against the algae-slick wall and sprang. In the blink of an eye, her body shot through the gap between the twisted bars, landing lightly on the stone floor beside him.
Lu Sheng caught the radiant gleam in her eyes, as though she were suppressing some dangerous, instinctive urge.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Zhao Jiaojiao,” she answered earnestly.
“You’re something,” Lu Sheng said, offering a rare note of approval. “Even more so than that old fogey earlier.”
“Naturally. If I hadn’t sought out the Zhen Family myself to test my strength, failed, and been captured, I wouldn’t have ended up here,” Zhao Jiaojiao replied, her tone calm, almost casual.
“How long have you been imprisoned?” Lu Sheng asked, curiosity flickering in his eyes.
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty years. Maybe fifty,” Zhao Jiaojiao said indifferently. “I stopped counting long ago. Now that you’ve released me, what do you plan to do?”
“I was planning to cripple your cultivation,” Lu Sheng grinned. “But I’ve changed my mind.”
SWISH!
His figure vanished in an instant and reappeared behind Zhao Jiaojiao as though he had teleported. A palm strike landed squarely in the center of her back.
BOOM!
By pure reflex, Zhao Jiaojiao’s body trembled violently. A terrifying surge of tyrannical inner Qi erupted from within her, even fiercer than the Ultimate Crimson Nine Furies Skill. It was like a bomb, primed to detonate at the slightest touch.
BOOM!! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!
Fist-sized masses of inner Qi, blazing like white light, exploded against Lu Sheng’s body, sending savage shockwaves rippling across the dungeon walls.
The thunderous blasts echoed through the entire dungeon. Had any ordinary mortal been present, their eardrums would have shattered on the spot.
Yet to the two of them, the violence meant nothing at all.
Zhao Jiaojiao tried to turn around. Yet no matter how formidable she was, the gap between their strengths was simply too great.
Before she could rotate even half her body, a crushing wall of inner Qi slammed into her, instantly overwhelming every line of her inner Qi defenses.
Within the blink of an eye, an intricate and complex Yin Crane Web rapidly took shape inside her body.
…………
About two hours later, Lu Sheng strolled out of the dungeon, with Zhao Jiaojiao following behind him beneath a black cloak.
Every prisoner left in the dungeon, save for Zhao Jiaojiao, had been drained dry of inner Qi. Deprived of that support, they languished and died soon after Lu Sheng finished extracting it.
By then, Zhao Jiaojiao was the sole survivor of the entire fourth story of the water dungeon.
“Go wash yourself first. Someone will bring you to me afterward. Do not attempt to run. You’re clever enough to know it would do you no good,” Lu Sheng said calmly.
“I, Zhao Jiaojiao, am no such fool,” Zhao Jiaojiao replied with a faint smile.
“Then we’ll get along well.” Lu Sheng nodded.
He summoned a guard and gave a few quiet instructions. Shortly after, several female disciples arrived and led Zhao Jiaojiao away to wash. Lu Sheng, meanwhile, headed straight for his study.
After absorbing the inner Qi of all the prisoners on the fourth story, he now possessed close to four hundred years’ worth of Aquarius Qi. Four drops of liquefied Qi rotated slowly within his chest, completely suppressing the Yang-aspected liquefied Qi of the Ultimate Crimson Nine Furies Skill.
The troublesome part is that all the inner Qi converted by the Yin Crane Web is Aquarius Qi. Only my Yin-aspected inner Qi has grown. I need a method to balance Yin and Yang… That’s it. Balance Yin and Yang.
Lu Sheng suddenly recalled one of the core effects of the Yin Yang Jade Crane Aquarius Qi. Its fundamental principle was to nourish Yang with Yin, thereby establishing equilibrium between the two from the outset.
If Aquarius Qi could convert Yang-aspected inner Qi before, then it should be able to reverse the process as well.
After absorbing four hundred years’ worth of inner Qi in a single session, Lu Sheng felt distinctly bloated.
He entered his study and immediately closed his eyes to meditate, focusing on researching a method to convert his inner Qi into the Yang attribute.
“Xu Chui greets Sect Master.”
Before long, Xu Chui, now already in Spirit Focus, entered and knelt on one knee.
“I have a task for you,” Lu Sheng said emotionlessly, without opening his eyes.
“Please give your instructions, Sect Master.” Xu Chui lowered his head in reverence.
“Take a sufficient number of men and pay a visit to the Mountain Tiger Clan. They’ve been secretly acting against our Crimson Whale Sect,” Lu Sheng instructed calmly. “Arrest all of their experts and throw them into the dungeon. Remember, I only want the experts. Inner-force experts.”
“Yes, sir!” Xu Chui replied without hesitation.
Since his last return, Xu Chui had taken full command of the Soaring Eagle Squad. Even in his normal state, his strength alone was more than enough to overwhelm the Mountain Tiger Clan’s experts.
And that was before accounting for his trump card. At present, Xu Chui could instantly transform into a Divine Prime expert.
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