Status: Updated to Chapter 1297: Damned Scumbag
Content Introduction:
[Traditional immortal cultivation featuring spirit insect pets, no system, well-rounded characters, and a low-profile, steady growth style] Yelin, a humble servant, accidentally awakens the Insect Emperor's bloodline and unlocks the Insect Emperor's Ancient Ring. From then on, he acquires a group of bizarre spirit insects. Billions of ants capable of devouring the heavens and the earth. A delicate white little snake that can thrash divine dragons with ease. A single fart from the stinkbug makes parents regret raising children... Millions of years later, the Immortal Realm, the Divine Realm, the Demon Realm, and all supreme beings tremble beneath his insect swarms! [This book strives to write a more realistic immortal cultivation experience with a slower pace. Readers who like fast-paced, invincible web novels should steer clear!]
Chapter 1: The White Snake's Gift
The Great Xuan Dynasty possessed a vast territory with a population numbering in the hundreds of millions. Everyone yearned for the Dao of immortality, hoping to become immortals who never grew old.
In the eastern part of the Great Xuan Dynasty, various prefectures and counties near the Seeking Dragon Mountains were even more fervent in their pursuit of immortal cultivation.
The immortal cultivation sects within the Seeking Dragon Mountains imparted some introductory body-tempering techniques and breathing exercises to the major clans. Consequently, the children of these clans had a much higher probability of awakening their spiritual roots than ordinary children.
The Lin Family, a major clan in East Lin Prefecture.
In the family's martial arts training ground, dozens of children around ten years of age sat cross-legged in neat rows. Boys and girls alike, they all kept their eyes tightly closed, forming the five-centers-facing-heaven posture with even, steady breaths.
They were all children of the Lin Family. On ordinary days, they were young masters and misses served by crowds of servants, and they were still at an age fond of mischief and play, yet not a single one dared to make the slightest sound here.
The entire world seemed reduced to nothing more than the sound of their rhythmic breathing.
A middle-aged man with a tiger's back and a bear's waist, standing eight feet tall, stood at the front of all the children. His gaze was like lightning, scanning every single child present with stern severity.
This was the instructor who taught the breathing techniques for the Lin Family.
"Maintain the rhythm of your breathing!"
"Remember, inhaling the clear qi and exhaling the turbid qi is the key secret to the breathing technique!"
"The clear qi contains spiritual energy. Once spiritual energy enters the body and washes through your limbs and skeletal remains, it tempers the flesh, nourishes the soul and the dantian, and allows the spiritual root to awaken earlier!"
"Before you turn fourteen, if you fail to awaken your spiritual root and take this most crucial step, it means you will have no affinity with the Dao of longevity in this lifetime!"
"Immortal and mortal are separated by an eternal gulf, as far apart as heaven and earth!"
Although the instructor's voice was not loud, it felt like a great bronze bell striking the soul, profoundly shaking everyone.
In the distance, a delicate youth who looked to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, wearing a light gray, unadorned ancient ring, knelt on both knees with a rag in hand, wiping the spotless floor while watching this scene with bright, sparkling eyes.
Hoo...
Hah...
His breathing rhythm seemed to have already synchronized completely with those children!
A pockmarked servant next to him lightly nudged his arm and whispered in a low voice, "Yelin, have you lost your mind? A few days ago, a servant who secretly learned martial arts was caught by the instructor, and his eyes were gouged out on the spot!"
"A servant for a day, a servant for generations. Only the young masters and misses are permitted to practice cultivation. Those who overstep their bounds meet a doom worse than death!"
The youth named Yelin smiled, then nodded and quickly resumed wiping the floor. Yet no matter what chore he did, his breathing rhythm never changed.
Those young masters and misses of the Lin Family practiced breathing exercises for two hours every morning, but Yelin practiced for sixteen hours. Ever since he learned it half a year ago, he had never stopped, except when he was asleep and unable to control it.
Yelin's ancestors had been servants of the Lin Family.
His grandfather was one, his father was one, and he was one as well.
If nothing unexpected happened, he would likely marry a maid of the Lin Family in the future, and his descendants would also remain servants for life, generation after generation serving the masters of the Lin Family.
Yet Yelin had once witnessed with his own eyes how his grandfather, having lost his labor capacity due to old age, was starved to death by the steward.
His parents pleaded on his grandfather's behalf, only to be brutally beaten by the guards, leaving them with chronic ailments. Within a few years, both of them died of grief and illness.
Echoing constantly in Yelin's mind were his father's dying words.
"Better to be a beggar than another man's slave!"
Yelin wanted to change his destiny!
...
That night, the moonlight was like water, and the air was filled with the chorus of overlapping frogs and insects.
Thanks to his mastery of the breathing technique, Yelin was brimming with energy. Even after a busy day, unlike other servants who collapsed onto their beds and fell fast asleep, he made the excuse of going to wash up by the river, found a quiet, secluded spot, and began his daily body tempering.
Yelin stripped off his upper garment, his muscles bulging all over, giving him a heroic and valiant aura that bore no resemblance to a humble servant. Stooping down, Yelin used one hand to hoist a huge boulder onto his back, then began doing push-ups with steady, even breaths.
One, two, three...
When the Lin Family taught the breathing techniques, servants were allowed to watch because the techniques were profound; even the young masters and misses could not necessarily master them perfectly after studying for many years. As for genuine body-tempering techniques, Yelin had never been taught them, and he was also afraid of being caught by the steward and beaten to death on the spot before losing his servant status.
Therefore, he could only use the most primitive methods to temper his body—alternating one hundred push-ups, one hundred pull-ups, and three hundred sit-ups—in order to make his physique sturdier and his blood qi more abundant.
Yelin's father had once risked his life to ask a passing Jianghu cultivator about some basic knowledge of cultivation, which he then passed on to him piece by piece.
That Jianghu cultivator said that the human body was the soil, while the spiritual root was like a sapling in the soil. Everyone possessed various "saplings" inside their bodies, but the "saplings" in the vast majority of people were too weak to be perceived or to bear fruit. The more fertile the soil, the faster the "sapling" would grow and the taller it would become.
And the way to make the soil more fertile was through body-tempering, which kept the blood qi abundant and the vital energy vigorous!
"Steward Wang said that in another two months, an immortal from the Taixuan Sect will come to the Lin Manor to test for spiritual roots. I must seize this opportunity!"
Just as Yelin was earnestly exercising, the previously mirror-smooth river suddenly rippled, and a winding, zhang-long white shadow was rapidly approaching.
Splash!
Water sprayed everywhere as the white shadow broke the surface with its head—it was shockingly a giant white snake covered in snow-white scales!
Yelin showed no panic whatsoever. Maintaining his breathing rhythm, he looked toward the white snake, a warm and affectionate smile touching the corner of his mouth.
"Xiaobai! Long time no see. You've grown another circle larger. Did you go off to shed your skin during this time? Oh my goodness, you're growing faster than the fattened pigs in our Lin Manor!"
This white snake, named Xiaobai, was rescued by Yelin a year ago from the mouth of a honey jar. As for why he saved it, it was because Yelin naturally loved all kinds of small animals and always felt an indescribable affinity with them, and the small animals liked him just as much.
For instance, now that it was summer, mosquitoes were extremely numerous, yet not a single mosquito came close to bite him. If an ordinary person stayed by the river here at night for even a short while, their entire body would likely be covered in bumps, turning them into a toad in seconds.
Xiaobai slithered out of the water and used a head easily half the size of Yelin's to rub affectionately against Yelin's forehead, then opened its mouth and spat out a pearl radiating a silvery glow.
Yelin was instantly astonished.
"Such a beautiful pearl! This is my first time seeing one. Even the young misses of the Lin Manor marrying out haven't worn anything like this. This must be worth a lot of money!"
"Then again, you're a snake, money is of no use to you either."
"But I'm not much better off than you. I'm a Lin family servant, money is equally useless to me, and it would likely arouse suspicion of theft, bringing trouble upon myself."
Everything a servant owned belonged to the master's family, including wealth.
Chapter 2: Awakening the Spiritual Root
Xiaobai shook its head, then once again used its bifurcated tongue to scoop up the pearl, delivered it to Yelin's lips, and shoved it inward with all its might...
Yelin, somewhat bewildered, clamped his lips around the pearl handed over by Xiaobai. While spitting out the dirt stained on the pearl, he asked with muffled speech, "You want me to swallow it?"
Xiaobai obediently nodded over and over.
Yelin didn't think much further; with a movement of his throat, he gave a gulp and swallowed it straight into his belly.
Xiaobai was raised by him, and since Xiaobai told him to swallow it, it would definitely be for his benefit.
Seeing Yelin swallow it, Xiaobai obediently coiled upon a nearby rock, quietly watching Yelin continue his workout.
Right after swallowing it, Yelin didn't feel any abnormality in his body. As time slowly passed, however, he felt a warmth in his stomach, followed by streams of warm current flowing along his meridians and blood vessels to his limbs and bones, making his entire body feel warm and cozy.
Moreover, all the fatigue that should have accumulated vanished instantly; he felt as though he could do another hundred push-ups—no, five hundred!
Yet this pleasant sensation faded quickly.
He felt his energy growing increasingly vigorous, his belly as scorching hot as if baked by a fire, and large beads of sweat oozed all over his body. Wisps of pale blue smoke began to rise from his forehead, and even his consciousness started to blur.
Right at that moment, he felt his body coiled by something covered in scales, and then he was dragged into the water. Yelin instinctively began gulping down mouthfuls of water frantically, and the scorching heat in his body was somewhat alleviated.
After his consciousness cleared slightly, Yelin saw Xiaobai swimming around him, while steam began to rise from the river surface beside him. Impurities from his pores were expelled along with his sweat, only to be washed away by the river water.
In less half an hour, the scorching heat in Yelin's body completely faded, leaving him feeling unprecedentedly refreshed and clear-headed, as if every single pore in his entire body were breathing in the fresh morning air.
"Good Xiaobai, what you gave me to eat is a treasure! What's the term for it again? Right, a heavenly treasure! A heavenly treasure that only the immortals flying in the sky can consume!"
Yelin hugged Xiaobai and gave its snake head a fierce petting.
Xiaobai affectionately rubbed against Yelin, evidently extremely excited as well.
"Let me try the breathing technique again!"
Earlier, Yelin had lost consciousness, so the rhythm of his breathing had broken.
Hoo...
Hah...
In an instant, Yelin seemed to catch sight of wisps of silvery-white light, never seen before, being drawn in by him, while what he exhaled was a mass of dusky gray air.
Yelin recalled what that instructor usually said to the young masters and misses.
Inhale the clear qi, exhale the turbid qi!
And the clear qi contained spiritual energy!
"Am I... inhaling visible spiritual energy? Has my spiritual root awakened?"
Xiaobai obediently nodded again, an excited gleam in its eyes.
Yelin almost wanted to hug Xiaobai and jump up on the spot, but he found that Xiaobai was too heavy; though only a zhang long and as thick as a rice bowl, it felt as though it were forged from iron.
One must know that even within the Lin Manor, with so many children and dedicated instructors teaching breathing and body-tempering techniques, only two or three people were detected to have spiritual roots each year.
Being able to take this step meant that Yelin now possessed the qualifications to become a cultivator, to become an immortal, and to look down upon mortals!
It meant that Yelin's freedom from his servant status was right before his eyes!
How could this not make him emotional!
"Father, Mother, Grandfather, Grandmother, did you see this? Lier is going to make something of himself, he is going to shake off his servant status and leap up to become an immortal! The masters we once served will all look up to me and kowtow to me in the future!"
"In this life, Lier will finally not have to be a servant anymore!"
Yelin knelt in the river, sobbing in a low voice...
Without waiting long, Yelin composed his emotions and recovered his calm and steady demeanor.
"Before the immortal arrives, no abnormalities can be discovered by anyone, or else the people of the Lin Manor might not know how to treat me."
Although Yelin now possessed the qualifications to cultivate immortality, he was not yet an immortal high above looking down upon mortals.
He had no reason to gamble that the Lin Manor would definitely treat him as an honored guest upon learning that his spiritual root had awakened.
On the contrary, he believed he would likely die an obscure death.
In the Lin Family, servants were never treated as human beings.
His grandfather was starved to death, his parents were beaten to death, the servant who secretly learned body-tempering was gouged of his eyes on the spot... These were just things that happened around Yelin; there were countless such incidents in the Lin Family.
In the eyes of the masters, servants should be servants for a lifetime and serve them generation after generation.
They would likely worry that Yelin would enter an immortal sect, learn true skills, and return to exact revenge, so they would kill him beforehand.
Of course, there were also people in the Lin Family who were relatively kind to servants, but they were in the minority.
Right at that moment, the weeds rustled violently, and a black shadow darted toward Yelin with a "swish."
Thwack!
That palm-sized black shadow clung tightly to Yelin's chest in the blink of an eye!
Throughout the process, neither Xiaobai nor Yelin reacted at all, as if they had long been accustomed to it.
It turned out to be a palm-sized pitch-black cockroach with a pair of huge pincers, gripping a fragrant roast chicken tightly within them.
The cockroach rubbed its head against Yelin's chest, then adopted a flattering posture and handed the roast chicken into Yelin's hands. Yelin took the roast chicken and began tearing into it with large bites.
"Xiaoqiang! Well done!"
This roast chicken was naturally stolen by Xiaoqiang from the Lin Manor's kitchen.
As the notorious "oil thief," Xiaoqiang's skill at stealing food could be described as nothing short of divine. Even the Lin Manor's kitchen, which was heavily guarded and stocked with various insect-repellent herbs, could not stop Xiaoqiang's chicken-stealing pace.
Xiaoqiang's speed was sometimes even too fast for Yelin to see clearly!
Precisely because Xiaoqiang helped Yelin steal delicacies from the kitchen every day, Yelin had the nutritional support for body training. Xiaoqiang deserved full credit for Yelin's robust physique.
The Lin Manor kitchen had also tried various methods to catch this oversized oil thief, even hiring Jianghu cultivators of the 1st or 2nd Heavenly Layer of Qi Condensation. However, Xiaoqiang was extremely cunning; whenever it saw a cultivator guarding the kitchen, it wouldn't steal, but whenever there were only gnashing-teeth footmen guarding it, it would steal with abandon.
If Yelin hadn't been unable to eat that much and afraid of being discovered, Xiaoqiang could have emptied the Lin Family's kitchen in a single night, leaving those footmen staring at a passing flash of black while the food simply vanished.
Precisely because Xiaoqiang only stole one or two items every night, the Lin Manor's losses weren't significant. Over time, the steward of the Lin Manor kitchen grew accustomed to it, stopped paying attention to Xiaoqiang, and let it steal as it pleased.
Xiaoqiang also possessed formidable tunneling abilities; whether it was hard wood or granite, it could instantly dig out a large hole, though iron blocks took considerably longer.
Generally speaking, cockroaches didn't have pincers, but it stubbornly grew a pair of large pincers resembling those of a crab.
Xiaoqiang was growing stronger rapidly, and Yelin believed that in just a few years, Xiaoqiang would also be able to instantly punch a large hole through an iron block.
Hiccup...
Having swallowed an entire roast chicken, Yelin felt in high spirits.
Walking ashore with Xiaobai and Xiaoqiang, Yelin fished out a small blade ground from a scrap of iron from a crevice in the rocks, then slashed deep cuts into the fingers of his left and right hands, respectively offering them to Xiaobai and Xiaoqiang.
Xiaobai clamped Yelin's finger in its mouth in a single gulp, its eyes turning hazy and excited.
As for Xiaoqiang, it crawled onto Yelin's hand and began greedily sucking his blood.
Yelin's blood was exceptionally favored by insects, and the little fellows who devoured his blood over a long period would rapidly grow into big fellows and become as intelligent as humans.
Xiaobai and Xiaoqiang were the best examples.
Unfortunately, he couldn't bleed too much, or his body would weaken and awakening his spiritual root would be completely out of the question. Therefore, over the years, he had only raised Xiaoqiang and Xiaobai.
Chapter 3: Xiaobai and Xiaoqiang
Before long, both Xiaobai and Xiaoqiang stopped drinking blood.
Xiaobai's tender, bifurcated pink tongue brushed lightly across Yelin's wound, and the cut on Yelin's hand healed and scabbed over at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Yelin asked with some perplexity, "Why did you only drink this much today? Is my blood no longer to your taste after the spiritual root awakened?"
Xiaobai and Xiaoqiang both shook their heads repeatedly, then simultaneously opened their mouths and burped.
Xiaoqiang even patted its belly with its pincers to indicate that it was extremely full today.
Only then did Yelin suddenly understand.
"It seems that after the spiritual root awakened, my blood is more filling for them. Once I enter the immortal sect, I can raise a few more little fellows."
Both Xiaobai and Xiaoqiang affectionately rubbed against Yelin before Xiaoqiang dashed into the grass with a "swish" and vanished from sight, while Xiaobai slithered back into the river.
Yelin suddenly remembered something.
"Xiaobai, I've heard that heavenly treasures are all guarded by ferocious demonic beasts. Don't take too many risks in the future, you must be careful."
Xiaobai turned its head back, nodded obediently and rapidly, and then plunged headfirst into the water, disappearing without a trace.
Yelin let out a soft sigh.
"Xiaobai must have sensed my eager desire to awaken my spiritual root and took the risk to snatch that pearl. Fortunately, it won."
"What a pity, Xiaoqiang can't help much in underwater combat, otherwise joining forces would probably be much safer."
...
Returning to the Lin Manor, Yelin showed no abnormalities. Just as he had always done in the past, he followed the steward's orders and worked without a single complaint. Facing the masters of the Lin Manor, he bowed and scraped every day, enduring beatings and scoldings without a word, appearing numb and humble.
For safety's sake, Yelin no longer practiced the breathing technique while doing chores on ordinary days; he was afraid that the trace amounts of spiritual energy he inhaled might be detected by others.
After his spiritual root awakened, his energy grew even more exuberant, and his physical strength increased rapidly every day by visible margins. He only needed to sleep for two hours each day to feel fully refreshed.
At the same time, his demand for food grew larger.
Xiaoqiang needed to steal five chickens a day to satisfy Yelin's appetite, which gave the steward of the Lin Manor kitchen a headache. Losing one chicken a day was bearable, but five was getting a bit hard to stomach.
Five a day meant over a thousand chickens a year!
Moreover, the chickens in the Lin Manor were not ordinary farm-raised chickens, but superior medicinal diet chickens. These chickens were raised eating medicinal herbs since they were chicks, making them rich in nutrients and precious in value.
After Xiaoqiang stole chickens for seven consecutive days, the Lin Manor hired yet another Jianghu cultivator at the 1st Heavenly Layer of Qi Condensation to lay down an inescapable net guarding the kitchen.
As a result, that night, not only were the chickens lost, but the Jianghu cultivator's trousers and clothes were also lost.
Having drunk the blood of Yelin after his spiritual root awakened, Xiaoqiang and Xiaobai had grown even stronger!
Everyone in the Lin Manor turned pale with fright, deeply feeling the terrifying nature of the chicken thief. From then on, at night, the Lin Manor kitchen didn't even have footmen keeping watch anymore.
The Lin Manor even went so far as to build a shrine specifically inside the kitchen, offering up five steaming roast chickens every single day.