Cultivating in a Bizarre World

Ren Qing calmed his Heart Spirit and listened carefully to the sounds of excavation coming from the surrounding mine shafts. From the proximity of the sounds, he could guess their approximate depths.

Song Zongwu had probably already dug more than two thousand meters.

Next was the mine shaft with fist marks, at around a thousand meters, followed by the one with claw marks, which was slightly less deep.

Huang Ziwang’s shaft was the shallowest. Perhaps because the corrosive effect of his poison was average, it was less than five hundred meters deep.

Ren Qing looked at the rock wall before him, gripped the pickaxe with both hands, his arm muscles beginning to bulge slightly as he leveraged his waist.

He didn’t plan to hold back.

This was mainly because the physical difference between the Half-Corpse Realm and the Martial Artist Realm wasn’t significant, not even comparable to a Magic Technique that enhanced the body.

HAH!!

The pickaxe slammed down hard.

With a crisp CRACK, the wooden handle of the pickaxe snapped in two, and the pickaxe head flew off from the remaining force.

Fortunately, Ren Qing reacted in time thanks to his Double Pupils; otherwise, he would have been left with a bruise at the very least.

"..."

The corner of his mouth twitched. He realized he had still underestimated it.

Ren Qing grabbed another pickaxe. This time, he didn’t dare to use too much force, so he only left a shallow dent in the rock wall.

He gradually increased his strength, but the pickaxe still didn’t last long.

Ren Qing simply closed his eyes and focused, his muscles tensing and relaxing as he occasionally simulated the motion of swinging the pickaxe.

The Information Flow gave Ren Qing extremely fine control over his body; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to wield the Great Miao Blade with such ease.

’What I need to do now is let my body figure out how to swing the pickaxe.’

In the adjacent mine shaft, Huang Ziwang noticed that Ren Qing had stopped.

He couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. ’Someone Song Zongwu spent the effort to teach couldn’t possibly give up so easily, right?’

He stopped spewing poison and leaned against the rock wall to wait.

A moment later, the sound of striking resumed, still at a moderate pace.

Huang Ziwang smiled and shook his head. Just as he was about to resume digging, the frequency of the strikes suddenly began to accelerate, and the noise grew louder and louder.

’How is that possible...’

His expression turned to shock. ’Could the kid already be a master at this?’

Huang Ziwang waited a little longer, thinking Ren Qing would soon exhaust himself, but to his surprise, the speed broke through another barrier.

He hurriedly spat out poison to corrode the rock wall. If he was overtaken by a junior who wasn’t even a Forbidden Guard, he’d never be able to show his face again.

Ren Qing chiseled away for a good ten-odd minutes before choosing to take a short rest.

He noticed that although each swing of the pickaxe dislodged large chunks of rock, the recoil made his arms ache, and the skin between his thumb and index finger had split open.

But the first step is always the hardest. Ren Qing waited for the feeling to return to his arms before continuing to dig.

After half a day of working on and off, his mine shaft was already several meters deep, but the originally light-yellow rock layer had taken on a slightly deeper hue.

Ren Qing tested it with a shovel and found that the rock wall had indeed become harder.

’Does that mean to maintain efficiency, I have to keep improving...’

He let out a long sigh, then focused his attention and buried his head in his work. After a long while, his striking frequency returned to normal and even improved slightly.

Ren Qing also discovered another benefit of mining: the recoil from the pickaxe was gradually and instinctively distributed throughout his body.

The Human Skin Book was being exercised involuntarily, and a tingling numbness spread across his skin.

This spurred Ren Qing to mine with even more enthusiasm. He could even see a path to becoming a Skin Refiner without consuming his Lifespan.

Whenever his stamina was depleted, he would eat some pig eyes to recover, repeating the cycle over and over.

Spurred on by him, Huang Ziwang stayed in the mine for a full five hours before leaving, muttering and cursing under his breath as he walked.

By the time Song Zongwu noticed something was off with Ren Qing, it was already late at night.

Ren Qing came to his senses and found he didn’t have an ounce of strength left. He could only lie sprawled on the ground, his clothes soaked with sweat.

Song Zongwu was slightly exasperated. Ren Qing had been somewhat reluctant before, so how had he suddenly become so obsessed that he would forget to eat or drink?

But the dozen-or-so meters of excavated tunnel didn’t seem fake, which meant that even the increasingly hard rock layers hadn’t stopped Ren Qing.

Song Zongwu dragged Ren Qing and tossed him into a military tent. In the blink of an eye, deafening snores echoed from within.

「The next day.」

Without needing a reminder from Song Zongwu, Ren Qing first went into the mountain forest to hunt a lone wolf, then grabbed some dry rations and plunged back into the mine.

Ren Qing could feel the Human Skin Book progressing at a visible rate. He suspected that blunt-force attacks from ordinary people could hardly injure him now.

For the next few days, he spent all his time either excavating or cultivating, but he did get to know all the Forbidden Guards in the camp.

Most of the Forbidden Guards were rather cold and couldn’t even be bothered to acknowledge him.

The Forbidden Guard who dug into the rock wall with his claws was nicknamed Land God. The Magic Technique he cultivated was similar to the Divine Sutra, but under the corrosion of Mutation, he had become half-man, half-beast.

He looked like a mole rat, and his hands had completely transformed into animal claws.

Simply put, under the influence of the Mysterious Object within their bodies, Cultivators gradually transformed into non-human forms, and the changes were permanent.

There was another Forbidden Guard named Xu Shilin. His Magic Technique seemed to involve manipulating mist, but he himself was elusive and hard to track.

When Ren Qing had dug over a hundred meters, he began preparing to practice with the Great Miao Blade. To be safe, however, he started by hacking at a hardwood stake.

Just as he was practicing his Saber Technique, the area outside the camp suddenly became extremely noisy.

Ren Qing quickly sheathed his blade and walked over.

He saw a crowd of over a hundred people, led by a Forbidden Guard, heading toward Camel Peak Mountain.

Among them, Government Constables only made up twenty to thirty percent. The rest were almost all prisoners in shackles, with a few others dressed as Hunters.

Ren Qing noticed the prisoners’ movements were stiff, as if they were under some kind of control.

The remaining Government Constables and Hunters, however, still possessed their Spiritual Wisdom, but their gazes toward the leading Forbidden Guard were filled with fear.

Song Zongwu raised his hand, signaling the crowd to halt.

Li Yaoyang smiled. As he opened his mouth, black flying insects swarmed out of the prisoners’ eyes, ears, mouths, and noses, before burrowing back into his body.

Dozens of prisoners collapsed to the ground, twitching as if they had lost all support. Some even stopped breathing.

Song Zongwu’s face darkened as he asked, "Li Yaoyang, I don’t recall asking you to bring these people, did I?"

"Don’t worry about it, Elder Song. Considering how troublesome the Disaster Mitigation Forbidden Area is, I brought over some extra manpower."

Li Yaoyang licked his lips and added, "These prisoners have been wasting away in their Prison Cells for too long. I had to use unconventional methods."

Song Zongwu said no more. He knew as well that having prisoners replace the Government Constables would speed up the excavation several times over.

Ren Qing, however, couldn’t help but frown, his gaze sweeping over the Hunters.

’Could Song Rong be mixed in with them, trying to use this as a cover? But that seems unrealistic right under the noses of so many Forbidden Guards.’

’If that’s the case, I’ll find a chance to flush him out with the Information Flow.’

Song Zongwu also realized there was a potential issue and asked, "Why are there a dozen or so Hunters?"

"The mountain villages near the forbidden area all have to be relocated, so I temporarily conscripted some Hunters. I’ll make sure they’re paid enough silver coins."

Song Zongwu nodded. Aside from himself, who was in the Yin Messenger Realm, all the other Forbidden Guards present had reached the Ghost Envoy Realm.

He couldn’t let mere suspicion slow down the sealing of the forbidden area. Besides, with Li Yaoyang’s Gu Insects, they could use three Magic Techniques to temporarily seal the Disaster Mitigation Forbidden Area.