The Quest for Immortality

Chapter 2443: Mo, the Immortal Child (part 2)

"I want to kill, I want to kill..."Repeating these words twice, he felt murderous intent but managed to maintain inner peace, meaning the deadly evilness was truly suppressed for now, allowing Mo Hua to finally be at ease.

Then he left the desolate mountain, entered the nearest Immortal City, chose a caravan, gave them some Spirit Stones, and joined them on their journey to Tongxian City.

This way, he could avoid walking himself.

It’s also to gradually adapt himself to being around others without succumbing to murderous impulses.

Mo Hua restrained his aura and walked with the caravan for a while.

Feeling the presence of living people around him, he performed inner vision and realized he truly hadn’t harbored murderous thoughts, thus fully relaxing.

Mo Hua let out a slight sigh of relief.

At this moment, he finally had the mind to observe the caravan traveling with him.

This was a very ordinary caravan.

There were more than a dozen cultivators in the caravan, each with different identities and ages.

The highest cultivation was at the Qi Refining Ninth Level, around eighty to ninety years old, the leader known as "Big Brother."

The lowest was at the Qi Refining Sixth Level, roughly in their thirties.

The cultivation levels of the others were also in the mid to late stages of Qi Refining, ages ranging from thirty to eighty.

At these ages and cultivation levels, it seemed rather low, but it was actually the norm for most low-level cultivators in this world.

Low-level cultivators face resource scarcity, making their cultivation extremely difficult, and reaching Foundation Establishment is even more challenging.

Many loose cultivators reaching decades, even close to a hundred years old, remain trapped at the Qi-refining stage, unable to progress further—this is quite common.

They can only rely on their meager cultivation level and physical strength to make a living, striving hard to survive.

Any chance of breaking through to Foundation Establishment and defying fate in their lifetime is almost impossible.

Mo Hua suddenly felt a sense of emotion.

Having returned from the Qianxue Continent’s Fifth Grade Great Province Boundary, he had witnessed Heaven Void, Feather Transformation, Golden Core, and countless Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Upon returning to Li State, seeing these small places where the realm is so low that only Qi Refining is possible, and living a life trapped in Qi Refinement for low-level cultivators.

The disparity is as stark as heaven and earth.

For a moment, Mo Hua felt a very strong sense of disconnection.

He even began to doubt whether these two state boundaries and two types of cultivators truly lived within the same cultivation world?

The same people, living under the same sky, with different backgrounds, could there really be such a vast chasm between them?

Mo Hua’s gaze was deep.

Afterwards, the convoy of more than ten people continued along the mountain path.

Throughout the journey, everyone in the caravan was very cautious.

They were engaged in small-time business, even calling it "small-time" seemed to flatter them.

They merely took things that others didn’t want, discarded, or disdained—the scraps of monster beasts’ skins and bones—and re-selected, cleaned, and melted them into waste materials for newbie artifact refiners to practice.

The profits from this were pitifully thin.

But that’s how it is at the bottom, with too many monks and too little porridge.

The jobs that earn Spirit Stones are few and far between, and whatever is profitable has long been divided, leaving none for them.

It’s almost their only safe way to earn some broken Spirit Stones to supplement cultivation and household expenses.

Even so, this task isn’t easy.

They had to transport goods from a second-grade Little Immortal City north of the Azure Cloud State boundary to the Black Mountain State Boundary, earning a tiny bit of markup.

Along the way, there were monster beasts, bandits, and malicious sin cultivators wanted by authorities.

The bandits and sin cultivators were easier, as they are humans seeking wealth, knowing the caravan is poor, might not act.

But monster beasts are different; monster beasts see no wealth disparity—all are mere flesh in their eyes.

As such, the bloodthirsty monster beasts along the way pose the most lethal threat to these poor Qi Refinement-level merchant cultivators.

The first half of the journey was fine, as it was the desolate vein of Cangyun Mountain, with few monsters.

But then further along, especially when entering the Da Heishan Mountain Range, the number of monster beasts increased.

And each monster beast, even if only at the First Grade early stage, would make the caravan feel like facing a formidable enemy.

After all, they were loose cultivators with poor spiritual roots, low cultivation levels, and inferior cultivation techniques—not trained as Monster Hunters, so each fight with monster beasts requires full intensity.

Their aim wasn’t even to hunt monster beasts, but ideally to just drive them off successfully, which would be a stroke of luck.

But whether it’s their good luck or bad luck, since entering the Da Heishan Mountain Range, monster beasts frequently appeared to attack the caravan, baring crimson jaws, eager to devour.

Every time, the Qi Refinement cultivators in the caravan were on edge, dealing with them with great difficulty.

The battles with monster beasts were extremely perilous.

Seeing this, Mo Hua felt some pity and quietly intervened, discreetly forming a few hidden Water Blade Skills at his fingertips and silently dispatching them to cut off the monster beasts’ limbs.

Given his current cultivation at the Foundation Establishment Late Stage, dealing with these First Grade monster beasts was already enough to crush them.

Yet Mo Hua didn’t act too obviously, just subtly disabled the beast’s claws or heart meridians, leaving the rest to the Qi Refinement cultivators in the caravan to handle.

After killing three or four monster beasts in this manner, the cultivators in the caravan started to notice something was amiss.

"Big Brother, are we really that strong?"

"These First Grade monster beasts, whichever one used to be formidable, how come today they’re all like ’soft-legged shrimps,’ letting us slaughter them?"

"Isn’t this... suspicious?"

The one called "Big Brother" was the leader of the caravan, the only Qi Refining Ninth Level cultivator.

He frowned, "Indeed, something’s off..."

"Is there perhaps... a high-level cultivator secretly assisting?" someone murmured.

"Really?"

"The question is... who is the high-level cultivator? Why would they help us?"