This time, Long Chen and Elder Sun decided to go to a small valley a bit further from the monastery for their transaction.

Long Chen noticed that Elder Sun seemed to have lost a great deal of weight. He hastily congratulated Elder Sun on his weight loss.

Elder Sun didn’t say a single thing. Throwing a spatial ring to Long Chen, his eyes were completely red, looking like they might spit flames at any moment.

Elder Sun really was pained enough to die. Long Chen had requested only extremely precious medicinal ingredients, and there had even been requirements on their age. Although in terms of quantity it had been only a third of the first list, its price had been even greater than the last time.

To obtain these medicinal ingredients, he had used up the rest of all his merit points that he had saved for decades.

Elder Sun even suspected that Long Chen knew precisely how many merit points he had had. These two sets had cost him practically everything. Of his tens of thousands of merit points, less than five hundred remained now.

His heart was practically dripping blood. If Long Chen dared trick him again, he wouldn’t care about any price to kill Long Chen.

Seeing the piles of medicinal ingredients in the spatial ring, Long Chen smiled brightly. He immediately handed over a black zirconium.

Elder Sun received and saw there was another ancient character on the back: Superior.[1]

“How domineering!”

Elder Sun delighted. But then when he flipped it over, his expression changed and he roared, “Why is there nothing on here?!”

This black zirconium only had a single character written on its back. There wasn’t the slightest thing written on the front.

Originally, Long Chen had been planning on putting something there, but he hadn’t had the time. Back in Phoenix Cry, he had gone to the Huayun Pavilion and bought four black zirconiums.

Although black zirconium was ancient, it wasn’t very valuable. Long Chen had bought them just to cheat Elder Sun.

That old fellow had targeted him several times for his Nine Star Hegemon Body Art. The last time, he had even drawn over a Corrupt Elder to kill him. If it hadn’t been for Chu Yao’s help at the end, he would have died.

Although Tu Fang had then planned on punishing him for Long Chen, Long Chen knew that the worst punishment Tu Fang could give was to expel him from the monastery.

Just being expelled from the monastery was far from enough to allay Long Chen’s hatred. If he wanted his technique, then he could have it.

Long Chen had drawn in the meridian circulation method of the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art. Originally, he had been planning on splitting the full diagram over four rocks.

It was said that black zirconium was something that required the carver to be at least at the Xiantian realm.

However, that wasn’t a problem for Long Chen. Although he couldn’t directly carve anything onto black zirconium, he could draw onto it.

Long Chen had used an extremely bizarre pill formula in his Pill Sovereign memories to make a mysterious stone-rotting extract.

This stone-rotting extract came from ancient times. Large sects had huge stone steles and monuments. Some were so large they were thousands of meters high.

In order to carve words into them, it not only required a great deal of power, but it also required a powerful tool.

But not only that. The carver couldn’t make a single mistake when carving. A single monument might require tens of thousands of words. If the carver made a mistake, wouldn’t the entire monument be ruined? It wasn’t as if the carvers were gods. No one would do something so foolish.

So the ancient era’s tablets were not directly carved. The characters were first drawn on, and after making sure there were no mistakes, they would use stone-rotting extract to soften the rock.

Stone-rotting extract was extremely miraculous. Its corrosive nature wasn’t permanent. It would only soften the rock for a moment. Once it was removed, the rock would return to its original hardness.

And most interesting of all, rocks that had been softened with stone-rotting extract would all possess an ancient aura.

When Long Chen had drawn on these black zirconiums, he had kept his divine ring released, letting its aura permeate into his strokes. That was to make it possible to sense the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art’s aura from these rocks.

After he managed to complete one of those ‘ancient treasures’, Long Chen would then polish it up, soaking the new carvings with medicinal liquid until it was impossible to tell that those lines were newly added.

Long Chen had really put in a lot of effort for this plot. After he had finished the first piece, he had gone straight to Elder Sun to offer him the bait.

However, he hadn’t expected Elder Sun to be so efficient. He had only just finished the second stone before he returned.

The day Elder Sun came to rage at Long Chen about the diagram being incomplete, Long Chen had only managed to carve a single word on the back of the third stone.

Originally, Long Chen had been planning on immediately going to finish the carving that very day, but in the end, he had changed his mind.

“That’s because there was never supposed to be anything carved there.” Long Chen shook his head.

“What do you mean?” raged Elder Sun, tightly clenching his fists.

“What I mean is that the front of this stone was always blank, and that it is supposed to be blank.”

“Nonsense! You said that your cultivation technique was split into an upper, middle, and lower portion! You said you’d hand over the middle portion once I got all these medicinal ingredients! Did you forget your oath?”

“Looks like you really are getting old. Then according to how you put it, then yes, the cultivation technique is split into an upper, middle, and lower portion. But when did I ever say that I would give you the middle portion? All I swore was that I would hand over what was in my hand back then. And yes, this is precisely what I was holding back then.”

Back then, Long Chen really had been holding this half-finished product. It was simply that Elder Sun had assumed it to be the middle portion.

Realizing he had been defrauded again, Elder Sun was no longer able to hold back. He shot forward, a claw reaching at Long Chen.

“Little bastard, die!”

Long Chen had long since been prepared for this. He summoned out his divine ring, and a star appeared in his eyes, his aura exploding.

BOOM!

Devil Decapitator slashed onto Elder Sun’s hand. The ground beneath their feet split. The two of them were both sent flying back. Neither of them had had any advantage just now.

Long Chen was delighted to find that although his cultivation base hadn’t grown, his physical body had grown quite a bit stronger after experiencing that huge battle.

Long Chen pointed Devil Decapitator at Elder Sun. “You should give up. First of all, you can’t kill me, so this is futile. Secondly, if we continue fighting, all that will do is draw other monastery Elders over. You won’t have a chance.”

He didn’t have Chu Yao’s assistance and his spiritual qi would be limited, making it so he couldn’t fight for long. But even if he couldn’t defeat Elder Sun, couldn’t he simply run? Furthermore, this place wasn’t far from the monastery. If the two of them really went all-out fighting, that would definitely attract the monastery’s attention.

At that time, Long Chen would still be safe. Even if this whole matter was reported to the sect leader, the cause of all of this was still Elder Sun’s greed for Long Chen’s cultivation technique. It was very likely that the final result would be that Elder Sun would be expelled from the monastery without gaining anything.

Even if it came to light that Long Chen had baited him, he had still baited him honestly. Furthermore, both the sect leader and Tu Fang were clearly on Long Chen’s side. Elder Sun could forget about getting anything like that.

“Long Chen, just what do you want to hand over your entire cultivation technique to me?” Elder Sun did his best to calm down.

“The prescription has already been prepared. All you need to do is gather all the medicines on this list.” Long Chen sent a piece of paper floating towards Elder Sun.

When Elder Sun saw that page, he immediately coughed up blood. That was the third ‘prescription’ page.

Elder Sun grabbed it and didn’t even glance at the medicinal ingredients on the sheet before tearing it to pieces.

“Do you think I’m an idiot? You think I’ll be cheated by you again and again?” raged Elder Sun.

“Young people shouldn’t get angry so easily. Stay calm, stay cool headed! This time I swear that if you can obtain all the medicinal ingredients on that list, I will definitely hand over my entire cultivation technique to you! Did you hear? The whole thing!” Another page appeared in Long Chen’s hand and he sent it flying to Elder Sun.

It was as if he had long since known that Elder Sun would go crazy. This second page was the exact same as the first one Elder Sun had torn up.

Elder Sun took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the urge to tear this page to pieces again. His hands trembled as he took that page.

The reason he used both hands to receive that page wasn’t because of any respectful two-handed etiquette, but because his hands were trembling too hard.

“Bastard, I really will kill you! The Qilin Fruit went extinct in ancient times! Let alone the monastery, not even the supermonastery could possibly have it! You’re clearly doing this on purpose!”

“So it really is like that…” Long Chen was disappointed. As he had thought, the Alioth Pill’s main medicinal ingredient, the Qilin Fruit, was the most difficult one to find.

“Fine, then you don’t need to get the Qilin Fruit. Just gather the other six medicinal ingredients.”

“I can’t buy these. I’m broke.”

“Well then, I can only regretfully tell you that our trade is over.” Long Chen shook his head with great regret.

“You…!”

“Don’t try acting like you’re suffering such a loss. I, Long Chen, will swear to the heavens to hand over my cultivation technique.

“There are a total of four stones that my cultivation technique is split over. I don’t know why one of them was just nothing, but my guess is that this stone was required in order for the cultivation technique’s name to be complete.

“Your luck was just bad that day. I just randomly took out that one, and you actually said you had to have it, so I also couldn’t say anything.

“But even so, you won’t lose out. You’ve already obtained the majority of the cultivation technique. Perhaps with your schemes and plotting, you can figure out the whole thing one day.

“If one day isn’t enough, then try a year. If a year isn’t enough, try a lifetime. If you can’t figure it out, you can leave it to your descendants to figure it out. In any case, you’ll definitely never be bored. You can just treat those stones as toys for your children.”

Listening to Long Chen’s ridicule, Elder Sun was about to explode. Looking at that page, he took a deep breath.

“You swear that you’ll hand over your complete cultivation technique without hiding the slightest bit?”

“I swear,” said Long Chen solemnly.

“Fine, then I’ll believe you one last time. If you dare trick me again, then even if I die, I’ll definitely bring you down with me.” Elder Sun clenched his teeth.

“Then don’t worry, I really don’t feel like dying with an idiot like you.”

Over the next few days, Long Chen really was busy. He had to abide by his promise and finish carving the rest of his cultivation technique.

But this time Elder Sun was much slower. It was only ten days later that he came to find Long Chen again.

[1] 殺 Sha