Chapter 42: Mortals fear ghosts, immortals fear regret

  After walking for over ten miles on mountain roads, the sky had already brightened up, with only a drizzle of rain floating in the air, but the sun had yet to come out.

  The villagers' homes were in a small mountain village built around the mountainside, with only about a hundred households. The surrounding dense forest isolated them from the world. Meng Xuan led the villagers back to their village, and others saw that these villagers who were thought to be dead had returned alive, one by one rejoicing and crying with joy. But just as they welcomed them back, they saw the strange appearance of the Corpse Demon Book's master, and immediately became frightened out of their wits.

  Meng Xuan had no choice but to take out a shirt from the Dongtian Ring and wrap it around Shu Sheng's mouth and face, lest he scare the common people. The Dongtian Ring he wore was actually obtained when they raided Hei Mu Shan's old nest. It looked like an ordinary iron ring, but inside, it had its own space that could store many things. Now, apart from some daily necessities like clothes, water, and wine, Meng Xuan also stored the spiritual instruments and gold and silver he had plundered from Hei Mu Shan's old nest inside the ring.

  An elderly tribal leader, having heard of Meng Xuan's lifesaving grace, walked over with trembling steps, bowed to Meng Xuan, and was hastily helped up by him. The villagers were grateful for Meng Xuan's kindness and also learned that he had driven away the evil cult and subdued the corpse demon, so they regarded him as a living immortal who saved the world, respectfully inviting him to the tribal leader's home, serving good tea, and asking several virtuous and respected elderly men to sit with them.

  "Sir, you saved our lives, we can't repay your great kindness, this is a little bit of money collected by the villagers, please accept it!"

  After a short while, some villagers brought over a tray, but it was just some scattered gold and silver, which added up to less than 100 taels. For this small mountain village, however, it was their all.

  "A few elderly gentlemen, no need to be so polite. Slaying demons and monsters is what people of our generation should do, it's nothing!"

  Meng Xuan smiled wryly and said, "Not to mention that he saved people just by chance, not for gold or silver. Moreover, this little bit of gold and silver is also beneath him." "However, Meng has come here with a purpose, so I'll ask boldly: Is there anyone in the village who knows how to cast iron and make armor?"

  The old man heard this, but instead burst out laughing and said: "Sir, you've come at just the right time! Our Qing Shui Village may not be skilled in other things, but when it comes to casting iron, that's a tradition passed down from our ancestors. Even the Lin clan from a thousand miles away often comes here to buy swords and armor!"

  Meng Xuan put down his heart and smiled: "Then please ask the villagers to cast a set of iron armor for me. There are a few requirements. First, the iron armor joints are flexible, but they all cover the body, and the whole body is made of fine iron. Except for the mouth and nose, there is not a single seam. Second, I will write some symbols later, please ask the blacksmith to engrave them on the armor when casting. This is careful, don't make any mistakes!"

  Several elders were taken aback by his words, and a burly old man spoke up boldly: "Sir, forgive an old man for speaking out of turn. I've spent my life casting iron and forging many suits of armor, but none of them have ever used only iron to cover every inch. We always use coarse hemp cloth to cover the less vital areas - partly for ventilation, and partly to reduce weight. Wearing a suit of pure iron armor is quite inconvenient!"

  Meng Xuan heard this and burst out laughing, saying: "Old man, you've misunderstood! This suit of armor isn't for people to wear. Just focus on forging it, all the labor costs will be compensated at three times the normal market price, with only one requirement - the quality must be high!"

  It's said that Meng Xuan gave them money, and several elderly family members naturally pushed it away, but Meng Xuan insisted on leaving them a thousand taels of silver. At this price, they could even make ten sets of armor with some to spare. Logically speaking, since Meng Xuan saved the people in this village, asking for one set of armor from them wouldn't be excessive. However, Meng Xuan did it for two reasons: first, to ensure quality, and second, he didn't want to take advantage of their kindness, so he simply gave them money instead.

  "Sir, I'm deeply grateful and can't repay you enough. The only thing I can do is to make this armor for you with the utmost care. However, I must inform you that if we were to make it from scratch with all our might, it would take a considerable amount of time, which I fear you may not have. Moreover, although our village has skilled craftsmen, we lack good quality iron, and the result may not be satisfactory. Instead, I propose an alternative: in our village, there is a legendary armor that has been passed down for centuries. It's said to have belonged to a wounded general who escaped to our village to avoid pursuit hundreds of years ago. The armor is of exceptional quality, far superior to ordinary ones. Why not use it as the base and add some components according to your requirements? We can make it airtight and complete. What do you think, sir?"

  The old clan leader remembered something and asked Meng Xuan about it.

  "Oh? Let me take a look!"

  Meng Xuan heard this and felt a sense of quality, like those iron armor that had been through battles, experienced the baptism of blood, and were the best.

  The old patriarch immediately went to fetch it himself. Meng Xuan took a look and saw that the pattern was fine, the material was simple and elegant, and it was indeed not an ordinary product. He readily agreed, but insisted on leaving 3,000 taels of silver for the mountain village. In total, he gave 4,000 taels of silver, which was already a huge amount for this small mountain village. The old patriarch firmly declined to accept it, but Meng Xuan would not listen and forcibly left it with him, unwilling to take advantage of the situation without giving anything in return.

  Then the old tribal leader ordered people to cast iron armor that could not be covered, and Meng Xuan engraved symbols on this old armor.

  The iron armor was extremely hard, Meng Xuan had exhausted his true energy, and he also used the Reversal Sword to barely engrave the talisman.

  This suit of armor was actually cast for Shu-Sheng's Corpse Demon.

  Although the corpse demon was mentally clear, its body still had the appearance of a corpse demon, emitting a foul odor and strong demonic energy. Anyone with cultivation would be able to detect it immediately if they approached within ten zhang. In the future, when Meng Xuan wanted to bring it into the mountain gate, it would naturally be very inconvenient. Casting this set of armor could conceal the smell and the engravings on the armor had Meng Xuan's talisman, which could also block the demonic energy from spreading.

  This set of talismans was learned by Meng Xuan from his master.

  They have a great disease, Xian Jue Yi Mai, doing things with caution, cultivating the law to cover up their own cultivation, and now, Meng Xuan has only changed that set of laws, changing it into symbolic engravings on the iron armor. The Corpse Demon is after all a Corpse Demon, Meng Xuan wants to take the bookworm away from here, in the future entering the town or even the immortal gate, without making some preparations it's simply impossible, they can't leave within ten miles before being discovered by people.

  He repeated his words to the bookworm, and the bookworm agreed. Although he had become a zombie, in a state of consciousness, he was still a timid and weak bookworm, at a loss when encountering things, but when he met Meng Xuan, it was as if he had grasped the main point, and everything was done according to his instructions. Another point was that although the iron armor was heavy, it was nothing to him.

  His current monstrous strength far surpasses Meng Xuan's, and is utterly terrifying.

  Moreover, from head to toe, there is no sense of pain. Let alone wearing iron armor, even if one were to wear thorny iron armor, it would make no difference.

  Although it was only casting some small parts that fit with the iron armor, it would take at least a day and night, so Meng Xuan stayed in the mountain village that evening. Fortunately, there were not many other things in the mountain village, but there were many houses, and the old patriarch ordered someone to clean out one of them, and they settled in.

  In the evening, Meng Xuan sat on his bed, while Shu Sheng was sitting at the door, neither sleeping nor resting. He asked the old clan leader to bring all the books from the village, regardless of whether they were medicinal notes or the Four Books and Five Classics, or even strange tales from the mountains and countryside. As long as there were books to read, that was enough. In his words, having spent a lifetime reading books, apart from reading, he really didn't know what else to do.

  After the quiet of night, Meng Xuan took a deep breath and picked up the Zhan Nie sword. He secretly operated the Xian Jue, extracting the demonic energy obtained from the corpse demon's body. After refining it, he couldn't help but feel shocked.

  This demonic energy is of a surprisingly high quality. If it were to be refined, I'm afraid it would be even stronger than the sickly energy on Qing Mu's body. It could possibly become a 4th-grade elixir.

  At that time, he was in the Qing Cong Mountains and had heard an old man say that the quality of the demonic energy on the corpse demon's body was also related to their qualifications for becoming a corpse. There were high and low ones, but those with excellent potential were rarely seen. The old man had also beheaded corpses and exorcised demons when he was young, using their demonic energy to refine elixirs. However, after beheading many corpses, the highest achievement was only refining a single third-grade elixir, which didn't have a very good effect. Later on, he gave up.

  And this book's Corpse Demon's demonic aura can actually be refined into a 4th-grade elixir, which shows just how rare it is.

  Unfortunately, Meng only extracted a wisp of magic energy from the corpse demon's body, and after refining out the impurities, there wasn't enough left to refine even one pellet of medicinal dan. At most, it could only be transformed into some refined spiritual energy for cultivation purposes. If he were to completely extract all the magic energy from the corpse demon's body, it might have been possible to refine a genuine fourth-grade dan, but that would also mean the corpse demon would die.

  Unlike living people, when a bookworm becomes an undead creature, his true energy is completely transformed into demonic energy, and the demonic energy is also his life force.

  Although he couldn't refine it into a pill, this demonic energy helped Meng Xuan's cultivation greatly, equivalent to three months of bitter practice.

  After refining the demonic energy, Meng Xuan began to cultivate the Great Sorrow Seal.

  The seal of Yin and Yang was formed, and the sorrowful meaning gushed out from the bottom of his heart, washing over Meng Xuan's sea of consciousness.

  This sorrowful intention is extremely strong. If an ordinary person were to endure it, they would probably be unable to hold on to their spirit in an instant and give rise to thoughts of taking one's own life.

  Meng Xuan tempered his heart and spirit with great sorrow, every time he brushed through it, it was as if he had experienced a huge failure and setback. If he couldn't get through it, he would become disheartened and lose his former sharpness, making progress in his cultivation difficult. But if he got through it, it was like being reborn from the ashes like a phoenix, his heart becoming stronger and more determined, advancing forward without hesitation during cultivation, evil thoughts not arising, and his progress rapid.

  True Qi is a mouthful of air inside the human body, coming from heaven and earth, tied to the heart spirit.

  When the mind is strong, the breath will be robust; when the mind is weak, the breath will wither.

  What people often refer to as a bad deed is called a "heart-loss thing", and this so-called "heart-loss" refers to the loss of one's spirit.

  When a person has done many wrong things, their own momentum naturally weakens. Even when they try to be strong, they will give people a feeling of being fierce on the outside but timid on the inside. This is actually because their heart and spirit have been damaged, and the true energy in their body has also withered away. In other words, even if a person is originally weak and small, as long as they occupy the moral high ground, are straightforward, and just, then when facing others, they will appear to be strong and powerful, and their dignity will be inviolable.

  There are cultivators in the world who, when they reach a bottleneck in their cultivation and can no longer progress, will cut off their physical bodies, be reborn, and experience the changes of the mundane world. The purpose is to temper their hearts in the midst of the mundane world, and after their heart and spirit become strong, their cultivation has hope of breaking through the bottleneck.

  Of course, the matter of a guilty conscience is not absolute, because there has always been a kind of person in this world who, after doing something bad, also thinks it's justified. Ordinary people may regret killing one person for their entire lives, but they don't think killing thousands or tens of thousands of people has any impact, and even take pride in having killed so many people. In such cases, their minds not only won't be harmed, but will instead become stronger.

  Ordinary people fear ghosts, while gods fear regret.

  Only when a person has done something that makes them feel regretful will their spirit be harmed; if they don't regret it, then the harm won't penetrate to the core.

  The more determined your mind is, the further you can go on the path of cultivation.

  For more than a month, Meng Xuan has been practicing the Great Sorrow Seal and has already understood its true meaning.

  Externally, Taiji can bind people's hearts and be used for combat, but internally, it can be used to refine one's own heart.

  After a stick of incense time, Meng Xuan opened his hands and let out a long sigh.

  This sorrowful intention washed over his self-cultivation method, and even he didn't dare try too much.

  If one cannot hold on and is injured by the intention of sorrow, then it is equivalent to destroying the foundation of the Tao.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw the bookworm demon still reading quietly, shaking its head from time to time, looking like a bookworm, but its appearance was too scary, and if it were suddenly seen by someone, it would probably scare them to death.

  However, the demonic energy on his body was even thicker than it was during the day. Meng Xuan estimated that he would fall into madness again in two days.

  "Huh? This corpse demon doesn't drink blood and doesn't cultivate, so how did the demonic energy on its body grow?"

  Meng Xuan suddenly became curious, although this world has many demons and gods, the law of conservation of energy still exists. Whether it's true energy or magic energy, it definitely won't appear out of thin air. Thinking of this question, he began to circulate his "Observing Qi" technique, looking at the scholar.

  At this sight, he couldn't help but be shocked.

  But then, above the scholar's head, a dense black air gathered from the heavens and earth, under Meng Xuan's observation technique, this black air was like a vortex, constantly collecting the yin energy between the heavens and earth, and pouring it into his head. However, the scholar seemed to be unaware of this, still shaking his head and reading with enthusiasm, even smiling silently when he reached an exciting part.

  "This guy is really a freak, Qingmu Tian was born with a spiritual aura, he can also be said to be born with a demonic aura?"

  Meng Xuan couldn't help but let out a sigh, feeling a little envious in his heart.

  If he were to absorb spiritual energy instead of yin energy, he would probably become a rare cultivation genius in just a few hundred years. In terms of demonic cultivation, his innate talent is not inferior to Qingmu, and may even surpass him. Unfortunately, Shusheng is stubborn and resents the demonic path, refusing to cultivate and wasting his exceptional talent...

  Of course, joking aside, if he really went to cultivate demonic powers, Meng Xuan would be unable to keep him by his side.

  Because once he truly starts cultivating demonic powers, he will inevitably be unable to suppress the evil intentions in his heart, becoming violent and bloodthirsty, bringing disaster to all around him.

  "No way, his talent won't go to waste like this... I've actually made a profit!" Meng Xuan suddenly thought of something and his eyes lit up: "In order to keep his mind clear, I need to extract the demonic energy from him about every ten days. And judging from the amount of demonic energy, every three extractions can be used to refine one 4th-grade elixir... Calculating it this way, I've actually made a huge profit..."

  "This silly bookworm is just like a treasure basin, collecting elixir materials for me every moment!"

  Meng Xuan suddenly decided that from now on, he would no longer call him Zhu Bao Ren, but instead call him Ju Bao Pen!

  Thanks for your rewards, recommendations, comments and collections, I'm so happy! Here's a 4,000-word big chapter for you!