23: Retrieving Spirit Crystals from the Burning Clouds

The day after the helicopter crash, the morning mist, mixed with the lingering smell of burning, shrouded the foothills of Mount Longhu like a greasy veil.

Deep in the mountain stream, a few wisps of smoke stubbornly climbed upwards, like the unwilling souls of the dead.

Zhang Xuanyi carried a half-worn bamboo basket in one hand, his expression as calm as if he were strolling through his own backyard vegetable patch.

Behind him, A Che followed closely, his face filled with tension and bewilderment.

Further back, Su Qingzhu, like a war correspondent, held a high-definition DSLR, its lens tightly focused on Zhang Xuanyi's back.

“Are you sure there are still spirit crystals in there? Yesterday’s explosion was so violent, I felt it from several kilometers away.” Su Qingzhu’s voice was laced with doubt. She pressed the shutter, documenting this bizarre “post-disaster scavenging” scene.

Zhang Xuanyi continued walking, chuckling softly without turning his head: “Qi crystals aren’t glass; they can shatter, but the Qi doesn’t dissipate. For my stall, as long as I can ‘smell’ it, I can suck it back.”

Before he finished speaking, his left sleeve suddenly billowed without wind, and a palm-sized piece of tattered cloth, its original color unidentifiable, quietly floated out, settling steadily above his palm.

The cloth surface trembled slightly, and the warp and weft threads at its edges seemed to come alive, twitching like a hunting dog’s nostrils, greedily sniffing the scent carried on the wind.

Almost at the same moment, a pale blue light screen, visible only to Zhang Xuanyi, unfolded before his eyes.

“System notification: High-concentration scattered spiritual Qi detected, meeting standards. ‘Gathering Qi’ mode can be activated.”

A faint smile curved Zhang Xuanyi’s lips, and a sharp glint flashed in his eyes. He said to the two behind him, “Hold on tight, we’re going to take the stall for a walk in the fire zone.”

At the bottom of the mountain stream, the scene was even more tragic than imagined.

The massive rotor was twisted into a pretzel, and the main body of the fuselage had become a pile of charred, distorted metal scrap, deeply embedded in the damp soil.

A peculiar smell permeated the air, both the pungent odor of fuel and a faint hint of sandalwood—the unique lingering scent of burning spiritual Qi.

Countless pale golden specks of light, like fireflies on a summer night, floated around the wreckage, gathering and dispersing erratically.

These were the “shattered Qi” that Su Qingzhu had mentioned.

Zhang Xuanyi found a relatively flat boulder and gently tossed the tattered cloth stall from his palm onto it.

“Devour!”

He let out a low roar, his voice like muffled thunder.

The tattered cloth seemed to obey a command, suddenly expanding in mid-air, instantly becoming three meters square, like a giant curtain spread over the boulder.

Immediately after, a layer of dim light emanated from the edges of the stall, and the center of the cloth surface slightly concave, forming a vortex invisible to the naked eye.

The next second, an astonishing scene unfolded.

The stall, like a giant, living mouth, suddenly inhaled!

The pale golden Qi dust floating around, as if subjected to an irresistible gravitational pull, transformed into millions of golden threads, converging towards the center of the stall in a frantic rush.

The entire process was silent, yet carried a domineering aura that seemed to swallow the heavens and earth.

The mixed smell of burning and sandalwood in the air visibly faded.

Su Qingzhu gasped in surprise, forgetting to press the shutter on her camera, her beautiful eyes wide: “It… it’s eating smoke?”

“Senior Brother…” A Che’s voice trembled slightly. He stared intently at the tattered cloth that was feasting, stammering, “This… this cloth, could it be made from the legendary ‘Taotie skin’?”

Zhang Xuanyi did not answer them; his entire focus was on the system interface before him.

“spirit coins: +10”

“spirit coins: +15”

The spirit coin balance was growing wildly at a rate of five points per second—faster than he had earned in a month of running his stall!

This wasn’t picking up junk; this was clearly picking up money!

However, just as the spirit coin balance was about to break the ten thousand mark, an unexpected change occurred.

The steadily absorbing stall suddenly began to tremble violently, as if it had eaten something indigestible.

On the cloth surface, the absorbed golden Qi dust began to stir restlessly, as if trying to break free.

Immediately after, a line of ancient seal script, formed by converging Qi streams, flashed across the cloth surface.

“Do not devour what is not offered, do not accept what is not willed.”

Zhang Xuanyi felt a sudden “buzz” in his mind and instantly understood.

“It only wants spiritual Qi that is ‘voluntarily lost’…” he murmured to himself, his brow furrowed.

When ordinary people lose items, it is an unintentional loss, and the wish power upon them has long dissipated.

But the people on this plane were core members of the Under Heaven Society, and they held strong possessiveness and obsession over these spirit crystals until their last moments of death.

This obsession transformed into a stubborn “spiritual imprint.” As long as the imprint remained, the stall could not completely “digest” it.

The people of the Under Heaven Society refused to let go even in death, so it couldn't be completely absorbed!

Just as Zhang Xuanyi was contemplating a solution, a faint whooshing sound suddenly came from the cliff above his head.

A lithe figure descended from the sky, like an iron feather carried by the wind, landing silently on a rock a dozen meters away.

The newcomer was dressed in a tight-fitting outfit, tall and slender—it was the Iron Lady, Luo Shisan.

Her left arm was already bandaged cleanly, but her face was still pale, and her eyes were even colder and sharper than yesterday.

In her hand, she carried a bag wrapped in clothing, from which came the faint clinking of hard objects colliding.

“You certainly came quickly.” Zhang Xuanyi narrowed his eyes, and the Innate One Qi within him quietly circulated, wary of this uninvited guest.

Luo Shisan wasted no words, tossing the bag in her hand at his feet. The opening of the bag scattered, revealing several charred but intact crystal fragments.

“Inside are three spirit crystal cores that weren’t detonated. I snatched them out before the cockpit completely exploded.” Her voice was devoid of warmth. “Now, they’re yours.”

Zhang Xuanyi raised an eyebrow, not immediately picking them up: “A traitor from the Under Heaven Society giving me a gift? What’s the catch?”

Luo Shisan’s gaze was like a knife, piercing straight to the heart: “I don’t want anything. But my master once said, ‘The Dharma belongs to the virtuous, and power is not for tyrants.’ The Under Heaven Society is no longer the Under Heaven Society I knew. Your Tianshi Mansion failed to stop them from going down the wrong path back then, but you, yesterday, succeeded.”

She paused, her gaze sweeping over the plane wreckage, and added with a complex look in her eyes: “Moreover… that plane should never have taken off carrying the ‘Empty Talisman.’ The experimental data for that thing had fatal flaws, which I reported, but it was forcibly suppressed.”

Zhang Xuanyi smiled. So that was it.

This was not just about righteousness, but also tinged with guilt and anger.

“So, you’ve come to repay a debt?”

Luo Shisan did not answer, tacitly agreeing.

She put down the items, seemingly intending to turn and leave, settling all scores.

“Wait.” Zhang Xuanyi suddenly called out to her.

Luo Shisan paused, turning to look at him.

Zhang Xuanyi pointed to the still slightly trembling stall at his feet, his gaze burning: “Are you willing to be the first ‘Market Guardian’ for this stall?”

That night, the moon was bright and the stars sparse.

On the boulder beside the mountain stream, Zhang Xuanyi sat cross-legged.

Before him, the stall lay quietly spread out, its aura much steadier than during the day.

Around the stall, an invisible barrier had appeared—a Wind Talisman Array personally set up by Luo Shisan. Any Qi fluctuations within a hundred zhang would not escape her perception.

She had, in the end, stayed. Without words, she had answered with her actions.

Before Zhang Xuanyi’s eyes, the system interface reappeared.

“System notification: External guardian wish power detected. The rudimentary form of the ‘Dao Market’ has been initially established.”

“Unlocked ‘Market Guardian’ sub-function: Can designate a target to directionally absorb scattered spiritual Qi from hostile forces.”

It was done!

Zhang Xuanyi’s heart swelled with joy. He closed his eyes and began to regulate his breath.

He slowly guided the pure spiritual Qi absorbed during the day into his Dantian, where it mingled with the Innate One Qi within his body.

At this moment, he felt a strange resonance established between himself and the stall beneath him.

The spiritual Qi absorbed by the stall seemed to transform into streams of golden data, feeding back to him through this resonance, allowing his understanding and perception of “Qi” to improve at an unprecedented rate.

That threshold to the Grandmaster realm, which had troubled him for so long, now seemed within reach.

After a long while, he slowly opened his eyes, exhaling a turbid breath with a faint golden glow, and looked up at the brilliant starry sky.

“Yan Jiuzhang…” He softly uttered the name. “People like him don’t die. But he must now utterly despise the word ‘Dao,’ and he must utterly despise me.”

A thousand li away, in an abandoned underground heavy industry plant.

The piercing alarms had long ceased, and the air was filled with a mixed smell of melting metal and charred flesh.

Yan Jiuzhang leaned against a concrete wall blackened by the shockwave, more than half of his body carbonized. His proud mechanical prosthetic arm was reduced to a few twisted metal remnants resting on his leg, constantly flickering with dangerous electrical sparks.

A subordinate in a black steward’s uniform knelt on the ground, his head bowed deeply, his voice trembling as he reported: “Chairman… the overseas spirit crystal supply chain is completely severed, and the core ‘Yellow Paper’ technology and production lines were… were all destroyed by Zhang Xuanyi. Should we… should we temporarily retreat and regroup?”

“Retreat?”

Yan Jiuzhang slowly raised his head, a sinister smile appearing on his face, which was half handsome and half charred.

He laboriously raised his only intact right hand, and with fingertips stained with blood and dust, drew a crooked talisman on the wall behind him.

The bloodstain snaked like a venomous serpent.

“No…” He laughed in a low voice, his laughter hoarse like an old bellows. “I want to show Zhang Xuanyi, and those old fogeys at the Tianshi Mansion, what ‘industrialized revenge’ looks like.”

His eyes gleamed with madness as he issued a command to the steward.

“Pass on my order! Immediately activate the ‘Hundred Talismans Project’—contact all our collaborators on the dark web! I want them to spare no expense, and flood Mount Longhu with one hundred thousand fake, inferior yellow papers!”

Almost at the same instant Yan Jiuzhang’s words fell.

Beside the Mount Longhu stream, Zhang Xuanyi, who was in meditation, suddenly opened his eyes.

The tattered cloth stall in his sleeve trembled violently without warning, far more intensely than during the day.

A line of glaring blood-red warnings flashed frantically across the system light screen before his eyes.

“Warning! Large-scale talisman counterfeiting detected. Source points to: Under Heaven Society Dark Web.”

“Analyzing… Counterfeit target: Tianshi Mansion basic Yellow Paper. Counterfeit quantity: Huge.”

“Threat level assessment: High!”

Zhang Xuanyi abruptly stood up, his gaze like lightning, looking towards the dimly lit secular town below the mountain.

Yan Jiuzhang was insane.

He had not chosen to directly attack the heavily guarded Mount Longhu—that would be foolish.

This calculating madman had chosen a more insidious, more fundamental approach.

An unprecedented storm was brewing.

And the first target of the storm would not be the lofty mountain gate, but the seemingly peaceful human world below the mountain, filled with the smoke of human life.