69: Chapter 69 This world is defiled.

Time flowed by.

Five years had passed since Su Yu was picked up by the Old Beggar.

The drafty shack in the slums had been replaced by a small blue-brick courtyard.

The courtyard was not large, but it could shelter them from the wind and rain, and an iron pot was set up in the corner.

The Old Beggar leaned against the threshold, chewing on a black flour cake, his cloudy gaze resting on Su Yu in the courtyard.

Five-year-old Su Yu had a thin and small frame, but his complexion lacked the grayish decay of children in Black City eroded by demonic energy, and his limbs were well-proportioned and healthy.

The Old Beggar felt that this child had a good destiny.

This "good destiny" had also truly benefited him.

Over these few years, Su Yu often dug out weeds and rotten leaves from corners and trash piles for the Old Beggar to boil and drink.

The Old Beggar was initially skeptical, but after drinking it for half a month, his coughing and back pain had miraculously improved.

This was precisely because Su Yu, relying on the alchemy and pharmacology he knew by heart from his past life, had used common herbs to clear the accumulated demonic toxins from his body.

Furthermore, these common herbs were the key to Su Yu breaking through his cultivation limits over these five years.

Over these five years, although Su Yu had relied on breathing to purify demonic energy day and night without interruption, he remained extremely dissatisfied with his cultivation progress.

The meridians of his 9th Grade Spiritual Root were too narrow, like drawing water with a thin bamboo tube; the spiritual energy obtained solely through breathing was extremely limited.

In order to completely break through this innate bottleneck of his roots and bones, he had already created a heaven-defying technique several years ago.

"Heaven-Swallowing Origin Transformation Technique"!

Although common herbs lacked spiritual energy, their medicinal properties were pure.

He used his own physical body as an alchemy furnace, forcibly compressing and purifying the medicinal properties of the herbs he consumed, turning them into wisps of extremely faint primordial vitality.

He did not convert it into mana, but instead used it to constantly cleanse and nourish his withered and blocked spiritual root.

He spared nothing that could be used as medicine—whether it was for clearing heat, detoxifying, or promoting blood circulation.

In fact, with Su Yu's current heaven-defying Comprehension Ability that almost saw through the laws of heaven and earth.

If he were in a normal cultivation world, he would only need to comprehend a few secret techniques to seize fortune, and with the aid of some rare natural treasures, improving his spiritual root would be a matter of course.

But over these past few years, he often sighed helplessly in his heart.

This world had been invaded by demons, and the laws of heaven and earth had been thoroughly polluted by insidious demonic energy.

Let alone rare natural treasures, even a low-grade spiritual herb containing a faint trace of spiritual energy could not be found!

It is difficult for even a clever housewife to cook without rice.

He possessed heaven-defying Comprehension Ability, but was forced to pick up common weeds, withered branches, and rotten leaves from the streets to build up his foundation bit by bit.

He had spent five full years, eating who knows how many bitter herbs.

Only then did he forcibly transform and improve his spiritual root aptitude from the most trash-tier 9th Grade Spiritual Root to Rank 8 Spirit Root!

But this was enough.

Relying on 24-hour passive, uninterrupted cultivation, plus his Rank 8 Spirit Root.

Only then could five-year-old Su Yu forcibly break through to the Second Level of Qi Refining in this desperate land filled with demonic energy.

If this were to spread to the outside world, it would be shocking enough to stun the world.

But in Su Yu's eyes, this speed could only be considered barely acceptable.

In terms of daily life, relying on the seemingly unintentional "childish words" of guidance from Su Yu.

The Old Beggar also learned to distinguish several herbs for treating basic ailments.

In the medicine-deprived slums, he transformed from a beggar living day-to-day into a small-time herb peddler who could barely make a living.

The Old Beggar actually had a name; he was called Old Dog.

It wasn't that his surname was Lao and his name Gou, but from childhood to adulthood, everyone called him that; after a lifetime of being called it, it became his name.

A humble name makes one easier to raise.

And he had indeed lived long enough.

In a place where the average lifespan of the lowest-level Mortal in Black City did not exceed forty, Old Dog had lived to sixty-four.

This in itself was a kind of luck.

And to make Su Yu easier to raise, he named him Gouwazi.

"Gouwazi, stop playing with mud, come over and eat some meat!"

Old Dog called out happily, fished out a few pieces of fatty meat from the iron pot, and dumped them all into Su Yu's bowl.

Su Yu patted the dirt off his hands, walked over, sat down, and chewed quietly.

The old man knew that a young child needed nutrition the most while growing, and now that he had some spare money, he would naturally go to the market every few days to buy some meat to stew.

Compared to the days five years ago when he couldn't even get enough of that black flour paste, this bowl of meat soup with oil droplets floating on top was simply a life of luxury.

Old Dog couldn't bear to eat the meat himself, only scooping half a bowl of meat soup to soak his coarse grain cake.

He finished the last bite with satisfaction, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and looked at Su Yu with deep emotion.

"You know, kid, why is your luck so good?"

"Following you, I, Old Dog, have also benefited."

"Nearing the end of my life, I can actually live such a comfortable life where I can see meat at every meal."

Su Yu did not reply, just lowered his head and drank the hot soup in his bowl.

Over these five years of living together, he knew very well what kind of person Old Dog was.

Although at the very beginning, Old Dog only wanted to raise him for seven or eight years and then sell him to the Blood Refining Workshop.

But in reality, ever since he carried Su Yu back to that drafty shack, the old man had never mentioned that thought again.

Even when he was so hungry he had to gnaw on tree bark, he would find ways to get some clean rice porridge to feed Su Yu.

For an Old Beggar who had struggled alone in the slums for a lifetime.

Su Yu, the child he picked up, became the only light in his life, which was like mud.

And the life they had now was a comfortable life that Old Dog wouldn't have even dared to dream of.

He even spent money to pull strings with the outer city household registration official to get Su Yu a proper civilian household registration.

He felt that as long as they could live peacefully like this.

Once Su Yu grew up and married a wife, his life would be considered complete.

...

After dinner.

Old Dog was in the room mending clothes for the winter.

Su Yu stood alone in the corner of the courtyard, his gaze crossing the walls, looking far away toward the very center of this world.

There, a massive city wall, a hundred zhang high and cast entirely from dark red black iron, stood tall.

Inside the city walls was the inner city ruled by demons.

Outside the city walls was a vast kingdom of Mortal stretching for thousands of li, the Great Li Dynasty!

Over these five years, through Old Dog's idle chatter and his own observation of the various phenomena in the outer city, Su Yu had thoroughly figured out the ecological structure of this world.

This was a world that made even him, an old monster who had experienced several cultivation worlds, feel extremely uncomfortable.

In previous worlds, cultivators were high and mighty, viewing Mortal as mere grass.

But that was merely indifference, a natural barrier formed between two different levels of life.

Cultivators were busy fighting for spiritual veins and snatching magical treasures; they rarely intentionally targeted Mortal because Mortal were of no value to them.

But it was different here.

The demons here treated Mortal as necessities for cultivation, as blood food and medicinal ingredients to maintain their realms.

In this world, Mortal were not just grass.

They were pigs and sheep on an assembly line, crops raised on vast lands.

The Great Li Dynasty was simply the farm manager appointed by those demons in the secular world.

Every year.

The Great Li Dynasty would hold an extremely grand ceremony across the country, crowned with a holy name: the "Blood Tribute"!

Tens of thousands of massive black iron prison carts would be escorted by the army into every prefecture and every city.

They would select hundreds of millions of Mortal just like picking livestock.

And the Mortal here did not resist; on the contrary, they flocked to it.

The habitual enslavement and brainwashing had long since completely twisted the cognition of the Mortal on this land.

The laws of the Great Li Dynasty stated that any family selected to participate in the "Blood Tribute" would be exempted from three years of taxes and receive a reward of silver sufficient for the whole family to eat well for a year.

Under the deliberate propaganda of the dynasty, being sent to have one's bones extracted and marrow drained by demons was not called dying.

It was called shedding one's mortal bones and ascending to the blissful holy realm!

Cannibalism, and they accepted it with pleasure.

This was a pathological ecosystem completely closed-loop by demons using absolute force and twisted systems.

In the cultivation world, the weak were the prey of the strong, but that was for the sake of competing for limited Dao resources.

But the demons here were digging up the foundation of the entire world.

Using the flesh and blood of Mortal to pile up cultivation, using polluted demonic energy to assimilate heaven and earth.

This practice of killing the goose to get the golden egg not only cut off the path of survival for Mortal but also cut off the path of immortality for this world.

Su Yu withdrew his gaze.

There was no rage of a hot-blooded youth in his eyes, nor any cynical cursing, just a sigh of lament.

"This world is tainted..."