Welcome to the Ability Shop!

Chapter 169 Do you know that your store is breaking the law?
When you drag the three abilities "weak and sickly", "respiratory weakness" and "deficiency of both qi and blood" into the same row of your inventory, you will receive a prompt asking whether to merge them into the "living dead" ability.

In the past few days, he has created more than fifty living dead.

"Living Dead" LV1, Green.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. You're still sickly, but the illnesses are no longer fatal; your breath is weak, but it's enough to satisfy your needs; your blood and energy are depleted, but the cold won't kill you. All kinds of hardships will eventually forge a powerful body, provided you get enough sleep, because you are a living dead!"

When Chen Xuan created his first living dead, he carried it with him.

There was no other way... After all, this wasn't a skill he acquired through a transaction with customers, so he had no experience to draw upon. The description on the store app was also rather rudimentary, so he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands and become the pioneer.

After experiencing it for the past few days, he found that it was a completely positive ability, and its effects were unusually powerful.

First, her breathing became weak...

It doesn't seem like a good situation, but his need for air has also decreased significantly. Without the protection of the Heavenly Cloud Technique, his maximum breath-holding time is about five minutes or more. With the addition of the Living Dead, he can easily hold his breath for thirty minutes, making him virtually indistinguishable from a dead person.

Considering that his body has been greatly strengthened by the mental cultivation method day and night, if an ordinary person who can hold their breath for thirty seconds were to try it, they should be able to last for ten minutes or so.

The deficiency of Qi and blood is even more astonishing. Literally, Qi deficiency can lead to symptoms such as cold body, aversion to cold, fatigue, and lethargy. However, in the case of the living dead, this characteristic becomes simply low body temperature. His body temperature even dropped from 37 degrees Celsius to 28 degrees Celsius. Normally, a person would have already died, but he felt almost nothing unusual!

Chen Xuan couldn't test for the illness, but he figured it was probably similar—many pathogens would likely invade his body more easily, but would only cause a cough or runny nose, not enough to make him seriously ill.

Looking at it this way, the ability does indeed turn people into the living dead: they barely breathe, have ice-cold body temperatures, and carry a large number of germs but are not greatly affected (after all, they are already dead).

If that's all there is to it, then at most it just offsets the drawbacks of the negative abilities, and there's nothing particularly noteworthy about it.

The real key point is the last sentence: "All kinds of hardships eventually forge a powerful body"—Chen Xuan discovered that it could actually accelerate the absorption and circulation of spiritual energy, as if it had given the Heavenly Cloud Technique a booster!
If you also equip the "Spiritual Body," your body will practically be in a storm-like absorption mode.

If you think about it carefully, this principle is not hard to understand.

Liu Shuyue once said that the mental cultivation method would refine external spiritual energy into one's own flesh and blood, but this "spiritual energy flesh and blood" is in conflict with life itself. How much spiritual energy a person can withstand depends on his body and will.

A spiritual body can accelerate the absorption and transformation of spiritual energy, but the price is a shortened lifespan—because a body rich in spiritual energy will overwhelm the will, generate inner demons, and eventually turn into a monster resembling a demon.

The "living dead" essentially raises the upper limit of the first container, allowing the physical body to bear more spiritual energy and flesh, thus making the cultivation process smoother.

The first people Chen Xuan thought of were the residents of Mala Village.

They are Qi Sensing Beings born after bathing in dragon blood, similar to the cultivators of the Immortal Alliance who cultivate by slaying demons. It's easy to get started, but the ceiling isn't very high either. Even if they exhaust their entire lives, they probably still won't reach the level of the disciples who have left the Lotus Cloud Sect.

"The living dead" can effectively broaden this bottleneck.

The good news is, there's more than one.

That's why Chen Xuan was so enthusiastic when the Northern Heavenly Court called to say they needed treatment—the more components he collected, the more living dead he could assemble.

It's also a capability well-suited for mass deployment: if only one person is a zombie surrounded by normal people, the former's susceptibility to infection makes him a potential reservoir of pathogens, thus harming others. If everyone is a zombie, then naturally there won't be this problem.

The only insurmountable drawback of this ability, "drowsiness," is merely that it increases the daily sleep time to 10 hours; if this requirement is not met, its effectiveness will decrease. Compared to the benefits it brings, this cost is essentially negligible.

"I'll equip them with the Living Dead at the next Ability Adjustment Conference," Chen Xuan thought. "I should let Liu Shuyue know beforehand; she shouldn't refuse."

Ding Dong!

An email icon popped up at the bottom of the screen.

Upon seeing this logo, Chen Xuanxin's heart leaped into his throat.

Could it be... that there's been a response regarding the rating?
He moved the mouse, took a deep breath, clicked the icon, and sure enough, the store manager rating page popped up.

"Congratulations! You have become a proud Level 5 Store Manager!"

— "The ???th Store Manager" LV5, Colored.

—"We are convinced that no matter how the world changes, the store manager's achievements will be remembered forever." "Milestone unlock: Gain an additional ability slot."

"Now it's possible to have two branches at the same time."

"Built-in mini-store unlocked: Use it to purchase your favorite gadgets."

"Ability synchronization limit increased to LV5".

"Not for sale, not for transfer. Store manager's current status: still active."

That's really not easy!

"This approval process is taking way too long," Chen Xuan thought to himself. From the time he submitted his application to the time he received a reply, a full eleven days had passed! "What, is it that difficult to verify the veracity of information from another world?"
He almost thought that silence was the same as rejection.

But no matter what, he finally got the reward he had been longing for!

Chen Xuan couldn't wait to scan himself with the barcode scanner and found that both his carrying capacity and the transaction box had increased to five.

Now, aside from the three fixed combinations of Thousand Thoughts Sword, Divine Eye Technique, and Heavenly Glow Technique, he has two slots that he can freely switch between. Whether it's the Disintegration and Reconstitution combination or the Demon-Slaying combination of Heavenly Thunder Token and True Sword, both are excellent. When he's in the shop, he can even switch to the Living Dead and Spiritual Body combination for recuperation and strengthening, accelerating his Qi refining cycle.

Having a bigger backpack slot is definitely a breeze!
As for other effects...

There's nothing to worry about with the two branches; doubling the quantity means that the weapons purchased overseas can be delivered directly to Mala Village without having to go through the main store anymore.

As for the built-in mini-store, Chen Xuan had already noticed that a purchase option had been added to the top of the assistant app.

Good grief... He runs his own shop, collects a salary, and then uses that salary to buy things from the shop, huh? A perfect internal loop. He didn't even need to open it to know that before, instead of giving out cash directly, they gave out a wallet—it was like taking off their pants to fart—so that was their hidden trick!

Sure enough, the moment he entered the interface, Chen Xuan saw his balance points: 14500 yuan.

It's connected to a wallet.

The in-app purchases are only available on the first page; subsequent pages require a higher staff level to unlock. Chen Xuan scanned the items and found that most were store skins.

That's right... He got burned by in-game skins in mobile games, and he didn't expect that opening a shop wouldn't save him from the skin curse either.

For example, the first skin: Fruit Shop.

"The store will be set up as a small fruit supermarket, including four sets of regular shelves and one set of refrigerated shelves."

"Note: The store door must be closed during the replacement process to ensure the store is in a closed state."

"All renovation projects will be completed during the skin replacement, but subsequent maintenance and product replenishment are not included in the service."

Price: 1200 yuan.

You might say it's useless, but spending 1200 yuan on it alone wouldn't even buy a few durians, let alone redecorate the store. It can change the store's theme and replenish the shelves all at once, so its total value is definitely far greater than the selling price.

But while it's not exactly useful, it's not that easy to use either—Chen Xuan's shop is already quite well-known in the Tianlu residential area. If it suddenly turned into a fruit shop overnight, customers would definitely be confused and begin to doubt the shop owner himself. He doesn't want to do something that's not worth the effort.

Perhaps it would be suitable to use it in branch stores.

The problem is that now the branches are just a conduit; they're shut down when not in use, so making them any more elaborate is pointless.

Moreover, this is already the cheapest skin in the in-app purchase store.

Chen Xuan also found a gun shop-themed skin, priced at 25600 yuan.

He bet that as soon as this skin is used, Tianlu Community will be on the news headlines the next day!

(End of this chapter)