Longevity: Starting as a menial servant in the Green Wood Sect

Once outside Black Mountain Market, the sky was as dark as lead, pressing down on the desolate wilderness, making it hard to breathe.

Gu An kept moving, his hunched figure weaving through the withered grass and scattered rocks. It seemed slow, but in fact, every step he took was solid and his speed was extremely fast.

The two chilling auras behind him were like a persistent, insidious infection, impossible to shake off, yet never getting close, always hovering a hundred feet away.

"Two Qi Refining Level 3 cultivators, they really think highly of this old bone of mine."

Gu An's lips twitched slightly, his eyes showing no panic, only a cold sternness of a shrewd scheme.

He didn't head towards the Green Wood Sect. If he returned to the sect now and these two saw through his disguise, his pretense in the outer sect would be a complete joke. What he would attract then wouldn't be two small fry, but a vicious wolf like Zhao Feng who would devour people without spitting out the bones.

With a turn of his toes, Gu An headed towards the Rotten Bone Marsh, thirty miles west of the market.

The area is perpetually shrouded in miasma and covered in swamps, making it a paradise for low-level monsters and poisonous insects, as well as a natural graveyard for murder, robbery, and the destruction of evidence.

Half an hour later.

A rotten, fishy smell filled the air, and the soil beneath our feet became damp, soft, and sticky.

Gu An stopped at the edge of a murky mud pit. The withered trees all around stretched towards the sky like ghostly claws, and grayish-white miasma churned on the water's surface.

"This is it."

He took out a bottle of freshly prepared antidote pills from his pocket and put it under his tongue. Instead of setting up the formation, he reached out and wiped his sleeve, and a few dark gray threads that had been treated with oil slipped from his fingertips.

Then, Gu An made an extremely bold move. He unbuttoned his shirt and, like a piece of dead wood, slowly sank into the foul-smelling mud.

The mud reached above his chest and neck, and even to the top of his head.

The Turtle Breathing Technique is activated at full power, gathering all the body's energy.

As his heart stopped beating, Gu An's body temperature plummeted to a freezing point, as cold as the surrounding mud. All the pores on his body closed, and that faint glimmer of life was locked deep within his dantian.

At this moment, there is one less living person and one more piece of dead flesh in this rotten bone swamp.

……

About fifteen minutes later.

Two sharp whooshing sounds tore through the air, ripping apart the miasma.

"Where is he? I clearly saw that old man crawling this way!"

The speaker was a burly man with a face full of scars, holding a ghost-head knife in his hand, looking around anxiously.

The other man was short and thin, clutching a tracking compass in his hand, his brow furrowed: "Strange, the aura on the compass stops here. Could that old ghost have a high-level concealment talisman?"

"Bah! A poor, rogue cultivator, how could he afford such fine goods?" the burly man cursed. "He's probably hiding in some mud pit, too scared to come out. Search! This place isn't big; we'll dig him out even if we have to dig three feet into the ground!"

"Be careful, there are a lot of poisonous insects in this rotten bone swamp," the skinny man warned. The two of them, back to back, cautiously groped their way into the depths of the mud.

Time slips away, bit by bit.

The miasma grew increasingly thick.

The two searched for a long time, but apart from a few startled toads, they didn't find a single human hair.

"Damn it, this is unbelievable!"

The burly man, his patience exhausted, cleaved the withered tree beside him with a single, powerful blow. Splinters flew everywhere, startling a flock of waterbirds that had been resting there.

"Second brother, could it be that the old bastard has already run away?" The burly man turned to look at the skinny man.

The skinny man was squatting by the muddy puddles where Gu An was hiding, poking at the murky water with a stick, deep in thought: "Wait... there's a footprint here, though it's covered in mud, but the depth..."

Just as the skinny man lowered his head...

Whoosh!

The once lifeless, mirror-like mud surface suddenly exploded without warning. There was no earth-shattering fluctuation of spiritual energy, only an extremely fast gray shadow, carrying foul-smelling mud, bursting forth like a venomous snake emerging from its hole.

"What...?"

The skinny man's pupils contracted sharply, and before he could even utter the word "person," his throat suddenly felt cold.

A thin, transparent thread coated with bone-corroding poison instantly wrapped around his neck, with a flick of the gray shadow's wrist.

puff.

A huge head shot into the sky, the cut as smooth as a mirror. Before the blood could even spurt out, the head rolled into the mud and sank to the bottom with a thud.

"Second brother!!!"

The burly man's eyes widened in fury, and he instinctively swung his knife at the gray figure.

The blade, imbued with fiery energy, cleaved a gap in the miasma.

But the gray figure neither retreated nor dodged; instead, it twisted its body strangely in mid-air, using the slippery mud to slide in from the blind spot of the blade.

Gu An was covered in mud, but his eyes shone brightly.

He pointed out with his right index finger, and a dark golden aura of Geng metal pulsed uncertainly at the tip of his finger.

"Go!"

The burly man felt a blur before his eyes, and the protective aura around him shattered like paper.

A sharp pain shot through my brow, followed by an endless darkness.

Thump. The burly man's massive body fell straight down, splashing mud and water everywhere.

From the start to the end, it lasted only two breaths.

Gu An stood in the mud, panting heavily. The prolonged period of suspended animation had left his brain somewhat oxygen-deprived, but looking at the two corpses, he felt completely refreshed.

[Defeat 2 Qi Refining Level 3 Tribulation Cultivators, Combat Experience +20]

[My mastery of the Turtle Breathing Technique has greatly improved; proficiency +10]

Gu An didn't waste time on sentimentality. He swiftly dragged the two corpses to the shore and skillfully examined them.

The two empty storage bags contained only a few dozen broken spirit stones, a few low-grade magic artifacts, and some miscellaneous talismans and pills.

"Poor wretch."

Gu An spat, put away the useful items, and then kicked the corpse back into the depths of the mud.

The mud in this swamp is extremely corrosive. Within three days, the two corpses will turn into bones, sink into the silt, and become nutrients for this swamp.

Gu An quickly washed off the mud, changed into a set of dry clothes, swallowed another antidote pill, and disappeared into the vast miasma.

This is not a place to stay any longer; it's time to go back.

……

It was already late at night when we returned to Courtyard No. 13, No. 2, Youying Valley.

Gu An activated all the restrictions and added several warning talismans around the courtyard walls before entering the stone house and sitting cross-legged on the bed.

He took out the bottle of Breakthrough Pill that he had bought at great expense from his pocket, and then laid out the Spirit Cleansing Grass and Jade Marrow Fungus.

The flickering candlelight illuminated the boy's slightly pale yet exceptionally resolute face.

"The transition from the third to the fourth level of Qi Refining is the first hurdle for low-level cultivators."

Once a breakthrough is achieved, the gaseous spiritual energy within the body will liquefy, resulting in a qualitative change in both the total amount and quality of spiritual energy. More importantly, one will be able to truly control magical artifacts and fly through the air, greatly increasing their survivability.

With the Qingmu Sect in its increasingly declining state, time is running out for Gu An.

Although this sect has the reputation of being a righteous sect, its exploitation and enslavement of the lower classes behind the scenes may not be any cleaner than that of demonic sects like the Blood Blade Sect.

However, in this ruthless world, how many people can truly distinguish right from wrong?

All beings suffer. The common people, under the rule of mortal dynasties or the jurisdiction of immortals, receive protection but also sacrifice some of their interests. And so do these disciples of the sect.

However, Gu An was not one to be content with the status quo. From the moment he transmigrated here and stepped into the Qingmu Sect, he was determined to seek immortality and enlightenment.