Xiangzi’s Record of Immortal Cultivation-Chapter 98: Unexpected Gain, Pulse Crystal in Hand

In the distance, faint shouts echoed.
The commotion must have reached Shi Cheng’s group.
Xiangzi crouched, searching the middle-aged guard’s body.
As expected, he found a small cloth pouch.
Without time to inspect it, he tucked it away, but his gaze fell to the ground—
A large jade thumb ring, half-buried in dust, glinted faintly in the moonlight.
With a flick of his spear, the blood-stained ring landed in his hand.
Pausing, Xiangzi vanished into the deep night.
—
Shi Cheng surveyed the carnage, his face ashen.
Beside him, Liu Quan stood terrified, head bowed.
Tonight’s plan was Liu Quan’s, backed by Shi Cheng, a master sent by young master Li for certainty.
Yet it nearly went awry.
The young guard’s wound showed Liu killed him.
No one expected Liu to survive Shi Cheng’s palm—a ninth-rank major achievement strike.
Liu Quan glared at the old man’s grisly corpse.
Damn, what a tough bastard!
Shi Cheng suppressed his roiling emotions, his sharp eyes scanning the scene.
Two dead guards were trivial; the young master wouldn’t care.
But Liu daring to play dead under his nose and nearly escaping?
And Girl Hu was gone, meaning the ledger’s whereabouts were lost.
A dark cloud settled over Shi Cheng’s gaunt face.
That was bad enough.
The real issue—
who killed Old Zhang?
The hole in Old Zhang’s chest was from a great spear.
The spearwork was brutally precise, a clean kill, likely by a ninth-rank minor achievement martial artist.
Otherwise, how could Old Zhang, a skilled ninth-rank beginner among the outer guards, fall without resistance?
Worse, the spearman was meticulous, shattering Old Zhang’s heart.
Wait—
Shi Cheng froze, eyes sharpening—
a great spear?
He recalled the tiger demon in the Li family’s mining district days ago.
That hill-sized ninth-rank peak beast, killed from within.
The wound that ended it was also from a great spear.
Shi Cheng’s brows knitted. He’d thought Liu Tang, skilled with a long blade, killed the demon, but now doubts arose.
And Liu Tang’s body was still missing.
His eyes hardened.
Perhaps another expert was hidden among Harmony’s convoy that day!
“Liu Quan, get me the list of all pullers who took the Li family’s ore line that day. I want every name checked!”
Liu Quan blinked, confused, but quickly nodded. “Master Cheng, I know the second-tier courtyard well. I’ll have the list by tomorrow.”
“No, I want it tonight,” Shi Cheng said, hands behind his back, his icy tone leaving no room for refusal.
“Yes!” Liu Quan’s forehead beaded with sweat, wondering,
What’s got Master Cheng so fixated on a bunch of filthy pullers?
—
Across from Harmony Rickshaw Yard, in a small inn, Xiangzi soaked in a wooden tub, exhaling deeply.
Submerged in warm water, every pore seemed to breathe joyfully, a peak of comfort.
Having avenged Wen San, Xiangzi finally relaxed, feeling a rare ease.
But recalling the night’s events, his brows furrowed slightly.
Liu’s death stirred no waves in his heart.
Missing the ledger was a pity, but seeing Harmony’s boss die before him counted as vengeance.
Yet Xiangzi felt no great emotion, only calm.
Liu deserved his fate, but his death was a wake-up call:
The Li family’s methods were far sharper than Xiangzi imagined—
his first glimpse of this world’s true power players.
Young master Li, hearing of the ledger from Liu Quan, killed his long-time pawn without question.
In the face of absolute power, all schemes and calculations are frail.
Liu was a figure in the southern city, but to the Li family, with their five-colored gold mines, he was just an old dog.
If a dog barks at its master, why keep it?
Liu, cautious and enduring all his life, thought himself a player, hiding the ledger as leverage against the Li family.
Yet that leverage became his noose.
One sip, one peck—all tied to cause and effect.
—
More alarming was the gaunt martial artist’s prowess.
Liu, with decades of tempered muscles and bones, was a ninth-rank beginner, though aged and weakened.
Yet before Shi Cheng, he couldn’t last a single round?
Was this the strength of ninth-rank major achievement?
As Uncle Jie once said:
Martial ranks have four barriers. A single barrier’s difference is like heaven and earth.
Sighing, Xiangzi rose from the cooling tub.
Across from him was a brass-edged mirror.
The man in it was tall, lean, with bronze skin and chiseled muscles.
Xiangzi noticed the knife scar on his chest had nearly healed, leaving only a faint groove—since consuming the tiger demon’s marrow, his recovery surpassed even Liu Tang’s, who’d trained his skin and bones from youth.
This led him to the anomaly in the Li family’s mining district. Despite being only at the Blood Energy Barrier, he endured the ore dust better than higher-ranked martial artists.
Whether this was good or bad, Xiangzi wasn’t sure.
Could he really be a natural “elixir saint”?
He chuckled self-deprecatingly, opening the cloth pouch from the Li family guard.
Inside was a small square box containing a black, pill-like object.
It had no medicinal scent—unlike the Blood-Regenerating Pill Lin Junqing gave him, this black pill seemed unremarkable.
But something a ninth-rank martial artist carried must have value, right?
After a moment’s thought, Xiangzi stored it away.
His gaze fell to the table—the jade thumb ring from the ground.
Examining it, his brows furrowed.
Inside the large ring, a faint golden trace glimmered—without his uncanny vision, he’d have missed it.
As he held it, an indescribable feeling arose, his dantian’s blood energy slowing slightly.
He recalled the young guard’s excitement when he took the ring.
No wonder.
This jade thumb ring… was carved from a complete pulse crystal!