Chapter 6: Spirit Stone

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In the past, Zhou Chen found tutoring to be a painful ordeal. But now, with an absolutely stunning beauty providing him one-on-one guidance, he thought, “Studying for a billion days wouldn’t be a problem!”

“I’ve already reviewed your test paper. The only flaw is your handwriting. Today, I won’t tutor you on anything else; we’ll focus solely on penmanship,” Gu Zhaoyue said, pulling out a handwriting practice book from her bag.

Gu Zhaoyue was patient, carefully pointing out Zhou Chen’s mistakes in stroke order.

Even with just handwriting practice, she worried a lot.

During the lesson, Gu Zhaoyue meticulously guided him hand in hand.

Her subtle fragrance, tender skin, and enticing strands of hair constantly stirred the blood of the vigorous Zhou Chen.

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“All right, it’s getting late. Let’s end today’s tutoring here. Your Chinese language skills are basically flawless now, but you can’t afford to be one-sided. From now on, you need to focus more on other subjects.”

Zhou Chen stood by the window, watching Gu Zhaoyue mount her electric scooter and leave, his mind brimming with thoughts.

Snapping back to reality, Zhou Chen stepped outside.

Before nightfall, he planned to absorb more soul energy.

After these days of effort, Zhou Chen’s soul strength had reached the sixth level of Qi Refinement.

If he absorbed the soul energy of a few more people tonight, he could leap to the seventh level of Qi Refinement.

At that point, he would truly be capable of reading ten lines at a glance and possessing an eidetic memory.

First, he went to the market.

Pretending to buy groceries, he actually released soul-devouring insects to harvest the soul energy of a seafood shop.

This seafood shop was notorious for its underhanded practices: shortchanging customers, switching goods surreptitiously after selection.

Though reported several times, the owner had connections with market supervision officials and only ever received a token verbal warning, with no further consequences.

After Zhou Chen left, customers entered the seafood shop and, seeing the sickly, listless seafood, lost all desire to buy.

“Boss, your seafood looks like it’s about to die.”

“Boss, aren’t these seafood all sick?”

“Let’s go, this place looks unhygienic.”

The owner scratched his head, unable to understand why the seafood that had just arrived yesterday looked like this today.

Zhou Chen’s second stop was a bar.

Filled with all sorts of people, it was the perfect place for his soul-devouring insects to grow.

Zhou Chen sat in an inconspicuous corner, scanning for petty thugs and societal scum.

He soon spotted a wealthy second-generation heir forcing a girl to drink.

He released a soul-devouring insect to consume the man’s soul energy.

“Hey, handsome, alone?”

At that moment, a glamorous girl approached, dressed in black stockings and radiating allure.

She fluttered her eyes at Zhou Chen, attempting to seduce him.

But Zhou Chen had no interest; such women were obviously bar hustlers.

He straightforwardly said, “I’m a senior at No. 1 High School, about to take the college entrance exam. Just here to relax. I have no money.”

As expected, the once enthusiastic girl turned and left immediately.

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Muttering, “No money but still come to a bar. What a poor loser!”

Zhou Chen heard but paid no mind.

He sent out another soul-devouring insect to absorb the girl’s soul energy as well.

His motto was simple: a cultivator must not be insulted and enemies must be repaid.

“Hmm?”

Suddenly, Zhou Chen sensed a peculiar energy amidst the chaotic bar.

Spiritual energy!

Indeed, the unmistakable aura of spiritual energy!

Unexpected to sense such a clear spiritual energy fluctuation in this lawless era.

Zhou Chen closed his eyes and, with his sixth-level Qi Refinement soul, sought the source.

“Found it!”

He fixed his gaze on a gaunt young man with lifeless eyes, seemingly a drug addict.

The man held a wooden box and was heading toward a private room with a waiter.

As Zhou Chen stood up, his expression changed.

The soul-devouring queen insect signaled that the accumulated soul energy was sufficient to evolve to the next level and to breed five soul-devouring offspring insects.

The insect clan’s cultivation system wasn’t like Qi Refinement or Foundation Building, nor beast evolution—it was more akin to a sci-fi leveling system.

The queen insect, just awakened from the seal, was level 1, while the three offspring insects were level 0.

Thanks to continuous nourishment from the offspring, the queen had advanced from level 1 to level 2.

A new ability unlocked—the Clan Shared Eye.

This ability allowed all insects to share a unified vision, which the queen could extend to Zhou Chen through the demonic seed.

Soon, Zhou Chen saw a vastly different world.

Here, everyone in the bar appeared as streams of energy.

This energy was concentrated mainly in the head—the so-called soul energy.

Many stationary objects were blurry, like clusters of mosaic.

Zhou Chen merged his own perception with the offspring insects’ vision.

The human eye’s world remained unchanged, but now with an added layer showing the soul energy status of living beings.

This was undoubtedly a divine technique, a cheating artifact.

With it, he could use the soul-devouring insects to spy on other examinees’ test papers.

Though useless for Zhou Chen—his goal was to become the top scorer in the college entrance exam!

He immediately ordered the three offspring insects to follow the gaunt youth.

The youth entered a luxurious private room and eagerly threw himself onto a table, greedily inhaling drugs.

“Where’s the stuff I asked for?”

Still in a euphoric state, the youth was slapped awake by a thug.

“Ah? Oh, it’s here.”

The youth pulled the wooden box from his pocket.

The thug handed it, along with the box, to a handsome young man—clearly another wealthy heir.

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“Haha, it really is a transcendent crystal!”

Chen Wenxu was ecstatic; with the transcendent crystal, his ancient martial cultivation advanced further!

Through shared vision with the soul-devouring offspring, Zhou Chen witnessed this scene and felt some puzzlement.

Undoubtedly, the young man laughing with the spirit stone was no ordinary person.

Yet Zhou Chen sensed no cultivator’s aura from him.

Using the soul-devouring insects’ vision, Zhou Chen clearly saw that Chen Wenxu’s soul strength far exceeded that of ordinary people.

He thought it through: this man was likely a cultivator of the lawless era, not following the ancient cultivator path, but focusing more on physical training.

From what Zhou Chen observed, he could ascertain this man was an utterly villainous character!

Simply providing drugs for others to inhale was enough to sentence him to death.

So Zhou Chen decided to kill, intending to have a soul-devouring insect completely consume this man’s soul.

But to be safe, he sent only one insect.

In his excited state, Chen Wenxu didn’t notice the insect approaching.

By the time he realized, it was too late—the insect had entered his ear.

“Huh? There’s a bug?”

Next moment, Chen Wenxu felt a sharp pain in his head and hurriedly clutched it.

“What the hell kind of bug is this!?”

He writhed on the ground in pain but soon recovered.

“Damn!”

Chen Wenxu grimaced, but the pain subsided.

Though Chen Wenxu was unharmed, Zhou Chen’s heart sank.

The soul-devouring offspring attempting to consume Chen Wenxu’s soul was violently resisted.

During the struggle, the offspring insect’s soul was destroyed by Chen Wenxu’s soul.

“As expected, a cultivator!”

Zhou Chen frowned deeply.

But soon, he relaxed his brow.

This man was indeed a cultivator, but not the same kind as himself.

His soul was merely stronger.

If the queen insect intervened, she could probably take him down.

Zhou Chen didn’t want the queen insect to take such a risk—there was no need.

He planned to wait until the queen insect bred the other five offspring insects, then attack together.

As for the spirit stone, it wasn’t that important; after all, Zhou Chen cultivated the “Demonic Seed of Dao Heart”—a pile of spirit stones meant little.

He silently memorized Chen Wenxu’s face and resolved that when they met again, Chen Wenxu would become food for the soul-devouring insects.