Surprisingly Enough(NOT), Common Sense Is Overpowered in a Cliché Cultivation World (Patreon)

50. Harvest~

"That went surprisingly well, all things considered," Ning muttered, sitting on a rock.

His face was slightly pale.

While it may have seemed easy to devour the spiritual consciousness of Li Tianhe, it was not without its fair share of hardship as well.

Due to the flood of memories and rapid expansion of his spiritual consciousness, Ning experienced mental overload once again, but unlike the other time, he forced himself to stay awake, so he experienced the whole mental expansion in full.

But compared to the reward gained, the slight pain was nothing.

Ning's eyes shone as he adjusted his state.

"Li Tianhe, a foundation-building cultivator, casual cultivator, ruins..." Ning couldn't help but lick his lips.

The memories he obtained were quite fragmented since he himself had worn down the soul to the point of disintegration, but even so, the harvest he obtained was incomparable.

Firstly, by getting nourished by the other party's consciousness, Ning's own spiritual consciousness was strengthened, and that meant his spiritual sense did as well.

"From nine seconds to sixteen, huh? Good! Very good!" Ning retracted his spiritual sense and got some preliminary results of this harvest.

Besides that, there were some memories of Li Tianhe's own insight into cultivation, his techniques, and even some information about various bizarre experiences he had encountered.

"This gamble really paid off," Ning couldn't help but say again.

Ning already had some suspicions from the moment he encountered the abnormal rat. It only strengthened when he saw the rat suddenly going full protagonist on him.

But there was no effect without cause after all.

After observing the rat for a while, Ning really discovered the abnormality of the rat. As per his normal routine, when he recited the soul-ferrying scripture in his mind, the soul of the dead didn't appear at all, and that rang major bells in his mind.

It meant either that the rat was a soulless creature, or something had already 'exorcised the soul' in the few seconds that Ning killed the beast.

From what he had observed, the rat was not something like a puppet or anything, and the spirit-devouring rat certainly didn't possess the soulless attribute. So, the chance of the second option was highly likely.

Especially the fact that the rat suddenly got a massive amount of spiritual Qi to advance a level meant that there was something weird about its body. So, Ning inwardly recited the soul-ferrying scripture hoping to find something weird.

And lo and behold, there really was something weird. From the rat, came out the soul of a human, it was crumbling and seemed weaker than any other soul Ning had seen.

Fortunately, the soul, under the cognition that Ning cannot sense its presence, boldly ran away, unaware that as long as Ning kept on reciting the scripture, he could not only sense but see the soul itself.

Li Tianhe just met a bad opponent as without some kind of spiritual eyes or treasure, it was extremely hard to come into contact with the soul for a qi cultivator.

So, the following plan was simple. Just 'coincidentally' happen to chance upon the soul and make it greedy enough to attack his own body.

From what Ning could surmise, a soul that was crumbling would in no way be right on the head and he was right. The soul that was breaking apart seemed to be full of emotions, but its cognition of the situation itself was quite low.

Seeing this, Ning changed his plan from ferrying the soul to strengthen his mental power, to devouring it whole. The gains from soul ferrying would be divided into three parts, but devouring the soul itself only nourished his mental powers; it was obvious which had the most gain.

So, Ning saw a chance and took it. He planted the suggestion of taking his body, and the rest was history.

Of course, if the soul itself was any stronger, then he would just turn a blind eye to everything and go on his merry way, but a soul that could even be suppressed by a beast was obviously nothing to write home about.

As for the guilt of 'killing' his very first human, Ning was quite calm about it.

"After all, I was broken from the start. The moment I was touched by the darkness, my path was already decided...okay, let's stop there. It's sounding cringe as f*ck."

Ning shivered reaching this line of thought and sighed softly.

He had already resolved himself, so it was impossible to get weak-willed at the critical moment. Furthermore, it's not like he has no blood on his hands, though all of them were from animals he has slain over the months.

So, Ning was quite calm about it; he did not have the urge to puke nor the urge to go into hysteria. One could even say he was unhinged.

"Well, enough about the depressing stuff; my condition has been stabilized." Ning stood up from the rock, as his blue eyes became a shade darker and seemed like a hawk's eye.

...

..

"It's lootin' time."

...

The first thing Ning did was reach the corpse and pull out a pouch.

This was not the inferior space pouch he had, but a mid-grade space pouch. The only difference was that the size was almost double his space pouch.

Imprinting the space pouch with his own spiritual brand, Ning spread his spiritual sense inside.

But as Ning expected, the content of the space pouch was quite unremarkable. There were some low-grade spiritual stones and some broken weapon parts and pills.

From the vague memories, Ning knew that Li Tianhe had sold most of his property to buy a rare peak tier three pill, so he was broke. Well, casual cultivators were mostly broke anyway, and Li Tianhe was not an exception.

The tier three pill cost all the accumulated wealth that Li Tianhe had amassed for more than seventy years. In the end, even though the pill did save him, his ending was not much different.

"Bro, really had some bad luck. If not for encountering me, he would probably not even be able to pass on his inheritance." In a sense, Ning did inherit the mantle of Li Tianhe, so it was not wrong for him to say that. Of course, that is if they totally ignored Ning 'mistakenly' murdering him in self-defense.

So, the most precious thing in the entire was the box that held the pill, a jade box made from the finest jade so as to preserve the quality.

Besides that, there was a small bowl that seemed to be filled with water, this was a beast bowl. It was used to rear small aquatic spiritual fish.

Glancing at the bowl, Ning muttered, "Only one thing left, I guess."

Ning walked toward a wall, following the fragmented memory.

[Heaven Shattering Fist]

With Qi gathered in his fist, Ning punched out akin to a dragon. While he could barely touch the first form of the technique, its might was not to be underestimated, with a bang, the wall collapsed under extreme force.

Breaking open rocks with bare hands, Jackie Chan would be proud.

With that, Ning walked inside; the hidden area was full of stalactites of different shapes, and there was a sparkling pool, which was so clear that one could even see light-red fish swimming around below.

Red Lightning Carp.

It was an ancient spiritual fish, said to have gone extinct in this region. This was the only gain of Li Tianhe from the ruin he visited. In fact, this was the source of confidence for Li Tianhe to peek into higher realms.

The flesh of these carps had the effect of imbuing the body with lightning Qi. But that was not the main feature of this carp, eating this carp, it was said there was a minor chance to form lightning Qi.

Normally, to form an elemental Qi, one would need to arduously practice for years with a technique of at least yellow grade, then gain insight into their desired element, only then one could form Qi.

That's why this carp is so extraordinary. Though it was said that there was less than a five percent chance to directly form lightning Qi, this was already overpowered enough.

It was for this reason that the colony of this fish was extensively hunted down and was said to be extinct. Of course, that was excluding those big forces, who would probably have treasure of this level in their hands.

Li Tianhe had barely formed Lightning Qi in the foundation-building stage, so using this carp, he wanted to bolster his lightning Qi and even hoped to view the next level.

With precision, Ning scooped up the three red lightning carp and placed them into the bowl.

[Total Harvest: Mid Grade Space Pouch, 3654 low-grade spirit stones, 4 mid-grade spirit stone, fragmented sword pieces, 12 Tier One Blood and Qi Healing Pill, 3 Berserk Pill, Lightning Palm Technique, and Red Lightning Carp]

"No wonder everyone is gunning to kill each other, the harvest is extraordinary indeed." Ning sighed before looking around the empty cave.

"It's time to return now."

...

Thanks for reading~

Sorry for the late update; my laptop broke, and the display got ruined. I've sent it for repair and will add an extra chapter when I get it fixed.