Life as a Rogue Cultivator

Chapter 268: The Final Effort

Rain hammered the mountains, snakes of lightning writhed inside the black clouds.Liu Xiaolou sat under the tree, calm and focused, his flute ringing out strong and fierce over the thunder. In the wind and rain, the spirit of the leopard flickered and swayed.

This spirit leopard was born with the power of thunder and lightning. After a full year of trial and error, Liu Xiaolou had learned that storms were the perfect time to cultivate it. Every time thunder rolled and lightning flashed, a bit of that electric energy would be absorbed by the leopard’s phantom and stored within.

Another three months passed. The phantom had grown to more than six feet long and over two feet tall. It was still clearly an apparition. Nowhere near a solid, living beast. But it had become strikingly lifelike. You could see the fur, each faint shimmer of it, and even the dim blue glow in its eyes. It looked almost as if the leopard had been reborn.

By this stage, the phantom had gained a bit of real combat strength. Don’t be fooled by the word “phantom”... when it lunged, it carried a sharp, cutting gust with it. Its fangs and claws could draw blood, and a sideways sweep of its tail could snap a tree trunk as thick as a man’s three fingers. Now and then, sparks of lightning crackled along its tail; a single brush against the skin left a tingling numbness.

Back when Liu Xiaolou had just descended from Wulong Mountain, at only the second layer of Qi Refinement, he would’ve had a hard time winning against this very phantom.

A phantom that could actually fight... just thinking about it felt a little unreal. Moments like this made Liu Xiaolou admit that some of the cultivation techniques of Badong really did have their merits. They truly deserved to be called paths of the Great Dao.

Still, relying on the spirit leopard phantom in an actual battle was far off. This was going to be a long, slow road of cultivation. But the phantom had finally taken shape, and that meant it was time to make his escape.

He moved to the edge of the treetop canopy and waited patiently for the right moment. At the same time, he took another magical tool from his Qiankun Pouch. A Jade Pendant Concealment. And he fastened it to himself. He'd gotten this jade amulet from Lu Yuanlang’s younger brother back on Tianmu Mountain. It had once helped him slip past Qingyu Sect’s spiritual-sense patrols, but when he tried using it again last year, it hadn’t fooled the demon tree at all.

Even so, he put it on now. If it provided even the slightest cover... if it threw off the demon tree’s spiritual sense by a hair, it would still be worth it.

A thunderclap shook the whole mountain range. A jagged streak of lightning tore across the sky from southwest to northeast. Liu Xiaolou had been waiting for exactly this moment. The sharp cry of his flute burst out, and the spirit leopard phantom sprang from the flute, charging wildly toward the open.

At the same time, Liu Xiaolou stirred his true qi. With a tap of his toes, he shot forward after it.

With his cultivation at the tenth layer, his speed had made another clear leap. At least twenty percent faster than when he was at the eighth layer.

The ground shook. Vines burst out of the soil, whipping toward the spirit leopard phantom and coiling around its limbs and tail. It flared with lightning, sparks flying across the twisting vines as it thrashed and struggled. But the phantom leopard was simply too weak to do any real damage. And in no time, the vines had it tightly bound and were dragging it back.

Liu Xiaolou never really meant to rely on the phantom to fight the demon tree. All he needed was for the phantom to draw its attention and buy him a chance to escape. For that, he was willing to give up the phantom he’d spent a whole year refining.

He shot forward with all his speed, longing more than ever for the free world just ahead.

Then... something clamped around both his ankles, and a powerful force yanked him backward. Panicking, he whipped out the Three-Mystery Sword. The three streaks of sword-light spun into a blossom and slashed toward the vine coiling around his legs.

With his cultivation so much stronger now, his sword-light had grown sharper too. The three limp strands of sword-light spun fast and sawed forward, finally slicing through one of the vines. It was the first time he’d ever managed to cut one of those tough things, and joy surged through him... only to vanish almost instantly. More vines whipped toward him. He tried to block them with the Glass Shield, but there were just too many. They wrapped around him, and the shield too, binding him tight and dragging him backward.

In his desperation, Liu Xiaolou flung out the formation disk. It was a last-ditch move, hardly more than wishful thinking. But to his surprise, it actually worked!

The vines binding him suddenly fell into confusion. Some loosened and drifted around him aimlessly, as if they’d forgotten what they were doing. Others tightened even more, as though unaware they’d already captured him, squeezing harder and harder until his tongue nearly lolled out from the pressure.

More vines burst up from the ground, gathering just outside the reach of the formation’s effect. One after another, they wove themselves into a tight, living fence, sealing him inside.

Another squeeze like that and he’d be crushed to death. Liu Xiaolou had no choice but to withdraw the formation disk. The moment the formation collapsed, the vines locked onto him again. They wrapped around him over and over, winding him up like a giant silkworm cocoon, then dragged him back and hung him beneath the tree.

And so he dangled there for seven whole days. Then, at some unknown moment, the “cocoon” suddenly loosened. The vines slipped away one by one, shrinking back into the ground. Liu Xiaolou dropped headfirst into the mud. It took a while before his mind slowly cleared and he came back to himself.

Thinking back on this narrow escape, he realized a few things:

First, the spirit leopard phantom actually worked. The demon tree treated it like a living creature and sent vines after it.

Second, the formation was effective too. The demon tree was clearly smarter than the leopard spirit, which was exactly why it could be thrown off by the formation’s illusions.

And third, despite how harshly the demon tree punished him, it still had never shown any intent to kill him. Or eat him.

Fourth, it’s now absolutely confirmed: the demon tree didn't rely only on its spiritual sense to detect movement... it actually . It could use those eyes just like any creature to track its prey. No wonder the Jade Pendant Concealment had zero effect on it.

Fifth, the whole "run for it" plan actually showed some promise. The distance he had managed to flee, especially through the air, was way farther than ever before. The real problem was how to deal with that overwhelming number of vines. If he could create ten -phantoms, wouldn’t he finally stand a chance?

But refining even phantom was an ordeal. Making ten… that’s almost impossible. What would that take? Ten years?

Of course, that opens up a whole other can of worms. Forget how long it would take... where would he even get that many phantoms? You couldn't just use any living creature. If they're not spiritual beasts or insects, their souls were useless for refining. It's enough to give you a headache.

Liu Xiaolou racked his brain for a solution, but no matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t come up with a single workable idea. All he could do was pace around the same tiny plot of land, back and forth, back and forth....

The next three months passed the same way. He was still stuck here. With no spirit stones, his cultivation progress had basically ground to a halt. He had to rely on the occasional berries and fat bugs the tree demon tossed over to replenish the tiniest bit of spiritual energy. But using that alone to break through the tenth layer? Impossible without at least thirty to fifty years. As for reaching Foundation Establishment… he didn’t even dare think about it.

He still kept up the habit of refining the spirit leopard phantom once in the morning and once at night. Didn’t seem to do much of anything, but it was the only way he had of killing time without losing his mind.

Even in the southern Ten-Thousand Great Mountains, where seasons barely bothered to show their faces, he could tell the heat was finally letting up. The mornings and evenings carried a hint of cool now. And that was enough to make him realize: he was staring down his second winter trapped here.

He had no idea how many times he’d kowtowed to this damned demon tree, bowing with total devotion, even hitting the ground flat in submission. But the demon tree never showed the slightest intention of letting him go. The only change was that it started tossing more spirit fruits and spirit insects, just enough for him to gain a tiny bit of progress in his cultivation.

But even so, after three months, the spiritual energy he’d accumulated wasn’t enough to break through acupoint.

One afternoon, as he sat under the tree spacing out, his ears suddenly twitched. It sounded… like someone talking.

At first he thought he was imagining things. But the voices grew clearer, closer... and then two people stepped out from the forest across from him.

A man and a woman.

Liu Xiaolou couldn’t hold back his emotions. Tears burst out of him.