I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

Chapter 222 A Glimmer of Life

The black market vendor's eyes, gleaming with greed, were fixed on Old Ding's weathered face.

Old Ding remained silent. He knew that this so-called "Blazing Sun Pill Waste Liquid" was trash that cultivators would discard like worn-out shoes. Consuming it would not only be of no benefit to cultivation, but would even damage the meridians due to the violent fire poison.

But for his wife, whose internal organs were almost frozen due to the extreme yin energy, this extremely domineering, even lethal dose of "fire poison" was the only antidote that could fight poison with poison and forcibly dispel the extreme yin energy!

"I'm not afraid of losing my life. I'm just asking, how much?" Old Ding's voice was calm, but his right hand, which only had three fingers left, was tightly gripping the spirit crystal voucher in his pocket.

"Five hundred spirit crystals." The stall owner held up one finger, chuckling coldly. "Not a single penny less."

Five hundred spirit crystal coupons!

Old Ding's heart sank, as if gripped tightly by an invisible hand. In the third arsenal of this fortified city, he worked ten hours a day on a CNC machine tool, toiling away for a month, and after deducting the expenses of buying basic spirit rice and nutrient solution, he could only save up less than fifty spirit crystal coupons at most.

Five hundred bills—it would take him almost a year to raise this huge sum! His wife couldn't wait that long.

"Boss, we've all crawled out of piles of dead bodies in the wilderness, please give us a way out." Old Ding's eyes were slightly red, and he trembled as he pulled out all his savings from his pocket—one hundred and twenty spirit crystal vouchers, soaked in sweat and crumpled.

"That's all I have. But I still have a life. This prosthetic leg of mine was a standard-issue item issued to me when I retired from the military. It has two miniature arrays inside, and it can be sold for at least a hundred dollars if I take it apart. And then there's my cornea, my kidney..."

"Stop, stop, stop!"

The stall owner seemed to have heard an extremely funny joke, and interrupted Lao Ding without any mercy, even kicking away the pitiful spirit crystal vouchers that Lao Ding handed over.

"Old man, have you been spending too much time in the sewers? Has your brain rusted? What about your life? Your organs? What era is this? It's the era of cultivation!"

The stall owner pointed at Old Ding's nose, his tone filled with extremely cruel mockery: "There are billions of mortals outside right now, and every single one of them is well-fed and plump from the Crimson Blood Spirit Rice. They have plenty of organs! Besides, no matter how healthy a mortal's organs are, they don't contain a trace of spiritual energy. For cultivators, they're even too dirty to feed to dogs!"

"As for your broken, rusty prosthetic leg?" the stall owner glanced at it. "What the black market has in abundance right now are cheap prosthetics for lowly worker ants like you. Get lost! Don't get in my way."

Old Ding froze on the spot as if struck by lightning.

The stall owner's words were like an extremely sharp knife, cruelly dissecting the most hypocritical facade of this era.

Yes.

In this era dominated by cultivators and with a highly developed psionic industry, mortals no longer need to worry about starving. The widespread use of agricultural formations has led to an astonishingly high grain yield. The government even regularly distributes free nutrient solutions to the lower classes.

However, behind this "abundance of food and clothing" lies an extremely profound and despairing sorrow.

Because besides "living" and working day after day on the assembly line for cultivators, you can't change anything.

In the old days, the poor could sell their blood, organs, or even their lives for a glimmer of hope to transcend their social class. But what about now? In the eyes of cultivators, the flesh and blood of mortals are worthless waste, and a mortal's life is cheaper than the spiritual rice in the ground!

You don't even deserve to risk your life!

This is the insurmountable class divide of our time. The absolute monopoly on cultivation resources has completely sealed off 80% of humanity in that bottom-level incubator, a place only fit for "production." The path to immortality is severed; even the ladder to survival has been ruthlessly removed.

Old Ding lowered his head, clenching his teeth tightly. His three remaining fingers dug deep into his palms, oblivious even as blood flowed from them.

He slowly bent down and picked up the spirit crystal tickets scattered in the mud one by one. Then, leaning on the mechanical prosthetic leg that made a screeching sound, he left the black market like a walking corpse.

He didn't blame the stall owner. In this dog-eat-dog world, compassion is the most luxurious thing. He only hated himself, hated that he was a useless person without spiritual roots, hated that he didn't even have the last bit of ability to protect his wife.

……

After leaving the black market, Lao Ding wandered aimlessly through the streets of Suzhou's seventh satellite city.

Compared to the cramped conditions of the lower city of Shanghai Fortress, the streets of the satellite city are much wider. On both sides of the streets, enormous official supply depots are visible everywhere.

A dozen giant stainless steel grain storage tanks, each tens of meters high, stood in the center of the square. Tracked transport vehicles continuously dumped tons of "Crimson Blood Rice" and "High-Protein Synthetic Meat Bricks" into the distribution pool.

The long queue stretched as far as the eye could see, with thousands of ordinary people from the lower classes holding their stained spirit crystal coupons and orderly buying enough food to feed their families for a week.

Prices are kept extremely low by the Alliance. As long as you're willing to work like a worker ant in the armory or mines, the meager wages you earn are enough to feed your whole family every day, ensuring they never starve.

The air was filled with the rich aroma of cooked spirit rice. Although the faces of the mortals bore the marks of weariness from their labor, their complexions were mostly rosy. Years of consuming this mutated rice, imbued with a faint spiritual energy, had made these laborers far more physically robust than ordinary people of the old era.

This is exactly the "universal harmony" and "prosperous age of plenty" that people in the old days dreamed of.

But in Lao Ding's eyes, the scene exuded a chilling despair.

He looked at the mortals queuing up. They were well-fed, well-clothed, and could easily live to be ninety. But there was no light in their eyes.

They're like a group of hamsters kept in a huge, transparent glass tank.

The alliance's leaders and cultivators filled the stomachs of mortals with the cheapest spiritual rice, but ruthlessly removed all the steps they had to climb to the top.

In the old days, even the poor could achieve upward social mobility through education, business, or even risking their lives on the battlefield. Are kings and generals born with a special destiny?

But in the era of cultivating immortality, there are certain kinds of people.

That "seed" is called a spiritual root.

Without spiritual roots, no matter how many physics formulas you learn, you won't be able to understand even the most basic [Spirit Gathering Array]; no matter how much wealth you accumulate, in front of a cultivator's flying sword, you're just a relatively fat lamb waiting to be slaughtered.

You don't even qualify to "risk your life." Because your mortal body is of no use to cultivators. Your life is worthless in this extraordinary era.

He was well-fed, but his path to immortality was severed.

This is the deepest despair of our time. You know perfectly well that there are gods who can command the wind and rain, and elixirs of immortality in this world, but you can only kneel in the mud forever, a worker ant responsible for providing the physical shell for this massive immortal-cultivation machine, until you die of old age.

"Cough cough cough..."

Old Ding leaned against a lamppost on the street corner, letting out a violent, dry cough. The cold wind pierced through his thin clothes, but it couldn't dispel the chill that felt like falling into an ice cave in his heart.

Without money, we can't buy medicine, and my wife might not last much longer.

Just as Old Ding was feeling utterly hopeless and preparing to find a corner to quietly end his absurd and pathetic life, his gaze was suddenly drawn to a holographic projection sign across the street.

That was a private shop called the "Blood Wolf Wilderness Expedition Team".

Standing at the shop entrance was a burly man with a full beard, radiating the spiritual energy of a fourth-level Qi Refining stage cultivator. He was holding a megaphone and shouting hoarsely at the idle mortals on the street:

"The Blood Wolf Expedition is recruiting! We're setting off early tomorrow morning, heading towards the outer edge of the Jiuhua Mountain spiritual vein, fifty miles away! We're looking for ten ordinary 'porters'!"

"You don't need to have cultivation, you don't need to be a fighter! All you need is some strength to carry the low-grade spirit ore we've mined out of the wilderness!"

"Generous rewards! Two hundred spirit crystal vouchers for each person who returns alive! If you die... a settlement fee of five hundred spirit crystal vouchers, paid on the spot and deposited into your family's account!"

The burly man's roar echoed through the bustling street, but the ordinary people around him avoided him as if he were a plague.

Go to the wilderness? And even to the outer reaches of those spiritual veins that are sealed off by high-level cultivators and powerful clans?

Everyone knows that the mutated plants and animals in the wilderness are becoming increasingly bizarre. Mortals who follow low-level cultivators to the wilderness as "porters" are, to put it nicely, doing physical labor, but to put it bluntly, in the event of a mutated beast tide, mortals are just "human bait" thrown out by cultivators to buy them time to escape!

This isn't recruiting workers, it's recruiting a suicide squad!

In an era when everyone had enough to eat and wear, who would risk their life for a few hundred spirit crystal vouchers?

Old Ding looked at the impatient, burly man, and suddenly a terrifying, almost frenzied, light, like a final burst of life, flashed in his empty, lifeless eyes.

The lives of ordinary people are indeed worthless.

But if used as bait for wild animals, it seems... it could fetch a decent price.

"Crunch—crunch—"

Old Ding pushed through the crowd, dragging his heavy mechanical prosthetic leg, and walked step by step with unwavering determination to the strong man in the Qi Refining stage.

"Immortal Master."

Old Ding raised his head, his weathered face expressionless. "I'm signing up to be a porter."

The burly man paused for a moment, looked Old Ding up and down, then frowned deeply, making no attempt to hide the disdain in his eyes.

"Old man, didn't you hear what I just said? We need strong laborers who can carry two hundred pounds of ore! Look at you, half-buried in the ground, wearing a broken, rusty prosthetic leg. Forget about carrying ore, you couldn't even outrun the weakest mutant rabbit!"

"Get lost, get lost, don't bother me!" The burly man waved his hand impatiently, as if shooing away a fly.

Old Ding didn't move.

He slowly rolled up the sleeve of his left arm, revealing a huge, gruesome scar on his arm, as if it had been torn apart by some kind of sharp claw.

"I am a veteran who retired from the East China Sea defense line of Bureau 749."

Old Ding's voice was hoarse, but it carried a chilling quality honed by countless battles. "I know your true purpose in recruiting mortals to the wilderness. If danger arises, I won't hold you back. I know how to slit my own arteries and use the scent of blood to lure away the mutated beasts."

"I'm not fast, but I know how to be the best bait."

Old Ding looked directly into the burly man's eyes and said, word by word, "I only need five hundred bills for the resettlement fee. And I want it in cash, right now."

The burly man's impatience disappeared.

He gave the disabled veteran a deep look, a hint of surprise flashing in his eyes. In all his years in this line of work, he had seen greedy people and desperate people, but he had rarely seen a mortal like the old man in front of him who spoke of "suicide" so calmly and clearly.

In the wilderness, a veteran who knows how to die is more valuable than ten strong novices who only scream and run around in the face of danger.

"Five hundred cash bills?"

The burly man stroked his chin, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. "Deal. Sign this waiver, take the money, and meet at the city gate at six tomorrow morning. If you dare to run, we have a hundred ways to make you wish you were dead."

……

Ten minutes later.

Old Ding returned to that remote corner of the black market.

He neatly slapped five hundred spirit crystal coupons, each stained with his fingerprints, in front of the black-cloaked stall owner.

The stall owner glanced at Lao Ding with some surprise. After confirming the authenticity of the spirit crystal voucher, he sneered and tossed the inferior jade bottle containing the "Blazing Sun Pill Waste Liquid" to Lao Ding.

"Money and goods settled. Old man, may you depart this world warmly."

Old Ding ignored the stall owner's vicious curses. He carefully put the jade bottle close to his body, feeling the violent warmth emanating from it. Finally, a smile, more painful than a grimace, appeared on his deathly face.

I got the medicine.

I've sold my life too.

Old Ding turned and limped towards the train station. The array of light in the night sky flickered with a cold light, and the high and mighty cultivators still looked down on the masses from the clouds.

The path to immortality for mortals is severed. But even in the deepest abyss of despair, there are always some ants willing to use the faint light of their own burning lives to try and illuminate even a second of darkness for those around them.