Chapter Sixty-Four: Beggars Do Not Eat the Food of the Starved

Long Yi sensed Wuyun’s gaze and hurriedly pleaded aloud, “Senior, the Soulshocking Blade flared up, rescued Little Worm and me, then swept us through one array and trap after another, and suddenly—it brought us here.” As he spoke, he raised the Soulshocking Blade. Where the broken blade had once ended, a new tip had grown, but now a notch marred its edge. It was said this wound was left by the jade seal hauled by these eighteen celestial dragons; even the ancestral dragon of the Six Talents was injured by it and dared not show itself.

“As long as you don’t disturb the Celestial Coffin, nothing will happen,” Wuyun assured them, observing carefully and quickly identifying what was amiss. Drawing on years of experience, he comforted them, “Don’t panic. The two of you just focus on your cultivation. The creature inside the coffin shouldn’t come out to eat you. After all, you two are far too weak to even fill a gap between its teeth.”

Long Yi and Little Worm looked pale, but Wuyun was already contemplating the hundreds of meters long, needle-sharp points—each one the equal of a lowest-grade celestial artifact.

“My lord, you really intend to leave nothing behind!” Old Bear Three saw how intently Wuyun studied the scene and felt a pang of distress. As expected, the task of removing these celestial spines had fallen to him and Battle King.

“They must be excavated from the very root,” Wuyun instructed, “only then can the spines retain their form and be refined into beautiful ninth-grade celestial artifacts.” Under his guidance, Battle King pondered how best to reach the deepest part and sever them.

Transforming his body was useless, celestial bones did not help, and Old Bear Three was even less capable. Should they send Yue Qi burrowing below?

“Listen to my command! Manifest your true form, plant your feet firmly, stabilize your stance, wrap your aura around the spine’s root, then use your spirit sense to pull—”

With a long shout, Wuyun spurred Battle King on. Drenched in sweat, he managed to snap one off, breaking it three meters from the tip.

“Excellent, keep going!”

This was a form of spiritual cultivation in itself. Even Wuyun was practicing as he supervised, gaining experience. As skill grew with practice, Battle King finally wrenched out the first spine, and Old Bear Three, unable to contain himself, shrank his size and leaped down for the second.

It was like prying up the first brick in a flat expanse—once the first was loose, the rest yielded in quick succession.

One, two...

A hundred, a thousand...

Ten thousand...

When over ten thousand had been extracted, Old Bear Three was just catching his breath when his hand suddenly trembled. As if stepping on a viper, he leapt back with a cry of alarm.

At the base where the dense spines had been uprooted, a corner of a closed mouth emerged. Pulling further would reveal a complete maw.

“A coiled-up hedgehog beast? A Celestial King-level monster?” Battle King drew a sharp breath. If this was indeed a Celestial King-level beast, it explained why all the spines were artifact-class.

But was it dead or alive? Old Bear Three and Battle King were seized by terror. If the Celestial King still lived, a single breath would be enough to destroy all four of them.

Wuyun snorted, “There’s only a Ten-tailed Fox Celestial King here!”

To be certain, he quietly sent a tuft of cloud drifting below. After a while, the cloud dispersed and reformed in his hand. Relieved, he grunted and was about to use the Ten Heavens and Nine Earths Array Diagram to harvest more when a shadow emerged from the distant forest of spines.

The shadow appeared one moment, then the next, it was at the edge of Wuyun’s formation, searching in confusion but not finding what it sought.

The trio dared not breathe, silently praying the array’s concealment would suffice to deceive the intruder. But as the shadow faded, a humanoid monster bristling with spines materialized, a hedgehog’s face covered in tufts of long hair drooping from its chin.

“Who dares steal my treasures? I’ll skewer them and roast them for three days and nights!” the hedgehog-faced creature snarled, turning to glare directly at the array. In that instant, the three realized its eyes were hollow, an empty shell bearing an evil spirit within.

“Who are you, daring to sneak into my resting place and pilfer my body?” the hedgehog face addressed the formation. Wuyun ignored it, continuing to wait.

When the formation gave no reply, two streams of black mist welled from the hollow eyes, swirling like lingering spirits and entwining the array.

Looking out from the array’s heart, there was no black mist—only a malevolent ghost gnawing at the protective barrier.

With each bite, the celestial energy the formation regenerated diminished. If this continued for days, the array would regress, losing everything it had rebuilt.

Old Bear Three grinned foolishly. Battle King, puzzled, asked why he laughed. The other replied cheerfully, “Who doesn’t know Senior Wuyun is a gourmet of the highest order?”

“Let that thing show off outside the array. I’d wager by the next moment, it’ll be the one begging for mercy!”

But events did not go as Old Bear Three wished. After the ghost gnawed for a while and heard no response, the black mist thickened, and from two nostril-like apertures in the spine forest, more hedgehog faces emerged.

These faces varied in size, yet moved and spoke as one.

Old Bear Three was marveling at this when he noticed that the artifact-like spines were slowly shifting, from upright to symmetrical, as though preparing to pierce the array.

He urged Wuyun to flee, but Wuyun scoffed, “Escape is impossible. We’re right above the creature’s mouth—move, and we’ll be sucked into the Celestial King’s body.”

Above the mouth?

Old Bear Three looked down and realized the mouth had somehow shifted to the center of the array, yawning open to reveal a white mist.

If the array had moved a moment before, they’d have been sucked in at once. Now, lodged at the mouth’s edge, as long as the mouth and the array remained still, there was a stalemate.

As countless spines pressed in, the harvested ten thousand spines became their salvation. From the center of the array, they unfurled outward like a peacock’s tail, bristling defensively.

Point against point, the spines could not penetrate.

But the black mist began seeping through the array’s defenses, forming anew within the space of a day and a world.

This, in fact, Wuyun allowed deliberately; he sought to understand the nature of these ghostly presences.

“A trace of unyielding resentment—this Celestial Hedgehog King, in his final moments, clung fiercely to life, leaving behind an indelible obsession. It must have been an Immortal Emperor who killed him—only such a being could slay him in an instant and leave this result.”

Wuyun captured a fragment of obsession; the coalesced resentment took the shape of a ghostly head and gnawed at the bones of his hand.

The fleshless bone was bitten away at once, but the ghost spat it out in disgust, even making a gesture of revulsion.

“My body is cursed, more wretched than a ghost. Who’s ever heard of a beggar eating a starving ghost?” Wuyun mocked himself, cast a spell, and absorbed the obsession into his body.

Strangely, after absorbing the black mist, Wuyun’s own body began to emit the same dark vapor.

In the next instant, Wuyun and the hedgehog-face formed of black mist became as close as sworn brothers, needing only to exchange blood and wine to seal their bond.

But, as Old Bear Three had boasted, Wuyun was the true connoisseur among gourmands. The black mist infiltrating the array grew ever denser, but he absorbed it all. His cultivation, at the threshold of Soulbreaking, soared as if riding a rocket.

From the early to late stages of Concentration, to its peak, and then to Celestial Body. And the body thus formed was an enviable, top-tier Shadow Immortal Body.

Though not the very best, it was close behind the mainstream. With such a foundation, his chances of ascending to the God Realm were greatly increased.

“This is the Celestial Body of the Hedgehog-face Immortal King!”

As Wuyun’s immortal body took shape, the black mist outside finally changed color, turning a charred yellow—the indestructible obsession, now purified, revealed its true hue.

With deeper communion, Wuyun sensed the final meaning of this obsession. He chanted a mantra, produced a prayer bead, tossed it out, and all the obsessions burrowed inside. The bead vanished.

Outside, the remaining hedgehog pelts were strewn everywhere, toppling and collapsing, slowly disintegrating into dust and fading from existence.

“These obsessions had become a single soul, believing itself the body. Come, let’s see what else remains within this Celestial King’s body!”

Guiding the array, he no longer cared for the spines but drifted from the mouth’s edge inside.

No sooner had they entered the maw than twenty-four celestial pillars appeared—these were the teeth of the Celestial King, vast beyond imagining.

Old Bear Three, excited, leaped out and touched them, only to find his face fall; the teeth were decayed.

“That hedgehog’s steel jaws must have been useless,” he consoled himself, following the enormous throat deeper. Along the way, countless arrays appeared, but since they slipped inside unnoticed, none were triggered.

When they reached the vital organs, eleven altars lay dim and ruined. Only the celestial river within the body still floated with all manner of celestial artifacts.

Old Bear Three and Battle King rejoiced, rushing to inspect them. Of over a thousand artifacts, the finest were fifth-grade, but all were riddled with pockmarks, abused as nests by previous spirits and hedgehog faces.

Cursing, Old Bear Three searched in vain for a single intact piece, but Wuyun collected them with the array. Instantly, they were restored into a formation of Two Days and Two Lands, their power vastly increased.

“Come, let’s examine those altars—that’s the foundation of the Hedgehog Immortal King’s cultivation!”

Wuyun led Old Bear Three to the edge of the first altar. It resembled a machine, inlaid with all manner of cubes, each like a separate cultivation technique. The runes, patterns, and colors upon them marked the level of progress.

Witnessing such a profound cultivation system, Battle King was tempted to study it, but Wuyun stopped him. “The spirit is dead, but the altar still harbors immense power. Touch it, and you’ll trigger an explosion!”

Gazing into the distance, Long Yun smiled, for one altar remained unfinished—the twelfth. Had it been completed, the Hedgehog Immortal King’s power would have reached perfection.

But even so, at the peak of his strength, he could not have withstood a single blow from an Immortal Emperor who had survived the Celestial Tribulation.

Within the unfinished altar stood a stone pillar like a celestial stele, newly formed. After deciphering the runes inscribed upon it, they read a single phrase: “Dragonform Ninefold Body-shattering Technique!”

“Can I learn it?” Old Bear Three asked.

Wuyun looked at him as if he were a fool and shook his head. “I have plenty of techniques like this—common stuff. I’ve got nine hundred and ten variations of soul-body techniques. If you want, you can trade one of your divine arts instead!”

Dismissing Old Bear Three, Wuyun pointed, and the array enclosed the unfinished altar, dissected it layer by layer, and forced out a segment of incantation. After careful analysis, a terrifying conclusion emerged.

The technique had a fatal flaw!

Wuyun pondered further, then attempted to seize a complete altar. But as soon as it entered the array, it exploded violently, scattering fragments everywhere.

Yet often, it is from such details that Wuyun gleaned insight. With a thoughtful hum, he collected the remaining ten altars as well and repeated the process.

“What’s there to enjoy in the sound of explosions? It’s all just worthless debris!”