Chapter 14: Cruel Acts, Death Is Not Enough

"Impossible... you’re actually a cultivator!"
The old man’s eyes widened, filled with confusion, unwillingness, and shock. Then he collapsed to the ground, dead, unable to find peace even in death.
As soon as he died, his body began to change. His once dark hair faded to a dull white, his skin grew more wrinkled, and his frame shriveled, as if he had been dried out for years in an instant.
Zhang Kai looked on in silence.
As expected, this fellow was nothing in the face of true martial arts, unable to withstand even half of my strength.
And yet he dared to boast about his own power? Ridiculous, arrogant fool.
Still, there was something uncanny about him.
With iron chains locking his shoulder blades, he still possessed such strength and lived for over a hundred years, remaining vigorous.
What was the principle behind this?
Thinking it over, Zhang Kai took out his phone, finding a single bar of signal.
He quickly opened Baidu, searched for a video about large flashlights, then snatched a flashlight from a product reviewer’s hands and began exploring the cave.
Under the strong beam, the environment within the cave became clear at a glance.
The iron chain was long, stretching deep into the cave’s interior.
Zhang Kai walked and observed, and before long, he discovered a space reminiscent of an underground cavern, with signs of human excavation.
Furthermore, Zhang Kai sensed a chilling cold: the icy air seeped through his skin, burrowing into his bones.
He could already channel energy to ward off the cold, able to withstand winter bare-chested, but here the chill was overwhelming, forcing him to shiver.
"What kind of place is this, why is it so cold?" Zhang Kai wondered, scanning the surroundings, soon spotting a pool.
This pool was peculiar, barely two meters across, shrouded in wisps of mist. The water was black, and the chain that bound the figure extended right beneath its surface.
Zhang Kai reached out to touch the chain, and immediately a bone-chilling cold stabbed through him, forcing him to let go as if shocked by electricity.
Too cold—just that brief touch nearly froze his fingers off.
This pool was truly sinister, so cold it seemed unnatural.
Could it be that the old man used the icy pool to freeze himself, prolonging his life?
Looking around, Zhang Kai made another discovery.

There was a bed and a collection of books and sundry items.
He picked up a book and flipped through it, and his gaze sharpened.
These were actually secret cultivation methods, and not just any, but the complete inheritance of the Maoshan Sect: diagrams for talisman crafting, methods for gathering energy and building a foundation, and even techniques for refining and raising corpses.
Could the man he just killed have been a former Daoist master of White Cloud Temple?
Zhang Kai speculated, but with the man dead, there was no way to ask.
He continued searching and found something resembling a journal.
Inside were notes on his own situation and experimental data—the subject of the experiments was none other than the pool in the cave.
Some entries confirmed Zhang Kai’s suspicions.
The man chained in the cave was actually the first abbot of White Cloud Temple, of Maoshan descent, whose family had guarded the sect’s rules and protected the community for generations. However, as spiritual energy faded and cultivation became difficult, he grew unwilling to give up and journeyed far in search of fortune.
And he found it—
This mountain’s icy pool, a spiritual nexus born from eons of geological change and fortuitous circumstances.
If spiritual energy still existed, this place would be saturated with it, an ideal spot for cultivation.
But the energy was gone, leaving only the cold pool.
Even so, the pool was valuable with many uses.
He stayed, befriended the locals for convenience, and secretly researched. Eventually, he discovered a method to extend his life:
Binding himself with iron chains, using the cold to anchor his soul. Special chains channelled the pool’s chill through his body, transforming him—not quite human anymore, and losing his cultivation—but after merging with the cold, his aging slowed to the utmost. Instead of dying in a hundred years, he might live two or three centuries.
Yet this method had drawbacks: he could never leave; once detached, he would surely die. He needed fresh flesh and blood to nourish his yang energy or else succumb to the cold.
To survive, he first refined a few corpse ghosts to hunt for him, but with spiritual energy gone, they disintegrated. Later, he tricked a villager who stumbled into the cave—luckily he survived until now.
But as time went on, he grew desperate. With the cold increasing, his body developed resistance, requiring more and higher quality blood and flesh. At the end of his notes, he recorded increasingly depraved fragments: boy’s blood, girl’s blood, placenta—utterly deranged.
Comparing this information, Zhang Kai finally understood why the man he killed brought children with him.
They were simply blood sacrifices!
He had not killed wrongly; if anything, those monsters died too easily.
He muttered inwardly, but his emotions eased, no longer as heavy as before.

Then Zhang Kai turned to the cold pool.
It was indeed a treasure.
The mountain’s icy pool, the essence of the range condensed by fate—such a place, in an era of flourishing cultivation, would be fiercely guarded by major sects against theft.
But in this era, even sites of cosmic fortune were greatly suppressed, their quality diminished.
And now, exploited by such filth, bringing harm to countless innocent lives.
He sighed, stepped outside, and found the corpse had become a block of ice. He stomped, shattering it into powder, then waved his hand, sending a gust of inner force to scatter the frost out of the cave, letting it drift away.
He walked out and saw piles of bones. He hesitated, then decided to bury them.
After all, the culprit had been brought to justice; exposing the matter would only stir wild rumors with no benefit.
With revenge fulfilled and debts erased, all that remained was to return dust to dust, earth to earth, hoping their next lives would be blessed.
In a hollow outside the valley, Zhang Kai used the Seven Spiral Slash to plow the ground, then unleashed the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms to blast the soil, digging a deep pit. He gathered the remains, interred them together, and after, turned the valley’s soil to cover the blood, finally dispelling the lingering scent and restoring peace and nature to this place of cosmic fortune.
Afterward, Zhang Kai returned to the cave to study the cold pool.
He had to admit, this place intrigued him.
For the cold here was overwhelming, and his own body could not withstand it—a clear weakness.
If he used the pool to temper himself, building resistance, then no matter how cold the weather, he would be unafraid.
Not yet immortal, every shortcoming must be addressed to face the future calmly.
He did not rush in; first, he sat in meditation by the pool, circulating his inner force and loosening his defenses to allow the pool’s chill to penetrate his body.
The cold spread within, sharpening his focus. As his inner force moved, Zhang Kai discovered something remarkable.
This chill could even temper his inner strength!