173: Chapter 173 Abandoning Bloodline, Starting Over!

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"Old Ancestor..."

An elderly grey rat yao couldn't help but mutter hesitantly,

"If you truly lose your cultivation level, who will manage the daily affairs of the Spirit Rat Lineage from now on?"

"Second Brother will."

Elder Rat pointed at the Treasure-Seeking Spirit Mouse. "During my secluded cultivation, all clan affairs will be handed over to him. External communications with the Sun and Zhao clans, as well as dealing with the Great Yaos of various factions, will also be his responsibility."

Second Brother had a bitter expression. "Big Brother, I'm just a Treasure-Seeking Mouse, how would I know how to handle all these complicated matters..."

"Learn."

Elder Rat's single word blocked all paths of retreat.

"When I followed the Old Ancestor back then, I didn't know anything either. I learned intelligence gathering on the fly, and the Earth Escape Technique on the fly. I even learned to speak human tongue on the fly. Who is born knowing everything?"

Second Brother lowered his head and didn't argue further.

Elder Rat stood up, his dark red fur unremarkable in the dim cavern.

He wasn't tall, and his back was hunched. The whiskers on his cheeks had already turned somewhat white. He looked at these clansmen who had followed him for many years and said,

"Spirit Rats are born weak; this is the mandate of heaven, and we cannot blame anyone."

"But the Old Ancestor gave us an Opportunity. A wisp of qi of the wind dao and a secret post in Nine Winds Valley—these are things other weak clans wouldn't even dare to dream of."

"But now that the Opportunity has arrived, whether we can grasp it depends on ourselves."

"I don't want our descendants to be scouts and laborers generation after generation. Our Spirit Rat Lineage should also have something impressive to show for ourselves!"

After speaking, Elder Rat said no more.

He turned and walked into the secret room at the deepest part of the cavern, pushing aside the stone door.

The stone door slammed shut behind him, and everything finally returned to peace. Everything would eventually be settled. Since there was no pioneer...

...then he would be that pioneering rat!

...

Inside the secret room.

The light was dim, with only a few night-luminescent pearls emitting a faint glow. Elder Rat lay prone on a stone platform.

Before him lay three items.

Inside a precious casket were over a dozen bottles of Rank Two beast origin pills; these were the Medicinal Pills to help him recover his cultivation in the future.

There was also a section of bone with blue spiritual patterns fluctuating on it. It was a section of a Rank Five Avian-type Yao Beast bone that he had commissioned the Sun Clan to find for him over the past few months, containing a dense aura of the Wind Path.

It had cost over ten thousand Spirit Stones, effectively draining his family savings.

The last item was a bottle of Rank Three Low Grade Evil-Cleansing Spirit Pills. These were Medicinal Pills he had requested from Immortal Master Qingshan of the Qingguang Sect.

He had to use the Old Ancestor's name; otherwise, they would have been truly difficult to obtain.

After a long silence, Elder Rat's heart settled.

He opened his mouth and spat out a bright red Blood-Evil Short Blade. This was the Peak Grade Magical Artifact he had refined back then.

It was also the Foundation of his current Blood Path cultivation.

Elder Rat's claws tightened, then loosened. Loosened, then tightened again.

He remembered a night many years ago.

Back then, he was still a grey rat whose sapience had not yet been awakened. Later, he happened to encounter the Old Ancestor, which opened his spiritual wisdom.

Although he had already forgotten the process of how his wisdom was opened...

...all of this was thanks to the Old Ancestor's grace!

It could be said that everything he had now was because of the Old Ancestor and obtained through him. He was unwilling to simply stop here.

As the years passed...

...the Old Ancestor had progressed from Foundation Establishment to Golden Core, step by step.

He had personally witnessed the process of the Old Ancestor's rise, from a small place like Hongtian City to the current Zixiao Peak.

He had watched the Northern Mountain Range rise from weakness to strength step by step!

Every step was fought for by the Old Ancestor with his life.

Compared to the Old Ancestor, what was he, Elder Rat?

What was discarding a Foundation compared to that?

"Come..."

Elder Rat calmed his mind, his eyes filled with absolute determination.

In the next instant, his entire body's Spiritual Qi was continuously poured into the blood-colored blade. Under the constant infusion, the blood blade suddenly emitted a series of overburdened "cracking" sounds!

*Bang!*

With a crisp snap, the blade shattered. He had crushed his own Foundation alive!

Countless fragments shot out in all directions as it completely collapsed.

The blood-evil power within his body instantly verged on losing control. A surge of intense pain exploded from his lower abdomen, spreading through his Meridians to his entire body.

Blood seeped out from the gaps in his fur.

Elder Rat gritted his teeth, not making a single sound.

After this threshold...

...there would be no more retreat for the Spirit Rat Lineage!

...

The process of stripping away the blood-evil power was a hundred, even a thousand times more cruel than what was described in the books; it was practically like scraping flesh and peeling bone!

For the first three months, Elder Rat was losing blood almost every day.

The blood-evil power had been rooted in his Dantian for over a decade, long since becoming inextricably entangled with his Meridians and flesh.

Actively stripping it away was like using a knife to scrape one's bones inch by inch. For every wisp of blood-Evil Qi stripped out, the corresponding meridian would develop cracks. He had to wait for the cracks to repair themselves before he could continue.

On the floor of the secret room, large patches of dark red bloodstains spread out. After one layer dried, a new layer was added...

The air was filled with a thick, pungent smell of blood.

As the days passed, Elder Rat curled into a ball on the stone platform. His blood-red fur became withered, yellow, and thin, revealing the pale, bluish skin underneath.

His body size was a full circle smaller than before he entered seclusion. It wasn't that he was thin; it was that his vital blood was being lost in massive quantities...

...

Another three months later.

Elder Rat's cultivation had already fallen to the Early Stage of Foundation Establishment...

Half a year later, his cultivation fell to the Peak of Qi Refining.

Most of the blood-evil power in his body had been stripped out wisp by wisp.

But the remaining residues deep in his marrow were even more stubborn, as if they had grown into the crevices of his bones and couldn't be scraped clean.

"Fortunately, I requested the Evil-Cleansing Pills from Immortal Master Qingshan."

"As expected, one can never be too prepared."

Thinking of this, Elder Rat grabbed the pill bottle and swallowed an Evil-Cleansing Spirit Pill. The effect was incredibly good; the blood-evil residues, which were like maggots on a bone, were nothing before this pill.

They melted away like snow. The medicinal power continuously circulated throughout his body, purifying the blood-evil aura within him...

Although the entire process was extremely smooth, the pain was truly agonizing!

Elder Rat bled from his seven orifices in pain, and his body convulsed violently.

At the Peak of the pain, he actually started laughing!

By the ninth month, the blood-Evil Qi in Elder Rat's body was finally cleared away completely.

The price was that his cultivation had dropped to roughly the fourth level of Qi Refining for a human Cultivator, and his entire coat of fur had turned grey-white, making him look decrepit and old...

Elder Rat collapsed on the stone platform, gasping for breath in large gulps.

His body felt much lighter, not just because he was thin, but because after losing the blood-evil power, his entire yao body had become 'empty.'

His Dantian was empty. Where spiritual power once flowed through his body, there was now only thin and weak spiritual energy, and his Meridians were riddled with holes...

Miserable.

Utterly miserable!

However, when Elder Rat circulated his spiritual power to draw upon the wind spiritual power from that Yao General's remains, everything changed...

The wind spiritual power was slowly guided into his Meridians. The feeling of it flowing through his body was completely different from the blood-evil power; they were worlds apart.

There was no violent, burning sting, nor the tearing sensation of flesh being gnawed!

Light.

Gentle.

It was like a breeze blowing through a dried-up riverbed.

What was even more marvelous was that as that wisp of wind spiritual power passed through his body, his physical form felt a sense of resonance. Even his innate concealment talent...

...was invisibly tinged with a bit of wind spiritual aura...

"It really works!"

Elder Rat murmured, a smile appearing on his withered face.

The compatibility between Wind Path spiritual power and the rat clan's concealment Bloodline was even higher than he had estimated.

Back then, cultivating the Blood Path was a last resort. He had forced a Bloodline mutation and stumbled along the way.

But the Wind Path was a natural fit.

If he had known this path existed, why would he have suffered so much?

Elder Rat smiled bitterly. But in this world, there are no 'ifs.' Without the qi of heaven and earth bestowed by the Old Ancestor and the Opportunity in Nine Winds Valley, this path probably wouldn't have existed at all...

In the following days...

...he began to use his ruin-like body to rebuild his Foundation with Wind Path spiritual power.

The progress was incredibly slow, but it was steady.

Every wisp of wind spiritual power poured into his Meridians did not cause any rejection. Those broken Meridians, under the nourishment of the wind spiritual power, actually began to repair themselves.

The speed was slow, but they were indeed repairing.

This was unimaginable in Blood Path cultivation.

Blood-evil power only tore things apart; it did not mend. But Wind Path spiritual power was gently and firmly filling every crack in his body.

In just one short year...

...his cultivation recovered to the Peak of Qi Refining.

...

Two years later.

Most of the Meridians in his body were repaired, and his cultivation was infinitely close to the threshold of Foundation Establishment.

Four years later, the stone door of the secret room slammed open.

Elder Rat walked out, the sunlight making him squint his eyes.

His appearance had changed.

His grey-black fur had turned into a grey-white with a bluish tint.

It wasn't the white of old age, but a cool, grey-blue with a metallic luster. His body was slightly smaller than before, but his limbs were more slender and his form more streamlined.

His tail was very long, three inches longer than before.

At the tip, there was a nearly invisible wisp of blue spiritual light entwined.

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