Chapter 26: The Demon

Teaching Liu Yunxi to read and write was not as difficult as imagined; perhaps due to the mouth seal, her memory was quite strong, and memorizing the sounds and forms of characters by rote posed no great challenge—only fluency in reading and writing would take more time.

Moreover, this teaching process was not without benefits: after just three days, Feng Xue found his stability had risen another notch, with both his speed of entering meditation and his precision in controlling qi showing significant improvement.

One could only say, teaching students was indeed a test of patience.

Another morning arrived, and Feng Xue slowly awakened from his meditation. Many imagine cultivation as sitting cross-legged with five points touching the ground, but the Observing Method does not require any posture—lying down is fine, even standing on one's head or during... heh heh heh, as long as you enter meditation, you can observe.

Feng Xue belonged to the type who didn't even need to maintain posture, because he could extract so much yuan-qi at once, while his soul's absorption efficiency was too low—he could spend ten minutes squeezing out more yuan-qi than his soul could absorb in a night, then soak his soul in it and fall into infantile sleep.

Waking up felt refreshingly clear-headed, even leaving his soul slightly swollen.

If there was a drawback…

"Gurgle… gurgle…"

Ah, right—he got hungry easily.

"Still so much yuan-qi left over… feels like a waste." Feeling his soul bloated as if overfed, Feng Xue confirmed he couldn't absorb any more, and let the excess dissipate.

Stepping out of the bedroom, he saw Liu Yunxi placing breakfast on the table.

Though three days weren't enough for her to read recipes, she had at least learned the few breakfast dishes Feng Xue had taught her step by step.

Holding a steaming bun in his hand, Feng Xue blew on it and said:

"Judging by your appearance, progress is good?"

"Mm, at this rate, it'll take about ten years to cultivate the Yin Inner Elixir." Liu Yunxi nibbled her bun slowly, her eyes half-closed into crescents—the Yin Inner Elixir was a feat even a thousand-year demon dared not dream of; thinking of it this way, life repaying karmic debt didn't seem so bitter after all!

As Liu Yunxi quietly reassured herself, Feng Xue, chewing his bun, suddenly asked: "By the way, you truly can't use human yuan-qi at all?"

Liu Yunxi, who had been savoring the flavor on her tongue, froze instantly, then shook her head firmly:

"Can't use it, absolutely not! Any demon who cultivates with yuan-qi is an evil demon that devours humans—I aim to achieve true enlightenment!"

"Oh…" Feng Xue shook his head, considering asking about Core Technique cultivation—but since he couldn't yet finely control his cultivation energy and had no suitable artifact core, he shook his head again.

Seeing Feng Xue's disappointed expression, Liu Yunxi's eyes darted: though the house was now large, Feng Xue's overflowing yuan-qi during cultivation still disturbed her own practice—she now had to train on the roof diagonally opposite his bedroom each night to avoid the interference; this was only the beginning, and in a few years, she might have to run miles away just to escape the tidal surge of yuan-qi.

As for fleeing, she had never even considered it—after all, she was bound by the mouth seal!

The mouth seal, in plain terms, was like a loan: humans, under the witness of 【Human Dao Spiritual Mechanism】, lent their "spiritual mechanism" to demons to assume human form, and after transformation, the demon must repay this "karmic debt" through various means. If a mortal borrows money and runs off, the creditor seeks the guarantor; but 【Human Dao Spiritual Mechanism】, as the guarantor, didn't even need the creditor to demand payment—it directly collected from the debtor demon!

Moreover, this "karmic debt" accrued interest over time—easy to understand: if you borrow fortune from a young person, even a small amount, the benefits they would have gained along their path due to that fortune diminish, and the karmic debt grows ever larger. Liu Yunxi had even heard from her Fox Immortal grandmother of a poor soul who hadn't repaid his debt even after his benefactor's natural death, and ended up owing even more because the benefactor had been reborn.

Repayment methods varied: orthodox ones included performing good deeds and secretly protecting others; darker methods involved repaying with wealth; some even gave up entirely, offering themselves in marriage and bearing child after child to settle the debt.

But no matter the method, all generally followed the rule of "giving coal in snow."

If you repay a poor farmer with gold and silver, you drastically improve his life—this repays heavily; but if you give gold and silver to a wealthy man, you repay only interest.

And Liu Yunxi, clearly, could no longer turn back—

Because she had borrowed far too much!

Though Liu Yunxi didn't understand why Feng Xue could endlessly increase the loan, the fact remained: when she realized this talent wasn't free, the debt tower she'd built was already so high she could barely pay the interest!

Why had she resisted helping Feng Xue cultivate so fiercely?

Perhaps initially it was merely because she didn't want to become a furnace, didn't want her hard-won cultivation to become fuel for his advancement—but now, she wished she'd agreed to be his furnace long ago!

Know this: with her current debt, if she agreed to help Feng Xue cultivate to repay it, it wouldn't be enough to merely become his furnace—even if she were skinned, tendon-stripped, marrow-sucked, and soul-refined, it still wouldn't suffice!

So Liu Yunxi could only maintain her stubborn refusal while obeying every call, first paying off some interest through chores—so long as she could endure until achieving true enlightenment, there would surely be ways to repay this karmic debt.

And before then, she absolutely could not request anything beyond the mouth seal—because if she took even cultivation resources (meaning yuan-qi) from Feng Xue, even if she achieved enlightenment, her realm would carry a portion of Feng Xue's claim, and thus could not be used to repay the debt!

For a mere forty-four-year-old demoness to carry a debt heavy enough to crush a thousand-year demon, Liu Yunxi could only sigh inwardly and continue slacking—after all, the debt was already taken, she couldn't repay it, and better to borrow more now than face bankruptcy and forced execution by 【Human Dao Spiritual Mechanism】; the sooner she achieved enlightenment, the sooner she could clear the debt.

But this yuan-qi… she really needed to find a solution…

After a moment's thought, Liu Yunxi suddenly had an idea, and said at once:

"If you truly have more yuan-qi than you can use, why not raise a ghost? They love yuan-qi the most—those two back at the Fox Immortal Temple were quite good…"

"Good idea, but those two won't do! I have a spiritual cleanliness issue—public use of private property is unacceptable." Feng Xue spoke words Liu Yunxi didn't understand, but internally he was evaluating the feasibility of the method.

Among the techniques he received from Ninth Aunt, both 【Spirit Binding】 and 【Nightmare Invocation】 required raising ghosts; 【Summon Object】 needed ghost assistance to achieve instant summoning, and if he had a ghost, he could indeed repurpose his wasted yuan-qi.

As for not capturing the two evil ghosts from the Fox Immortal Temple, it wasn't really due to spiritual cleanliness—it was simply because they had gone too far off track.

According to the 【Spirit Binding Spell】, the best method was to find weak, solitary wandering spirits, imprint them, and then, like taming a hawk, feed them only your own yuan-qi and cultivation energy, so they memorized your aura—only then could you handle them effortlessly and avoid backlash.

Spirits that had already tasted flesh and devoured humans, no matter how much you trained or reformed them, could never be truly tamed.

Regarding the specific mechanism of "seeking a seal," whether you know it or not doesn't matter, so it's not written in the main text.

First, "spiritual mechanism" should be understood as a unified concept encompassing things like wish-power, faith-deities, spiritual essence, and fortune—all bundled together. Explaining it is complicated; treat it as a black box. In short, any metaphysical phenomenon with some autonomy and complex composition can be called spiritual mechanism.

In principle, it's roughly the sensation of borrowing the wisdom, talent, and fortune of the one granting the seal.

Thus, in stories, those who seek seals from scholars or virtuous people are usually positive examples, while those who seek seals from ordinary farmers or woodcutters often end in disaster. Of course, from the author's perspective, everyone knows this is just literati self-aggrandizement—but when the story becomes a worldbuilding framework, the author must provide a plausible explanation.

In short, scholars have higher wisdom, virtuous people have enduring fortune—these people are easier to borrow from and lend more; farmers and woodcutters barely have enough for themselves, so if you borrow from them, you rob them of lifespan and wealth, and by the time you want to repay, you can't—thus you accrue karmic debt.

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(End of Chapter)