CHAPTER 212: ORDINARY ROCK

Everyone can live as a mortal, all they have to do is never cultivate... but no one with spiritual roots does it, even cultivators with pseudo spiritual roots take the route of cultivation. In the end, it is because of the allure of long lifespans and unimaginable strength.

This allure is too enticing to give up for anyone. Even if you cultivate till some lower realms, your lifespan and strength will increase far more than mortals, so who wouldn’t want to cultivate?

The only problem is once you start the path of cultivation, your greed increases... you always want to achieve more, as the lifespan and strength increase is tremendously higher for higher levels. So much that cultivators don’t mind taking risks which can kill them—it is quite contradictory.

Maybe some cultivators cultivated in the beginning just to achieve a particular realm and live their life happily afterwards, but watching someone stronger than them, who can kill them in seconds, breaks their spirits.

Their previous resolve gets broken. In the end, if they try a little more, then they will achieve that level too... and this creates an endless cycle unless they truly cannot advance anymore.

But how many truly reach the level where they can’t advance anymore? There is a reason why the death of cultivators is more than mortals in every world.

As for the mortals, they were from the start at the level where they cannot advance anymore. They know that cultivation is impossible for them, so they accept their fates and live contently.

Now who is cursed? Cultivators who are not content because of their own greed, or mortals who are content because they don’t even have the option for that greed...

If he thinks like that, then it is still the mortals who are cursed. There is a reason why freedom is the most blissful feeling. Mortals might think they are content, but they don’t have the freedom to choose.

They are just living contently in a bigger cage where any cultivator can kill them on a whim and they cannot stop it. As for cultivators, they are living in the same cage, but they have the choice to cultivate and break free from this cage eventually.

"For me, the mortals are the ones who are cursed, senior."

Yao Ying nodded. "True. Just because you are content as you don’t have the choice to choose, then it’s just a beautiful lie."

Yao Ying suddenly stopped and looked towards a spot where a man was selling various items. Jiang Hao got surprised and looked too.

He even used his spirit sense, but he didn’t find anything. There were only some uniquely shaped rocks, and some normal herbs.

Yao Ying side-glanced at Jiang Hao. "Go and buy all those rocks, all if possible. Inquire about where he got them."

Jiang Hao was stunned. He looked back at the rocks—they still looked ordinary to him, but if senior Yao had her interest in them, then they were anything but ordinary.

He nodded and moved to the peddler. The peddler smiled. "Welcome, lord. What do you want?"

The peddler was a mortal, and he surely knew how to do business.

Jiang Hao wasn’t good with twisting words, so he straight up decided to give him an offer.

"I will buy everything from you and even give you 1,000 spirit stones. The only condition is that you tell me about the location from where you gathered those rocks."

The peddler was stunned. He knew what spirit stones were... they were far out of his reach. All the things he was selling were worth only about 10 silver coins. In fact, he would have agreed to the deal even if he had gotten just 1 spirit stone.

The peddler immediately looked in every direction to see if someone had listened to what Jiang Hao had said or not.

Jiang Hao understood why—a mortal having that many spirit stones is a sin. If anyone knew about it, then they would definitely kill him for those spirit stones.

When the peddler was assured that no one had seen or heard this, he immediately packed everything into a cloth and bowed while giving it to Jiang Hao. "Lord, here is everything. Also, the location where I got those stones isn’t far from here, but..."

It was easy for Jiang Hao to understand what he was implying. "Do you have another cloth?"

"Yes, I do have," the peddler immediately took out another cloth and handed it to Jiang Hao.

Jiang Hao immediately filled it with 1,100 spirit stones. He just decided to add 100 spirit stones extra for the rocks he had gotten from him.

He handed the makeshift cloth bag back to the peddler. The peddler immediately looked inside and got stunned seeing so many spirit stones. He didn’t know if it was a thousand or not, but even this much was enough for him.

"Thank you, lord. The place I got those stones is Twin Mountains, which aren’t far from this city. These mountains are on the way to the next city and are easily recognisable."

Jiang Hao nodded after listening and left. He could have told the peddler to come and show them the location, but he doubted the peddler would willingly agree.

There was a chance he might think that after arriving at the location Jiang Hao would kill him and take back those spirit stones, so he didn’t bring out that topic.

When he returned, he decided to ask.

"Senior, what is so special about those rocks? I didn’t even sense any spirit qi from them."

Yao Ying moved her hand towards him without saying anything.

Jiang Hao looked at the hand—the image of him holding it came to his mind... the strange and unforgettable feeling had already etched itself inside his mind.

No matter how much he tried to discard it, it couldn’t be erased.

He sighed and took out the stone, placing it in her hand. Yao Ying fiddled with it for some time.

"Of course, it is impossible to sense them with spirit sense. Your spirit sense gets absorbed by it... this upper layer is just ordinary rock, but the thing inside it isn’t. Even by the standards of the upper realm, it is quite valuable."

Yao Ying immediately sliced her finger across the rock, and it turned into dust particles, scattering into the wind. Only one thing was left in her hands—a small oval-shaped stone which was purplish-black in colour...

"This is a Void Stone. Finding them in lower worlds is very rare... because they are formed under extreme spatial law conditions, like rifts, spatial storms. These are very rare in lower realms.

The space itself might be fragile in the lower realm, but the concentration of spatial law is also lower, so there is a chance that these rocks have crossed the boundary of the lower realm to come here, instead of getting formed here"