The Quest for Immortality - Chapter 1114 (Patreon)

Chapter 1114: Snatching the Feast

Three days later, at dawn before the first light broke, Mo Hua had already packed his belongings.

He handed a jade slip to his mother, Liu Ruhua, and said, “Mother, this jade slip contains my insights on Foundation Establishment. I’ve organized them for you. When you have time, take a look and cultivate well. Father has already reached Foundation Establishment, but you’re still at the ninth level of Qi Refining. You must have been slacking lately, not putting enough heart into cultivation. That won’t do. Cultivation is like rowing upstream—if you don’t advance, you fall behind. Once you slow down, every step after will lag even more…”

“You must work hard. Cultivation is the foundation of a cultivator. With higher cultivation, your body will grow stronger, your lifespan will lengthen, and I won’t have to worry so much about you anymore…”

Mo Hua spoke earnestly.

Liu Ruhua flushed red with embarrassment. Mo Shan, standing to the side, couldn’t help but smile wryly.

In other families, parents urged their children to cultivate diligently. In the Mo family, it was their son doing the lecturing instead.

After saying all this, Mo Hua found he had nothing else to remind them of. He double-checked his storage pouch, making sure the dried meats and pastries his mother made were all packed. Then, he turned to look around his room and his home, feeling a pang of reluctance.

Liu Ruhua gazed at her son, about to leave home, her heart aching. She couldn’t help but pull him into her arms and softly whispered, “You must take good care of yourself.”

“If danger comes, don’t act recklessly. Run if you must—saving your life comes first. In this world, nothing is more precious than your life.”

“If you ever grow tired, come home. Mother will always be waiting for you here…”

“Mm…” Mo Hua nodded softly.

After a moment of silence, Liu Ruhua looked at him deeply, hesitated, and asked, “Zisheng and Zixi… I’ve missed those two children. Have you met them while studying in Qianzhou?”

Zixi loved eating Liu Ruhua’s pastries, and Bai Zisheng, the greedy one, had always wanted to acknowledge her as his godmother. The two siblings had even visited their home before. And besides, they were Mo Hua’s little senior brother and little senior sister—disciples of the same master, close as family.

Liu Ruhua was fond of them both and often thought of them.

Mo Hua froze for a moment. Images surfaced in his mind—when he left Qianzhou aboard the Cloud Ferry, at the point where the cloud veins split, he had caught a fleeting glimpse of a graceful female figure, veiled and ethereal as a dream. Her beauty had struck him like lightning through the mist.

“That person… was that my little senior sister?” he thought. “It should be, right?”

“So that premonition in my Heavenly Mechanism Calculation—the feeling that I’d regret not choosing that old Cloud Ferry—was because I’d meet her?”

“The slower Cloud Ferry… allowed me to cross paths with her?”

“What a pity… the ferries only passed for an instant. I didn’t even get a good look at how she’s changed since then…”

A trace of wistfulness filled his heart.

“Hua’er?” Liu Ruhua’s gentle voice pulled him back.

“Oh,” Mo Hua blinked and shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen them.”

“I see…” Liu Ruhua’s eyes dimmed. After a pause, she asked softly, “Zixi… her family background isn’t simple, is it?”

As the saying goes—children reveal their hearts early.

Even when they were little, Liu Ruhua could sense something between Mo Hua and Bai Zixi. They had grown up together, inseparable as shadow and light. They probably hadn’t noticed their own feelings yet—but how could a mother not see it?

But their identities were worlds apart.

Liu Ruhua felt both guilt and sorrow—guilt that she couldn’t give her son a better origin, and sorrow that if those two children truly cared for each other, the vast divide of status might one day bring them nothing but hardship and heartbreak.

Mo Hua sensed her worries and said gently, “Mother, don’t worry. You don’t need to concern yourself with that.”

Liu Ruhua nodded, but her eyes remained downcast, clearly still troubled.

After a moment, Mo Hua looked at his parents, then hesitated before suddenly saying, “Father, Mother, why don’t you… have another child? Maybe a little brother or sister for me? The house would be livelier.”

Liu Ruhua’s face instantly turned bright red. “What nonsense are you saying, you silly child…”

Even the always-composed Mo Shan was left speechless. But the awkward laughter helped ease the sorrow of parting.

Once everything was ready, Mo Hua bowed deeply to his parents. “Father, Mother, your child now leaves home to temper himself and seek Core Formation. Please take good care of yourselves.”

“Mm,” Mo Shan nodded.

Liu Ruhua’s eyes glistened with tears as she said again, “And you, make sure to take care too.”

“Mm!”

Though his heart ached to leave, Mo Hua turned decisively and departed.

Mo Shan and Liu Ruhua stood side by side at the old family gate, watching his figure grow smaller and smaller down the road.

Even as he walked far away, Mo Hua could still feel their lingering, loving gazes behind him.

A pang of guilt struck him. They say, “When one’s parents still live, one should not travel far.” Yet here he was, leaving home again, chasing the uncertain path of cultivation.

But there are no perfect choices in this world. Every road requires sacrifice.

He had chosen his Dao—the Great Path—and once chosen, he must press forward, undistracted. He would not fail his parents’ expectations. He would reach Core Formation and become Immortal-Passage City’s first true Golden Core cultivator.

“Golden Core…”

The thought settled his heart. He buried his longing for home and love for his parents deep inside and set forth, alone, on the path to Core Formation.

Before dawn, under the dim sky, Immortal-Passage City still slept. Without many noticing, Mo Hua had quietly left the city behind—stepping onto a road of thorns and peril.

No one knew when he would next return.

…

After leaving Immortal-Passage City, Mo Hua detoured to South Mountain to visit the old residence of Mr. Zhuang.

But everything from the past was gone— the bamboo courtyard, the pond, the great locust tree, his master, Kui Lao, his little senior brother, and his little senior sister… All gone, like dreams fading into mist.

He stood there for a long time before sighing softly and continuing south, entering the vast Black Mountain Range.

The forest was dark and dense. Demonic beasts’ low growls echoed through the mist.

Mo Hua walked alone through the treacherous terrain, where danger lurked everywhere. Yet none of the beasts, no matter how fierce, could sense his presence. Even the stronger ones, when they faintly detected a trace of him, shrank back instinctively, too afraid to provoke that shadow passing through the dark.

After wandering the mountains, Mo Hua finally stopped before a certain peak. He knelt, pinched some soil between his fingers, and sniffed faint traces of blood lingering in the air.

Scenes began to flicker faintly through his mind— a group of cultivators hunting a demonic beast, a beast roaring as it tore open a man’s chest, then a burst of furious retaliation— but the vision grew blurry, fragmented beyond clarity.

He tried to push deeper with his divine sense, but suddenly his mind seared with pain. A tide of killing intent surged up. In his ears came the wails of resentful ghosts.

Mo Hua’s vision dimmed; his heart chilled. He forced himself to stop the deduction.

“No… I can’t.” He exhaled slowly. “If I overuse my divine sense or Heavenly Mechanism techniques, I risk mental imbalance and backlash from killing aura.”

He frowned. This made things troublesome.

He had no clue where his tiger had gone—or whether it was still alive.

That tiger had a long history with him. When he was little, it had been a scrawny cub, caught in one of Uncle Chu’s traps. Mo Hua had begged for it, used it to practice his movement Techniques, and later kept his promise to release it. Years later, he had saved it again at Black Mountain Fortress, and it had once saved him from an evil cultivator. He’d even fed it dried fish on lazy afternoons.

When he left for Qianzhou, the tiger had stood at the edge of the forest, watching him go with lonely eyes.

He owed it too much to ignore its fate now.

But who had captured it? Was it dead or alive? Had it escaped, or had it fallen into someone’s hands?

If it escaped, maybe it had gone to claim a new mountain somewhere. If it was caught—then given the relationship between cultivators and beasts—it likely wouldn’t have survived…

Mo Hua’s gaze darkened. “Who… dared to catch my tiger…”

After a while, he sighed. His Heavenly Calculations were limited; there were no clear leads. He could only keep traveling, ask around, and look for traces along the way.

Besides… there was another matter.

He journeyed deeper south, into the most perilous parts of the Black Mountains, walking until midday. Finding a deserted spot—far from man and beast alike—he used his divine sense to inscribe a second-grade high-level array around him.

In this remote area, such an array was considered the peak of power. No cultivator or beast nearby could possibly break it.

Sitting inside, Mo Hua took out the Pixiu Tooth Pendant.

It was time to “feed.”

In Qianzhou, he had abstained—too dangerous to expose his connection to the Great Wilderness Wicked God. In Immortal-Passage City, he dared not—lest the evil power spill out and harm his friends and family.

But now, traveling alone through wild mountains, with no one around—he no longer had to hold back. He could finally enjoy a little “feast.”

Heaven and earth are merciless, treating all things as straw dogs. The gods are merciless, treating all beings as straw dogs. Mo Hua was merciless—treating the Evil God as his straw dog.

The Evil God was his offering. He had promised the Great Wilderness Wicked God this, and he would never “break his word.”

More importantly, to reach Core Formation—to have his divine sense prove the Dao and forge his Lifebound Artifact—he needed to raise his divine sense to the twenty-fourth pattern. That meant an immense deficit of spiritual awareness.

To fill that void, the Evil God’s Divine Embryo was a feast beyond compare. That was why he had used the Pixiu to seal it in the first place.

It was a sound plan. At least, until he discovered one crucial flaw—

The Pixiu was unwilling.

When Mo Hua entered his sea of consciousness and tried to carve off a piece of the Evil God’s Divine Embryo to consume, the Pixiu—usually docile—suddenly flared up, baring its teeth and golden mane.

Only then did Mo Hua remember the old legend— the Pixiu was famed for warding off evil because it was greedy and stingy to the extreme. A miserly divine beast that never shared a single coin once swallowed.

This big-headed Pixiu was exactly that kind of stingy, tight-fisted creature!

Mo Hua groaned inwardly. Of all things, he had overlooked that.

Though he’d sealed the Evil God within it, it was effectively like handing the Pixiu a treasure trove—and now it refused to give any back.

Mo Hua himself wasn’t exactly generous either. So naturally, he couldn’t accept this.

After all, he needed to eat the Evil God to advance his cultivation!

He tried to reason with the Pixiu, coaxing it with words and logic, but the divine beast wouldn’t budge—stubborn as a stone mountain.

In the end, Mo Hua lost his patience and punched it.

The Pixiu roared furiously, and they fought— one stubborn divine beast, one stubborn divine child— snarling, wrestling, biting, neither gaining the upper hand.

Finally, the Pixiu relented. Perhaps it felt guilty—after all, both Evil God embryos had been caught by Mo Hua himself. It decided to “make an exception” and allow him to cut off one small piece.

Mo Hua found that unacceptable—too stingy! But for a Pixiu, that concession was monumental. If not for their close bond—and the half-Pixiu essence Mo Hua carried through their contract—it never would have allowed even that much.

Otherwise, not even the Heavenly Emperor himself could take a scrap from a Pixiu’s mouth.

Still unsatisfied, Mo Hua tried to argue for more. The Pixiu’s big golden head shook violently like a rattle—no way, not a chance!

Mo Hua could only give in. He focused his divine sense, forming a blade, and cut off a small piece of the Evil God’s Divine Embryo.

The Divine Fetus screamed in fury and pain— to it, this was humiliation beyond bearing.

Mo Hua’s divine sense became the butcher’s knife, and the Evil God the slab of meat.

It was a sin against heaven itself.

And if the Evil God hurt, the Pixiu hurt worse. Watching its “property” being cut apart pained it like losing its own flesh.

If not for their bond, and the contract binding them, the Pixiu would never have let him “snatch food” from its jaws.

After cutting off the piece, Mo Hua returned to his inner sea. He summoned the Dao Stele’s tribulation lightning to cleanse it, burning away all traces of evil will, then swallowed it whole and refined it.

His divine sense strengthened slightly. But it was far from enough—barely a drop in the ocean toward the twenty-four-pattern threshold.

Worse yet, snatching food from a Pixiu was harder than killing one.

Mo Hua sighed, gazing toward the boundless land of Lizhou. “Seems I’ll need to find another way… to strengthen my divine sense.”

He paused, then murmured with a faint smile, “I wonder if there’s anything else in the Great Wilderness that’s… edible.”

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