Chapter 118: Red Jade Mosquito, Body Cultivator’s Divine Weapon

Late at night, inside Li Yinsheng’s bamboo house.

He had escorted his junior sister back to cultivate before nightfall. Now, he leaned back in a recliner, examining the Qiankun Bag he had obtained from Chongyun, along with a delicate little metal cage.

The cage was an entirely silver, hollowed-out metal sphere no larger than a walnut. Though small, it held a universe within, storing several species of Exotic Insects that Li Yinsheng did not recognize. Since Qiankun Bags could not store the vast majority of living creatures, this cage was presumably designed specifically for rearing insects.

However, Chongyun’s death seemed to have triggered some sort of Restriction on the insects. They had all died off, leaving behind countless corpses.

Li Yinsheng dumped the insect carcasses straight into Chongyun’s Qiankun Bag, feeling rather disappointed. While going through Chongyun’s belongings, he had hoped to find some tasty bugs. But the man clearly strayed far from the Orthodox Dao. Not a single insect in the cage looked edible, and their auras were an impure, chaotic mess.

However, upon inspecting the Spirit Insect Cage itself, he discovered that it seemed to have been refined by Chongyun only recently. The imprint was shallow, leaving Li Yinsheng to wonder where the man had stored his insects previously.

Initially, Li Yinsheng had no interest in the Spirit Insect Cage. After all, he had no insects to raise. But after rummaging through Chongyun’s Qiankun Bag, he changed his mind.

Chongyun did not seem particularly wealthy. Aside from some materials, Elixirs, and Talismans—items considered highly valuable by ordinary Cultivators but rather mundane to a Daoist—the Qiankun Bag contained only a few books made of extraordinary material and a dozen sesame-sized, red-and-white striped insect eggs. Because the life aura within the eggs was incredibly faint and contained, they could survive inside the Qiankun Bag, though that would certainly change once they hatched.

Li Yinsheng flipped through the books. They detailed the Exotic Insects and giant, fleshy worms he had encountered earlier. It turned out to be a Magic Technique that Chongyun had created himself, based on some fragmented ancient texts from the Thousand Insects Valley. Most of the contents pertained to this malicious Magic Technique. This included records of several failed experiments and reflections, methods for cultivating Exotic Insects and Mother Insects, and an assortment of related miscellaneous knowledge.

None of this was of much use to Li Yinsheng. Even ignoring the methods that involved harming others for personal gain, simply nurturing a Mother Insect required massive amounts of precious materials and over a decade of painstaking effort. With that kind of time and resources, he figured he’d be much better off using them to nurture his junior sister.

However, amidst the useless clutter, he also discovered an Insect-Control Skill created by Chongyun, alongside an illustrated bestiary dedicated exclusively to various Exotic Insects. The bestiary appeared to have been printed by the Thousand Insects Valley and distributed to the majority of its disciples. Even if not every single disciple possessed one, it was likely extremely common.

Aside from recording a vast amount of knowledge on rearing Exotic Insects, it also featured an “Exotic Insect List” compiled by the Thousand Insects Valley itself. The preface claimed it had been jointly compiled by all the senior Great Powers of the Thousand Insects Valley over thousands of years. It was lauded as the most authoritative ranking of Exotic Insects in the entire Hundred Thousand Mountains, documenting the top one hundred strange and Exotic Insects across the region.

It even included a special note stating that several Immortal ancestors of the valley had personally guided its compilation. At the very end of the bestiary, a warning written in blood-red ink declared that any disciple who dared to question the rankings on the Exotic Insect List would be subjected to the punishment of ten thousand insects devouring their bones.

Using the bestiary as a reference, Li Yinsheng identified the insects that had belonged to Chongyun. The ones that had formed a giant face over the mountain peak earlier were likely the “Yin Fog Insects,” ranked seventy-first on the Exotic Insect List. A single one could conjure a large patch of fog to disorient enemies; when gathered in massive numbers, they formed that colossal visage.

The swarm directly crushed by the God-Suppressing Head consisted of “Smoke Poison Insects,” ranked thirty-eighth. According to the Exotic Insect List, if a Smoke Poison Insect was nurtured properly, a True Flame would be born within its body, granting it both fire and poison properties. The True Flame within a single Smoke Poison Insect was potent enough to melt a boulder weighing tens of thousands of pounds into magma. If one failed to cultivate the True Flame within them, their ranking would plummet beyond the top fifty.

The remaining insects that had perished alongside Chongyun were all ranked somewhere between fortieth and sixtieth.

Finally, Li Yinsheng looked up the information on the dozen red-and-white striped insect eggs.

Ranked thirty-sixth on the Exotic Insect List: the Red Jade Mosquito.

Although they ranked only two places higher than the Smoke Poison Insect, they were incredibly unique, with a massive gap between their maximum and minimum potential.

Red Jade Mosquitoes were exclusively female. They fed on blood and possessed numerous peculiar abilities. First, they were exceptionally fast and adept at evading Divine Sense. This made them nearly impossible to detect and virtually unblockable. Second, the Red Jade Mosquito could be considered a Body Cultivator among insects. Not only did they possess incredibly robust defense, but their mouthparts were razor-sharp. If nurtured properly, they could easily pierce the tough skin of a Body Cultivation Daoist and feast on their blood.

Furthermore, while the Red Jade Mosquito itself was not venomous, anyone bitten by it would suffer from unbearable, maddening itching. Neither Magical Power nor Spirit Medicine could easily alleviate this itch; the victim could only wait for it to subside naturally. As for how long that would take… depending on the Red Jade Mosquito’s level of development and the bitten Cultivator’s Cultivation base, it could last anywhere from half a day to several months.

Aside from the itching, although Red Jade Mosquitoes were capable of moving in absolute silence, they could also emit a sonic wave Magic that interfered with a Cultivator’s Divine Sense. While they could only disrupt Divine Sense and not inflict physical harm, this attack could easily leave an opponent flustered, disoriented, and deeply unsettled. Using it to distract an opponent during Magical Combat was a surefire tactic.

Of course, if the Red Jade Mosquito only possessed these irritating tricks, the Exotic Insect List certainly wouldn’t have ranked it thirty-sixth. Beyond these basic abilities, the most terrifying trait of the Red Jade Mosquito was its ability to swarm together and coalesce into a solid, physical form that resembled Red Jade. This was the very origin of the “Red Jade” in their name.

The power of this coalesced entity depended entirely on the number of Red Jade Mosquitoes within the swarm. An entity formed from just a hundred mature Red Jade Mosquitoes could effortlessly crush most Cultivators with fifty or sixty years of Cultivation. The Exotic Insect List noted that a swarm of over a thousand mature Red Jade Mosquitoes, wielded by a powerful Cultivator, possessed an offensive might rivaling that of a true Magical Treasure.

However, as Exotic Insects, Red Jade Mosquitoes were notoriously difficult to rear. This was likely why Chongyun had never hatched these eggs. The Exotic Insect List emphasized their massive variance in potential because Red Jade Mosquitoes required immersion in exceptionally high-quality blood to hatch. Moreover, the quality of this blood dictated their maximum potential after birth.

If the eggs were soaked in the blood of an ordinary demon or Cultivator, the hatched Red Jade Mosquitoes would be extremely frail. Their actual combat power would drop their true ranking to below the sixties or seventies, rendering them practically useless. Soaking them in the blood of a demon with over fifty years of Cultivation yielded significantly better results. Even so, they would still fail to reach their true standard, hovering around the forties or fifties in actual ranking. Only when hatched in the blood of a demon or Cultivator with seventy to eighty years of Cultivation would the resulting Red Jade Mosquitoes truly live up to their rank as the thirty-sixth Exotic Insect.

Because of these stringent requirements, Red Jade Mosquitoes were exceedingly rare. In the wild, if a swarm of Red Jade Mosquitoes wished to breed powerful offspring, they had to hunt en masse, killing a mighty demon or Cultivator to use their blood for incubation. But without sufficient numbers, how could they possibly take down a powerful demon with seventy or eighty years of Cultivation?

Of course, for Chongyun, demons of that caliber were neither hard to find nor difficult to kill. Yet, since he had hoarded these eggs for so long, he clearly looked down upon mere Demon Blood.

According to the Exotic Insect List, if Red Jade Mosquitoes were hatched using the ordinary blood of a True Cultivator, their actual ranking would jump to somewhere near thirtieth. If they were hatched using the blood of a Body Cultivation Daoist, they could push close to twentieth. And if one could go a step further, using the essence blood of a Body Cultivation Daoist for the incubation… then the resulting Red Jade Mosquitoes would rival Exotic Insects in the top fifteen!

Li Yinsheng figured that Chongyun must have been scheming to obtain the fresh blood, or even the essence blood, of a Body Cultivation Daoist to hatch a brood of supremely powerful Red Jade Mosquitoes. After all, Chongyun himself was a Daoist. If he had been satisfied with the blood of a non-body cultivating Daoist, he could have just used his own. Hatching Red Jade Mosquitoes with one’s own blood would generate a Restriction the moment they hatched. This meant the Insect Control Restriction would be innately woven into the mosquitoes, making them far easier to manipulate.

The fact that Chongyun hadn’t done this meant he was holding out for the essence blood of a Body Cultivation Daoist—a path that yielded less obedient but far more devastating insects.

However, this was clearly a grueling and highly dangerous endeavor. After all, Body Cultivation Daoists were not only exceedingly rare and fearsome in combat, but they also tended to have terrible tempers. If someone brazenly knocked on their door asking to trade for their essence blood, casually mentioning they wanted to use it to incubate some mosquitoes… the most likely outcome was that the Body Cultivator would simply swat the petitioner like a mosquito.

Thus, it was easy to see why Chongyun’s Red Jade Mosquito eggs had remained untouched in his Qiankun Bag all this time. But Li Yinsheng did not share these troubles. He didn’t need to go hunting for a Body Cultivation Daoist. He was one.

Furthermore, as someone who practiced the True Blood Secret Scripture, essence blood was hardly a precious commodity to him. At present, thirty percent of his blood had been converted into True Blood. That equated to roughly thirty-eight thousand drops of True Blood, with every single drop vastly outperforming ordinary essence blood.

Hatching a single Red Jade Mosquito egg would only require five drops of his True Blood. The mere dozen eggs would cost him less than a hundred drops in total. Even if he went on to raise a swarm of a thousand Red Jade Mosquitoes in the future, it would only require a few thousand drops. Even if he burned several times that amount to accelerate their growth, spending tens of thousands of drops wasn’t a big deal—he still had to frequently enter his Grotto Heaven for secluded cultivation anyway, which would naturally replenish his True Blood.

Besides, by the time he successfully cultivated a thousand Red Jade Mosquitoes, who knew what Realm his body cultivation would have reached? The amount of True Blood in his body would only increase.

Li Yinsheng felt as if these Red Jade Mosquitoes were tailor-made for him. Mosquitoes hatched and nurtured with his own True Blood would possess an innate Restriction, making them effortless to control. Moreover, their combat power would easily surpass those hatched from the essence blood of a standard Body Cultivation Daoist. They might even rival the strength of the top ten on the Exotic Insect List.

More importantly, once the Red Jade Mosquitoes coalesced into their solid Red Jade form, the Exotic Insect List likened them to an offensive Magical Treasure. But reading between the lines of the other records, it wasn’t hard to deduce that this Red Jade form simply possessed phenomenally high physical durability and strength. After all, a single Red Jade Mosquito was hailed as the “Body Cultivator among insects,” boasting tyrannical defense, astonishing speed, and the ability to pierce a Daoist Body Cultivator’s defenses. Naturally, once they coalesced into a solid mass, their structural integrity would be astounding.

In that case… if he willed them to form into a blade, spear, sword, or halberd, wouldn’t they serve as an exquisite weapon? As a Body Cultivator, what Li Yinsheng lacked most was a reliable, handy weapon. A weapon formed from Red Jade Mosquitoes would boast immense durability, fluidly change forms, and be incredibly responsive to his will. Best of all, it could evolve and grow alongside his own cultivation. As long as he continued to nurture them, the Red Jade Mosquitoes would sooner or later become a peerless Divine Weapon!

Compared to scouring the world for a weapon that he might rapidly outgrow, cultivating Red Jade Mosquitoes seemed like a much more sound investment.

Even setting aside their utility as a weapon, a single Red Jade Mosquito was enough to make an ordinary Cultivator wish they were dead. They were blisteringly fast, practically invisible to Divine Sense, their bites caused agonizing itches, and they could scramble an opponent’s mind… If anyone dared cross him in the future, they could kiss a good night’s sleep goodbye for the rest of their lives!

His mind made up, Li Yinsheng wasted no time. He spent the entire night studying and managed to grasp the basics of the Insect-Control Skill left behind by Chongyun. It was indeed a Magic Technique personally crafted by a Daoist. Even though it was a Heterodox Technique, upon reaching the Beginner stage, Li Yinsheng could still sense its profound depth and complexity.

However, the difficulty was a minor issue. At worst, once he collected his rewards for cultivating Magic, he would just dedicate some time to properly training his Insect-Control Skill.