My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting
Chapter 275 – Everyone Has Their Own Obsession, The Life-Devouring Weaponsmithing Skill - Part 3

Chapter 275 – Everyone Has Their Own Obsession, The Life-Devouring Weaponsmithing Skill - Part 3

A few days later.

Li Yuan regained his composure and returned to the Vine Pavilion. The old caretaker, Old Mu, had been replaced by a young woman dressed in yellow.

She greeted him curtly, “Xiang Qingyu of the Xian Clan greets Master Li.”

“What happened to Old Mu?” Li Yuan asked casually.

“He departed on a long journey,” Xiang Qingyu replied.

“A journey?”

She nodded. “His life is almost at its end, and he wanted to see what’s out there before it was too late.”

“But the world outside is chaotic...”

“It was his decision.”

“I see,” Li Yuan murmured. Then he went off to continue reading.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Another few days passed.

One afternoon, Xiang Qingyu suddenly spoke up. “Master Li, it’s pointless.”

“What is?” Li Yuan was intrigued by her comment.

She lifted her chin, her gaze sharp and perceptive. “I’ve seen you reading all those notebooks and treatises about breaking through bottlenecks. But even if you read them all, it won’t change reality.

“It’s just like Old Mu. He spent all that time here but couldn’t escape his own lifespan. A sixth rank martial artist gains a couple of centuries at most. Once that path is cut off, there’s no extending it.”

Li Yuan eyed her. “Miss Xiang, you’ve never traveled outside, have you?”

Caught off guard, Xiang Qingyu paused. “I only just broke into sixth rank. I’m supposed to go out into the world, but it’s a mess right now, and my clan decided to have me replace Old Mu at the Vine Pavilion while I read a bit. Why?”

“No reason,” he replied, simply shaking his head. Then he went back to his books.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

The same evening.

When Li Yuan returned to the Jing estate, a carriage stood by the roadside. The moment he appeared, an older man from the Xian Clan stepped down with Xiang Qingyu and hurried over, apologizing profusely.

“Our young Qingyu can be thoughtless,” he kept saying.

Tears brimming in her eyes, Xiang Qingyu bowed repeatedly to Li Yuan, offering one apology after another.

Only then did Li Yuan learn that, upon seeing her clan again, she had casually remarked about their conversation in the Vine Pavilion. Alarmed and worried that her words might have offended him, the Xian Clan had rushed her here to make amends in person.

Li Yuan, however, didn’t mind in the least. Waving a hand, he said with a smile, “No need to scold her. Honestly, Miss Xiang has been a big help these past few days; she’s always assisting me in finding the right texts.

“Besides, I fought alongside your clan head more than once in various missions outside the city stronghold. Why would I hold a grudge against a youngster?”

He then invited them into the Jing estate and presented Xiang Qingyu with a top-quality sixth rank longsword fashioned especially for female martial artists. Such a weapon was rare. Apart from Li Yuan himself and Master Gong, few blacksmiths had the skill or luck to craft a top-quality sixth rank weapon.

Overwhelmed by his generosity, Xiang Qingyu was on the verge of tears. She was, after all, the eldest young miss of the Xian Clan, with a grandfather who served as its clan head. That was why she had the privilege to watch over the Vine Pavilion.

But even with her status, she’d never owned a top-quality sixth rank sword. Those prized weapons were all held by the clan’s top sixth rank experts. Yet here she was, receiving one for herself.

“Thank you, Master Li... Thank you,” Xiang Qingyu murmured, touched by his kindness.

She had braced herself to bow her head in apology, expecting indifference or even harsh sarcasm from Li Yuan, only to force a smile and keep apologizing. She hadn’t imagined things would turn out like this. She now regretted all the more that her bluntness might have caused offense.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

The next day.

When Li Yuan arrived at the Vine Pavilion once again, Xiang Qingyu greeted him warmly and helped him gather a whole stack of books on breaking through cultivation bottlenecks. Then she spoke up on her own initiative.

“Master Li, there’s actually a storehouse of old tattered books outside the Vine Pavilion. They’re in terrible shape and full of missing pages, so they were never brought in here. But I’ve always felt there might be something valuable hidden among them. Would you like to go check it out? Maybe you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”

Li Yuan was startled. That was fast, He’d spent months working with Old Mu, occasionally hinting about other book collections, yet Old Mu had refused to say a word. Now—

“Will this cause any trouble for you?” he asked.

Xiang Qingyu let out a little harumph, the temperamental heiress shining through. “It’s just an old, broken-down building stuffed with ruined books. What kind of trouble could it cause?”

“All right, then,” Li Yuan said. “Let’s take a look.”

With a carefree grin, Xiang Qingyu beamed at him, then clung to his arm like an affectionate little sister. “Alright, then let’s go, Big Bro!”

Li Yuan couldn’t help smiling wryly at her casual tone. “Big Bro? You’re calling me that now?”

She shrugged, still looking mischievous. “You’re so young-looking. Better to call you a big brother than some stuffy old master!”

He realized she was just trying to put him at ease, thinking he was worried about his limited lifespan and searching for a way to break through, exactly as Old Mu had done. This was her way of showing concern.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

“Then Big Bro it is.”

A once-highhanded young lady was now acting like an enthusiastic little sister—a pleasant change, if a bit brash.

Xiang Qingyu dashed away for a moment to retrieve a large key hidden behind a mechanism. Then she hooked it on her belt and led Li Yuan out. Light-footed, the two traveled through a maze of vines, parting a cluster of thick leaves until they reached an extremely well-concealed tree hollow.

She slipped the key in and unlocked the entrance; a stale, musty odor wafted out. Fanning her face, she wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue before turning to Li Yuan.

“You go in first. Shut the door so no one sees you, okay?”

Then she pulled the key free, handed it over, and added, “When you leave, remember to lock up.”

Li Yuan, already eager to check out the old books, nodded. “Thanks, Miss Xiang.”

She grinned. “If anything, I should be thanking you.” With that, she tossed him the key, then bounded away with a carefree air.

Li Yuan focused on the collection, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. Sunlight filtered through the vines and a small crystal window, forming slanted beams across the dusty room. Brushing off a wooden shelf, he surveyed its contents.

The books truly were in dreadful condition—some reduced to half a sheet of paper, some in languages he couldn’t decipher, and others too blurred to read due to poor preservation. Still, he went through them one by one. He knew the odds were slim. These had been left here after being carefully culled, so the chance of stumbling on a forgotten treasure was small.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Several days later.

Li Yuan uncovered a half-rotten, leather-bound volume among the piles of torn and timeworn books. The writing was nearly illegible. After squinting at it for some time, he pieced together its contents.

Amazingly, it turned out to be a manual on weaponsmith, albeit one that leaned on the unorthodox if not demonic side. Its theories were extreme and bore no resemblance to Heavensense or Earth Appraisal, which relied on channeling Yin or Yang.

In short, this weaponsmith’s legacy was called Life Devour.

Its central idea was to sacrifice the weaponsmith’s own lifespan to imbue the forged weapon with terrifying power.

Beyond the smithing method itself, the lineage also included an iron hammer passed down through generations. The hammer’s exact workings were unclear, but it seemingly absorbed a person’s remaining life force and transferred it into the spirit artifact being forged, granting the weapon an extraordinary trait.

Intrigued, Li Yuan searched the area for a while longer and was astonished to find, propping up one corner of a table, a black hammer that matched the description in the text. Grasping it, a prompt appeared in his equipment list.

「Ghost Hammer」

So that’s why it can siphon lifespans; it’s a ghost item, Li Yuan thought.

It might have existed for over a thousand years, or even several thousand. Yet since it was technically an equipable item, he wasn’t too worried; objects recognized in that category were usually not overwhelmingly dangerous.

“Maybe I should give it a try,” Li Yuan murmured, eyeing the half-ruined Life Devour manual. Though he’d never be able to learn it in full, he only needed to grasp the basics before his own skills could fill in the gaps. And given his expertise in weaponsmithing, he could experiment and figure out whatever was missing.