Eternal Life Begins with Learning

Cold!

A bone-chilling cold!

The sun was blazing high in the sky. It should have been warm. With his Qi Blood surging, he should have felt as if he were in a furnace!

Cold?

How could it possibly be cold?

Chu Mu instinctively calmed his Qi Blood and glanced around. The men on Forced Labor were still toiling, Li Jinghong and the man in white still stood not far away, and the Inspectors were still chatting casually in twos and threes.

At a glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Then, Chu Mu’s pupils contracted. ’The bone-chilling cold... it’s gone?’

Under the sun’s rays, there was only warmth.

It was as if the bone-chilling cold he had just felt was merely a hallucination.

"An illusion?"

Chu Mu frowned, uncertain.

Chu Mu looked to Xu Yuan, who was studying intently beside him, and asked with some hesitation, "Did you feel a chill just now?"

"What chill?"

Xu Yuan looked confused, glancing up at the blazing sun. "It’s pretty warm, actually."

Chu Mu frowned. It seemed it really was just his imagination.

Chu Mu scanned the mine pit once more, but there was still nothing out of the ordinary. After a moment of contemplation, he closed his eyes, calmed his mind, and began to sense his Qi Blood again.

But the very instant he sensed his Qi Blood, Chu Mu’s eyes shot open again, filled with unspeakable horror.

Cold!

The moment he sensed his Qi Blood, the bone-chilling cold reappeared!

Chu Mu forced himself to calm down and sensed his Qi Blood again. A moment later, he opened his eyes once more.

It wasn’t his imagination!

There truly was an unspeakable, bone-chilling cold!

When he wasn’t sensing his Qi Blood, nothing felt wrong. But the moment he did, he could instantly feel the bone-chilling cold enveloping him!

Chu Mu took a deep breath, trying to calm himself while slowly piecing things together.

He had come to this mine pit with the other Inspectors, then sensed his Qi Blood and started his Cultivation.

Just a moment ago, a chill had suddenly washed over him, as if... as if he had been abruptly thrown into an ice cellar.

’Could it be... something has gone wrong with my Qi and Blood Cultivation?’

Chu Mu’s expression flickered uncertainly as he tried to recall his Cultivation over the past few days. The only deviation was that he hadn’t followed the Body Refining Technique’s instructions to wait several days between using the medicinal liquid to support his Cultivation.

He had followed the Body Refining Technique’s instructions to the letter in all other respects.

Even with the medicinal liquid-supported Cultivation, he had only used it one extra time. It seemed impossible that could cause such a bizarre, almost hallucinatory phenomenon.

Chu Mu frowned, carefully sensing the changes in his body. But as long as he wasn’t sensing his Qi Blood, that bone-chilling cold was completely undetectable, like a mere phantom.

The heat of the sun, the warmth in his body, the beat of his pulse—everything seemed perfectly normal.

’If something went wrong with Qi and Blood Cultivation, shouldn’t it be affecting my body?’

’So why does everything feel fine when I’m not cultivating my Qi Blood?’

Chu Mu got up and began to pace, his face etched with contemplation.

This concerned his Qi and Blood Cultivation—it might even be a matter of life and death. He couldn’t afford to be careless.

Chu Mu wondered if he should request leave to go see Elder Li for a diagnosis.

Or maybe he should first find an expert accomplished in Qi and Blood Cultivation and inquire about it.

Chu Mu’s gaze swept over the surrounding Inspectors, but he quickly abandoned the idea.

The reason was simple: his network within the Inspection Office was not extensive. The one person he was on good terms with, Wu Shuo, was nowhere to be seen.

’I still have to request leave!’

Chu Mu considered it, but as he prepared to go request leave, he was struck by a dumbfounding realization.

Who was he supposed to ask for leave?

He was a team leader, and his direct superior was Wu Shuo.

But Wu Shuo was nowhere in sight.

With Wu Shuo absent, he would have to find Wu Shuo’s superior.

That would be He Ping, the Hundred Households who had died a miserable death at Fengyue Tower.

And He Ping’s superior, the one in charge of the Nanshan Inspection Office, the Vice Thousand Households, had also died at Fengyue Tower.

In the past few days, Li Jinghong’s attention had clearly not been on the Inspection Office, so he naturally hadn’t bothered with these vacant positions.

In other words, for a lowly team leader like him to request leave, he would have to go to Li Jinghong—the Lord Thousand Households and County Captain of Nanshan County!

And right now...

Chu Mu looked at Li Jinghong, and his own back started to ache in sympathy. It seemed Li Jinghong had been constantly bowing before the man in white.

The dignified County Captain of Nanshan County had been acting like a fawning eunuch ever since the man in white arrived, attending to his every need with extreme humility.

Li Jinghong didn’t even dare to utter an unnecessary word. And he was supposed to go up and request leave now?

No matter how he thought about it, Chu Mu felt that would be the act of a complete fool.

"It’s probably... nothing, right?"

Chu Mu tried to reassure himself as he paced, wandering aimlessly around the area.

Then, as if noticing something, Chu Mu’s gaze narrowed, his brow already furrowed.

Chu Mu strode forward. Not far from him, a group of men on Forced Labor toiled away, with Guardian Inspectors standing by. It was the typical scene at the mine.

What caught Chu Mu’s attention, however, were not these things, but two corpses wrapped in straw mats off to the side.

From his vantage point, he could clearly see the heads of the corpses, which were sticking out from the straw mats.

The closer he got, the more clearly he could see, and the graver his expression became.

He could now clearly see a layer of frost on the corpses’ heads, visible to the naked eye!

The snow had stopped more than half a month ago, and all the ice had long since melted. Though it was winter, the past few days hadn’t been particularly cold.

In fact, the sun had been blazing in the sky every day. Where would frost come from?

Chu Mu walked forward without hesitation and reached out to touch one of the frost-covered heads. A bone-chilling cold instantly traveled up from his fingertips, a sensation that registered deep in his mind.

Strangely, Chu Mu found the coldness somehow familiar.

Familiar?

Chu Mu’s heart skipped a beat. ’What the hell? How can a feeling of coldness be familiar?’

Chu Mu double-checked, but the feeling only confirmed it again and again: this cold was identical to the one he had felt earlier.

It sounded ridiculous, but the sensation was unmistakably clear.

"Brother, what’re you looking at?"

Seeing Chu Mu staring blankly, a nearby Inspector couldn’t help but ask.

Chu Mu looked at the Inspector and asked with a hint of confusion, "Someone froze to death in this heat?"

At these words, the Inspector’s expression changed. He seemed about to speak, then hesitated.

Seeing this, Chu Mu’s own expression shifted. The Inspector’s reaction clearly meant there was more to this story.

Chu Mu smiled, smoothly changing the subject. "Brother, you’re from the third squad, aren’t you?"

"I’m from the second squad. Chu Mu. Good to meet you."

The Inspector looked surprised. "You’re Chu Mu?"

Chu Mu nodded. "There can’t be another Chu Mu in our Inspection Office, can there?"

The Inspector grew excited. "I heard that when you were fighting the bandits, you took down seven or eight of them all by yourself?"

"For real? I heard those bandits were vicious!"

"A lot of our brothers at the Inspection Office died fighting. Now I hear remnants of the Rebels are still stirring up trouble in town..."

Chu Mu chuckled and played along. Since they were both Inspectors, it wasn’t hard to build a rapport as long as there were no conflicting interests.

Back and forth they went, and Chu Mu slowly steered the conversation back toward the corpses.

That inexplicable feeling of familiarity was too absurd.

But it also seemed to suggest that it wasn’t what he’d thought—an error in his Cultivation. The problem, it seemed, wasn’t with him at all...

...