Martial Immortality: Starting with the Spirit Beast Scroll

Ever since he obtained the Spirit Beast Scroll, Zhao Lin had considered the power of smell more than once.

In the beginning, when survival was a struggle, his sense of smell was of little help in improving his family’s situation. It was the dead of winter, with all the vegetation withered, making it impossible to find medicinal herbs by scent.

After absorbing the Essence Souls of the old yellow ox and the bear, his circumstances gradually improved, and the sense of smell became even more insignificant in his mind, so he slowly stopped thinking about it.

But now, his perspective had changed.

The sense of smell was the ultimate tracking tool.

In his past life, trained police dogs could pick up a suspect’s scent from hours before, but the Fragrance Leopard’s sense of smell was even more acute!

’If I absorb its Essence Soul, catching the Drilling Mountain Leopard will be easy.’

Zhao Lin decided it was worth it, even if it meant sacrificing one of the slots on his Spirit Beast Scroll.

In a mink shed next to the stables, a skinny, dark-faced old man who looked like a farmer was mixing wild vegetables and rice bran with a pile of fish and shrimp. He poured the mixture into a large wooden bucket and stirred it vigorously with a stick.

On the ground beside the old man were several iron cages, which held more than a dozen slender, silvery-gray minks.

These minks were extremely active, leaping about inside their cages.

"Are these all Fragrant Minks?"

Zhao Lin asked, watching the minks as they jumped around in their cages, eager for food.

The sudden appearance of another person in the shed startled the old man. He looked up and saw it was a young man, and he had just started to relax when he noticed Zhao Lin was covered in blood. His heart, which had just settled, leaped back into his throat.

"Don’t be alarmed, sir. This blood is from the bandits."

Seeing the old man trembling in fear, Zhao Lin explained with a smile, "I was just asking if these in the cages are Fragrant Minks."

"They are, sir. They’re Fragrant Minks," the old man replied respectfully.

"Pick one out for me." Zhao Lin squatted down by the cages.

"What kind are you looking for, sir?" the old man asked.

"One with a good sense of smell. A male, preferably," Zhao Lin said after a moment’s thought.

Not daring to refuse, the old man opened a cage and caught a large, plump mink with a glossy coat.

Zhao Lin glanced at it. "Is this the best one?"

The old man nodded. "I’m with these minks every day. I know which is which."

"Good. Kill it."

At Zhao Lin’s words, the old man’s hand trembled, and he nearly dropped the mink.

Zhao Lin knew the old man must think he was some kind of deviant. "Don’t get the wrong idea," he explained. "I just want its pelt."

The old man swallowed hard, clearly not believing him. But he was used to being bullied by the bandits in the stronghold and didn’t dare refuse. With tears in his eyes, he clubbed the mink to death with a wooden stick.

"Thank you. Could you please wait outside? I’ll call you when you can come back in."

Zhao Lin didn’t want anyone around while he absorbed the Essence Soul, so he sent the old man out.

After the old man left, the Essence Soul of the Fragrant Mink had already coalesced in the air.

’I wonder what this experience will be like.’

Zhao Lin’s nostrils flared as he inhaled the silver light.

Just as he had expected, the silver light entered his body and immediately gathered around his mouth and nose, beginning a drastic transformation—or perhaps, an evolution.

A pungent sensation shot from his nasal cavity straight to the crown of his head.

’Now that’s a kick!’

Zhao Lin felt as if he’d just swallowed a huge mouthful of wasabi. The sensation seared his nose, his eyes instantly filled with tears, and his very soul felt like it was about to be blasted out of his body.

Immediately following that, all sorts of scents—some he’d smelled before, some he hadn’t, and some he couldn’t even have imagined—exploded in his senses.

Fruity, milky, meaty, smoky, sour, burnt, rotten, pungent, the reek of urine, the sharpness of vinegar, the tang of fruit acids... Each scent differentiated into dozens, even hundreds of variations, all of them unbelievably potent.

Scents he had previously thought were similar, or even identical, now seemed worlds apart.

The absorption of the Essence Soul didn’t take long. After just a short while, the Spirit Beast Scroll flashed, and the image of a Fragrant Mink appeared in the fifth slot.

Zhao Lin took a deep breath...

...and almost threw up.

The mink shed was filled with the stench of feed, urine, and feces.

Before, Zhao Lin’s nose hadn’t been very sensitive, so he had only found it a little unpleasant. But now, with his heightened sense of smell, these odors were magnified tenfold, a hundredfold. He instantly felt his stomach churn, and he fought the urge to vomit.

Forcing down his nausea and covering his mouth and nose, he suddenly noticed that the two wooden buckets used to feed the minks contained feed of different colors. One was pale red, the other light gray.

Suspicion bloomed in his mind, and he called the old man back in to question him.

"Why are there two different colors of feed? Is it for different breeds of mink, or is there another reason?"

"Sir, the feed is different colors because different spices have been added."

The old man pulled two paper packets from his robes, opening them for Zhao Lin to see. Sure enough, one contained red powder, the other black.

"What’s the difference?"

Zhao Lin’s intuition told him this wasn’t so simple. He leaned closer, wafted the air toward his nose with his hand a couple of times, and immediately distinguished the difference between the two powders’ scents.

While both had a musky aroma, the red powder also smelled of oil and pine wood, whereas the black powder had a hint of sweetness.

The old man watched Zhao Lin’s actions with curiosity. When asked, he paused for a moment before answering, "The chieftains regularly take red pills. If they get too far apart from each other and need to make contact, they use the Fragrant Minks raised on the red feed to find one another."

"The minks are clever, but they can’t speak. This is the fastest method."

’So it’s used internally among the bandits.’

Zhao Lin’s eyebrow twitched. ’I wonder if Drilling Mountain Leopard ever took the red pills,’ he mused.

The old man continued, "The black powder is used on outsiders. As long as someone is marked with even a tiny bit of it, the Fragrant Minks raised on the black feed can be put to use."

He paused for a moment before adding, "Normally, I wouldn’t be privy to such things. But last year, Lord Ma Hao was talking about it with someone, and I happened to overhear a bit."

A flash of understanding hit Zhao Lin. This must be the same black powder that Drilling Mountain Leopard had sent his men to sprinkle on him.

"Thank you, sir."

Zhao Lin thanked him politely and was about to leave when a thought occurred to him.

’This old man has been helping the bandits raise Fragrant Minks for years,’ he thought. ’He’s indirectly harmed countless people, myself included. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he’s been aiding the enemy.’

With this in mind, he turned to size up the old man, his hand resting on the iron ruler at his waist. A smile touched his lips. "Sir, what did you do before all this? How long have you been on this mountain?"

For reasons he couldn’t explain, a sudden, inexplicable panic seized the old man. The hair on his arms stood on end, and he fell to his knees with a THUD.

"Sir, I used to be a farmer on Baitou Mountain. I know a bit about herbs, and I used to help my neighbors treat their sick livestock. I had a bit of a reputation."

"Ten years ago, Second Chieftain Xu captured me and brought me up this mountain. He forced me to raise these Fragrant Minks, and I’ve been here ever since. My poor mother is nearly eighty... I don’t even know if she’s still alive."

Zhao Lin sighed quietly. The hand gripping his iron ruler slowly relaxed. "In the next day or two, something big is going to happen in this stronghold," he said softly. "You should find a place to hide. If you can make it through the next couple of days, you’ll be able to go home."

With that, he strode out of the wooden hut.