After arriving at Maple Leaf City, Lou Cheng did not immediately contact the seller, but instead used the branch of the Alchemy Association to find his identity; he did not want to walk into a trap.
After a brief investigation, he discovered that the seller was just an ordinary cultivator at the Body Refining Realm. In order to get resources, he will often go to the mountain area to fight against demonic beasts and sell their core and corpse for origin stones.
Luckily for him, while there, he accidentally discovered a rare herb and wanted to sell it for a high price at the Alchemy Association. However, after learning that an alchemist had posted a call for this herb, he was adamant about meeting him.
After reviewing the information, Lou Cheng realized that there was nothing wrong so far and that the seller most likely wanted to ask him for some rare pill, so he decided to meet the man.
If the price is not too exaggerated, he is open to trade.
Inside a large room in the Alchemy Association Branch, Lou Cheng looked at the man in front of him. He was wearing tight leather clothes that facilitated easy movement, and also had some defensive ability. However, he could also see that the man’s clothes were also worn out.
After checking the man’s clothes, Lou Cheng observed other things about him. The man had a 9th Layer Body Refining cultivation, however, his blood qi was weak and scattered. Obviously, he cultivated a common-level cultivation technique.
Adding to that the fact that he looked middle-aged, his talent could also be determined as subpar.
"You said you wanted to see me before the exchange? Tell me your purpose," said Lou Cheng, who seemed a little impatient.
The seller frowned for a moment, then said: "Well, I was preparing to play a little more, however, since you’re in a hurry, I guess I’ll get back to business."
Immediately, Lou Cheng felt something was wrong; he immediately wanted to do something, but to his horror, he discovered that he could not move a single inch.
Meanwhile, his Dao Protector also felt something was wrong, so he wanted to exit the void and save Lou Cheng. However, as soon as he had this intention, countless strings suddenly appeared out of nowhere and binds him.
The old man immediately started to use his Fire Law to break the strings, however, countless runes suddenly appeared from the strings and sealed the Law inside his body.
Then, a grey string entered his Sea of Consciousness and binds his soul. Immediately afterward, the old man felt his consciousness rapidly losing, turning him into a puppet. He only resisted for a few seconds before he was completely turned.
The seller--who had a smirk on his face--raised his hand and placed it on Lou Cheng’s forehead, then he said:
"[Fate Stealing]"
A fate line appeared from Lou Cheng’s body, wriggling around it for a moment. Then, another fate line appeared from Wang Wei’s body which fused with his.
Lou Cheng’s body disintegrated into millions of pieces, meanwhile, Wang Wei slowly transformed into Lou Cheng’s appearance.
And it was not just his appearance, his soul, cultivation level, physique, aptitude, and memories turned into the same as Lou Cheng. What he did was steal the latter’s fate, thus turning into him.
With this method, Wang Wei is now Lou Cheng, but Lou Cheng is not Wang Wei.
After his transformation, Wang Wei checked his body from head to toe. He discovered that he was exactly like Lou Cheng--even his little brother had shrunk by a few inches.
"Well, with this method, I can even fool an Emperor Formation that checks the soul."
Then, Wang Wei waved his hand to use a secret technique to create a clone that looked exactly like the previous seller. He proceeded to make it look like Lou Cheng and he had an exchange before parting their ways.
Since Lou Cheng was staying in a special room reserved for him by the Alchemy Association, Wang Wei returned there. The first thing he did once he returned home was to check all of Lou Cheng’s memories.
According to the technique he used, he could allow Lou Cheng’s main consciousness to be in charge of this body while he stayed in the background, but he did not want to do this for many reasons.
Although this method was safe and lowered the risk of being discovered due to strange and out-of-character behavior, he wanted to be in charge in case something unexpected occurred and the real consciousness of Lou Cheng is powerless.
After checking the guy’s memory, Wang Wei muttered: "No wonder this guy actually took my bait. It turns out that he cultivates a special technique that can actually raise his talent of alchemy."
Talent in alchemy can be divided into three categories: understanding of herbs and how they interact with one another. This part of talent can be made up with years of study, however, some talented individuals can hold a herb in their hands for the first time and immediately know its characteristics and how to match it with other herbs.
The second category revolves around divine runes and how to properly apply them to make pills.
Lastly, it is the talent to control flames. The better an alchemist is at controlling flames, the more power he or she can bring from the ingredients used in making pills.
The cultivation that Lou Cheng cultivated allowed him to slowly increase his talent for Flame Control. However, Wang Wei quickly realized that this cultivation technique was incomplete.
Furthermore, after reviewing how Lou Cheng got this technique, his intuition told him that something was wrong. Unfortunately, he did not have enough information to make any kind of judgment,
After reviewing all of Lou Cheng’s memories, Wang Wei did not immediately return to the Origin Pill Dao Sect but went to the east of Maple Leaf City where there were many street vendors selling artifacts that were supposedly found in Secret Realm.
He bought a very ancient small mirror. With his True Vision ability, he knew that this was just a normal mirror, not an ancient artifact from the Ancient Emperor Era like the street vendor said.
The reason he bought this mirror was that he realized that it was actually very old, probably dating to the last era and further.
After that, Wang Wei took a carriage heading back. In fact, Wang Wei wanted to take a Soaring Phoenix Construct, unfortunately, in Lou Cheng’s memory, he discovered that this guy was quite old-fashioned and hated the constructs.
He did not like the fact that mortals and cultivators’ lives became entangled with one another. To him, these two people belong to different worlds and should remain as such. So, when it comes to these constructs that brought these different worlds together, he refused to use any of them.
Wang Wei was not surprised by this as many cultivators felt that way. To them, the world was changing too fast and they did not like that.
"Huh?" softly muttered Wang Wei as he felt something. He raised his head and looked in the distance. His vision seemed to penetrate a few hundred thousand kilometers as he saw 5 Saints Realm cultivators blending in the void, hiding their auras.
"Although they try to hide it, I can feel that these guys have killing intent for this Lou Cheng....It seemed that things are not peaceful in the Origin Pill Dao Sect."
Wang Wei thought for a moment about how to deal with the situation before deciding to get rid of these people. His current priority was to get back to the sect and secure his identity.
So, he flicked his fingers making the void tremble lightly. Then, another space fluctuating appeared on the location of these Saints. As a result, they immediately felt something was wrong and wanted to react.
However, a bunch of strings suddenly appeared and cut them into millions of pieces; they did not have time to scream, move, or open their Domains for protection. Even their Primordial Spirit did not have time to escape their bodies and was cut into pieces.
Nodding his head in satisfaction, Wang Wei continued his journey in peace. However, he did not slowly go there as he planned. Instead, he had his Dao Protector carry him back as he did previously.
As soon as Wang Wei arrived at the Origin Pill Dao Sect, the first thing he noticed was that the sect was built on top of countless volcanoes, making the surrounding area always surrounded by heat.
Inside these volcanoes were caves where most of the lower disciples resided. This was a way to allow the ones with low levels of cultivation to use the heat from the volcano to make pills. After all, only after entering the Divine Sea Realm can cultivators use spells.
After taking a quick look at the surroundings, Wang Wei headed straight to the cave on the highest peak.