Chapter 19 The Legend of the White Rat

  During his time on Fragrant Cloud Mountain, Bai Xiaochun, as an outer disciple, was living a very nourishing life, and other than the fact that he always missed the food from the Fire Stove Room on the mountain, he was very happy with everything else.   Whether it was the speed of his cultivation or his study of grasses and trees, he felt that his life was fulfilling, and only occasionally did he get bored; the courtyard he was in was a bit remote, and with no one he knew around him, he didn't even have anyone to talk to a lot of the time.   "Could it be that cultivators are all so lonely?" Bai Xiaochun raised his head with emotion and stood in the courtyard, looking up at the sky with the look of a teenager.   Now that the autumn winds had gone, the snow and wind were falling, and with the plummeting temperatures, occasional snowflakes could be seen falling between the sky and the earth, the Spirit Winter Bamboo in the courtyard, too, was thriving in this descent into winter, and now stood at a height beyond Bai Xiaochun's own, emerald-green and a sight to behold in the spring of this cold winter.   At the moment, it had been more than a month since he had become the first of the grass and wood steles, except that the difficulty of the second chapter of the grass and wood had exceeded his expectations, and his research had slowed down a bit, and on top of all that, although Zhou Xinqi had never taken back the first of the first steles, Bai Xiaochun's stress rose here at the thought of the grass and wood remnants that were left incomplete at the end of the trial.   "I can't let that little bitch Zhou Xinqi surpass me in my hefty reputation." Bai Xiaochun secretly resolved that he hadn't yet accomplished that ideal deep down inside of him of proudly stating that he was the Turtle Pill Master when all eyes were on him, and felt more and more like he had to work even harder to do so.   Although the second chapter of Grass and Wood was progressing slower, he was on the verge of reaching a small circumference by practicing the Immortal Longevity Technique.   The excruciating pain intensified each time he practiced, but Bai Xiaochun's obsession with the words Immortal Longevity made it so that he had even managed to hang on for dear life here.   "There are still three days left, and in three days, according to the Immortal Longevity Technique, it'll be a complete Little Zhou Heaven." Bai Xiaochun took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and darted back and forth across this courtyard while studying the second chapter of Grass and Wood.   Very quickly, three days passed, and when dusk fell on the third day, snowflakes drifted up from the sky, causing the Spirit Stream Sect to be covered in silver.   Bai Xiaochun was running when suddenly his body shook violently and came to a direct halt, and the severe pain that had lasted for ninety-one days instantly disappeared at this moment.   Gusts of heat suddenly erupted, and after continuously surging within his body, they all coalesced on his skin, causing it to roll as if it had just come out of a furnace with a branding iron.   Before the snowflakes could fall on his body, they immediately melted, and immediately afterward, they directly became white gas rising into the air.   "It's done!" Although Bai Xiaochun's mouth was dry and hot, he was pleasantly surprised as he looked down at his body and immediately saw some black light appear on his skin, which traveled in a circle before slowly dissipating.   Bai Xiaochun poked his arm with his right hand, and that tough, cowhide-like feeling made his eyes light up, and then after moving his body around a bit more, he visibly realized that he seemed to be going a bit faster, so he dashed forward, and with a whoosh, he even appeared directly a few feet away.   This kind of speed was more than double what he'd had before, and seeing how obvious the effect was, Bai Xiaochun was even more delighted, and after trying it for a long time, he was quite satisfied.   So without hesitation, he continued practicing according to the Undying Longevity Technique's mnemonic, a method of closing the mouth and nose and attempting to breathe with the body, one breath in and one breath out, a small cycle of sorts, with the requirement that it be performed ninety-nine hundred and eighty-one times a day for ninety-nine hundred and eighty-one days before it could be counted as a small circumference.   If it could be done consistently, then combined with the previous small circumference of intense physical pain, it would be a minor accomplishment of the Immortal Skin!   Bai Xiaochun practiced for a while before he slowly found a pattern and stood in the courtyard to breathe, but right after he managed to complete a small cycle, his body actually lost a circle of weight that was visible to the naked eye.   At the same time, gusts of hunger surfaced, causing Bai Xiaochun's stomach to rumble, but he ignored them and continued to breathe like this. Gradually, his body became thinner and thinner, and at the end of the day, after he completed his fifteenth breath, his body looked like it was on the verge of being skin and bones.   It was as if all the nutrients had been drained away, while his skin looked even tougher at this moment.   But Bai Xiaochun couldn't help it; he was dizzy and green-eyed when he opened his eyes, and the indescribable hunger felt as if there was a giant elephant in front of him that he could swallow in one bite.   "I can't, I'm going to starve to death!!!" Bai Xiaochun gulped hard, his eyes glowing with light as he looked around, but there was nothing edible around here, except for the bamboo, which was green and seemed to look delicious.   He wanted to hold back, but that feeling of hunger made his body huffed and puffed and came directly to the side of the Spirit Winter Bamboo, and bit down hard on that bamboo.   With a clicking sound, a large piece of the bamboo body was bitten off by him, clicking in his mouth, and after swallowing it down, Bai Xiaochun's face suddenly twisted with that bitter flavor, causing his entire body to shiver.   "It's too bitter ......"   "I want to eat ......" Bai Xiaochun in this instant, for the fire stove room miss, has been strong to the extreme, he is hungry ah, even he is so big, have not been so hungry, at the moment hungry dizzy, eyes more and more green, shortness of breath, body suddenly rushed out, directly Darted out of the courtyard.   As he sped down the mountain road, his speed was so fast that the other outer disciples he encountered along the way only felt a wind blowing past them, and looked at Bai Xiaochun's back in surprise.   He went straight down the mountain, rushed into the servant's area, and headed straight for the stove room. He didn't even want to waste any time opening the door, and leapt straight in.   At the moment, the Fire Stove Room was cooking, and after Zhang DaFat and Hei SanFat left, Huang ErFat became the head of the place, and he was pouring out rice soup when a gust of wind blew, the bowl in front of him disappeared, and appearing underneath the rice soup was Bai Xiaochun with his mouth wide open.   "Huh?" Huang ErFat startled, a few other fat people also froze, when see clearly is Bai Xiaochun, not yet wait for them to speak, Bai Xiaochun on the green eyes themselves pick up a pot, gulp gulp all the drink, seems to still feel slow, even put his head directly into a pot, that pot of rice soup instantly reduced ......   A mouthful, two mouthfuls, three mouthfuls ...... Bai Xiaochun drank more than a hundred pots of soup in a row, and his body was like a bottomless pit, and he didn't even feel half-supported.   "Hungry ah, I can't, I'm still hungry ...... I want to eat meat!" Bai Xiaochun was in a hurry, looking around and gulping down a mouthful of saliva at the first sight of a few fat senior brothers who were like mountains of meat.   The fat men in the fireplace room looked at Bai Xiaochun in disbelief, they had seen hungry ones, but they had never seen one starved like this, where is this still Bai Xiaochun, this is clearly a starving ghost ah.   Especially upon realizing that Bai Xiaochun was actually staring at himself and the others as they gulped down their saliva, Huang Erfang and the others immediately went crazy and hurriedly backed away, with Huang Erfang even yelling out.   "Nine Fatty, there's spirit food for Elder Zhou in the kitchen!"   As soon as Bai Xiaochun heard this, the light in his eyes flashed violently, and his body rushed directly into the kitchen.   Outside, Huang ErFat and the others looked at each other in disbelief, all sucking in their breath.   "See, this is what happens when you become an outer disciple, the young master is starved like this ......"   "Beat us to death, we won't become outer disciples either!" Several other fat people had made up their minds, and were quite sympathetic to Bai Xiaochun here.   For this meal, Bai Xiaochun held back, following the six truths of the Fire Stove Room, and just ate the edges and didn't go for the whole thing, because once the rules were broken, it was those senior brothers in the Fire Stove Room who would be victimized, and that was the kind of thing that Bai Xiaochun couldn't do.   After drinking the soup and eating the edges, Bai Xiaochun's hunger was finally a little less, and could be tolerated for a short time, before he walked out, crying with desire, feeling that the Immortal Longevity Technique was too horrible, and now that it didn't hurt anymore, this hunger was even more maddening.   "Second Senior Brother ......," Bai Xiaochun looked blearily at Huang Erfan.   Only after seeing Bai Xiaochun's gaze return to normal did Huang Erfan let go of his heart, and dared to walk over to Bai Xiaochun, patting his shoulder with a sympathetic look.   "Don't worry little senior brother, big deal, we'll just prepare some more for Elder Zhou... look at you, you're starving like this... alas, in the future, you'll come back more often to make up for it."   Bai Xiaochun was touched by these words, and he gritted his teeth, deciding that it would be better to come back less often in the future, or else in his current state, in case he really didn't hold back one day, he was afraid that a fire cooker room wouldn't be able to feed ......   Sent off by Huang Erfan and the others, Bai Xiaochun walked alas up Fragrant Cloud Mountain, the beauty and comfort he had felt before instantly dissipating, to be replaced by a patchwork of despair; he was terrified that he would actually starve to death.   "I wonder if the Spirit Stream Sect has had any disciples starved to death before me, I don't want to be the first." Bai Xiaochun cried out, thinking about what could be a long-lasting solution to the problem of food, when he suddenly heard a chicken crowing not far away.   The moment he heard the rooster's call, Bai Xiaochun's body gave a start, and he slowly turned his head, staring dead on in the direction from which the rooster's call had come, his eyes going straight, and his stomach beginning to rumble.   "Chicken ......" Bai Xiaochun looked around and realized that no one was paying attention to him, his body shifted, and he directly disappeared into the bushes, his speed soaring, like a weasel, whooshing out of sight.   A few moments later, in the Xiangyun Mountain specializing in raising spirit birds, surrounded by a fence outside, Bai Xiaochun shrinking body squatting there, looking at the fence within a group of is condescending each other walking around, tail has three-color feathers, the size of a calf-sized chickens, the light in the eyes of the thieves, do not know how many mouths of saliva swallowed.   "Meat ......," Bai Xiaochun here, let out an odd laugh, that smile sounds, extraordinarily creepy.