"Weak and Ill," "Breathing Weakness," "Qi and Blood Deficiency," when you drag these three abilities into the same row in the inventory, you’ll get a prompt asking if you want to merge them into the "Living Dead" ability.

And in these days, he has merged over fifty Living Dead.

"Living Dead" Level 1, green.

——"What doesn’t kill you will inevitably make you stronger. You’re still sickly, but the illness is no longer fatal; your breathing is weak, yet it meets your needs; your qi and blood are empty, but the cold won’t take your life. All sorts of hardships eventually forge a powerful body, provided you ensure adequate sleep, because you are the Living Dead!"

Chen Xuan carried the first Living Dead he merged with him.

There’s no other way... After all, this isn’t an ability traded from a customer, and he has no experience to reference. The store APP’s description is also quite makeshift, so he can only experience it personally and be the adventurous one.

After experiencing it for a few days, he discovered this is entirely a positive ability, and its effects are extraordinarily powerful.

First, the weak breathing...

It seems like a bad situation, but his demand for air has greatly reduced as well. If he doesn’t use the Celestial Mist Skill as protection, his breath-holding limit was about five minutes before. After adding the Living Dead, he can easily hold his breath for thirty minutes, pretty much like a real dead person.

Considering his body has been greatly strengthened through nightly heart method training, even a normal person who could hold their breath for thirty seconds should be able to last ten minutes.

The qi and blood deficiency is even more magical. On the surface, qi deficiency leads to coldness, aversion to cold, fatigue, and lethargy, but with the Living Dead, this trait just becomes a simple low temperature. His body temperature even dropped from 37 degrees to 28 degrees at one point, and by all logic, he’d be dead already, yet he felt almost no abnormality!

As for the illness part, Chen Xuan couldn’t test it, but he thought it was similar—many pathogens would more easily invade his body but ultimately only cause some coughing and runny nose, not enough to make him gravely ill.

Looking at it this way, the ability does indeed turn people into the Living Dead: almost no breathing, icy body temperature, carrying a lot of bacteria but not suffering much from them (after all, he’s already dead).

If it were just like this, at most it neutralizes the drawbacks of all the negative abilities, without anything particularly commendable.

The real emphasis is on the last sentence: "All sorts of hardships eventually forge a powerful body"—Chen Xuan realized that it actually accelerates the spiritual qi absorption cycle, like adding a booster to the Celestial Mist Skill!

If you add "Spiritual Energy Body," the body is practically in a stormy intake mode.

Think about it carefully, the logic is not difficult to understand.

Liu Shuyue once said that the heart method refines external spiritual qi into one’s own flesh and blood, but this "spiritual energy flesh" conflicts with life itself, and how much spiritual qi a person can endure depends on their body and will.

The Spiritual Energy Body can accelerate the absorption and transformation of spiritual qi, at the cost of shortening life—it means the qi-rich shell overwhelms the will, creating an Inner Demon, eventually becoming a creature reminiscent of Demon Fiend.

"Living Dead" equates to raising the limit of the first container, allowing the flesh to hold more spiritual energy flesh, making the heart method refinement smoother.

The first people Chen Xuan thought of were the Hot Pepper Village residents.

They are Qi Sensing Man born after bathing in Dragon Blood, similar to those cultivators from the Immortal Alliance who practice by slaying Demon Fiend. It’s easy to start, but the ceiling isn’t very high. Even if they exhaust their whole lives, they probably won’t reach the level of a disciple from the Lotus Cloud Sect.

"Living Dead" could effectively widen this bottleneck.

The good news is, it’s not just one of them.

That’s why when Beitian Academy called about treatment, Chen Xuan was so proactive—because the more components he collected, the more Living Dead he could merge.

It’s precisely a suitable ability for mass equipment: if only one person is the Living Dead, surrounded by normal people, their propensity to get infected would make them a potential pathogen pool, harming others. But if everyone is the Living Dead, naturally there wouldn’t be such issues.

The only downside of this ability, "drowsiness," merely increases sleep time to 10 hours a day, and lacking this makes the effectiveness diminish. Considering the benefits it brings, the cost is negligible.

At the next ability adjustment assembly, let’s equip them with Living Dead, Chen Xuan thought, first getting a go-ahead from Liu Shuyue, who likely wouldn’t reject it.

Ding Dong!

An email icon popped up at the bottom of the screen.

Seeing this icon, Chen Xuan immediately perked up.

Could it be... the rating has been replied?

He moved the mouse, took a deep breath, clicked the icon, and the storekeeper rating page indeed popped up.

"Congratulations, you have become a glorious Level 5 storekeeper!"

——"The ??? Storekeeper" LV5, colorful.

——"We are confident, regardless of world changes, the storekeeper’s achievements will be passed down through the ages."

"Milestone unlocked: gained an extra ability slot."

"You can now have two branches simultaneously."

"Internal store unlocked: purchase your favorite trinkets."

"Ability synchronization limit increased to Level 5."

"Non-transferable, non-negotiable. Current storekeeper status: still alive."

It wasn’t easy!

The approval time was excessively long this time, Chen Xuan complained, taking a full eleven days from application to response! What, is it difficult to verify the situation from another world?

He almost thought that silence equaled rejection.

But no matter what, the reward he longed for has finally arrived!

Chen Xuan eagerly scanned himself with the barcode scanner, discovering that both the carried abilities and transaction slots turned to five.

Now, apart from the Thousand Thoughts Sword, Divine Eye Technique, and Celestial Mist Skill fixed trio, he has two free slots to swap around. Whether it’s the Decomposition and Re-Fusion combo or the Celestial Thunder Order plus True Sword Demon Slaying combo, they’re all very good. When in the store, he can even switch to the Living Dead with Spiritual Energy Body as a recuperative set, accelerating his Qi Refining cycle.

Indeed, having a larger backpack slot is enjoyable!

As for other effects...

There isn’t much to care about the two branches; doubling the quantity means he can directly send the firearms bought overseas to Hot Pepper Village without needing to go through the main store anymore.

As for the internal store, Chen Xuan already saw an additional purchase column at the top of the assistant APP.

Goodness... Opening a shop to earn a salary, then using that salary to buy things from the store! A perfect internal loop. He didn’t even need to open it to know, previously, instead of giving out salaries directly, they gave him a wallet equivalent, feeling like they were playing with him! The hidden move was right there!

Indeed, the moment he entered the interface, Chen Xuan saw his balance points: 14,500 yuan.

It was linked to the wallet.

Only the first page of in-app purchases was available; the following pages required a higher store employee level to unlock. Chen Xuan glanced over the items inside and found most were store skins.

That’s right... Just like getting trapped by premium skins in mobile games, he didn’t expect he couldn’t escape the skin curse even after opening a store.

For instance, the first skin: Fruit Store.

"Set up the storefront as a small fruit supermarket, including four sets of regular shelves and one set of refrigerated shelves."

"Tip: Must close the store door when changing to ensure the store remains sealed."

"Skin replacement will complete all renovation projects simultaneously, but subsequent maintenance and goods replenishment are not included in the service."

Price: 1200 yuan.

If you say it’s useless, pulling out 1200 yuan separately wouldn’t buy enough for a store remodel, let alone a few durians. It can change the store theme while simultaneously restocking shelves, its total value far exceeding the price.

But to say it’s useful, it’s not exactly useful—Chen Xuan’s store is quite well known in the Celestial Ridge District, and if it suddenly transforms into a fruit store overnight, customers would find it ridiculous and start doubting the storekeeper himself. Such a loss outweighs the gain, and he does not want to do it.

Perhaps using it on a branch would be okay.

The problem is now the branch is just a transit channel, which is directly closed when not in use, making it pointless to make it exquisite.

Furthermore, this is already the cheapest skin in the in-app store.

Chen Xuan also found a gun store-themed skin priced at 25,600 yuan.

He bets that if this skin is used, the next day Celestial Ridge District will be making headlines!