Chapter 96
Translator: penny
Chapter: 96
Chapter Title: Mountains and Rivers Life (2)
It took about twenty days for my body to fully recover.
Once I was completely healed, I sought out a map to figure out where I was. I'd been flying recklessly on a cloud, so I had no clue about the precise location, and since I'd fled in a panic, I didn't even know which direction I'd gone.
Acquiring a map wasn't difficult.
I obtained one with detailed local geography, memorized it with my divine sense, and cross-referenced it with the accurate map of the Central Plains stored within me.
Starting from the High Heaven Sect area, the path I'd traveled over the past half-year appeared in detail, along with the location data sent from the Lower Star Sect. The shape of the roads. The state of the skies. The form of the rivers. The lay of the mountain ranges...
But no matter how I matched it up with terrain data, nothing lined up with the surroundings here.
'This is bad. Did I go too far?'
The new realm of my Cloud Escape Art must have been more effective than I'd thought.
Where the hell was this place? Which way to High Heaven Sect? To Lower Star Sect? To the birthplace of the Three Lives One Fate Scripture?
None of it could be determined from the geographic info I'd just gathered.
'We were heading for Lower Star Sect, so they're probably all going there.'
Lower Star Sect brimmed with such excessive yang energy that it damaged a woman's yin essence, making it a place no woman should visit.
Our original plan had been for me to go there alone while Hyang Mae, Ahan, and Pyeong Yu-ran stayed in a nearby fortress or city. So if I headed there now, I could reunite with Hyang Mae and Pyeong Yu-ran.
But who would've thought even the path there would be this blocked off.
'First, I need more information.'
In the end, I'd unwittingly have to stay in this unfamiliar city until I gathered enough intel.
I glanced around briefly. Endless unfamiliar scenery stretched out, without a single familiar face.
...It felt utterly daunting.
Three months passed since I began this unintended life of wandering the mountains and rivers. Over those three months, I'd diligently gathered information, but regrettably, I still hadn't found a way to reach Lower Star Sect.
That said, it wasn't entirely fruitless. One such result was the woman now sitting beside me.
She had deep purple hair, eyes faded to pure white, and skin as pallid as a corpse. She wore a scandalously revealing black robe that exposed much of her skin.
Across that bare flesh were etched crimson tattoos in the form of characters used in talismans, each one emanating a sinister, potent aura.
Her name was Yi Seon-aeng.
She was the dharma treasure that had emerged from the sealed coffin—bound with red cords—from the storage pouch of the Falling Star Sect Master: the Life-Seizing Nether Human Jiangshi.
Acquiring her had been pure coincidence.
To explain how I obtained Yi Seon-aeng step by step, I first need to talk about the purple stone whose nature I'd uncovered two months ago.
The stone from Gong Ga-jin's storage pouch—the one he'd personally imbued with divine sense and cherished—was called the Heavenly Born Cranial Crystal.
The Kui, a one-legged aquatic demon that ruled over lightning, would transform its brain into a gem after a thousand years of life. The Heavenly Born Cranial Crystal was precisely that: the brain of a millennium-old Kui.
Perhaps akin to how a human body develops calcified lesions after long years?
Upon learning this, I thought that since I'd lost my Thunderclap Sword during my escape, I could use this Heavenly Born Cranial Crystal to craft a powerful lightning-based dharma treasure.
It was an exceedingly rare treasure even Soul Transformation cultivators lacked, with immense potential applications.
I could forge it directly into a dharma treasure, use it to repair and enhance my Enlightened Six Paths Dragon, or simply keep it until a new use presented itself.
But these were mere plans, and since I wasn't using the Heavenly Born Cranial Crystal right away, I intended to store it in my pouch alongside other unused dharma treasures.
I was tidying up my belongings at the time.
That's when, by chance, the Heavenly Born Cranial Crystal touched the coffin I'd taken from the Falling Star Sect Master's pouch... and the black stone coffin began greedily absorbing its energy with terrifying momentum.
Startled, I separated the Heavenly Born Cranial Crystal from the black coffin and hastily examined the crystal.
In that brief moment, its size had halved, and strange characters emerged across the entire surface of the black coffin, now infused with the crystal's energy.
Characters like those on talismans densely covered the coffin, with one phrase inscribed at the center.
, , .
Worship the edict of Yama, sever the wandering Yellow Springs, cast it far away and let it be forgotten.
"...".
Reading that ominous phrase, I cautiously traced it with my finger. I worried touching the coffin might suck away my life force, but protected by the pagoda, its power couldn't touch me.
"A coffin sealed by Yama's command to isolate the wandering Yellow Springs... The Yellow Springs Wandering Seal Edict Coffin, then."
Though initially flustered, I sat cross-legged before the edict coffin after a moment's thought.
Believing it might hold the key to my current predicament, I began the ownership ritual.
As I dripped my vital blood, the coffin absorbed it like a parched desert drinking rain, and I attempted to bind it through ownership.
Yet the coffin repelled my divine sense as if it already had an owner. If the Falling Star Sect Master had been its owner, his death would've severed that bond, so this shouldn't have happened.
"...Could the edict coffin and the spirit treasure inside be separate dharma treasures? Is the coffin owned by the spirit within?"
I'd already known something immensely powerful lurked inside. Even after Xiao Hu reached Nascent Soul, it had licked its lips greedily, so I guessed it was at least Soul Transformation grade.
Such a mighty spirit treasure possessing its own sub-treasure wasn't impossible.
Thus, riding the flow of the coffin absorbing my vital blood, I extended my divine sense to perform the ownership ritual directly with the entity slumbering within.
Proving its extraordinary nature, it took a full month just for the ownership ritual with the being inside, and another month to feed it the Heavenly Born Cranial Crystal and fully absorb its power.
After two months, I claimed and activated the dharma treasure. The red cords binding the black coffin unraveled, the lid opened, and a figure rose.
That was Yi Seon-aeng, now sitting before me.
The issue lay in her inner energy.
The Falling Star Sect Master had crafted a mighty living being as a dharma treasure.
Not some spirit beast or demon, but his own wife.
And not by betraying her and using her corpse against her will to make a Life-Seizing Nether Human Jiangshi—Yi Seon-aeng had volunteered for it herself.
"...You chose to become a jiangshi to cultivate this technique?"
"Indeed."
As I examined the book of the linked-body technique she'd given me and posed the question, Yi Seon-aeng nodded, as if confirming I'd understood properly.
The linked-body technique she'd handed over was a fortuitous encounter hidden in Nether Star Gorge, discovered alongside the Yellow Springs Wandering Seal Edict Coffin.
The Nether Star Sinking Body Art.
This technique refined the human body with nether star energy, transforming it into a denizen of the underworld—a nether human—with immense power, but at the terrible cost of rotting body and soul. Thus, with her husband's aid as a skilled Qi Refining cultivator, Yi Seon-aeng had reforged her body into a jiangshi-cum-spirit dharma treasure.
By converting her flesh into an imperishable treasure form and separating her soul to dwell as a spirit, she'd circumvented the technique's side effects.
To perfect the Nether Star Sinking Body Art, she'd then sealed herself within the edict coffin—the infinite source of nether energy in Nether Star Gorge—and slumbered for centuries.
As you might guess from hearing this, the Falling Star Sect Master and Yi Seon-aeng shared profound trust and unbreakable bonds as husband and wife.
The wife willingly offered her body as material for a dharma treasure, secure in her faith in her husband; and he, honoring her hopes without deceit, perfectly reforged her into an autonomous treasure.
Was it because of that?
Yi Seon-aeng now radiated feral hostility toward me.
Not only had I forcibly broken her seal with the Heavenly Born Cranial Crystal when she should've emerged after completing the technique, but her beloved, trusted husband had died by my hand.
For some reason, despite knowing I was merely at mid-Core Formation, Yi Seon-aeng was utterly convinced I'd killed her husband.
Did she sense something?
"You must want to kill me, right?"
At my question, Yi Seon-aeng nodded as if it were obvious.
"But you can't, can you?"
"Kuh... What a base, vile man. Killing my husband and claiming my body too."
"Anyone overhearing might misunderstand."
It was true I'd slain her husband and forcibly bound Yi Seon-aeng through ownership to dominate her, but implying I'd done it intentionally felt like a grave slander.
Yi Seon-aeng scrutinized Yong Yoo, who gazed calmly at her.
Had her body not become a jiangshi, and had she not steeled her resolve for centuries of self-imposed sealing, his beauty might have swayed and enchanted her.
Yet her heart remained unshaken; her love for her husband burned firm.
She recalled centuries ago, when both were at Qi Refining, her bashful husband confessing he'd become a cultivator to gift his beloved a fine accessory. Recalling the necklace he'd given her then warmed her cold, hardened heart.
She could never forgive this wicked wretch who dared kill her beloved husband and seize her body.
'I'll warn him of the dangers of a spirit-possessed treasure.'
Having a spirit inhabit a dharma treasure had drawbacks, not just benefits.
Since the treasure gained autonomy, if the owner displeased it and the treasure's power surpassed the owner's, the inhabiting spirit could rebel and slay them.
'I'll avenge my husband...!'
In the eyes of Yi Seon-aeng, now a nether human, she saw the karma Yong Yoo had accrued from slaying people, and the resentful spirits clinging to him.
Spotting her aged yet still cherished husband's spirit among them, she steeled herself, bracing for Yong Yoo to hide some trump card capable of slaying even Soul Transformation cultivators, and prepared to strike with a palm toward him.
But just before Yi Seon-aeng could act on her resolve...
"For now, get inside."
Yong Yoo spoke softly and gaped his mouth wide. Yi Seon-aeng was irresistibly sucked in, her body shrinking as it was drawn into his mouth.
"Kyaaaaah!"
Passing through Yong Yoo's mouth into his soul's repository, before the accommodated Yi Seon-aeng stood a massive pagoda of scriptural verses, entwined by a majestic orange dragon.