Translator: Cinder Translations
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In a cave more than four hundred miles from the Blood Crystal Mine.
Song Wen's expression was somewhat gloomy. He had just performed soul searches on Su Jingshu and Jing Lu, but the results were less than satisfactory.
The soul search on Su Jingshu had failed.
Song Wen had hoped to learn about the Su family's scheme to capture the "Longevity Technique Cultivator" from Su Jingshu's memories. The failure of the soul search left Song Wen in a bad mood.
The soul search on Jing Lu was more successful, and Song Wen obtained some useful information. The most interesting piece was:
In the Ghost Market, there was a private trading meeting for scattered cultivators, all of whom were at the Foundation Establishment stage. The meeting took place on the night of the full moon each month and served to facilitate exchanges among scattered Foundation Establishment cultivators.
A jade slip suddenly appeared in Song Wen's hand, recording a secret ghost control technique called the "Nine Hells Ghost Sutra."
The Nine Hells Ghost Sutra was obtained by Jing Lu from an ancient cultivator's cave and was a profound ghost control method that allowed a cultivator to command ghostly beings slightly stronger than themselves, even crossing small levels of cultivation.
However, this was Jing Lu's own assessment. Song Wen did not find the Nine Hells Ghost Sutra particularly exceptional.
After all, the Soul Banner he refined could achieve similar effects.
The method of refining the Soul Banner came from the three major demonic sects' Profound Yin Sect, which was somewhat more profound and mysterious compared to ordinary ghostly techniques, which was to be expected.
But that did not mean the Nine Hells Ghost Sutra was useless to Song Wen. The methods of capturing and refining ghosts in it were still worth learning from. For now, it could help Song Wen to more quickly refine the Ghost King.
Two hours later, after carefully studying the ghost refinement methods in the Nine Hells Ghost Sutra multiple times, Song Wen decided to begin attempting to refine the Ghost King.
The Ghost King had expended a significant amount of ghostly energy during its fight with Su Jingshu, making it the best time to refine it.
Once the Ghost King's strength was restored, even with the Ghost Flag sealing it, it would be nearly impossible for Song Wen to refine it.
However, before refining the Ghost King, he needed to first refine the Ghost Flag.
Song Wen focused his mind and sat cross-legged, holding the Ghost Flag. His thick spiritual energy surged like a raging tide, continuously washing over the dark flag.
Su Jingshu was dead, and the Ghost Flag had become a masterless item. But this flag was a top-grade spirit artifact for ghost control.
Song Wen, being only at the early Foundation Establishment stage, found it difficult to truly refine this ghost control banner.
After two days of relentless refining and consuming over ten spirit replenishing pills to maintain the depleting spiritual energy, he finally succeeded in refining the Ghost Flag.
The quality of the Ghost Flag was too high for Song Wen to use directly. He planned to lure the Ghost King into the Top-grade Ghost Banner and, using its power, slowly and thoroughly refine the Ghost King.
Song Wen activated the Ghost Flag, releasing the Ghost King.
The Ghost King's ghostly energy was severely depleted, and since the Ghost Flag had no stored souls to help restore the Ghost King's strength, it appeared somewhat weak.
As soon as the Ghost King appeared, it opened its enormous mouth and lunged aggressively at Song Wen.
The Ghost Flag suddenly emitted a faint blood light. The Ghost King was immediately frozen in place, unable to move.
Following the method of the Nine Hells Ghost Sutra, Song Wen continuously performed hand seals, directing streams of spiritual energy like raindrops onto the Ghost King.
At the same time, Song Wen multitasked. The Top-grade Ghost Banner suddenly appeared.
A large amount of ghostly energy surged from the Top-grade Ghost Banner, washing over the Ghost King's soul body.
Countless souls then emerged and surged toward the Ghost King.
Seeing these souls, the Ghost King devoured them like a hungry ghost, greedily absorbing them.
Suddenly, the Top-grade Ghost Banner spun around the Ghost King, and countless banner shadows surrounded it.
Realizing something was amiss, the Ghost King stopped feeding and became agitated, trying to break through the encirclement of banner shadows.
The Ghost Flag once again glowed with a faint blood light, causing the Ghost King to freeze in place once more.
Countless banner shadows abruptly contracted toward the center, crashing into the Ghost King.
When all the banner shadows disappeared, the Top-grade Ghost Banner reappeared at the position where the Ghost King had stood.
The Ghost King had vanished, captured within the Top-grade Ghost Banner.
With a slightly pale face, Song Wen let out a long breath.
The continuous activation of the Ghost Flag, although only triggering its superficial power, had drained most of his spiritual energy.
With his current cultivation level, forcibly activating a top-grade spirit artifact was still too strenuous.
The Top-grade Ghost Banner was crafted by Song Wen himself, and he could control it with ease. The Ghost King was captured within it and would be slowly refined. Within a month, it would be completely refined and fully under Song Wen's command.
With a thought, twenty storage rings appeared before Song Wen.
He began to inspect the items as his spiritual sense entered each ring.
Among the twenty storage rings, there were a total of 170,000 spirit stones, most of which came from the storage rings of Su family cultivators.
The storage rings of those scattered cultivators mostly contained only three to five thousand spirit stones.
It seemed that these scattered Foundation Establishment cultivators did not live well. They likely spent any spirit stones they plundered quickly.
After all, Foundation Establishment cultivators consumed a large amount of spirit stones daily for their cultivation.
Each storage ring also contained some fist-sized blood-colored transparent crystals, which were the Blood Crsytals. There were a little over ten thousand in total.
These Blood Crsytals were worth about 500,000 spirit stones, a substantial sum of wealth.
Song Wen categorized all the spirit stones, Blood Crsytals, elixirs, spirit artifacts, and techniques, and stored them in different sections of the storage rings.
At this moment, he was holding a jade vial with two blood-colored pills inside.
From the pills' scent and the fluctuations of spiritual energy they emitted, Song Wen could determine that these were likely "Explosive Blood Pills."
Song Wen casually put the Explosive Blood Pills into a storage ring. It was not the right time to study the pills.
With a thought, six corpses appeared on the ground.
Song Wen intended to refine them into substitute puppets, but since he had only asked Su Huayue for three days off, and time was running out, he had to abandon the plan.
He took out a large high-grade corpse-raising coffin and placed all six corpses inside.
After setting up two formations to conceal their presence, Song Wen stepped out of the cave and boarded his flying boat, heading north to the city market.
Not far from the market, Song Wen put away the flying boat and changed his appearance to that of "Yuan Cheng," before entering the city market.
Three days ago, Master Yuan had left the Su family, and naturally, Master Yuan would return to the Su family three days later.
As soon as he entered the market, Song Wen noticed that some scattered cultivators frequently mentioned the "Blood Crystal Mine."
At first, Song Wen thought the news about the Blood Crystal Mine being plundered by scattered cultivators had reached the market.
After expanding his senses and carefully listening to their conversations, he learned unexpected information.
The Su family had occupied the Blood Crystal Mine for nearly a year, and during this period, several forces had tried to take over the mine.
Some were like Jing Lu, scattered cultivators who plundered and then fled immediately, regardless of their gains.
Others were Golden Core forces who aimed to occupy the mine and extract it permanently.
Over the past year, the Blood Crystal Mine had been captured several times but was quickly reclaimed by the Su family.
However, this time was different.
Two days ago, Su Wenshi led a team into the mine area with the intention to rebuild the mine. However, on that day, they were attacked by the Du family.
The Du family dispatched more than twenty Foundation Establishment cultivators, almost all of their Foundation Establishment cultivators.
The battle ended with the Su family's defeat.
Two Su family Foundation Establishment cultivators were killed in action, several others were injured, and Su Wenshi was slightly injured and fled in a sorry state.
Everyone thought that the Su family had only suffered a temporary setback. After accounting for their losses, they would surely retaliate strongly and drive the Du family away, reclaiming the Blood Crystal Mine.
After all, the Du family was a newly emerged Golden Core family.
The Du family's Golden Core cultivator had only recently broken through to Golden Core more than ten years ago, leading to their insufficient foundation. Their Foundation Establishment cultivators were significantly fewer compared to other Golden Core forces.
Compared to an old Golden Core family like the Su family, which had nearly twice as many Foundation Establishment cultivators as the Du family, the disparity was evident.
Without Golden Core cultivators involved, the Du family could not possibly be a match for the Su family.
Even if both sides deployed their Golden Core cultivators, the newly advanced Golden Core cultivator of the Du family would likely not be a match for the Su family's long-standing Golden Core ancestor.
However, the development of the situation was far beyond everyone's expectations.
Two whole days had passed, and the Su family had not made any move.
It was as if they were willing to hand over the Blood Crystal Mine willingly.
At this point, people realized that the Su family's old ancestor was already in his final years, approaching the limit of a Golden Core cultivator, with only a short time left before he might pass away due to old age.
The Su family's silence was like the calm before a storm, oppressive and unsettling, causing scattered cultivators to feel a sense of foreboding.
The Su and Du families were likely to face a great battle.
This caused widespread anxiety among the scattered cultivators in the market, and many began packing up and preparing to leave.
(End of the Chapter)
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