Translator: Cinder Translations
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One day later.
Several dozen miles outside of the place where Zuo Shuiyun was in seclusion.
Song Wen had opened a temporary cave dwelling at the foot of a large mountain.
With still over ten days remaining until the one-month period agreed upon with Zuo Shuiyun, Song Wen decided to enter seclusion for a while.
He released the Sacred Gu to guard the surroundings of the temporary cave.
After setting up the "Qi Concealment Formation" and the "Nine Palaces Yin Array," he waved his hand.
"Thud, thud, thud."
With the sound of heavy objects hitting the ground, three corpse nurturing coffins appeared inside the cave.
Song Wen began to use the corpse refining secret techniques from the "True Explanation of Corpse Puppets" to refine the three bronze corpses.
In an instant, the entire cave was surrounded by corpse energy, malevolent aura filled the space, and a nauseating stench of rotting corpses permeated the area.
Fifteen days later.
Song Wen successfully refined the three bronze corpses.
He placed two of the bronze corpses into the nurturing coffins, leaving behind the strongest one.
Previously, he had obtained two Xuan Yin stones from the Tianhe Li family, losing one while refining the first silver corpse. Now, he had one left.
He planned to refine the bronze corpse before him into a pseudo third-tier silver corpse.
Song Wen added the Xuan Yin stone, along with essence blood, spirit stones, and Yin Fiend Dew, into the corpse coffin, then formed seals to execute the corpse refining technique.
In the blink of an eye, another seven days passed.
The silver corpse was still not completely refined, but only two days remained until the time agreed upon with Zuo Shuiyun, and there wasn't enough time to finish refining the silver corpse.
Song Wen halted the refinement of the silver corpse and used corpse path secret methods to temporarily seal it.
After putting away the nurturing coffin, Song Wen took out two blood-colored jade slips and began to examine them.
The first slip recorded a cultivation method called "Corpse King Rebirth Technique."
The "Corpse King Rebirth Technique," like the "Corpse King Blood Refining Technique," originated from the Divine Blood Gate.
According to the outline of the method, it was a dual cultivation technique for both law and body.
The technique was divided into nine levels, corresponding to the nine major realms of cultivators, and upon completion, one could directly reach the realm of immortals.
However, the jade slip in Song Wen's hand only contained the content for the first three levels, meaning it only included the techniques for Qi Refining and Golden Core stages.
What surprised Song Wen greatly was that although the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique" was a demonic path cultivation method, it could refine corpse energy into vitality. The spiritual power cultivated through this method contained both the impure energies of the corpse path and the pure vitality.
This technique was essentially a combination of the "Corpse King Blood Refining Technique" and the "Longevity Technique."
Or perhaps, both the "Corpse King Blood Refining Technique" and the "Longevity Technique" were merely parts of this technique.
It was as if someone had deliberately divided the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique" into pieces and disseminated them widely in the cultivation world.
Especially the "Longevity Technique," which was the most widely circulated method in the cultivation world, could actually be used to siphon off vitality, helping people extend their lifespan.
A thousand cultivators practicing the Qi Refining stage "Longevity Technique" could extend someone's life by a whole cycle of a decade.
If it were a thousand foundation-building cultivators, or even ten thousand...
The effectiveness of extending life would likely increase tenfold or even more.
If there were no conspiracies involved, it was truly hard to believe.
But regardless of any schemes behind the scenes, all of this was unrelated to Song Wen.
The "Longevity Technique" had circulated in the cultivation world for countless years; those who once plotted conspiracies had long since disappeared into the river of time, perhaps turned to dust, or maybe ascended, leaving this realm behind.
Looking at the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique" in his hand, Song Wen fell into deep thought.
He had always believed that it was his special constitution that allowed him to cultivate both righteous and evil paths, practicing the "Corpse King Blood Refining Technique" and the "Longevity Technique" at the same time.
Now it seemed that it might not be the case.
These two techniques, at their core, stemmed from the same source.
"Perhaps the techniques themselves have no distinction between righteous and evil. Whether it's pure spiritual energy or impure energy, they are merely different forms of the energies of heaven and earth, a natural part of the universe," Song Wen mused internally.
At this moment, he had a vague feeling that he could transfer to the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique," and the two spiritual liquid vortices in his dantian would merge into one as a result.
After careful consideration, Song Wen temporarily set aside the idea of transferring to the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique."
Firstly, switching to another technique meant he would have to disperse the cultivation power he had built in the foundation-building stage.
Having already cultivated the "Longevity Technique" to the peak of the foundation-building mid-stage, he was just a step away from breaking through to the late foundation-building stage.
At this time, dispersing his power would leave Song Wen feeling somewhat reluctant.
Secondly, cultivating the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique" required a large amount of corpse-related spiritual materials.
Given his current situation, it was quite difficult to gather these materials. The Ghost Market in the mountain stream could provide some, but it was hard to maintain a stable supply over time.
Thirdly, since he was hiding in the Beastmaster Sect to evade the pursuit of the Corpse Demon Sect, it was truly inconvenient to cultivate the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique."
Putting away the jade slip, Song Wen began to explore the second jade slip.
The contents of this slip turned out to be the self-narration of Xue Mei.
TL: Changed Blood Brows to Xue Mei, sounds better...
From what was recorded, Song Wen roughly understood the sequence of events.
The Blood Cloud Cave was a branch of the Divine Blood Sect.
Xue Mei was the supreme elder of the Blood Cloud Cave and had once been a mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator.
After advancing to the mid-stage Nascent Soul, her cultivation stagnated.
In order to break through to the late Nascent Soul stage and even the God Transformation stage, Xue Mei set her sights on the sect's ultimate technique, the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique."
Xue Mei held the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique" in high regard, believing it to be the finest existence in the Tianyuan Realm.
The Tianyuan Realm is the name of the realm where Song Wen resides, named after the Tianyuan Continent.
To obtain the "Corpse King Rebirth Technique," Xue Mei schemed against a genius of the Divine Blood Sect.
However, she did not expect that the technique she had painstakingly acquired contained only the first three levels.
What left her in despair was that the incident of plotting against the Divine Blood Sect's genius was exposed.
The Divine Blood Sect sought to eradicate the entire Blood Cloud Cave.
However, the actions of the Divine Blood Sect were leaked.
As a result, before the Divine Blood Sect could strike the Blood Cloud Cave, the disciples of the Blood Cloud Cave began to flee from their sect in droves.
While other disciples could escape from the Blood Cloud Cave to seek a glimmer of hope, Xue Mei, the mastermind behind it all, could not escape her doom.
Under the siege of the Divine Blood Sect's powerful members, her physical body was destroyed, and her Nascent Soul was captured.
To set an example and intimidate other subordinate forces, the Divine Blood Sect extracted her soul and sealed it in a "soul shackle" made of soul-nurturing wood, imprisoning her on a small island in an underground lake, where she was tortured endlessly.
Amid the endless torment, Xue Mei's soul repeatedly teetered on the brink of collapse but was nourished back to strength by the soul-nurturing wood.
And thus, countless years passed without her knowing.
One day, the members of the Divine Blood Sect who had tormented her never appeared again, leaving behind the twenty-four indestructible bronze corpses to guard the stone hall.
From that point on, Xue Mei's soul, nourished by the soul-nurturing wood, grew increasingly powerful.
Gradually, she discovered that her soul had become strong enough to break through the restrictions of the "soul shackle," extending some of her spiritual energy beyond the "soul shackle" and the bronze corpse coffin.
Just when Xue Mei thought she could escape, she found that her soul power was enough to move the "soul shackle," but she could not leave the bronze corpse coffin.
As soon as the coffin moved slightly, the twenty-four bronze corpses guarding the stone hall would converge and seal the coffin tightly.
(End of the Chapter)
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