The Ghost Possession Technique, a secret art of the Yanfu Dao, was the core of the Ghost-Driving system, and its power was immeasurable.
For cultivators on this path, every additional great ghost that could be possessed meant a leap in strength. Its effects were striking.
Thus, the nurturing of ghostly entities had become a great discipline within the Yanfu tradition.
Different ghosts carried different innate Life Patterns, and the enhancements they granted when possessing the body varied greatly.
By refining and collecting diverse ghosts, a cultivator could vastly enrich their tactical repertoire. It was a compulsory lesson for all disciples of the Ghost-Driving lineage.
Yet this mighty art came with severe limits.
Each ghostly possession, while dramatically increasing one's combat power, also placed immense strain on the flesh.
Because of this, cultivators could maintain the state only for a very short duration.
In battle, the norm was to first unleash ghosts to entangle the foe, exhaust their power, and only then employ the Ghost Possession Technique to deliver the decisive blow.
The technique was less a regular method of combat and more akin to an ultimate transformation skill—one with a long cooldown and fleeting duration.
However, among the myriad types of ghosts, there was one special class that carried no burden to the body and could possess indefinitely:
The Life-Bound Ghosts are summoned through a cultivator's own Life Patterns.
Such ghosts were tied to the cultivator's very destiny, two sides of the same coin.
When possessed, they meshed with the body as naturally as organs or sinew, blending seamlessly with no sense of separation.
These could be borne at all times, without strain or limit.
For disciples of the Ghost-Driving path, it was essential to devote Life Measures to forge at least one, if not several, Life-Bound Ghost Life Patterns.
Within the Yanfu heritage, there was one such Life Pattern that was virtually mandatory:
Five Ghosts
Grade: Blue-Blood
Verse: "Where the Five Ghosts tread, fortune flees like banners; under this moon, comes calamity and misfortune."
With this single Life Pattern, one could house five great ghosts. Possessing all five at once could more than double a cultivator's power. The cost-to-benefit ratio was immense.
This Five Ghosts Life Pattern was the strongest acquired Pattern in the entire Ghost-Driving tradition for accommodating multiple Life-Bound Ghosts.
Any higher-grade versions had to be awakened by the cultivator themselves.
Yet even so, compared to Jing Qian's Hell Scroll, such Life Patterns, even the rare "Golden-Root Ghost-Driving Life Patterns," were nothing in comparison.
Every great ghost raised within the Hell Scroll was itself a Life-Bound Ghost.
This allowed Jing Qian to wield the Ghost Possession Technique without any burden whatsoever.
For him, the most direct and efficient path to greater power was simply to raise more ghosts within the scroll.
And on top of this foundation, he wielded the sword arts of the Pure Yang Ruins, whose killing force already far exceeded ordinary Yanfu disciples.
With enough ghostly augmentation, he would become a swordsman of the Pure Yang Ruins who never lacked for power.
He had no idea just how extraordinary this truly was.
If fate one day allowed him to inherit the full legacy of the Pure Yang Ruins, he would understand far more deeply.
But here and now, as Jing Qian stood before the deadly waters of the Sea of Wronged Souls, he had but one goal.
To hunt ghosts, replenish his resources, and raise several new great spirits within the Hell Scroll.
The Sea of Wronged Souls was the place where ghostly entities thrived more than anywhere else in the Yingfutu Realm.
Spanning a hundred thousand li, it lay across the seas like a barrier, cutting off Hunzhou from the heartlands of the Divine Dynasty.
Even the fleets of Qiming Island had to detour great distances around it to reach Haizhou.
No one knew how many ghosts roamed its vast expanse.
Rumors claimed that in its deepest regions, even Ghost Kings of the upper Third Grade dwelled.
For disciples of the Yanfu Dao, this place was a pantry, a butcher's stall, and a training ground all in one, a treasure land of cultivation not to be missed.
Jing Qian transformed into a streak of flowing light, gliding freely into the Sea of Wronged Souls.
In the sight of his Worldly Insight, the terrifying sea appeared like a vast green curtain.
Above that vast green curtain, countless tiny black sprouts dotted the expanse.
Each sprout was a faint, flickering remnant soul.
These so-called remnant souls were the husks of living beings' spirits, lingering fragments that absorbed spiritual energy. They were already in the process of transforming into true evil ghosts, though not yet fully formed.
In terms of cultivation rank, they were equivalent to mortals who had just begun to breathe in qi and nurture essence below the first grade, but already possessed traces of energy and spellforce.
For ordinary Ghost-Driving cultivators, such remnant souls were useless. They had to seek out fully formed ghosts of proper rank to subdue and refine them.
But for Jing Qian, who possessed the Hell Scroll, even remnant souls had their value.
As the strongest Ghost-Driving Heavenly Life Pattern, the Hell Scroll could devour the strength of remnant souls, illuminate its own illustrations, and gradually evolve them into fully fledged ghosts.
It could also, like any other Ghost-Driving cultivator, hunt down quality ghosts and forcibly subdue them.
Its versatility was unparalleled.
Guided by the faint sprouts in his sight, Jing Qian streaked across the Sea of Wronged Souls. His light flashed, arriving beside one remnant soul. Threads of the Soul-Weaving Life Pattern twined forth, strangling the wisp into nothing.
A curl of gray smoke drifted upward, immediately absorbed into the Hell Scroll.
On its surface, following after the Mist Ghost, a new, faint shadow began to emerge.
Jing Qian's flight did not slow. In the outskirts of this haunted sea, he traced arcs of light through clusters of sprouts, scything them down with ease.
Using Soul-Weaving to harvest remnant souls was almost too simple.
And with each wisp devoured, the Scroll's third ghost grew clearer, rapidly taking shape.
The deeper he ventured, the more remnant souls there were. The denser they became, the faster he reaped them.
After two hours of tireless harvesting, he had slaughtered an uncountable number of remnant souls. The third ghost shadow on the Hell Scroll at last solidified.
By his own will and design, Jing Qian shaped it into a specialized spirit:
Beacon Ghost
Grade: Ninth Rank
Life Pattern: Ghost Veil (Azure-wings)
This ninth-rank ghost was forged for a single purpose: to carry his Sumeru Beacons.
It bore the innate Ghost Veil Pattern, making it exceptionally skilled at concealing its presence. With Jing Qian's Bian Yuan Weiyang movement art layered atop it, the Beacon Ghost could roam far and wide, mapping the world on his behalf.
With such ghosts dedicated to bearing beacons, stronger entities like the Skin Ghost and Mist Ghost could remain by his side at all times.
Jing Qian pressed onward, harvesting soul after soul, until, before long, he had cultivated yet another Beacon Ghost.
Now the Hell Scroll bore four spirits.
Then, suddenly, his gaze caught upon something different.
Amid the endless sprouts, there rose a shrub taller and darker than the rest.
Without hesitation, he closed in only to find it was a ninth-rank headless ghost.
Jing Qian's sword-silk flashed once, cleaving the monster neatly in two.
The Hell Scroll unrolled with a hungry sweep, swallowing the ghost's remains whole.
A fifth shadow bloomed at once, beginning its transformation.
With a genuine ranked ghost as material, he could finally attempt to refine one of the specialized spirits recorded in the Yanfu Dao's heritage.
Jing Qian was now far enough into the Sea of Wronged Souls that ninth-rank ghosts appeared in numbers.
He welcomed them all with unflinching resolve; each one that crossed his path was felled by a single stroke of sword-silk.
Heart like iron, blade like a dragon, he harvested spoils at a speed beyond imagination.
Ghost after ghost fell before him.
Yet unlike the yin spirits that roamed in certain seasons, these sea-spawned wraiths left behind no materials when slain.
Unless one possessed the means to refine or subjugate them, killing such ghosts was a losing trade.
Thus, few dared to frequent this lethal sea.
Those who did were invariably specialists, cultivators who had mastered ghost-banishing arts and understood the Sea's workings well.
And not a single one among them would dare rampage as Jing Qian now did, slaughtering recklessly, reaping without restraint.
For though this haunted ocean seemed chaos incarnate, a law lurked beneath its surface.
Should an intruder's killing grow excessive, the entire Sea of Wronged Souls itself would turn against them, summoning forth mighty great ghosts from its depths to cleanse the invader away.
But this kind of backlash was exactly what Jing Qian was aiming for.
After he cut down the tenth ninth-rank ghost, he clearly felt a shadowy force settle upon his head.
He had finally been marked by the Sea of Wronged Souls!
In his sight, a towering black-and-white tree of twisted form came rushing toward him.
Jing Qian, delighted, remained where he was, waiting patiently.
Why spend effort hunting down scattered ghosts when he could draw aggro and have powerful prey come straight to him?
With the opening of the Zhuoling Grotto-Heaven imminent and no time to slowly climb realms, his best option was to rely on the Hell Scroll to refine more ghosts in quick succession, call them into his body, and give his strength a brutal surge.
At the edge of his vision, a black-and-white specter appeared: a warped abomination with two heads and seven arms, roaring as it charged straight at him.
Judging by its aura, it was a seventh-rank ghost.
Perfect!
Without hesitation, Jing Qian turned into a streak of flowing light and shot toward it.
Before he even arrived, a blazing sword-thread lashed out.
Over time, the Qingping Sword Casket had been accumulating its root sword-qi, and its potency had grown once again.
Now, even a strand of sword-silk born from it could pierce a sixth-rank foe.
As a dual heir of both the Yanfu Dao and the Pure Yang Ruins, a true Heir of Spiritual Constructs, Jing Qian could now kill two whole grades above his own.
The sword-thread cleaved down.
The seventh-rank ghost was annihilated on the spot, bursting apart into smoke that rushed straight into the Hell Scroll.
With the power of one seventh-rank ghost, ten ninth-rank ghosts, and countless remnant souls, the Scroll birthed its fifth great ghost!
This one Jing Qian deliberately forged using a secret art from The Dao Book of the Nether Cycle of Yanfu:
Liver-Wood Azure-Face Ghost
Rank: Eighth Grade
Life Pattern: Nourish Liver (Blue)
The moment the ghost was formed, he summoned it forth: a palm-sized imp with a ghastly azure face.
Activating the Ghost-Possession Art, he drew it into himself at once.
The tiny blue-faced ghost coursed through his body before settling into his liver, where it merged with his organ as a faint green sigil.
A shiver ran through Jing Qian. From head to toe, a refreshing clarity washed through him.
His liver function had strengthened tenfold, and with it, his body grew sturdier.
His overall spell force spiked by another ten percent. His combat power soared.
The sensation was intoxicating, so good it was nearly addictive. Jing Qian hovered above the sea, quietly savoring it.
But after felling that seventh-rank ghost so easily, the mark of the Sea on his head deepened once more, its pull growing stronger.
It wasn't long before five more seventh-rank ghosts arrived together.
Jing Qian welcomed them warmly. None who came would leave unsatisfied.
This time, he chose not to get reckless. Instead, he slipped into the dimensional void and let his sword-silks slash outward from within.
Standing in an untouchable position, he calmly cut them down one by one.
Thirty rifts in space crisscrossed the battlefield, hemming in the five ghosts.
Razor-thin sword-silks wove in and out, followed by shadowy blades that clung close, shredding everything in their path.
The five seventh-rank ghosts fought ferociously, but without Spiritual Constructs to shield them, they had no defense against Jing Qian's blade. One after another, they fell, consumed by the Hell Scroll.
From this feast of five seventh-rank souls, four new great ghosts emerged at once upon the scroll:
Heart-Fire Hair-Feeding Ghost (Nourishes the heart)
Spleen-Earth Belly-Cultivating Ghost (Strengthens the spleen)
Lung-Metal Fang-Forging Ghost (Tempers the lungs and teeth)
Kidney-Water Eye-Bearing Ghost (Reinforces the kidneys and pupils)
With these four alongside the Liver-Wood Azure-Face Ghost, Jing Qian now had the complete set.
At once, he invoked the Ghost-Possession Art, drawing them all into himself.
Each spirit circled within his body, then settled into its destined organ: heart, spleen, lungs, kidneys.
Now his five viscera were each guarded by a ghostly patron, their functions magnified manyfold.
His spellforce reservoir swelled to one-and-a-half times its former volume. His strength spiked again.
In the heritage of the Yanfu Dao, these five spirits were famous: the Five-Element Five-Viscera Ghosts, the premier protectors of the body's organs and cultivators of flesh.
Cultivating with them over the long term not only fortified the body and shielded the viscera, but could even extend lifespan and deepen spellforce.
The moment Jing Qian learned of their existence, he had resolved to make them his.
And now, thanks to the Sea's inexhaustible ghostly bounty, he had forged them successfully.
With the Five Viscera Ghosts permanently bound to him, he would henceforth keep them lodged within his body, lending him constant aid.
Not only did they grant immense benefits, but having five crystalline presences embedded in his organs gave him a perpetual sensation of clarity and cool refreshment. It was simply too comfortable to ever give up.
As he adjusted to the changes in body and spellforce, Jing Qian waited for the next challengers.
The mark of the Sea upon him had grown heavier, almost solid to the eye.
The next wave of ghosts, surely, would be sixth-rank.
And Jing Qian was eager beyond measure.
Even though Jing Qian had already advanced into the Dragon-Elephant realm and his cultivation had soared with the aid of the Azure Wing Life Essence, directly facing a sixth-rank ghost was still an enormously important trial.
He treated the coming battle as nothing less than a rehearsal for his expedition into the Zhuoling Grotto-Heaven.
If Fan Zhuoyi's information was correct, then within the Grotto-Heaven, he would encounter the heirs of great sects, Spiritual Construct Bearers of the Longevity Realm.
That group of monsters was the strongest cultivators of their generation, handpicked and honed by the twelve great lineages of the world, each possessing the ability to leap across realms and kill above their station.
In other words, if Jing Qian could not even handle a single sixth-rank ghost, then once he entered the Zhuoling Grotto-Heaven, he'd be nothing more than cannon fodder.
He gathered his scattered thoughts and poured his entire focus into the terrifying apparition now appearing before him.
It was a massive sea-swallowing gull, its entire body covered in oozing sores. With every beat of its wings, the boils burst, spewing torrents of dark-green venom that rained down like a monsoon, transforming the sky into a poisonous wasteland of certain death.
Even Jing Qian, as strong as he was now, could not withstand being caught in that storm of poison.
He quietly slipped into the dimensional void, moving closer to the ghostly gull while relying on Sumeru's protection. It remained the safest way to fight.
Deprived of its target, the toxic gull paused in confusion, circling uncertainly.
But in the next instant, a razor-sharp sword-silk shot forth from nowhere, slashing cleanly across its right wing.
The ghostly gull shrieked, and a ghastly wound split open to the bone.
And that was not the end of it. Five more sword-shadows followed up, slicing into the wound, ripping it even wider.
This was thanks to the Qingping Sword Casket, now linked with his Little Ghost Life Pattern.
That connection granted his sword-qi an additional "sword-shadow": weaker than the original stroke, yet consuming no energy, a free strike that enriched his attack pattern and carried the chance of unexpected kills.
And ever since the Little Ghost had ascended into the Hell Scroll, its blessing to the Sword Box had grown even stronger.
Now, for every ghost Jing Qian summoned onto himself, an additional sword-shadow would accompany his strikes.
With the Five Viscera Ghosts settled in his organs, each swing of his sword carried five phantom afterimages.
Each shadow was only a tenth the strength of the true sword-silk, but numbers made power, so many at once created an overwhelming force.
With one strike, the gull's wing was nearly severed, its massive body tumbling toward the sea.
But then its form warped, twisting like viscous liquid, the wound flowing closed and knitting back together.
This ghostly gull was no corporeal body but a construct of concentrated mana. Jing Qian's sword-silks could shatter its defenses and slice apart its form, but they could not finish it in a single blow.
Now, under his blades, the gull was like a lump of stubborn tar—cut apart again and again, but never destroyed.
What's worse, every strike shook more poison loose, until the skies were thick with dim green miasma.
Hidden in the void, Jing Qian ignored the toxic fog, wholly focused on tempering his sword-silks.
Though he had never received the true teachings of the Pure Yang Ruins, his reliance on the combined power of the Qingping Sword Casket and the Qingping's End still held untapped potential.
Every sword stroke honed his cultivation further.
And he wasn't about to waste such a durable target as this poison gull. This was the perfect training dummy.
Immersed in the fight, he felt his Sword Casket grow ever livelier, blending more seamlessly with his mana, sharpening with each cut.
His sword-silks grew steadily stronger.
For him, this was not just a battle; it was a thorough sparring match, a stretching of muscles, and a true test of his offensive limits.
Three days passed in a blur.
Jing Qian poured his entire mana reserves into wave after wave of sword-silks, unleashing his first-ever all-out storm of blades until he was utterly exhausted.
By then, the ghostly gull was nearly spent and had been reduced to a faint, flickering shadow, like a candle guttering in the wind, ready to go out at any moment.
And from this crucible, Jing Qian's sword path underwent another breakthrough.
The Qingping Sword Casket, already linked with the Soul-Weaver and Hell Scroll Life Patterns, still had space to bear five more.
Through constant tempering, one more connection was finally forged.
In the Worldly Insight, countless simulations had been run to test how Life Patterns could bind to the Sword Casket.
The higher-ranked Life Patterns, Sumeru, Ghost Seal, Flesh-Budding, and Bian Yuan Weiyang were all progressing slowly.
But the humble Longevity Life Pattern, only half a step into Blue-Blood rank, succeeded in forging a link.
The Longevity Life Pattern was strange: it neither occupied his Life Measure nor expanded his Life Essence.
More importantly, it was a unique Life Pattern that only cultivators of the Longevity Realm should have been able to awaken.
In the entire history of the Pure Yang Ruins, never once had anyone linked the Longevity Life Pattern to the Sword Casket.
And Jing Qian had accidentally created history.
The benefits of this early awakening were only just beginning to reveal themselves.
The very next sword he unleashed bore a subtle, mysterious essence, and with a single strike, he cleaved the weakened gull apart completely.
After three days of relentless effort, he had slain his very first sixth-rank foe.
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