Totem God Pillar

"Spirit pills and miraculous medicines? For a poor disciple like me, being able to eat my fill is already more than enough. How could I afford to consume spirit pills and miraculous medicines?"

Zhong Yue shook his head. He picked up the Bronze Lamp and prepared to leave for Sword Gate, but suddenly stopped and turned back. The Kindling Child watched him curiously as Zhong Yue took a hoe from the medicine basket, spent more than half an hour digging a pit, bowed to the corpse, placed the bones into the pit, filled it with soil, and bowed again before standing up and leaving with the lamp.

The Kindling Child inside the lamp looked on with approval. He quietly waited for Zhong Yue to finish everything. When he saw Zhong Yue hang the lamp against his chest and climb along the cliff face, he could not help saying, "A mighty member of the Divine race, yet you can't fly. You actually have to walk on two legs—what a disgrace to the Divine race! Pure-blooded members of the Divine race are sacred by birth. With a single movement of their tails, they can ride the air and fly."

Zhong Yue climbed onto the mountain ridge and smiled. "I don't have a tail, and I'm not of the Divine race. Naturally, I can't fly."

The Kindling Child leapt out of the lamp and walked across his clothes. He touched Zhong Yue's coccyx and shook his head. "You have a tail. It simply hasn't grown out yet. The Fuxi Divine Clan members I encountered in the past all had snake tails. Why hasn't your tail grown? You don't believe me? Then feel your own backside and see whether you can find traces of a coccyx."

Zhong Yue reached behind himself and, sure enough, touched his coccyx. His heart trembled slightly.

Could the Human race really be descended from the Fuxi Divine Clan? Impossible. The Human race is weak—one could say it is the most humble race among all the races. How could it possibly be descended from the most exalted imperial clan of the Divine race?

He steadied his mind and climbed desperately up the cliff. With the Kindling and the Bronze Lamp, the black haze could not invade him. Zhong Yue soon reached the top of the cliff and looked around, only to see the black haze shrouding heaven and earth.

"Kindling, can you see what is actually inside this black fog?"

"A mighty member of the Divine race, yet you don't know how to use your Divine Eye to look... Ah, your Divine Eye has degenerated too. Feel your brow. Is there a slight depression? That is the position of the Fuxi Divine Clan's third eye—the Divine Eye!"

Zhong Yue touched his brow and, sure enough, felt a sunken spot. He grew even more suspicious and thought, Suihuang in the Fire Epoch Palace Suihuang Visualization also had a third eye. Could the Human race have a third eye too?

The light of the battered Bronze Lamp gradually brightened, illuminating farther and farther. The black haze was incredibly dense, yet the light seemed able to pierce through every layer of gloom.

Zhong Yue looked around along the lamp's light, and his heart was filled with terror.

A gigantic foot descended from the sky and stepped into the deep valley. It had no flesh or blood, only bones—pale and gleaming, nearly half an acre in size!

He raised his head and saw a colossal skeleton standing before him in the black haze. It wore tattered armor covered in copper and iron rust, mottled and decrepit, as though it had endured the erosion of countless millennia.

The bones of the skeleton giant were covered in all kinds of magnificent patterns. Totem designs spread across every bone. It strode forward on two feet, dragging a long white-bone tail behind it that swayed back and forth. Who knew what race it belonged to?

Suddenly, a tattered banner silently drifted past Zhong Yue. It floated and fluttered in midair, while one enormous white-bone foot after another descended from the sky and moved soundlessly through the black haze. The tops of these feet alone stood much taller than Zhong Yue!

Many more skeleton giants floated up from underground and joined this white-bone army, yet the ground remained completely undamaged.

The bones of these skeleton giants were covered in totem patterns that had not been worn away despite the passage of endless years. They seemed to possess no true physical form. When they encountered mountains, they passed through them; when they encountered water, they walked across it. They followed behind the banner in the sky, and only when they encountered living creatures would they drain away all the flesh and blood from their bodies!

One giant beast after another appeared, rotten flesh hanging from their bodies and ghostly flames flickering inside their skulls. Skeleton giants rode astride the beasts. Some skeleton giants even had the flesh of various flying birds and beasts hanging from them, the flesh writhing in a thoroughly eerie manner.

Farther away, one tattered banner after another flew through the air. More giants and giant beasts appeared, but they were too far away for Zhong Yue's vision to make them out clearly. He could only see clusters of dancing, ghostly flames—the eyes of the skeleton giants and skeleton beasts!

The area around Sword Gate Mountain had originally been lush and green, its mountains verdant. Yet now it seemed to have transformed into a demonic domain where ghosts and monsters ran rampant!

"These are demon souls, formed from the un-dispersed resentment of gods and demons after their deaths!"

Inside the lamp, the Kindling Child spoke in a low voice. "The resentment is this strong, so something earth-shaking must have happened here to leave these fellows' resentment unscattered. And what exactly are these demon souls searching for after death? Whatever they still seek even after dying must be some extraordinary treasure!"

Zhong Yue was startled. "They are members of the Divine race?"

"There are members of the Divine race and members of the Demon race, but most are low-level members of the Divine race. Only the Fuxi, Nuwa, Huaxu, Yanzi, and six other great clans are truly of the Divine Emperor clans, with the most exalted bloodlines. You have the bloodline of the Fuxi Divine Clan within you, but unfortunately, it is too thin. You are far inferior even to these dead gods and demons, so you are unsuitable to inherit the Kindling. Otherwise, you would be the Kindling inheritor of this generation."

Zhong Yue identified his direction and walked toward Sword Gate Mountain.

By the time he left Juyun Mountain, the demon souls in the gloom had already dispersed. After another half a day, the gloom vanished as well.

With the demon souls and gloom gone, the Kindling Child inside the lamp also fell silent. These past few days, Zhong Yue had been accompanied by this strange little life-form, and he had not felt lonely. Now that the Kindling Child suddenly stopped speaking, he found himself somewhat unaccustomed to it.

He lifted the lampshade and looked inside, only to see that the Kindling Child on the wick had vanished, leaving behind nothing but a flame the size of a fingertip.

"Kindling, are you still there?" Zhong Yue shook the strange lamp and asked.

"Don't disturb me."

The flame swayed, faintly revealing the Kindling Child's fingertip-sized head. He yawned and said, "These past few days, I burned the lamp to resist the black haze and expended too much energy. I need to rest. I must find a Kindling inheritor as soon as possible and reside on his soul, or I won't last more than a few years before going out. I've slept for too long. I'm far weaker than I used to be..."

He sank back into a drowsy sleep. Zhong Yue thought for a while, then placed the lamp in his medicine basket, covered it with medicinal herbs, and walked into Sword Gate Mountain.

"The treatment for Outer Disciples who have cultivated Soul Egress and those who haven't is worlds apart. Once I cultivate Soul Egress, I'll live in the Upper Court and receive ten Feather Spirit Pills every month. The cultivation arts taught there are also much more profound! I must first go to Azure Sky Hall in the Outer Sect, pass the assessment, and improve my treatment!"

Zhong Yue headed straight for Azure Sky Hall. The Soul Egress assessment was held only once a month, and today happened to be the day. If he missed it, he could only wait until next month.

There were many Outer Disciples, more than fifty thousand in all. Zhong Yue's disappearance for three days had not attracted Sword Gate's attention. A nobody from a small tribe like Zhongshan Tribe would probably receive no concern even if he died outside.

For Soul Egress, I can't use the Fire Epoch Palace Suihuang Visualization taught to me by the Kindling. I can only use the Sword Gate Soul Egress Visualization. I wonder whether this method can achieve Soul Egress?

Zhong Yue was somewhat worried. Sword Gate placed immense importance on its inheritance. If they discovered that he was cultivating something other than Sword Gate's arts, being expelled from Sword Gate would be a minor matter. If he died because of it, that would be a terrible loss.

When he arrived at Azure Sky Hall, he saw more than a hundred Outer Disciples gathered inside, waiting for the assessment as well. Several Outer Disciples held Totem God Pillars, their surfaces covered in strange patterns painted with the blood of exotic beasts.

Totem Pillars were divine pillars used by Human race tribes in the Great Wilderness for sacrificial rites. They had wondrous effects and were exceptionally nourishing to the soul, making visualization cultivation twice as effective with half the effort.

Those qualified to hold Totem Pillars were all members of the upper-class families within their tribes.

Only Qi Practitioners could refine Totem Pillars, so they existed only in tribes that possessed Qi Practitioners. The spirits refined by Qi Practitioners were also a kind of totem, called a Totem Spirit.

Spirits and totems were closely related. One tribe's Qi Practitioner had a Totem Spirit that was a black tortoise, so the entire tribe took the black tortoise as its totem. By worshiping the black tortoise totem, the tribe also improved the Qi Practitioner's cultivation to a certain degree.

As for tribes without Qi Practitioners, they naturally had no Totem God Pillars. Zhong Yue's Zhongshan Tribe was an even smaller tribe, so of course it did not possess such a treasure as a Totem God Pillar.

Just as Zhong Yue reached Azure Sky Hall, a sudden uproar erupted. The crowd surged.

"Someone's dead!"

"Someone was beaten to death during the assessment. Their soul has been scattered!"

Zhong Yue's heart stirred. He saw two men in white carrying a young man's corpse out of Azure Sky Hall. He was an Outer Disciple who had died during the assessment.

The sight made the many Outer Disciples' hearts tighten. The Soul Egress assessment was extremely demanding. Merely achieving Soul Egress was not enough to pass; it also tested the strength of one's soul and one's combat awareness, with danger lurking everywhere. The slightest carelessness could result in serious injury!

It was even common for lives to be lost!

Outside Azure Sky Hall, the Outer Disciples who had come for the assessment were anxious and uneasy. They had all heard of deaths occurring during Azure Sky Hall's assessments, but hearing about it and seeing it with their own eyes were two different things. The latter struck their hearts far more forcefully, making many of them drum their fingers nervously and retreat.

Zhong Yue stepped forward and thought, The path of cultivation lies in advancing with courage and ferocity. If the heart is defeated, everything is defeated—what is there left to say about cultivation?

Before Azure Sky Hall, the white-robed old man in charge of the hall watched his nose and nose watched his heart, seemingly unaware of Zhong Yue's arrival. Indifferently, he asked, "Which clan are you from?"

"Zhongshan Tribe, Zhongshan Clan, Zhong Yue!"

The white-robed old man raised his head and sized Zhong Yue up. "Go in. Next! Which clan are you from?"

"Weishui Tribe, Shuitu Clan, Shui Qingyan."

Zhong Yue walked into Azure Sky Hall. Suddenly, a pleasant and melodious voice came from behind him. "Zhong Yue? Brother Yue from Zhongshan Clan? Is that really you? How did you become so thin after just a few days apart?"

Zhong Yue turned around and saw a young girl following him into Azure Sky Hall. She was around thirteen or fourteen years old, with fair skin and delicate features. A white fur hat rested on her head, and her eyes were clear as fresh water. She carried a faint, elegant fragrance and hurried over with a small Totem God Pillar on her back. Reaching his side, she cried out joyfully, "It really is you! I went looking for you a few days ago and saw that you weren't there. I thought something had happened to you and was scared half to death! How did you become so thin? I almost failed to recognize you just now..."