By the time Bloodwhiskers had devoured nearly all of Cheng Yu's Divine Soul, his former Peak Qi Refining cultivation had begun to waver, showing faint signs of breaking through to the Foundation Establishment Realm.
However, Cheng Yu had expended too much of his Divine Soul power to cast the curse of death, and Bloodwhiskers couldn't complete the breakthrough in one go.
Lu Yan didn't much mind. At worst, he could find another opportunity to kill a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Among Lu Yan's three main souls, the Warrior specialized in defense, while the Giant Spirit excelled in raw strength. Only Bloodwhiskers could use the Soul Fusion Technique to merge all the vengeful ghosts into one, unleashing the Soul Banner's full power and allowing it to kill enemies of a higher realm.
Once Bloodwhiskers reached a certain level of cultivation and gathered hundreds or thousands of vengeful ghosts into one, he might well be able to contend with a Golden Core True Person.
Compared to his three main souls, each endowed with its own unique abilities, Cheng Yu—a Foundation Establishment Great Cultivator with a hidden weakness—was nothing special. Even if Lu Yan truly put him into the Soul Banner, he might not prove as useful as any of the three main souls.
I hadn't noticed before, but after fighting Cheng Yu this time, I realized that the Talent Spells born from these main souls' supernatural abilities might be a little too powerful.
What exactly are these supernatural abilities? Could they be related to the traits of the Apocalypse Version?
The thought flashed through Lu Yan's mind. He then recalled most of the vengeful ghosts, leaving only a hundred outside.
He glanced over the ghosts and ordered them:
"Search the surrounding area and bring back anything with spiritual energy."
At his words, more than a hundred vengeful ghosts vanished into the night, beginning their search for nearby objects.
Lu Yan, meanwhile, walked over to Cheng Yu's crushed corpse and rummaged through the bloody chunks of flesh until he found two Storage Bags.
One was red, embroidered with a Red Lotus emblem. It was clearly from the Red Lotus Demonic Sect.
The other was blue and looked quite ordinary. It could be bought in a shop.
But compared to the low-grade Storage Bag Lu Yan carried, this blue one was already a low-grade magical artifact. It cost more than ten times as much, had several times the storage space, and its stable spatial array allowed it to last for over a hundred years.
Lu Yan bent down to pick up the Storage Bags, but his powerful Spirit Sense suddenly detected something amiss.
He paused, then waved his hand, summoning the Profound Yellow Merit Fire into his palm. With the light of merit shielding him, Lu Yan reached for the two Storage Bags again.
The next moment, a hideous, twisted face appeared on the red Storage Bag. A wailing spirit lunged at Lu Yan, but it couldn't even break through the light of merit. Under the Profound Yellow Merit Fire's radiance, it quickly dissipated.
"It has no offensive power. It should be some kind of curse that leaves a mark.
"Once the mark is imprinted on me, the people of the Red Lotus Demonic Sect will be able to track me. Then I'll be in for an endless pursuit."
Lu Yan marveled at the subtle, complicated methods of the demonic path, but he wasn't too worried.
The Profound Yellow Merit Fire was the bane of such demonic methods. Even if a mark had been left behind, he could easily remove it.
He opened the red Storage Bag. Its vast space held no other belongings, only a half-man-high, crystal-clear blue stone.
Ordinary Spirit Stones constantly leaked spiritual energy into the surrounding air, but the energy given off by this blue stone was tightly contained. Unless Lu Yan touched it himself, he couldn't even sense its spiritual energy.
"Could this be the fabled Spirit Marrow Ore?"
Lu Yan froze, then stared in shock.
The Spirit Stones used by Rogue Cultivators were generally mined from Spirit Stone Mines. But Spirit Stone Mines produced more than just Spirit Stones. Deep in the heart of some veins, a special kind of ore could be found: Spirit Marrow Ore.
In terms of spiritual energy alone, Spirit Marrow Ore was only a little better than Spirit Stones. Yet its value far exceeded that of an equivalent volume of Spirit Stones.
That was because Spirit Marrow Ore could absorb spiritual energy from the surrounding air and, through contact, permeate nearby objects, transforming whatever it touched into Spiritual Objects.
Such Spiritual Objects needed Spirit Marrow Ore as a medium and couldn't remain for long once separated from it. But combined with certain special arrays, this very property allowed Spirit Marrow Ore to produce a Spiritual Vein!
Many great sects established branch halls and Rogue Cultivator markets by using Spirit Marrow Ore together with arrays to generate Spiritual Veins.
The Spiritual Veins they could produce varied according to the quality of the Spirit Marrow Ore, but could never exceed second rank. At most, they could support a Foundation Establishment-level market or branch hall.
This was of little use to great sects, but to cultivation lineages and minor powers, it was a treasure of strategic importance.
Lu Yan had no idea of the Spirit Marrow Ore's exact quality or price.
Even the lowest-grade Spirit Marrow Ore, however, would cost at least tens of thousands of Spirit Stones—enough to buy several Foundation Establishment Pills.
But to Lu Yan, this piece of Spirit Marrow Ore was worth far more than any Foundation Establishment Pill.
He realized that if used well, this piece of Spirit Marrow Ore might have the power to subvert the entire Urban Version!
"Such a precious treasure—even a Golden Core True Person might not possess one. Cheng Yu was merely a Foundation Establishment cultivator. How did he come by this Spirit Marrow Ore?"
After a moment's thought, Lu Yan arrived at an answer.
A ruin!
A branch of the Red Lotus Demonic Sect had infiltrated Wushan for more than a decade for the sake of that ruin.
If they had held out for so long, perhaps the Red Lotus Demonic Sect had already made some progress in deciphering it. Most likely, this Spirit Marrow Ore had come from there.
The Spirit Marrow Ore had been stored by itself in the Red Lotus Demonic Sect's Storage Bag, which also bore a special curse mark. Clearly, the bag had been used specifically to transport treasures.
Cheng Yu himself might not even have known what was inside.
"Whatever the truth, this Spirit Marrow Ore is mine now."
Although the Profound Yellow Merit Fire had already cleansed the Storage Bag, Lu Yan still took out the Spirit Marrow Ore and placed it in his own Storage Bag, which he kept close to his body.
Only after that did Lu Yan turn his attention to the other, blue Storage Bag.
When he opened it, the first thing to catch his eye was a copy of the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra.
But compared to Lu Yan's previous copy, the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra in Cheng Yu's Storage Bag was clearly different. It recorded the cultivation methods from nurturing the Divine Soul and breaking through to Foundation Establishment, all the way through the later stages of Foundation Establishment. It was enough to carry Lu Yan's cultivation to the peak of Foundation Establishment.
Seeing this book, Lu Yan finally breathed a sigh of relief.
A large part of the reason he had come to the Xianxia Version was to obtain the rest of the Red Lotus Karma Fire Sutra's cultivation method.
A method that could take him all the way to the peak of Foundation Establishment would serve him for a long time.
The method for forming a Golden Core was still far beyond Lu Yan's reach. He could make plans for that after reaching Foundation Establishment.
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