Middle Grade Spirit Ghost

In the blink of an eye, half a year slipped by.

One day, after Lei Dong had drained the second Spirit Stone, the Profound Yin True Qi he had been cultivating without pause finally reached the peak of the first layer of the Qi Refining Stage. With a thought, he sensed that he was in good shape, so he went with the flow and directed his True Qi downward. After it wound around the first acupoint for a while, it pressed on toward the next. Having broken through once before, Lei Dong remained calm and focused, slowly nurturing the acupoint.

Time trickled by, and after a full three days, Lei Dong broke through the bottleneck once more, surging straight into the second layer of the Qi Refining Stage. A cool sensation poured down from the crown of his head, flowing along the patterns of his skin and down his bones. It felt as refreshing as floating among the clouds. The sensation washed over him again and again, more than a dozen times in all. He had no idea how much time passed before it finally stopped.

He slowly opened his eyes. Though his dark eyes were weary, they glittered with extraordinary life. Lei Dong wrinkled his nose slightly as a familiar, fishy stench hit him, and he couldn't help smiling, his spirits lifting. Clearly, after advancing to the second layer of the Qi Refining Stage, he had undergone another thorough Marrow Cleansing and Hair Washing. Cultivation was just that: a process of constantly tempering oneself, taking step after step toward immortality, and gradually evolving. But Lei Dong knew this was a thorny, rugged road. Every step demanded immense effort—and sometimes even luck.

As usual, he took a bath and ate. Only then did he get in touch with Chen Ge and Wei Hua. Before entering seclusion, Lei Dong had told them he might try to break through to the second layer of the Qi Refining Stage.

Before long, Chen and Wei arrived together, beaming as they congratulated Lei Dong. Chen Ge had already successfully broken through a month or two earlier, reaching the second layer of Qi Refining. Wei Hua, meanwhile, was still at the peak of the first layer and could advance at any moment. After the three of them had spent a little time together, they soon took their leave.

Several days later, Lei Dong appeared once more near the long-familiar Mass Grave.

But this time, everything was completely different from half a year ago. Not only had Lei Dong reached the second layer of the Qi Refining Stage, his strength had increased considerably, and he now wore a pair of Middle Grade Magic Artifact Cloud Ascending Boots. The boots were indeed an excellent Magic Artifact. When he wore them and moved, it was as if he were treading clouds and mist, light and fleeting, leaving no trace.

With Lei Dong's current cultivation, he could already run as fast as a galloping horse, light as a swallow. But after equipping the Cloud Ascending Boots, his speed more than doubled. Even someone at the fourth or fifth layer of Qi Refining might not be able to catch up with him. More than a year after joining the sect, and after experiencing quite a lot, Lei Dong had begun to understand that cultivation was about more than simply growing stronger. The most important thing was to stay alive. Otherwise, no matter how high one's cultivation reached, death would leave nothing behind.

Running fast was certainly a major advantage. After seeing how powerful Ghost Soldiers were, Lei Dong had made up his mind to focus on summoning spells. With his underlings taking the hits up front, he could stay back and pull a few dirty tricks. The most important thing was to keep his enemies from getting close. At least if he couldn't beat them, he would still have a chance to run for his life. In that light, Myriad Ghost Ancestor must have given him the Cloud Ascending Boots instead of an offensive Magic Artifact after giving it some thought. After all, Myriad Ghost Ancestor had made his name with the Ghost Taming Art and knew this area inside and out.

Besides, his treasured Ghost Soldier, which had earned its keep several times over, would be a great help in capturing Yin Souls this time. Once Lei Dong summoned it from the Soul Nurturing Pagoda, its body had grown much more solid, plainly different from how it had been before his long retreat. Though this Soul Nurturing Pagoda was only a beginner-level trinket, it could still nourish Spirit Ghosts and help them slowly grow.

After devouring flesh several times and spending more than half a year being nourished by the Soul Nurturing Pagoda, the Ghost Soldier had reached the middle level of a First-level Ghost Soldier. Of course, most of that progress came from the flesh it had devoured; the nourishment from the beginner-level pagoda could only be called negligible. Once he had a little more money to spare, he would have to consider getting a better Soul Nurturing Pagoda. That was the only way to speed up the Ghost Soldier's growth.

It was the dead of night. Yin Wind sighed everywhere, and Ghost Howls rang out without pause. Lei Dong strode along in his Cloud Ascending Boots, sending the Ghost Soldier ahead to clear the way. He first wandered around the outskirts and captured only two stray Yin Souls. But Lei Dong no longer needed to return and rest after every two or three Spirit Ghosts, as he had before.

What's more, he now had more than a hundred Spirit Stones to his name. Before setting out, Lei Dong had exchanged some of them for ten bottles of Qi Condensing Pills. Unlike Lesser Vitality Pills, which helped increase cultivation, Qi Condensing Pills only sped up the recovery of True Qi. But when he needed to capture large numbers of Yin Souls, carrying plenty of them proved its worth.

He no longer needed to use any Magic Tools to capture Yin Souls. Instead, he had the Ghost Soldier strike them until they were half-dispersed, then used a hand seal to forcibly draw them into the Soul Nurturing Pagoda. After his True Qi had been depleted by three or four tenths, he swallowed a Qi Condensing Pill. By the time he found the next Yin Soul, his True Qi had almost completely recovered.

This created a virtuous cycle. Apart from the time spent searching for Yin Souls, Lei Dong wasted almost no time capturing them. Gradually, he grew bolder, venturing deeper into the Mass Grave. The closer he got to the center, the denser the Yin Souls became. Before long, he would occasionally encounter two at once. But even two posed little threat to Lei Dong. He only had to send the Ghost Soldier to injure them before easily collecting them.

He worked hard all night, and by dawn he had captured more than a hundred. After returning to Myriad Ghost City to rest, he inspected them, but unfortunately found not a single Spirit Ghost among them. Fortunately, Lei Dong had been prepared for that. He knew that Spirit Ghosts weren't easy to capture. Even if he caught a hundred in one night, the chance of finding a Spirit Ghost was a mere one percent.

For more than thirty days straight, Lei Dong roamed the Mass Grave, capturing nearly four thousand Yin Souls, yet he still hadn't found a single naturally formed Spirit Ghost. Fortunately, he had the Soul Devouring Pagoda, so he wasn't all that eager to capture Spirit Ghosts directly. The Inferior Ghosts swallowed by the pagoda had condensed into Soul Beads one by one, and he had obtained ten in all.

He used two Soul Beads to feed and create two Low-grade Spirit Ghosts. He fed the remaining eight to the Ghost Soldier, one by one. Lei Dong was willing to do this because every time the Ghost Soldier ate a Soul Bead, it seemed to enter a state of transformation. The effect of each transformation was nowhere near as dramatic as the first, when it had changed directly from an Inferior Ghost into a Spirit Ghost.

Yet each time the Ghost Soldier transformed, the faint streak of gold deep within its body seemed to grow richer when examined with the Spirit Ghost Appraisal Art. This filled Lei Dong with hope. After it had swallowed eight Soul Beads in all, the golden streak inside the Ghost Soldier had grown three or four times as rich as before. It seemed just like the Middle Grade Spirit Ghost described in the Ghost Taming Art.

That was what had driven Lei Dong to keep capturing Yin Souls at the Mass Grave for more than a month.

In the blink of an eye, another seven or eight days passed. The Yin Souls wandering through the Mass Grave seemed to be growing scarce. Fortunately, he managed to gather two more Soul Beads. After feeding them to the Ghost Soldier, it finally underwent a dramatic change. Trembling violently, it re-formed into a ball. It took three or four full days before it unfurled its body again. But now the Ghost Soldier had changed in a few ways. When Lei Dong used the Spirit Ghost Appraisal Art, he was delighted to discover that its quality had fully reached the Middle Grade Spirit Ghost level.

Even though he had already expected it, seeing the Ghost Soldier evolve into a Middle Grade Spirit Ghost and confirm his theory left Lei Dong almost unable to contain his wild joy. In the year or so since joining the sect, he had taken time to look through many records about Spirit Ghost grades. Not one of them had mentioned how to raise a Spirit Ghost from Low-grade to Middle Grade.

In fact, Lei Dong knew that Spirit Ghost quality could no more be improved than the quality of a human's Spiritual Root. Otherwise, why hadn't the mighty Ghost Taming Art become the most popular cultivation art around? Just imagine how many Top Grade Spirit Ghosts—or even Heavenly Spirit Ghosts—the Yin Sha Sect could produce if their quality could be improved.

If every Yin Sha Sect disciple cultivated the Spirit Forging Art to strengthen their Mind Power and equipped themselves with several Heavenly Spirit Ghosts—no, even just several High-grade or Top Grade Spirit Ghosts—that alone would be enough to make the Yin Sha Sect the greatest sect and very likely unite the world under its banner.

His hand trembling slightly, Lei Dong stroked the Soul Devouring Pagoda. It looked utterly ordinary, yet had brought him a miracle. Now that he knew Soul Beads could raise a Low-grade Spirit Ghost to Middle Grade, Lei Dong understood that his fate had truly changed.