Middle Grade Spirit Ghost

In the blink of an eye, half a year passed.

One day, as Lei Dong emptied the second Spirit Stone, his continuously cultivated Profound Yin True Qi finally reached the peak state of the first layer of Qi Refining Stage. With a thought, feeling good, Lei Dong went with the flow and directly circulated his True Qi downwards. After lingering in the first acupoint for some time, he moved on to the next. Having experienced breaking through once before, Lei Dong was neither hasty nor impatient, guarding his mind and slowly nurturing the acupoint.

Time flowed by drop by drop. A full three days later, Lei Dong broke through the shackles once more, advancing to the second layer of Qi Refining Stage. A cool sensation poured down from the top of his head, flowing along his skin and bones. It felt as refreshing as floating on clouds. This continued for more than ten cycles before it finally stopped.

He slowly opened his eyes. Though his dark eyes were somewhat weary, they were filled with extreme agility and spirit. Lei Dong twitched his nose slightly, and a familiar fishy, pungent smell assaulted his nostrils, making him smile with relief. Clearly, after advancing to the second layer of Qi Refining Stage, his entire body had undergone another thorough Marrow Cleansing and Hair Washing. Cultivation, he knew, was a process of constantly refining oneself, stepping towards immortality, and gradually evolving. However, Lei Dong also knew that this was a thorny and arduous path, and every step required immense effort, and even luck.

Following his routine, he took a bath and ate. Then, he contacted Chen Ge and Wei Hua. Before this closed-door cultivation, Lei Dong had informed them that he might attempt to break through to the second layer of Qi Refining Stage.

Not long after, Chen and Wei arrived with smiles, congratulating Lei Dong profusely. Chen Ge had already broken through a month or two ago, achieving the second layer of Qi Refining. As for Wei Hua, he was still at the peak of the first layer, on the verge of advancing at any moment. After a brief gathering, the three parted ways.

Several days later, Lei Dong reappeared near the long-unseen Mass Grave.

But this time, he was completely different from half a year ago. Not only had Lei Dong's cultivation reached the second layer of Qi Refining Stage, significantly increasing his strength, but he was also wearing a pair of Middle Grade Magic Item, Cloud Ascending Boots. These Cloud Ascending Boots were indeed very useful Magic Items. When he moved with them on, it truly felt like ascending to the clouds, ethereal and traceless.

Originally, with Lei Dong's current cultivation, his rapid running was already as agile as a swallow and as fast as a galloping horse. However, after equipping the Cloud Ascending Boots, his speed nearly doubled. It was likely that even someone at the fourth or fifth layer of Qi Refining might not be able to keep up. After more than a year of entering the sect and experiencing many things, Lei Dong had somewhat understood that cultivation was not just about increasing strength. The most important thing was to survive first; otherwise, no matter how high one's cultivation, death meant the end of everything.

Running fast was indeed a great advantage. Having witnessed the power of Ghost Soldiers, Lei Dong was determined to focus on summoning spells. With minions to take the front line, he could play dirty from the back, and most importantly, try to avoid letting enemies get close to him. At the very least, when he couldn't defeat an opponent, he would still have a chance to escape. From this perspective, it seemed that Myriad Ghost Ancestor giving him a pair of Cloud Ascending Boots, rather than an offensive Magic Item, was a well-considered decision. After all, Myriad Ghost Ancestor came from the Ghost Taming Art lineage and was very knowledgeable in this area.

Furthermore, Lei Dong's treasured Ghost Soldier, which had served him well several times, was also a great help in capturing Yin Souls this time. When he summoned it from the Soul Nurturing Pagoda, the Ghost Soldier's body had condensed significantly, appearing quite different from before Lei Dong's closed-door cultivation. Although this Soul Nurturing Pagoda was just an entry-level item, it could still nourish Spirit Ghosts and allow them to grow slowly.

After devouring flesh and blood several times and being nourished by the Soul Nurturing Pagoda for over half a year, the Ghost Soldier had now reached the intermediate level of a Level 1 Ghost Soldier. Of course, most of the credit went to the devoured flesh and blood; the nourishing effect of the entry-level Soul Nurturing Pagoda was negligible. When he had more resources, he had to consider getting a better Soul Nurturing Pagoda to speed up the Ghost Soldier's growth.

In the middle of the night, a chilling wind swept through the area, and ghostly howls echoed. Lei Dong, with the Cloud Ascending Boots on his feet, drove his Ghost Soldier ahead to clear the path. He first roamed the outer perimeter, capturing only two scattered Yin Souls. However, Lei Dong no longer needed to return to rest after capturing two or three Spirit Ghosts like before.

Not to mention, he had over a hundred spiritual stones on him. Before coming, Lei Dong had exchanged for ten bottles of Qi Condensing Pills. Unlike Lesser Vitality Pills, which helped increase cultivation, Qi Condensing Pills were solely for accelerating True Qi recovery. However, when needing to capture a large number of Yin Souls, carrying a large quantity of Qi Condensing Pills proved useful.

Each time he captured a Yin Soul, he no longer needed to use any Magic Items. Instead, he had the Ghost Soldier strike, making the Yin Soul half-condensed and half-scattered, after which Lei Dong would use a Law incantation to forcibly absorb it into the Soul Nurturing Pagoda. When his True Qi was depleted by thirty to forty percent, he would take a Qi Condensing Pill. By the time he found the next Yin Soul, his True Qi would have almost fully recovered.

This formed a virtuous cycle. Basically, apart from the time spent searching for Yin Souls, Lei Dong wasted almost no time when capturing them. Gradually, his courage grew. He ventured deeper into the Mass Grave, and the closer he got to the center, the denser the Yin Souls became. In the end, he occasionally encountered two at once. But even two posed little threat to Lei Dong. He just needed to have the Ghost Soldier strike and injure the Yin Souls before easily collecting them.

After a night of hard work, as dawn approached, his haul reached over a hundred. He returned to Myriad Ghost City to rest and inspect his findings, but unfortunately, he didn't find a single Spirit Ghost. Fortunately, Lei Dong was mentally prepared, knowing that Spirit Ghosts were not easily captured. Even capturing a hundred a night, the chance of obtaining a Spirit Ghost was only one percent.

Thus, for about thirty days, Lei Dong, lingering in the Mass Grave, captured a total of nearly four thousand Yin Souls, yet he still hadn't found a single naturally occurring Spirit Ghost. However, Lei Dong had the Soul Devouring Pagoda, so he wasn't overly desperate to capture Spirit Ghosts directly. Through the Inferior Ghosts devoured by the Soul Devouring Pagoda, he condensed numerous Soul Beads, accumulating ten in total.

After using two Soul Beads to feed and create two Lower Grade Spirit Ghosts, the remaining eight were all used to feed the Ghost Soldier. The reason Lei Dong was willing to do this was that every time he fed a Soul Bead, the Ghost Soldier seemed to enter a state of transformation. Although the effect of each transformation was far less impressive than the first time it directly transformed from an Inferior Ghost to a Spirit Ghost.

However, after each transformation, when the Ghost Soldier was scanned by the Spirit Ghost appraisal technique, the golden hue deep within its body seemed to grow richer. This gave Lei Dong great hope. After devouring a total of eight Soul Beads, the intensity of the golden hue within the Ghost Soldier had increased by three to four times its original level. It was as if it resembled a Middle Grade Spirit Ghost recorded in the Ghost Taming Art.

This result was the powerful motivation for Lei Dong to continuously capture Yin Souls in the Mass Grave for the past month.

In the blink of an eye, another seven or eight days passed. The Yin Souls wandering in the Mass Grave seemed to be growing scarcer. Fortunately, he managed to gather two more Soul Beads. After continuing to feed them to the Ghost Soldier, it finally underwent a drastic change, trembling violently and reforming into a mass. This process lasted for three to four days before it finally unfurled its body again. However, the Ghost Soldier now had some new characteristics. Using the Spirit Ghost appraisal technique, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the Ghost Soldier's quality had completely reached the Middle Grade Spirit Ghost level.

Even though he had anticipated it, seeing the Ghost Soldier evolve into a Middle Grade Spirit Ghost and confirming his thoughts, Lei Dong was almost unable to contain his elation. In the more than a year since he joined the sect, he had taken the time to research the quality tiers of Spirit Ghosts extensively. He had never encountered any record of how to elevate a Spirit Ghost from Lower Grade to Middle Grade.

In fact, Lei Dong also knew that just like a human's Spiritual Root quality cannot be improved, a Spirit Ghost's quality was also unchangeable. Otherwise, with such a powerful Ghost Taming Art, why wouldn't it become the top-tier trending spell? If the quality of Spirit Ghosts could be improved, one could imagine how many Top Grade Spirit Ghosts, or even Heavenly Spirit Ghosts, the Yin Sha Sect could create with its power.

If every Yin Sha Sect disciple cultivated the Spirit Forging Art more, strengthened their mental power, and were equipped with several Heavenly Spirit Ghosts—no, just several Upper Grade or Top Grade Spirit Ghosts would be enough to make the Yin Sha Sect the foremost sect, with a very high probability of unifying the world.

His hand trembling slightly, he caressed the mysterious Soul Devouring Pagoda, which looked ordinary but had brought him a miracle. Now that it could elevate a Lower Grade Spirit Ghost to Middle Grade with Soul Beads, Lei Dong knew that his destiny had truly changed.