Bottle Ghost Girl

Inside, the candle flame was no bigger than a bean; outside, the night stretched into unfathomable darkness. Something seemed to click its tongue regretfully a few times, then tiptoed away.

Only then did the stepmother let out a breath of relief. She opened her palm and called back the bamboo dragonflies she had sent out to scout.

She had sent out five, but only three had returned.

The other two hadn't been destroyed by Old Qian.

Night was always full of danger. If the stepmother had let her guard down even a little just now, this fight would never have ended here.

Lin Wanmo had sensed three wills watching them from the shadows.

Xu Yuan inspected his Three-eyed Firearm. The secret artillery powder was meant for the bronze cannons built by Artisan Cultivators, and after three shots, the firearm had overheated.

Xu Yuan winced at the thought of the cost. After he changed the powder, the Artisan Cultivator-made weapon would be even more powerful, but its lifespan would likely be greatly reduced.

Setting the hand cannon aside for the moment, Xu Yuan began searching Old Qian's corpse. Lin Wanmo saw him swiftly pull dozens of copper coins from Old Qian's purse and understood why the boy had managed to bring back so much money.

"How could this old bastard be so dirt poor?" Xu Yuan grumbled.

He searched Old Qian from head to toe, only to find a few dozen copper coins!

Lin Wanmo glanced at the corpse. "He wasn't old at all, no more than thirty-five. He looked so decrepit because he had been exposed to Shade Souls too much. Even Divine Cultivators can't overdo it."

Old Qian had been obsessed with refining souls, lost in his work. As a result, his cultivation as a Divine Cultivator had advanced rapidly, earning the master's favor.

But his body had also been damaged. Even if Xu Yuan hadn't killed him, he wouldn't have lived another five years.

The master had rewarded him with plenty of money, but he had spent it all on soul-refining research. He owned little else and was content as long as he had enough to eat and wear.

Xu Yuan searched him again and found a small booklet.

He opened it. The booklet recorded all of Old Qian's cultivation insights. It was really his notebook: whenever an experiment yielded something or he had a new idea, he jotted it down.

If a Divine Cultivator got hold of it, they could easily become another "Old Qian."

And they wouldn't have to pay the price of ruining their body as Old Qian had.

For a Divine Cultivator, it was a priceless treasure.

But it wasn't much use to Xu Yuan or his stepmother.

Three pages of the booklet were devoted to several Divine Cultivator techniques. One was called the Divine Skin Technique, which used one's "true spirit" to greatly strengthen the defensive power of the body's skin.

The foundation of a Divine Cultivator's practice was to strengthen their "true spirit."

Xu Yuan didn't know whether Old Qian had used the Divine Skin Technique in his final moments. Even if he had, it hadn't been enough to withstand three shots.

The stepmother flipped through the booklet, then handed it back to Xu Yuan. "Put it away for now. If we meet a friendly Divine Cultivator later, we can sell it for a good price."

Old Qian had nothing else on him. All that remained of his possessions were those jars and bottles.

Only then did Xu Yuan remember the Bottle Ghost he had captured from Qiao Zi'ang's study. He had left it in the room without checking it.

Xu Yuan opened a clay jar. A shrill howl rang out, stabbing at the soul, and a cloud of black sand surged from the jar, coalescing into a vicious ghost with a human torso and a scorpion's tail!

Its eyes were blood red. Four black fangs curled between its lips, and greedy drool streamed from its mouth.

It was about to unleash its fury when it saw a short sword wreathed in Inner Fire, already waiting in front of its brow.

It was an Eighth Stream Xian Ghost, a strange creature formed when the vengeful soul of someone who had died violently in the mountains fused with some of the mountain's spirits that had yet to develop intelligence.

Feeling the terrifying heat before its brow, it knew it wouldn't survive if the thing stabbed into it.

So the Xian Ghost obediently drew in its body. With a poof, it dispersed into a cloud of sand and obediently slipped back into the jar.

Then it even flicked out a little tail of sand to put the lid back on itself.

Xu Yuan nodded in satisfaction. "Now that's a sensible one."

Then Xu Yuan opened another jar.

Of all the bottles and jars Old Qian had brought, this one was the biggest—and the most exquisite.

It was a blue-and-white porcelain jar, about three feet tall.

Xu Yuan lifted the lid, and a little girl's head suddenly poked out!

Lin Wanmo peered into the jar and cursed, "That man deserved to die!"

The girl's arms and legs had been chopped off and her body crammed into the jar. Old Qian's method was different from the usual "bottle fairy" tricks used by the martial world.

After the girl had been stuffed into the jar with her limbs cut off and kept there for a while, enduring unimaginable agony, Old Qian had shoved all kinds of poisonous insects inside.

The insects gnawed at the girl's body day and night.

Unable to escape or hide, she had eventually been eaten alive, dying a wretched death inside the jar.

Old Qian then sealed the jar with a secret art, refining the girl's vengeful soul together with countless poisonous insects!

Who knew whose beloved daughter she had been, only to suffer such a calamity and be so cruelly tormented by him.

This Bottle Ghost Girl was consumed by resentment and carried terrible poison. She was the most powerful Yin Soldier in Old Qian's possession.

The moment the Bottle Ghost Girl appeared, blood dripped from her eyes. She opened her fanged mouth and lunged at Xu Yuan.

A long, serpentine neck sprouted from behind the little girl's head!

Xu Yuan used Inner Fire to force her back inside, then replaced the lid. For a moment, he had no idea what to do with this unclean thing.

Lin Wanmo said, "Refine her and help her transcend. In this state, her incomplete soul has to endure the poisonous insects' spirits gnawing at her every day. It's just... too cruel."

Xu Yuan nodded. He took a deep breath and drew the Inner Fire into a thin line. He lifted the lid just enough to make a narrow gap and sent the Fire line inside.

After a while, he opened the lid again. A thin wisp of green smoke rose from the jar.

The smoke curled into a thread, drifting and circling before slowly fading away.

Its shape somehow conveyed the feeling of a burden finally lifted.

Xu Yuan sighed inwardly, but he wasn't feeling any better.

Xu Yuan opened all the remaining bottles and jars. They held all kinds of vicious ghosts and Yin Soldiers—eleven in total.

The stepmother pushed the earthenware jar toward Xu Yuan. "Bait."

Xu Yuan froze. "All of them?"

"All of them!" Lin Wanmo would have loved to go out and catch some more herself, so Xu Yuan could use them as bait to refine Outer Pills and give his strength a serious boost.

The moment that boy had charged out just now, Lin Wanmo knew he would never be able to "stay out of trouble" from now on.

If he wasn't strong enough, his stepmother truly couldn't rest easy.

But several of these Yin Soldiers were as revolting as the Corpse Water Monster, and Xu Yuan couldn't bring himself to eat them.

Lin Wanmo didn't force him. She merely went and sat beneath Xu Huanyang's memorial tablet, wiping away tears that might not even exist, and lamented, "Old Xu, you've only been gone a few days, and the child's already stopped listening to me. What's the point of my living? I may as well join you..."

The veins on Xu Yuan's forehead twitched. Wasn't she taking this a little too far?

She even made it look convincing! No wonder she was the owner of the old opera stage.

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