"We're still one tael short of Chenzhou realgar and cinnabar. You haven't found the vengeful soul silk either?"
Chen Mo took out the materials list and checked the entries one by one.
The Ghost Banner Daoist lowered his head, looking somewhat ashamed.
"Master Chen, vengeful soul silk is ten times harder to find than Chenzhou realgar and cinnabar."
"You may not know this, but vengeful soul silk isn't a naturally occurring spiritual material."
"It has to be extracted in a place of extreme yin, from the remains of those who died with grievances unredressed."
"A hundred-year-old grievance corpse yields an inch of vengeful soul silk at most. The slightest mistake, and all your efforts go down the drain."
He sighed and raised his sleeve to wipe nonexistent sweat from his forehead. "And the stuff is terribly sinister. Whoever extracts the silk needs an iron will. Otherwise, once the grievance energy invades their body, they'll go mad at best—or drop dead on the spot at worst."
"There used to be a few unorthodox cultivators willing to risk refining it. Later, the United Government strictly prohibited the private refinement of vengeful soul artifacts, and the local branches of the Anomaly Suppression Bureau cracked down hard. Fewer and fewer people dared touch the stuff."
A place of extreme yin?
A hundred-year-old grievance corpse?
Chen Mo frowned slightly, tapping his fingers gently on the table. "Do you have any leads, then?"
The Ghost Banner Daoist pondered for a long while with a troubled expression before answering hesitantly. "Leads... I did hear an old story once."
"There was an unorthodox sect in Magic City called the Profound Yin Studio. They supposedly had a sect-defining artifact called the Thousand Grievances Guide, woven entirely from vengeful soul silk."
He glanced at Chen Mo and, seeing no change