The white figure draped over Hong Yuan's back had a blurred, ever-shifting face. Only its eyes remained distinct, filled with icy malice and venomous resentment.
An ordinary person confronted with such a sight would likely have been frightened out of their wits.
Hong Yuan raised an eyebrow. Rather than panicking, he studied it with keen interest.
Sever the shackles of the flesh and temper the spirit into immortality: this was the Phantom-Soul Astral Art.
The Phantom-Soul Astral Art regarded the fleshly vessel as a transitional stage. It held that the body would eventually rot, while only the spirit could endure. Thus, its ultimate leap at the final juncture was to abandon physical form and remain in the world as a "phantom soul."
Yet once a "phantom soul" left the body, the myriad fluctuations in the void would erode it, preventing it from enduring indefinitely. It therefore needed something to attach itself to.
"A spirit vessel?"
Hong Yuan had only wanted to test his new arts and had casually selected a band of brigands in Songyang Commandery. He had never expected such a harvest: picking up a spirit vessel and encountering a product of the Phantom-Soul Astral Art.
Strictly speaking, this was his first encounter with one since learning of the Phantom-Soul Astral Art.
Red Lotus did not count. The ritual for her [Illusory Flower Painted-Skin Astral Force] had been incomplete, nowhere near full mastery.
Hiss!
Force surged in his palm, enveloping the bloodstained Human Bone Plaque. Fine strands seeped inside to probe it.
To Hong Yuan's slight surprise, the feedback from his Six Voids Force revealed nothing unusual about the Human Bone Plaque.
His probing, however, seemed to unsettle the white figure greatly. It screamed soundlessly and climbed up Hong Yuan's back, wrapping two slender, elongated arms, faint as mist,