Stealing Essence Blood

Song Wen returned to his cave dwelling in high spirits, having reaped a bountiful harvest.

Before he could tally tonight's gains, Song Wen discovered that his purse had once again become embarrassingly light. Fewer than thirty Spirit Stones remained.

On his way back, he had spent another two Spirit Stones to buy blank talisman paper for drawing low-grade, first-rank talismans.

Song Wen's talent for drawing talismans was clearly inferior to his talent for spells. He used up all the talisman paper he had obtained from Extreme Yin, yet failed to successfully draw even a single Fireball Talisman.

Still, he had no intention of giving up. If he could successfully draw talismans, not only would it improve his combat ability, but he could also sell them for considerable profit.

He had learned at the market that even low-grade, low-rank talismans like Fireball Talismans had a good market. Two of them could sell for one Spirit Stone. Yet he had spent two Spirit Stones to buy a full fifty sheets of blank talisman paper.

The Spirit Stones he had earned from selling the furnace cauldron had barely warmed in his pocket before they were nearly spent. He only had ten Corpse Blood Pills left, and at his current cultivation speed, they would last at most ten days. If he wanted to raise his cultivation quickly, he had to continue buying Corpse Blood Pills or other pills that aided cultivation.

"Ah! I need to find a way to get some Spirit Stones."

Song Wen thought to himself as he took out today's spoils.

The first thing he took out was the Soul-Banishing Technique, which he still could not be certain he was able to cultivate.

At the time, he had read the first half of the first layer of the technique and felt that it might help him refine the souls he had devoured.

Ever since he had devoured another person's soul, Song Wen had only been able to digest and absorb it slowly. From the time he killed the little beggar until now, he had noticed that his spiritual power had improved somewhat, making it stronger than that of others at the same realm.

But the improvement in spiritual power was extremely limited. Most of the souls he had devoured had not been fully digested, and most of them slowly dispersed and went to waste.

Moreover, there were a great number of lingering soul fragments in the Corpse Dissection Cave. After absorbing large quantities of soul fragments, he could not refine them in time, leaving his Sea of Consciousness saturated for long periods. This greatly hindered him from devouring more soul fragments.

If this technique could help him resolve this problem, it would undoubtedly greatly strengthen Song Wen's soul and allow him to make the fullest use of his golden finger.

After peeling away the paper concealing the technique, Song Wen found that, just as he had expected, the first layer of the Soul-Banishing Technique contained only a little over three hundred characters.

The paper recording the technique was ancient and weighty. Its authenticity should have been guaranteed; it did not seem like something someone had fabricated at random. It was highly likely to be a technique left behind after the Ten Thousand Souls Sect was destroyed.

Song Wen quickly finished reading the more than three hundred characters.

Then, he began attempting to cultivate it, using the Soul-Banishing Technique to refine the soul fragments he had devoured and stored within his Sea of Consciousness.

To Song Wen's delight, cultivating the Soul-Banishing Technique was exceptionally easy for him. It was as natural as drinking water and eating food—he learned it the moment he tried.

The soul fragments filling his Sea of Consciousness were rapidly consumed, while the strength of his soul and his spiritual power rose swiftly.

Song Wen guessed that the missing outline of the Soul-Banishing Technique probably contained the method for devouring other people's souls and turning them into soul fragments to store within the Sea of Consciousness.

Song Wen's guess made some sense, but it was far removed from the Soul-Banishing Technique's true contents.

He had vastly underestimated the effect of his body's ability to devour others' souls. According to the Soul-Banishing Technique's actual records, to break down and devour another person's soul, one needed to expend immense resources and construct an array. One first had to turn the other person's soul into soul fragments, then gradually and slowly draw them into the Sea of Consciousness. Even devouring soul fragments was an extremely slow process.

After all, the Sea of Consciousness was the most mysterious part of the human body. Even in the cultivation world, no one could peer into all the mysteries of the soul and the Sea of Consciousness.

The human Sea of Consciousness was mysterious, powerful, and fragile. The slightest carelessness could result in an incomplete soul, or even the soul scattering and vanishing.

Therefore, when cultivating a technique like the Soul-Banishing Technique that directly involved the Sea of Consciousness, no amount of caution was excessive.

Within the former Ten Thousand Souls Sect, only a small number of people born with stable Seas of Consciousness and powerful souls had any chance of successfully cultivating this Soul-Banishing Technique. Every year, quite a few people who fancied themselves geniuses forcibly cultivated it, only to damage their Seas of Consciousness and leave their souls incomplete, becoming muddleheaded fools.

After cultivating the Soul-Banishing Technique for an entire night, Song Wen had consumed more than half of the vast number of soul fragments stored in his Sea of Consciousness, greatly improving his spiritual power.

Although Song Wen had cultivated all night without sleeping, he still felt refreshed and invigorated, without the slightest hint of fatigue.

After eating breakfast at the dining hall, Song Wen arrived early at the Corpse Dissection Cave.

While dissecting corpses, he began consciously absorbing the soul fragments lingering in the Corpse Dissection Cave and on the corpses.

At the same time, he increased the amount of essence blood he devoured from the corpses.

That day, Song Wen remained tense throughout, terrified that someone would discover him stealing essence blood from the corpses.

Fortunately, after the dissections were completed, they only needed to hand over the skin and flesh, bones, and internal organs. The blood inside the corpses flowed directly through the channels of the Dissection Platform into the great blood pool within the Corpse Dissection Cave.

No one discovered Song Wen's covert act of devouring a portion of the essence blood.

When Song Wen finished the day's work and prepared to find Yuan Cheng to hand over the corpse limbs, he suddenly realized that he had devoured too much essence blood that day. Blood energy surged throughout his body, and he could barely control the abundant blood energy within him.

To keep Yuan Cheng from noticing anything suspicious, Song Wen had no choice but to circulate the Corpse King Blood Refinement Art with all his strength, trying to calm his surging blood and qi.

A quarter of an hour later, the blood and qi within Song Wen had basically calmed down. As usual, he was the last to walk toward the cave where Yuan Cheng was.

Yuan Cheng accepted the four storage bags Song Wen handed over and asked unconsciously,

"What happened just now? I saw you standing beside the Dissection Platform for a full quarter of an hour."

Song Wen had not expected Yuan Cheng to notice him calming his blood and qi beside the Dissection Platform. He could not help feeling nervous, but his face showed no panic at all. Instead, he spoke with a somewhat dejected expression.

"I don't know what happened either. Just now, I only felt my blood and qi churning within me, while my spiritual power became disordered and ran wild. I barely managed to calm my spiritual power."

The symptoms Song Wen described were the early signs of discomfort many corpse dissectors experienced after being contaminated by the foul qi in the Corpse Dissection Cave.

The appearance of such symptoms meant that the person was not far from suffering cultivation deviation.

Yuan Cheng cast Song Wen a pitying glance but said nothing more. He waved a hand, indicating that Song Wen could leave.

Song Wen carefully made his way back to his cave dwelling, struggling to control the abundant blood and qi within his body.

After returning to his cave dwelling, Song Wen immediately sat cross-legged and reversed his blood and qi, forcing the excess blood energy out of his body.

Gradually, crimson mist shrouded Song Wen's entire body. Slowly, the whole cave dwelling filled with incomparably dense blood energy.

A single bean-sized drop of scarlet essence blood began to condense at Song Wen's glabella. It then fell into a jade bottle he had prepared beforehand.

One drop, two drops, three drops...

Drops of pure essence blood fell into the jade bottle.

More than a hundred drops of essence blood fell into the jade bottle in total. Only after it was filled nearly halfway did Song Wen stop forcing out essence blood.

If outsiders had witnessed this scene, they would surely have been so shocked that they could not believe it. The essence blood Song Wen had forced out was nearly equivalent to all the essence blood possessed by a Late Qi Refinement cultivator.

With Song Wen's strength at the Qi Refinement Second Level, even ten lives would not have been enough for him to condense so much essence blood.

Yet even after forcing out more than a hundred drops of essence blood, Song Wen's blood and qi remained full and vigorous, without the slightest weakness from excessive depletion.