Soul Crystal

For the time being, Yin Ming treated Little Black Fur Ball as a kind of demon creature.

Then, unknown consciousness fragments equaled the inherited memories of the Demon Race's bloodline.

Unknown energy essence equaled unconverted elemental energy that had been absorbed.

Unknown biological blood essence equaled the racial bloodline of the Demon Race.

Yin Ming could understand all of that—except for this: Mental Essence.

It should not have appeared among the Scavenger Gourd's extractable options.

"Mental Essence!"

The Scavenger Gourd was merely an Innate Spiritual Treasure with a Divine Restriction; it could not accept just anything.

For things with their own will, they could only be taken into the gourd once their will had completely given up resisting.

Other than Yin Ming, the Scavenger Gourd's master,

no one else could enter the Yellow-Skinned Gourd, even if they trusted Yin Ming one hundred percent.

Resisting control was a living creature's instinct. If even that shred of free will was lost, it could no longer be considered a living creature at all!

For instance, with the deceased Jeroen Hoven, the Yellow-Skinned Gourd could take in only his soulless body, not his soul.

Lifespan, memories, talent, and mental power were not things the Scavenger Gourd could not extract.

Rather, those things were tied to one's self-will and could not be drawn into the gourd.

"If the black crystal can extract Mental Essence, then it must contain mental power stripped of self-will."

In the Immortal Path System, humans possessed three treasures: essence, qi, and spirit.

When the form shed away and only qi and spirit remained, one became a ghost. Ghosts had no roots and diminished by the day. Yet if one cultivated immortal methods until qi and spirit were complete, one could attain the Dao as a Ghost Immortal.

When qi shed away and only spirit remained, it was formless and immaterial, a dim awareness in the unseen. Once the spirit was complete, it could be entrusted to a magical artifact and endure, attaining the Dao as a Corpse-Liberation Immortal.

When spirit shed away, it was said that the True Spirit still remained—the self-will without thought, sensation, form, or shape.

Yet the True Spirit could only be perceived by oneself. If only the True Spirit remained, it had neither thought nor sensation and was regarded as nonexistent.

Thus, among observable phenomena, when the spirit scattered, the True Spirit scattered; when the spirit gathered, the True Spirit gathered.

The Blue Star Cultivation World had argued without end over whether the True Spirit truly existed.

"Mental power is practically born alongside self-awareness. How could it possibly be stripped away?"

Yin Ming was especially curious. If he could solve this technical bottleneck,

the Scavenger Gourd could extract enormous quantities of Mental Essence, greatly accelerating the accumulation of mental power.

[Extract!]

Yin Ming extracted everything of value from the black crystal.

The crystal sphere serving as the vessel split into four.

A fingertip-sized gray Inheritance Memory Crystal!

A pea-sized colorless Mental Essence Crystal!

A grain-of-rice-sized black Unknown Energy Crystal.

A marble-sized Bloodline Crystal with a pinpoint of crimson at its center.

Yin Ming decided to view the inherited memories first. Perhaps they contained knowledge he needed.

With a crisp "crack,"

the gray Inheritance Memory Crystal shattered.

Yin Ming felt as though he had been placed in a dark, damp basement. Before him stood a Gray-Skinned Giant hidden in the darkness!

Large ears, enormous eyes, long thin limbs, and not a hair on its entire body except for a tuft at the tips of its ears. Its mouth was filled with sharp fangs, and an unknown beast hide was wrapped around its body.

Within Little Black Fur Ball's bloodline was an absolute belief in submission to the Gray-Skinned Giant.

"My consciousness was placed into Little Black Fur Ball. Scaled to a human perspective, that Gray-Skinned Giant would only be a little runt around one point four or one point five meters tall."

Yin Ming awoke from the scenes of inherited memory.

He learned that the Gray-Skinned Giant was not a native creature of this world.

It came from the Abyss: a First-Ring dark creature, a Quasit.

It was a low-level Demon that lived in the Abyss!

Low-level carried no derogatory meaning, just as human wizards below the Third Ring were called low-level wizards.

In the Abyss, any creature that could be called a "demon" was a powerful extraordinary lifeform.

Quasits were naturally vigilant and cowardly, accustomed to hiding in darkness and rarely revealing themselves.

Little Black Fur Ball possessed the Quasit Bloodline. Its task was to parasitize humans and collect chaotic souls that died by murder for the Quasit.

Within Little Black Fur Ball's inherited memories, Yin Ming also found the source material for Mental Essence.

[Ritual: Dretch Sacrifice!]

[Offer chaotic souls that died by murder to an Abyssal Quasit, and you will receive Soul Crystals that increase mental power in return.]

The core of the ritual required an item tainted with the aura of the Abyss.

The Quasit Blood extracted by the Scavenger Gourd fully met the requirements of the sacrificial ritual.

Yet Yin Ming had no intention of making an Abyssal Sacrifice. Jeroen Hoven's obsession with murder had mostly been influenced by the Quasit Bloodline. Quasit Bloodlines fed on Soul Crystals, and the parasitic methods of a First-Ring Demonic Beast might not be something a Junior Wizard Apprentice could guard against.

Soul Crystals were a specialty of the Abyss. To obtain them, one did not necessarily have to sacrifice to Demons; hunting Demons was also a path.

As for how Soul Crystals were formed in the Abyss,

probably not many Abyss Demons knew. At the very least, the First-Ring Quasit knew nothing.

"Since Jeroen Hoven is dead anyway, I might as well absorb the Mental Essence before going back."

With a crisp "crack,"

the colorless crystal shattered.

A stream of pure mental power spilled out.

Like a colorless, tasteless drop of water falling into a dark and profound pool of ink, it was swiftly stained, assimilated, and absorbed.

Yin Ming's mental power limit rose from 10.3 to 11.

He had completed ten percent of the mental power accumulation needed to permanently fix the second Mental Rune.

Moreover, because this was Mental Essence without impurities, the only side effect was needing a little time to deepen his own imprint upon his mental power.

"..."

The setting sun was blood-red!

The sky gradually darkened.

When he left the Magic Beast Forest, Tulip Manor was strangely deserted.

The stonemasons and gardeners who had been building flowerbeds were nowhere to be seen, and the serfs clearing broken stones had vanished as well. Tools lay scattered chaotically across the ground, along with a pungent stench of blood.

"Eno, you're still alive?"

The moment Yin Ming returned to Blackstone House, Randy circled him and inspected him from head to toe.

It was dark, mealtime had long passed, and any serfs who had yet to return were basically doomed.

The two of them had nearly begun mourning for Yin Ming. They had never expected him to return!

"I almost didn't make it back. When I was hauling stones, I saw a Magic Beast. I hid until now before daring to come back."

Yin Ming had prepared his excuse long ago. With Jeroen Hoven dead, no one would investigate further anyway.

"Was it a pitch-black panther, bigger than a tiger and unbelievably fast? Four serfs and one guard died at the manor, while more than a dozen others suffered light injuries." Randy said, still shaken.

"Luckily, Young Master Adams Arthur had just returned from the western battlefield. He shot the Magic Beast in the eye with one arrow and scared it away. He's organizing knights to hunt that panther Magic Beast right now." Jack spoke animatedly as he recounted the perilous scene.

A Shadow Leopard!

There really was a Magic Beast?

That added a few more layers of credibility to his story about seeing one.

Yin Ming had attended Adams Hank's lessons and knew the common Magic Beasts. After hearing Jack's description, he recognized it as an intermediate Magic Beast: a Shadow Leopard.