Formation Banner

The first thing Ji Yuan saw inside the Storage Bag was row upon row of Jade Boxes.

They looked exactly like the Jade Boxes Wei Caishan had used to hold the Rotbone Flowers.

Ji Yuan hurriedly took out two and opened them. Sure enough, each held a Rotbone Flower!

And these Jade Boxes... including the ones he had gotten from Wei Caishan, there were eighteen in all.

Eighteen Rotbone Flowers. The Pigsty could finally be upgraded, and he could spend his days picking up Spirit Stones and taking it easy.

The tension in Ji Yuan's heart eased considerably in an instant.

After inspecting the Rotbone Flowers, he turned to another lidless Jade Box nearby. Inside, neatly arranged, were... Spirit Stones!

Ji Yuan swept his gaze over them. A hundred Spirit Stones sat in tidy rows, with another twenty or thirty scattered beside them...

The cost of buying those High-Grade Talismans had all come back at once!

Sure enough, if you wanted to get rich, you had to kill someone first!

As for Cultivation Pills, besides the common Spirit-Restoring Pills and Hundred-Herb Pills, there was a bottle of pitch-black pills. Even the bottle was black, and Ji Yuan had no idea what they were for.

The High-Grade Talismans were gone, but six Middle-Grade Talismans remained, along with a number of low-grade ones.

None of these was especially useful to Ji Yuan. By his rough estimate, selling the talismans and pills could bring in another seventy or eighty Spirit Stones.

Once he had looked through those, another Jade Box in the corner caught his eye.

Compared with the box that had held the Spirit Stones, this one was clearly more exquisite. It had a hollow-carved double layer, finely engraved flowers and grasses, and even a dainty little gold lock.

With a thought, Ji Yuan drew it out.

The gold lock was only decoration. He flicked it aside and opened the Jade Box.

There was no danger. A Jade Slip lay quietly inside, and Ji Yuan was already familiar with those.

He had used inheritance Jade Slips to learn techniques several times before.

What technique could it be...? Ji Yuan wondered. For the Ghost Island Master to have treated it with such care, it had to be powerful.

Ji Yuan pressed a hand against the Jade Slip and fed a trace of spiritual energy into it. In an instant, a great flood of unfamiliar memories poured into his mind.

He felt a stab of pain despite himself.

What the hell is this? It's just a technique—how can there be so much...? Ji Yuan froze. After looking through it briefly, he finally understood.

"Holy shit, I really found a treasure!"

Ji Yuan was overjoyed.

The Jade Slip did not contain a single technique. What it recorded was the sect the Ghost Island Master had spoken of...

The sect was called the Yin Ghost Sect, and its greatest expertise was refining Yin Ghosts.

For instance, the Ghost Island Master's Formation Banner, comparable to a Mid-Grade Magical Artifact, was called the Yin Ghost Banner. The Formation was called the Yin Ghost Formation.

And the two Black-Mist Ghost Heads he had first unleashed, which could entangle flying swords, were Yin Ghosts he had refined.

According to the information in the inheritance Jade Slip, the methods for refining Yin Ghosts were... filthy and exacting.

First, one had to choose a cultivator born at a yin hour, then brutally torture them to death. Only then would the resulting ghost be vicious enough.

The slip also contained instructions for cultivating Rotbone Flowers.

One had to take the shinbone of someone who had died a violent death, place three Bone-Rot Flower Seeds inside it, bury it where yin energy gathered, and lay a layer of Spirit Stones beneath it, among other things.

As for their effect... Ji Yuan searched through the memories in his mind, and his eyes suddenly lit up.

"Crush Rotbone Flowers for their juice and apply it to the Bubbling Spring and Life Gate acupoints to briefly increase the rate of spiritual energy absorption?"

Ji Yuan was delighted at first, but then doubt crept in... The Rotbone Flower was foul and unclean by nature. He did not dare try smearing it on the Life Gate and Bubbling Spring acupoints.

But on second thought, if there were no basis for it, why would the Jade Slip record it?

After going through the Jade Slip's contents and thinking them over, Ji Yuan guessed at a possibility.

The Jade Slip was incomplete, and so was the information it contained.

Apart from the method for constructing the Yin Ghost Formation and the method for cultivating Rotbone Flowers, it held only assorted scraps of information. One said the Yin Ghost Sect was a subordinate sect of a great sect.

Disciples of the Yin Ghost Sect must never admit their affiliation when away from the sect.

A person could possess no more than five Yin Ghosts at once, or they would turn on their master, and so on.

It did not even record a proper technique.

Having read it, Ji Yuan understood why the Ghost Island Master had been so excited earlier when Ji Yuan claimed to possess a secret manual left by his sect.

Presumably, he too knew the Jade Slip was incomplete.

In that case, Ji Yuan had even less reason to try using Rotbone Flowers to improve his cultivation efficiency.

After finishing the Jade Slip, Ji Yuan did not rush to refine the Formation Banner. Instead, he took something else from the Storage Bag... a ring.

It was pitch-black throughout. He could not tell what material it was made of, but it resembled a bone band with a skull carved into it.

After some hesitation, Ji Yuan levitated it before him and fed a trace of spiritual energy into it.

The moment the energy entered, a wisp of black mist rose from the ring. The mist shifted and finally formed the character for "yin." It lingered for two breaths before dispersing.

The ring returned to its unremarkable appearance.

"This looks like some kind of token."

That was Ji Yuan's best guess.

Not knowing what it was for, he put it away. Only then did he turn to the Magical Artifacts he had gained... especially the black Yin Ghost Banner and the Mid-Grade Spirit Vessel.

The best things were for last. Ji Yuan first picked up the protective Skeleton Token.

It was a Low-Grade Magical Artifact. It had taken several hits from the Whitewater Flying Sword and showed some wear, but it was still in decent shape. Its quality had been somewhat better than Ji Yuan's old Dragon Armor Shield, though after the damage, they were about equal.

Ji Yuan planned to sell it when he returned to Zengtou City.

Next was the black ritual robe. It too was low-grade, but it had suffered far more damage: it had taken a hit from a High-Grade Demon-Subduing Talisman and several thrusts from Ji Yuan's mid-grade flying sword.

The fact that it had not shattered on the spot was already a testament to its quality.

Wei Caishan's Spirit Vessel was only an ordinary low-grade vessel, worse even than Ji Yuan's White Boat. He could only sell it for Spirit Stones.

Once he had inspected those, Ji Yuan picked up the palm-sized black Spirit Vessel.

He infused it with spiritual energy and refined it a little.

Unlike a Low-Grade Magical Artifact, this Mid-Grade Magical Artifact transmitted a piece of information as soon as he refined it.

The Spirit Vessel was called the Black Wind Boat. It raced across the water like a gust of black wind. Driven at full power, it could even ride the wind for a short time, moving with astonishing speed.

Even underwater, it was faster than an ordinary Mid-Grade Spirit Vessel.

It really was a fine Magical Artifact.

Ji Yuan glanced at the White Boat in his Storage Bag. Wu Laochuan had "lent" it to him back then. It was time to trade his old peashooter for a cannon.

Only after finishing the refinement did Ji Yuan take out the Formation Banner trailing wisps of black smoke... the Yin Ghost Banner.

For all Ji Yuan had gained today, the most useful and valuable prize was still this Formation Banner.