Xu Qingtong arrived in the rear courtyard, where a small two-story building stood before him. Its ground floor was a study piled with all kinds of books. Some concerned the history of the Demon Realm, some its local customs, and others its specialty products.
Upstairs was a room for resting, furnished with a bed, a desk, and a chair.
The surroundings were quiet, and it seemed few people came here. Xu Qingtong returned to the study downstairs and slowly examined the books inside.
Most were ordinary paper books used by mortals; only a very small number were recorded on jade slips.
Xu Qingtong skimmed those ordinary books, taking in ten lines at a glance. There were too many books, and unlike jade slips, he could not learn their general contents with a sweep of his divine sense.
Xu Qingtong spent the entire morning browsing those books. Two of them caught his interest.
One was written in human script and concerned the cultivation of demonized garden balsam. Xu Qingtong gave it a cursory look, then put it into the Seven-Star Bracelet.
The other was a book about the Spirit Controlling Clan.
According to the book, the Spirit Controlling Clan had only gradually risen to prominence after the war between humans and devils.
The Spirit Controlling Clan was best known for exercising its abilities through taming magic beasts. Once tamed, magic beasts of different attributes, such as fire, water, lightning, wind, and earth, would possess formidable power.
Xu Qingtong had already witnessed this. The Wind Attribute Shadow Wolves and Demonic Wind Leopards, for instance, as well as the Earth Attribute Giant-Horned Rhinoceroses, all had extremely powerful attacks.
That was not even the most frightening part. The Spirit Controlling Clan also possessed a secret technique that allowed them to fuse with spirit beasts,