The mystery of Tianhai

"Complete Record of Immortal Dao Scenery..."

He seemed to have glimpsed it while searching the gazetteer for information on Sword Cultivators.

It was a story that sounded rather fantastical.

Song Yan did not rush to take out the Jade Slip containing the Complete Record of Immortal Dao Scenery. Instead, he rummaged through Wan Songran's miscellaneous belongings, seemingly to verify something.

A black wooden token had a large "Wan" carved in its center, with two smaller characters beneath it: "Songran."

A book.

He finally found what he wanted: a booklet of rules and instructions for disciples of the Wan Lineage.

But it was very new. Wan Songran himself had probably never opened it; instead, it was Song Yan who picked it up and leafed through it.

"The Wan Lineage..."

"Their ancestor was a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator?"

"Wan Zhihong? Originally from the Central Region..."

They really did come from the Central Region...

The Central Region of this continent stretched boundlessly, yet it had only one immortal court: Great Tang.

For scattered odds and ends like the Chu Kingdom, struggling to survive in the cracks between the Central Region and the Southern Border, the Central Region was a prosperous, flourishing land everyone yearned for, whether in the mortal world or the cultivation world.

His gaze fell on the flute.

The flute was three feet and three inches long. Held in his hand, it was no different from a short sword.

It was black and red throughout, with a mass of black clouds carved at its tail. There seemed to have once been some ornament above them, but it had broken off at the black clouds, leaving only the flute's body.

Above the black clouds on the flute's body, two characters were carved vertically in an ancient script. Song Yan had previously studied this script to annotate some obscure passages in Five-Star Pulse Seizing.

"Glutton Tail."

For some reason, as he stared at those two characters, a vast, terrifying surge of Demon Qi seemed to rush straight at his face.

Song Yan shuddered in alarm, only to find nothing unusual around him. He saw only Snake Treasure Xiao He on the bed, wrapped in her little quilt, staring at him and the flute in his hand.

"What an uncanny treasure..."

"Yanyan, what are you doing?"

You haven't paid attention to me in so long.

"Oh, I'm reading an ancient legend..."

Only then did Song Yan open the Complete Record of Immortal Dao Scenery and carefully search its contents.

At last, in one account, he found the legend that had brought the Glutton Tail Flute to mind.

"Secrets of Tianhai City..."

At some point, Xiao He had turned into a little snake and climbed around Song Yan's neck. Her tiny forked tongue lightly touched the Jade Slip.

"I want to read it too! Me too!"

An ancient secret slowly unfolded before the man and snake like a series of painted scrolls.

Legend had it that in the Central Region during High Antiquity, there was an ancient city renowned throughout the world: Tianhai.

In Tianhai City, cultivators and mortals lived together in harmony.

Here, being a cultivator was more like an occupation, a pursuit, rather than being an "immortal" exalted above everyone else.

One year, a frenzy of Demon Beasts erupted in Tianhai City without any warning.

The cultivators worked together as one, yet they could only keep clearing out the Demon Beasts. They could never discover where these creatures came from; seemingly endless, they emerged from the city's shadows.

The mortals simply could not withstand such a disaster, and many cultivators were killed or wounded as well.

Just when everyone was at their wits' end, a cultivator in a spotted Daoist robe arrived from the south. A black-and-red flute was tucked at his waist, and he called himself the Demon-Summoning Daoist.

Seeing the situation in the city, he told its people, "I have a method that may resolve this strange phenomenon."

"But it will cost me a great deal, so I will need payment from you."

The people of Tianhai City were overjoyed. They agreed repeatedly, begging the Flower-Robed Daoist to lend his aid at once.

The Flower-Robed Man played the Ancient Flute in his hands, and its lilting notes rang out.

The Demon Beasts continually emerging like a tide throughout Tianhai City surged toward the Flower-Robed Man in great swathes, stopping before him to watch, seemingly listening to the flute.

Playing his flute, the Flower-Robed Man left the city, accompanied by the beast tide that had filled its streets.

The matter seemed to have reached a perfect resolution.

But the story was far from over.

The cultivation world had many conflicting accounts of what followed, broadly divided into two versions.

One was widely circulated:

The beast tide crisis was resolved, and the Flower-Robed Daoist received the payment he wanted.

The Daoist lingered in Tianhai City for several days. When he was about to leave, one observant cultivator followed him the whole way.

He discovered that the beast tide in the city had been orchestrated entirely by the Daoist, solely to obtain the city's Cultivation Resources.

He returned to the city and told the cultivators. The people were furious, and Tianhai City's cultivators pursued the Daoist, intent on killing him.

In the end, the Flower-Robed Daoist suffered grievous wounds and perished.

The other version was less widely circulated, yet its account was completely different from the first:

The beast tide crisis was resolved, but when the Flower-Robed Daoist sought his rightful payment, the city's cultivators went back on their word and refused to pay him.

In his fury, the Flower-Robed Daoist played his transverse flute. The city's Spirit Beasts, Spirit Demons, and even mortals suddenly went mad, slaughtering one another.

But Tianhai City's cultivators had strength in numbers, after all. They attacked him en masse, and the Flower-Robed Daoist fled, ultimately suffering grievous wounds and perishing.

"..."

Song Yan pondered.

Two stories, two entirely different versions.

"Yanyan..."

"Hmm?"

"Which one do you think is true?"

"..."

Song Yan shook his head, indicating that he did not know either.

But he did not dwell on which version of the two stories was true.

Instead, he began reassessing the value of this Glutton Tail Flute.

"If this Ancient Flute really is the one from that ancient legend, then the Flower-Robed Daoist in the Secrets of Tianhai City was very likely the Wan family's ancestor, Wan Zhihong."

Could this flute be... an authentic item once held by a Great Power?

In the cultivation world, Law Artifacts and Talismans were all distinguished as authentic items, imitations, or counterfeits.

Taking Law Artifacts as an example, authentic items were naturally spiritual treasures and objects born of heaven and earth, or original treasures crafted by an Artifact Refining Master.

Their might as Law Artifacts or Law Treasures, their ease of control, and so forth were all the greatest.

Imitations, as the name suggested, were copies of authentic items made by somewhat less skilled Artifact Refiners, or by disciples of the Artifact Refiners who had made the originals.

They were somewhat inferior in every respect, but good overall and offered relatively high value for their price.

Counterfeits, meanwhile, were things cobbled together and forged by Artifact-Refining Hacks. Generally useless, they served only to deceive cultivators who knew no better and swindle them out of Spirit Stones.

From beginning to end, Song Yan had believed that any so-called "treasure" in the hands of a Qi Refining Stage disciple, however heaven-defying its effects, could at most be an imitation.

But if this was real...

A Law Treasure used by a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator!!!

In Song Yan's eyes now, this flute was no longer a flute at all.

It was an inexhaustible, never-ending supply of Spirit Stones!

Sell it at the Lingyuan Marsh Market auction, handing it to a bunch of ignorant fools for three to five hundred Spirit Stones?

Absolutely not!

He had to find a major buyer!

Having made his decision, he put the precious flute aside.

Song Yan sorted the remaining pills and Talismans into categories, keeping anything useful for his own cultivation.

Whatever he could not use went into a pile with the Law Artifacts he had just decided to sell. Anything that could bear the light of day could be sold together through Granny Qin when the time came.

As for anything that could not bear the light of day... that would have to wait for the Night Market.

Worth mentioning was a bottle of Qi-Congealing Pills among Wang Xi's belongings.

The Spiritual Qi and medicinal effects of Qi-Congealing Pills far surpassed those of Yellow Sprout Pills. These were pills only late Qi Refining Stage cultivators would take.

After methodically finishing everything, Song Yan began making plans.

"Right now, Supreme Spiritual Objects and a Life-Bound Flying Sword are what I most lack for cultivation."

One could strengthen the Dao Seed beneath the Sword Mansion of the Dao-Subduing; the other could not only strengthen it, but was also a Sword Cultivator's most important means of attack and slaughter.

It could be said that a Life-Bound Flying Sword determined whether a Sword Cultivator was powerful.

"I should restore my spiritual power cultivation to Qi Refining, fourth layer first."

Whether it was a Life-Bound Flying Sword or the refinement and fusion of Supreme Spiritual Objects, both required at least the middle Qi Refining Stage.

Only by returning to the middle Qi Refining Stage would he regain the ability to protect himself.

Song Yan sat cross-legged on the stone bed. The tangled thoughts in his mind gradually cleared, and he slowly began cultivating.

Only Xiao He remained at the table, still holding the Jade Slip and racking her brains.

"Which one is true?"

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