Innate Primordial Spirit

"Pup!?"

On another battlefield, Xiluo growled as she witnessed Panhu pass out.

Unfortunately, locked in combat with the Ghost King, Xiluo could only watch helplessly.

Although Xiluo was the mountain god of Flying Peak,

when it came to her actual combat strength at present, she was only a shade stronger than the extraordinarily gifted Panhu.

After all, her combat strength had already fallen sharply following her battle with Ruifu some time ago.

Afterward, she had used an explosive skill that could boost her strength for a short time.

Thus, as long as the Ghost King endured her initial burst of strength, the danger Xiluo posed would plummet.

In fact, this presented no difficulty whatsoever to the Ghost King, an incarnation of You Xiao.

As the strongest malign baleful intent, the Ghost King possessed the "undying body" common to all malign baleful intents. Simply scattering its form was utterly meaningless.

Only by destroying every last beast soul within the Ghost King could it possibly be killed for good.

Unsurprisingly, Xiluo's subsequent battle with the Ghost King entered a prolonged phase of attrition.

Neither combatant thought of breaking away anymore. Instead, both focused entirely on ending the battle quickly.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Having transformed into a crimson leopard, Xiluo trod on clouds of fire and breathed flames.

Every charge successfully blasted the Ghost King apart, destroying large numbers of the roaring beast souls within it.

By contrast, though the Ghost King's counterattacks lacked Xiluo's tremendous momentum, they brought eeriness, anguish, and sinister menace to their utmost extremes.

Every attack carried a terrifying curse, weakening its opponent in every respect, from physical stamina to the mind.

Now and then, the Ghost King's piercing howls could also be heard-mental pollution of the most nauseating kind.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The piercing clash of metal rang throughout Black Cloud Marsh.

If Xiluo's battle with the Ghost King was a clash of Divine Abilities and spells, then Li Boyang's battle with the four-armed ghost god was purely an exchange of physical attacks.

Relying on his adamantine, indestructible body,

the four-armed ghost god swung his arms, colliding with the Sword Pill again and again.

Even when the spinning flying sword occasionally pierced his body, the four-armed ghost god could recover from his wounds in an instant.

Just as You Xiao had said, having transformed into a ghost god, he was invincible in the night.

This was a ghost's characteristic, and a god's privilege.

"I am a god now!"

"And gods cannot be defeated!"

Shouting with wild arrogance written across his face, You Xiao had clearly been influenced by his own obsessions and resentment, becoming utterly deranged and conceited.

After all, if "gods" truly could not be defeated, he would never have set his sights on Li Boyang's fleshly body in the first place.

[Brainless fool. You actually abandoned wisdom for power.]

The cold voice reached You Xiao's mind, and the golden Sword Pill stopped in midair.

The next second, Sha Qi rose from beneath the earth, gathering around the Sword Pill in an unending stream.

This sudden sight left You Xiao, who had been preparing to continue his attack, utterly stunned.

Whoosh!

As the Sha Qi gathered, the earth began to tremble, and the crust began to collapse.

In the blink of an eye, a small earthquake struck Black Cloud Marsh and rapidly spread throughout the Hundred Lands Mountain Range.

"Gathering Sha to refine a form? The Guifang Secret Method?"

His pupils trembling violently as he stared at the still-gathering Sha Qi, You Xiao exposed the essence of the phenomenon in a single utterance.

"How do you know my Guifang Secret Method!?"

The "Guifang Secret Method" was You Xiao's means of refining baleful ghosts, as well as a closely guarded secret of the Guifang Kingdom's high priest.

Had You Xiao not accidentally become a vengeful ghost, then used the Pill Furnace's power to capture the yin deity Ox-Head, he could never have attained his current ghost-god body.

Precisely because he understood how difficult it was to achieve mastery of the "Guifang Secret Method," You Xiao wore such an incredulous expression.

"You refined me into a sword soul, and now you ask how I know the Guifang Secret Method?"

The cold voice rang out again, but this time, it had a definite source.

Endless Sha Qi gathered into a human form.

It was a man whose clothing and appearance were utterly out of place in this era.

Short sleeves, long trousers, a close-cropped buzz cut, and a youthfulness that could not be concealed no matter what...

This was none other than Li Boyang's appearance in his previous life.

Clang!

From afar, he could be seen standing in midair with a golden longsword in hand, without the slightest sense of ominous ferocity about him.

Had he not seen it with his own eyes, You Xiao could never even have imagined that the other party was an incarnation of Sha Qi.

"Besides, this isn't the Guifang Secret Method you speak of..."

Li Boyang was speaking the truth. The form he had manifested through Sha Qi was no baleful ghost.

Ghosts were powerful beings born when souls attached themselves to some kind of substance.

The stronger their resentment and the deeper their obsessions, the stronger the ghosts became.

When these powerful ghosts met certain established conditions and underwent a further transformation, so-called "baleful ghosts" were born.

From this perspective, Li Boyang, whose soul had attached itself to the Divine Firmament Sword, could actually be considered a special kind of baleful ghost.

An undying soul, the Divine Firmament Treasured Sword...

Had Li Boyang not ultimately turned the tables and killed You Xiao, then reincarnated as a human once more, he would have been the strongest baleful ghost under You Xiao's command.

"Impossible! You're clearly..."

You Xiao was just about to retort when his eyes suddenly widened in disbelief.

For You Xiao discovered that Li Boyang had actually spoken the truth. His current state was far more complicated than that of a baleful ghost.

Following the human body's nine palaces and eight trigrams, its full circuit of acupoints...

Li Boyang had actually reconstructed a body independent of his flesh-a spiritual body poised between existence and nonexistence.

Whoosh!

An endless stream of Sha Qi circulated within him before finally flowing into the Divine Firmament Sword in his hand.

Most crucially, compared with those baleful ghosts born from gathered resentment,

Li Boyang in this form was not only lucid and rational, but had also nurtured a transcendent spirituality.

It was the most fundamental, purest part of a living being's mind and consciousness.

It was an innate spiritual essence that existed independently of acquired experience and learning.

It was precisely the existence of this trace of spirituality that kept Li Boyang from being a baleful ghost now.

"What exactly are you now?"

Perhaps out of fear of the unknown, even You Xiao's voice began to tremble.

"I'm curious too... just what state am I in now?"

Sensing his resonance with the Sha Qi of the earth veins, Li Boyang murmured with equal curiosity.

"I've clearly lost my fleshly body, yet I still retain my complete sense of self and my emotions..."

"I seem to have become a god like Ruifu, a god formed from the gathered primordial Qi of the earth veins."

"Whether ominous baleful intent or auspicious omens, they're merely choices a god can make."

As though confirming Li Boyang's words,

the Divine Firmament Sword in his hand actually began to give off a presence as warm and gentle as jade.

"If I had to give this state of mine a suitable name..."

"I think Primordial Spirit would be a pretty good term."