Extraterrestrial Otherworldly Spirit

Li Yiyuan lived in the main building of the rear courtyard, which had three rooms: a bedroom, a study, and a meditation room.

Zhou Wuji knew the place very well. He went straight into the bedroom, deftly turned the mechanism's handle on a wooden cabinet to release the hidden lock, and pushed the heavy cabinet aside, revealing a passage leading down.

After moving the cabinet back into place, Zhou Wuji locked the mechanism from below.

Anyone outside who wanted to get in would have to force their way through the heavy iron plate covering the tunnel.

Without suitable tools, they would not get in anytime soon.

About ten feet down the bluestone steps lay an underground chamber built of blue bricks.

The chamber had a heavy iron door. Beyond it was a natural cave. Farther down the cave, an underground river flowed through the mountain and straight into the Nine Sources River outside.

Li Yiyuan had prepared a small boat here. Following the Nine Sources River downstream, he could travel several hundred li a day.

As Li Yiyuan's closest disciple, Zhou Wuji knew this secret escape route very well.

With this way out available, Zhou Wuji was in no hurry to flee.

He lit an oil lamp with a fire striker, and dim yellow lamplight immediately filled the chamber.

The chamber was tiny, containing only a crude wooden table, two wooden chests against the wall, and a gourd a little over a foot tall. There was nothing else.

Zhou Wuji casually opened one chest. Inside were layers of gold.

There were twenty gold ingots weighing ten taels each, two hundred taels in total.

Converted into the currency of his previous life, their purchasing power was roughly two million-a sizable sum.

Still, for a dignified seventh-rank Daoist to have saved so little over his entire life, Zhou Wuji felt his master had been far too concerned with keeping up appearances...

Zhou Wuji merely glanced at the gold, confirmed that nothing was wrong, and closed the chest.

His gaze turned to the gourd plastered with numerous talismans. A Sha Ghost was sealed inside.

Spiritual Qi flourished in this world, and people's spirits did not immediately dissipate after death.

If the resentment of those who died violent deaths lingered, they had a chance of becoming ninth-rank Vengeful Ghosts.

Nourished by earth Qi, a Vengeful Ghost could become an eighth-rank Fierce Ghost whose spirit refused to disperse.

By consuming blood-sha essence Qi, a Fierce Ghost became a seventh-rank Sha Ghost.

Once it became a Sha Ghost, it could affect the physical world and absorb the souls and spiritual essence of living beings.

The Sha Ghost inside the gourd had killed dozens of people. It could even assume physical form in the darkness and was quite formidable.

Such Sha Ghosts posed little threat to martial artists with powerful Qi and Blood. Conversely, ordinary martial artists had few ways to deal with Sha Ghosts.

Precisely because demons, devils, ghosts, and monsters ran rampant, the Daoist and Buddhist orders, which specialized in subduing them, enjoyed extremely high standing and were heavily relied upon by the imperial court and local authorities.

After capturing this Sha Ghost, Li Yiyuan had never destroyed it. Instead, he had sealed it inside the gourd with talismans and hidden it in the chamber.

Zhou Wuji had never understood what use his master had for keeping a Sha Ghost hidden away.

Now he understood. The Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment needed Sha Ghosts.

The intricate vermilion inscriptions on the talismans gleamed silently in the dim lamplight, their red somewhat harsh on the eyes.

Zhou Wuji took a deep breath and summoned the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment again.

The ancient black book slowly opened before his eyes. Sixteen ancient characters were written on its first page: command ghosts and gods, slay demons and destroy devils, execute the wicked and eradicate evil, enforce the law on Heaven's behalf.

The following pages listed thirty-six major precepts and one hundred and eight minor precepts.

The ancient script made Zhou Wuji a little dizzy. As his thoughts shifted, the precepts changed into simplified characters one by one.

Through his master's transmission, the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment had already bound itself to his soul, allowing it to change according to his wishes.

Li Yiyuan had explained it very clearly: the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment was the Daoist order's foremost divine artifact of slaughter, with boundless power.

However, its precepts were also the strictest and absolutely could not be violated.

"The first precept: the officer of punishment must administer punishment according to the law, without transgression. Those who administer punishment in secret shall have their lives severed and their spirits destroyed, their souls cast into the fiery hell, and their blood relatives across five generations put to death."

Merely reading the first major precept made Zhou Wuji's scalp prickle. This thing was truly sinister.

Administering punishment according to the law meant strictly observing the one hundred and eight precepts.

His teacher, who had failed to observe them, was a cautionary tale.

After reading through the precepts, Zhou Wuji felt they were truly outrageous.

One minor precept, for example, prohibited relieving oneself while facing north. Violators would lose ten years of life.

There were also prohibitions against drinking alcohol, visiting prostitutes, kneeling or praying to other deities, reciting Buddhist scriptures, associating with Buddhist believers, and so on...

Such stringent precepts bound the practitioner hand and foot. No wonder his master had achieved little even after obtaining the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment.

Zhou Wuji turned to the next page of the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment. His name appeared on it, along with his lifespan: fifty-nine years remaining.

After his name was a special annotation: (Extraterrestrial Otherworldly Spirit).

"What's this?"

At a thought from Zhou Wuji, an explanation appeared after Extraterrestrial Otherworldly Spirit: outside Heaven's ordained fate, unbound by karma.

"Does this mean I don't have to follow the precepts?"

Zhou Wuji's eyes immediately lit up. He felt he had discovered a loophole in the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment.

Still, he would have to test it first.

With that thought, he converted his lifespan into seconds. The fifty-nine years became a long string of digits beginning with 1, which kept ticking downward.

Leaving through the chamber's iron door, Zhou Wuji faced north and took a piss. This was also one of the precepts with the lightest penalties.

When he checked his lifespan again, it was still slowly decreasing one second at a time. Clearly, he had not suffered the prescribed punishment.

A line of writing also appeared at the bottom of the page bearing his name: relieving oneself facing north constitutes grave disrespect. Lifespan reduced by ten years.

At the end of the text was another special annotation: (blanket exemption).

As Zhou Wuji's gaze settled on "blanket exemption," he immediately understood what it meant.

Complete, total exemption from every punishment imposed by the precepts, without exception!

He could not help rejoicing. This really worked...

Zhou Wuji then tried pressing his palms together and reciting a few lines from the Diamond Sutra. It was a Buddhist scripture of this world that he happened to have read and remembered a few lines from.

He also loudly recited the Buddha's name and prayed for his protection.

He violated several precepts in succession. The Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment marked every violation, yet each ended with (blanket exemption).

Zhou Wuji paced around the chamber in delight, unable to resist praising himself: Awakening the wisdom of my past life is fucking awesome! I'm so fucking awesome!

After all that experimentation, he also understood how to operate the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment.

Bound to his soul, the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment was like a bright mirror that could reflect every aspect of his body and spirit, inside and out.

At his wish, his true condition appeared on the page.

Zhou Wuji: ninth rank (Extraterrestrial Otherworldly Spirit)

Lifespan: eighty (fifty-nine years remaining)

Northern Dipper Tianshu Scripture: foundational Qi-refining method. (Beginner)

Golden Light Incantation: spell (Beginner)

Rejuvenation Incantation: spell. (Beginner)

Xiaoxiang Swordsmanship: martial art. (Proficient)

Zhou Wuji understood, but seeing those several Daoist arts marked (Beginner) still left him feeling helpless. He had never managed to sense Qi and could not practice Qi ingestion, so his spells were mere empty forms, unable to unleash their true power.

His swordsmanship was different. After more than ten years of practice, he could at least call it well-honed, no worse than that of martial artists at his level.

The facts proved that his talent for Daoist cultivation was mediocre.

Fortunately, with the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment, mediocre talent was no longer a problem.

Zhou Wuji hesitated no longer. He immediately tore away the talisman seals on the gourd and pulled out its stopper.

A gust of cold wind surged from the gourd, condensing in the blink of an eye into a crimson phantom over ten feet tall.

The phantom had a hideous face. Its body, like air and mist, radiated dense Sha Qi and gave off a rank stench. This was the Sha Ghost's true appearance.

Smelling a living person, the Sha Ghost opened its mouth and was about to pounce to suck out his essence Qi.

Zhou Wuji formed a sword seal with his left hand while drawing the Seven Star Sword with his right and sweeping it across.

He could not control True Qi and was unable to activate the Northern Dipper's seven stars on the hilt.

However, the Northern Dipper Seven Stars Demon-Slaying Sword engraved deep within the blade was an extremely powerful demon-subduing secret method of the Northern Pole Sect.

After Li Yiyuan's many years of ritual refinement, this ritual sword had also reached an extremely high level.

Through the sword's own power alone, the Sha Ghost split apart beneath the snow-bright blade, disintegrated, and vanished in an instant.

The paltry Sha Ghost had already lost most of its Sha Qi while sealed in the gourd. Before the Seven Star Sword, it could not withstand a single blow.

As the Sha Ghost perished, light shone from the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment, and a line of writing appeared on a blank page: Sha Ghost (seventh rank) executed. Can be refined into three taels and one mace of Origin Spiritual Qi.

Without hesitation, Zhou Wuji immediately activated the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment to convert it into Origin Spiritual Qi.

The Sha Ghost dissipated, and a perfectly rounded golden light like a dewdrop emerged.

Joy stirred in Zhou Wuji's heart. Although this bit of Origin Spiritual Qi before him was tiny, it should still be enough for him to sense primordial Qi and open his spiritual aperture...