Chapter 204: The Two-Part Harmony of the Ghost God’s Advent

Advanced chapter join my patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/caleredhair you will get free 3 chapter to read daily and 10 chapter daily for pledged member

How could Qin Haoxuan not see through Su Wu’s little thoughts? He was only helping him to have a place to hide and not be found by Master Chi Lian. As for slaughtering his way through the country like Su Wu wanted, that was something he was unwilling to see. In his eyes, the soldiers of the rebel army were also born of a mother and father, living beings. To take their lives for the so-called greater good of the world, was that not also a great slaughter?

More importantly, after defeating one army with his help, Su Wu would surely continue to seek out the next. From the two rebel armies he had encountered so far, each one had at least one cultivator in its camp, and their strength was in the ten-plus-leaf range, and they had many strange and wonderful treasures on them, making them difficult to deal with.

Qin Haoxuan did not want to encounter any more cultivators. If he ran into one he couldn’t defeat, it would be troublesome. And if he continued to fight like this endlessly, he would sooner or later encounter an even more powerful one.

Thinking of Hao Xiu’s Feilian Talisman Beast from today, Qin Haoxuan secretly considered himself lucky. He had the Advent of the Ghost God as his trump card, but who could guarantee that other cultivators didn’t have even more powerful ones?

After some consideration, Qin Haoxuan said, “I can help you kill the enemy’s immortal, but you must agree to one condition.”

“Please give your command, High Immortal,” Su Wu said, overjoyed to see he had a chance, and he prostrated himself on the ground.

“After I have killed their cultivator, you will lead your army to surround the enemy, but do not attack,” Qin Haoxuan said. “We will surround them for a period of time, which will also give your soldiers a chance to rest. Do not let the enemy escape, but do not launch a full-scale assault, and you must prevent them from calling for reinforcements. This seat deeply feels that the slaughter in this period has been too great. To continue killing would be to go against the will of heaven. We cannot advance any further.”

After speaking, Qin Haoxuan slowly closed his eyes and began to regulate the spiritual energy in his body, no longer paying any attention to Su Wu.

Su Wu never thought that Qin Haoxuan would be unwilling to continue advancing, but he was helpless. After all, he could not command a High Immortal. Although he was very unwilling in his heart, he had to respectfully kowtow three times and say, “I will obey the High Immortal’s decree.”

After Su Wu had left, Qin Haoxuan began to think about how to deal with the enemy cultivator. Xing, at his side, tilted his head and offered a plan. “Sooner or later, you’ll have to fight. I think it’s better to strike first. Why don’t we launch a sneak attack tonight and kill him?”

“But how can we sneak into their camp without being discovered?” Qin Haoxuan asked.

Xing took out two earth-yellow jade talismans. “These are two Earth Evasion Talismans I found on Hao Xiu’s body today. Although they’re low-grade, they can let you travel a hundred li and go ten meters underground. Their speed is as fast as a horse’s, and if you’re careful, it’s not easy to be discovered.”

Qin Haoxuan nodded. “Then it’s settled. We’ll use these to go over.”

He took one of the talismans and, after estimating the enemy cultivator’s position, crushed it. A soft primordial energy enveloped his body. He felt the earth beneath his feet instantly become as soft as water. He sank ten meters down and then began to move towards the estimated location, the feeling just like swimming in water.

When they arrived, Qin Haoxuan was the first to emerge. He was right inside the tent of the enemy cultivator, Perfected Man Hulu.

Since returning from the battlefield, Perfected Man Hulu had been refining his Talisman Beast. His was also modeled after an ancient exotic beast, the Bifang. The power of Qin Haoxuan’s ghost soldier had made him feel a sense of danger, and he was seizing the time to complete his half-finished beast as quickly as possible. That way, he would have more confidence when dealing with him. Although Qin Haoxuan made him feel danger, his Fourth-Leaf strength made it impossible for him to take him too seriously. After setting up a simple barrier around his tent, he began the refining process.

The barrier shattered. The engrossed Perfected Man Hulu cursed inwardly. To break my barrier in an instant, could it be a more powerful cultivator? He snapped his eyes open and pushed the half-finished Talisman Beast behind him. When he saw Qin Haoxuan, he sneered, “Good, kid! You actually dared to come here! Since you’ve delivered yourself to death, you can’t blame me for it!” A greedy look was plain to see on his face.

While he spoke, he was already forming a hand seal, rapidly gathering spiritual energy in his hand for the fastest possible spell: the Heaven-Cleaving Slash. He was a Fifteenth-Leaf cultivator, after all. Even if Qin Haoxuan was being reckless, he couldn’t just stand there and let himself be hit. He condensed his spiritual sense into a rod and slammed it into Perfected Man Hulu’s fragile consciousness. Although the attack couldn’t shatter his soul, it made him cry out in pain, and his incoming slash faltered for a moment.

Just then, Xing also shot up from the ground. He grabbed Perfected Man Hulu’s neck and, with a vicious twist, snap. The man who had been planning to kill him and take his treasures just a moment ago gurgled and died. His eyes, wide with disbelief, stared blankly. To his dying breath, he could not believe that he had fallen at the hands of a Fourth-Leaf youth.

Because Qin Haoxuan had broken through the barrier so quickly and had followed up with a spiritual sense attack that left him powerless to resist, the assassination had gone incredibly smoothly.

After killing him, Qin Haoxuan grabbed the corpse with one hand and the half-finished Talisman Beast with the other and returned to his own tent. His gaze fell on the man-high beast. It was a bird, its body snow-white, with a ring of pale-yellow feathers on the edges of its wings and its short, upturned tail. Its beak was long and pointed, and unlike an ordinary bird, it only had one leg.

Xing also circled the large bird, and after a moment of thought, he clicked his tongue in admiration. “A good thing, a good thing! This is a Talisman Beast modeled after the ancient exotic beast, the Bifang. But it’s still a half-finished product! And it’s lucky it’s not finished. The power of a Bifang is on par with a Feilian, or even stronger.”

Qin Haoxuan felt a wave of relief. If he had managed to complete it, and he had rashly gone to ambush him, he would have suffered a great loss. At the same time, he gave Xing a deep look. This fellow, who was usually a slacker, really knew a lot of things. He could recognize such an ancient beast with a single glance.

“That’s not right, that’s not right,” Xing said, still studying the beast. “A Talisman Beast needs the soul of a beast to be completed. How could a mere Fifteenth-Leaf cultivator possibly kill a Bifang? Without a Bifang’s soul, this Talisman Beast is just an empty shell; it can never be truly completed.”

“That Feilian from today was also an ancient beast. Where did a Fourteenth-Leaf Hao Xiu get a Feilian’s soul?” Xing frowned and muttered to himself. After a moment, he had a realization. “I know! The Feilian from today wasn’t that strong; it definitely wasn’t refined with a true Feilian’s soul! I bet this Perfected Man Hulu also had a similar method of substituting another beast’s soul for a Bifang’s. Quick, search him!”

Hearing this, Qin Haoxuan immediately began to search the body. This Perfected Man Hulu was, after all, a leaf stronger than Hao Xiu and much richer. He found a considerable number of low-grade spirit stones and even two second-grade stones. At the same time, he also found a tattered book in his robes, wrapped in three layers of animal hide. He opened it and flipped through it. “This is a fragmented manual on refining Talisman Beasts. It’s clearly not a complete system from a major sect. There are many things that were clearly just added in based on his own assumptions, and it’s full of flaws.”

Qin Haoxuan, having come from the Taichu Sect and having been exposed to a great deal of basic cultivation knowledge, could see that several parts of the manual violated the common sense of the immortal path. But he knew his own limitations and handed the fragment to Xing.

Xing took it and began to read and deduce, shaking his head as he did so. “That’s not right, not right…” After half an incense stick’s worth of time, he finished reading and, after a long moment of contemplation, said, “This Bifang was indeed not refined with a true Bifang’s soul, but with many ghosts. He was using these ghosts as a substitute. But this method is only theoretically workable; the chance of actual success is one in ten thousand. And if it fails, it will explode!”

With that, he let out a long breath. “It’s a good thing we went when we did. If we had been a little later, and this Bifang, which was at a critical stage of refining, had failed and exploded, we would both be dead.”

“Explode?” Qin Haoxuan’s eyes lit up. “How do you make it explode? And what kind of power would the explosion have?”

Xing waved the fragmented manual in his hand. “If you follow the method in here, it will explode. With ghosts as the catalyst, and then setting up an infusion array to pour the spiritual energy from spirit stones into it, it will certainly explode. As for the power… I can only say it would be very strong.”

“Could the explosion injure Master Chi Lian?” Qin Haoxuan asked with a wide grin.

Xing did not answer immediately. He re-ran the calculations in his head for a moment, then said, “The power of the explosion would be great. Theoretically, it could threaten Master Chi Lian.”

Qin Haoxuan nodded with satisfaction. “Then that’s enough.”

Following the method in the manual, he shrank the man-high, half-finished Bifang and put it away. He decided to keep it as a trump card to use against Master Chi Lian at a critical moment.