Chapter 183: The Refinement Method of the Soul Respecting Banner

After Chen Luo left, silence quickly settled over the room.

Lady Bai Gu sat in her place, legs crossed and gently swaying. The blood qi evil cultivator looked at her with a sinister gaze.

“The aura on that man is very strange,” he said. “Very little killing intent. I sensed the presence of ‘Inner Demon’ from him. You know what this means, don’t you?”

“It’s precisely because of this energy that I chose to work with him.”

“The troubles here won’t be any less for us than they will be for him.”

The voice of the blood qi evil cultivator was somewhat hoarse. As two old monsters who had lived for more than four hundred years, they naturally knew what the power of ‘Inner Demon’ represented.

Few cultivators who reached Foundation Establishment were fools. On this land, only those who weren’t stupid could live long enough to reach Foundation Establishment.

“If we don’t break through soon, both of us will die!” The blood qi evil cultivator paused briefly before continuing. “Without our lives, why worry about so much else? Have you grown tired of living?”

Luo Zhengdao had already gone. If everything went smoothly on his end, they would have a chance to snatch the soul essence and cultivate it into a Rakshasa Bone.

“Rakshasa Bone…”

Lady Bai Gu suddenly lost interest. She looked in the direction Chen Luo had left, her gaze vacant, as if lost in thought.

Evil Bone Secret Manual.

As soon as Chen Luo left the Yuquan Chamber of Commerce, he accessed the information within the bone manual.

This was a purely evil cultivation technique that focused on refining one’s spirit while harnessing the malevolent energy from corpses to nourish bones. The practitioner had to relinquish their physical body, entrusting their soul onto a set of white bones. After achieving this step, they would then refine these bones using artificing methods.

The technique was divided into three stages: White Bone, Jade Bone, and Golden Bone. Each stage corresponded to the three realms of immortal cultivators.

Chen Luo attempted to absorb the light into his forehead but quickly put down the bone manual.

How ominous! These two seemed so grandiose, yet they’ve secretly placed restrictions within the bone manual!

While readable, the manual only revealed content up to the Qi Refining White Bone stage. From the Jade Bone section onwards, it was sealed by dark red threads. When his divine sense swept over them, he could only perceive obscurity—a sensation eerily familiar from the ‘Blackstone Secret Technique’ in his possession.

Chen Luo realized he must find an opportunity to extract knowledge about such restrictions; otherwise, he’d be left clueless when encountering high-quality ancient tombs in the future.

His plan to simply take off with the technique proved unfeasible, leaving him no choice but to wait for contact and engage seriously in trade.

“I’ll start by seeing if I can purchase some monster brains,” he decided.

The scene from the inn earlier had sparked an idea in Chen Luo’s mind.

This was demon cultivation territory—corpses were raw materials here! He didn’t necessarily have to dig them up himself; all he needed was a change in perspective—get people to deliver brains as raw material themselves. And then there was Lin Feng’s soul banner, which also needed some adjustments. Foundation Establishment cultivators’ spiritual energy was limited, so he needed to maximize external forces as much as possible to conserve his own consumption.

Putting away the bone scroll, Chen Luo turned towards the market.

Fox girl Su Linlin had said that the market was for Qi Refinement cultivators to trade goods, but Chen Luo felt her statement was somewhat absolute.

The Jade Spring Chamber of Commerce had its advantages, but the market had its charms too. The items sold within the chamber were all put out by Foundation Establishment cultivators, who had their own estimates on pricing and tended to sell more standardized goods. In contrast, the market was far more lax—if you could call it that—even if many of the wares were counterfeit. But compared to the timid merchants at the chamber, these shady vendors were bold as lions!

As long as you were willing to pay, they’d even sell their own fathers.

Re-entering the market, Chen Luo found the lively scene refreshing. Unlike the cold atmosphere at the chamber, this place truly felt like where business thrived. After Lai Ziliu’s ‘precedent,’ the crafty old hands at the market now knew Chen Luo’s capabilities well. Upon seeing him approach, they bowed deferentially one after another, their attitudes extremely friendly.

Chen Luo skipped past the front stalls, venturing deeper into the market in search of his target.

The bustling bazaar was a hive of activity. Chen Luo’s eyes fell upon several shops peddling monster and human remains, but the quality of their wares was uniformly poor. The best they offered were items suitable for the initial stages of Qi Refinement, which held little value for him.

After a thorough巡游, he discovered a miscellaneous goods stall tucked away in a corner. The vendor clearly wasn’t one for propriety; instead of a proper storefront, a black cloth had been spread on the ground, cluttered with an assortment of random objects. Some still bore traces of dirt, as if freshly unearthed.

When Chen Luo approached, a crowd had gathered around the stall. Several individuals were engaged in heated negotiations with the vendor, their faces flushed red over a mere two spirit stones’ worth of profit.

The array of items on display was equally haphazard: fragmented spirit notes, a pill furnace missing a corner, and various murky medicinal pills without even labels. At the very center stood a dilapidated magical artifact, its surface marred by nine skulls strung together—a sight that had drawn Chen Luo to this particular stall.

He stepped closer, reaching out to examine the skull-adorned artifact more closely.

“Don’t touch it unless you’re buying!”

The vendor, who had been embroiled in argument, whirled around at Chen Luo’s approach, eyeing him warily.

The vendor’s overreaction was understandable; the market’s business environment was indeed that simple and straightforward. Inattentiveness could easily lead to theft, leaving inexperienced vendors with empty stalls after a month of work—having sold their goods without earning any spirit stones!

“Let me see it.”

Chen Luo casually tossed out a spirit stone.

Upon seeing the spirit stone, the vendor’s attitude immediately improved. Without hesitation, he retrieved the skull-shaped magical artifact and handed it to Chen Luo, not forgetting to boast about its value:

“You’ve got an eye for quality, sir! Among all my items, this magical artifact is the most precious. I nearly lost my life acquiring it!”

The fellow still haggling nearby quickly exposed the vendor’s sales pitch, causing his face to redden as he angrily waved them off:

“Get lost! If you’re not buying, scram. Don’t hold up my business.”

Unfazed by their argument, Chen Luo focused on the skull-shaped magical artifact in his hand. As expected, upon touching the skull, familiar information began to surface.

Not bad at all!

Retrieve!

Chen Luo’s spirits soared as he immediately ran his hands over all nine skulls.

Nine faint auras flowed into his arms.

Ordinary people?

Chen Luo frowned. The feedback from the nine skulls was a huge disappointment; they were just ordinary individuals. Born during a yin year, month, day, and hour, these children had been captured by some evil cultivator practicing dark arts. They’d been refined into magical artifacts that preserved a sliver of their brainwaves—but all that remained were resentment and malevolence, utterly useless for his purposes.

Setting down the white bone artifacts, Chen Luo turned his attention to another damaged item nearby.

It was a pitch-black skeleton, dug up from who knows where by the vendor, who hadn’t even spared the bones from being sold alongside everything else.

“Let me take a look at this one,” Chen Luo said, tossing another spirit stone to silence the vendor once more.

As he touched the skeleton, he found it was much like the previous skull artifacts—just an ordinary person with little value. However, there wasn’t nothing to be gained here either. This complete skeleton still harbored a lingering obsession:

Soul Banner! With enough banesouls, I can forge a Soul Banner! By merging tool and path, I can overcome my inability to cultivate and break through this hopeless situation! I will definitely become an immortal!

This was the unyielding fixation the skeletal remains couldn’t relinquish, even in death.

This fellow was likely an ordinary person with no spiritual aptitude in life. He must have discovered some cultivation technique somewhere, hoping to embark on the path of immortality.

It seemed he succeeded only partially; had he failed completely, his brainwaves would have decayed into dust like any commoner’s. But since Chen Luo could still read his brainwaves, it meant this man had somehow broken through the barrier—albeit imperfectly.

“Any banesouls for sale?” Chen Luo called out. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

Having struck out with the skulls, Chen Luo decided to shift his focus.

He already possessed a soul banner—the one Lin Feng had used as his trump card—and planned to enhance it using the knowledge gleaned from these minds. He also needed to fill in his gaps in array formation techniques. Ideally, he’d create a portable array flag to serve as his ultimate secret weapon.

“One thousand spirit stones each,” the vendor replied promptly. “I have three here.” He quickly produced a soul pouch containing three banesouls.

Cultivating banesouls was no easy feat. Beyond requiring specific birth dates, they demanded just the right amount of resentment and spiritual energy. Most crucially, once ensouled within a banner, they needed ongoing nurturing. Regular infusions of bane pearls were essential; without them, the banesouls’ resentment would wane over time, diminishing the banner’s power.

Even a mid-Foundation Establishment cultivator like Lin Feng could maintain only eight banesouls in his soul banner, underscoring the immense difficulty of refining such banners. No wonder he’d been so destitute.

Chen Luo tossed out a storage pouch containing ten thousand spirit stones. He used the remaining stones to purchase some bane pearls before finally leaving.

He wandered through the market several more times, feeling over seventeen or eighteen skulls, but the results were all the same. The best he found was from someone in the late stages of Qi Refining, completely worthless for his purposes.

This gave Chen Luo an understanding of how evil cultivators operated. They extracted souls from bones, but they placed great emphasis on the quality of the materials. Often, they sought specific yin souls and banes from certain years, grinding any unsuitable bones into powder for medicinal use.

Currently, Chen Luo had no influence or power base. Collecting corpses and bones would have to wait until he established his territory and subordinates.

Clunk!

Chen Luo dumped a large pile of bone scrolls onto the table.

These were all purchased at today’s market—many incomplete artifacts dug up from graves, missing parts here and there. Their contents varied widely, covering numerous topics. To others, these items held no value, but for Chen Luo, it was different. With access to vast external brains, if those brains had studied these abilities in life, he could instantly convert them into power once added to his ‘database’. Missing pieces weren’t concerning; what mattered most was having content!

A day of frenzied spending had nearly depleted the savings Chen Luo inherited from his rogue cultivator father, Yue Qingping. Yet the gains were immediately apparent. With these bone scrolls, he could finally utilize the two array masters’ brains within his external device. No longer would he be limited to just a handful of basic formations, barely enough to deceive novices.

“Silver-winged centipede cultivation methods,” “Five Elements Sword Formation,” “Advanced Soul Banner techniques”… Chen Luo pored over the bone scrolls, organizing them by category.

He’d acquired these from more than a dozen stallholders, each unaware of the true value hidden within their wares.

“This will take some time, and I still need to resolve my identity issue.”

Hearing the sounds of people bustling outside, Chen Luo decided it was time to find lodging for the night.

Inns are too noisy; they’ll interfere with my cultivation.

After a brief rest, Chen Luo carefully stored away the bone scrolls he’d examined earlier. First, he replenished his temporary identity card with 1,000 spirit stones before heading towards the Jade Spring Chamber of Commerce.

With his Foundation Establishment cultivation base, he could bypass many troublesome formalities. Chen Luo saw no point in pretending to be less capable than he was.

If he could command respect as a grandmaster, why settle for being treated like a novice?