Hunyuan Immortal Sect

Chapter 17: A glimpse of the leopard through the pipe
At night, Song Xian returned to the mansion and ate some hot food and soup provided by the servants in the mansion to fill his stomach.

At this time, the black flag had already recovered its vitality. All magical instruments store a certain amount of energy inside, and the cultivator simply releases this energy.

The more restrictions a magical weapon has, the more energy it can store.

When the energy stored in the instrument is exhausted, it takes a certain amount of time to adjust and recover before it can be regenerated.

If placed in a place with rich spiritual energy, the magic weapon will recover its energy faster. If placed in a place with insufficient spiritual energy, the magic weapon will recover slower.

Song Xian was extremely curious about the black banner and was itching to get it. Without waiting for the next day, he went to the backyard with the black banner and saw a colorful bird landing in the yard.

With a thought, he controlled the black flag to shoot out a beam of blood light towards the bird. The blood light penetrated into the bird's body like an arrow without any sound. The bird fell straight down as if petrified.

However, the next moment, something strange happened. After the bird fell down, its body shriveled up at a speed visible to the naked eye. In just a few breaths, it turned into a pile of skin and bones, with the flesh and blood inside having been hollowed out.

Song Xian stared at this astonishing change with his eyes wide open. Suddenly, he saw the disappeared blood light shoot out from the bird's body again and return to the black flag.

What's going on? Song Xian was shocked, his eyes widened, his mouth slightly open, and he stood there in a daze.

This change of the black banner was completely beyond his cognition. The surging blood light was like a living blood-sucking worm, entering the bird's body, quickly sucking it clean, and then drilling back into the black banner.

Is there such a thing?
Song Xian came to his senses and quickly ran to the bird's corpse, picked it up and examined it carefully. He saw that the bird's feathers were still plump and colorful, but the body hidden under the feathers was empty, with only a thin layer of skin covering the bones. The death looked extremely terrifying.

Is this the secret of the black flag? Song Xian was surprised and delighted. This thing is indeed a treasure.

His spiritual consciousness entered the internal space of the black flag, and the blood light inside was still floating. As expected, after the blood light returned to the black flag, it meant that the energy condensed by the black flag had not dissipated.

He controlled the black flag to attack again, and blood shot towards the stubborn stone in the distance, which instantly shattered and disappeared without a trace.

Song Xian's consciousness entered the black flag again, but the energy stored inside had been exhausted, and he had no way to launch an attack.

This instantly brought him back to his ecstatic mood. Although the black flag was a bit weird, it was nothing more than that.

After all, it is just a magical weapon of the first level of restriction. Its power is shockingly low and it is impossible to pose a real threat to others.

After this experiment, his mood changed drastically and he felt quite bored. In addition, the energy stored in the black flag had been exhausted, so he stopped thinking about it.

After practicing the Fireball Technique some more, he returned to the main room to sleep.

He continued to maintain his usual routine after that, running back and forth between his residence and the practice room every day.

The research on the black flag has never stopped, but no further discoveries have been made.

In the blink of an eye, three months passed.

June 30th is the inspection day for Qingyun Sect. The assets of the mountain sect will be reviewed. These inspection matters are all handled by the inner disciples. Under the command of the head sect leader, Song Xian was assigned to inspect the sect's spiritual medicine. Following him was another inner disciple named Xie Zifeng.

The next day, the two came to the herb garden at the mountain gate. The disciple in charge knew that the sect would send people to inspect, so he waited here early.

Seeing the two people coming on the flying magic tool, he hurriedly went to greet them with a smile on his face.

"Thank you, Senior Brother and Junior Brother Song, for your hard work."

"Junior Brother Chang, we are here on the orders of the headmaster to review the affairs of the herb garden. Please bring this year's detailed report." Xie Zifeng said.

The disciple in charge of the herb garden is named Chang Yuan, a distant nephew of Elder Chang. Due to his poor spiritual aptitude, he was only an outer disciple, responsible for the specific affairs of the mountain gate herb garden.

"It's been prepared long ago." Chang Yuan took a thin booklet from the person behind him and handed it to the two of them.

Xie Zifeng just flipped through a few pages and handed it to Song Xian.

The two were led into the herb garden, which was a second-level spiritual field, covering an area of ​​several dozen acres. It was planted with colorful spiritual trees, flowers and fruits, and all kinds of exotic fragrances filled the air.

"According to the plan, this year the sect purchased 300 black tongue lotus seeds, 200 dragon spirit grass seeds, 100 three-leaf flower seeds, 60 green wood tree seedlings, 50 red lotus fruit tree seedlings, and 50 white orchid tree seedlings..."

As they walked, Chang Yuan introduced the various magical herbs in the herb garden to the two of them.

Song Xian remained silent all the way. Everyone knew that the so-called inspection was just a formality, and if you took it seriously, you would only get yourself into trouble.

Chang Yuan was backed by Elder Chang, and with his support, ordinary people couldn't touch him. From a distance, the herb garden seemed to be lush with rows and rows of various spiritual trees and herbs. Only when you got closer could you see the clues.

Many spiritual medicines seemed to be wilting, and most of the spiritual fruits on the spiritual trees were green and small.

This is because the well-grown spiritual herbs and fruits have been secretly picked and put into everyone's pockets, leaving only some crooked and broken fruits to keep the store looking good.

Song Xian has been in Qingyun Sect for many years and has long understood all of this, but he doesn't say it out loud even though he sees it through.

Even the headmaster secretly embezzled the sect's treasury, so how could he prevent his disciples from embezzling money?

Such a large herb garden, a good second-level spiritual field, has an average annual income of only thousands of spirit stones, sometimes even only a few hundred. Who would believe this? However, this is what the sect's financial statements show.

If you press the issue, there are always excuses, such as the spiritual medicine is not suitable for the climate and soil, or the pests are multiplying, or the extreme cold or heat makes the survival rate of the spiritual medicine low, or the sect's alchemy disciples pick them at will, etc.

After strolling around the herb garden, the two came to a room to rest and chatted. After sending everyone else away, Chang Yuan took out two small bags and handed them to the two with a smile.

"Thank you, Senior Brother Song, for your hard work. This is a small token of our gratitude from the disciples of this peak. I hope you two can say something good about it to the headmaster and the elders."

Seeing that Xie Zifeng accepted it calmly, Song Xian also put it in his pocket.

……

After the inspection day, life returned to normal.

On this day, Song Xian returned to his mansion after finishing his training as usual and began to study the black flag.

During this period, he no longer urged the blood light in the black banner to attack the stones, but instead focused on hunting birds and sucking their flesh and blood to see if it would produce any changes.

He came into the forest with a black flag. Seeing a red snake moving, he launched an attack with the black flag. Blood pierced into the red snake's body like an arrow. After about ten breaths, all the blood and flesh in the red snake's body was sucked clean.

The blood light returned to the black banner. Song Xian picked up the skinny red snake corpse and threw it into the bag that had been prepared long ago.

He hunted a large number of birds, snakes, and rats in the mountains and forests. These animals died in strange ways. If they were discovered, it would inevitably attract attention and suspicion.

Therefore, every time he hunted something, he would pick up its corpse and burn it together.

Every night after training, he would go to the mountains and forests to hunt birds with a black flag and blood-red light.

There are changes, there are indeed changes, my guess was right.

After completing today's hunting mission, Song Xian's consciousness entered the black flag and found that the blood light inside the black flag had become slightly stronger.

Originally, the blood light was only three inches long, but now it has grown to two inches, and is also thicker than before.

This discovery made him so excited that he almost jumped up. He had guessed before that the black flag was so strange that even the Eye of True Observation could not see through it, and the blood light condensed inside the magic weapon could return to itself after absorbing flesh and blood. It should not be completely useless. He must have not discovered the magic of it yet.

If the black banner is compared to a mother body, the condensed blood light is like an incarnation born from the mother body. This blood light can not only absorb the blood and flesh of birds and beasts, but also return to the black banner.

It’s a bit like the soldier ants in the ant kingdom going out to find food for the queen.

The blood light absorbed the flesh and blood of birds and beasts and returned to the black flag. Would it feed back some unknown energy to the black flag?
Just because of this guess, he continued to hunt birds and beasts every day.

Now the changes in the blood light of the black flag are enough to prove that his previous guess was correct to some extent. After absorbing the blood and flesh of birds and beasts, the blood light returns to the black flag and will indeed feed back some kind of energy to the black flag.

The reason why the blood light became bigger and stronger was because the energy of the black flag had been enhanced, so the condensed blood light was stronger than before.

Thinking of this, Song Xian became very excited.

This small change proves that the black banner has the ability to improve itself. No wonder the Eye of True Observation cannot see through it. This black banner must be an extremely extraordinary treasure.

Although it took several months of hunting to make the blood light slightly stronger, he was not discouraged at all, because in these months he had hunted weak animals such as birds, beasts, snakes and rats.

If you hunt large animals like tigers, leopards, wolves, and lions, the flesh and blood in their bodies will be hundreds or even thousands of times higher than that of birds. What about hunting monsters? Will the increase be even greater?

(End of this chapter)