Immortality Cultivation: Fellow Daoists, please live for two more episodes!

"But what?"

"However, when this booklet was passed on to Shuiyue, it was missing a part. More than a dozen pages in the middle were broken. The first three steps of guiding the soul, transforming into form, and entering the weapon were complete, but the rest was missing."

"Gone? What will happen if it's gone?"

"It won't really matter, since you can still train your avatar anyway."

He Qing tapped the table with the pen handle:

"That missing part caused another problem: there's no connection between the avatar you created and your original body."

"You can't see what it's doing, you can't hear what it's saying. Once it's out of your sight, it's no different from a stranger. You can't judge its situation. Even if you can control it remotely, you'll lack the help of vision."

He Qing put down his pen, his tone carrying a hint of someone who had been through it all:

"You know what kind of place our Shuiyue is..."

"You painstakingly created an avatar, giving it half of your wealth, all so it could run errands for you while you remained hidden in the background. But it went out the door and ran off with all your things! Where are you going to find it now?"

Has this happened before?

"Yes, there have been more than one."

He Qing scoffed, "So this booklet has been gathering dust in a corner for over a decade, and nobody's thought to practice it."

Zhou Youyuan's gaze lingered on the booklet.

Because he suddenly realized that this useless cultivation technique, which had been despised by the Shuiyue disciples for over a decade, was a perfect match for the cards in his hand...

He has unclaimed souls, he has artifacts, and as for the lack of vision, he has the "Record of Sending Off the Dead," which binds his avatar to become the fourth destined person. The dynamics on the panel are more effective than any divine connection.

What is someone else’s weakness is precisely his strength.

"This is it."

Are you sure?

He Qing raised an eyebrow: "Let me warn you, this thing..."

"Sure."

He Qing shrugged and made a note on the roster: "Two thousand four hundred, deducted from your account."

"There's another thing I'd like to ask about."

Zhou Youyuan didn't leave immediately. He turned to a page in the booklet and handed it over, pointing to a line of small print:

"To guide a soul into a vessel, a physical body is needed as a medium. It must have spiritual roots, cultivation, have been dead for no more than seven days, and be a 'fragmented soul'—where can one obtain one?"

He Qing glanced down at the small print and scoffed, "In Shuiyue, you, junior brother, would worry about corpses?"

"Some conditions are troublesome to meet on your own."

"At the west end of the Inner Gate Market, in the back alley of Wanbaoge, there is a shop called Guichentang that specializes in this kind of business."

He Qing pulled out a yellow sheet of paper from the roster, wrote a place name on it, and pushed it over:

"Corpses are classified into different grades based on their condition. The higher the grade of the spiritual root, the more expensive they are; the higher the cultivation level, the more expensive they are; and the shorter the time since death, the more expensive they are. Low-grade spiritual roots with less than three levels of Qi Refining cost around five hundred. Mid-grade and above cost two to three times more. High-grade... you can't afford them, don't even think about it."

"A low grade will do, thank you, Senior Brother He."

"Don't mention it, it's just business."

He Qing tucked the pen back behind her ear.

…………

Guichen Hall is located at the west end of the Inner Gate Market, behind Wanbaoge Alley.

The shop was small, sandwiched between two medicine shops. There wasn't even a plaque on the door; there was only a piece of ebony wood with the words "Return to Dust" written in cinnabar.

Pushing open the door, a chilling aura hit me. Behind the counter sat a gaunt old man with a pot of cold tea and a thin booklet in front of him.

Upon arriving at the counter, Zhou Youyuan directly stated his request. Only after he placed 600 points and a spirit marrow on the table did the gaunt old man push out an ice coffin from behind a hidden door.

When the coffin lid was lifted, a young woman with a pale complexion lay inside. She had regular features and was wearing a gray Taoist robe from the outer sect of Shuiyue Sect.

A charred burn on her chest was the one that took her life.

He had a low-grade water spiritual root, at the third level of Qi Refining. He had been dead for three days, but a trace of spiritual energy still remained in his meridians. His spiritual root had not completely dissipated, and it was within seven days.

Zhou Youyuan put the ice coffin into his storage bag, then turned and left Guichen Hall.

…………

Luoxia Peak, Bingzi District Cave.

Zhou Youyuan closed the stone door and set off the restriction. He sat cross-legged on the stone platform, with a bronze mirror and an ice coffin placed side by side in front of him.

On the surface of the bronze mirror, Lin Qiusheng's soul floated up and down, while the face of the young woman in the ice coffin appeared and disappeared in the icy mist.

The cultivation of the "Soul-Guiding Technique" is divided into three steps.

Using spiritual power as a guide, the soul is drawn out of the object, and then the physical body is used as a medium to shape the soul into a human form that can move. Finally, the formed soul is pressed back into the object and merged with it. The process varies from person to person, taking anywhere from two months to half a year.

He first spent half a month memorizing the entire technique from beginning to end.

He cannot cultivate, as spiritual energy cannot flow into his meridians, but practicing martial arts techniques is not affected.

Even if he doesn't understand the basics of immortality like others, he can memorize the finger techniques of hand gestures and the nodes of spiritual power circulation, just like someone who can't play the piano can memorize the position of every note on the sheet music.

Half a month later, he began to act. He pressed his palms against the mirror frame and poured spiritual energy into the mirror. His spiritual energy was just a fuse; the one who truly carried out the technique was Lin Qiusheng's soul in the mirror.

A faint light flashed across the mirror, and a wisp of white mist seeped out from it, like a stick of incense scattered by the wind.

The white mist had barely seeped out half an inch before it receded.

The soul that had been soaking in the "Soul Nourishing Technique" for twenty-five years was as sticky as mud stuck to the bottom of a bowl, clinging to the bronze mirror and refusing to come out.

Zhou Youyuan increased the amount of spiritual power poured into the mirror and pulled it out forcefully. The mirror emitted a sharp buzzing sound. This process was repeated for seven days before the white mist was completely pulled out.

Next comes the transformation.

He took the body out of the ice coffin and placed it on the stone platform, then guided the white mist into the body according to his technique.

The soul slowly seeped into the corpse's meridians along with the remaining spiritual energy, like water finding a long-dried riverbed.

However, while penetration is easy, shaping is difficult.

Lin Qiusheng's soul no longer remembers what he looks like. His memories have been washed away. It is just a warm white mist that barely supports a human shape when it enters the corpse. But when the spiritual power is withdrawn, it collapses into a clump, like a garment without a frame.

Until he remembered the "Sparkling Sword Manual".

The sword intent still lingered deep within his soul. He poured his spiritual power into the core of the white mist, and as soon as the sword intent stirred, his soul instinctively condensed into a sword-wielding posture.

First the hands, then the arms, shoulders, torso, and legs, as if a clay sculpture was being propped up from within by an invisible sword.

Two months later, the white mist completely merged into the corpse, and the young woman, whose face had originally been pale, slowly opened her eyes.

No, she could no longer be called a woman. Her face was changing at a visible speed: her brow bones were rising, her jawline was narrowing, her shoulders were broadening, and her gray Taoist robe was being stretched taut...

In less than a quarter of an hour, a young man in his early twenties sat up on the stone platform. His features were still somewhat blurry, but his outline was exactly the same as Lin Qiusheng's when he graduated at the age of twenty.

The final step is to insert the instrument.

Zhou Youyuan pressed his palm on the top of his head and activated his spiritual power.

hum.

The young man's figure shrank in response, his body, soul, and sword intent all transforming into a stream of light and disappearing back into the bronze mirror.